Surprise: "Firearms cache not necessarily illegal"

The Philadelphia Inquirer has this amazing article here. It has often been one of my pet peeves that newspapers will frequently point to the number of guns or ammunition that someone has as evidence of some type of guilt. Even when the number of rounds is only about 500 or a thousand I have seen newspaper articles in shock over the number, so it is very welcome to see this piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The nearly 260 guns and half-million rounds of ammunition discovered in a bunker on a South Jersey man's property this week sounds like an ominous find for law enforcement.
But Brian Hinkle's weapons could have been bought and owned legally, said Evan Nappen, an Eatontown, N.J., lawyer whose practice focuses on firearms law.

"It depends on the type of weapons involved, if none of them are prohibited assault weapons," he said. "There's no limit to the rifles and shotguns one can possess."

State Police Sgt. Steve Jones said the arsenal could constitute the largest number of weapons state investigators have ever uncovered, but he said it would take time to determine whether each gun was owned legally.

"It will be a very long administrative process," he said.

In the bunker, police found semiautomatic rifles, handguns, antique guns, and World War II-era firearms of various calibers.

Under New Jersey law, residents need a state-issued firearms purchaser identification to buy long guns, but there are no restrictions on how many can be purchased.

To buy handguns in New Jersey, residents also need a separate state permit for each handgun they plan to buy. As long as all the state and federal procedures are properly followed, "you could have a million guns," Nappen said. "The number is not relevant."

As for the ammunition in Hinkle's home, Nappen noted that some calibers are sold in cases of 500 or 1,000 bullets.

"That's a lot of ammo, but it's not insane," he said. "It's what you'd find on a big shelf in a store." . . .