And Now You Know The Rest Of The Story

The late radio broadcaster Paul Harvey used to have a feature called, "The Rest of the Story". He'd end the feature with the tagline, "And now you know the rest of the story." I saw the tweet below from Shannon Watts of Everytown Moms for Illegal Mayors yesterday. Just like Al Sharpton demands "Justice!", Shannon demands "Gunsense!".

Man Steals AR-15 From @Walmart in #Asheville #NorthCarolina http://t.co/eT0GlYjVF6 @MomsDemand #gunsense
— Shannon (@shannonrwatts) November 30, 2014

This is not just some Walmart store. This is my Walmart store. The one that is a five minute or less drive from my house. The one at which I buy ammo if it is in stock. In other words, I know the store and I know the gun counter. Both ammo and firearms are kept in a locked case and only certain employees have the key.

The story as reported involved the theft of an AR-15 and 150 rounds of ammunition from the locked case on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. The thief purportedly shoved the rifle down his pants and just walked out.

And now for the rest of the story.

Donald Alan Skelton, 33, was arrested on Thursday as he went back to the same Walmart. According to records from the NC Department of Public Safety, Skelton was released from prison in February. His criminal record goes back to at least 2008 and includes convictions for felony breaking and entering and for being a felon in possession of a firearm.





For this theft, Skelton was charged with larceny of a firearm, misdemeanor larceny, and possession of a firearm by a felon. He is being held in the Buncombe County Detention Center under an $11,000 bond.

Watts got 28 retweets and 7 favorites from this tweet. How the theft of a firearm by a convicted felon relates to "gunsense" and the call for universal background checks is beyond me.

And Gun Control Would Have Prevented This How?

Perhaps the gun prohibitionists would care to explain this and how any new gun control laws would have kept these guns off the street.

Truck driver Elliot Perez and his accomplice Michael Murphy were indicted in US District Court in Bridgeport, CT for stealing 111 firearms from Smith and Wesson.

According to the indictment against them, on November 8, Perez had a scheduled delivery of guns to pick-up at Smith & Wesson in Springfield. He was supposed to pick up five boxes of firearms to bring back, but ended up taking an additional three. Driving back down to Connecticut, he allegedly stopped at his Bridgeport home and met with Murphy before bringing the truck to his company’s warehouse in Stratford, where he unloaded only the five that he was supposed to deliver.

The indictment charges that on November 15, Perez and Murphy sold one of the stolen guns to another individual. Five days later, when questioned by ATF special agents, Perez allegedly lied and said that a “black male” at Smith & Wesson had instructed him on which boxes he was supposed to load onto the truck, adding that he had dropped off all of the cases of guns at the company warehouse.

At the time of the two men’s arrests days later, Stratford Police had only been able to recover 28 of the stolen guns.

Charges include conspiracy, possession of stolen firearms, trafficking, and making false statements to a law enforcement officer.

Perez was not an employee of Smith and Wesson. He worked for a trucking company contracted to handle transportation services for S&W.