Monastery raided by ATF, firearms confiscation

U

unknwn

New member
Yeah, you heard it right. A monastery folks, and the rub is that the monks weren't even found to be breaking any "code violations" . The Fed.s took it upon themselves to haul away some 50-odd rifles and handguns, and get this - over 800 boxes of ammunition, in the spirit of a so-called "crisis intervention" . Huh, I wonder what a bunch of Orthodox Cappadocian fathers (monks) did to deserve this sort of anti-constitutional siezure of property, much less the 2nd amendment issues involved.
After you check out the sensationalized "news" article , and see the pics (nice broom handled Mauser Father), go to thier website and sign the guest book with a few words of encouragement.

http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/lo...und-after-57-guns-confiscated-from-st-hermans
http://sainthermans.ipower.com/index.html

link fixed
 
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FWIW the news link works for me.

That said, the news article says that no code violations were found, the investigation is still ongoing, and no charges have been filed.

My thoughts? It's certainly possible that federal laws were broken here. A good number of the guns appear to be vintage militaria; a lot of it is not recognizable due to the low resolution, but there's definitely a Mauser C96, blackpowder muzzleloading rifles, and what looks like a Lee-Enfield buttplate. My guess is that this is someone's personal collection that may have been accumulated without the proper FFLs.
 
Two possibilities comes to mind.

1. Firearms are normally owned by individuals, not homeless shelters. Therefore, they might have felt that the guns had been collected from the homeless men they served (i.e. good possibiltiy that they were stolen in the first place).

2. A homeless shelter frequently serves convicted felons who are not legally allowed to be around firearms. The monistary may have been storing these weapons in an unsecure manner in such a way as to not be totally secure from the felons they served.
 
Doyle, those are both good points. And you'd expect, at a homeless shelter, a high proportion of mentally ill folks as well, many of whom may also be prohibited persons.

This is just a guess, as I don't know much about this particular monastic order, but in many such orders, property is held in common -- monks have little or no personal property of their own. In such a case, I could see the ATF having some interest in who, exactly, owns these guns...
 
Wow I wouldn't have predicted this story! Personally any time I read a news story I assume it has been crafted to conceal the truth. The truth sometimes comes between the lines. Much like in the days of Stalin when a story of men eating a prehistoric frozen fish might appear in a scientific journal and reveal the truth that the state was starving them.

I was an Orthodox Christian part of my life and an Orthodox priest can have a wife but can't kill animals. It does seem odd for them to have firearms in quantity. The cops had no respect for their property just shoving them in buckets but the owners might have carelessly stored anyway.

I might have to ask a padre I know for glimmers of the truth, the orthodox community in USA is relatively small.
 
what ffl is required to accumulate a collection?
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I should have been more specific. I wrote that post in haste and I now realize that this particular phrase didn't make much sense.

Theories re: possible laws broken...
  1. The firearms may have been purchased by a nonlicensee from private individuals in adjacent states in violation of federal law.
  2. The firearms may have been legally obtained by a FFL but no additional license was obtained for storage at the monastery building. A licensee is supposed to obtain a separate license for each location where his/her firearms will be stored unless the additional storage facility is used exclusively for storage of firearms and ammo, which does not seem to be the case here because the building is also a monastery and homeless shelter. A FFL's firearms may also legally be taken elsewhere for sale or to be loaned to others for legal sporting purposes, but I gather that gun shows aren't usually held at this monastery, and it is unlikely that any sort of sporting purpose was being served unless there is a shooting range in the basement! ;)
  3. The owner (presumably he?) is suspected of conducting a business buying and selling firearms without a FFL.
  4. The guns may have been confiscated from homeless people per Doyle's first theory; OTOH the guns in the picture IMHO appear to be nicer than what I would expect homeless people to possess, unless this is the culmination of decades of collecting activity (i.e. the cream of the crop).
  5. The guns were made accessible to prohibited persons, possibly via careless and unsecured storage, per Doyle's second theory.
  6. The guns were made accessible to minors- essentially a variation on Doyle's second theory.
 
My guess would be, the guns and ammo were collected under a "no guns in the shelter" policy, over an extended period of time (monasteries tend to be around). During a "disturbance" the officers asked for "any guns on the premises", and were shown the "secure lock-up". Upon collecting their jaws from the floor over that 50 year arsenal, they decided to box it all up first and figure it out later.
 
My guess would be... During a "disturbance" the officers asked for "any guns on the premises", and were shown the "secure lock-up". Upon collecting their jaws from the floor over that 50 year arsenal, they decided to box it all up first and figure it out later.
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Another strong possibility is that one of the guns showed up off-premises in the possession of a suspect, the police asked the person where he/she got it, and the person's story seemed so bizarre that they decided to check it out for themselves. (Put yourself in the cops' shoes- a junkie claiming that she found a Lorcin .32 under a bush is nothing special, but it's not every day that someone tells you he lifted, say, a prewar Belgian Hi-Power from a monastery! :) ) The rest of the story proceeds per your second sentence. :rolleyes:

This is all conjecture, but as a gun collector, I'm interested to see where this story goes!
 
Surprising how thin the news coverage is on this.

A bit of background on St. Hermans: It is not owned by any orthodox church, but is held in the name of a cancelled corporation and pays real estate taxes vastly in excess of what any competent owner would pay because the owner has permitted the county to vastly over value it. If it were a church property, it should not be paying any real estate tax at all.

A few of the arms confiscated were new condition ARs and the monk in question tried to use an exemption from sales tax when purchasing a rifle from a walmart. This may be what put him on the radar.

None of this is to suggest that what they do isn't good, or that the people involved are insincere.

For those who do not follow these matters closely, I suggest that Cleveland is only slightly more gun friendly than DC.
 
Heck, I'm more curious as to what a bunch of "Monks" are doing with that kind of arsenal in the first place? Those types are usually prohibited from weapons and stuff. Maybe they are some radical group planning some mayhem and the cops got wind of it.

Very strange story though.
 
Why is nobody concerned about probable cause here? It's not enough that it seems highly unusual that a monastery would have that amount of ammo and guns. There has to be probable cause to suspect a specific crime has been committed and that the seized items are are evidence of crime or contraband. You can't simply seize the guns, cart them off, and then sort it out later. Maybe there's a lot we don't know about, but there's nothing in the news stories that would seem to warrant confiscation.
 
Question #1
Why is it that the protection against unreasonable siezures never seems to0 apply to a gun collection? At least not till long after the fact, if then?

Questions #2, why is it the police never seem to care for the state of the "Evidence" siezed? Everything belongs to somebody, and if the owner(s) are not found guilty of a crime, why do they have virtual license to mistreat that siezed property (particularly when it is guns)? Seems like any damage suffered to siezed property almost always is claimed to have "been that way when we recovered it". And it takes a court case to prove otherwise?

I know guns are a "special" case, because of our love of them, and so many others hate for them, even though they are mere mechanical objects, but come on, innocent until proven guilty should include a reasonable protection of property while in evidence, shouldn't it?

I mean, if a thief stole something, say a rare book, and the cops recovered it, intact, but had to store it as evidence, and then when it was finally returned to the rightful owner, half the binding had been eaten by rats, I feel fairly confident that absent clear proof to the contrary, it would "have been recovered in that condition, go seek damages from the theif."

Not bashing any individual, or LEO in general, just that these kinds of things not only happen, but keep happening generation after generation, giving us (or at least me) the feeling that the cops don't really care. After all, its not their property, now is it?

I suppose its just a sign of how fallible and human we all are. Sigh......
 
Let's see, what's wrong and incomplete about the original articles.

It's not a monastery. It wasn't raided. How's that for a start.

There was a crisis intervention last month and the Father in question agreed to the guns being taken. I think the number was 57, but they were in his apartment as I understand it, not the shelter.

The so-called raid wasn't, but it was this month and consisted of the fire department and health department looking for violations. They found some, but the amount of "clutter" kept them from finishing.

Next, we have 150-some MORE guns being found on a church farm or other property.

I think by this point the people supporting the shelter are wondering what the guy has been doing with the budget. You think?

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/02/spiritual_leader_gives_up_post.html

"Rev. John Henry takes leave from post at St. Herman's after 230 guns seized"
So spare me all of the rightous indignation and Nazi comments. Sheesh. JT
 
80 guns in a car, in plain view, and the car is unlocked? They could call the show Careless in Cleveland.


www.vindy.com/news/2011/feb/10/officials-seize-guns-ammunition-at-farm/

"During an investigation prompted by a tip [I think the store called it in after he tried to use the church's sales tax exemption - JT], Cleveland police also seized 80 guns and 874 boxes of ammunition Jan. 28 from a car parked near St. Herman’s after police saw weapons “in plain view” in the unlocked car. Pastor Henry gave consent for officers to search the car, the Plain Dealer reported."
 
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