Gun stores are always going to be targeted for burglaries. After all, if you want to steal guns, why break into homes in hope that there will be guns when you can break into a gun store where you know there will be?

As such, these kinds of burglaries happen and they’re never a good thing.

One recently took place in Portland, with at least one suspect arrested.

An avowed white supremacist is back in federal custody, one of five men who prosecutors say busted through a Southeast Portland pawn shop last month using a sledgehammer and stole 47 guns worth about $20,000.

Kory Dean Boyd, 38, was arrested after federal agents searched his residence with a warrant and recovered eight guns, including seven stolen from an overnight break-in last monthat Pawn Central LLC in the 12200 block of Southeast Stark Street.

…

The owners had received notice of several alarm activations at the business over the previous few days. They responded to some of them and said they checked the doors and windows and left when they found them secured. They told federal investigators they hadn’t, however, checked the back exterior wall of the shop.

Several large trash containers were placed in front of the two holes in the wall to conceal them, Livengood wrote in a criminal complaint unsealed Monday.

Video surveillance revealed two people carrying a suspected sledgehammer and several others hauling rifle cases out to waiting vehicles, according to the complaint.

But he’s a “white supremacist” in Portland. Doesn’t that just mean he’s insufficiently progressive?

Not really.

Boyd was convicted in 2016 of attacking a Black man at a bar in downtown Vancouver and was sentenced then to two years and 10 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release.

An admitted white supremacist, Boyd started attacking the man when he refused to leave the bar, according to federal court records. Boyd threw a pint glass that narrowly missed the victim’s head while he repeatedly yelled “white power” and called the man by a racist slur as he urged his friends to stab the man, Burkhart wrote in a court memo. The victim suffered minor physical injuries, according to prosecutors.

“The attack was unprovoked and completed based” on Boyd’s racist beliefs, the prosecutor wrote to the court.

Yeah, this is an actual, real white supremacist and not just someone who doesn’t share the majority politics of Portlandia.

This, of course, raises the question of just why he was trying to steal all those guns. An obvious answer is that he did it for money, stealing them in hopes of selling them. White supremacist criminals are looking for money just like the non-racist bad guys.

However, it could also be an attempt to gear up for something nasty.

Frankly, I think anyone in Portland with half a brain should get guns of their own and a permit to carry them, just in case Boyd’s friends decide to get rowdy with those stolen guns.

As for the method of breaking in, I’d like to say this is the first time I’ve seen it, but it’s not. People don’t realize how relatively simple it is to break into any building by just going through the wall. It’s just too bad the owner didn’t question the trash cans’ location and look there.