While many of us have a number of firearms, we never really have enough. If I had my way, I'd have enough of an arsenal to outfit a few divisions of troops. Not because I need them but simply because I can.

I love living in the land of the free.

Yet our friends in California often refer to themselves as living in occupied territory. That's because the gun laws there are so strict. The idea of massive quantities of firearms isn't completely dead there, but it's difficult.

Those laws, we're told, are meant to keep people from getting guns illegally.

Yet an arrest there kind of makes it clear how little these laws are doing in that regard.

A man was arrested in Richmond after 214 illegally owned guns and about one million rounds of ammo were found, along with thousands of more gun parts.

According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), on January 31, agents performed a search warrant on a suspect’s house in Richmond with the help of many other agencies including the Bureau of Firearms (BOF) Contra Costa Anti-Violence Support Effort (CASE) Task Force assisted by the BOF Dublin office and Contra Costa County Probation Officers. 

...

In total, authorities seized 11 military-style machine guns, 133 handguns, 37 rifles, 60 assault rifles, 7 shotguns, 20 silencers, and 4 flare guns, and around one million rounds of ammunition of different calibers.

In addition to all of those, he also reportedly had 3,000 "high capacity" magazines.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta tried to play this as a victory for the Armed and Prohibited Persons System there, but let's be real here. This is someone who had no problem procuring firearms illegally. When he gets out of prison for these weapons charges, he'll probably start buying guns all over again.

I mean, 11 "military-style machine guns" isn't some journalist-speak for a few AR-15s laying around. We're talking about at least one M2 Browning .50-caliber machine gun and things only a step or two down from the venerable Ma Duece.

In other words, some serious hardware, all of which is pretty much illegal in California and has been for ages.

None of those laws stopped this guy, apparently. 

See, California has all these laws and we keep saying that they don't stop the bad actors from doing whatever they want. We're told we're stupid for even suggesting such a thing, some even ignoring the fact that our issue isn't so much making things illegal for criminals but in that they prohibit good guys from doing the same things. It puts us at a disadvantage.

This is what we're talking about, though. 

Whoever got all of this stuff did so illegally. They accumulated a pretty impressive arsenal, the kind of thing I'd love to have in my gun room, but they did it in spite of the plethora of gun control laws on the books. They didn't go through all the NFA paperwork to get these weapons. I can only imagine what kind of money he spent on these guns, either.

But the point is that despite the numerous laws on the books in the occupied territory, none of them did anything to prevent this. The only saving grace is that this guy hadn't decides to use them for anything. At least, he hadn't yet.

Now I'm curious, though. How many more arsenals like this are floating around?