New police firearms unit confiscates hundreds of guns

Police investigators expected to find guns inside a Kensington home when they raided it in April. But they did not expect to find so many.

Police found 57 handguns, shotguns, rifles and assault rifles, said Sgt. Kenneth Berger of the county police department's Firearms Investigation Unit. Guns lay on tables, under furniture and hidden in wall niches. In a bunker-like room in the basement, they found kegs holding eight pounds of black gunpowder.

The man was committed to a psychiatric hospital after the raid. He has since been released and is seeking to have his weapons returned, Berger said. However, under state and federal law, police can confiscate the weapons of those committed for mental health problems.

This is just one of the hundreds of cases investigated by the county police under a pilot program launched in 2003.

The police are quoted in the article trying hard to spin it as an effort that was being very careful of the rights of law-abiding gun owners, but there's a catch-22 here. They get a tip -- which is almost certainly worthless -- do a raid, confiscate this guy's 57 guns, and have him committed for evaluation. Then he gets released, because he's sane. No charges.

But he's been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital. He's no longer "legally permitted" to own a gun. So he can't get his guns back.