Sheriff George Wilhelm made a good point in interviews following the arrest of Ralph Eugene “Junior” Christie Jr. last week on charges of having weapons of mass destruction, among other things.
Christie may consider himself a harmless collector, Wilhelm said, but there are plenty of people around who could help Christie’s collection get into the wrong hands. Grenades, chemical dynamite, flame throwers and the like could do a lot of damage.
You don’t have to be a Timothy McVeigh to inadvertently equip a Timothy McVeigh.
“I’m a firm believer in the right to bear arms,” the sheriff says. But collecting items that can blow up buildings or decimate a crowd goes way beyond that. It leads to charges of possessing weapons of mass destruction.
This, needless to say, is serious stuff. Empty grenades are readily available as military surplus, and some people even use them as jokes. Unfortunately, the fuses and detonators needed to set them off —once filled with gun powder —are all too easy to get on the black market. Once you take those steps, you’ve gone beyond “collecting.”
Wilhelm says it wouldn’t surprise him to find out there might be a few more folks collecting these types of goods in the community. Who knows what’s stashed away in the privacy of Rowan County homes?He warns citizens to be aware of the law.
“We’re not out hunting for this type of thing,”Wilhelm says, but if authorities learn someone has it, “it’s best to get it out of the hands of the public.”
The fact that Christie had also built himself an underground shelter in a buried bus adds a fascinating element to the story, though there’s nothing illegal about it. Certainly many people did stranger things as the world braced for Y2K. But let’s hope most of them didn’t also acquire explosives.
Authorities had heard rumors about what Christie had stashed at his place off Barringer Road for years, but they never had enough probable cause to get a warrant, Wilhelm said. That surfaced recently in the form of an informant.
So, kudos to the informant for alerting law enforcement, and kudos to authorities for taking action. Collectors have their rights, and they can have their eccentricities, too. But when they store up explosives and grenades, they’re far from harmless. They’re an accident waiting to happen, and a crime in progress.
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