Associated Press: A man who stockpiled weapons and ammunition in a shopping-mall storage room was preparing to start a race war and planned to carry out assassinations based on race, religion and ethnicity, federal prosecutors said.Schmidt’s plans were discovered not through investigation or some sort of sting, but because of shit luck. Police were investigating something else entirely when they came across his private arsenal.
Richard Schmidt, who pleaded guilty to possession of firearms and trafficking in counterfeit goods in July, is to be sentenced next month.
He was “a one-man army of racial and religious hate,” prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum filed last week in federal court. Schmidt’s attorney disputed the accusations, calling them “over the top.”
Prosecutors charged Schmidt nearly a year ago after finding rifles, shotguns and 40,000 rounds of ammunition inside the mall where he ran a sports memorabilia store in Bowling Green, about 20 miles south of Toledo.
The FBI told black and Jewish leaders in the Detroit area that their names were on a list kept by Schmidt. The head of a Jewish organization in Detroit said there was a notebook that listed his group and its leaders, but he said it wasn’t a specific hit list.
Had Schmidt been luckier than police, rather than the other way around, he probably would’ve tried use his Precious Second Amendment Freedoms to launch his race war by now.
And that makes Richard Schmidt today’s Second Amendment Hero.
[image sources Dept. of Justice, Flickr, Flickr]
