Texas couple finds fully automatic military-grade M16s in storage cases purchased online

[peppertree]

A couple in Houston recently discovered a number of fully automatic M16s inside gun storage cases they bought from an online government surplus store.

The couple has a business where they buy surplus items and resell them on eBay, which is why they purchased the 108 storage cases.

According to ABC13, a friend helped to stack and store the cases over the weekend so the couple gave that person one of the cases as a thank you.

When the person opened the case, he discovered 12 fully-automatic M16s inside. The weapons are designed specifically for military use only.

All the weapons had tags that designated the military branch and names of service members who had previously handled the weapons, ABC13 reported.

Retired Houston police captain and former Marine Greg Fremin said the military carefully tracks all of its weapons because any misplaced weapons can be extremely dangerous.

At: https://www.ksat.com/news/2022/09/27/texas-couple-finds-fully-automatic-military-grade-m16s-in-storage-cases-purchased-online/

[dchill]

1. "...the military carefully tracks all of its weapons..."

That seems to be less than accurate.

[Bristlecone]

4. Lol. No kidding!

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

8. When I was in the Army, all firearms were carefully checked.

Serial numbers were verified by the company armorer when we checked them out and checked them back in.

Coincidentally, classified documents were also carefully checked out of and back into the document vault..

Times change.

[melm00se]

12. Someone in my brother's unit lost an M-16 in the field

and the entire unit got the wonderful experience of marching back and forth across their operational area until they found it. It took 12 hours in the summer desert sunshine in east Texas.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

13. How do you lose an M-16?

Did a chipmunk steal it?

[melm00se]

14. My brother asked the same question

He was in the army in the early 80s and he said that the bulk of his unit struggled with simple tasks and that they were not the brightest bunch of people.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

15. re: "...the bulk of his unit struggled with simple tasks..."

Not the Russian army right?

[yagotme]

16. Dropped out of a chopper, possibly.

Has happened more than once. Or, impromptu head call, was in a hurry to get back in formation, and with all the other gear, left weapon behind.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

17. Ugh.

[yagotme]

18. Guy I worked with "found" one...

When he was in the army, was driving in a "jeep", saw a rifle sticking up out of the ground by some brush. Was stuck in about a foot or so, IIRC. Fell out of a chopper. Unit had been looking for it for 2 days.

[Drum]

2. Wouldn't all of the added weight of firearms tip ANYONE off even before shipping and opening these?

Geez, man!

[gay texan]

5. Those rifles don't weigh a whole lot n/t

[sarisataka]

10. A bit over 7 lbs

So a full case is 85-90 lbs more than an empty

[Chainfire]

9. They were probably palletized and handled by a fork lift.

[Walleye]

3. Pretty soon you won't be able to walk down the street in the country without tripping over guns

[Duppers]

6. About the damn truth!!

Some people are making a lot of money, keeping other people very paranoid.

[SeattleVet]

7. Somebody is about to be in a HEAP of trouble.

I'm pretty sure that they'll very quickly trace these to the folks that sold them to the surplus auction house, and someone is going going to become very familiar with military investigators and lawyers. They don't screw around when weaponry goes astray.

I've seen what happens when a single M-16A1 (an older model than the ones in the story) is misplaced. Entire bases get locked down, and massive resources are deployed to find a single missing weapon.

Given the information that was on the tags, this should be an easy one to solve.

I do feel somewhat sorry for the person that made the error...their life is about to get VERY interesting.

[Paladin]

11. Honestly, I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often. (nt)