Michael Olivieri courtesy chicagotribune.com

A doctor living in the tony Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago was jailed on Friday after he fired a shot from a revolver through the wall of his apartment and into the one next door on Wednesday. Luckily, he injured nothing but the kitchen backsplash in that apartment. Michael Olivieri (above) told prosecutors he thought he’d replaced the live ammo in the revolver with dummy rounds when he laid it on his kitchen island. For some reason, he decided to squeeze the trigger as it lay there, telling police he “squeezed the trigger as a nervous tic like squeezing a tennis ball.” Investigating officers confiscated eight guns, including at least one rifle, and prosecutors say none of them were registered. When police came to pick him up on Friday . . .

he told them he had a ninth gun he’d forgotten to tell them about on Wednesday, stored in his car in the parking garage. He faces a felony charge of reckless discharge of a firearm and was cited for the unregistered guns. As of Saturday, he was being held on $10,000 bail.

Your Lockdown of the Dayâ„¢ comes from a hospital today, instead of a school. The Hennepin County (MN) Medical Center was “forced into” lockdown for about 90 minutes Saturday after a visitor threatened another visitor with a gun. The two individuals were visiting two separate patients when they became involved in a verbal altercation in the hallway, resulting in one “making a gun threat to the other.” No more info on the nature of the threat is available, but it was overheard by staff who activated their emergency plan and notified police around 11 a.m. The individual who made the threat fled the hospital before the lockdown was in place, and during the following 90 minutes police set up a cordon around the building and searched the inside for firearms, finding none. Nobody was injured, and everyone patted each other on the back for how smoothly their procedures had been followed.

Although most of us here would loudly decry the system under which it’s necessary to operate to possess firearms in Merry Olde England, I found this case interesting in the sensibility with which it was handled. Imagine what the penalty would be if you were found to be in possession of a silencer without paperwork, or in a state where firearms registration is (unconstitutionally) required, without the paperwork for those firearms. Last week, a judge in Warwickshire, England found that there was “nothing sinister” in a man’s possession without certificates of two shotguns, a Winchester .22 rifle, a silencer, and hollow-point .22LR ammunition (all of which require certificates to own). Because of the lack of mens rea, he sentenced the man to only two months in prison, suspended for two years, with two years of supervision. Basically, that amounts to two years of probation for some rather egregious violations of their firearms laws. Even if you disagree with their laws, it’s hard to deny that this judge has his head on straight.

How well do you know your neighbors? When an aged man in Brentwood, England died suddenly on April 2nd, his 31-year-old neighbor and caretaker called police to say she thought they should come get the guns out of his house. She knew he had some, and that he kept them under lock and key, but what police found was far beyond what anyone expected. In addition to his legal store of weapons, he also had a machine gun of some sort, six deactivated hand grenades, bulk gunpowder, and a collection of World War II memorabilia that included two foot-long bombs, one of which was still live. Police called in Explosives Ordnance Department to remove and dispose of the items, while the caretaker and others got busy clutching their pearls and gasping because “The whole street could have gone up.” Why can I never find cool stuff like this?

Demolition Ranch demonstrates “The Most Tactical Reload” of a shotgun, ever. I could practice for literally days and not get this to work right.

I don’t know how many failed takes they had, but I’m just going to say that he got it on the first try, and raise a glass.

Hickok45 flings some 405 grain hardcast lead bullets at a cinderblock wall at 250 yards. What a beautiful rifle.

I absolutely love the sight of a bullet flying downrange leaving a mirage in its wake.

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45 COMMENTS

  1. With the passage of the CCW law in Illinois and state preemption of handgun regulation, I thought the Chicago registration scheme went bye-bye. I now live in the suburbs and wasn’t that focused on the current state of Chicago law, but this seems off.

  2. I hope my friends make it to my house when I croak.
    Before some dimwit calls the police.

      • Yup.
        This brings up a great point. One should have a trusted friend or two to confide in if life goes sour.
        My best friend has the combo to my safes and an encrypted chip with all my crap listed on it. Also where to find more stuff.
        I have the same of his.

        A good friend of ours passed a bit back and his family called a few of us. None of us knew about the grenades.
        That was a somber and fun weekend.

  8. Something about this article doesn’t make sense, or the police have no idea what they are doing. None of the three legal entities here, City of Chicago, Cook County, or the State of Illinois require firearms to be registered.

  10. Interesting difference in sound down range between the smokeless and the black powder If any of you got to the last few minutes). Love me some 45-70! Man what big holes it makes!

    • Fo fiddy is better IMO, the guy in A Bronx Tale said it best:

      *If you shoot a guy on an elephant with this, you are going to knock down the guy and the elephant while the bullet continues through two counties.”

      How is 45/70? I have always sorta wanted one but ammo is hard to get for that caliber in Norway.

  11. I think I replaced the live rounds with dummies…..I think I’ll just pull the trigger and find out.

    Basic gun handling folks….basic gun handling.

      • JWM,
        Hit me up sometime to plan some shoots/hunts.
        I didn’t find you on the forum, so here’s a good email address for me.

        [email protected]

        Love to come down there with some bang sticks and go hog hunting with you and your son.

        • Still searching for a good hunting vehicle. When I get it I will start scouting a hog hot spot I’ve heard about. I’ll let you know. It’s in condor country so bring non lead boomstick fodder.

  13. Ditto on no Chicago registration. Over the weekend more than 30 shootings in Chicago. Chief thug McCarthy blamed it on “lax gun laws”. A little taste of summer with 80degrees on Saturday.( it’s SNOWING RIGHT NOW!”.) McCarthy got a bit agitated when asked if the summery weather contributed to the violence. LOL. It could be the loon doctor had no FOID card.

    • I think your incessant blathering about what this site should or should not “run” has played out.

      I happen to LOVE the Lockdown of the Day ™ series. It’s an excellent perspective piece about how rampant and out-of-control this nonsense is becoming and quite fitting for a “TRUTH about Guns” web site.

      The more light shone under this particular rock the more “truth” gets out there to more people. Big win.

    • Time to stop using “lock down”. As stupid as “active shooter” HS grad cops trying to sound all edumacated and sophisticated.

  16. It is probably not reasonable, but one would expect that a man who has the mental horsepower to make it through medical school and residency and who knows how many more years of education to become a doctor would have enough intelligence not to do something so stupid and so ineptly keep a stash of firearms in his home and apparently also one in his car.

    But…guess not.

    • That thought also occurred to me. But maybe instead of being dumb, he was defiant.

      “This is America, dammit, and I’m not registering my guns just because some politician says so.”

      Many here have been lauding precisely that sort of attitude from from gun-owning folks in Connecticut, right?

      Of course, that doesn’t say anything to the negligent discharge.

      • “What do you call a medical school student who graduates at the bottom of his class?”

        “DOCTOR!”

  17. So it was not a reference to the Duran Duran song of the same name? Huh…
    Forgive me, but I thought pulling the trigger to see if a firearm is (was?) loaded went out with bleeding patients and burning witches.

    • I can’t always tell you precisely where the titles come from, other than “out of my brain.” They almost always relate to one or more of the stories, though possibly in a way that is only apparent to my fever-addled mind. This particular one found its genesis in “falling block,” which is the style of rifle that hickok45 is shooting.

  18. So the guy had a negligent discharge, So the Police take all his GUNS? I think there might be a second amendment issue here. What”s next. You back out of your driveway and accidently hit another car, are they going to show up and take away all your cars. Only in Chicago, anywhere west of there, common sense still prevails.

  19. It’s a wonder anyone survived WWII. If a bomb sitting perfectly still can blow up an entire street, I can’t imagine how unstable they are when you start carrying them around in planes and trucks.

    • Ordnance showed it’s ass spectacularly on numerous occasions. Ships were destroyed, units decimated and great destruction done by safely stored and transported ordnance during the war.

      Even when you do things right there’s a measure of risk in handling explosives or volatile chemicals.

      A live ww2 era bomb in a residential neighberhood has disaster written all over it.

      • ^^^This.

        Plus some explosives become unstable over time. A bomb that didn’t detonate in 1944 can go boom tomorrow.

  20. «The 31-year-old, who had cared for Mr James during his illness, said: “I know he had a firearms licence because police used to come to the door about it.”»

    Ugh.

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