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“The raid started Friday night, according to SLED. It’s reportedly part of an ongoing investigation involving multiple jurisdictions that could have ties to counties in North Carolina as well. Sheriffs from other jurisdictions were there as well as SLED and ATF. ‘None of us have ever seen anything anywhere close to this,’ (Chesterfield, SC County Sheriff Jay) Brooks said. ‘No telling how many break-ins this will held wrap up.'” And what did all that LEO power find when they exercised a search warrant on Brent Nicholson? . . .

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According to wbtv.com,

Deputies estimate that they’ve seized between 7,000 and 10,000 stolen guns from a house and warehouse near Pageland. …

When asked what Nicholson was doing with so many guns, Brooks said, “(he) looks like a gun hoarder to be honest with you.” Deputies have found no evidence that he ever sold any of the guns.

“You know he just had 7,000 guns,” Brooks said. “99.9 percent are hunting rifles and shot guns.”

So Nicholson was really just an underfunded avid collector. If you’re in the southeast and had a long gun stolen, you might wan to check with the Chesterfield County Sheriff. They may have some good news for you.

[h/t Ripcord]

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66 COMMENTS

  1. If they cant be returned to the rightful owners.
    There should be one heck of a sale.
    Or if they try to pull a Honolulu.
    One heck of a riot.

    • How do they know they are all stolen. They cross-referenced the serial numbers with theft reports? Like all of the victims had records of their serial numbers? All 10,000 of them? How long did that take?

      I have serious doubts here.

      • The guy co-owned a liquor shop and was a heroin dealer. My guess is he was taking stolen goods (it wasn’t just guns, the original warrant was for some stolen chainsaws he had sitting on his front lawn) in trade for heroin and booze.

    • I’m in Chesterfield County SC. Pageland SC is one damned sketchy ass town. I live 30 miles from there. A few years ago my father had over 100 guns stolen from him (They were locked in Stack-On boxes, He’s got 2 50 gun liberty safes now). Long guns and pistols and ammo were stolen. My sorry ass skeevy dope-head cousin was (is) a strong suspect. We had had 3 sets of hand prints, foot prints, DNA from a slobbery beer can (Bastards drank Pop’s beer). Earth was ripped up for a mile where they came in and left on 2 ATVs. Nothing happened. After constant phone calls to LEO, we never got the first update on the “investigation”. Not to mention Chesterfield County is recovering from the worst, most corrupt sheriff SC has ever seen (well, that I’ve seen anyway). If anyone gets any thing back out of that pile O’ gun, I’ll be blown away. I can promise that if any are returned then is would be SLED”s doing and then only because this is such a high profile event.

      My answer to anyone who has asked me why I carry get’s this answer, “Chesterfield County Sheriffs Dept.”

      Oh,, and minor update. There was a shoot out in Pageland SC last night. 1 dead, 1 on the run, shots exchanged with LEO. Think its related??

    • Instead, why don’t we just melt them all down into a giant peace-dove statue, and thereby end all gun violence forever and ever? /sarc.

  3. Underfunded is right I have the same problem here, apparently it’s irresponsible to buy firearms instead of clothes for the kid.

    • It is. I hit a certain point with gun collecting and my desire to acquire more has dropped drastically. Sometimes I think about selling some to replace them with a small amount of high end guns. I have still bought a few more, but they are mostly as AR and AK build projects.

    • …. notice the lack of pistols and automatics. Criminals don’t dig Double barrels and bolts actions. Or maybe Nicholson was a criminal, heroin dealing Fudd. He wouldn’t by a stolen AR or Glock ‘cuz no one needs that to hunt.

  6. Take them to Ferguson, give them to all the poor black folks who can’t afford to buy more than a dozen illegal guns on the street.

    For the children, and the next riot!

    • Man, that’s a really great name for a gun store, especially one that specializes in “assault” type weapons.
      I like crazy names like “Scarf & Barf” for a first class restaurant!

      • There’s actually a holster company that goes by the name SHTF Gear. They make IWB and mag holsters. I have one for my 5.7. The one I have is pretty nice.

  9. He might have been an anti who was conducting his own personal “gun buy-backs”. Taking them “off the streets”. He just wasn’t paying for them. After all, he was “underfunded”.

    • “He just wasn’t paying for them.

      He probably did actually pay for them. If it’s true that he owned a liquor store and dealt heroin then he probably took guns in trade for smack, booze, tobacco products, a case of hostess fruit pies, a months supply of Slim Jims, etc.

      Wonder how many lemon pies you can get for a stolen pre-64 Winchester model 70?

      • My guess is that guns would get stolen, anything with street value: handguns, maybe ARs and AKs would go north or to Chiraq. This was the left overs. Much harder to move hunting rifles and shotguns.

  12. I don’t see how one person could have stolen all of these. Money had to have exchanged hands for some of these if not most. What I want to know is where that much money comes from unaccounted. There is a lot more to this story and somewhere in the middle of it I would bet politics gets involved. Just think an average price of $100 each is a lot.

  14. All the news coverage I see on this all have headlines talking about the number of guns. None of the headlines say anything about them being stolen or the drugs until you dig into the article.

    All the headlines seem to imply that he was arrested merely for owning that many guns. I wonder if lefty reporters think that it is a crime to possess thousands of guns?

    • You can take it as a given that the average Journoliar thinks that either it is illegal or should be illegal.

  16. I bet there is an AR-15 assault shotgun with a 30 caliber magazine clip, automatic bayonet, and (of course) the shoulder thingy that goes up. There just has to be one of those there. Probably even has a night vision compatible pistol grip.

  17. It looks like there’s a fishing rod in the center of the top picture, so maybe Brent Nicholson is just an avid outdoorsman. A really, really avid outdoorsman.

    Let us know if the cops found any .22 ammo. ‘Cause if Nicholson bought up all of that stuff, he should be summarily shot or something.

  19. What’s funnier is his collection of mounted dear heads!

    Don’t know if those were stolen, but the guy was a hoarder to the Nth degree.

  20. OK wait a minute. In the article, his neighbor’s name is “Rusty Fender”? Seriously?
    Also, there’s a nice axe handle in the middle of the photo along with some illegal fishing poles scattered here & there.
    Paddle faster, I think I hear banjos…

  21. How in the world did he get all of these? Did he steal all of them himself or buy them from other gun theives? If he stole them all himself, how come he was never caught until now ? He must be a great thief. Though he does seem to have a compulsive disorder.

    • That is what I pointed out. It is a whole lot of stuff for one guy to acquire. Even if he bought the majority of them from thieves, it is still a lot of stuff to acquire. This seems a bit surreal.

  24. And to think that all he had to do was take all those (maybe/maybe not) “stolen” guns to a “no questions asked ‘buy back'”…

  25. Plus a hundred fifty chainsaws?

    This is OCD…..

    Though I admit he took nice care of the pine paneling and stairs!

  26. Yep “buyback” heaven. At least he’s in the south-in NYC(or California) he’d be locked away forever…I doubt we will ever get the full story.

  27. If he sold all those firearms for an average price of just $200 (which I think is incredibly realistic), he would walk away with $1.4 million in cool cash.

  30. Perhaps he was sympathetic with Moms Demand Action and merely sought to do his part to get crime guns off the street. He obviously thought the original owners were bad people for letting them get stolen in the first place.

  31. If I was to load all those guns up in a truck, I would be extremely careful picking them up. One gun hitting another one might dislodge the pile, and who knows how many might be loaded??

  34. 12+ years ago, I lived in Chester, SC and had 2 handguns stolen from my house – both .357 Magnum Revolvers, a Ruger Security Six and a Taurus.

    I know most of the weapons recovered were rifles and shotguns… but would like to know if either of my revolvers were there.

    Who would I contact, any idea???

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