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Repossessed auto leads to Grover Beach man’s arrest

October 23, 2024

By KAREN VELIE

A repossessed auto led to the arrest of a 36 year old Grover Beach man on multiple firearm related charges on Tuesday.

Shortly after Eric Covault’s auto was repossessed, law enforcement learned the vehicle contained a ghost gun, a firearm silencer, and a firearm with its serial number removed. Following this discovery, the Grover Beach Police Department’s detective bureau obtained a search warrant for Covault’s residence.

On Tuesday afternoon, Grover Beach Police Officers conducted a traffic stop and discovered Covault in the car.

Shortly afterwards, officers served the search warrant at Covault’s home located in the 1700 block of Manhattan Avenue. During the search, officers found several unserialized firearm components, large-capacity magazines, and evidence of firearm manufacturing.

As a result, officers arrested Covault on multiple charges, including:
• Possession of large capacity magazines,
• Manufacture/sale/possess undetectable firearm,
• Possession of a firearm silencer,
• Obliterating the identification of a firearm.

 


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CA penal code 32310(C), which bans possession of large capacity magazines, has been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge, the ruling finding its way all the way to SCOTUS that remanded it back to the 9th circuit, ruled unconstitutional again, and is currently awaiting an en banc ruling by the 9th. Subsequent to all of the above legal wrangling, enforcement of 32310(C) is on hold and NOT enforceable. The rest of 32310 remains in force, so manufacturing, trading, selling, etc of large capacity magazines is illegal, but that is not what is being charged in this case.


I’m kinda surprised GPPD chose to charge under 32310(C)….???


Subsequent to the SCOTUS Bruen decision (The Supreme Court declared that any regulation affecting the right to bear arms must be rooted in the “historical tradition of firearm regulation” in the United States.) the rest of those charges must be evaluated against the backdrop of firearms laws circa 1787…..a time when firearms and associated devices were made one at a time by hand and certainly not serialized.


8

Good job! Most likely lives were saved by removing weapons with no other purpose than crime.


0

I agree! Good thing they impounded that 2 ton loaded weapon. I wonder if it was an Assault Vehicle?


3

None of those things should be illegal.


-13

Ghost guns should be illegal, and it should be a crime to remove the serial number. There is no such thing as a “silencer”–that’s a Hollywood term and a fiction. Suppressors should be legal. When was the last time you heard of a mass shooter having a suppressor on their weapon and/or that leading to more deaths. They reduce noise; they don’t eliminate noise. And they make a weapon heavier and less concealable.


9

I understand your feelings but I don’t follow your logic, are you proposing making items illegal that mass shooters have used, seems reactive and irrational.

Let’s say 50 percent of speeding tickets are received by people driving white cars and we ban white cars, dose the number of speeders get reduced by 50 percent? Now we realize that only 10 percent of cars are black but they account for 25 percent of speeders so we ban them, now we’ve band back and white cars so who’s gonna write the tickets? Just saying counselor.


-2

It IS a crime to remove a serial number from a weapon.


It is also FEDERALLY legal to build a firearm, and not be required to serialize it, nor register it as such. A firearm built for personal use, is NOT required to be serialized. This allows these silly named “ghost guns” to be built, along with thousands of people who create beautiful works of muzzle loading and other historical firearms art.


A serial number must be attached, if the firearm is made by, or sold through a federally licensed gun dealer.


4