An Aberdeen man has been jailed after collecting weapons – including two illegal stun guns – during the Covid lockdown.
David Tosh lived a “hermit-like existence” in 2020, leaving his bedroom only to get drugs.
His concerned parents alerted the police and turned in his collection – which included two working stun guns.
Tosh, 37, appeared via videolink at the High Court in Inverness for sentencing having previously admitted two firearms charges relating to possessing the stun guns – which were disguised as a knuckle duster and a mobile phone.
Defence counsel David Moggach, for Tosh, told the court his client “wasn’t in a good place” at the time of the offences and was “abusing all sorts of illicit drugs and alcohol”.
He said: “Rather bizarrely and irrationally he began to collect various weapons which were all kept in a box in his room.”
‘He knows that it was just daft in the extreme’
Mr Moggach said Tosh’s mother described her son as “living a hermit-like existence” during this period.
He said: “He never went out, staying in his room. He seemed to be depressed and only went out to get drugs.”
Mr Moggach told Lady Hood: “He knows that it was just daft in the extreme to collect the things that he did – fortunately they were kept in a box in his room.
“There was no suggestion of using them or even taking them out of the house.”
The advocate said Tosh was now abstinent from illicit substances, which had led to improvements in his mental health and his relationship with his parents.
“He seems to have been able to free himself from that,” he said.
Lady Hood noted that Tosh’s crimes had been discovered following a “stormy” period which culminated in Tosh’s father alerting the police to his son’s actions.
Both weapons were in working order
She said: “Your parents gathered together weapons, which you had gathered in your home, and attended at an Aberdeen police office.”
The court heard that officers had sorted through the weapons and recovered the two stun guns.
“Both weapons were in working order and each is a prohibited weapon,” Lady Hood stated.
The judge noted Tosh has previous convictions, including a weapons charge, and had bought “an array of weapons online during the Covid lockdown”.
She said: “You stated that you had no intention of using these weapons but could not offer an explanation for buying them.
“Possession of a firearm in breach of the legal controls is a serious offence and any sentence must not only punish the offender but deter the public,” the judge told Tosh, of Sunnyside Road, Aberdeen, before sentencing him to three years and seven months imprisonment.