72yr old Mass. Attorney Fails To Report Stolen Gun Fast Enough

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Bartholomew Roberts

Moderator
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/a...cop-charged-with-failure-to-report-the-theft/

An attorney with a license to carry met a delightful woman at a strip club and brought her home. Eventually, he noticed six of his firearms were missing. Embarrassed, he delayed reporting them stolen until July 9th. On July 11th, one of the firearms was involved in an attempted shooting of a police officer. Because he did not report the theft within 72 hours, he is now being charged with a crime, has lost his license to carry, and police have seized his remaining firearms.

I thought this example might be a good opportunity to discuss what our moral responsibility is, as well as whether this particular law is just.

ETA: Apparently this happened in Connecticut and not Massachusetts.
 
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Seems more like the overreach of the authorities that needs to be discussed. Why were the rest of his guns seized?
 
"Someone stole some of your guns? We better take the rest and throw you in prison!"
Yeah, doesn't sound so great.
 
Tell me someone, how did this law stop a gun crime?

Well I guess two crimes for the price of one is even better than before.
 
Ben Dover said:
This is the warped, twisted way that Mass. people think.
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It isn't limited to Massachusetts. Several states have enacted 72-hour report laws. The one in my state is worded 72 hours from when you knew "or should have known" that a gun was missing. I almost always have two or three guns in varying stages of project progress, and on more than one occasion I have lost track of one or more of them.

Properly, I suppose, to cover my tail I should have called and reported them -- not as "stolen," but as unaccounted for. But I live alone and the house hadn't been broken into, so I was sure the missing pieces would turn up eventually. And they did. Had I reported that I had misplaced a few firearms, I have no doubt that the State would have declared me unfit to own firearms, cancelled my carry license, and confiscated my (ahem) "collection."

FWIW, the article in the link is about Connecticut, not Massachusetts.
 
Seems to me a motel room would have been cheaper in the long run...

:rolleyes:


WA's latest gun law gives us 5 days to report gun theft or face legal consquences… 5 days from the day we knew or should have known...
gahh, I hate phrases like that in law...:eek:
 
Embarrassed, he delayed reporting them stolen until July 9th. On July 11th, one of the firearms was involved in an attempted shooting of a police officer.
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That's an unusually fast turnaround from theft to criminal usage. Usually, "time to crime" is measured in years.

Unfortunately, this guy displayed poor judgment across the board, and now advocates for these laws have all the ammunition they need to claim said laws protect public safety.

These laws are, for the most part, predatory measures designed to catch gun owners in statutory traps. What happens if I go on vacation on the 1st, my house gets burglarized on the 2nd, but I don't get home until the 10th?
 
Tom Servo said:
These laws are, for the most part, predatory measures designed to catch gun owners in statutory traps. What happens if I go on vacation on the 1st, my house gets burglarized on the 2nd, but I don't get home until the 10th?
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The guy was in Connecticut. The Connecticut law is one of those that reads "knew or should have known." That's a phrase that could be used both for and against the gun owner. Clearly, if the guns were stolen while the owner(s) was (were) away on vacation, they could not have known. The open question, then, would be when they should have known. If the place was ransacked (as my house was when I was burgled in 1997), the burglary would be obvious and the police would probably be called immediately. Then it would be a matter of how long it takes to inventory the house to determine what all was taken. One might hope that if it took a week to compile a complete inventory of what was taken, the fact that the initial report was made within 72 hours of discovering the burglary would be enough to have set the wheels in motion and to comply with the 72-hour law.

But ... some overzealous prosecutor might try to claim that the 72-hour law requires that the guns should have been inventoried first and a separate report filed for those within the 72-hours. I have not heard of that happening in any of the states that have such reporting laws, but that doesn't mean that it hasn't happened (or won't happen).

But, suppose you go on vacation and you left a door unlocked? Someone was able to walk in without any signs of breaking in, and you left a handgun or three on your workbench when you went on vacation. It might be a week or more after you return before you even realize there was a burglary, and you might not miss those guns for a month or more. Maybe over the course of a vacation you forget they were on the workbench, and by the time you get home you just assume they are in the gun safe, where they normally live. You don't realize they are missing until the next time you go shooting, when you open the safe and see a couple of empty spaces where there should be guns. Then you spend a few days looking around the house to see where you might have left them before finally remembering that you had left them on the workbench when you went on vacation, and they weren't there whenever you got back to the workbench after the vacation.

The answer to when did you know is clear; less clear is when you "should have known" that a gun or three had gone walkabout.
 
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Unfortunately, this guy displayed poor judgment across the board, and now advocates for these laws have all the ammunition they need to claim said laws protect public safety.
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He sure did, at every step.
But even had he reported the loss, how could it have protected anything?

These laws are, for the most part, predatory measures designed to catch gun owners in statutory traps.
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Bingo.
 
The thing is, he DID report the loss. And he did it before the pistol was used in a crime, so it wasn’t just a “I’ve been caught, I’d better report it” thing. He lost his carry license, lost his remaining guns, and was arrested because he didn’t report it fast enough.
 
The gun owner doesn’t seem to be real smart, at least by attorney standards. The article doesn’t state when the timeline of events began except for sometime last year. So that means the shortest possible time span before reporting the crime was 7 months, but probably much longer.
That is incredibly irresponsible and negligent. It is a law in his state that he broke. I’m not a fan of this law, but it’s law nonetheless.

I’m no law enforcement professional, so I’m not sure that these guns would have been found before any other crime was committed if he had reported them missing right off. There would have been a prime suspect based on the article. Could have gone differently: guns missing, call police, police talk to suspect(s) and maybe the find out where the guns went.
The timing of the owner reporting the crime being so close to the time that a crime was committed with one of them is suspicious to me, especially considering the guns were stolen 7-19 months before.
This seems to me to be the exact thing that the spirit of the law was intended to prevent. Support the law or not, it was meant to prevent the crime. If it would have worked or not, we can only speculate.
 
While he has a gun safe, he told police that while cleaning and working on the guns, he would leave his pistols on the kitchen table when the woman was visiting. When he left to run errands, he noticed the guns were missing upon his return.
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I don't know how you read it, but to me it implies this happened more than once. Of course, it might have only happened once, and could just be the writer's choice of words giving a false impression, we shouldn't discount that possibility, either.

The report says he met the woman last year, but gives no indication that the theft occurred at that time. The report uses the words "visiting" and "dating" which are plurals implying it was a multiple time thing, and ongoing for some time. I don't, at this time, see anything that states when he discovered the guns missing, it could have been anytime between when they first met until July 5 (more than 72 hours before he reported the theft on July 9) We just don't know.

My best guess is that he delayed reporting out of fear of embarrassment, not knowing there was a 72hr requirement, and probably told police the actual time he found them missing without knowing he had broken the reporting time law.

What kind of lawyer (or anyone else) who knew they broke the law would voluntarily self incriminate? IF that was the case there might be some legal scramble down the road over admissibility of his incriminating statement, etc, but right now we simply don't have much beyond a "sound byte" headline.
 
This law does nothing except turn victims into criminals so their guns can be taken.
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So it seems in this case. However in the abstract, it would work against someone who sold their gun(s) to criminals, then later, claim they had been stolen long previously.

My problems with this kind of law is #1) an arbitrary time limit, #2) "should have known" language in the law, and especially #3) blanket criminal penalties.

It would also be a very, very bad thing if they passed a law with a criminal penalty for failing to report tragic boating accidents in a timely manner..:rolleyes:
 
This law does nothing except turn victims into criminals so their guns can be taken.
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that is my take on it. But, not everyone that wants gun control is a bad person; doesn’t mean that they have nefarious intent.
Now... judges, presidents, governors, legislators, media and corporations know completely what they are doing and they still don’t care.
Expect more laws like this around the country.
Gun owners have lost their political clout and refuse to battle these gun laws politically with any real fervor. TFL keeps informing me that they will never take guns or ban any types of weapons but yet it still keeps happening. Wake up people... the patriots are gone.
People all over are willing to march in the streets for their cause even when things happen to residents of other states. Gun owners don’t care what happens outside of their safe zone, we just have some tired old cliches and something something second amendment something.
 
44 AMP said:
It would also be a very, very bad thing if they passed a law with a criminal penalty for failing to report tragic boating accidents in a timely manner..
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They already did. I Googled the Connecticut law ... it applies to firearms that are lost or stolen. As long as we're discussing the language of the law ... we might as well discuss the language of the law. The case was in Connecticut, so the following is the language that zapped the guy:

Sec. 53-202g. Report of loss or theft of assault weapon or other firearm. Penalty. (a) Any person who lawfully possesses an assault weapon under sections 53-202a to 53-202k, inclusive, or a firearm, as defined in section 53a-3, that is lost or stolen from such person shall report the loss or theft to the organized local police department for the town in which the loss or theft occurred or, if such town does not have an organized local police department, to the state police troop having jurisdiction for such town within seventy-two hours of when such person discovered or should have discovered the loss or theft. Such department or troop shall forthwith forward a copy of such report to the Commissioner of Emergency Services and Public Protection. The provisions of this subsection shall not apply to the loss or theft of an antique firearm as defined in section 29-37a.

(b) Any person who fails to make a report required by subsection (a) of this section, within the prescribed time period shall commit an infraction and be fined not more than ninety dollars for a first offense and be guilty of a class C felony for any subsequent offense, except that, if such person intentionally fails to make such report within the prescribed time period, such person shall be guilty of a class B felony. Any person who violates subsection (a) of this section for the first offense shall not lose such person's right to hold or obtain any firearm permit under the general statutes.
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https://www.cga.ct.gov/current/pub/chap_943.htm#sec_53-202g

I was interested to see that subparagraph (b) includes this:

Any person who violates subsection (a) of this section for the first offense shall not lose such person's right to hold or obtain any firearm permit under the general statutes.
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Given that language, I have to wonder how the police justified taking away his guns. There may be more to this story than was put into the article.
 
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