California gun repo men?

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Derius_T

New member
This is a snip and a link to the article. I hope I am posting this properly, if not mods please revise. This is the first I have heard of this actively going on. I know California was very unfriendly to firearms, but not to this level. What concerns me the most is the meaning and intentions behind this statement...

... at the ranch house in nearby Upland, where they seized the three guns from the home of a woman who’d been hospitalized for mental illness. One gun was registered to her, two to her husband. “The prohibited person can’t have access to a firearm,” regardless of who the registered owner is, says Michelle Gregory ...
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Where is this headed? It seems to say that even if the guns legally belong to me, and I have a full legal right to own them, that they can be seized because someone in my home gets deemed "mentally ill" by some over zealous medical personnel, and suddenly I am stripped of my legal rights? Am I reading this wrong? Overreacting? Link to full article below:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-21/californias-gun-repo-men-have-a-nerve-racking-job
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Sure reads that way to me, if the guns are in the same home as the mentally ill person, they can be seized. It's about access, not ownership.
 
So can the argument be made that the person has no "access" to the firearms? As in the guns are locked in a safe where only owner has access? I doubt that would stop them. This is troubling.
 
Its all about control. When all guns are removed from the citizens then the gov has total control. This is what they want.
 
It's about access, not ownership.
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I don't know the California statutes, but access is usually a different thing than possession.

If dad keeps his booze in a liquor cabinet, his children have access to it, but they're not in possession of it just by living in the house.
 
Derius_T said:
...Where is this headed? It seems to say that even if the guns legally belong to me, and I have a full legal right to own them, that they can be seized because someone in my home gets deemed "mentally ill" by some over zealous medical personnel, and suddenly I am stripped of my legal rights...
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This is not new, novel, nor a California issue.

  1. If someone may lawfully possess guns but is living with a prohibited person, he must secure his guns against access by the prohibited person.

  2. When the Third Circuit (Pennsylvania) looked at the issue a while ago, it let stand an indictment for aiding and abetting the unlawful possession of a gun by a prohibited persons in a situation in which a gun owner had a cohabitant who was a prohibited person.

    The point in that case, United States v. Huet, 665 F.3d 588 (3rd Cir., 2012), was that the gun the prohibited person was charged with possessing was not secured against the prohibited person's access, supporting both the prohibited person's conviction for unlawful possession of a gun and the indictment of his cohabitant. From the opinion (at pg. 593, emphasis added):
    ...on June 6, 2008, a valid search warrant (the “search warrant”) was executed on the couple‟s Clarion County home. Agents seized an SKS, Interordnance M59/66 rifle (“SKS rifle”) from an upstairs bedroom.

    Although Huet is legally permitted to possess a firearm, Hall was convicted in 1999 of possessing an unregistered firearm, in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d), and is therefore prohibited from owning or possessing a firearm. After being informed of the raid, Huet allegedly told investigators that the guns in the house belonged to her and that it was not illegal for her to purchase weapons. Despite Huet‟s assertions that she alone possessed the SKS rifle, the Government sought and obtained an indictment charging Hall with illegal possession of the weapon, and Huet with aiding and abetting Hall‟s possession....
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  3. So the issue for a gun owner in any State living with a prohibited person will be to assure that the prohibited person not have access to the gun(s). This could probably be accomplished by (1) keeping the gun on his person under his control; and (2) when not on his person keeping the gun locked up in a safe/case to which the prohibited person doesn't have the combination or key.
 
News article, checks on convicted felons with firearms...

I read a news item from a major CA paper, The San Francisco Chronicle, I think, that stated the CA state agency that enforces the gun laws & SOPs for state agents to confiscicate California felons guns. They claim they lack the funds, manpower & resources to get all the convicted felons weapons. :rolleyes:


The news article is from www.SFgate.com date: 01/30/2013, the reporter is Wyatt Bucahan.
CF
 
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(2) when not on his person keeping the gun locked up in a safe/case to which the prohibited person doesn't have the combination or key.
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When my Dad decided to plead guilty to a non-violent felony... his lawyer told him to give up any ideas of "finessing" the law. My Dad had asked him about selling his guns to his wife and putting them all in a new safe and only the wife having the combination. The lawyer told Dad that nobody was going to believe that a husband in that situation wouldn't have knowledge of the combination. Or, for that matter, that the guns really belonged to the wife. He asked what would happen if a judge put Mom on the stand and started asking her specific questions about the guns, what kind of ammo, what kind of scope, when you last fired it, at what, etc? My Mom can't tell a .22 LR from a .44 Magnum so he had a point....

So I guess it depends on who you are and what your relationship is. I would consider guns locked in a safe to be "secure" from a rental roommate. But I can see what the lawyer was talking about... people that have been married for 50 years don't have secured areas from each other.

Gregg
 
When my Dad decided to plead guilty to a non-violent felony... his lawyer told him to give up any ideas of "finessing" the law. My Dad had asked him about selling his guns to his wife and putting them all in a new safe and only the wife having the combination. The lawyer told Dad that nobody was going to believe that a husband in that situation wouldn't have knowledge of the combination. Or, for that matter, that the guns really belonged to the wife. He asked what would happen if a judge put Mom on the stand and started asking her specific questions about the guns, what kind of ammo, what kind of scope, when you last fired it, at what, etc? My Mom can't tell a .22 LR from a .44 Magnum so he had a point....

So I guess it depends on who you are and what your relationship is. I would consider guns locked in a safe to be "secure" from a rental roommate. But I can see what the lawyer was talking about... people that have been married for 50 years don't have secured areas from each other.

Gregg
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Try thinking of it from a different perspective. Using your example above, your mom was convicted of no crime and should lose none of her rights, correct? So, why should she be prohibited from possessing the means to defend herself and her family? Her lack of firearm-specific knowledge is no different than that of many other citizens who own firearms legally. Your mom may be married to a felon, but she shouldn't be forced to divorce him or move out of the home in order to retain her constitutional rights.
 
I guess we will have to watch and see what the courts decide and in the mean time write letters voicing your opinion on the subject and vote every chance you get.
 
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The marital privilege varies by state. Its not as simple as you cant be required to testify against your spouse.

Ownership and possession are two very different things. The law only prohibits possession by prohibited persons but they may still own guns.
 
Plumbnut said:
...When your married all property is considered joint owned if acquired after the marriage. Also after a period of time,I think 10 years even property before the marriage becomes joint owned. Unless a prenuptial agreement was in place. I guess it varies by state possibly...
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Wrong!

  1. Yes, it does indeed vary considerably by State.

  2. Marital property is automatically joint property only in States that have adopted a community property system of marital property. There are only nine such States.

  3. Even in community property States not all property acquired after marriage is community property. All such States recognize exceptions such as property acquired by gift or bequest. In addition, spouses in community property States may agree that certain property acquired after marriage will be the separate property of one or the other, and such an agreement may be shown by conduct.

  4. All other States use some variation of a common law marital property law system. In such system property acquired by either spouse during marriage remains his or her separate property unless they have in some way demonstrated an intent to treat the property as joint.

  5. This is irrelevant anyway.

    • The legal issue revolves around possession and access, not ownership.

    • For example, in U.S. v. Casterline, 103 F.3d 76 (C.A.9 (Or.), 1996), the 9th Circuit set aside a conviction for being a felon in possession of a gun, because the conviction was based solely on evidence of ownership, but under the circumstances the defendant did not have access to or possession of the gun and ammunition.
 
Kilimanjarp said:
...reads that way to me, if the guns are in the same home as the
mentally ill person, they can be seized. It's about access, not ownership.
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So noted.

And in consideration, this was exactly the situation in the Newtown school
shootings instance that put us all in the bind that we're in now. **



**
In that case, however, I don't believe there was a formalized "mentally-ill"
determination beforehand. (But I wish there had been)
 
The laws don't "vary by state" in my Dad's case. He pled guilty to a Federal felony. And it was the Feds who told him (along with his attorney and the judge) that he could no longer have guns in his house. Whether "the wife owned them" or they were in a safe or whatever. They actually told him that if there was a search of his house for any reason and they found so much as one round of .22 LR, he would go to jail. And since my Mom would be implicated as accessory... they said they would charge her as well. She's such a threat since she's never even had a parking ticket and she is 72 years old! Of course you could say the same thing about my 72 year old Dad who worked for DoD as a civilian for 40 years. With top secret classification. Actually "above" standard top secret since he was totally "in the black world." GS-17.

Don't get me started. It's a dark and twisty path when the Federal gov't decides to "make an example of you."

Gregg
 
No, federal law regarding possession of guns or ammunition does not vary by State. But marital property laws, which were brought up by Plumbnut, do vary by State.
 
OK, let's also settle a few other issues:

Derius_T said:
Where is this headed? It seems to say that even if the guns legally belong to me, and I have a full legal right to own them, that they can be seized because someone in my home gets deemed "mentally ill" by some over zealous medical personnel, and suddenly I am stripped of my legal rights? Am I reading this wrong?
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Yes, a little bit. From the article:

Bloomberg Businesweek said:
The list of those no longer eligible to keep weapons is compiled by matching files on almost 1 million gun owners with databases of new criminal records and involuntary mental health commitments.
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An involuntary commitment is an act in which a petitioner, a physician, and a judge/magistrate believe a person is an imminent threat to themselves or someone else. All three elements must be secured for an involuntary admission to take place. As a Mental Health Professional in Indiana, I have been forced to secure numerous Emergency Detention Orders (name varies by state) when evaluating someone arriving at an ER making suicidal or homicidal threats who is unable or unwilling to voluntarily get mental health treatment. In my work in a 100 bed psych hospital, normally only 4-7 are EDO admissions, often due to a dementia diagnosis in an elderly person who has no legal guardian who has been physically aggresisve to others in the home or nursing home. It is a serious process, and most of my colleagues take this very seriously. A simple mental health diagnosis is not, to my knowledge, reported to the state, due to HIPPA and the fact that the person is recieving treatment.
 
Forgive me if I'm off base here but in cases where the husband is denied the rights to have a firearms but the wife is legal to own a firearm, I fail to see how California can take the wifes firearms from a legal firearms owner.

Wouldn't that be an issue of equal protection? Also, on mandating locks/safes ect.. I thought that was delt with in the Heller case, the SCOTUS ruled that it was Unconstitutional to mandate trigger locks since it would not allow for immediate used to defend yourself? If the firearm must be locked up at all times the husband is home, then isn't her right to defend harth and home being denied without due process of law?

Thanks in advance for your reply.
 
Jimmy, I was under the impression that in the single case referenced by the OP, the person who made the judgment which sent the woman of the house to a facility for two days was actually a nurse, unknown if she was a nurse practitioner, but I would expect that to invalidate the claim, or am I wrong? If some ER nurse with a grudge against fat old white prison guards decides to "have me committed" when I came in for a hangnail, well, I might have a real problem with that.
 
One of the more chilling aspects of this matter is the fact that, in many cases, mental health adjudications that describe varying degrees of mental health are not permanent in any respect.

A person can be "sane", come home from several tours in Afghanistan and have PTSD, go through treatment and recover, suffer the death of a parent and/or the end of a marriage and become depressed, go through therapy, and thereafter be mentally stable again.

Mental health can vary from period to period, throughout people's lives.

Laws such as this act as deterrents to people who may be suffering from PTSD or Depression, by preventing them from getting the help they need - for fear of being classified as mentally defective by the State and having their firearms seized.


In some cases, removing firearms from citizens suffering from PTSD or depression may be justifiable - but there should be some mechanism in place which recognizes that in many cases these conditions are successfully treated and resolved. In such cases, the citizen should be able to petition to get their firearms back.

This approach demonizes mental health issues, and over time will lead to people who need help not seeking it out of fear of being labled defective and losing their 2A rights.
 
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