California Department of Justice police agents walk towards a house near Ontario, California on March 5, 2013.
Photo Credit:Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg
California Department of Justice police agents walk towards a house near Ontario, California on Tuesday, March 5, 2013. The agents, working for the only state-level program to confiscate illegal firearms from owners, targeted people who’d once legally purchased firearms and lost the right after being convicted of violent crimes, committed to mental institutions or hit with restraining orders.
Wearing bulletproof vests and carrying 40-caliber Glock pistols, nine California Justice Department agents assembled outside a ranch-style house in a suburb east of Los Angeles. They were looking for a gun owner who’d recently spent two days in a mental hospital.
Special Agent Supervisor John Marsh who coordinates the operations around California, said: “We’re not contacting anybody who can legally own a gun. The only people we’re contacting are people who are prohibited from owning guns.”
Weapons and ammunition seized from the home of Lynette and David Philllips by agents with the California Department of Justice police in Upland, California.
Lynette Phillips, 48, and her husband, David Phillips, 51, sit in their home in Upland, California on March 5, 2013. Lynette, a nurse, had to surrender three guns after spending two days in a mental hospital in December.
Special Agent Supervisor John Marsh with the California Department of Justice drives out to seize illegal firearms near Ontario, California on March 5, 2013.
They knocked on the door and asked to come in. About 45 minutes later, they came away peacefully with three firearms.
California is the only state that tracks and disarms people with legally registered guns who have lost the right to own them, according to Attorney General Kamala Harris. Almost 20,000 gun owners in the state are prohibited from possessing firearms, including convicted felons, those under a domestic violence restraining order or deemed mentally unstable.
“What do we do about the guns that are already in the hands of persons who, by law, are considered too dangerous to possess them?” Harris said in a letter to Vice President Joe Biden after a Connecticut school shooting in December left 26 dead. She recommended that Biden, heading a White House review of gun policy, consider California as a national model.
As many as 200,000 people nationwide may no longer be qualified to own firearms, according to Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis. Other states may lack confiscation programs because they don’t track purchases as closely as California, which requires most weapons sales go through a licensed dealer and be reported.
“Very, very few states have an archive of firearm owners like we have,” said Wintemute, who helped set up the program.
Funding Increase
Harris, a 48-year-old Democrat, has asked California lawmakers to more than double the number of agents from the current 33. They seized about 2,000 weapons last year. Agents also took 117,000 rounds of ammunition and 11,000 high-capacity magazines, according to state data.
“We’re not contacting anybody who can legally own a gun,” said John Marsh, a supervising agent who coordinates the sometimes-contentious seizures. “I got called the Antichrist the other day. Every conspiracy theory you’ve heard of, take that times 10.”
The no-gun list is compiled by cross-referencing files on almost 1 million handgun and assault-weapon owners with databases of new criminal records and involuntary mental-health commitments. About 15 to 20 names are added each day, according to the attorney general’s office.
Probable Cause
Merely being in a database of registered gun owners and having a “disqualifying event,” such as a felony conviction or restraining order, isn’t sufficient evidence for a search warrant, Marsh said March 5 during raids in San Bernardino County. So the agents often must talk their way into a residence to look for weapons, he said.
At a house in Fontana, agents were looking for a gun owner with a criminal history of a sex offense, pimping, according to the attorney general’s office. Marsh said that while the woman appeared to be home, they got no answer at the door. Without a warrant, the agents couldn’t enter and had to leave empty- handed.
They had better luck in nearby Upland, where they seized three guns from the home of Lynette Phillips, 48, who’d been hospitalized for mental illness, and her husband, David. One gun was registered to her, two to him.
“The prohibited person can’t have access to a firearm,” regardless of who the registered owner is, said Michelle Gregory, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office.
Involuntarily Held
In an interview as agents inventoried the guns, Lynette Phillips said that while she’d been held involuntarily in a mental hospital in December, the nurse who admitted her had exaggerated the magnitude of her condition.
Todd Smith, chief executive officer of Aurora Charter Oak Hospital in Covina, where documents provided by Phillips show she was treated, didn’t respond to telephone and e-mail requests for comment on the circumstances of the treatment.
Phillips said her husband used the guns for recreation. She didn’t blame the attorney general’s agents for taking the guns based on the information they had, she said.
“I do feel I have every right to purchase a gun,” Phillips said. “I’m not a threat. We’re law-abiding citizens.”
No one was arrested. Most seized weapons are destroyed, Gregory said.
“It’s not unusual to not arrest a mental-health person because every county in the state handles those particular cases differently,” Gregory said by e-mail. “Unless there’s an extenuating need to arrest them on the spot, we refer the case” to the local district attorney’s office, she said.
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Comments
ACTION.
The marxist use this as a way to disarm the citizens.
You don't believe in marxist way so your insane and we will take away your guns.
Next we will put you into camps TO reprogramming or death,
This is all without due process. We are in trouble.
So California goes. So the nation goes.
Every state has to put in there constitution that the federal and state government can not enact any gun band or gun control laws.
Right up and start signing a petition on this bill.
Join the local Sheriff reserve so if they come trying to confication in your county you will be ready.
THE TIME HAS COME FOR ACTION.
I do believe that this is the excuse the powers that be will use to take anyone's weapons, so I hope that anyone who even saw a psychologist/psychiatrist for one time will also be at risk of having a weapon taken. I feel even an x-con would have the right to a weapon--he/she served her time, and therefore, should be allowed to one. However, I also believe these people know where to get a weapon illegally too. If we should have to register our weapons, I would not comply. The object is to have the element of surprise if someone attacks you, that means with the stupid news media publishing owners of weapons lists, it would no longer be a surprise as to if you had a weapon or not.
if anger ,fear ,peranoia, acting in an emotional manor,drepression,road rage work rage goverment rage ,is mential illness would we not all be guilty,we should not bear false witness,unless we are without and to tell you the truth i have not known one person that has not fit at least one of the above,so whate is REALLY SANE!!!!!!!?????
We must not comply.
You can consider what you want. Sandra was saying it is ok for the govt to take away someones right,really,i think not and sir i do have a right. or are peoples rights lost here too. I did not attack anyone,i stated my point of view,thats all.
@only 1 way 2 win -- I consider that an attack on a member. Sandra is allowed her viewpoint, as is everyone else. And doesn't she have a bit of a point? Everyone was clamoring for address the mentally ill, no more gun laws. Rather a valid point.
some one that thinks this is no big deal is a little unstable, where does it end,sletieve marriges , breading,who lives and who dies,these are far more than just the 2nd .This is your civil rights,this is your constitutional bill of rights 4th 5th 6th 8th 9th and 10th. how much are you willing to give up, how fare are you willing to let them go,oh it is a very!!!! big deal and every right is worth fighting over.and those people are not ,do you bleade for the 3000thousand children killed on our nations highways by drinking and driving , texting and driving talking on a cell phone and driving ,yet we all still have cars, cellphones and texting is not a crime .
In ONE FLEW ONE FLEW OVER THE COOKOO'S NEST who was the crazy ones??????? What is the process and who has the authority to determine one crazy. This is very dangerous territory because they can label anyone they want crazy. What warrants crazy?????? Remember the movie "THE CHANGELING"??
"AND SO IT BEGINS". I ask you who in Washington is mentally stable????? I would like to see Pelosi's mental history records. I read an article in the Feb. 2013 issue of USCCA mag. about a cop who got fired for abusing his authority. A few months later he was reinstated because they said at the time he was suffering from PTSD. Are you kidding me?????????????
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