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.
Credits
Michael B. Marois & James Nash
Comments
We do keep "a weapon" on hand as a "teaser"; it's disabled, no firing pin. Anything else is extremely well hidden; "invisible" to any electronic device, can't be seen with the naked eye. Guess if it came right down to it, I could use the "teaser" as a club!
When omalarky comes after all the guns we wont be allowed to own a gun.Hes gonna start a civil war when he does attempt to take our guns.Somefolks will surrender their guns but others will stand and fight and that will be when the war begins.
Concerning the liberal mindless, I got a FB, scene of the little boy in the movie Bruce Willis, called, "The Sixth Sense", and it's not only true but funny. The little boy is looking at Bruce Willis, and he is saying, "I see stupid people. They are everywhere and they don't know that there dumb." LOL
The current NeoCom administration and minions, will attempt to broaden the definition of "mentally unfit" to posess a firearm to such an extent that it will further undermine the Second Amendment. They are already pushing draconian anti-gun legislation, and "executive orders". The "mentally unfit" justification for gun confiscation is a Pandora's box that the Left will leverage to overeach, and create a Constitutional "loophole". Don't underestimate how contorted things might get with people that hold office these days.
This whole thing about mentally ill people being ban from protecting themselves is so blown out of proportion it's ridiculous! Does this mean than anyone ever on antidepressants are considered mentally ill? Who do you know who have never taken an antidepressant pill? We are either addicts, depressed, or victims of some mentality these days, or so it seems(at least as far as the media is concerned) when you see the top prescribed drugs being in the antipsychotic, antidepressant category. So to what extent is it deemed that someone is mentally ill? This would be a good thing to know. When I think of someone mentally ill, what comes to mind is a demented person not in touch with reality. Watching more and more videos on police brutality lately looks like we have mentally ill police. Ex: A man is pulled over for an alleged illegal left hand turn. The officer throws this man to the ground and beats this man into broken jaw, concussion, and brain damage. Why did the officer respond this way? He "imagines" that the person to trying to disarm him. Talk about an elephant in the living room! This is more like a response one would get from a highly excitable, paranoid crack user, who while under the influence of that kind of drug can be extremely dangerous. Maybe, this cop should be disarmed forever because of his show of extreme instability to the public he is hired to protect. Anyway, if they are truly going after "real" nut cases, then even so they should have to show a warrant signed by a judge. At least that way there is a form of due process.
only one way to win . I spend my day reading rightwing internet and blogs . I have yet to read a personal comment from enyone who hes recieved any of those rqirements by the the government to turn in the guns . As amatter of fact yesterday I read an article by the VA that said they were doing no such thing and didn't intend to . . In this insane country and environment no one knows what can be relied on . The possibility and probability of false flags is unlimited . BE AWARE . As RR said " verify "
Mr. Blucher, I find you're anti-Semitic remarks offensive, and I'm a Christian! One of the reasons our Founding Fathers left their homeland, was to escape religious persecution. Anti-Semitic rants such as yours, are reminiscent of a fascist named Adolph Hitler. Are you suggesting that Obama is a Jew? Regardless your accusation is far from the truth. We HAVE A CRIME PROBLEM, in DC! The former leads to the fact that WE DO HAVE A POLITICIAN PROBLEM. And WE HAVE A PEOPLE PROBLEM, wether they be low/misinformed, freeloaders, or just plain stupid. Stop being part of the problem and desist these moronic rants. They damage the credibilty of the Tea Party!
Say hello to my little friend! (my AR-15)
For those who believe that man is somehow in control of what is playing out on planet earth don't know the truth. The one ultimately behind all earthly events is none other than our enemy Satan. Man lost control in the Garden of Eden at the beginning of time. This will continue until The Lord Jesus Christ opens the title deed breaking its 7 seals and completes what is written in it. Remember we see flesh doing all the evil but we are told this, "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." Eph. 6:12
Yes, this is what it will look like.
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