I have been covering California’s hate-late relationship with gun rights.
The reports have included the fact that gun control groups have target our state for enhanced activism, and that San Diego’s Chief of Police has stated that Americans can be disarmed in a generation.
Now, it seems some of our citizens have been fast-tracked for disarmament. The Blaze covered a recent incident involving a spouse’s gun being confiscated after his wife went in for a mental health evaluation voluntarily.
Just last week, the California Senate approved a $24 million funding bill to expedite the process of collecting guns from owners in the state who legally acquired them but have since become disqualified due to felony convictions or mental illness.
Such was recently the case for one woman, who had been in the hospital voluntarily for mental illness last year that she says was due to medication she was taking. Lynette Phillips of Upland, Calif., told TheBlaze in a phone interview Monday she had purchased a gun years ago for her husband, David, as a present. That gun, as well as two others registered to her law-abiding husband (who does not have a history of felonies or mental illness), were seized last Tuesday.
“My husband is upset that they took the right from us that should never have been taken, Phillips told TheBlaze.
But according to the state of California, that doesn’t matter.
“The prohibited person can’t have access to a firearm” regardless of who the registered owner is, Michelle Gregory, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, told to Bloomberg News.
San Diego conservative activist Charles Fettinger offers more concerning details about the new state program that was used to confiscate Phillips’ guns.
The California Department of Justice is running a program to confiscate registered guns from homes that local law enforcement refused to implement. Mark LeForestier, California Supervising Deputy Attorney General & Legislative Affairs Director, testified to a Congressional Task force determined to implement gun controls about the Armed Prohibited Persons (APPs) program.
It is intended to disarm people who are prohibited from owning or possessing firearms under both federal and California law. It is really a preventative law enforcement program that we believe is critical to enhance and move forward and should be used as a model nationally.
This program works into the framework we have been discussing in which “public health” is being used to subvert the civil rights of Americans as protected by the second amendment.
Michael B. Marois and James Nash filed a story for Bloomberg that also investigated the state program and how it works.
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…
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.
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.
Good intentions and legislative haste are clearly impacting the Second Amendment rights of Californians. It is just a matter of time before citizens lawyer up here in response.
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Comments
Sounds like a good example of “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.
Today it’s the legal gun owning spouse of someone disqualified because of a felony or mental health issues, tomorrow it’s other family members, or the neighbors next door.
My humble little blog being mentioned along side Bloomberg and The Blaze… terrific!
On my blog is a link to a C-SPAN hosted clip that we made. We found Mark LeForestier trying to push CA DOJ’s confiscation program into a federal program before a congressional task force. You may think California confiscation is crazy, but it may be coming to the entire nation.
All the best from the Soviet “mental health” regime.
The Soviets figured that if you were in opposition to the great Soviet socialist system and the Workers’ Utopia, you must be insane. We’re squarely on that road, ourselves.
How much longer until us “gun nuts” are considered mentally ill and our love of firearms, and the empowerment they give the common man, an addiction? How long until this whole “inalienable rights” thing is considered a form of delusion, prone to radicalizing a docile populace?
Yet, speak of radical Islam to the Left, and they go clinically ape-sh!t crazy.
And all the while, our benevolent leader assures us that the proposed registration of firearms is not meant as a step towards confiscation. We’re obviously just paranoid, which would of course disqualify us from gun ownership…
Two can play at this game.
We need to start talking about global warming again so that the liberals will go back and follow that lead for a while. We need to keep changing their focus by having them chase their tails.
They cannot bankrupt themselves fast enough.
If they come to my house, they may get my guns but there will be fewer of them leaving than came.
Zelsdorf,
They come to homes without sufficient probable cause to have warrants, so they have to ask nicely in many cases.
So, at least the first time around, “Just Say No” to grabs.
Eureka. The libtards have found a way to take you guns. Call you nuts and say goodbye to your civil rights.
I recall posting this to be a very likely outcome & one that was also proffered by Bobby Jindal .
I am not sure access to guns by mentally deficient people is defensible . You are going to have to give up on loonies getting guns.
This is one you can not win . The three most famous. cases – Loughner Holmes & the Conn guy fit these scenarios.
For as long as California is D – forever.
In California, the only thing that has to happen is that you get angry and belligerent and someone files a 5150 on you (involuntary psych eval). Once you have a 5150 on your record, you lose the right to posses firearms for 5 years. You don’t even have to have committed a crime.
A “designated county clinician” can sign off on a 5150.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5150_(Involuntary_psychiatric_hold)
Oh, and I have seen people threatened with a 5150 for the crime of pissing off a police officer and getting upset over being harassed.
You have to read the criteria for writing a 5150, and attack it from a legal standpoint if written without proper legal justification:
“5150 criteria
The criteria for writing requires probable cause. These include danger to self; danger to others together with some indication, prior to the administering of the hold, of symptoms of a mental disorder; and/or grave disability, as noted below. The conditions must exist within the context of a mental illness.
1.Danger to self: The person must be an immediate threat to themselves, usually by being suicidal. Someone who is severely depressed and wishes to die would fall under this category (though they generally have to have expressed a plan to commit suicide and not just a wish to die).
2.Danger to others: The person must be an immediate threat to someone else’s safety.
3.Gravely disabled:
1.Adult (patients over 18 years of age): The person’s mental condition prevents him/her from being able to provide for food, clothing, and/or shelter, and there is no indication that anyone is willing or able to assist him/her in procuring these needs. This does not necessarily mean homeless, as a homeless person who is able to seek housing (even in a temporary shelter) when weather demands it would not fall under this category. Also, the mere lack of resources to provide food, clothing, or shelter is not dispositive; the inability must be caused by the psychiatric condition.
2.Minor (patients under 18 years of age): The person is unable to provide for his/her food, clothing, and/or shelter or to make appropriate use of them even if these are supplied directly—for example, a psychotic adolescent who refuses to eat because he/she believes his/her parents are poisoning them.”
But when you own the courts, the legislature, the police and the mental health services, who cares if it meets any legal standards? These are the new Jim Crow laws for non-conformists.
this won’t end until the people start “fighting” back
[…] brings me to this. Leslie Eastman noted that in California, the state uses its power to confiscate guns from law-abiding citizens […]