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.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY