Thousands of Pennsylvania firearms confiscated

[alpacaheat]

https://keepandbear.com/news/pennsyl...reds-firearms/

PENNSYLVANIA SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT CONFISCATING HUNDREDS OF FIREARMS
MARCH 10, 2018

Since the school shooting on Valentine’s Day where 17 were killed and over a dozen others injured, Democrats and weak Republicans have been scrambling, trying to write and pass a number of gun control bills, most of which are designed to infringe on the Second Amendment rights of citizens.

One of the bills many are looking into is to ban anyone accused of any form of domestic abuse from owning or possessing a firearm.

Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania already has such a law and the county sheriff says his second shift deputies confiscated between 500 to 700 guns a year from people served with Protection From Abuse orders.

The way this operates in Westmoreland County is the type that some warn about being dangerous and used as a revenge tactic from an unhappy partner. For example, an unmarried couple breaks up because she cheats on her boyfriend. He gets mad and yells at her and tells here it’s over. She runs to the police and court and claims that he threatened her and asks for a protection order and it is granted. The next day, the sheriff’s deputies show up at the boyfriend’s home and confiscates his guns, just because she wanted to get even with him. Chances are, he will never have the right to own guns ever again.

READ MORE HERE http://www.mcall.com/news/nationworl...307-story.html

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Thousands of Pennsylvania firearms confiscated in court-ordered seizures



Confiscating firearms could easily be part of the job description for deputies on the second shift at the Westmoreland County Sheriff's Office.

Sheriff Jonathan Held said the shift that begins at 3 p.m. is when deputies are sent out to serve Protection From Abuse orders that require defendants to surrender their weapons.

"We usually get about 500 to 700 weapons a year," Held said, gesturing to the hundreds of firearms secured in an evidence room in the basement of the county courthouse. They range from pellet guns to pricey customized semiautomatic rifles.

Once confiscated, the guns are ticketed, logged in and held under lock and key for the duration of PFA orders that can last as long as three years.

PFAs are among several things that can cost gun owners their right to bear arms. That right has come under increasing scrutiny in the wake of the Valentine's Day shooting that took the lives of 17 high school students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

Firearms seizures under Protection From Abuse orders are a long and established feature of Pennsylvania law. The law gives judges the option to order weapons seizures when domestic violence is an issue. Procedures for such seizures vary across the state. In Allegheny County, for instance, it often falls to small local police departments to carry out the court's orders.

Deputies and police officers could find themselves busier with weapons seizures if a proposal introduced Monday in the state Legislature becomes law.

The bill sponsored by state Rep. Stephen McCarter, D-Montgomery County, would permit individuals to seek so-called Extreme Risk Restraining Orders leading to temporary gun seizures, "when there is good cause to believe an individual poses an immediate threat to the safety of a family or household member, or other person, by possessing a firearm, other weapon or ammunition."

Kim Stofler, a longtime Allegheny County gun rights activist and president of Firearms Owners Against Crime, opposes the bill.

"Four states (California, Connecticut, Indiana and Texas) have it now. There is no proof it has made any difference," Stofler said. He dismissed the bill as "another effort on the part of anti-gun groups to suspend the Constitution."

A similar bill introduced in Pennsylvania two years ago never made it out of committee. But McCarter hopes this one will have more momentum, given the increasingly urgent public debate about mass shootings and suicides.

"There is no question we have a problem in this country and we have to find a way to have this conversation," McCarter said.

Even so, Pennsylvania judges appear hesitant to invoke existing provisions for weapons confiscation in PFAs.

Domestic violence prevention advocates say weapons confiscation orders are included in only about 14 percent of the thousands of PFA orders Pennsylvania judges issue every year. They'd like to see them included on every PFA.

Westmoreland County Senior Judge John Driscoll, who handles the bulk of the PFA filings in Westmoreland County, estimated he requires weapons to be confiscated in about one in four or five PFAs.

"There's frequently one or two handguns and a rifle. I usually do it if the spouse asks for it or if there is some other red flag. It's always better to be safe than sorry," Driscoll said.

He said requiring such provisions on all PFAs might create storage issues, especially when gun lovers may have collections of anywhere from 20 to 150 guns.

Sabrina Korbel, a lawyer who supervises the civil law project at the Women's Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh, worries that women may be at risk during the period between when an order is issued and weapons are relinquished.

"That's a safety concern. ... Here, where the volume is so great — Allegheny County judges issued about 3,600 PFAs in 2016 — and local police are asked to serve them, there is no guarantee when an order will be served," she said.

PFAs are among the court orders that the Pennsylvania State Police log into the Pennsylvania Instant Check System (PICS) database. It also includes records of mental incompetency rulings and involuntary mental health commitments as well as criminal convictions. Such findings raise red flags on background checks during gun purchases.

Hundreds of thousands of names have been entered into the state database, which is fed into the National Instant Check System (NICS) database. To date, the Pennsylvania State Police have submitted more than 700,000 mental health records into the database.

In 2016, state police said the database handled more than 1.1 million background checks for licensed firearms dealers, sheriffs and law enforcement agencies across the state.

Only about 2 percent of background searches triggered denials based on red flags. State police said the searches also spurred the arrest of 152 individuals who had outstanding arrest warrants when they tried to purchase a gun.

Six things to know about Pennsylvania's gun laws
1. No one younger than 21 can purchase a handgun. Although Dick's Sporting Goods and Walmart earlier this week announced they will sell no firearms to any person under 21, Pennsylvania law still permits those 18 or older to legally purchase long guns, including semi-automatic rifles such as the ones used in the Parkland, Fla., and Las Vegas shootings.

2. Judges MAY confiscate any guns or other weapons owned by the defendant for the term of the PFA, which can be as long as three years.

3. Gun owners, subjected to such seizures, may pass their weapons to a designated "safe keeper," i.e. a licensed gun dealer or a friend or relative who has no criminal record, for the duration of the court order.

4. Those who have been subject to an involuntary mental health commitment or have been judged incompetent are prohibited from purchasing or owning a gun.

5. Federal law prohibits anyone convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor from purchasing or owning a firearm.

6. Licensed gun dealers are required to run background checks on handgun purchases and long gun purchases. There is no similar requirement for those purchasing rifles or shotguns from private parties.

[coppery]

Simple solution. Pass a clause that states such orders must go through court via due process before it is granted in order to preserve rights. Any intelligent cop will tell you that protective order is a waste of paper anyway. If anything is going to strip you of your rights, their should be immediate due process, and a court hearing with the accused, facing their accuser.

[Roadking]

"Teach your daughters to shoot, since a PFA is just a piece of paper"

PFAs are interesting, yet can be useless, and can be abused.

[ideaman]

Well. there's going to be shortage of cops without a gun.

Regarding keeping spouse abusers from possessing guns. The following data shows the police themselves commit the majority of spouse abuse.
http://womenandpolicing.com/violenceFS.asp

Police Family Violence Fact Sheet
Two studies have found that at least 40% of police officer families experience domestic violence, (1, 2) in contrast to 10% of families in the general population.(3) A third study of older and more experienced officers found a rate of 24% (4), indicating that domestic violence is 2-4 times more common among police families than American families in general. A police department that has domestic violence offenders among its ranks will not effectively serve and protect victims in the community.5, 6, 7, 8 Moreover, when officers know of domestic violence committed by their colleagues and seek to protect them by covering it up, they expose the department to civil liability.7

[Manxdriver]

Simple solution. Pass a clause that states such orders must go through court via due process before it is granted in order to preserve rights. Any intelligent cop will tell you that protective order is a waste of paper anyway. If anything is going to strip you of your rights, their should be immediate due process, and a court hearing with the accused, facing their accuser.

And EXTREME penalties if not warranted! For her and disbarrment for her lawyer.

[wanneroo]

In PA we have a major problem with PFA's being abused and one such way is using a PFA or threat of a PFA to negotiate money and stuff out of men, either in or out of marriage or in a divorce. The law needs to be changed. In addition the delayed due process needs to end.