“Only 17 states and the District of Columbia have passed gun-relinquishment bills that force domestic abusers and other violent offenders with restraining orders to hand over their firearms,” Diane Diamond writes at stwnewspress.com. Click here to check your state’s laws. And note . . .
A restraining order does not equal a criminal conviction. Judges can and do issue restraining order ex parte (without the accused’s presence or foreknowledge). So the first a gun owner may know about the imminent loss of his gun rights is a knock on the door by the local constabulary.
Ms. Diamond is OK with this — despite misgivings that hint at an even greater desire for gun rights restrictions.
Could a determined offender get another gun illegally? Yes, that’s a whole different and difficult problem. But according to a study by Michigan State University states that take guns from known violent criminals have a 22 percent lower rate of intimate-partner homicide by gun. Naturally, it is women and children who suffer the most.
Correlation doesn’t equal causation. Learn that for the children!
Anyway, what’s your take on restraining order-related firearms confiscation? Would you be OK with it if the gun-grabbing order couldn’t be issued ex parte?
No.
H E double hockey sticks no.
I’m against any punishment not handed down by a jury of your peers. At the very least, I want the person who signed the order liable for damages along with some hefty jail time if the order proves to be unfounded.
Not only that but hefty fines and jail time for the entities who do not give back the person’s property. Surprised DiFi hasn’t said all gun owners were crazy, filed a complaint and had their guns taken by the police or something. Oh shit I may have said too much.
You’re right. That whole ” Due Process ” thing……
I believe that if someone is so dangerous that they need to have their guns taken away, they should be in jail. Therefore, I do not believe that a restraining order alone warrants gun confiscation from the alleged perpetrator.
However, a restraining order should absolutely result in an optional carry pistol and ammo loan to the alleged victim, along with training on how to use it for self-defense against the alleged perpetrator, should the need arise. If the alleged victim is uncomfortable with guns, then pepper spray is also an option.
I think the whole concept of a “restraining order” is grossly unconstitutional. If someone is dangerous enough to qualify for one, they are probably guilty of several major crimes. Punish those. The idea that some judge can randomly order me to change major portions of my life because some womyn came whining to him with a made up story is an affront to the very concept of due process.
They are utter crap and no, I would *not* be okay if they were not issued ex parte. GVPO, or whatever bs name they call them, are nothing more than an expansion of prior restraint, which is wrong and anti-American. Full stop.
No. Note that the police, as in the photo, will deliberately mishandle your guns in order to devalue and damage them. Even if gun cases are available, they (local, state, BATF, etc.) prefer to just throw them into the trunk of the cruiser. The police are never your friend.
Yep typical douchebag governmental abuse of someone elses personal property.
G.O.s ACCUSED of DV, NO!
G.O.s CONVICTED of DV at a TRIAL of their peers or a judge, YES!
Restraining orders, do not mean forfeiture of gun rights; Sometimes filed out of malice.
Loss of rights only by conviction; caveat w/ a path to regain rights under most circumstances. No Rights restored if convicted of Any degree of Murder, Conspiracy to commit murder, armed robbery, Burglary, Arson, or fraud.
Fraud? If they’re not trustworthy enough to serve their sentence completely and walk freely with a gun, they’re not trustworthy to walk free, then. If that’s the case, keep them in prison. Otherwise, give them their rights. Second Amendment doesn’t say “except for frauds, etc”.
A conviction is a requirement of forfeiture of rights in the US.
So, hell no.
Not true. You can be held without bail
There is no Constitutional right to bail. That’s why the right to a speedy trial exists.
Of course, but the fact remains, your rights can certainly be denied without a conviction. Just only for so long.
Right to a speedy trial doesn’t really exist. Since the term speedy doesn’t specify a definable timeline, and don’t forget the prosecutor-friendly condition of having to actually mess up your defense for the right to be violated. So, as long as your evidence is not time-base, they could keep you waiting for ten years, and as long as it did not affect the evidence for your case, it’s not unconstitutional.
Truly is funny how many hallowed rights we have that are so hollowed from case precedent.
A writ of habeas corpus is a thing. Courts don’t tend to look kindly on stalling tactics from the prosecution. Generally, gross violations result in a RoR for the defendant if not outright dismissal with prejudice.
“according to a study by Michigan State University states that take guns from known violent criminals have a 22 percent lower rate of intimate-partner homicide by gun” – Was the overall intimate partner homicide rate any lower, or only the rate by gun???
It would also be interesting to see whether this supposed reduction is relatively uniform across the states, or whether the lump total of all states with the laws was compared to states without, with no concern for the variation in rate between different states within each group.
“states that take guns from known violent criminals…” Are they even comparing the same studies? Who are these known violent criminals, and who knows them? Are they convicted felons? Then of course they can take the guns. I don’t think an accused domestic abuser = known violent criminal, if so we need to determine who knows these criminals and pass the tips along to arrest them!
Further it would be interesting to investigate this gem:
states that take guns from known violent criminals have a 22 percent lower rate of intimate-partner homicide by gun (emphais mine).
Why are they ignoring the men who beat, stab, choke, etc. their women to death? Are those means of intimate-partner murder (defensive homicides aren’t a crime, so let’s just focus on the murders) acceptable to Ms. Diamond and Michigan State? Did they design this study to make guns look dangerous? Are the rates of intimate-partner murder about the same for these states, because it turns out that murderers will murder even if we take their guns away?
Restraining orders fall into SIFI’s “pre-crime” category in that they are predicated on the notion that patterns of behavior can be predictive for future behavior. As we are seeing with gun-confiscation, that’s a dangerous slippery slope. Perhaps “hate speech” will be next.
Restraining orders, issued ex parte, are not based on a pattern of prior behavior. They are issued based on one person’s unverified, unchallenged accusations.
Hate speech, it already is. Freedom of speech, yet there are certain words this society considers ” hate speech”.
Sticky subject. Ok here’s where we need a burden of proof on that E.P.O law. Say Jack and Dianne are dating. Jack messes around on Dianne with Sally and leaves Dianne for Sally. Well Dianne ain’t takin it well so she goes full “bunny boiler” and goes to court to take an EPO out against Jack ex parte. Jack meanwhile has got a new place and is lovin life with Sally until there’s a knock on the door and they take all of Jack and Sally’s guns. Jack never actually hit Dianne or so much as said he would but is losing his property.
Flip the script, Jack is an abuser he beats Dianne daily. Dianne finally leaves him, he stalks her, and she takes out an EPO. Jack loses his guns. At least now he can’t shoot her.
The way I look at it is if IF an EPO is issued it should be proven that the respondent actually did something illegal like assaulted the petitioner and said respondent should be arrested on those charges.
How about this: Jack is a dickhead who is bullying and mentally cruel towards Diane (though hasn’t hit her, yet). Realizing that she is on the verge of leaving him, HE files, ex parte, for an order of protection, claiming that she is the abuser. She does move out, but the cops visit her to take away her little S&W Shield.
Later that week, Jack also visits her (he followed her back to her new home from her place of work), they exchange heated words and Jack ends up assaulting and killing the recently disarmed Diane.
The way I look at it is if IF an EPO is issued it should be proven that the respondent actually did something illegal like assaulted the petitioner and said respondent should be arrested on those charges.
That should cover it.
Merely Accused?? Well shit, I accuse Diane Fienstine of touching me at the golden globes.
DiFi tried to touch your golden globes? Gross…
Yeah….might want to have a doctor look at those instead.
NO.
Disarm those CONVICTED of domestic violence ~ maybe.
If it hasn’t already been used in a crime, IT IS STILL THEIR FING PROPERTY, they should be the one’s able to divest their ownership in it.
No, I can’t support any life time ban on any right, firearms included. Even as a survivor of very serious inter-family abuse I still can not support the act of banning anyone from their intrinsic rights. Even if there is something to be said about some level of temporary or long term ban on know violent individuals.
If they can’t be trusted walking free with a firearm after they serve their sentence, they should still be in prison, not out walking free at all.
So a hearing can be held, without the accused being present or even being informed that said hearing is taking place, where a judge revokes a natural right explicitly stated in the US Constitution’s BILL OF RIGHTS. Remind me again how this is legal???? Oh, because guns….
Sure. Take the dude’s guns away.
That way he’ll be forced to use a knife, or a baseball bat, or the same crowbar he uses to break into her house.
Now her face is unrecognizable and it will be a closed-casket funeral.
Happy now?
. . . AND, he goes after the local cops, because he knows the small airfield where they hangar their police helicopter and the lot where they keep their units, and the National Guard is brought in because the city can’t field a force, so [ ] disappears for a few months and comes back to do skirmisher attacks against city hall, the police, the local hospital, associated state troopers . . .
Why? Because FU [same reason they’re using].
should be MORE of it….
any (dot)gov org’ that violates the US Constitution is just vermin…..
No. Serves no rational purpose. Ever hear of bare hands? That’s all the weapon most men need, and not a few women. Everyone is responsible for their own life and safety, so should be prepared to defend themselves, dependents and, in a pinch, others.
The only real purpose of this gun confiscation, before or after a “trial,” is gun confiscation.
The primary purpose is to give vengeful women another tool to harass an ex. It helps satisfy Democrat politicians who hate guns and wish to punish gun owners any way they can.
IT’S OFTEN “CARD 1” PLAYED. So it’s abusive process right out of the gate.
AFAIMC: gov’ authority stops @ my front gate…
don’t like that?
then….. youse (dot)gov maggots will hafta wade through a hail of 7.62NATO….
OTW: GFY 😠
“according to a study by Michigan State University”
The pre-cogs have spoken.
No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…
And I think this sets up a good foundation of what that due process requires:
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
An ex parte hearing with a judge meets none of the emphasized requirements. So that’s a big hell no!
Innocent until proven guilty! Ex Parte orders of relinquishment are completely unconstitutional. There would need to be some type of hearing, with the accused present, and plenty of factual evidence that the accused is an imminent threat to the accuser before I would even consider it appropriate for the accused to have to relinquish their lawfully owned firearms (even temporarily). These Judges giving out ex parte orders without the accused being present and able to defend themselves before they’re even tried goes against the United States Constitution and the American style of jurisprudence that has always stated that one is “innocent until proven guilty”.
While we’re at it, let’s ban the 1st amendment rights for people (here’s looking at you, ladies) who are simply accused of making false allegations against other people.
No
The government supports homosexual marriage. But uses the Welfare Industrial Complex to prevent straight relationships. Then the government gets involved in disputes between couples.
If a woman, and its usually a woman, needs a gun to protect herself from the poor choice she made in picking a dirt bag man, she needs to get the gun.
Carol Bowne in New Jersey was denied a gun. She was murdered while waiting for government permission to get a self-defense firearm.
Let these women kill their attackers without government interference.
Accused? No.
Proven guilty by a jury? Yes.
Hell f’n no.
Not in out current social media obsessed culture. For a woman, being a victim gives you likes and followers. It gives you status. Getting a restraining order put on a man, demonstrates to all your girlfriends that you are so desirable that men go crazy over you…and it gives the woman victim status and endless “you go gurls”.
For a man to be disarmed, he must be convicted of a serious crime or showing a consistant pattern of criminal activity. Restraining orders have little due process.
Yeah, but if it saves just one life, isn’t that worth it?
Excuse me while I go throw up now.
No. He!! No! Women(and kids and men) lie sometimes. Like the witchhunt in hollyweird going on. My insane EX lied about me. As mentioned most gals aren’t shot to death either…
I don’t think firearms rights should be revoked for anyone not convicted of committing a crime with a firearm, and even then only only until the sentence is fulfilled.
How about turning it around?
Arm the accuser with a three-month (or whatever) CCW loaner with holster, and include some instruction, range time, practice and SD ammo. Accuser can choose to notify the accused either him/herself or by police visit, or not at all.
At the end of that time, hand it back in, or buy it from the PD for market price.
why is it that we have entered a time where accused and guilty are one in the same?
accused, no.
convicted, yes, but only temporarily.
Domestic Violence is a misdeamnor. It was a Cliton era gun ban. Loss of firearms for life, for a misdeamnor. Not a felony( which can be expunged , and gun rights restored. A DV misdeamnor loses guns for life, no exceptions. What does the law consider a DV, how about a ripped shirt or blouse in a heated argument. Of all the laws against guns we complain about, this is one that needs changed.
This is going to be a long post….
I have experience with this very thing. I filed for divorce from my ex-wife and had her served. I did not think this would come as a surprise to her as it had been discussed and agreed upon, but I made the mistake of not moving out. Two weeks later I get up, kiss my kids good bye, and head off to work. On my way to work I get a call from her attorney saying there is an ex-parte hearing the next morning to have me removed from the home and my firearms taken away due to domestic violence and drug use. After I get done hyperventilating I call my attorney and she says “I need you to go there tomorrow morning and no matter what happens do not lose your temper, but you probably won’t be seeing your kids for a while.”
After I take this in, I call in sick and head home to find nobody home and my ex-wife had turned my kids phones off. I decided to be proactive and took my gun collection to my local FFL who I am on good terms with and moved my stuff into a storage unit.
The next morning I go to court where her attorney refused to even give me a copy of the motion. When I asked if I would be able to respond since I was there the court clerk laughed at me, and told me “no”. In her motion she said I pointed a gun at her and her son from a previous relationship and threatened their lives and that I was a daily intravenous drug user. Even though I had never been arrested, and with no evidence other than her statement, and notwithstanding the fact that she had never made a police report after someone supposedly pointed a gun at her kid, the judge gave me 12 hours to get out of my house and issued a temporary restraining order that kept me from contacting my children in any way for a month. Also, I was ordered to surrender my firearms.
A month later when I actually got to defend myself my attorney was able to prove definitively that she perjured herself no less than three times. While her request for a permanent order was denied there was ZERO punishment for her breaking the law to spite me.
In the end I got my kids back and my guns back, but it cost me 15 grand, and in the end she didn’t even have to pay for me to defend against her lies.
As a gun owner and a gun rights advocate and a father of two daughters this is a weird gray area for me. I think anybody should be able to have legal protection from an abusive spouse, and if there is credible evidence that someone is an abuser taking their guns away for a month while it gets figured out may be in the public interest.
But, also in the public interest should be very real and very harsh penalties for manipulating the system like my ex-wife did. I literally proved my ex-wife committed no less than three separate felonies in an effort to take my kids, House, and guns from me and there wasn’t even a fraction of the fervor that was directed at me during the ex parte.
I think it should be very simple. Any act of perjury during the course of trying to restrain someone from their legal right to anything should be referred for criminal felony prosecution. There is a special place in hell for people who try to take someone’s god given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for any reason other than to protect the personal safety of them and their loved ones from a REAL and CREDIBLE threat.
Happened to me also,only not to your extent. She didn’t show up for court in fear of perjury I guess. I had to spend three days in jail+ time and money for a false accusation. Side note, here’s how her 9-1-1 call went, he hit and shoved me. I took phone and said ” no I didn’t, she attacked me, I will be waiting for the cops outside of my house.” 9-1-1 operator tells me” NO STAY IN THE HOUSE”, WTF? so the law wants me to stay in the house where there is imminent danger,she had told 9-1-1 ” I have a gun and am not afraid to use it”… Stay in the house? . . ..
And now you see why I consider the 19th Amendment to have been a mistake.
I’ve heard stories similar to yours far, far too often. Women have used emotion and sob stories made of whole cloth to manipulate the justice system to their own ends – and they are rarely, if ever, punished for doing so.
Your rights to due process were violated, without any doubt. The justice system looks at women as being some special little snowflakes, and takes everything they say at face value, without any skeptical inquiry. Men’s reputations and livelihoods are ruined regularly as a result of crap like this.
Ok, first off my post was not meant to suggest that women as a whole are bad. To reply to my post that the 19th amendment shouldn’t have happened is not only vile, it is counterproductive to any sort of cohesive argument.
If I wasn’t clear, I have daughters and their safety and well being is more important to me than my gun rights. That being said, it is up to me to teach my daughters the importance of telling the truth and that using their sex to manipulate and get ahead is not only lazy it is far beneath them.
I take offense to the suggestion that my wife or daughters shouldn’t be the equal of any man in this planet. The only type of person that would ever suggest that is one who is too unintelligent to compete on a level playing field and therefore seeks to reduce the entire sex to a lesser class.
Second, the second that drivel comes out of your mouth NOBODY that matters will ever take you seriously. You become the guy that nobody can believe actually exists, and when they are done laughing at you, they will use you as an example for their children of what happens when you drop out of school in the third grade and then made your living betting people ten bucks at a time you would stick your tongue in electrical outlet for five seconds.
Please don’t ever use anything I say as motivation for that backwards, inbred, thoroughly proven false again and again version of reality.
Disarmament of those accused of DV/intimate partner violence/pet abuse is already Federal law. If you ever apply for Federal employment or military you will find out that you need a Lautenburg order from the judge after your restraining order or DV arrest to restore your gun rights whether you were convicted of DV/pet abuse or not.
Pretty sure you’re wrong about that. Federal law disarms those CONVICTED of MISDEMEANOR of domestic violence. Only misdemeanor for which you lose a Constitutionally protected right… But accusations don’t mean disarmament at the federal level…
Spent some time on recruiting. Arrests for intimate partner violence/DV/pet abuse are enough to ban someone from joining the military where they will have access to weapons. Additionally, if you had cops called to your house for DV but received no paperwork, you are required to self-report. There are audits to make sure recruiters don’t join people with DV arrests
Only by conviction.
Accusations are not an argument unless and until they can proved in court. No amount of emotionalism or anecdotal stories from alleged victims will ever change this, either. False accusations occur far and away much, much more often than one could possibly imagine.
As Noah said in his post, there is no penalty for lying to the court
These angry women ( it is almost always women) make these accusations as a bargaining tactic.
Or just to harass the man
They will also make unfounded accusations of child abuse
Child protective services will come out over and over again
I had them come to my house 7 days in a row during the summer visitation
They claim they have to every report separately
The courts will investigate, you prove your innocence and there is no repercussions for making knowingly false accusations
Other fun things I have seen them do to other doctors I know is report you to the IRS, homeland security and the state medical board
These organizations will all also investigate and you incur costs in defense
Our family court system is biased in favor of the woman
Domestic violence TROs are valid for no more than 3 weeks in most states (absent an agreed extension), and unless brought to trial on a permanent DVRO within the time frame established by law, expire by their own terms. Upon expiration of the TRO, gun rights are restored. Such orders have been repeatedly upheld as not violating due process of law for two reasons: 1) they can only be issued by a judicial officer upon satisfactory proof through signed affidavits, and 2) they are a short term order intended to preserve the peace until a contested hearing can be held on adequate notice. Long or permanent orders cannot be justified without a hearing and an opportunity to be heard. Moreover, some states allow the subject of the order 24 hours to rid him/herself of firearms by storage with an ffl, transfer to other persons, etc., thus protecting property rights.
Are such orders more than occasionally vindictive? Certainly, but in the vast majority of cases, those TROs are never brought to trial as the spouse obtaining the order wants to avoid being questioned as to the truth of the allegations.
Do I approve of such orders? Absolutely. Anyone who works in this area knows full well that an abusive spouse served with such an order, or a petition for divorce, is likely to react with anger, threats of violence, and actual violence. Phone calls, stalking, hammering on the door at all hours of the night (because these TROs contain stay-away orders as well), etc. Obviously no piece of paper will stop a rampaging spouse, but taking the guns at least makes him or her somewhat less deadly.
You can’t be made a little less deadly (and still be allowed to walk the streets) any more than you can get a little bit pregnant. Murderous rampage is binary: once you cross that Rubicon, the die is cast; availability of weapons is trivial. For such a hard core offender, these orders won’t reduce either their will or ability to inflict lethal injury.
What they will do, is impose serious and unnecessary hardship on people whose actions can be sufficiently curbed with the simple retraining order not confiscating their firearms.
Most courts automatically renew DVROs every 3 weeks unless a lawyer gets involved to stop the process. No judge wants to be blamed for letting a DVRO “lapse” and have an incident.
No. I’m OK with the concept of a restraining order. It’s a formal order whose violation and consequences are explicit. I know, I know, it’s just a piece of paper. Except it isn’t. It’s backed by real consequences.
For many people, even someone who actually has smacked his or her partner around once or twice, that retraining order is a wake-up call. It’s serious now. There’s no need to confiscate that person’s firearms, damaging them, “losing them” entangling him/her in further bureaucracy and expense, because he or she has gotten the message. They’ll abide by that order to stay away from its subject, so there’s no valuable purpose in snatching their firearms.
For others, that piece of paper, plus consequences for violation, still equals jack squat. They’ll ignore it and do as they please, regardless. Really, anybody who volates that whole law against murder thing, is going to blow right past any restraining order. They will also overcome any lack of immediate availability of weapons, too, had those been confiscated previously. So even for these people, any firearms confiscation order would be just as useless.
Ineffectiveness, a petitioner’s false sense of security, in addition to the due process defects, all make this not only a bad idea, but possibly one that puts victims in even greater danger. Unfortunately, this is counterintuitive and not easily understood by regular people, especially when there’s some gun grabber slithering around, playing on emotions and banging the drum for confiscation.
Are the standards of proof sufficient to prevent such confiscation orders from being misused and/or unjust? No?
Are there sufficient penalties for false accusations? No?
Do we believe in innocent until proven guilty? Yes?
Well, I guess I’ll go on thinking such disarmament orders are wrong.
Accused of? No. Convicted of? Absolutely. (Which is current law.)
I’d prefer if police departments created a program in which filing a TRO gets you expedited handgun training (as in, same day) and the cops send you home with a weapon and an extra magazine to be turned in once he/she has acquired a personal weapon.
Quite a few pro gun states on that list, you only think you live in a free state until they toss your collection in the trunk and drive away.
It’s true that many people who get ROs against them are wack-jobs, just one short fuse-burn from violence.
It’s also true that many of these wack-jobs will use whatever weapon they can get their hands on, including a gun they are may not be allowed to legally have.
It’s also true that if it is too hard to get an RO, many who really need them won’t go to the trouble.
But it is also true that 2A rights shall not be infringed. I guess most people are OK with convicted felons being denied guns (through normal legal channels, knowing that they may very well break that law, too).
I think, therefore, that I am in the camp of the police taking a very hard look at the subject of an RO. I mean, if I called the cops and said one of my neighbors was terrorizing the neighborhood, kicking dogs, knocking down mailboxes and making death threats, I’d want them to take a good look at him. I’d hate to have to be the one that ends up shooting him in a defensive situation. And if there’s good evidence that the subject of the RO is indeed a wack-job, then I’d support disarming him, checking if he’s taking his meds, showing up to work, etc., etc. And if he’s truly a wack-job, take him into custody. We 2A folks are always talking about how the Democrats let the crazies out and closed the asylums; put your money where your mouth is: put the crazies back in.
So, yes, I support taking away rights of a wack-job, IF he is indeed truly a wack-job. It can’t be that some woman lost an argument and is taking revenge. There needs to be pretty clear guidelines on what a “wack-job” is. And if he isn’t, then back off. No confiscation. No incarceration. No nothing. But if he IS a wack-job, then put him away before I end up shooting him (if my daughter, for example, is the initiator of the RO).
How un-American to equate “accused” and “offender”.
Someone needs a slap upside the head with a two-by-four.
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