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http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/5697710p-6670909c.html
Raids aim to curtail illegal gun ownership
But an NRA attorney says California authorities are applying the NRA-backed law too broadly.
By Gary Delsohn -- Bee Capitol Bureau
Published 2:15 a.m. PST Tuesday, December 24, 2002
SAN FRANCISCO -- Dressed in riot gear, six special agents from the California Department of Justice met in a Fisherman's Wharf office here the other day -- it's three floors above tourists and Christmas shoppers -- to plot their latest gun raid.
Ignatius Chinn, supervisor for the Sunday-before-Christmas mission, told his men to go easy. They were after firearms they believed a 42-year-old man with a history of violence was keeping illegally.
But they wanted to do it without a fuss.
Keep your guns down, he told the agents. Try not to excite anyone. He's got five daughters living inside there. Knock on his door and let's hope he cooperates.
"If not," Chinn added, "we'll knock it down and we're going in anyway."
It was all part of a new California program -- the nation's first -- wherein state agents try to identify some of the estimated 170,000 firearms registered to owners who later run afoul of the law and are no longer allowed to possess weapons.
Even the National Rifle Association supported the bill when it was debated in the Legislature last year, but a lawyer for the organization now questions whether the law is being enforced too broadly. Among his concerns: Gun owners can lose their weapons if they have temporary restraining orders imposed on them by the courts in domestic violence cases -- even if they're not convicted.
"The biggest problem with these raids," said Chuck Michel, a lawyer for the NRA and spokesman for the California Rifle and Pistol Association, "is that they net as many dogs as they do wolves. You have to make a distinction between the felon and someone involved in a domestic violence dispute who may not even be convicted."
Agents and other Justice Department officials say the program targets only those with bonafide violent pasts and that no law-abiding citizens are losing their guns if they are legal and registered properly.
When gun owners who show up on the so-called "armed and prohibited" list don't hand over their firearms voluntarily, agents get search warrants, seize the weapons anyway and often get local prosecutors to file charges.
On more than one occasion, they've knocked down doors, stormed through houses, confiscated dozens of guns and rifles and made multiple arrests.
The target of this San Francisco raid, a 42-year-old car dealer who'd been accused of beating his wife but found not guilty when she recanted her complaint, wasn't in his tidy green bungalow near Balboa Park when agents showed up with their own shotguns and battering ram.
After talks with his wife and a subsequent call to the man at his job, where the agents showed up unannounced, he agreed to give up at least three assault-style weapons.
Ten days earlier, during a similar encounter in Sacramento, agents confronted a 32-year-old man on probation for a past felony weapons conviction and struck gold.
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer said agents confiscated two sawed-off shotguns, three unregistered assault pistols, three unregistered assault rifles, 18 other firearms, more than 460 electric matches, large amounts of ammunition, a 37 mm grenade launcher and shells, 20 mm shells and two multiburst trigger devices designed to fire multiple rounds with every trigger pull.
The Sacramento Police Department's bomb squad was called in when agents also found an explosive device among the suspect's weapons cache. Hallye Jordan, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the man is facing at least 29 weapons-related charges.
"The individuals we're going after have a violent past or they been held for mental problems that make them a threat to themselves or others," said Randy Rossi, head of the Justice Department's firearms division.
"The vast majority of people we're going after have multiple violations that make it illegal for them to possess firearms. We've had some who've been committed against their will for mental health problems as many as eight times."
So far, since starting the new program in July, agents have arrested 24 so-called "armed and prohibited" persons and seized 259 firearms.
Those numbers would likely skyrocket once the Justice Department can find $4 million to fund its new firearms database called for in legislation sponsored last year by Senate Republican Leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga and signed into law in October 2001 by Gov. Gray Davis. The bill passed both houses of the Legislature without a single dissenting vote.
Once the law is made fully operational, the program would work like this:
A new database would include names of all registered handgun owners who subsequently were convicted of a felony or misdemeanor spousal abuse. If a restraining order is filed and not removed, a gun owner could also land on the prohibited list. The list also would include people who sought to purchase new guns from registered dealers and were turned down because of something in their criminal background.
Those people would be contacted and told they now were banned from possessing weapons. If the guns were otherwise legal and they cooperated, no charges would be filed and the weapons would be turned over to Justice Department agents and, in most cases, eventually destroyed.
Those who didn't cooperate or had illegal guns, such as assault weapons, would be searched and charged if firearms were found.
Police and other law enforcement officers could also tap into the database and know within seconds if someone were both a registered owner and legally prohibited from having a firearm.
Because the Legislature didn't add funding when the bill was passed, Justice Department has yet to set up the database. It has been relying primarily on calls from gun shops that deny a sale due to something criminal in a customer's background against a check of permanent state records of all registered owners of handguns.
"Right now we're identifying the worst of the worst," said Jordan, the Justice Department spokeswoman. "We have limited resources. Until we get some money, we're going at this at the best pace we can."
In July 2001, when the Legislature was considering the issue, the NRA included its signature on letters of support that were also signed by California prosecutors, police and sheriff's groups and handgun control advocates.
"Without this critical information," the letters said, "public and officer safety will be jeopardized by allowing these armed and prohibited individuals to possess these handguns."
But in an interview Monday, Michel, the NRA and gun-rights activist, took strong exception to the program.
"What Lockyer's doing is painting it and spinning it as if these are all bad guys they're going after but that's not always the case," said Michel.
For instance, someone who has a temporary restraining order filed against him in a spousal dispute may not be someone who should lose his otherwise legally registered weapon, Michel said.
In the San Francisco case, the target's wife obtained a temporary restraining order after she alleged that he physically abused her, and it was never canceled, agents said, despite the fact the man and woman have reconciled and are living together.
"The first move of every woman in a divorce is to get a TRO," Michel said. "It's a strategic advantage in a divorce proceeding."
Michel said convicted felons should be made to give up their weapons, as state law requires, but non-felons need to be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Rossi, the Justice Department firearms chief, called Michel's statement "one of ignorance."
For one thing, according to the agents involved in the San Francisco raid, their target had "a violent past but no convictions." Plus, he allegedly possessed illegal assault weapons.
"This is a program the NRA supported," Rossi said. "It's their mantra that we should enforce existing gun laws and that's what this program does. How they can say that without having an idea of who we're going after is really too much for me."
