national gun control confiscation
(AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
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According to SFGate, a site that bills itself as the Bay City News Service, a proposal has been put forth by the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors to facilitate gun confiscation. Now, it’s important to note the proposed gun law applies specifically to people who have had restraining orders (RO) and temporary protection orders (TRO) taken out against them.

SFGate reports as follows:

The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday will consider funding a new team specifically aimed at getting guns out of violent hands.

Board president Cindy Chavez will introduce a proposal to earmark nearly $430,000 to support a “gun team” tasked with removing guns from repeated domestic abusers and people with temporary restraining orders against them.

“It is a lethal combination where there’s a case involving domestic violence and a court order to remove a gun from a person with a restraining order against them, particularly if it’s not enforced,” Chavez said during a Monday news conference.

So where is that nearly-half-a-mil initial investment of funds coming from?

County general fund money would pay for a new criminal investigator and attorney for the county gun team. Several other positions would be funded by grants from the Bay Area Urban Areas Security Initiative.

Sounds like a good gun law, right? People known to be violent will have their guns confiscated thus protecting the victims of their abuse.

The current methodology in the Golden State is that if you have a restraining order issued against you, you have to turn in your own gun. As court.ca.gov says:

If the law enforcement officer does not take your firearms [when you are served], you have to turn them in to the police or sell them to, or store them with, a licensed firearms dealer. (Respond to a Request for Firearms Restraining Order, https://www.courts.ca.gov/33680.htm?rdeLocaleAttr=en)

What could possibly go wrong?

Coming at this as someone who has had to take out a restraining order against a violent ex gives me a unique perspective, but it probably isn’t the one you’d expect. This particular attempt at forming a gun confiscation team is being presented with the claim of being for violent offenders and people with active restraining orders against them.

Looks good on the surface, right? Finally, a common-sense gun law! Guess again.

gun confiscation destruction
(AP Photo/Agustin Marcarian)

Gun confiscation is a slippery slope. Authorizing and funding law enforcement to put together a team to go in and take guns away is an iffy proposition at best. It might be starting with people – and the occasional woman – who’ve had a restraining order issued against them, but where does it end? And what about the restraining orders that are wrongly put in place?

If the 21 days passes between the TRO being issued and the court date, and the judge decides it should never have happened, is the person going to get their guns back? Good luck with that. I seriously doubt it.

The gun confiscation team isn’t a perfect solution it’s more like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. For an added touch of irony, Deputy District Attorney Marisa McKeown said “…the very voluminous California laws on guns mean nothing if we don’t adequately and smartly enforce them.”

Exactly. Law enforcement can already take firearms from people when they serve a firearms-specific restraining order, so why do they need a dedicated team? They don’t. Enforce the existing gun laws — of which there are far too many in California already — and move on.

Two thumbs way, way, down for this one, California (as with the vast majority of your gun laws). If you’re being abused, defend yourself. Get a restraining order – yes, really, get one – and get yourself armed and trained. You know the drill; say it with me. When seconds count law enforcement and all associated gun laws are only minutes away.

 

 

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50 COMMENTS

      • Everyone talks a good game. When tasked with the job of forcibly taking lethal weapons from some well-armed, violent, angry, alcoholic (for instance), I don’t imagine there would be too many enthusiastic volunteers.

      • And there are many gun owners out there who will not comply or hesitate to inflict as much damage as possible if they feel they have nothing to lose because they are being treated as a criminal. These same people might just be armed with weapons that class 4 body armor is like soft butter…Does the California DOJ want to repeat the mistakes of Ruby Ridge or worse, Waco? I don’t think so. There are better ways to deal with potentially dangerous people who are not dangerous unless provoked. Given options and a chance of no confrontation, most people will be not be aggressive considering they have not yet committed a crime.

        • +100
          Plus when guns get outlawed, folks will start making bombs out of common household materials!

  1. Anti gunners will point out that the “Slippery slope argument” is a logical fallacy. In other words, if a new law is passed, that is not absolute proof that it will go further or be abused. Ture enough, but it has been a surprisingly accurate way of predicting what will come next.

    Remember when abortion rights would never extend beyond the first trimester, or that live babies would not be killed? How about gay rights? We will never demand gay marriage, we swear.

    Same with gun control, in every case, new gun laws begat more new gun laws unless it is stopped by courts.

      • Santa Clara county= San Jose, Gilroy… lots of farming, lots of immigrants (legal and not) poorly educated, majority of voters probably around liberal San Jose… Just promise everybody free shit tell them the Republicans will TAKE it all away, they don’t know any better, they’ll vote the way they’re told….

  2. :(((( Please be careful when you post pictures like the one with all of the death row gats… Some people have fragile hearts that can’t look at hundreds of pretty firearms as they lie in piles waiting to be destroyed….

  3. So a “gun team” would remove guns from places where domestic violence offenders live… and they’re frequently living with their victims… so removing weapons from the dwelling also disarms the victim and believe me the creep is about to be royally pissed off about all of this and… Freakin’ BRILLIANT!

  4. As if restraining orders are hard to get.

    Politicians can get restraining orders or temporary protection orders against protesters that constantly bother them. Show up at a politician’s house protesting gun control while openly carry a gun… Guess what? No more guns for you.

    • The ACLU lawyers, Libertarians, Liberals, and the Left, have all said you have a civil right to protest in the neighborhood where people live. Its called Free Speech. The Bill of Rights says it too.
      Blacks were told this when the ACLU said, it’s great to have the KKK march through the black areas while carrying guns.

      The senator from KY, Mitch McConnell, has also had people come to his home. And not just one man . But hundreds at 3am came to speak to the Senator. I don’t recall anyone saying this was wrong. Including Chief Censor.

      • Unfortunately, under Trump’s leadership things have changed more than under Obama. Everything is accelerating so fast people can’t keep up. Americans believe it’s still 2001.

        The constitution is now being proclaimed as dead. No free speech, no guns, no privacy, no due process, no warrants…

        At this point the individual better start getting ready for the new society. The new order. It will come under Trump. That is the plan.

    • Such a brave man, this Mr. Levine. Couldn’t go out and confront the fellow himself, had to have the police play messenger boy. What a brave lad. But, I suppose we can’t be too harsh on him. After all, that assault weapon was a LARGE one. Perhaps, if it were smaller, Mr. Levine would have taken care of business himself.

      Now, if Mr. Levine had an assault weapon of his own, he could have fearlessly trotted on out to the street for a frank conversation with his visitor. I don’t know how this bit of irony escaped him.

  5. It will be just like the repo guy. They will have a SWAT team back them up every where they go to collect the property.

  6. The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday will consider funding a new team specifically aimed at getting guns out of violent hands.

    Let me get this straight: someone is so violent and dangerous as to warrant confiscating their firearms. And yet we leave them roaming freely to acquire another firearm from a “street vendor” or to acquire alternate weapons (such as pipes and knives) and proceed to maim/kill the person who filed the protection order. And this makes sense in what universe?
    ——

    … $430,000 to support a “gun team” tasked with removing guns from repeated domestic abusers …

    If someone is a repeat domestic abuser, why is he/she not in prison?
    ——

    “It is a lethal combination where there’s a case involving domestic violence and a court order to remove a gun from a person with a restraining order against them, particularly if it’s not enforced.”

    And it isn’t lethal leaving the subject of the order roaming free to easily stab, bludgeon, punch, kick, and/or poison to death the person who filed the order?
    ——
    Either the people who support this garbage are complete morons, or protecting the people who file personal protection orders is NOT their agenda. Oh, wait …

    • Couldn’t agree more. These laws were created to transfer powers from licensed psychiatrists to unqualified persons more obedient to democrats, e.g., local judges and crotchety old aunts. Due process requires reports from two psychiatrists, one from each side, legal representation, arraignment, indictment and trial by jury.

      Nobody wants criminals to have firearms but to be taken seriously, if the accused is a danger to himself (not against the law) or others, he should be legally arrested. In other words, take the man but leave the guns. The line of inheritance codified in state laws determines the legal custodian of any property. The state seeks confiscation because it considers due process too much trouble and too expensive.

  7. So a bratty 14 year old gets pissed at her stepdad who she never much liked anyway, tells the cops that she afraid of him and that he has a gun. Based on this “evidence” and nothing else, a judge issues a restraining order, good ole’ stepdad gets branded “armed and dangerous” thus justifying a SWAT no-knock raid which results him him getting shot killed. Coming to a neighborhood near you . . .

  8. I’ll say it again. Never, never, never register your guns if you can avoid it. If you have “grandfathered” items, do not ever voluntarily make them known to CADOJ. Ever. Retain them off the radar for as long as possible, if not always.

  9. I certainly like the way the powers that be do not have to follow the Constitution of The United States of America. Builds faith in our lorders,I mean leaders

    • Yup, that’s what they are: our elected lords. Some are more elite than others, but all lords nevertheless. And they need their self-important lordly egos stoked with stuff like this. My thoughts on this are that even if the victim of a red flag order is able to reverse it and request his/her guns back, they will already be in SF Bay or at the metal grinder. As for the county official who came up with this idea, she sounds like a progressive airhead who is just waiting for the next brilliant idea to float into her head. These politicians need to justify their existence by continually coming up with new laws, new ideas. They certainly aren’t believers in “That government is best which governs least.”

  10. All of these laws are end runs around constitutional protections. Authoritarian controls freaks can’t stand that the government doesn’t have unlimited power, yet. If laws like this continue to be passed, they will of course be expanded to cover offenses that the law was never intended to cover. These people care nothing for the impediments the constitution places before them, they are merely words on paper with no force behind them in their mind.

  11. When there’s a dedicated gun confiscation team, they’re gonna be measured on guns confiscated.

    Not clean confiscations. Not doing it lawfully, with minimum violence, let alone respecting the property of the accused. Certainly not keeping the peace.

    If the anti-people want to do this, it gets enforced by the same law enforcement as everything else … and balances against those other demands on their time, and goals, like peole *not* getting hurt.

    • ” they’re gonna be measured on guns confiscated ”

      Exactly. Same dynamic at work here as the Founder’s distrust of a standing army — if you’ve got an army, sooner or later you’ve got to use it just so you can justify keeping it.

  12. So, the confiscation squad become clients of that particular law, and it’s independent funding.

    I wonder what they’re going to say about how they’re doing?

  13. If the accused is so dangerous why is he/she still in the general population? The idea is clearly to get the GUNZ. Since they have the authority vested by the county if you resist you’re dead meat.

  14. I’m real tired of hearing about CALIFORNIA !!!!!!! Those people cause most of there own problems. I wish the damn thing would break off, and sink in the ocean !!!!!! Gun Laws just send me around the bend !!!!!! Buy the gun of your choice, learn to shoot and take care of it. Defend your property, and your life !!!!!! THE END !!!!!!

  15. Come to my house to get my guns: 1. I will not answer the door. 2. I will be armed to the tee. 3. Many others will go down before I do. Any volunteers to take my guns. All gun owners need this attitude.

  16. The best end of life revenge will be taking all your guns down to Martin Luther King Blvd. and selling them to the highest bidders.
    Off site storage answers all other questions.

  17. “It might be starting with people – and the occasional woman – who’ve had a restraining order issued against them, but where does it end?”

    So, women aren’t people?

  18. Don’t think i would apply for a job taking firearms away from people who have been pegged as troublesome. They better offer good health and life insurance.
    They keep pecking away at the 2A. One chip at a time.

  19. All the massive problems CA has, and this is their focus. It’s astonishing the lack of foresight in the people running this state. How about focusing on your enormous homeless population, human feces all over the streets, rampant IV drug use and needles lying around for someone to step on. You are the most pathetic leaders in the country and the laughing stock of the nation. And now you have coronavirus. Can’t wait to get the hell out of this godforsaken cesspool. Good Job Newsom et al!

  20. We the People cannot justify the confiscation of guns because of a restraining order how about searching the homes of convicted Felons who have been through the system and are not allowed legally to possess a firearm once they take away your firearm it is so easy to purchase another one it sounds like a revolving door of injustices towards our 2nd Amendment right, I could see if the persons that they are removing the firearms from who is certifiably and mentally unstable or fit to possess a gun of any kind, this leaves the final statement at large will criminals be the one that laughs in the faces of these unarmed civilians when they break into their homes or rob them no defense to protect your family. the laws are written against the average citizen who in the face of legal diplomacy becomes the victims!

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