“When you are going to take their guns,” observes Special Agent John Marsh, “they are not happy.”
“They” are California residents who have been designated as “prohibited persons” by the state’s Armed Prohibited Persons System (APPS). Those individuals are said to have “lost” their rights under the Second Amendment. Marsh leads a special APPS paramilitary task force dedicated exclusively to gun confiscation.
Using gun registration lists, and drawing information out of several other databases, APPS stormtroopers “regularly sweep through California cities” to seize firearms from people the state has designated “prohibited persons,”reports the Fresno Bee. California Governor Jerry Brown recently signed a bill that will use a $24 million surplus from firearms purchase fees to hire 36 new jackboots for the squad.
As is always the case with “gun control” initiatives, APPS does nothing to abate violent crime, because criminally inclined people do not register their firearms. California gun owners who comply with the state’s laws are subsidizing a program that is increasingly used to confiscate guns from innocent people on the whim of bureaucrats who aspire to disarm the public at large.
Speaking of the tens of thousands of Californians who have been classified as “prohibited persons,” California’s proto-Stalinist Attorney General (and presidential pinup) Kamala Harris insists: “They are those people who have been proven to violate the law, and present a threat to public safety.” Harris insists that proactive disarmament of “dangerous, violent individuals … is smart and efficient law enforcement.”
Harris, predictably enough, is lying through deliberate over-statement. Only a minority of “prohibited persons” are convicted criminals, and not everyone who meets that description is a felon – violent or otherwise.
A criminal conviction is not necessary for enrollment on the civilian disarmament register. All that is necessary is an official finding by the state’s Welfare bureaucracy that the gun owner is “a danger to himself or others.” This determination can come in the form of a restraining order issued ex parte in a domestic dispute, an involuntary “mental health” hold (a formal commitment proceeding is unnecessary), or conviction for a “violent” misdemeanor, including one issued for the non-crime of resisting arrest. It is estimated that at least 20 California residents are enrolled on the disarmament roster every day.
According to attorney Chuck Michel, who has represented gun owners in court, “there are 30 different ways you can be prohibited from owning a gun. Most of the people on the list aren’t a threat, and don’t even know they’re on it.”
Clad in black tactical gear and prominently displaying high-powered weaponry, Harris’s firearms confiscation stormtroopers typically carry out raids late at night, or early in the morning. They arrive in overwhelming numbers and, without the benefit of a warrant, seek to intimidate targeted individuals into permitting searches of their property in order to confiscate any firearms that might be found. If the “prohibited persons” refuse to cooperate, the raiders will “seek a warrant and lock down the house until they get results,” explains the Bee.
Commissarina Harris clearly sees California’s gun confiscation program as a template for similar initiatives across the nation.
“California is leading the nation in a common-sense effort to protect public safety by taking guns away from dangerous, violent individuals who are prohibited by law from owning them,” boasted Harris – who speaks exclusively in collectivist boilerplate, it appears – last January. In a letter to Vice President Biden, she urged him to use APPS as a national model. To that end, California Democratic Congressman Mike Thompson has sponsored the federal Armed Prohibited Persons Act of 2013, which thus far has failed to find traction in the house.
So far, California is the only state to deploy a dedicated gun confiscation team — but it isn’t the only one to engage in pre-emptive civilian disarmament.
In 1999, the Connecticut legislature enacted a measure permitting police to confiscate firearms from any individual believed to pose “a risk of imminent personal injury to himself … or to other individuals.” All that is necessary for the seizure to occur is a sworn complaint “by any state’s attorney or assistant state’s attorney or by any two police officers to any judge of the Superior Court.” The confiscated firearms can be held for up to a year, without any criminal charges or civil action being taken against their owner. Thousands of firearms have been seized under that provision, which famously did not prevent the Sandy Hook Massacre.
In the Glorious Democratic Republic of Massachusetts, police and prosecutors didn’t even bother pretending that they were enforcing a law permitting the pre-emptive disarmament of Gregory Girard, a resident of Manchester-by-the-Sea, after his estranged wife — who appears to be a temporally displaced subject of East Germany — called health and welfare officials to report that her husband held eccentric political views. Specifically, Mr. Girard believed that martial law, complete with gun confiscation, is imminent. Since it is impermissible for people to believe that government agents will carry out paramilitary raids to confiscate firearms, a paramilitary squad was sent to Girard’s home to confiscate his firearms.