New York State claims that insomnia is sufficient mental illness for retired cop to have his guns taken away

A decorated retired New York cop is suing the state for taking away his guns.  From Fox News:

. . . Donald Montgomery’s lawsuit contends that Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other state officials violated his Second Amendment rights when his guns were seized after a brief hospital stay for insomnia. Montgomery, a cop for 30 years and a U.S. Navy veteran, brought the lawsuit in Rochester Federal Court on Dec. 17, according to the Daily Caller. 

The SAFE Act became law with little public debate after Cuomo convinced lawmakers that New York needed to do something after the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Conn. 

Montgomery was the owner of four guns -- a Colt .38 handgun, a Derringer .38, a Glock 26 9-mm. and a Smith & Wesson Bodyguard 380. 

His troubles started when he visited a Long Island hospital in May complaining of insomnia. He was discharged with a diagnosis of “depression, insomnia” and then returned a short time later for a 48-hour stay. The lawsuit says that during that visit, staff erroneously listed him as an “involuntary admission,” triggering the SAFE Act reporting provision. Those deemed at-risk for owning guns by mental health professionals have to be reported and their names entered into a database. 

The lawsuit claims Montgomery should not have been reported because he was not a threat to himself or others. The suit says a hospital psychiatrist told him “You don’t belong here” and “I don’t know why you were referred here.” . . .

Another case where registration type records are used for confiscating guns?:Government retroactively changing its mind on what is a legal gun

From Fox News Insider:

Joseph Palumbo, owner of the Albion Gun Shop in Albion, New York, was forced by state police to hand over 165 customer records or risk having his store raided. 

Palumbo spoke to Tucker Carlson this morning on Fox and Friends Weekend and explained that the police said they were looking for anyone who had purchased a modified AR-15 rifle. 

Although the police did not have a written order to seize the customer records, Palumbo said they made it clear there was the imminent threat of a SWAT team raid of his store, so he complied and handed over the records. . . .

"We had been told by the state police that this modification was legal over a year ago," said Palumbo, who has hired an attorney specializing in the Second Amendment. . . .

Sun News Network on "Broken Trust: Gun Grab at High River," Royal Canadian Mounted Police break into law-abiding citizens' homes to confiscate guns

For those who haven't heard of the gun confiscation that took place in High River, Alberta may be surprised by what happened here.  Did the Canadian government use gun registration records to target people's homes?  This show is presented by Lorne Gunter.

Gun registrations used to confiscate guns in New York City

This is the reason that many gun owners fear registrations.  From Fox News:

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is sending out letters telling gun owners to turn over their rifles and shotguns — or else face the consequences. 

New York City’s ban on rifles and shotguns that hold more than five rounds is now being enforced, according to a letter the NYPD is sending out to targeted city gun owners. . . .

State Senate Democrats in New Jersey on guns: “We need a bill that is going to confiscate, confiscate, confiscate.”

Democrats at both the state and federal level keep pushing for taxes on gun purchases and registration.  Democrats claim that they really aren't interested in reducing gun ownership or confiscating guns, but then you have statements such as this.  From the New Jersey Star-Ledger:

As a committee hearing on new gun-control legislation began winding down Thursday, three state senators started chatting amongst themselves.
What they didn't realize was the microphone was still on.
A recording of the exchange — which appears to be between Democrats Loretta Weinberg, Sandra Cunningham and Linda Greenstein — ended up on YouTube, and gun supporters said today they were upset by the remarks.
The recording opens with what sounds like a senator or staff member saying, "We needed a bill that was going to confiscate, confiscate, confiscate" — although it is not clear who is speaking or if this is what she is saying. . . .

Some of the new laws that will be voted on Monday in New Jersey will substantially raise the cost of obtaining a gun.

• Reinstating a seven-day "cooling-off" period. When someone qualifies for a permit, they would have to wait seven days before buying the gun — an effort to prevent domestic violence and suicide. The original package of bills would have removed the seven-day waiting period. "Someone who is heated and angry can’t just go out to the store and buy a gun right away," said Nicola Bocour, the project director of anti-gun violence group Ceasefire New Jersey.
• Currently, New Jersey residents have 90 days to buy a gun after getting a permit. Under the bill, they would have four years, but changes were made to make it easier for law enforcement to yank the permit.
• Residents who apply for permits would have to undergo training.
• All sales of ammunition online would be electronically sent to the State Police. . . . 

Waiting periods are associated with increased crime rates against women.  The costs of mandated training will make it so that poor people who live in high crime urban areas will be disarmed.

Nine new gun control laws being proposed in California

Now that California has registered undesirable guns, they are talking about using that registrations to confiscate those guns.

AB 174 (Asm. Rob Bonta, D-Oakland)) - Would begin the conversation on ending the grandfathering of existing weapons which are now illegal to purchase but are still legal to possess. “State laws on the books currently restrict the purchase and sale of assault weapons and large capacity magazines, but almost all laws only apply on a going forward basis and exempted weapons remain on our streets,” Bonta said. “With AB 174 we will closely examine this loophole and do what’s right for the children and people of California.”

The full list is available here.

NJ judge says that even blind person has the right to own guns

So apparently you don't lose your rights when you are blind.  From CBS 2 News in New York:

. . .  That episode began a legal battle that wound up in Morris County Superior Court. Prosecutors argued Hopler shouldn’t have guns because he’s a danger. However, a judge ruled otherwise, saying his disability shouldn’t take away his constitutional right to bear arms.
Robert Trautman is Hopler’s attorney, and said police singled out his client.
“The state argued that Steve drinks too much.” Trautman said. “It’s just simply that the police didn’t want Steve Hopler to own firearms because he’s blind and they felt that was improper.” . . .

Newest Fox News piece: Why Gun Bans Still Don't Work

My newest Fox News piece starts this way:

Yesterday's wild shooting spree at the University of Texas fortunately ended without anyone being hurt before the gunman shot himself. Naturally, the incident has yet again raised the question over gun bans, such as the ban currently in effect at the University of Texas.

Do they actually do more harm than good?

Gun bans as the solution to gun violence has popped up again, covering different areas. It would have been nice if such bans had stopped criminals from using guns. But, alas, the results are invariably the same, whether the ban is put in place for college campuses, cities, or entire nations: gun bans disarm the law-abiding, not criminals. Instead of making victims safer, they make criminals safer.

Take a simple example. . . .

The Financial Times writes a very positive article about Kennesaw, Georgia's gun law

This article is wrong about Kennesaw being unique, there are other cities in the US (Love, UT; Greenleaf, Idaho; Geuda Springs, Kansas; Virgin, Utah; and Cherry Tree, Pennsylvania), which have similar laws. Still it is an interesting article.

Kennesaw, Georgia, is Everytown, USA: a mixture of old wooden bungalows and cookie-cutter subdivisions, of seventh- generation locals and Mexican immigrants. Its quaint, cobbled historic centre is lush, with low-hanging trees and chirping cicadas. The civil war museum tells the history of the local Confederate fight against the Yankees. At the suburban malls on a humid Saturday afternoon locals vie to park their SUVs as close as possible to the Target and Best Buy outlets, and queue for tables at Chuck E. Cheese’s and Applebee’s.

But this city, half an hour’s drive north of Atlanta, is unique: it is the only place in America where it is compulsory to own a gun. In 1982, Kennesaw City Council unanimously passed an ordinance requiring households to own at least one firearm with ammunition. The law states that its purpose is to “protect the safety, security and general welfare of the city and its inhabitants”. Kennesaw’s ordinance was a heartfelt assertion of second amendment gun rights, a principled and legislative rebuttal to a law passed earlier that year in Morton Grove, Illinois, banning guns within the city limits.

“It was official, but we were protesting as much as anything,” recalls Fred Bentley, a lawyer, who was already 56 when he wrote the ordinance. Looking every part the southern charmer in a grey suit and spotless white shirt topped with a gingham bow tie, Bentley keeps a loaded .38 revolver by his bed and two double-barrel shotguns from his hunting days. Otherwise his guns are decorative – a Brown Bess ­revolutionary-era musket stands by the door of his office.

Kennesaw residents were outraged not only by Morton Grove’s assault on the second amendment of the Constitution – which gives all Americans the right to bear arms – but also by “the slobbering way that the press portrayed the law as taking a stand against ‘evil’ handguns,” says Robert Jones, the president of the Kennesaw Historical Society and the owner of a .357 Magnum handgun. The American Civil Liberties Union challenged Kennesaw’s law as unconstitutional, but the federal court let it stand, although the city did add a clause exempting conscientious objectors, criminals, the mentally disabled and people who could not afford a gun. . . .

Though it will give liberals heartburn, Kennesaw’s gun policy works. . . .

North Carolina Democrat Governor Bans Transportation or possession off of property of guns during Hurricane threat

North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue instituted a state of emergency that allowed her to issue the order when Hurricane Earl recent passed the state. A discussion of her order is available here. Not all the links on the website worked so I wasn't able to check out all of the article's claims.

Glenn Beck and gun registration

Glenn Beck is a fairly brilliant guy and he deals in this show with a lot more than guns, but I think that this is one case that he could make his argument stronger with respect to gun control. Registration programs in Hawaii, DC, and Chicago can't point to any crimes that have been solved as a result of registration. In Canada, the government claimed that since the 1930s it could point to three handgun crimes that registration solved. I believe that long gun registration still hasn't solved any crimes in Canada. (All these figures are from a few years ago, but I don't believe that anything has changed.)

Why? The theory is that if a gun is registered and it is left at the scene, it could theoretically be traced back to the owner. There are a couple of problems with that. 1) Crime guns are virtually never left at the scene of the crime. When they are left at the scene it is almost always because the criminal has been seriously wounded or killed, and thus you are going to catch the criminal anyway. 2) Even when the crime guns are left at the scene they turn out not to be registered to the criminal who left them at the scene.

While Beck has few equals in getting ideas across to people, I think that he is making a mistake in this case by letting the debate be set up as freedom versus safety. Freedom and safety go together at least in this case. Registration raises the costs of law-abiding citizens getting guns relative to criminals. Of course, if guns are eventually confiscated as discussed in the show, gun bans only end up with criminals having guns.

"'Toy' rifles seized by federal agents"

From going after gun shows in Texas to false statements about the source of illegal guns in Mexico to things like this, the Obama administration is doing what it can at the margin to harass gun owners. This claim that the guns could be refitted to turn into a machine gun is bizarre.

Earlier this month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the Port of Tacoma seized a shipment of 30 toy M-4 automatic rifles that had arrived on Oct. 20 in a 40-foot ocean container.

The shipment's manifest listed the contents as "Toys and Parts" and was shipped from a manufacturer in Taiwan, according to a Customs and Border Protection news release. The rifles were the same size, weight and look of an M-4 automatic rifle, which is used by the U.S. military. The rifles had no serial numbers and did not have an orange-blaze tip which is required for all imported of toy guns.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) tested the files and determined they were tooled to shoot plastic balls. However, ATF also found that the internal components could easily be refitted with original machine gun components, making the rifles capable of firing live ammunition. ATF lab results indicated the rifle to be a WE-Tech, Model AWSS M4CQBR, Airsoft M-4 copy.

ATF also confirmed the shipment did not arrive with the proper permits to enter the U.S.

The machine guns were turned over to the ATF to be destroyed.

"These rifles could have had far-reaching and potentially devastating ramifications if they had gotten into the hands of individuals who wanted to do harm in the American population", Customs and Border Protection Area Port Director Rolando Suliveras Jr. said in a news release.

Thanks to Ken Mott and Alec Dawson for this link.

Cubans apparently have kept guns illegally for about five decades

In the past the Cuban government has used registration lists to confiscate guns, it isn't clear why people should trust them any more this time. It is interesting that after 50 years the Cuban government thinks that there are a number of illegally owned guns that have still escaped registration and confiscation.

Cuba has declared a two-month amnesty for citizens to register unlicensed guns, and says those passing aptitude and psychological tests will be allowed to keep their weapons.

The move is unusual in a state where almost no one except some active military personnel and plain-clothed state security agents are allowed to possess weapons.

Even most police officers are required to leave their pistols at the station or in a regional barracks when on vacation or leave, and young men participating in mandatory military service are given unloaded firearms for most exercises.

Starting Feb. 12, Cubans will have the "exceptional and one-time only" chance to register their guns with police, and will be allowed to keep them provided they are over 18 and have passed the proper tests administered at police stations.

There was no explanation for why the drive to legalize unlicensed weapons is coming now, though the state-run news agency Prensa Latina said the move grew out of a November 2008 law regulating possession of guns and ammunition.

According to a weekend bulletin carried by state news media, gun owners must "maintain conduct consistent with the appropriate norms of social behavior, meet security and protection conditions for the firearms and pay established taxes."

Cubans were encouraged to register any weapons they owned in the years after Fidel Castro and his band of rebels toppled dictator Fulgencio Batista on Jan. 1, 1959. But later authorities used a list of those who had sought licenses to go door-to-door and encourage them to turn over their firearms - even antiques considered family heirlooms.

While Cuba is among the safest countries in the hemisphere, it is not unusual to find firearms in Cuban homes, though most are weapons improvised from household materials or guns that were smuggled into the country and bought on the black market. . . .

Who knows what the crime rate is in Cuba. It is hard to believe that the government statistics can be trusted, but the AP reporter doesn't seem to question them.

Info on confiscation of guns in the UK

This is from Richard Munday, who is undoubtedly the leading expert on gun control in the UK.

Rifles and pistols have been individually registered as such on personal Firearm Certificates in Britain since 1920, and magazine-fed shotguns with a capacity over three shots since 1988. Firearm Certificates, giving individual permission to possess specific serial numbered weapons, are subject to renewal by the police every five years (formerly every three years). At renewal, the police may make individual judgements about which particular firearms an owner will be allowed to retain, on the basis of recorded regularity of use, etc.

When the 1997 ban was implemented, the police had a complete list of every licensed pistol: unless one exported the weapon (and could prove it) or could satisfy the police that one had somehow destroyed it, one had no option but to hand it in. Every holder of licensed pistols received a letter from his local police authority, detailing when and where his registered weapons were to be surrendered. I rather doubt that many copies of those letters are still extant, and I cannot offer other references for what happened because it was simply not a matter for discussion: it was the obvious and inevitable way the system worked.

Shotgun Certificates in Britain are subject to slightly different issue criteria from Firearm Certificates. All legal shotguns have been individually registered by serial number to their owners since 1988; prior to that Shotgun Certificates did not record registration numbers. When the 1988 Act was implemented and magazine-fed shotguns were elevated to the higher Firearm Certificate control level, Colin Greenwood estimated that over the previous ten years some 300,000 such guns had been imported into Britain; only 50,000 were subsequently registered. One may speculate as to how many other single and double barrelled shotguns were not submitted for registration at that date; the confiscation of all licensed fullbore self-loading rifles in that year (on the same basis as that used for pistols in 1997) might have influenced the thinking of some owners.

Interestingly, the Home Office estimated that there were some 8,000-10,000 fullbore SLR's in Britain in 1988 (the licensing system accurately segregated rifles from pistols, but did not specify action type), and the British Shooting Sports Council (which might have wished to stress the likely compensation cost) estimated that there were 20,000 such weapons in circulation. In fact, only 3,548 rifles were recorded as having been handed in. Others may have been deactivated (which would have been subject to police check) or personally exported, or (probably the majority) simply sold to the gun trade for export. The mechanism for the seizure of self-loading rifles should otherwise have been as watertight as it later was for pistols. Reference for the 1988 events may be found in my book Most Armed & Most Free? (Piedmont 1996) p.42.