Thread: New Push Tries to Confiscate Firearms From Felons, Mentally Ill

July 26, 2013, 8:52 p.m. ET

New Push Tries to Confiscate Firearms From Felons, Mentally Ill

Gun-confiscation programs start to launch across the country but have their critics

By JACK NICAS


Rob Hart for The Wall Street Journal The gun suppression unit of the Cook County Sheriff's Police in action.

HARVEY, Ill.—Many politicians have called recently for new laws to prevent criminals and the mentally ill from obtaining guns. But in some parts of the U.S., the focus has turned to confiscating firearms from the convicts and mentally ill who already have them.

Under federal and most state laws, legal gun owners lose their right to possess firearms when they are convicted of a felony or violent misdemeanor, or are judged by a court to be mentally ill. Officials tell these people they must surrender their guns, but in much of the country, authorities don't ensure they do. Instead, people who are prohibited from having guns are left to get rid of them on their own.

Now some officials are accelerating efforts to seize those firearms. In recent months, the sheriff of Cook County, which includes Chicago, launched a gun-confiscation program; California began adding agents assigned to take away firearms; and New York enacted a law that paves the way for such a program.

On a recent Wednesday here in the rundown suburbs south of Chicago, five police officers with bulletproof vests and Glock handguns knocked on doors and tried to talk their way into homes of felons and mentally ill residents who, according to records, held gun licenses.

In its first six months, the unit has confiscated nearly 200 guns, but it has almost 5,000 more names to check.

"It's beyond absurd that no one takes it to the final step and makes sure these people don't have guns," said Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, a former Democratic state lawmaker who says he launched the gun-confiscation program in February after recognizing the lack of enforcement.

Critics say such programs sometimes also confiscate the guns of people convicted of crimes unrelated to firearms, such as drunken driving or tax evasion. George Mason University law professor Joyce Lee Malcolm, a Second Amendment scholar and gun-rights advocate, said laws on who can't possess firearms are too broad.

"People that have committed a nonviolent crime are not a danger to the community," she said, "so it seems wrong to seize guns from them."

California has the only statewide program dedicated to confiscating guns from people who aren't allowed to possess them. It adopted its policy in 2007, but for years a lack of funding limited the program to periodic sweeps. In April, state lawmakers approved an additional $24 million for the effort, funded by fees on gun purchases. California Attorney General Kamala Harris is now doubling the number of state Justice Department gun agents to almost 70. After seizing more than 11,000 guns since 2007, authorities aim to take back an additional 40,000 firearms from 20,000 people over the next several years.


Rob Hart for The Wall Street Journal

A confiscated pistol seized by investigators of the unit.

In January, Ms. Harris wrote a letter to Vice President Joe Biden, urging him to consider a similar federal gun-confiscation program. California's program "addresses a critical gap in our nation's approach to gun violence—what do we do about the guns that are already in the hands of persons who, by law, are considered too dangerous to possess them?" she wrote. The White House didn't respond to requests for comment.

A month later, two Democratic congressmen from California introduced legislation that would provide federal grants to states that set up similar gun-confiscation programs. The bill remains in a House committee.

New York lawmakers this year passed sweeping gun-control legislation that creates a statewide database of handgun owners that will allow authorities to see if any are prohibited from possessing guns. The law also requires mental-health professionals to report if patients are dangerous, and authorizes law enforcement to confiscate those patients' firearms. Officials said that the new data and authority will help law enforcement confiscate more guns there.

Officials in Illinois and California can systematically confiscate firearms because they collect more data on gun owners than most states, experts said. They merge data on who owns guns with a list of people who can't legally do so, whether because of a felony conviction, violent misdemeanor, restraining order, involuntary stay in a mental hospital or court adjudication that they are mentally unstable.

In most states, "police simply don't know who the gun owners are, and without that info it's effectively impossible to have a viable felon-confiscation policy," said Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

"Compiling information on who owns guns is politically toxic, so very few states can enact such policies."

Gun-rights advocates have long fought to prevent government from keeping data on gun owners. Federal law requires destruction of data on the background checks that the government runs on gun buyers, and fears of a national gun registry helped kill gun-control legislation in Congress this year. "Gun databases lead to confiscation," said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation.

Mr. Gottlieb's group has collected 160,000 signatures for a ballot initiative in Washington state, where it is based, that would require law enforcement to get a court order before confiscating a firearm. Mr. Gottlieb says his group hopes to get another 165,000 by January to ensure the measure qualifies for next year's ballot.

"We know where [the government is] going with all this: They don't want anyone to have a firearm if they had their way," he said.

Current and former officials dismiss that. Kenneth Melson, former acting head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said that during his nearly 30 years in the Justice Department, "I have never heard of any program or desire to create a program that would go out and confiscate willy-nilly the guns of innocent citizens."

Although gun-rights advocates agree that guns should be taken from violent criminals, they also say the efforts are confiscating firearms from those who aren't dangerous, under the guise of making communities safer. "Politicians are claiming that this program goes after violent felons.…Instead, it goes after harmless civilians that don't know they're prohibited because the laws are so complex," said Chuck Michel, a California civil-rights lawyer and author of the book, "California Gun Laws."

Write to Jack Nicas at jack.nicas@wsj.com

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