When risk ‘extreme,’ 4 states let courts take guns
Such protection orders getting renewed interest
The Florida shooting rampage rekindled interest in legislation that would allow a judge to order authorities to remove guns from a threatening person or prevent a gun sale if a police officer or relative makes the request.
Four states have adopted the measures called “extreme risk protection orders.” Legislation is pending in Congress that would urge states to adopt more of the provisions. President Trump and Florida Gov. Rick Scott have said they would review gun restrictions in an effort to keep weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill.
Gun rights groups typically oppose the measures for hindering access to and ownership of guns. Connecticut has the option to request an emergency court order, but it didn’t prevent the shooting spree at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.
The adults who brought the suspect in Florida into their home said they didn’t realize he could be violent.
Nikolas Cruz, 19, is charged with murdering 17 people at a Florida school he used to attend, using an AR-15-style rifle he bought legally. He has a history of mental illness, according to public defender Melisa McNeill.
The court orders adopted in Connecticut, California, Washington and Oregon generally allow requests to judges to order the removal of firearms
from someone determined to be a threat before they commit violence.
“Like so many others that came before it, this tragedy was avoidable,” said Avery Gardiner, co-president of the advocacy group Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “It’s time to change the conversation about guns in America, and that starts with each one of us asking hard questions and demanding accountability from our elected officials.”
Florida doesn’t have such a law, but even if it did, somebody would have had to request that Cruz’s guns be removed. Cruz lived at a friend’s house after his mother died Nov. 1. The friend’s parents, James and Kimberly Snead, told the Sun-Sentinel newspaper in Fort Lauderdale that they were aware Cruz had the rifle and other weapons in a locked cabinet in their home, but not that he was violent.
“We had this monster living under our roof, and we didn’t know,” Kimberly Snead told the Sun-Sentinel.
Connecticut pioneered extreme risk protection orders in 1999, the year after a man who had been treated for attempted suicide and depression killed four co-workers at the Connecticut Lottery with a gun and a knife before shooting himself to death.
The Connecticut law allows police to obtain a court warrant to remove guns from people who pose an imminent risk to themselves or others.
Evidence of probable cause includes recent acts of violence or cruelty to animals. The law led to gun removals in 762 cases from 1999 through 2013, according to a study in Law and Contemporary Problems. Police removed guns in 99% of the cases, an average of seven guns for each warrant subject, the study showed.
About 12% of the subjects received treatment from the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Ser- vices in the year before their gun seizure, and 29% received treatment the year after.
About half the cases were reported by an acquaintance of the person, most of them family members, employers or clinicians, and the rest were reported by people who didn’t know the person, according to the study. Reasons for the intervention were diverse, including anger between intimates, distress over finances or sadness in old age.
But the law works only if someone intervenes. It didn’t prevent a gunman from killing his mother and 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012 before killing himself.
California’s Legislature agreed in 2014 to allow a family member or intimate partner to directly ask a court for what is called a “gun violence restraining order.” Starting July 1, 2016, California courts could issue 21-day restraining orders to prevent someone who poses a significant danger to himself or others from buying, owning or possessing a firearm.
The law was approved months after the shooting and stabbing deaths of six students and injuries to 13 others at the University of California-Santa Barbara. The family of the gunman, who killed himself, had sought help for his strange behavior before the shootings.
Washington state voters adopted their legislation for extreme risk protec- tion orders by ballot initiative in November 2016. The law allows police, child-welfare agencies or relatives to ask a judge to remove guns from someone considered a risk for violence for up to a year, with extensions possible.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Calif., propose to allow states to use federal grants to craft similar legislation. Their goal is for state-level bills to temporarily block people with severe mental illness from buying a gun from a federally licensed dealer and to develop a court process to temporarily remove guns from risky people with severe mental illness.
“One common thread that runs through mass shootings in this country is that family and friends were often aware that the perpetrators had significant mental illness and posed a threat to themselves or others,” Feinstein said.