Disarmed.
Enforcement of a 2013 law varies, and the state isn’t tracking weapons.
Enforcement of a law intended to take firearms away from domestic-violence offenders is inconsistent.
Glen Galloway knew the two-story home on Miramont Street in Colorado Springs well.
He had been there many times before May 30, 2016, when police say he shot Janice Nam twice in the head in her home, killing her.
Nam and Galloway had dated and broken up years before, but he remained a malevolent presence in her life. He allegedly stole her washer, dryer and refrigerator, and left food to rot on the kitchen counter. Another time, Nam’s faucets were left on and her television remote was stolen.
Galloway was charged in 2014 and later convicted of stalking Nam, and twice he was ordered to relinquish his firearms. The first time he complied and turned over three weapons, but the second time, about a year later, he told the court he had none. It is not known whether anyone investigated to confirm that claim, but it was not required.
Roughly a year later, Nam was shot dead. Galloway has pleaded not guilty to 29 counts against him, ranging from murder to bail bond violation and theft.
Colorado passed a law three years before Nam’s death to ensure domestic violence abusers who are subject to protection orders surrender their firearms. But The Denver Post found that judicial districts across the state vary wildly in their interpretation and enforcement of the law, leaving some domestic violence survivors more protected than others.
The Post uncovered other problems that make it difficult to measure the law’s effectiveness.
At least 45,000 men and women have been ordered to surrender their firearms under the law — either by selling or transferring them to a licensed firearms dealer or a third party who underwent a background check, or by storing them at a law enforcement agency or licensed firearms dealer.
Transferring a weapon requires a receipt as proof. But individual courtrooms have differing protocols for filing and organizing relinquishment receipts. They are not required to keep
track of the receipts, and the state does not track what happens to the weapons.
Logistical issues also hinder enforcement. Colorado, like most states, does not have searchable registries of firearms owners that authorities can use to assist in getting guns out of domestic offenders’ hands.
Advocates and law enforcement officials say systems like Colorado’s put too much accountability on offenders to police themselves.
“It is somewhat naive to just expect all of these people to follow the honor system and relinquish their firearms,” said April Zeoli, an associate professor at the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University who specializes in studying domestic violence firearms law and crime statistics.
Relinquishment “is something law enforcement should be responsible for, because it is about keeping the public safe,” she said.
Enforcement varies
The Post reviewed state records analyzed by the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety that show enforcement varies widely across the state.
The data show that judges reported they ordered offenders to relinquish their guns in fewer than 1 percent of protection order cases last year in counties including Dolores and Montezuma, the 22nd Judicial District, while judges in the 17th Judicial District, which includes Adams and Broomfield counties, filed those orders nearly 70 percent of the time. On average, across the state, judges filed relinquishment orders in 36.3 percent of their total protection order cases, according to data they reported to the state.
Since SB-197 became law in Colorado in 2013, 126 people have been charged in violation of it, according to the Colorado Judicial Branch.
Analysis of some of those cases by Everytown found that the incidents tended to happen during chance encounters with law enforcement during traffic stops or unrelated crimes, or when they tried to purchase firearms from licensed dealers. Everytown was unable to find a case in which an offender was charged for neglecting to file a receipt.
“If you look at it statistically, if 45,000 people are charged with relinquishment and you can’t find many charges brought against them, that’s a problem,” said Robert Wareham, a Highlands Ranch attorney who also runs a firearms storage business for people who are ordered to relinquish.
The level of scrutiny domestic violence offenders face is unequal across the state and is based on each judicial district’s interpretation of the law, not their crimes, critics say.
Judicial districts are concerned that the law conflicts with several statutes, including the state Constitution and the Rules of Criminal Procedure, said Jon Sarche, a public information officer at the state judicial branch. “In some counties or judicial districts, no law enforcement agency can or will accept firearms under relinquishment orders,” he wrote in an email.
The law requires courts to issue a warrant for the party’s arrest if they fail to file a receipt in the allotted time. “Several districts noted, however, that finding a defendant or restrained party noncompliant may be left up to chance (occurring only if the court receives outside information) because of the statute’s silence on follow-up,” Sarche wrote.
Judges order relinquishment of firearms in protection order cases when they find the relationship between the parties qualifies it as domestic violencerelated. If the court does not deem the case domestic violence, both parties may be allowed to keep their firearms.
In Weld County, people are informing the courts that they’ve surrendered their firearms, District Attorney Michael Rourke said. “What we have done on the front end is to train law enforcement in a domestic violence situation to ask ‘are there any firearms in the home?’ We’re including it in the filings,” he said. Judges in the 19th Judicial District, which includes Weld County, ordered relinquishment in about 32 percent of their cases.
Judges in the 18th Judicial District, which includes Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert, and Lincoln counties, ordered relinquishment in 28 percent of their protection order cases in 2016.
“The intent of the legislation is right. We want to keep guns out of the hands of people who would most likely turn them on a loved one,” said George Brauchler, district attorney for the 18th district. “The legislation is flawed, and almost impossible to enforce.”
Forcing people to admit to owning firearms is a potential violation of the 5th Amendment of the Constitution, Brauchler said. That amendment forbids the justice system from forcing citizens to self incriminate through testimony.
U.S. law since 1996
In 1996, Congress passed the Lautenberg Amendment, which bans firearm possession for anyone convicted of a misdemeanor domestic violence crime or subject to a protection order.
Enforcing this law was left up to states and up until 2013, Colorado had no mechanism of enforcement. Colorado now is one of 25 states that has passed domestic violence relinquishment laws, and it is one of just five that requires proof of relinquishment in all cases.
“What happened before 2013 was nothing,” said Annmarie Jensen, a lobbyist who worked on passing the bill. “Nobody did anything in court and nothing happened to make it go away.”
Gun violence researchers hold a handful of law enforcement agencies as exemplary in seeking out solutions to the problems that plague the effort to retrieve firearms. The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department in Maryland is one of them.
When a protection order gets filed in the county, the Family Justice Center in the sheriff’s office is notified immediately. Deputies research the offender in the state’s gun ownership database, a tool Colorado does not have, that includes new residents of the state and assault rifle owners.
The sheriff ’s office interviews the protected party to see if they know of weapons the offender did not previously mention to the courts. The best intelligence usually comes from the victim, explained Capt. Rodney Brown of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department. After that, they travel to the offender’s home.
“Sometimes when we go there, the weapon can be taken legally if it’s in plain view,” said Lt. Zachary Grant. “If the gun is not there, we emphasize, ‘If you access this gun, there will be criminal charges.’ ”
The sheriff ’s department confiscates about 100 to 300 firearms a year using this system. The guns are booked into the sheriff ’s office, and “it’s a process” to get them back, he said.
To get their firearms back, offenders must send a letter to the sheriff. Many end up leaving their firearms with the sheriff ’s department, which melts them down if no one comes to retrieve them. The sheriff’s office has been recovering firearms like this for about a decade, Brown said. The only cost has been hiring a few extra deputies to replace those reassigned to the unit, he said.
Few registries
Only six states and Washington, D.C., maintain easily searchable gun registries at varying levels of detail, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Authorities use the databases to learn whether an offender previously purchased a weapon before they became ineligible for ownership. Colorado, like eight other states, has a law that prohibits such a database from existing. Without a searchable registry, Colorado law enforcement is hindered by a lack of knowledge of who in the state owns a firearm.
Police stations and sheriff’s departments across the state said that requests to tally the firearms they have in their possession would take weeks to fulfill, because of the lack of an established filing system for these guns. Sheriff ’s departments have little room for storing firearms at their facilities and don’t want to be held liable for damage to the guns, said Chris Johnson, executive director of County Sheriffs of Colorado.
“None of us want to become gun holders. We actually encourage people to relinquish them to family members or friends,” said Carrie Haverfield, a public information officer at the Boulder County Sheriff’s Department.
Judges from the 20th Judicial District, which includes Boulder, filed relinquishment orders in 0.57 percent of their cases, which county officials say is artificially low due to the court’s document filing protocol.
Other states have found creative ways around the gun storage issue.
In Vermont, a law orders the state’s department of public safety to create a list of facilities where offenders can store their firearms and a fee schedule for using the service. Those fees are paid to the law enforcement agency, which can also take out a loan to build more space for the guns. The law also releases all offices of liability from damage to the firearms if they’re stored properly.
A private gun range in Dallas County, Texas, takes in relinquished firearms. There, judges begin by assessing defendants’ access to firearms at their initial court appearances and using information acquired through law enforcement. The court orders defendants to relinquish firearms to the gun range or a third party for the duration of their cases.
Domestic violence advocates say relinquishment laws — if enforced properly — not only can save lives but are valuable in removing the looming threat of a gun at home, explained Lydia Waligorski, director of public policy at the Colorado Coalition for Domestic Violence.
“The mere presence of a gun says, ‘I can kill you whenever I want,’ ” she said.