State Senator Proposes Gun Offender Registry

[MJS]

Link

Requiring gun offenders to register with local authorities would give police a potent new tool to combat violence, said state Sen. Martin Looney.
Looney, a New Haven Democrat, testified in favor of the gun registry at a public hearing this morning before the legislature's public safety committee.
The registry would be the first of its kind in the nation; several cities, including New York City and Baltimore, have established such programs but no state has done it, Looney said.

It would operate similarly to the sex offender registry: those convicted of major gun offenses would be required to register with local police.

Thoughts on this? Personally, I think its a great idea.

 

[ballen0351]

Link



Thoughts on this? Personally, I think its a great idea.

I'm not sure what the point would be? If your already convicted of a gun crime then the police already know who you are and your not prob. allowed to own a gun anymore anyway. Sounds more like a Look Im tough on crime law that really wont do anything but cause alot of paperwork for cops who already have enough to do.

 

[Archangel M]

An NCIC warning of previous firearms crimes would be nice. The only way I can find that out now is if I run a criminal history on you and I normally can't do that on routine contacts or car stops.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Link

Thoughts on this? Personally, I think its a great idea.

My initial thought would be that I would be against it, for a number of reasons. However, none of those reasons would be because I am pro-gun or pro-gun-crime; I'd like to say that up front.

There is a distinct different between a criminal history file and a registry. When one is arrested, one's name goes into a national database that can be accessed by law enforcement and court-related officials through the nation (in most cases). When one is convicted of a crime, that information goes in there too. Some things may not show up, like field interview cards and parking tickets and so on - although they might show up in state-wide or local databases; but the big stuff does.

A 'registry' of this sort, however, requires that the person convicted go through the formality of registering their current location with local authorities, and that they continue to do so regardless of where they move to in the future. Some registries require life-long registration; some require it for a period of time.

Generally these registries are available to the public and not just law-enforcement personnel. Generally, they are established on a state-wide basis for sex offenders. The concept behind them is that sex offenders are by nature highly at risk of offending again, and that citizens have the right to know if sex offenders are living in their neighborhoods.

Typically, such registries are supported by the public, and generally, they seem to do no harm to anyone. It's hard to argue in support of sex offenders, after all.

However, there are sometimes situations which occur which to some may seem a miscarriage of justice. For example, some 'sex offenders' have been young men who have had consensual sex with minors who were just a few months their junior - an 18 year-old man having sex with a 17 year-old girlfriend, and that sort of thing. Or men who pay for a prostitute and get caught at it. Hardly what I'd call 'dangerous criminals' that we need to monitor on an hourly basis for the rest of their lives, but they're often lumped in with the rapists and child molesters. In fact, based on my local Michigan offender's list, most of the offenders that live in my neighborhood are guilty of just those sorts of offenses. I'm not too worried that a guy who got busy with his underage girlfriend when they were both in their teens but he was 18 and she wasn't is going to be stalking kids on the local playground, are you?

As well, other laws based on the registries have been passed in some places. From keeping track of where sex offenders live, there are some places that disallow them to live within certain distances of public places like schools. While well-intentioned, in at least a couple states, it turns out that sex offenders have no choice but to live under bridges and in tents in the woods, because there IS no legal residence that passes the 'distance test' within a given city's jurisdiction. Google for it if you don't believe me. And as much as many might be happy to see sex offenders punished for the rest of their lives and would consider living under a bridge to be a good idea, one might also suggest that the desperate and homeless might be a tad more prone to committing crimes than one who has a job and a place to live. Just saying.

And finally, in some noted cases, neighbors and others have taken the law into their own hands, burning down houses of known sex offenders, harassing them out of town, ensuring they get fired from their jobs, and so on. In a well-known case here in Michigan a couple years ago, a man in his 30's who had been convicted of having sex with his underage girlfriend when he was 21 and she was 17 was tracked down (he had been reduced to living in his truck), lured to a garage with the promise of a construction job, murdered, and had his head chopped off. That was to 'punish' him for being a sex offender. Some punishment, eh? Hey, any of you guys have sex at a young age, maybe when you were 18 or 19 and your girlfriend was 17? Think you deserve to have your name on a list and have to report where you live for the rest of your life, to be hounded out of a job and have to live in your vehicle, and then 10 years after the offense to be killed and beheaded? I mean, if you think you deserve that, feel free to turn yourselves in.

So, getting back to a proposed gun-offense registry...I'd have to know some things.

First, what kind of crimes are sufficient to be put on this registry? Are we talking about about someone who goes hunting without a license? That's technically a 'gun crime', right? Someone who is found to have a weapon in their vehicle during a stop for something else entirely? Someone who rushes out of their house with a gun to defend their property and is arrested for having a gun in public if local laws don't allow that? I'd really like to know what the minimum offense is.

Second, for how long would such a person be put on the list? Is it for life? Is it possible to get oneself removed from the list by petition or trial? Can mistakes be rectified?

Third, who has access to this proposed registry? Are we talking the general public here?

Imagine a guy who has a CCW and it expires and he doesn't notice. He gets pulled over for a speeding offense, tells the officer that he is armed (as he is required to), gives up his CCW, and the officer arrests him for CCW because the permit is expired.

Now, in addition to criminal charges, he finds himself on a list for life, one that his neighbors have access to on the internet. As a 'gun criminal', some concerned neighbors take it upon themselves to notify his employer, and he loses his job. Then they start protesting in the street in front of his house until he moves. But wherever he goes, it starts up again. In addition, some do-gooding legislators pass a state law that limits where he can live to not within 1,000 feet of a school, church, or public building. And there are no buildings in his small town that don't fall within that limit. So he finds himself and his family homeless, jobless, and camping under a bridge.

Justice has been served. Right?

I suggest instead that if we want to protect society from gun criminals, lock them up. If we don't intend to lock them up, then leave them alone. We still have our criminal history records, which the police have access to, which lets them investigate crimes and determine suspects. I do not see what public interest is served by making a list of local gun crime violators available to the general public in this manner. Does the public have a right to know? Sure they do. And it can be found through public records of convictions as well as through news stories. It's not as convenient as browsing a database to see who lives on your street who has ever been convicted of a gun crime, but I'm not sure that making it more convenient is a public right in this case.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

An NCIC warning of previous firearms crimes would be nice. The only way I can find that out now is if I run a criminal history on you and I normally can't do that on routine contacts or car stops.

I think that would be due to local policy, then. I was a licensed scope operator for NCIC as well as the Colorado version of same (CCIC) and I routinely ran qw and qh on drivers whom the officer had reason to want same. No PC required, just a hunch.

 

[LuckyKBoxer]

I am not a big one on lists.
What are they proposing are the requirements for being put on one of these lists, and what exactly does that mean?
I dont really see a use for it that does not already have an answer.
my radar goes off anytime anyone starts talking about putting a list together of people associated with guns. I know they are wanting to associate this with gun offenders, but gun offenders in what way?
someone who simply uses a gun while committing a crime?
or anyone who commits a crime, who also happens to own a gun but may not have necessarily used it during that crime?....
or anyone who owns a gun who commits any infraction or worse?
no I see no reason for people to be making lists of people with guns, and if your a felon isnt it illegal to have a gun anyways?

 

[Empty Hands]

I'm with you Bill, these registries are ********. They are used to inflict punishment after a criminal sentence has been served, which should be unconstitutional IMO. I'm not surprised to see the attempted expansion. No one likes sex offenders, so they were first up. Now that registries are a fact of life though, expect to see more and more categories of offense added.

It never made much sense to me anyway. Murderers and arsonists can go on their merry way after the sentence is done, but public urinators must be monitored?

 

[Bill Mattocks]

It never made much sense to me anyway. Murderers and arsonists can go on their merry way after the sentence is done, but public urinators must be monitored?

Well, the *official* reason that sex offenders are the ones for whom the registries have been established is that unlike murder and arson, sex offenders are not just criminals but have a mental perversion which will cause them to re-offend again and again.

I'm interested in the mentality that now thinks people who commit 'gun crimes' (whatever they are) have a mental perversion that will force them to offend with a gun again, and that they therefore deserve public scrutiny for the rest of their lives.

 

[Empty Hands]

Well, the *official* reason that sex offenders are the ones for whom the registries have been established is that unlike murder and arson, sex offenders are not just criminals but have a mental perversion which will cause them to re-offend again and again.

Except it's demonstrably untrue. Lifetime recidivism rates for all crimes is in the range of 60%, for sex crimes it's about 5-10% (can't remember the exact figure). It's almost like politicians care more about "looking tough on crime" to the voters instead of making fact-based decisions.

 

[Archangel M]

Sex Crime recidivism rates all depend on what "sex crime" we are talking about. I think you will find that pedophiles and child rapists have a higher rate or re-offense than some guy who was 21 yo who got in trouble when his 16 yo girlfriends parents went to the police.

http://www.csom.org/pubs/recidsexof.html

Reliance on measures of recidivism as reflected through official criminal justice system data obviously omit offenses that are not cleared through an arrest or those that are never reported to the police. This distinction is critical in the measurement of recidivism of sex offenders. For a variety of reasons, sexual assault is a vastly underreported crime. The National Crime Victimization Surveys (Bureau of Justice Statistics) conducted in 1994, 1995, and 1998 indicate that only 32 percent (one out of three) of sexual assaults against persons 12 or older are reported to law enforcement. A three-year longitudinal study (Kilpatrick, Edmunds, and Seymour, 1992) of 4,008 adult women found that 84 percent of respondents who identified themselves as rape victims did not report the crime to authorities. (No current studies indicate the rate of reporting for child sexual assault, although it is generally assumed that these assaults are equally underreported.) Many victims are afraid to report sexual assault to the police.

Several studies support the hypothesis that sexual offense recidivism rates are underreported. Marshall and Barbaree (1990) compared official records of a sample of sex offenders with "unofficial" sources of data. They found that the number of subsequent sex offenses revealed through unofficial sources was 2.4 times higher than the number that was recorded in official reports. In addition, research using information generated through polygraph examinations on a sample of imprisoned sex offenders with fewer than two known victims (on average), found that these offenders actually had an average of 110 victims and 318 offenses (Ahlmeyer, Heil, McKee, and English, 2000). Another polygraph study found a sample of imprisoned sex offenders to have extensive criminal histories, committing sex crimes for an average of 16 years before being caught (Ahlmeyer, English, and Simons, 1999).

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Sex Crime recidivism rates all depend on what "sex crime" we are talking about. I think you will find that pedophiles and child rapists have a higher rate or re-offense than some guy who was 21 yo who got in trouble when his 16 yo girlfriends parents went to the police.

http://www.csom.org/pubs/recidsexof.html

Yes indeed. Of course, many states treat all 'sex crimes' the same way in terms of requirements for registration, rules for where they may live, and so on.

I can certainly understand why the public would not want a pedophile living next door to them. I have a more difficult time understanding why a guy who bought a hummer from a hooker at a business convention has to go live under a bridge for the rest of his life, or a guy who hooked up with his too-young girlfriend when she was a few months underage has to have his head cut off to 'teach him a lesson'.

There is no nuance to the registration laws that I'm aware of, leading to treating all 'sex crimes' the same way; and the same thing for 'gun crimes' would be different how?

Still gotta come down on the side against it.

 

[jks9199]

I'm not sure what the point would be? If your already convicted of a gun crime then the police already know who you are and your not prob. allowed to own a gun anymore anyway. Sounds more like a Look Im tough on crime law that really wont do anything but cause alot of paperwork for cops who already have enough to do.

An NCIC warning of previous firearms crimes would be nice. The only way I can find that out now is if I run a criminal history on you and I normally can't do that on routine contacts or car stops.

I'd take it a step further and make it a violent offender flag, even if you restricted it to assault on an officer/resisting arrest and aggravated assault or felony assaults.

But, while I see the argument for a gun offender registry, I question the practicality of it. Let's be real -- the sex offender registries don't do much from a LE perspective. Failure to register or comply is rampant, and you get people up in arms over the "sex offender" living near the school who turns out to have been a college freshman dating a HS kid.

 

[jks9199]

Imagine a guy who has a CCW and it expires and he doesn't notice. He gets pulled over for a speeding offense, tells the officer that he is armed (as he is required to), gives up his CCW, and the officer arrests him for CCW because the permit is expired.

Or the guy in New Jersey who was trying to transport his guns from his parents's residence to his new home and got arrested and convicted of possessing unregistered guns not too long ago...

Or the guy who's legally transported and declared guns were in his luggage when he missed a connection, and he discovered himself arrested for a similar offense a few years ago...

 

[ballen0351]

An NCIC warning of previous firearms crimes would be nice. The only way I can find that out now is if I run a criminal history on you and I normally can't do that on routine contacts or car stops.

There is a caution code for armed in NCIC or is that a stse thing? We get caution codes for armed, past drug user, resist arrests, and assaults on police may be a few more I dont remember I have not run a name in a few years.

 

[ballen0351]

But, while I see the argument for a gun offender registry, I question the practicality of it. Let's be real -- the sex offender registries don't do much from a LE perspective.

The only thing the sex offender registry is used for is to check up on your neighbors. I dont think Ive ever used it for anything police related other then serving warrants on people who failed to register

 

[Bill Mattocks]

A timely story about sex crimes - by minors. At the moment, the popular teen fad of 'sexting' often results in lifetime requirements to register as a sex offender - for having sent a nude photo of oneself to a boy or girlfriend when one is oneself a juvenile.

http://reason.org/blog/show/some-sense-on-sexting

 

[Archangel M]

Or the guy who's legally transported and declared guns were in his luggage when he missed a connection, and he discovered himself arrested for a similar offense a few years ago...

[tangent] I remember that. I found that "gotcha" game despicable. [/tangent]

 

[MJS]

I'm not sure what the point would be? If your already convicted of a gun crime then the police already know who you are and your not prob. allowed to own a gun anymore anyway. Sounds more like a Look Im tough on crime law that really wont do anything but cause alot of paperwork for cops who already have enough to do.

I'm only going to speak on my PD, as its possible that each PD could have differnet set ups. The officers aren't going to know if someone has'has not been convicted of a gun crime unless a records check/criminal history is run. Simply running someones name, say on a mv stop, will not tell me criminal history. However, when I run someones name, I can tell if the person has any warrants, is a supervised person ( on probation) is a sex offender.

I'd imagine with this set up that they're trying to pass, it'd be a simpler process than running the records check.

 

[ballen0351]

I'm only going to speak on my PD, as its possible that each PD could have differnet set ups. The officers aren't going to know if someone has'has not been convicted of a gun crime unless a records check/criminal history is run. Simply running someones name, say on a mv stop, will not tell me criminal history. However, when I run someones name, I can tell if the person has any warrants, is a supervised person ( on probation) is a sex offender.

I'd imagine with this set up that they're trying to pass, it'd be a simpler process than running the records check.

I was more saying most officers know who the real nasty criminals in there posts or areas unless you are always changing. I know when I go in certain housing projects which guys are the shooters, dealers, fighters and runners. If someone has committed something to get on the list then I would hope most officers already know him. At least where I work they people never leave they stay in the same neighborhood there whole lives. Unless they have warrants then they go hide a few blocks over because we will never find them there lol. But for us when I run a name our dispatchers are supposed to check them thru our in house and county wide computer database and any gun crimes will pop up. I also thought NCIC had caution codes for that stuff already.
Either way it wont effect me since I wont be running the checks but it seems like just one more program that has no real effect on stopping crimes. I treat everyone as if they are armed anyway so me knowing they have prior gun charges wont change the way I do my job. I was taught from day one every where you go there is a gun easily available to the bad guy if her wants it and its strapped to your hip.

 

[MJS]

My initial thought would be that I would be against it, for a number of reasons. However, none of those reasons would be because I am pro-gun or pro-gun-crime; I'd like to say that up front.

There is a distinct different between a criminal history file and a registry. When one is arrested, one's name goes into a national database that can be accessed by law enforcement and court-related officials through the nation (in most cases). When one is convicted of a crime, that information goes in there too. Some things may not show up, like field interview cards and parking tickets and so on - although they might show up in state-wide or local databases; but the big stuff does.

A 'registry' of this sort, however, requires that the person convicted go through the formality of registering their current location with local authorities, and that they continue to do so regardless of where they move to in the future. Some registries require life-long registration; some require it for a period of time.

Generally these registries are available to the public and not just law-enforcement personnel. Generally, they are established on a state-wide basis for sex offenders. The concept behind them is that sex offenders are by nature highly at risk of offending again, and that citizens have the right to know if sex offenders are living in their neighborhoods.

Typically, such registries are supported by the public, and generally, they seem to do no harm to anyone. It's hard to argue in support of sex offenders, after all.

1) However, there are sometimes situations which occur which to some may seem a miscarriage of justice. For example, some 'sex offenders' have been young men who have had consensual sex with minors who were just a few months their junior - an 18 year-old man having sex with a 17 year-old girlfriend, and that sort of thing. Or men who pay for a prostitute and get caught at it. Hardly what I'd call 'dangerous criminals' that we need to monitor on an hourly basis for the rest of their lives, but they're often lumped in with the rapists and child molesters. In fact, based on my local Michigan offender's list, most of the offenders that live in my neighborhood are guilty of just those sorts of offenses. I'm not too worried that a guy who got busy with his underage girlfriend when they were both in their teens but he was 18 and she wasn't is going to be stalking kids on the local playground, are you?

As well, other laws based on the registries have been passed in some places. From keeping track of where sex offenders live, there are some places that disallow them to live within certain distances of public places like schools. While well-intentioned, in at least a couple states, it turns out that sex offenders have no choice but to live under bridges and in tents in the woods, because there IS no legal residence that passes the 'distance test' within a given city's jurisdiction. Google for it if you don't believe me. And as much as many might be happy to see sex offenders punished for the rest of their lives and would consider living under a bridge to be a good idea, one might also suggest that the desperate and homeless might be a tad more prone to committing crimes than one who has a job and a place to live. Just saying.

2) And finally, in some noted cases, neighbors and others have taken the law into their own hands, burning down houses of known sex offenders, harassing them out of town, ensuring they get fired from their jobs, and so on. In a well-known case here in Michigan a couple years ago, a man in his 30's who had been convicted of having sex with his underage girlfriend when he was 21 and she was 17 was tracked down (he had been reduced to living in his truck), lured to a garage with the promise of a construction job, murdered, and had his head chopped off. That was to 'punish' him for being a sex offender. Some punishment, eh? Hey, any of you guys have sex at a young age, maybe when you were 18 or 19 and your girlfriend was 17? Think you deserve to have your name on a list and have to report where you live for the rest of your life, to be hounded out of a job and have to live in your vehicle, and then 10 years after the offense to be killed and beheaded? I mean, if you think you deserve that, feel free to turn yourselves in.

So, getting back to a proposed gun-offense registry...I'd have to know some things.

3) First, what kind of crimes are sufficient to be put on this registry? Are we talking about about someone who goes hunting without a license? That's technically a 'gun crime', right? Someone who is found to have a weapon in their vehicle during a stop for something else entirely? Someone who rushes out of their house with a gun to defend their property and is arrested for having a gun in public if local laws don't allow that? I'd really like to know what the minimum offense is.

4) Second, for how long would such a person be put on the list? Is it for life? Is it possible to get oneself removed from the list by petition or trial? Can mistakes be rectified?

5) Third, who has access to this proposed registry? Are we talking the general public here?

6) Imagine a guy who has a CCW and it expires and he doesn't notice. He gets pulled over for a speeding offense, tells the officer that he is armed (as he is required to), gives up his CCW, and the officer arrests him for CCW because the permit is expired.

Now, in addition to criminal charges, he finds himself on a list for life, one that his neighbors have access to on the internet. As a 'gun criminal', some concerned neighbors take it upon themselves to notify his employer, and he loses his job. Then they start protesting in the street in front of his house until he moves. But wherever he goes, it starts up again. In addition, some do-gooding legislators pass a state law that limits where he can live to not within 1,000 feet of a school, church, or public building. And there are no buildings in his small town that don't fall within that limit. So he finds himself and his family homeless, jobless, and camping under a bridge.

Justice has been served. Right?

I suggest instead that if we want to protect society from gun criminals, lock them up. If we don't intend to lock them up, then leave them alone. We still have our criminal history records, which the police have access to, which lets them investigate crimes and determine suspects. I do not see what public interest is served by making a list of local gun crime violators available to the general public in this manner. Does the public have a right to know? Sure they do. And it can be found through public records of convictions as well as through news stories. It's not as convenient as browsing a database to see who lives on your street who has ever been convicted of a gun crime, but I'm not sure that making it more convenient is a public right in this case.

Hey Bill,

Nice detailed post as always. I numbered a few things that I wanted to comment on.

1) Going on what I've seen, the people on the sex offender list are the ones who've raped, molested kids, etc.

2) I'm sure it happens, just like I'm sure that after 9-11, people took out anger on small stores run by Arabs. I'm sure some people have played the role of Charles Bronson, ala Death Wish, but I dont think it happens as much as some may think.

3) That I'd imagine, would have to be deterined by the courts. I'd say things such as armed robbery with a gun, killing someone with a gun..things of that nature.

4) Again, that'd have to be determined. I'd imagine it'd depend on the crime.

5) According to the article, I believe it'd just be LE, but its possible it could be made public.

6) I doubt he'd be arrested. That'd be no different than you DL being expired. Everything checks out, and you're not a dick to the cop, I'd say a ticket would suffice.