(c) 2018, The Washington Post.
LISBON, Conn. - John McGuire was inside his house with 81 guns when five state troopers were dispatched to investigate a threat he had reportedly made. They drove past a series of frozen lakes and up an unplowed driveway to a house set back in the Connecticut woods. The shades were drawn. A tattered mattress wasted away on the front porch, and boxes of medical equipment cluttered the entryway.
McGuire, 76, came to the door wearing a stained sweatshirt and uncombed gray hair. He hadn’t dealt with police in the two decades since he retired from the force himself, but he still knew the legal statutes and understood his rights. He asked the police if he was under arrest, and the officers said he was not. He asked if he had broken any laws, and they said he hadn’t. They told him he wasn’t being charged, or investigated, or even accused of any crime. Instead, they had come to search his house this winter evening based on a controversial type of warrant, one that represents the United States’ latest piecemeal attempt to prevent gun violence.
“Person Posing Risk to Self or Others,” read the bold lettering on top of the warrant.
Probable cause: “McGuire stated to a medical technician that . . . he was going to kill himself by burning his house down and blowing his head off with a revolver.”
Number of registered firearms: “38 or more.”
Purpose of search: “Take any and all firearms to prevent imminent personal injury.”
In the polarizing gun debate, here was the latest attempt at a solution: civil seizures that allow police to temporarily take guns from at-risk owners without consent after a credible threat is reported. Gun-control advocates say it is a common-sense way to prevent suicides, murders and mass shootings. The National Rifle Association says it is the manifestation of a gun owner’s greatest fear, in which the government confiscates legal guns from the homes of law-abiding citizens. Five states have passed versions of the law. Eighteen more and the District of Columbia are considering doing so.
Nowhere is the approach used more than in Connecticut, which instituted the country’s first “red flag” law in 1999 and where each year about 200 cases tell the story of a nation always on the precipice of the next shooting. An opioid addict threatened to show his “favorite semi-automatic” to a nurse who refused to provide more pills. A fired parking attendant told his co-workers that he would “give a whole new meaning to going postal.” A mother discovered her 19-year-old son in his bedroom writing a suicide note. “Three guns to choose from. Which does the job?”
Each time a threat is reported, police can seize a person’s guns for up to two weeks before a court decides if and when those firearms will be returned. Case
