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<DIV><FONT face=Garamond>Mr Rumelhart,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Garamond></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Garamond>My reply focused on burying evidence. The type of
evidence was, I thought, secondary. It was not anti-gun, and I regret that it
may have been taken that way in your response.<BR><BR>I rather doubt any MPD
officer would do same today. Type of evidence is/was not my point.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Garamond></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Garamond>Warren Hayman</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Garamond></FONT> </DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=godshatter@yahoo.com href="mailto:godshatter@yahoo.com">Paul
Rumelhart</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=whayman@roadrunner.com
href="mailto:whayman@roadrunner.com">Warren Hayman</A> ; <A
title=janesta@gmail.com href="mailto:janesta@gmail.com">Janesta</A> ; <A
title=art.deco.studios@gmail.com href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com">Art
Deco</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Monday, March 18, 2013 3:53
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Vision2020] NRA: Women's
Best Friend</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #fff; FONT-FAMILY: times new roman, new york, times, serif; COLOR: #000; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">It
also feeds the "gun is evil" trope. Did he remember to bury it in
salt?<BR><BR>If this guy didn't have a gun, do you think it would have been
any less dangerous for her if he had grabbed a hunting knife or a baseball bat
or if he had just grabbed the nearest heavy blunt object he could reach?
The problem isn't the gun, it's the out-of-control ex-husband who is
irrationally angry. I don't know what you do about that. And
that's the problem. Banning guns is a Simple Solution (tm). It
doesn't affect the real problem. That would require asking serious
questions about what you can do when you think someone is prone to violence
when they haven't done anything violent yet. Do you lock him away for
making the threat? How do you determine what is an actionable threat and
what is just words spouted in anger? Is there some minimum of evidence
needed, or can anyone lock up any significant other with just a quick phone
call?<BR><BR>Paul<BR>
<DIV><SPAN><BR></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT-FAMILY: times new roman, new york, times, serif; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">
<DIV
style="FONT-FAMILY: times new roman, new york, times, serif; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">
<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=2 face=Arial>
<HR SIZE=1>
<B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">From:</SPAN></B> Warren Hayman
<whayman@roadrunner.com><BR><B><SPAN
style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">To:</SPAN></B> Janesta <janesta@gmail.com>;
Art Deco <art.deco.studios@gmail.com> <BR><B><SPAN
style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Cc:</SPAN></B> vision2020@moscow.com <BR><B><SPAN
style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Sent:</SPAN></B> Monday, March 18, 2013 3:26
PM<BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Subject:</SPAN></B> Re: [Vision2020]
NRA: Women's Best Friend<BR></FONT></DIV><BR>
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<DIV id=yiv3470709>
<STYLE></STYLE>
<DIV>
<DIV>A cop burying possible evidence, as in a gun? Sorry, and I'm not. This
constitutes travesty. I'm glad your friend is okay, but no... Wrong.
Immediately so.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Warren Hayman</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4"><B>From:</B> <A
title=janesta@gmail.com href="mailto:janesta@gmail.com" rel=nofollow
target=_blank ymailto="mailto:janesta@gmail.com">Janesta</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=art.deco.studios@gmail.com
href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" rel=nofollow target=_blank
ymailto="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com">Art Deco</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Cc:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com" rel=nofollow target=_blank
ymailto="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Monday, March 18, 2013 3:01
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Vision2020] NRA: Women's
Best Friend</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>I once knew a woman in Moscow... Thirty-nine years ago, she
married her first husband. Thirty-seven years ago, they separated. One
night, gun in hand, he broke down her front door.. Between the time he
started pounding on the door, and the time it broke down, the police were
called. After a few hours of talking, the man finally gave up his gun. An
officer for the MPD took the husband's gun, and it was never seen again.. A
year later, the woman asked the officer what he did with the gun. The
officer replied he buried it in his back yard, deep enough no one would ever
find it. Knowing protective orders are about as good as the paper they are
written on, to this day, she is very thankful to the officer.
<BR><BR>Janesta<BR><BR>
<DIV class=yiv3470709gmail_quote>On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 7:11 AM, Art Deco
<SPAN dir=ltr><<A href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" rel=nofollow
target=_blank
ymailto="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</A>></SPAN>
wrote:<BR>
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class=yiv3470709gmail_quote>
<DIV dir=ltr>
<DIV>
<DIV><A href="http://www.nytimes.com/" rel=nofollow target=_blank><IMG
border=0 hspace=0 alt="The New York Times" align=left></A> </DIV>
<DIV></DIV></DIV><BR clear=all>
<HR align=left SIZE=1>
<DIV>March 17, 2013</DIV>
<H1>Ruled a Threat to Family, but Allowed to Keep Guns</H1>
<H6>By <SPAN><A title="More Articles by MICHAEL LUO"
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/michael_luo/index.html"
rel=nofollow target=_blank><SPAN>MICHAEL LUO</SPAN></A></SPAN></H6>
<DIV>
<DIV>Early last year, after a series of frightening encounters with her
former husband, Stephanie Holten went to court in Spokane, Wash., to
obtain a temporary order for protection. </DIV>
<DIV>Her former husband, Corey Holten, threatened to put a gun in her
mouth and pull the trigger, she wrote in her petition. He also said he
would “put a cap” in her if her new boyfriend “gets near my kids.” In neat
block letters she wrote, “<A
href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/audio/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/DVGunsQuickLinks/holten_location.mp3#media/holten2"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>He owns guns, I am scared</A>.” </DIV>
<DIV>The judge’s order prohibited Mr. Holten from going within two blocks
of his former wife’s home and imposed a number of other restrictions. What
it did not require him to do was surrender his guns. </DIV>
<DIV>About 12 hours after he was served with the order, Mr. Holten was
lying in wait when his former wife returned home from a date with their
two children in tow. Armed with a small semiautomatic rifle bought several
months before, he stepped out of his car and thrust the muzzle into her
chest. He directed her inside the house, yelling that he was going to kill
her. </DIV>
<DIV>“I remember thinking, ‘Cops, I need the cops,’ ” she later wrote
in a statement to the police. “He’s going to kill me in my own house. I’m
going to die!” </DIV>
<DIV>Ms. Holten, however, managed to dial 911 on her cellphone and slip it
under a blanket on the couch. <A
href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/audio/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/DVGunsQuickLinks/holten_911.mp3#media/holten1"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>The dispatcher heard Ms. Holten begging for her
life</A> and quickly directed officers to the scene. As they mounted the
stairs with their guns drawn, Mr. Holten surrendered. They found Ms.
Holten cowering, hysterical, on the floor. </DIV>
<DIV>For all its rage and terror, the episode might well have been
prevented. Had Mr. Holten lived in one of a handful of states, the
protection order would have forced him to relinquish his firearms. But
that is not the case in Washington and most of the country, in large part
because of the influence of the <A
title="More articles about National Rifle Association"
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_rifle_association/index.html?inline=nyt-org"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>National Rifle Association</A> and its allies.
</DIV>
<DIV>Advocates for domestic violence victims have long called for stricter
laws governing firearms and protective orders. Their argument is rooted in
a grim statistic: when women die at the hand of an intimate partner, that
hand is more often than not holding a gun. </DIV>
<DIV>In these most volatile of human dramas, they contend, the right to
bear arms must give ground to the need to protect a woman’s life. </DIV>
<DIV>In statehouses across the country, though, the N.R.A. and other
gun-rights groups have beaten back legislation mandating the surrender of
firearms in domestic violence situations. They argue that gun ownership,
as a fundamental constitutional right, should not be stripped away for
anything less serious than a felony conviction — and certainly not, as an
N.R.A. lobbyist in Washington State put it to legislators, for the “mere
issuance of court orders.” </DIV>
<DIV>That resistance is being tested anew in the wake of the massacre in
Newtown, Conn., as proposals on the mandatory surrender of firearms are
included in gun control legislation being debated in several states.
</DIV>
<DIV>Among them is Washington, where current law gives judges issuing
civil protection orders the discretion to require the surrender of
firearms if, for example, they find a “serious and imminent threat” to
public health. But records and interviews show that they rarely do so,
making the state a useful laboratory for examining the consequences, as
well as the politics, of this standoff over the limits of Second Amendment
rights. </DIV>
<DIV>By analyzing a number of Washington databases, The New York Times
identified scores of gun-related crimes committed by people subject to
recently issued civil protection orders, including murder, attempted
murder and kidnapping. In at least five instances over the last decade,
women were shot to death less than a month after obtaining protection
orders. In at least a half-dozen other killings, the victim was not the
person being protected but someone else. There were dozens of gun-related
assaults like the one Ms. Holten endured. </DIV>
<DIV>The analysis — which crosschecked protective orders against arrest
and conviction data, along with fatality lists compiled by the <A
href="http://www.wscadv.org/" rel=nofollow target=_blank>Washington State
Coalition Against Domestic Violence</A> — represents at best a partial
accounting of such situations because of limitations in the data. The
databases were missing some orders that have expired or been terminated.
They also did not flag the use of firearms in specific crimes, so
identifying cases required combing through court records. </DIV>
<DIV>Washington’s criminal statutes, however, contain a number of
gun-specific charges, like unlawful possession of a firearm and aiming or
discharging one, offering another window into the problem. Last year, The
Times found, more than 50 people facing protection orders issued since
2011 were arrested on one of these gun charges. </DIV>
<DIV>In some instances, of course, laws mandating the surrender of
firearms might have done nothing to prevent an attack. Sometimes the gun
used was not the one cited in the petition. In other cases, no mention of
guns was ever made. But in many cases, upon close scrutiny, stricter laws
governing protective orders and firearms might very well have made a
difference. </DIV>
<DIV>The Times also looked at several other states without surrender laws.
In Minnesota, more than 30 people facing active protection orders were
convicted of some type of assault with a dangerous weapon over the last
three years, court records show. </DIV>
<DIV>And in Oklahoma, The Times found the case of Barbara Diane Dye.
</DIV>
<DIV>Ms. Dye, 40, obtained an emergency order of protection in July 2010,
on the same day she filed for divorce from her husband, Raymond Dye, a
firefighter. Ms. Dye, who worked as a personal trainer at a gym the couple
owned, explained in her petition that since telling her husband she wanted
a divorce because of his infidelity, he had repeatedly threatened to kill
her. She wrote that she feared he would “have a violent reaction when he
receives divorce papers.” </DIV>
<DIV>When asked if there were weapons on the premises, she wrote, “Yes.”
In fact, Mr. Dye possessed an arsenal of weapons, which Ms. Dye and her
family would later beg the local police to help them deal with, to no
avail. </DIV>
<DIV>After obtaining the court order, which was good until a hearing about
a lengthier order three weeks later, Ms. Dye went into hiding in Texas but
returned to Oklahoma to attend divorce proceedings. Two weeks after
obtaining the initial order, she was in a bank parking lot in the city of
Elgin when <A
href="http://newsok.com/murder-suicide-leaves-elgin-residents-in-shock/article/3478169"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>her husband pulled up</A> in his truck,
blocking her in. </DIV>
<DIV>Witnesses later told the police that Mr. Dye, 42, tried to drag her
into his truck. When she fought back, Mr. Dye brandished a .357 revolver
and shot her in the leg. She fell to the ground. Mr. Dye fired several
more shots into her, saying, “I love you, I love you,” according to the
police report. He then shot himself in the chest with a different gun, a
.45-caliber semiautomatic pistol, and collapsed, dead, onto his wife.
</DIV>
<DIV>“<A
href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/audio/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/DVGunsQuickLinks/burk_guns.mp3#media/burk1"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>We kept telling them, ‘He’s got all of these
weapons</A>,’ ” said Ms. Dye’s mother, Barbara Burk, a local official
who has fought unsuccessfully in Oklahoma for a measure that would give
judges issuing protective orders the power to order sheriffs to confiscate
weapons and hold them for a “cooling off” period. “Is there nothing you
can do?” </DIV>
<DIV><B>Legislative Landscape</B> </DIV>
<DIV>Intimate partner homicides account for nearly half the women killed
every year, according to federal statistics. More than half of these women
are killed with a firearm. And a significant percentage were likely to
have obtained protection orders against their eventual killers. (A <A
href="http://cjr.sagepub.com/content/26/2/193.short" rel=nofollow
target=_blank>2001 study</A>, published in Criminal Justice Review, of
women slain by intimate partners in 10 cities put that number at one in
five.) </DIV>
<DIV>It was in recognition of these converging realities that Congress
included a provision in the <A
href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/billfs.txt" rel=nofollow
target=_blank>1994 crime bill</A>, over the objections of the N.R.A., that
barred most people subject to full protective orders filed by intimate
partners from purchasing or possessing firearms. In a nod to the concerns
of the gun lobby, the statute excluded most people under temporary orders,
on the ground that they had not yet had the opportunity to contest the
accusations in court. </DIV>
<DIV>The statute, though, is rarely enforced. In 2012, prosecutors
nationwide filed fewer than 50 such cases, according to a Times analysis
of records from the <A href="http://trac.syr.edu/" rel=nofollow
target=_blank>Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse</A>, a research
center at Syracuse University that collects federal government data.
</DIV>
<DIV>It has, therefore, largely fallen to a state-by-state patchwork of
laws to regulate this issue — or not. </DIV>
<DIV>A handful of states have enacted laws requiring that judges order the
surrender of firearms when issuing even temporary protection orders. The
strictest states, like California, Hawaii and Massachusetts, make it
mandatory for essentially all domestic violence orders; others, like New
York and North Carolina, set out certain circumstances when surrender is
required. In a few other states, like Maryland and Wisconsin, surrender is
mandatory only with a full injunction, granted after the opposing party
has had the opportunity to participate in a court hearing. Several other
states, like Connecticut and Florida, do not have surrender laws but do
prohibit gun possession by certain people subject to protective orders.
</DIV>
<DIV>Although enforcement remains an issue, researchers say these laws
have made a difference. <A title=Abstract.
href="http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/16/2/90.abstract"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>One study</A>, published in 2010 in the journal
Injury Prevention, found a 19 percent reduction in intimate partner
homicides. </DIV>
<DIV>Washington State has seen several efforts to enact firearm surrender
laws. In 2004, Representative Ruth Kagi, a Democrat, introduced a bill
mandating the surrender of firearms with temporary protective orders. But
after strong opposition from the N.R.A., the bill failed to make it out of
committee. The N.R.A.’s lobbyist in the state, Brian Judy, testified that
the measure granted “extraordinarily broad authority to strip firearms
rights.” </DIV>
<DIV>Gun-rights groups stress that the subjects of temporary orders have
not even had the chance to be heard in court, and that many temporary
orders do not become full injunctions. Advocates for domestic violence
victims counter that the most dangerous moment is when such orders are
first issued, and that the surrender of weapons at this stage may be only
temporary. </DIV>
<DIV>Nevertheless, in 2010, they decided to lower their ambitions and
backed a proposal in the Washington Legislature requiring surrender only
after a full protective order was issued, restraining threatening conduct
against family members or children of family members. The measure also
would have made it a felony to possess a firearm while subject to such an
order. </DIV>
<DIV>Once again, the N.R.A. and its allies strenuously objected. The group
sent out a legislative alert to its members, who besieged legislators. A
veteran gun-rights lobbyist flew in from Florida to meet with
Representative Roger Goodman, a Democrat who had introduced the measure.
</DIV>
<DIV>Mr. Judy, the state N.R.A. lobbyist, wrote in an e-mail to Mr.
Goodman that his organization considered the current Washington law
“already bad on this subject.” He added, “It is the N.R.A.’s position that
any crime that is serious enough to cause an individual to lose a
fundamental constitutional right should be classified as a felony.” </DIV>
<DIV>Ultimately, lawmakers stripped the gun measure out of a broader
package of domestic violence legislation. </DIV>
<DIV><B>Lessons of History</B> </DIV>
<DIV>This year, the issue is pending once again in the Washington
Legislature, part of a number of gun-related proposals introduced after
the Newtown shooting. The proposed <A
title="House Bill 1840 in Washington State Legislature."
href="http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=1840&year=2013"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>legislation</A>, further narrowed in an attempt
to placate the N.R.A., seeks to mirror the language of the federal
prohibition, which bars most people under full protective orders from
buying or owning weapons. But in an e-mail to House Judiciary Committee
members considering the measure, Mr. Judy wrote that the federal law “does
not provide adequate protection” and argued that individual firearm rights
were more broadly protected in Washington’s State Constitution than in the
Second Amendment. </DIV>
<DIV>The bill seemed on the verge of being scuttled as the N.R.A. pushed
to amend it in a way that supporters argued would render it meaningless,
but House Democrats managed to close ranks and pass it. It faces a much
steeper climb in the Republican-controlled State Senate, where the N.R.A.
wields greater influence. </DIV>
<DIV>The issue has also gained traction in Colorado — a traditional power
base for the gun lobby but also the state where 12 people were shot to
death and 58 were wounded at a movie theater in July. A <A
title="Senate Bill 197 in Colorado General Assembly."
href="http://www.leg.state.co.us/clics/clics2013a/csl.nsf/fsbillcont3/24B586DC34FB057F87257B08007A98F7?open&file=197_ren.pdf"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>measure</A> that would require the surrender of
firearms in protection-order cases is part of a gun-control package passed
by the State Senate last week, though not a single Republican voted for
it. </DIV>
<DIV>And in Congress, Representative Lois Capps, Democrat of California,
introduced a <A title="Domestic Violence Survivor Protection Act."
href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d113:hr1177:" rel=nofollow
target=_blank>bill</A> last week that would expand the federal prohibition
to include temporary orders and current or former “dating partners.”
</DIV>
<DIV>Even so, across the country, any suggestion of a broad shift must be
tempered by history. </DIV>
<DIV>In the mid-1990s, Wisconsin became one of the first states to require
the surrender of firearms with full protective orders. But in 2010,
seeking to strengthen enforcement, advocates for domestic violence victims
pushed for the statewide adoption of procedures that had been successful
in a few counties. Among a host of provisions, people subject to
protective orders would have been required to list their firearms and
surrender them to the county sheriff or a third party within 48 hours.
</DIV>
<DIV>The N.R.A. mobilized, calling the measure “a blatant violation of
Americans’ Fifth Amendment rights” in an alert to its members. Jordan
Austin, an N.R.A. lobbyist, expanded in his testimony on the bill before
an Assembly committee: “Once a person has an injunction issued against
him, he is already a prohibited person. He cannot, under the Fifth
Amendment, be forced to disclose whether he is in possession of firearms,
because that would be tantamount to forcing him to admit a crime.” </DIV>
<DIV>The bill died in the State Senate. </DIV>
<DIV>In Virginia, the gun lobby has repeatedly stymied efforts to make it
illegal for people subject to court injunctions to possess firearms.
(Currently, they are barred only from buying and transporting firearms.)
</DIV>
<DIV>“There’s often recognition that firearms and domestic violence is a
lethal combination, but it’s followed quickly with concerns about taking
away an individual’s right to possess a firearm,” said Kristine Hall, the
policy director for the <A href="http://www.vsdvalliance.org/index.html"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action
Alliance</A>. </DIV>
<DIV>The lack of a state surrender law helps explain what happened when
Deborah Wigg, a 39-year-old accountant in Virginia Beach, obtained a
protective order in April 2011 against her husband, Robert Wigg, whom she
was in the process of divorcing. In her petition, she described a violent
encounter in which Mr. Wigg grabbed her by her hair, threw her down,
ripped out a door and threw it at her. He was arrested and charged with
assault. She also made clear in the petition that her husband owned a
9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun. </DIV>
<DIV>She eventually won a full protective order, but Mr. Wigg kept his
gun, which he used in his business installing and servicing A.T.M.’s.
</DIV>
<DIV>Ms. Wigg and her co-workers at an accounting firm openly fretted
about the weapon. She agreed that every morning she would call Marty
Ridout, a partner at the firm, so he could make sure she was safe. </DIV>
<DIV>On the morning of Nov. 8, 2011, Ms. Wigg left Mr. Ridout a voice mail
message saying everything was fine. </DIV>
<DIV>Around 11 p.m. that night, however, Mr. Wigg, 43, <A
href="http://hamptonroads.com/2011/11/man-kills-wife-self-suffolk-neighborhood"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>showed up</A> at his wife’s home and began
ringing the doorbell and pounding on the door. Ms. Wigg called her
parents. Her mother, Adele Brown, told her to hang up and call 911. </DIV>
<DIV>But as Ms. Brown and her husband, who lived about a half-mile away,
were heading over, Mr. Wigg smashed through the door and into the house.
The Browns arrived to find a neighbor bent over their daughter’s bleeding
form, screaming, “Debbie, don’t leave me!” </DIV>
<DIV>“When we got to her, those beautiful blue eyes were already set,” Ms.
Brown said. </DIV>
<DIV>Ms. Wigg died of a single shot to the head. </DIV>
<DIV>After shooting his wife, Mr. Wigg drove to the Browns’, apparently to
kill them as well. He killed himself in their front yard. </DIV>
<DIV>“It astounds me,” Mr. Ridout said. “I cannot believe we have a
society where a person has physically abused another person and been
charged with assaulting her and that they don’t automatically take away
his weapon.” </DIV>
<DIV><B>A System That’s Working</B> </DIV>
<DIV>One state with strict laws in this arena is California, where anyone
served with a temporary protective order has 24 hours to turn over any
weapons to local law enforcement or sell them to a licensed gun dealer.
</DIV>
<DIV>Enforcement, however, has been inconsistent. So in 2006, the state
set up pilot programs to increase enforcement in San Mateo County, just
outside San Francisco, and Butte County, a largely rural area north of
Sacramento. The programs’ money dried up in 2010 with the state’s fiscal
woes, but San Mateo sought other financing because it believed that its
program was saving lives. </DIV>
<DIV>“We have not had a firearm-related domestic violence homicide in the
last three years,” said Sgt. Linda Gibbons, who oversees the program as
the head of the major crimes unit in the county sheriff’s office. </DIV>
<DIV>Last year alone, the program took in 324 firearms through seizure or
surrender from 81 people, out of more than 800 protective orders it
reviewed. </DIV>
<DIV>Every morning, Detective John Kovach, who handles a range of domestic
violence investigations, reviews a stack of protective orders filed the
day before — generally 15 to 20 a day — looking for any mention of
firearms. </DIV>
<DIV>Usually, a handful of orders a day will contain some reference to
guns, which Detective Kovach follows up on. He sometimes contacts the
person protected by the order to find out more. He also checks various law
enforcement databases, including one available in California that tracks
handgun purchases. </DIV>
<DIV>He goes out once or twice a week and serves the restraining orders
himself. Usually, he says, he tries to collect firearms immediately,
employing a well-honed sales pitch about helping the person comply with
the law. If he believes beforehand that the person might not be
cooperative, he will sometimes request a search warrant. </DIV>
<DIV>“My experience is the quicker you act, the more successful you’re
going to be,” he said. </DIV>
<DIV>Notably, given the gun lobby’s objections to seizing guns after just
a temporary order, Detective Kovach said he had handled only one or two
restraining orders involving firearms in the last year that were
eventually dropped after the court hearing. </DIV>
<DIV>In a typical case, a 19-year-old woman from Redwood City filed for a
restraining order against her husband in December, explaining that he had
become increasingly abusive and that she had recently moved out. She
checked off a box on the form saying he had used firearms to threaten her
and, on a confidential “weapons possession data sheet” provided as a part
of the San Mateo program, indicated that he owned an assault rifle and a
handgun. </DIV>
<DIV>The detective picked up her order the following morning and, with a
colleague, arranged to meet that day. She told them that after an argument
a year earlier, her husband had threatened to kill himself, sending her in
a text message a picture of himself holding an assault rifle to his head.
More recently, he had warned that if she started dating, he would shoot
the man, her and then himself. </DIV>
<DIV>Detective Kovach quickly secured a search warrant. He and several
other detectives staked out the man’s home and served him with the
protective order while he was walking his dog. In their search, they
turned up seven guns, including two AR-15 assault rifles. </DIV>
<DIV>“Every murder, when you look at it, there are always points where law
enforcement could have made a difference,” the detective said. “I don’t
ever want to be that guy who goes to sleep knowing he hasn’t done
everything to protect the public.” </DIV>
<DIV><B>Deadly Consequences</B> </DIV>
<DIV>In Washington State, The Times’s analysis highlighted danger at play
when there is no broad mandatory firearm surrender law. </DIV>
<DIV>Under current law, judges issuing protective orders are required to
order the surrender of firearms only in very specific situations, like a
determination by “clear and convincing evidence” that the person has used
the weapon in a felony or has committed another offense that by law would
disqualify him from having a firearm. Otherwise, judges have the
discretion to issue a surrender order under a variety of circumstances,
including a finding that there is a threat of “irreparable injury.” (There
is also a court form specifically requesting the surrender of firearms,
but advocates say it is rarely used because few victims of domestic
violence know about it.) </DIV>
<DIV>All five of the Washington cases identified by The Times in which the
woman who obtained the protective order was later killed were
murder-suicides. In three cases, the woman wrote in her petition that her
husband or ex-boyfriend possessed firearms. In none of the cases did the
judges issue surrender orders. </DIV>
<DIV>In fairness, it was not always clear that such an order would have
prevented the deaths. Even so, those cases can show the existing system’s
weakness in the face of obvious peril. </DIV>
<DIV>Melissa Batten, a 36-year-old software developer for Xbox, secured a
temporary protective order in July 2008, describing a series of episodes
in which her estranged husband harassed her and also broke into her
workplace in Redmond. She said he also pointed a loaded gun at her in an
argument and then put it to his head, threatening to kill himself. </DIV>
<DIV>It fell to a mutual friend, however, not the courts or law
enforcement, to deal with the gun. He persuaded the husband, Robert
Batten, to sell his .22-caliber handgun back to the dealer, according to a
police report. But Mr. Batten later bought two more guns, a .357 Smith
& Wesson revolver and a 9-millimeter Taurus semiautomatic, according
to the police. It is not clear exactly when he bought them, but the police
found evidence that he went to a gun show a few days after being served
with the protective order. (In some states, the existence of the order
would have barred him from buying guns.) </DIV>
<DIV>Mr. Batten shot his wife eight times in the parking lot outside her
home before shooting himself, killing them both. </DIV>
<DIV>Ms. Batten’s case <A
href="http://kotaku.com/5032443/xbox-developer-dead-in-murder+suicide"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>made headlines</A>. Then there are the more
routine episodes that unfold outside the public eye. </DIV>
<DIV>Julie Lohrengel obtained a temporary order for protection against her
estranged husband, Shawn Lohrengel, in August 2010, detailing several
encounters, including one in which he had shaken her and grabbed her by
the throat. She checked off the box in the petition that indicated he
possessed firearms. </DIV>
<DIV>The court commissioner did not order Mr. Lohrengel to surrender his
guns. Several weeks later, Ms. Lohrengel and a friend, with Ms.
Lohrengel’s two children in the back seat, drove up to her home in
Centralia but stopped when they saw Mr. Lohrengel’s truck parked outside
the garage. As they started backing out of the driveway, between five and
eight gunshots rang out, but no one was wounded. When the police arrived,
Mr. Lohrengel ran out onto the front porch with a rifle, as if looking for
someone, the police report said. He eventually pleaded guilty to aiming
and discharging a firearm and reckless endangerment. </DIV>
<DIV>Sometimes, the person who takes out a protective order is not the one
ultimately victimized. </DIV>
<DIV>James Anthony Mills, 17, pleaded guilty last year to second-degree
murder for <A
href="http://seattletimes.com/html/theblotter/2015148297_16-year-old_charged_with_murde.html"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>firing two shots</A> that killed Adrian Wilson,
16, at a birthday barbecue in Auburn, Wash. Less than a year before, an
ex-girlfriend of Mr. Mills’s had obtained an order for protection against
him. She explained in her petition that Mr. Mills had threatened her with
a gun during an argument. Nothing was done about the weapon. </DIV>
<DIV>Even in cases where there was evidence that someone subject to a
civil order for protection possessed a gun in violation of state and
federal law, no move was made to remove it. </DIV>
<DIV>Dennis Pirone was arrested in Seattle in July 2009 and charged with
harassing his ex-girlfriend Jody Mayes. A criminal no-contact order was
issued, requiring him to surrender his firearms. He filled out a form
declaring that he had none. He was arrested again a few weeks later for
violating the no-contact order. Once again, after being ordered to
surrender firearms, he declared that he did not have any. </DIV>
<DIV>That December, Ms. Mayes sought a protective order, writing in her
petition that Mr. Pirone had bought a gun even though “he is a convicted
felon and is not supposed to have it in his own words.” </DIV>
<DIV>Two months later, Mr. Pirone flew into a rage at another woman, a
roommate, after she refused his sexual advances. He came back with a small
silver handgun, told the woman, “I will kill you,” and pointed the gun at
her before firing a shot into an old sofa, according to a Seattle police
report. The police later found two .22-caliber semiautomatic handguns in
the house. </DIV>
<DIV>More than a year after her ordeal in Spokane, Stephanie Holten still
cannot understand why the judge did nothing about her former husband’s
guns. </DIV>
<DIV>“<A
href="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/audio/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/DVGunsQuickLinks/holten_guns.mp3#media/holten3"
rel=nofollow target=_blank>I do believe in the Second Amendment</A>,” she
said, “but at the same time, public safety has to be paramount.” </DIV>
<DIV>Ms. Holten, 39, who is still seeing a counselor about the episode,
said her mind relentlessly replays the scene of her on her knees, looking
down the barrel of a loaded gun. In the recording of her 911 call, she can
be heard sobbing and begging Mr. Holten to leave. He can be heard
responding, between expletives, that she is going to die. </DIV>
<DIV>Mr. Holten — who later pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree
assault and was sentenced to more than six years in prison — ordered her
upstairs to her bedroom, forcing her to show him that she still had their
wedding photos and other mementos. He then offered her a deal: he would
put the gun down if she promised to drop the protection order, give him
custody of their son and not call the police. When she tearfully assented,
Mr. Holten placed his 9-millimeter carbine — the same weapon Ms. Holten
believes she saw at his home a month earlier and cited in her court
petition — in a hallway closet. That was when they both heard a male voice
say “Police Department.” </DIV>
<DIV>Her legs buckled, and she crumpled to the ground. </DIV>
<DIV>“I wish in my case he had to surrender everything,” she said. “If the
cops had been able to take the firearms out of that household when they
served him, I think it would have averted the entire thing.” </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>Griff Palmer contributed reporting. Kristen Millares Young and Jack
Styczynski contributed research.</DIV><SPAN class=yiv3470709HOEnZb><FONT
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