GUNS/BARMS

[ONEBGG]

California DOJ Forced to Return 500 Guns to Citizen

By Ben Marquis
on April 11, 2017

It is common knowledge that the state of California is a decidedly unfriendly jurisdiction for the Second Amendment-protected right to keep and bear arms, and will attempt to grab any guns away from the citizenry that they can get their infringing hands upon.

Unfortunately for the California Department of Justice, a major and highly publicized seizure of about 500 firearms and over 100,000 rounds of ammunition from a law-abiding collector in 2015 has resulted in the government being forced to return all of the seized property following a lawsuit, according to The Fresno Bee.

Albert Sheakalee of Clovis, California, found himself on the receiving end of a law enforcement raid that seized his collection of firearms after he was placed in the state’s Armed Prohibited Person’s database.

Formerly a federally licensed firearms dealer, Sheakalee lost his license in 2014, according to a November, 2015, report from KFSN in Fresno. He was placed on the list arms prohibition list because he was institutionalized with mental issues three times in 2015, KFSN reported.

However, Sheakalee’s attorney, Mark Coleman, argued in a lawsuit that Sheakalee had never been made aware that he was on the list and, furthermore, that he was directly lied to by the California DOJ at the time of the raid because agents had promised to keep the incident quiet until court hearings could settle the matter.

Instead, then-Attorney General Kamala Harris made a big deal in the media out of the seizure — including issuing a news release — and used it as a cornerstone of her ultimately successful run to replace the retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate.

In all, the agents under Harris’ command “seized 209 handguns, 88 shotguns, 234 rifles, 181 standard capacity magazines, 100,000 rounds of ammunition and 10 guns designated assault weapons under California law, including a .50 caliber bolt-action rifle.”

It should be noted that Sheakalee was never charged with any crime, nor did he have a prior criminal record. Yet even after he was released a free man, his collection was not returned to him until the lawsuit against the California DOJ proved successful.

Even more outrageous is the fact that the California DOJ claimed to have notified Sheakalee that he had been placed on the arms prohibition list in July 2015, but records showed that the letter notifying him of it wasn’t delivered until late November 2015, nearly two weeks after he had been arrested and had his collection seized.

As if that incompetence wasn’t enough to make a gun owner’s blood boil, the DOJ even tried to drag its eet after being ordered to return the guns and threatened to destroy them all if Sheakalee didn’t jump through certain hoops within a specified time frame to get them back.

Bearing Arms noted that Sheakalee had been taken into custody and his firearms seized under a controversial provision of an ordinance called the Welfare and Institutions Code 5150, a code which allows for law enforcement to involuntarily take into custody anyone they believe may be a harm to themselves or others.

Unfortunately, the vague code is ripe for abuse as virtually anyone — including feuding family members, disgruntled ex-spouses or nosy neighbors — can file a complaint against anyone for virtually any reason and have them harassed by law enforcement and their firearms seized without any crime having been committed or the individual adjudicated by a court as a potential threat.

In other words, no due process whatsoever.

This entire episode is little more than a despicable example of how aspiring anti-gun politicians like Kamala Harris can use a state’s gun control laws to harass and steal property from law-abiding gun owners on the thinnest of pretexts.

Hopefully, the end result of these shenanigans will result in the code that was used being done away with, or at least significantly modified to prevent such abuses in the future.

H/T Breitbart

Please share this on Facebook and Twitter to let everyone know about the California man who had 500 guns stolen from him by the government and then returned after he sued.

http://conservativetribune.com/california-doj-500-seized-guns/

Note: There are active links contained within the original article at the website posted above.