http://m.providencejournal.com/article/20150616/NEWS/150619505
It continues for two more pages, but the gist of it them complaining that police are not instantly dispatched to someone's home the instant a RO is issued.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. *— A review of all domestic violence restraining orders issued in Rhode Island for the past two years found that judges rarely require suspects to turn in their firearms, even when the alleged victims say there are firearms present or that they've been threatened with a gun.
Of the 1,609 protective orders granted from 2012 to 2014, Rhode Island judges ordered the suspects to surrender firearms in just 5 percent of the cases. The results varied from court to court, with Kent County District Court and Washington County District Court judges ordering guns surrendered at far higher rates than judges in*the remaining six district and family courts.
The research comes from Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that has lobbied for gun-control bills now languishing at the General Assembly, including legislation that would require people convicted of domestic violence crimes and subject to restraining orders to surrender their firearms. Everytown released the research and its data to The Journal first.
While federal law prohibits people under domestic violence protective orders from buying or possessing guns, there's no provision for how the guns are surrendered, and in Rhode Island, the matter is left to a judge's discretion.*Everytown wanted to see how that discretion is applied, said its research director, Ted Alcorn.
What they found, Alcorn said, was a "wake-up call."*
Visiting each courthouse, the researchers collected the 1,609 final protective orders, totaling more than 22,000 pages.*They reviewed all of the handwritten complaints and the judges' final orders, looking for key points, Alcorn said. Did the person seeking the order mention the presence of guns, threats against themselves or their children, or ask the court to remove the guns? When the judge granted the restraining order, was the suspect also told to surrender any firearms?
"When you see the narratives, they tell a powerful story," Alcorn said.*
One was a Providence woman with young children, who wrote that her estranged husband broke into her home and said he was going back to his truck to get his guns. In another, a woman said the man threatened to "blow my head off" and made her lay on the floor of his apartment with a gun to her head and "said he could put a bullet in my head and leave me there." In both cases, the judges granted restraining orders but didn't require the men to surrender their firearms.
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It continues for two more pages, but the gist of it them complaining that police are not instantly dispatched to someone's home the instant a RO is issued.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. *— A review of all domestic violence restraining orders issued in Rhode Island for the past two years found that judges rarely require suspects to turn in their firearms, even when the alleged victims say there are firearms present or that they've been threatened with a gun.
Of the 1,609 protective orders granted from 2012 to 2014, Rhode Island judges ordered the suspects to surrender firearms in just 5 percent of the cases. The results varied from court to court, with Kent County District Court and Washington County District Court judges ordering guns surrendered at far higher rates than judges in*the remaining six district and family courts.
The research comes from Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that has lobbied for gun-control bills now languishing at the General Assembly, including legislation that would require people convicted of domestic violence crimes and subject to restraining orders to surrender their firearms. Everytown released the research and its data to The Journal first.
While federal law prohibits people under domestic violence protective orders from buying or possessing guns, there's no provision for how the guns are surrendered, and in Rhode Island, the matter is left to a judge's discretion.*Everytown wanted to see how that discretion is applied, said its research director, Ted Alcorn.
What they found, Alcorn said, was a "wake-up call."*
Visiting each courthouse, the researchers collected the 1,609 final protective orders, totaling more than 22,000 pages.*They reviewed all of the handwritten complaints and the judges' final orders, looking for key points, Alcorn said. Did the person seeking the order mention the presence of guns, threats against themselves or their children, or ask the court to remove the guns? When the judge granted the restraining order, was the suspect also told to surrender any firearms?
"When you see the narratives, they tell a powerful story," Alcorn said.*
One was a Providence woman with young children, who wrote that her estranged husband broke into her home and said he was going back to his truck to get his guns. In another, a woman said the man threatened to "blow my head off" and made her lay on the floor of his apartment with a gun to her head and "said he could put a bullet in my head and leave me there." In both cases, the judges granted restraining orders but didn't require the men to surrender their firearms.
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