{"id":32637,"date":"2018-01-24T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-24T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/home2\/senator-proposes-revoking-firearm-rights-in-cases-of-harassment\/"},"modified":"2018-01-24T15:31:58","modified_gmt":"2018-01-24T23:31:58","slug":"senator-proposes-revoking-firearm-rights-in-cases-of-harassment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/northwest\/senator-proposes-revoking-firearm-rights-in-cases-of-harassment\/","title":{"rendered":"Senator proposes revoking firearm rights in cases of harassment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><style type=\"text\/css\"><\/style>\n<\/p>\n<p>A proposed bill would add harassment to a list of domestic violence crimes for which someone can have their firearm rights revoked. <\/p>\n<p>SB 6298, sponsored by Senator Manka Dhingra, D-Redmond, adds harassment crimes in a domestic violence setting to existing law. The bill was heard on Tuesday. <\/p>\n<p>Under both existing law and the Dhingra&rsquo;s bill, a person must be convicted of a domestic violence felony or gross misdemeanor to have their firearm rights revoked. <\/p>\n<p>Harassment, which is a gross misdemeanor, not a felony, would be included under the bill. Harassment includes physical threats or threats that instill reasonable fear and are likely to be carried out. <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We can&rsquo;t ignore that these threats are promises to a victim,&rdquo; Chris Anderson, director of the Domestic Violence Unit for the Seattle City Attorney&rsquo;s Office, said.<\/p>\n<p>Protective order cases, he said, often show patterns of domestic abuse, threats, and harassment that can be more serious than individual incidents reported in 911 calls. <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The most statistically significant thing we can do is remove firearms from the situation,&rdquo; he said. <\/p>\n<p>Anderson also said that because felony level domestic violence cases are sometimes hard to prove, the court might settle for a plea-bargained misdemeanor. Including misdemeanors, the bill would more accurately represent a perpetrator&rsquo;s past history of violence. <\/p>\n<p>Washington state already has a law prohibiting those convicted of domestic violence from owning a gun. That includes felonies like assault, stalking, death threats, or violating a protection order. When someone is convicted of a crime, he or she must surrender any firearms to the court. In 2014, the legislature enacted a law that someone must surrender their firearms to the court when there is a protection order issued against them. He or she can, however, petition the court to restore those rights. <\/p>\n<p>Under Sheena&rsquo;s Law, passed in 2015, law enforcement must notify family members when a previously surrendered firearm is returned to that person. A 2016 law allows family members to petition courts to remove firearms from those who pose a risk to themselves or others. <\/p>\n<p>Implementation of these laws is challenging because, according to the Seattle City Attorney Annual Report, it requires a multi-systematic force made up of county police departments, court and prosecutor&rsquo;s offices, and state coalitions and associations advocating for gun safety and against domestic violence.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly one in three women experience some sort of domestic abuse, according to a the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. The same study said homicide is five times more likely when a gun is present during a domestic violence incident. <\/p>\n<p>Tamaso Johnson, public policy director for the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said the bill addresses key gaps in the criminal justice system because the courts currently don&rsquo;t look too much at the past history of a perpetrator in domestic violence cases. <\/p>\n<p>He said the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence found, in their Domestic Violence Fatality Review, patterns of harassment were closely coordinated with homicide rates. <\/p>\n<p>A study from Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund shows a correlation with mass shootings. The study found that in 54 percent of mass shootings in the U.S. the perpetrator also shot a family member or partner. <\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;If this legislature is committed to taking steps to end violence in communities and gun violence in general, this bill is a critical step in that direction,&rdquo; Johnson said. <\/p>\n<p><em>This report was produced by the Olympia bureau of the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The bill would expand an existing law that takes guns from perpetrators of domestic violence. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":571,"featured_media":32638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,24],"tags":[32],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-32637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-northwest","tag-state-legislature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32637"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/571"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32637"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=32637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}