Philly

**togor** · 11-22-2020, 10:12

5-6 firearms/year average

**lyman** · 11-22-2020, 11:35

interesting AP article on the PFA firearms,

https://apnews.com/article/f4d6f3e181b64d0b93c6e6d77edeade7

Defendants in protection from abuse cases in Pennsylvania can no longer turn over their firearms to kin or friends for safekeeping. Act 79 amends Pennsylvania’s crimes and offenses and domestic relations statutes, in particular PFAs, and the corresponding relinquishing of firearms in domestic abuse situations. The law went into effect earlier this month. Gov. Tom Wolf signed it into law last fall, but it takes 180 days to apply officially. As a result, defendants now have 24 hours, instead of the former 60 days, to turn over their weapons to the sheriff’s office, a local municipal law enforcement agency, state police or a licensed firearms dealer. A court order must be issued, with a list provided by the defendant, of any firearms that need to be relinquished, according to the law. The choice of who will take custody and store their property is the defendant’s, Somerset County Sheriff Brad Cramer said. If the defendant chooses to have the weapons relinquished to a licensed dealer, sheriff deputies will transport the firearms to the dealer at no cost to the defendant or the dealer. The firearms can be relinquished to the defendant’s attorney, as long as the attorney is not family or a household member. They can be taken to a commercial armory, too. The choice on whether to accept the firearms is up to the licensed dealer, according to Calvin Hoover, of Hoover Outfitting & Supply in Rockwood. “I don’t think you’ll see many high-volume dealers agree to keep the firearms,” he said. “Most of us don’t have the room. (The firearms must be marked and kept separate.) Most of us don’t want the liability and the responsibility.” After a decade of advocacy for domestic violence homicide prevention, the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence called the new law “potentially life-saving.” The new law allows a plaintiff to extend a PFA against an incarcerated defendant who has been, or will be, released from custody within 90 days without having to show new instances of abuse. The county sheriff’s office is renovating an area in anticipation of having to store more firearms, Cramer said. Prior to the law change, all PFA defendants required to turn over weapons did so to a third-party, or to the sheriff or deputies. The third-party could have been a family member or friend. “There always was the possibility of a defendant in a PFA case having to turn over their firearms,” he said. So an area was designated for storage. In the last 10 years, more than 1,600 people have died from domestic violence-related incidents in Pennsylvania, according to Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence in the group’s 2018 Domestic Violence Fatality Report. The nonprofit group, along with other organizations, has been conducting these annual reports for more than 19 years. The information is compiled by the group based on news accounts, police departments and data gathered from the group’s 59 local domestic violence programs serving all 67 counties in the state. The report states that 122 victims of domestic abuse were killed in 2018 in Pennsylvania, with one in Somerset County. Firearms have topped the method of killing for a decade, according to the report. In 2018, of the 122 victims killed, 71 were shot, 30 stabbed, 10 beaten, five strangled, one suffocated and five were killed by methods not listed. In 2017, of the 117 victims who died in domestic violence incidents, 78 were shot, followed by 19 stabbed, 11 beaten, three strangled, two poisoned and four by methods not listed. One person was killed in Somerset County that year. The fatalities involved current or former intimate partners, family members, police officers, bystanders, interveners or others, such as former partners killed by new partners, or new partners killed by former partners. In 2018, 68% of victims were killed by either a current or former intimate partner, according to the report. Sixty-five percent of murder-suicides involved an intimate partner, with 94% involving a firearm, a national study conducted by the Violence Policy Center states. During the past decade in the state, 90% of intimate partner murder-suicides involved the offender using a firearm to commit suicide, according to the coalition’s 2018 fatality report. The 2018 death in Somerset County was a murder-suicide, according to state police. Under state law, the PFA defendant can petition the court to modify its order, providing for the return of the relinquished firearm, other weapons or ammunition. The plaintiff will be part of the proceedings regarding the petition. The defendant’s firearms are returned automatically when the PFA expires, or with the dismissal of the PFA order. The defendant is not required to pay any fees, costs or charges associated with the returns. As for a selected dealer, the defendant’s items can be given for consignment sale, lawful transfer or safekeeping. The dealer may charge the defendant a reasonable fee for accepting the firearms, and for storage of them, other weapons or ammunition. The dealer will not be allowed to return the firearms to that person while the prohibition from possessing a firearm is in place. The dealer cannot sell or transfer those weapons to a person the dealer knows is a member of the defendant’s household.

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