AZ: Guns can be Confiscated Without Due Process

Attorney Marc Victor in a tie;  Rick Bailey in the gray shirt


The good news is that Rick Bailey has had his expensive gun collection returned.  The bad news is that he had to fight for it in court in the first place, in spite of never being convicted of any offense.   From the canadafreepress.com:

BELLEVUE, WA – A retired Navy veteran in Arizona whose gun collection had been seized by Glendale police now has his firearms back, the Second Amendment Foundation revealed today.

SAF had intervened in the case of Glendale resident Rick Bailey early last month, taking on funding of the case and working with Chandler, Ariz., attorney Marc J. Victor. Bailey’s case had fired up Second Amendment activists across the country after police confiscated 28 firearms valued at more than $25,000, which Bailey had collected over more than a decade.

I have not found the offending statute.  No doubt it is in the law that authorizes judges to grant protective orders in private disputes.  Marc Victor, Mr. Bailey's attorney says this.    From attorneyforfreedom.net:

Mr. Bailey is the victim of an overly broad Arizona law allowing judges to immediately strip citizens of their fundamental constitutional rights to peacefully keep and bear arms based on unchallenged and uncorroborated assertions.

Here is an image of the part of the court order requiring Mr. Bailey to surrender his property.

This case made national news, and was  covered in theblaze.com.  But how many other cases are there, where the victims do not have the money or connections to fight, or whose circumstances render them less than the perfect example needed to gain national funds and sympathy?   I have a very close friend that this has happened to, and he was completely blindsided by it.  He is fighting it in court, but the process takes thousands of dollars.    Some judges have reputations for including the prohibition on owning arms rather promiscuously, some not, but the law gives judges far more power than they should have.

According to this website, all of the city judges were appointed by the City Council, except for Jean Baxter, who was appointed by Judge Elizabeth Finn in 2014.   Hearing Officer Baxter is apparently the "J Baxter" who signed the order against Rick Bailey.   It seems likely that this Jean Baxter is the same as the Presiding Judge Jean Baxter who retired in 2013. 

Another close friend had a protective order taken out against him because he complained about a neighbors likely illegal activities.  The judge did not include any prohibition against arms ownership in his case, the order was granted solely on the basis of the neighbor's statements; and there does not seem to be any substantive redress.   In his case the neighbor moved in two months, and the restrictions, though galling, did not take any of his property.  It is a "he said, she said" situation, where the scofflaws seem to have learned how to use the courts as a bludgeon to silence those who complain of their activities.

I suspect that AZCDL will be coming up with a legislative solution to this loophole in the criminal justice system; on the other hand, Bloomberg and his allies are pushing for laws to expand judges' power in this area.   They are pushing a sort of a "violate your neighbors constitutional rights on a whim", law.   The laws are being crafted to specifically give judges the ability to confiscate arms from people on the allegations of a single individual.   

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