Family Fights for Return of Rifles

A neighborhood boy was pestering Louis Anderson again, and the 90-year-old man was fed up.

So when his doorbell rang on a January afternoon, Anderson answered it holding his unloaded Winchester rifle.

Ventura police promptly seized that gun and another rifle in the house. Now the World War II veteran and his family are trying to reclaim the weapons.

But it won’t be easy.

State law prevents people from reclaiming firearms if they are deemed a danger to themselves or others.

After Anderson brandished the gun, he spent time at the county’s mental health facility and at Vista del Mar Hospital, where he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

Anderson’s family’s legal battle to get his hunting rifles back illustrates the conflicting concerns of law enforcement agencies and gun advocates.

“Everybody has a right to bear arms,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathleen O’Brien, who handles mental health cases. “Unless we take it away. There are certain people who should not have guns.”

In addition to keeping firearms from people who have mental health problems, laws place restrictions on ownership by felons and by those guilty of misdemeanors or convicted of domestic assaults.

But gun enthusiasts say the laws are another attack on the 2nd Amendment.

“The government just wants to take your guns,” said Monique Shana Hill, a Ventura criminal defense attorney and National Rifle Assn. member. “I can’t tell you how many firearms I’ve gotten returned for people who have a lawful right to have guns.”

Even if criminal charges are not filed, gun owners still have to get clearance from the Department of Justice before they can reclaim their weapons. That often is a bureaucratic struggle and a source of tremendous frustration among gun owners, Hill said.

Senior Deputy Renee Ferguson, who used to oversee the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department property room, said she fielded dozens of calls from gun owners. “When it comes to guns, they’re very passionate,” Ferguson said. “They see it as a violation when we take their guns.”

The department has 1,065 firearms, including shotguns, rifles, revolvers and semiautomatic pistols, stored in a vault in its property room. Some are being held as evidence in criminal cases; others will be destroyed or returned.

Twice a year, a crew from the Sheriff’s Department hauls guns to a salvage yard. There, on a recent trip, 122 guns were fed one by one into a rusty machine. Wearing goggles, sheriff’s employees watched as a salvage yard employee crushed the rifles and handguns and tossed the scraps into a trash bin.

“There is a sense of accomplishment,” said Senior Deputy Katie Baker. “These weapons won’t be used again. These weapons won’t be out on the street again.”

Despite the seizure laws and the weapons destruction, law enforcement does not always succeed in protecting the public or gun owners. In 1995, teacher Daniel Allen Tuffree shot and killed a Simi Valley police officer who was responding to a call about Tuffree’s well-being. Tuffree used a handgun that police had seized and returned years earlier.

Superior Court Judge David W. Long, who rules on weapons petitions, said his worst nightmare would be to return a gun and then learn that it was used in a violent crime.

“Guns kill people. That’s what they’re designed to do,” Long said. “So we weigh the evidence and make some very tough calls.”

If an owner requests a hearing, the prosecutor must prove to the judge that he is a danger to himself or others. O’Brien said she wins about 90% of the cases in which the owner was detained for apparent mental problems, often because the owner has not followed through with treatment.

Anderson’s attorney, John Orr, said the court will not return weapons to an elderly man with Alzheimer’s but hopes that Anderson’s adult daughter can claim them at a hearing at the end of the month.

“We have no intention of putting a gun in his hands,” Orr said. “The intention is to preserve it for the family. It’s a piece of the family lore.”

In court papers, Nancy Antilla wrote that her father’s rifles have special meaning for her. Anderson has owned the guns for nearly 40 years and used them to hunt deer and grouse when he was working in Alaska.

“The whole thing is crazy,” said Anderson, who now lives in an assisted-living home in New Mexico. “They’ll take guns away from me, but they won’t take the guns away from the gangsters.”

But O’Brien said in court documents that returning the weapon “would be likely to result in endangering” Anderson.

“Regardless of it being a family heirloom,” she said, “it still could kill somebody.”