Alvina Vansickle just wanted a little .22 caliber handgun for self-defense. The 81-year old woman went to the local gun shop and picked out a Taurus revolver and went to pay for it. The store owner then called the state police for the background check.
Alvina was denied. The state police said she was too old for a gun. And she was a woman.
No, really:
An employee in the state police Firearms Transaction Approval Program noticed Vansickle’s age and gender, and brought the sale to an immediate halt.
Vansickle’s application was then routed to Sgt. Benjamin Nefosky, who heads the firearms approval unit.
According to MacLeish, the transaction was halted over concerns “based upon age and gender.”
“To be very honest with you, we have a legal obligation under the law to do approvals,” MacLeish said. “We also have an obligation to make sure we’re safe, and paying due diligence.”
MacLeish said the initial call taker “was concerned this individual never purchased a weapon before. Age and gender caused her to take caution.”
As to whether age and gender are included in the state statute as legitimate reasons to reject a firearms purchase, MacLeish stated, “No, they are not.”
The state police in Delaware were also found to be keeping an illegal record of gun purchases. The list covered years worth of purchases, while state law requires purchases to be purged from the list after 60 days.
Some gun owners fear any government agency that tracks gun purchases or keeps lists of who has them. They worry these lists could someday aid in weapons confiscation, fall into the wrong hands and serve as a road map for burglars and thieves, or result in increased scrutiny by law enforcement.
“I was totally drop-jawed,” [Dave Lawson, a retired state police lieutenant and firearms instructor] said. “I asked [Sgt. Benjamin Nefosky, who heads the firearms approval unit] how far back the records went. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He felt she was possibly a threat because of her age, a threat to herself or her family. That’s what the implication was. He was concerned that never having bought a gun before, why would she want one now, at 81?”
Lawson served in the State Bureau of Identification as a lieutenant, which includes the firearms approval section and other specialty units. He knew the law. Nefosky’s concern about Vansickle’s age and sex, he said, should never have come into play.
Lawson also knew the gun records should have been destroyed.
MacLeish would not allow Nefosky to be interviewed.
In an interview with The News Journal, MacLeish claimed all paper firearms records are destroyed every 60 days.
The electronic records, however, are another story. (Emphasis mine.)
The National Rifle Association is on the case now, because of the troubling aspects of this case. Why are gender and age considered in gun purchase approvals? Why are there illegal records being kept by the state police? And why are police wondering why people want to buy guns, rather than just basing the approval on their record?
This is why you should support the National Rifle Association. They are the nation’s oldest civil rights organization. This is, like it or not, a civil rights issue, in the same spirit as freedom of speech and freedom of religion:
John Thompson is president of the Delaware State Sportsmen’s Association, the local affiliate of the NRA.
Several people told him of Nefosky’s delay, and expressed their outrage about the list of gun owners maintained by the Delaware State Police.
Thompson, an attorney, had worked with state lawmakers in the early 1990s to craft the state’s background-check law.
Legally, he said, Vansickle’s reasons for wanting a firearm are moot, and he knew the lists were a problem.
“This suggests two violations: one is denial without cause, and the other is keeping records of gun purchases,” Thompson said. “Under statute, the Delaware State Police are required to destroy any purchase records that involve approvals. Now they’re maintaining lists of gun owners, which we think is inappropriate. We did not create this system to allow this to happen.”
Vansickle’s civil rights were violated, he said.
“There is nothing in the Second Amendment or the Delaware Constitution that says the right to own firearms is limited to people of a certain age,” Thompson said. “We don’t have any problem with age restrictions regarding children, but we don’t think someone ought to arbitrarily decide people are too old to own guns.”
First they came for the guns, and I said nothing because I didn’t own a gun…
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