Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Attorneys.Media
“In today’s society, I think anybody can notice that there is a greater number of crimes being committed with a weapon, and it’s all over the news. You can just turn on a news, any channel, any day of the week, and you’re going to see that. And I’m not sure…well, I don’t want to get into the societal changes that caused that to occur. But talking about the legal defense issue, has that changed because of society’s greater use of a weapon in the commission of a crime?”
Kirk Tarman– Criminal Defense Attorney – San Bernardino County, CA
“Well, it’s, I don’t think the defenses have necessarily changed much, but I think there’s a couple levels to this answer. The first one is because of the media exposure of all of these mass shootings, that the weapons charges have become a little bit more polarizing. You’ve got a lot of district attorneys who are not familiar with guns at all, and they see if a person has a gun illegally, or even legally, and they immediately jumped to some conclusion that these are bad people. And you’ve got a lot of guys that are like gun enthusiasts, who are DA’s and they are…we don’t believe in prosecuting people for just having a gun. And unless they’re using it illegally.
But I will tell you, for example, in San Bernardino County, they’ve gone to this level where anybody, any gun charge, especially an ex-felon with a firearm, is like state prison. And we’ve had a number of individuals who are just basically transporting a gun illegally, and they’ve charged it as a felony.
Now you can’t get to having a pistol that’s loaded in your car to a felony, unless there’s a couple of additional factors. For example, if it’s not registered, or if it’s a ghost gun, etc. So the punishment, as it has become more extreme, just generally speaking, because of this media attention on the use of guns in these mass shootings, etc.
And everybody wants all the DA’s… want to be perceived as hard on criminals with firearms, etc. So, it’s obviously a political aspect to it. But there are some other new things that are occurring. For example, there’s a case out in New York called the Bruen case, where in…it was basically shown that an individual out in New York couldn’t even transport a firearm legally, if it was called legal from California’s perspective… a gun separated from its ammunition, in the back of your car, not accessible, etc. You couldn’t even do that unless you had a license. So, they got this Bruen case, we believe it’s going to have some long, range repercussions.
Basically, the only way you can transport a gun in California…loaded is if you have a CCW, a concealed weapon license. And those things were notoriously difficult to get. But now the Bruen case has basically said…you have to get rid of the aspect of the good cause for applying for a concealed weapon. Now you don’t have to say, oh, I carry cash around at night, or I’m a female, who, I have to take the bus and it’s and there’s, you know, it’s a scary neighborhood, etc, that’s gone. So, it makes getting a concealed weapon a little bit easier, but it’s obviously, still have to jump to all these hoops.
So, there’s some legal things occurring about weapons. And then there’s this social awareness thing that’s occurring about weapons, which is making defending them a little bit more difficult. But we got a little, we have some more action. We’ve got a little more defenses.”
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