How do I fight this?

Sorry - could not find an appropriate category - new to the forum.

The new York State police “stole” my pistol!

My brother was accused and acquitted of a domestic violence charge in New York State. After he had been taken away for questioning, two officers told my brother’s wife they needed to confiscate any pistols on the property. They made specific mention any rifles and shotguns were OK to keep. She handed them two modern pistols and a family heirloom owned by my grandfather (I am 58) since he was pretty young.

They told my brother *when he found out about them taking them) that he had broken the law because he did not have a permit to OWN a pistol. I was shocked when hearing this b/c, living in PA at the time, I had never heard of such an obviously unconstitutional “law.” I use quotation marks b.c the Constitution is the self proclaimed LAW of the Land and gives no authorities to states to limit our freedoms in this manner.

I had allowed my bother to borrow the .22 revolver (heirloom_ pistol (when in PA - so totally legal) and he was using i to teach my nephew gun safety.

I am in the process of going through proper channels to get my revolver back. The conficating officer first told me it was the DA’s responsibility my property back to me. After a lot of time giving them info etc.; them saying it was being shipped; they did not ship it and did not notify me it was not shipped; numerous phone calls back and finally talking to a person again; they all of a sudden said it was all a mistake and that they were not the proper avenue to go through - they could not help me, and instead I had to contact the officer who had confiscated it. I asked the DA why we had spent so much time on the phone getting all of my information (and shifting me to their Victims department) etc, and reminded them I had been told by that office that the issue was taken care of and they were shipping the pistol. The DA simply replied it all was just some sort of mix up on their part and I had to contact the officer who confiscated it.

I contacted the officer and I told her what had happened. She tried to tel me it WAS the DA’s responsibility. I engaged her in information about the pistol’s family history and asked her why she had not tried to return the pistol to its owner anyway. She assured me she was not aware it did not belong to my brother and if, at some point he had let hew know this, that she would have gotten it back to the owner. I led her around talking about the court case and she made the mistake of saying, “Well I was under the impression this pistol was not your bother’s, but your fathers, and he is dead right?” My immediate response was, “why would you say you think the pistol is my father’s considering my brother would have had to tell you that and yet you said he never told you it was not his property?”

After a small silence I was transferred to an official “Investigator.” I relayed all of this to him. He said he could send it to me through an dealer with an FFL. Of course I would have to pay postage and the FFL dealer’s handling fee. I told him nicely this was not acceptable b/c the definition of theft is someone taking my property without my consent. Add to that that there was no attempt to get the property back to the legal owner, by a legal organization, and the situation seems unjustifiable. He said I was absolutely correct, but the knew there was no way the department would pay the fees.

Since the DA had actually offered, and I did not ask, me to ship back all of the pistols they had gotten from my brother. I told the investigator if he did this, then at least I could sell the other ones and pay the fees, so go ahead and do what the DA had said they would do.

He said he needed to run background checks on the pistols so he knew whose property they actually were.

And this is where we stand.

All of this as background to say:
Is there actually any organization currently fighting getting rid of the ridiculously unconstitutional “law” in New York state which requires a person to pay for a permit to OWN a pistol?

If not - then why not? This is a cancer that will spread if people roll over and allow the “law” to be kept in the books.

Every organization I have tried to contact so far more or less has said they want money before we will say anything. I was under the impression that places like the NRA exist to find and fight these tyrranical laws. How did something like this get passed to begin with? and how do we as Americans get rid of it before it spreads?

Is a grass roots gofundme needed - and who would the issue be taken to?

I don;’ trust places that worship the almighty dollar in the pocket before patriotic matters will even be discussed.

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Sometimes laws like these get passed by voters who don’t understand what they are voting for.

The only way to change it is for someone with a lot of money to fight the law in court until a judge determines it unconstitutional.

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Gun Owners of America, the Firearms Policy Coalition, and the Second Amendment Foundation seem to be taking more legal initiative than the NRA. The FPC is actively looking for people to sue on behalf of, and they have a hotline set up. Maybe they can help.

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Just pay the shipping and transfer fee. Get your gun back. Otherwise go spend a ton of money on a lawyer to get the same results.

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You are between a rock and a hard place, I would pay the fees also and get my guns back. In the future keeps your guns with you and not allow them to be in a state like NY…Guns are like money, Loaning either usually ends up bad.

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This is a mistake. Do you want the gun or not? Pay the extortion fee! If you don’t you’ll never see the pistol again. And for crying out loud, don’t ever “loan” a firearm to a relative ever again. :neutral_face:

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Ditto this :arrow_double_up:

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Or anyone else, for that matter, unless you know for sure where and how it’s going to be used.
If it’s yours to begin with, then sooner or later you will be responsible for it.
Just a thought.

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Crazy story. I think I would be going crazy at this point

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You’re dealing with the “Empire State” where you can not even purchase ammo without the states permission, if you get any cooperation at all seize on it, do the FFL if that’s what it takes

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I appreciate this information. This may be what I am looking for.

For those suggesting so, I do plan on paying for the pistol I want returned.

As to those who said I should not have called this a theft, I have enough experience dealing with people that I can assure you this was done only after engaging the person on the other end of the phone in legitimate conversation, softening them up so they saw I was NOT some (as they would see it) red neck idiot trying to argue the law. We had a legitimate legal discussion that took quite some time where I approached them with honesty. I told them I was trying to be educated by them and what was happening. When you understand the psyhe of what thse people are used to dealing with, you know to what to expect from them. It takes very little time to discern a legitimate person trying to help, an ignorant puppet in the system, and a powermonger. The first officer was obviously (after I had spoken with her) a powermonger who needed to be softened up so I could lead her into contradicting herself and cutting through the red tape - which I did. This is how I got past that level of red tape.

And since I am new here, I ask those who made responses to the effect of “just pay up and forget about it,” that I am displeased to find this kind of “advice” on this forum.

It will cost me about 30.00 to get the gun back. What will it cost others, including my children and theirs if I do not find some way to get the funds to nail these traitors making these laws to the wall legally? Too many of our forefathers died - think of that and put yourself in their place - to make sure this kind of tyranny never was in the US. What kind of leech am I on our system of freedom - as it is plainly written - in the Constitution if I don’t consider the sacrifice they made worth preserving? Or, should I just go back to watching the next football game since our country has been so lulled into entertainment mode that we don’t care anymore?
Please don;t take anything personal as I did not aim anything at one specific person. I am just hoping to help people re-evaluate what our freedoms cost, and trying to foster an attitude which will keep preserving our freedoms instead of just rolling over and playing possm - which will result in this cancer spreading into each of our own states.
Not too many years ago the Supreme Court rules against something similar in DC and upheld people had the right to own a pistol and protect themselves. I do not know the specifics of the case b/c I am just starting.
The problem, and the traitors who make these laws no it, is that they can pass this traitorous garbage and enforce it b/c no on has the MONEY to fight it. This is why I have thought of a gofundme if needed b/c no organizations will do what they claim and take up the defense of our freedoms.
Please, again, take no offense at my words. But also please don;t be like these police officers I have talked with (after having legit conversation and setting he right mood of learning) and asked them how they enforce this law while nicely educating them (and they were receptive at this point to hear) what the wording of the Constitution says and means. Both were legitimately clueless and I hope to have planted a seed. They have just been following orders - as one of them told me - while we were disucssing the legitimacy/illegitimacy of what they were trained to do. The one officer said he was not even aware that in other states a permit was not required to own a pistol. I assured him he could look it up.

Thanks to everyone again. This is not over. After my property is returned I plan on finding any way I can to take action. I just hope there are enough people, if it should come to a need for raising money, that would back taking this traitorous law to court and getting rid of it so its cancer cannot spread.

Oh, and as to loaning a pistol to any family member - I grew up in a day where no one would have a notion to even think about this anymore than if I loaned a family member a hammer. The wording in the Law of the Land has not changed. I have not changed. My freedoms have not changed despite what some illegitimate bureaucrat thinks. I will do with my property what I see fit. My nephew needed to be instructed in pistol safety, and as an American I never could have looked him in the eye and said, “Sorry, you cannot use mine b/c someone defying the Constitution says I do not have control over my own property.” And it was only AFTER the fact that I even had a conception about finding out if PA (where I lived then) “allowed” this so I could deal with the situation where it had been taken in NY state. SImply put, and as my own grandfathers would say about a good many things in life, " its none of their business and never will be."

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Perhaps you’re just misunderstood,

My friends brother ( I never met) left his pistol at a relatives house in Clearwater, he lived in West Palm, the wife freaked out, had her husband take it to the police station, my friend asked me to go get it, I lived in Sarasota

I drove to the police station, they gave me the gun and the ammo (against policy) and I gave it to my friend

No one asked the wife or her husband or the police to obligate themselves, would have been nice for anyone of them to take responsibility but at the end of the day it was a whole lot less headache to do what we did than to argue someone else was responsible

Your case is worse as it’s NY, you’re lucky IMO you’ve received the cordial responses you describe

Doesn’t sound like theft, they could have told her what they wanted for lunch, was it her duty to provlde it?

We’re extremely diversified here, no cookie cutter personality type, the one thing that does seem to ring true is only the thick skinned really seem to stick around, the softies all seek comfort elswhere.

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@Robert
Yes - definitely a misunderstanding on my part in this case. Her husband took the pistol to the police.

In the case i am talking about, my sister-in-law handed the pieces over.
How I defined the action as theft to the police was that my property had been taken without my knowledge and the police never tried to get my property back to me once they learned who it belonged to.

The DA office understood what I was saying as does the investigator - both agreed the problem is that this conflict resulted from how state laws differ. In fact the main point the officer used in trying to get around sending me MY pistol (at the start) is she kept trying to turn the conversation back onto my brother’s two pistols and him not having a permit. She was not expecting me to disarm her argument by saying I totally agreed with her that my brother did not have a permit and thus was not in alignment with what NY state has on the law books. I then emphasized to her that MY property is all I was interested in, and asked her why she had not tried to get it back to me since they had taken my property. I said I just naturally expected an officer of the law to be concerned about making sure n owner’s property is returned if the police somehow end up with the property.
She told me she was not aware at the time it was not my property (which I knew was false from what my brother had said - that it was not his), and this is why she had not pursued getting it to me. She said at any time had my brother told anyone that it was not his, they would have found the legitimate owner (flag goes up in my mind).
I turned the conversation to the runaround the DA office had given me and nicely asked why they had spent so much time with me and then referred me back to her? After chatting a bit about what had happened with the DA, I brought it back around to now that the officer knew it was mine, I wanted her, as she had told my sister in law when she took it (them) that anyone with a permit could get them mailed to a dealer with an FFL.
This is where he slipped up! The law in NY state does not allow a father (even) to give his son a pistol. She tried to go down this street by then saying, Well I thought the gun was your father’s, and he is dead." That is when I told her she never would have know that if my brother had not told her, and so contrary to what she had said before, she knew it was my gun. My brother obvioulsy HAD told her the owner of the gun and why in the world would he ever say my Dad was dead when he is not?

Yes, it seemed like there was a bit of disgust on the other end of the line. She then checked to see if they still had mine (after telling me it had been destroyed several times but never verifying) and then I found myself taking with Investigator Smith - to whom I relayed everything including the lie.

I also found online a clip about how the pistols confiscated in NY have all been auctioned off instead of being destroyed. I don’t know if its true, but after this ordeal I tend to put a little more faith in the veracity of the article.

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This is a very convoluted story,

Again, this is NY, they have more time and money than you , did you not follow this recent case?

I moved from FL to NY, was offered a good job and a nice place to live, I didn’t know it was a communist state but I found out when I went to buy ammo and was asked if I had guns in the state, I gave it all up and moved my happy ass back to FL real quick,

you’re 58, how much time and energy can you spare for this fight?

On the low end is the time it takes to ship, price to ship, NICS and FFL fee’s

Seems you’ll even get two extra pistols out of the deal at that price,

Now, on the high end…

Lots of unhealthy stress, lots of time, lots of money, likely all from you as many of the gun rights groups are already overwhelmed

And…

NY does it again to someone else

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I was under the impression this was a deeply cherished family heirloom you were trying to get back, not something to martyr under NY’s asinine state laws. But meh, to each their own I suppose. Best of luck in your fight.

If I were a betting man I’d put money on you coming out of this with some sort of criminal charge yourself for knowingly giving a NY resident a handgun they weren’t allowed to possess.

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@spookYou ar3 correct. I am after the pistol my grandfather had and passed down through the generations.

I like to do my homework also and did it before I started all of this. NY state cannot charge me b/c, as I said, I loaned my brother my pistol when he was in PA.

So do people REALLY believe if this law is not challenged that similar laws will not be passed in other states?
This whole event woke me up to how far other people have already allowed their freedoms to be stolen. This situation is not about martyrdom - its about how much I can live with myself if I am not willing to do something in honor of our Constitution and those honored dead who gave their lives to defend our freedoms.
I used to teach history in a Christian school. We deliberately went over the Constitution bit by bit. I deliberately taught as much history as I could from taking writings of the forefathers and people of the time period.
When the kids were done, they knew what it meant, and were thankful they had had the privilege of being born in America. They knew whyso many people have alwasy wanted to immigrate here, and how America was/is unique. They understood the historic statement that our greatest export has been our Constitution.

Students for the past 30+ years have not been exposed to actual American history without invented negative overtones to make our system look evil for globalistic desires. How do we think the socialists (communists) could become so prevalent in modern American politics? The lack of instilling legitimate American pride into our youth for so long plus lethargy are why we have gun controls at all.

Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin

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I have had my cousins guns for over 30 years . First he was in college then in the navy and is now retired and living in Washington state and won’t take them back . I don’t know why but I don’t think he wants to deal with the laws there . One of them is a mint Colt trooper in .38 special.

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Was he a PA resident at the time you allowed him to ‘borrow’ the pistol? From your post I am guessing not unless he moved very shortly after.

If you allowed him to borrow it in your presence, that was legal. If he was a PA resident at the time it would be a legal ‘transfer’(direct family transfer doesn’t require an FFL/background check. Letting a non-relative ‘borrow’ a handgun outside of your presence does per PA law). In that situation the gun would ‘legally’ speaking be his until he ‘transfered’ it back to you, but only if he was a PA resident when both transfers occurred.

If he wasn’t a PA resident and you told him “Sure you can take it home to NY”, that is an interstate transfer per federal law and requires FFL’s being involved, family or not.

If he moved to NY after ‘borrowing’ the pistol he was required to obtain a permit BEFORE bringing it into the state(rifles and shotguns are OK). Simply put, since your brother doesn’t have a NYS pistol permit he was in possession of ILLEGAL pistols including one you ‘transfered’ to a possible out of state resident.

Bite the bullet and pay the transfer fees. That they are offering to send you two pistols that are not yours, which you can sell through an FFL on consignment, is a freaking MIRACLE.

Look, NY/NJ gun laws are ABSOLUTE BULL SH!T. No one on this forum, including myself, will likely say otherwise. What’s more important is he being charged for possession of those pistols? If so you/he got WAAAYYY bigger problems to deal with than trying to fight GCA '68 and if he was in fact a NY resident at the time you are lucky ATF-U isn’t getting involved.

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@Jtr
So sad. I never thought I would see the day when we faced this kind of government overstepping. If you could go back to the mindset of even the 60s and 70s when I was growing up, America is so very much more controlled now. Its sickening.

Want a wake up call anyone? I was watching I Love Lucy. In one of the episodes Ricky and Fred pretend take pistols with them to where their wives, Lucy and Ethel, are working alone at night. The husbands want to scare their wives by pretending to be robbers. The police come in on it, find out what is really going on, and understand nothing bas was happening. Ricky even has his gun in hand while talking to the officer. Nothing is said at all about the guns in fact if I remember right Ricky makes some comment to the affect they brought their guns to make it look real and scare their wives…

Now…I know this is Hollywood…its not reality…that is the point!
Back then even one of the top rated American shows on TV - produced in what is now a leftist hive - had no thought of the pistols in the hands of law abiding people being anything to even remark about. That is the America I grew up in as did everyone before my time. The change is not American at heart.

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New York had the same laws back then.

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