Munford Gun Grabbing Supporters are Like a Broken Record

Munford Gun Grabbing Supporters are Like a Broken Record

By

James Scott Trimm

Tarrant County Judge Bill Harris still rationalizing Munford's Gun Grabbing. In a recent Facebook post Judge Bill Harris said:

The debate over Judge Jim Munford’s generous and  public interest warnings to litigants in family law cases has gone from ridiculous to the sublime. Temporary or final orders made or agreed to, approved by Texas judges that contain injunctions as to persons, after a hearing or opportunity to be heard, subject all parties subject to the injunction for liability under 18 U.S.C. 922(g) for possession of a firearm or ammunition.... The rendition or approval of an injunction as to persons is NOT a comment on the merits of a Federal statute.  No Texas judge can negate the application of 18 U.S.C. 922(g) or relieve any litigant of those provisions....  Fred Adams, a highly respected Dallas lawyer and life member of the N.R.A. has, for the last 16 years since the decision in United States v. Emerson... advocated the warning of litigants subject to injunctions as to persons about the restrictions imposed by Federal law.  Judge Munford does that, nothing more, nothing less. 

 

In response to Judge Harris I quote Luke Skywalker in the Last Jedi, "Almost everything you just said was wrong". 

Harris is now sounding like a broken record, he keeps repeating the same things over and over, even though they are arguments that have already been disproved in my most recent blog on this subject.  There is no point in my emulating Judge Harris by simply repeating myself here. 

Harris claims that the Munford was only giving a warning "nothing more, nothing less" yet this claim has already been proven to be completely erroneous in my recent blog Was Munford Gun Grabbing Justified by Federal Law? Munford's Gun Grabbing provision was a court order, not a mere warning, and it had far reaching negative effects that a warning would not have had.

 

Harris has almost become entertaining in his repetitions.  He repeats, like a parrot as if chirping away in a "Polly wants a cracker" intonation. "Injunction as to persons, chirp chirp... Federal Law 18 U.S.C. 922 (g) chirp chirp... US v. Emerson, chirp chirp."  Harris completely ignores that fact that at the time Munford issued his "gun grabbing" order, that no injunction containing the terms which 18 U.S.C 922(g) states must be included "explicitly" for an injunction to trigger that law, was in effect.  Therefore 18 U.S.C. 922(g) did not apply to this case, and therefore neither did U.S. v. Emerson which dealt only with 18 U.S.C. 922 (g).  These facts are all laid out in my recent blog Was Munford Gun Grabbing Justified by Federal Law? with such clarity that even a cave man could understand it!

 

Harris keeps repeating arguments that have already demonstrated by overwhelming evidence and documentation to be false.

 

I will add that Tarrant Family Matters commissioned a Washington DC law firm to effectively fact check the claims of my blogs on these matters.  Their complete report is as follows:

• It is basic law that state judges have the authority, indeed the duty, to follow the constitution, even if that means ruling that federal statutes are unconstitutional. There are many examples of state courts doing this successfully or unsuccessfully. See, e.g., Glen Ridge I Condominiums, Ltd. v. Fed. Sav. & Loan Ins. Corp., 734 S.W.2d 374 (Tex. App. 1986); Pierce Cty., Wash. v. Guillen, 537 U.S. 129 (2003). Here, there are potential constitutional arguments that section 922(g)(8) is invalid under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but they are beside the point.

• The larger issue is that Judge Munford didn't just fail to fight for the Second Amendment; he and other judges like him are actively working to undermine it, and the basic principles of the Texas Republican Party. The fundamental truth is that even if 18 U.S.C. section 922(g)(8) is constitutional, Munford should not have included in his order an injunction specifically barring Mr. Ives from possessing a gun and judges should not routinely enter orders barring divorcing parties from threatening each other unless there is an actual need to do so.

o First, section 922(g)(8) simply did not apply at the time Munford entered his order in August 2009, because there was no injunction in place at that time meeting the requirement in section 922(g)(8)(C)(ii). It appears that such an order had previously applied, having been entered in June 2009, but that order appears to have expired by operation of law 14 days later. Meanwhile, a generic "injunction as to persons" order was in effect when Judge Munford entered his order in August 2009, but that "injunction as to persons" did not contain the explicit language required to trigger section 922(g)(8). Thus, section 922 was not even relevant at the time Judge Munford entered his order.

oSecond, and perhaps more importantly, even if a qualifying order under section 922(g)(8)(C)(ii) was in place at the time of Munford's order, there is absolutely nothing in section 922 that would require Judge Munford to go further and add an injunction barring Ives from possessing a gun. In fact, in the Emerson case, the Family judge had not included such an order. Judge Munford's order was purely voluntarily and seriously undermines principles we hold dear.

 Judge Munford effectively eliminated Ives' ability to even challenge that section 922(g)(8) is invalid under the Second Amendment. Even if Ives could successfully argue that the Second Amendment made section 922(g)(8) invalid, Ives still could not possess a gun because, in addition to the so-call injunction "as to persons" Judge Munford voluntarily added a separate injunction specifically barring Ives from possessing a gun.

 Judge Munford took the matter from being governed solely by section 922(g)(8) – a federal law that the State of Texas could have chosen not to enforce – into one of state law that Texas courts would be required to enforce. That is, Texas does not have to enforce alleged section 922(g)(8) violations. But it does have to enforce violations of injunctions entered by Texas judges.

o Third, no judge is under any obligation to enter automatically an injunction that would trigger the potential application of section 922(g)(8). Yet, some Family judges insist on mindlessly entering these orders as a matter of course. For example, at various times, there was an injunction barring Ives – and his wife – from all manner of things listed in Texas Family Code section 6.502(a). But just because a Family judge "may render" such order does not mean that he or she has to or should do so in every single divorce. In the Emerson case, the Fifth Circuit explained that Congress presumed in section 922(g)(8) that state court judges would not enter qualifying injunctions unless "evidence credited by the court reflected a real threat or danger of injury to the protected party by the party enjoined." 270 F.3d 203, 262 (5th Cir. 2001). No such finding was ever made against Ives and his wife in their case. Yet, broad injunctions barring all sorts of conduct – including threatening each other – were included. There was no basis for the Family judges to do that. That mistake is made even more egregious by the fact that these unfounded injunctions might have the impact of triggering section 922(g)(8) and thus unjustifiably taking away a person's guns merely because he or she is getting divorced.

 

And can also be found in my recent blog Was Munford Gun Grabbing Justified by Federal Law?

It is time to stop rationalizing Munford's Gun Grabbing order. Munford issued an order that would have stripped a man who had not been accused of making threats, or of any wrong doing, of his second amendment rights.  That is just plain wrong, and no amount of rationalization can change that simple fact.