Mike Ives Didn't Agree to Have is Guns Grabbed by Munford
by
James Scott Trimm
News on this story is breaking, In recent blogs I have written about.Associate Judge James Munford's Gun Grabbing court order. Munford is the Associate Judge of the 322nd Family Court. Each Family in Tarrant County has an elected District Court Judge, and an appointed Associate Judge. This blogger has obtained a court order which Associate Judge Munford signed in 2009 “grabbing” Tarrant County gun owner and father Michael Keith Ives guns:
“…the Father is not to have in his possession or control a
firearm and he is placed on notice that he is not to have in his possession any
firearm until such time as the injunction is resolved. The firearms may be delivered to a third
party for storage such as the paternal grandparent.”
Ives only crime was being both a father, and a gun owner. He was not accused of threatening anyone, or doing anything inappropriate with his guns, yet Gun Grabbing Munford was effectively stripping Ives of his second amendment rights!
As I had reported in the past, Munford's Gun Grabbing provision was later removed by 322nd District Court Judge Nancy Berger, but only after the NRA got involved and began backing Mr. Ives' in his fight to keep his guns.
The Munford camp has been desperately trying to rationalize Munford's gun grabbing order. The most recent tactic has been the classic "blame the victim" strategy. This latest tactic has been to try to paint a picture that blames Ives himself.
The new strategy has taken two forms:
1. An Erroneous claim that the July 9th 2009 Rule 11 Agreement represented by the July 9th Associate Judges Report amounts to an agreement by Mike Ives to be stripped of his second amendment rights.
2. That Mike Ives failed to challenge the August 14th gun grabbing order within ten days and thus acquiesced to having his guns grabbed.
Both arguments are aimed at transferring blame from James Munford, to the victim of his gun grabbing, Mike Ives. Lets examine each claim carefully.
Did Mike Ives Agree to have his Second Amendment Rights stripped in the Rule 11 Agreement?
To begin with, it is important to know what a Rule 11 agreement is. A Rule 11 agreement is an agreement that the parties enter into on their own, outside the courtroom. It is typically represented in the court record by an Associate Judges Report fill in the blank form. The form in this case has a box checked next to the words "Mutual Temporary Injunction as to Persons."
This July 9th document was the only injunction in effect at the time Munford issued his "gun grabbing" order on August 14th, 2009.
In the past the Munford Camp had erroneously claimed that the box checked next to the words "Mutual Temporary Injunction as to Persons" triggered Federal Law 18 USC 922(g). This has been shown to be untrue.
Both parties agreed to an injunction that was very vague. The injunction that they both agreed to on July 9th was nothing more than a box checked next to the words "Mutual Temporary Injunction as to Persons." This said nothing about guns.
It also did NOT include the language that would have been required to trigger the Federal Law being talked about. For an injunction to invoke USC 18 922 (g) it must be an injunction that "explicitly prohibits the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against such intimate partner or child that would reasonably be expected to cause bodily injury."
A box checked next to the words "Mutual Temporary Injunction as to Persons" does not come near meeting that standard which must be met "explicitly" a triggering injunction.
The Munford Camp is now arguing erroneously that since each party had asked, in the original Petition for Divorce (flied by Mrs. Ives attorney) and the Counter Petition for Divorce (filed by Mike Ives Attorney) had asked for an injunction against the other, that would have triggered this law, that the box checked next to the words "Mutual Temporary Injunction as to Persons" somehow transplants the terms which appear in the Petitions, into the Injunction itself.
In fact Faith Bussey has gone so far as to post a picture of page form the Counter Petition and falsely claim that it is a page of the July 9th injunction!:
The fact that both parties asked for this language in their petitions does not mean that after they entered into negotiations, that they agreed to these terms to be included in their Rule 11 Agreement. There is no evidence to indicate that, and a petition is not considered evidence in a court record. There is in fact evidence that their Rule 11 Agreement did not embrace such triggering language. The only thing the July 9th Associate Judges Report on the Rule 11 Agreement indicates is a "Mutual Temporary Injunction as to Persons" with no further language, nothing explicitly using the terms required to trigger 18 USC 922(g).
At the bottom of the AJ Report in the Rule 11 Agreement we read that Munford directed Mrs. Ives' attorney to prepare formal orders in conformity with the Report on the agreement:
(The form has "Judge Haddock" here because Munford had apparently run out of forms and borrowed one of hers. He made appropriate changes elsewhere, but forgot to change this line.)
Munford was then supposed to use the material submitted by Mrs. Ives' attorney as a basis to issue formal Temporary Orders. These are the Temporary Orders Munford issued after a hearing, on August 14th, 2009. These Temporary Orders Munford issued (which did contain outright gun grabbing language to which Mike Ives never agreed) did not contain the triggering language found in the petitions that would have triggered 18 USC 299 (g). If such triggering terms had been agreed to by Mike Ives in the Rule 11 Agreement, then they should have certainly appeared in the Temporary Orders issued on August 14th, 2009.
Even if we assume that the box checked next to the words "Mutual Temporary Injunction as to Persons" was intended by both parties to refer to the terms in the petitions (and there is no evidence of that) then this still would not have triggered 18 USC 922 (g) because 18 USC 922(g) requires the terms to appear "explicitly" in the injunction itself.
The only injunction that existed on August 14th 2009 when Munford issued his gun grabbing order, was a box checked next to the words "Mutual Temporary Injunction as to Persons", and nothing about the terms explicitly in that injunction meet the standard required to trigger 18 USC 922(G).
There is no evidence that Mike Ives agreed to an injunction that would have triggered the Federal Law, and certainly as the time that his guns were grabbed, no such qualifying injunction existed.
Did Mike Ives acquiesce to have his guns grabbed by failing to challenge the Gun Grabbing order within ten days?
The end of the Temporary Orders (containing the gun grabbing provision) read:
This order was originally issued on August 14th, 2009. It was received by Mr. Ives' attorney on August 17th, 2009 and on August 20th, 2009 Ives' attorney filed a motion asking for a new hearing and saying in part that "...under no circumstances should an injunction be entered that has the effect of depriving either party of their constitutional rights."
This was set for hearing before Judge Berger to be held on September 15th, 2009. Ives' attorney ultimately waved that hearing. The reason why is that an out of court settlement was reached on many of these issued on September 11th, 2009. Why did Mr. Ives not pursue the September 15th hearing? The answer is clear from a post he made on an Internet Forum on August 18th, 2009 (the day after Mr. Ives attorney received the orders with the gun grabbing provision. The post is as follows:
Munford's gun grabbing order had put Mike Ives in the impossible position, with his limited financial resources, to spend those limited resources fighting for his parental rights, or fighting for his Second Amendment Rights! This is a dilemma that no parent should be put in. As I have said repeatedly, Mike Ives only crime was being both a parent and a gun owner. He was being forced to choose between his parental rights and his constitutional rights, and like any good parent, he chose to fight for his parental rights. He was, at the time, being forced to simply accept being stripped of his Second Amendment rights.... that is until the NRA agreed to back his fight. As soon as Mike Ives was able to do so, he fought, with NRA backing very hard against the gun grabbing order that originated from James Munford.
Mike Ives attorney Jennifer Moore, with NRA funding, was able to fight Munford's order, and eventually, after the NRA got involved, Judge Berger removed all anti-gun provisions from the orders.
On 11/24/2010 Mike Ives filed a Motion for new trial claiming his second amendment rights were violated by the Divorce Decree:
Then on 12/15/10 Mike Ives' attorney Jennifer Moore filed a motion to Clarify again claiming his second amendment rights were being violated:
And then on 1/12/10 Mike Ives's attorney Jennifer Moore filed a motion to Reform the Decree, again claiming his rights were violated:
This is a process called "perfecting the order" that one follows before filing an appeal. However when Judge Berger realized that the NRA was backing Mike Ives suit, she issued a Clarified Final Decree of Divorce. On February 28th 2010 Judge Nancy Berger issued a Clarified Final Decree of Divorce which eliminated gun grabbing language entirely, saying only that both parties should behave responsibly and not drink alcohol while having firearms around the children:
The fact is that Munford issued a Court Order stripping Mike Ives, a man who had not even been accused of making threats, or of any wrong doing, of his Second Amendment rights. Munford's gun grabbing provision was later taken out entirely, after the NRA got involved. Second Amendment Hero Jennifer Moore was Ives Attorney, who got the NRA involved and saved Mike Ives' guns from Munford's Gun Grabbing Order!
Mike Ives' rights were violated the minute Munford issued an order stripping him of his Second Amendment rights despite the fact that he had not even been accused of making threats or of any wrong doing. The fact that he was not initially in a financial position to fight for his rights, does not change the fact that they were being violated. Munford's gun grabbing order put Mike Ives in a gut wrenching position of choosing between fighting for his children and fighting for his guns! Thank God for the NRA backing Mike Ives fight!
This is so simple even a Caveman can understand it!
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