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Old January 28, 2017, 10:20 PM   #1
turkeestalker
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Join Date: February 2, 2015
Location: Cottleville, Missouri
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Missouri House Bill 185

A bill has been proposed in Missouri that would impose fines and ultimately possible jail time on gun owners who do not report a firearm lost or stolen within three days of discovering it missing.

Here is a link to a pdf of the text of the bill introduced by Democratic Representative Bruce Franks of St. Louis.

https://legiscan.com/MO/text/HB185/2017

Nothing new, it's been tried before and failed, but it's a bit of a new spin and concern for me due to a call I got from my father earlier this week.

He and my mother are both now in their 80s, and live a bit on the remote side, in a house on a hill with nothing but field and woods surrounding them. Their closest neighbor is near a half mile by road.

In a conversation several years ago he mentioned that he was keeping a Ruger Mark II, (a gift from my siblings and myself long ago), in his nightstand for home protection.
On hearing that, I purchased a 9mm at the next gun show for him to use in it's stead. I presented it to him with a couple of boxes of practice and one box of defensive ammo.
It was a good time to share together, getting him familiar with and learning to shoot it.

Fast forward to January of 2012, he phoned me to tell me that the pistol was missing from his nightstand, and that the local police filling out the report needed the serial number which he'd not recorded himself.
I shared a brief conversation with the officer and provided the information to him, pretty much end of story... gun gone.
I had a handgun identical to the one stolen which I gave him in it's stead.

He called me Monday afternoon of this past week to tell me that the Highway Patrol had called and told him that they had recovered the pistol, and he would be free to come to his local office and pick it up on Thursday.
Wow, who would've expected that! Cool!
But when he picked it up on Thursday they revealed to him that they had taken it off a fella back out near where I live during a routine traffic stop, in August of 2010!!!

Though I find it almost incredulous, it had obviously been stolen long before he ever noticed it missing.

The way I'm reading the text of this proposed bill, it looks like such a situation could prove to be a real problem for my father, the 80 something year old Baptist Minister... or anyone else.

The struggle will never end.
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Old January 29, 2017, 12:08 AM   #2
Aguila Blanca
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My state has such a law. I don't remember the actual language, but I think it's one of those "knew or should have known" things, so if he kept it stored in a particular drawer that he never opens, and there was no other indication that the house had been burglarized, maybe he'd be able to avoid a conviction on the basis that he had no reason to think it might have been stolen.

Maybe ...
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Old January 30, 2017, 11:46 AM   #3
Technosavant
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Join Date: May 29, 2007
Location: St. Louis, MO area
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I don't see the law going anywhere. The author of the bill had his own gun stolen when his car was carjacked a short while back. Gun control bills are pretty much DOA in Missouri right now.

Even if it did pass it doesn't look like it would do all that much. It's not even a "should have known" bill. It's a "when you do discover it, report it within 72 hours" thing with a penalty of $100 the first time around.

I'm not even sure what it's supposed to accomplish. In theory a person with a stolen gun could be busted for having it if it is reported, but I'm not sure how often people are deliberately NOT reporting such thefts. I'd think most would- you don't want a gun you owned showing up at a crime scene without some kind of paper trail showing its loss.
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