Violent Criminal Activity Among Handgun Purchasers With Prior Misdemeanor Convictions

To the Editor: As a representative of a law enforcement organization, I disagree with the proposal made by Dr Wintemute and colleagues¹ that convicted misdemeanants should lose their gun rights as is now the case for felons.

Since Wintemute et al considered primarily the fact of misdemeanor conviction and not the underlying crimes, the research may indicate only that prosecutors should be less willing to accept misdemeanor pleas from serious felons, not that true misdemeanants should be disarmed.

The policy would further undermine the bond between law enforcement and the citizens law enforcement officers protect, which has been moving toward an "us vs them" mentality, replacing the view that civilians and police are all just members of the same community with different jobs to do.² If people committing relatively minor offenses fear that arrest could lead to a serious loss of rights, even without counsel, our jobs will be made more difficult and more dangerous—gun rights are serious to those who enjoy the companionship of hunting and the security felt by having a gun at home.

More than one third of officers feloniously killed in the line of duty are killed in the course of attempting arrests.³ Most of those deadly arrests—unlike arrests in general⁴ —are for felonies. More officers' lives could be at risk if misdemeanants take more extreme efforts to avoid such arrests. And should those misdemeanants continue to believe they need guns for protection—living in areas where it would normally be deemed safer to be "tried by twelve than carried by six"—they would be facing felony prosecution if found with a gun, even though that might otherwise simply be a misdemeanor and spur little resistance.

The proposed policy would give police greater enforcement discretion, which could be perceived as being exercised in a racist or otherwise discriminatory way. In other instances in which legislatures have made the punishment for certain offenses irrationally severe, officers respond by avoiding making arrests where they believe the penalty would be unjust.⁵ The authors' recommendation would mean that officers would have to take into account the potential loss of rights in deciding whether to arrest someone for a misdemeanor and whether to arrest a previously convicted misdemeanant found in possession of a gun. Lawmakers should avoid enacting laws that invite charges of discrimination or selective enforcement and that further separate police and the most victimized of ethnic groups into artificial distinctions of us vs them.