Some states take abusers’ guns. Will the Supreme Court stop them?
As Janet Paulsen prepared to leave her husband, who had become increasingly volatile over their 15-year marriage, she slipped down to his gun safes one night while he slept to try to change the combination locks.
“There were 74 firearms in my house,” said Paulsen, who was stunned by how many guns she found, but could not figure out how to change the codes. “When I went to get my protection order, I brought pictures of all of those firearms with me.”
Georgia, where she lives, is not among the 21 states with gun surrender laws that can force people to relinquish their weapons while they are deemed a risk to themselves or others. So Paulsen’s husband, whom she accused of threatening and erratic behavior, was only ordered to stay away from her and their 13-year-old twin boys until a court hearing.
That changed a few days later when she said he tried to track them through a phone locator app, a violation of the protection order that prompted a misdemeanor charge, two hours in jail and a court order to confiscate his guns.
As Paulsen and the boys rode out the week at a motel where they had taken refuge while he moved out, deputies removed more than 70 firearms from their home, a modern Craftsman nestled in a lakeside community about 30 miles northwest of Atlanta.
Police, though, left a handgun in a pickup truck parked in the driveway, unsure if the order covered Scott Bland’s vehicle, she said.
Five days later, Bland ambushed Paulsen in the garage as she stopped home with groceries. He used the 9 mm semiautomatic pistol to shoot her six times, as she tried to flee, before killing himself.
“It took me five years to get up the courage to divorce him, because I knew I would pay a price. And you know what happened when I did? He shot me,” said Paulsen, 53, a former property manager and endurance athlete who was left partially paralyzed in the 2015 shooting.
Her medical care has since cost about $2.5 million, much of it borne by society at large through health insurance payments.
“Every step of the way it seemed like his rights were more important … than mine and my children’s,” she said, her normally stoic voice breaking.
![Janet Paulsen showing a photo of dozens of guns.](images/GADG303-2.webp)
Different states, different protections
If Paulsen endured those threats in Seattle today, not only would her husband’s cache of weapons be moved to police storage, a judge would hold a hearing within days to grill him about his access to other firearms. Does anyone else in your family have a weapon? Do you have access to guns at work? What happened to the gun listed in your federal firearms purchase history?
Scores of people seek protection in King County each week from domestic violence, stalking, school threats or other concerning behavior. When guns are present — as they are in about half of the cases in which domestic violence petitions are granted — the threat of injury or death is exponentially higher, and an interagency team can initiate a gun surrender under state law.
It’s a less adversarial, non-criminal program that’s become a model for other counties. But the effort, and similar ones across the country, could be in jeopardy as the U.S. Supreme Court considers next month whether people can be forced to relinquish their weapons before a conviction.
A federal appeals court, in a Texas case, deemed the practice unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has agreed to review the issue on Nov. 7 — but no one knows if it’s to overturn the Fifth Circuit ruling or double down on it.
The Supreme Court seems to have a growing interest in gun rights cases. The conservative 6-3 majority voted last year to overturn New York’s longstanding restrictions on concealed weapons. That has led lower courts, sometimes begrudgingly, to overturn more than a dozen state and local gun safety measures. Domestic violence advocates worry that so-called “red flag” laws, which keep guns away from people in crisis, may be next.
Meanwhile, some state courts are loosening firearm bans for other reasons. Gun surrender orders are on hold in at least five counties in Washington after a state appeals court said they violated a man's Fourth Amendment right protecting individuals from improper search and seizures and Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.
That worries advocates who point to new data that show gun seizures can reduce the nation’s 2,500 or more annual domestic violence deaths — more than half of which involve guns — by 10% or more. The most dangerous time for victims is when they try to leave a relationship, long before their abuser would be convicted of anything.
“It’s very troubling,” said Karla Carlisle, managing partner of the Northwest Justice Project, who represents domestic violence victims and has asked the Washington Supreme Court to uphold the state law. “I keep waiting for the worst to happen, which is for somebody to lose their life.”
![Janet Paulsen headshot.](images/GADG307.webp)
![A Georgia weapons carry license with 2 bullets.](images/GADG317.webp)
‘Do his gun rights supersede the rights of others?’
One of Carlisle’s clients has moved three hours across the state with her children to try to avoid that fate.
“Isabelle,” who asked that her real name not be published to protect her and her family, obtained a domestic violence protection order in a rural Washington county in May, but the judge refused to order her estranged husband to surrender his estimated 40 weapons. Her spouse was instead told not to “possess” them. But with no enforcement, Isabelle has no guarantees.
Carlisle is using the case — and its inherent contradiction — to try to challenge the Washington appeals court ruling.
“You have victims just pulling up stakes, because they don’t want to be in that situation,” said Jordan Ferguson, a retired Spokane police sergeant now with the Spokane Regional Domestic Violence Coalition.
In hours of interviews this summer, Isabelle described a 20-year cycle of toxic behavior that echoed classic patterns of abuse: “Lovebombing,” at first. Isolation, before long. “Baby-trapping,” after they had three kids in two years. Gaslighting, as she grew afraid. Stalking, when she tried to hold down a postal route.
“You really do fall in love with a lie, and hope becomes an addiction, that that person (you first met) is coming back,” she said. “But he made me like a servant.”
The fraught behavior intensified after her truck driver husband suffered a head injury on the job in 2016, she said. They had started collecting weapons around 2008, when the country’s economic downturn led them to lose their home and business and consider becoming licensed firearms dealers. That never happened, but they nonetheless amassed AK-47s, handguns, rifles and thousands of dollars worth of gun parts.