Many loopholes in domestic-violence gun law

By The Columbus Dispatch  • 

Mark Meeks kept three guns in his home. He used two of them in January, shooting his children as they lay in their beds and leaving his wife and himself sprawled dead on the master-bedroom floor, Whitehall police said.

The murder-suicide has Whitehall Councilwoman Jacquelyn Thompson asking why Meeks, 51, had guns and whether communities could do more to prevent domestic violence.

Meeks had been convicted of assaulting his ex-wife in 1993, which should have barred him from possessing a gun under federal law.

"Was there any way the system failed this family?" she asked fellow council members. "How do we get guns out of households with domestic violence?"

She raised the issue just after Councilman Wesley Kantor was arrested on charges of domestic violence and assault a week ago.

But her main goal - to get guns out of the homes of domestic-violence offenders - is riddled with challenges, lawyers and police say. For one thing, the only way to know if an offender has guns is if someone turns him in.

"You can put the laws out there, but unless we have a police state, you can't enforce everything," said Lara Baker, chief prosecutor for the Columbus city attorney's office. "We can say they're legally prohibited, but it's like underage drinking."

Federal law bars domestic-violence offenders as well as drug addicts, alcoholics and the mentally ill from owning guns. The U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed last month that this includes misdemeanors involving a physical attack on a spouse, ex-spouse or other member of the household even if it isn't explicitly called domestic violence under state law.

Meeks' ex-wife, Cindy Bailey, accused him of domestic violence in 1993, although he pleaded guilty in Franklin County Municipal Court to a lesser charge of negligent assault. The FBI, however, still would count that as violence against a former spouse.

Bailey's complaint accused Meeks of "pushing (her) down, kicking (her) about the upper body and slamming (her) forehead against a parking lot and porch."

Six years later, he married Jennifer Dallas-Meeks, who died in the murder-suicide.

Family, friends and even Bailey said after the killings that Meeks was a loving man. Even so, he should have been barred from possessing a gun after Congress approved the ban in 1994.

Even though the law was retroactive, Franklin County Municipal Court never asked the clerk's office to add old offenders to the prohibited-gun-buyers list, said Marilynn Stephens, a clerk's office spokeswoman.

FBI officials said that's not uncommon and it's another of the challenges.

About 30 percent to 40percent of gun transactions are private sales that don't require background checks, according to estimates by the Police Foundation in 1996.

Whitehall police have not yet said where Meeks got his guns.

The Athens County sheriff's office investigated whether it could monitor gun possession after a prohibited buyer killed himself. Marc Kidby, 30, not only had a gun; he had a concealed-carry permit.

Although there is no gun-owner list in Ohio, and police can't search a home for a gun without probable cause that a crime occurred, police could check the concealed-carry permit database when someone is convicted of domestic violence. But Dave Malawista, who was chief deputy then, said he was not aware of the law before Kidby died and that some court records were mislabeled.

The office decided that the best it could do was ensure that the court got records to the sheriff's office and the sheriff's office filed them for reference in FBI background checks, he said.

If a potential buyer has been flagged as an offender, it will turn up automatically in the FBI background check required by licensed dealers.

The FBI also looks through criminal records, said Monica Snider, a unit chief for the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check. If records show a violent crime, the FBI contacts the local court to figure out whether the victim was a member of the household or an ex-spouse.

The FBI has three days to complete the background check. So, how often does it take too long to hear back from the courts? How often are old records missing?

"All the time," Snider said.

Law-enforcement officials, meanwhile, have to make do and balance privacy rights, gun rights and the risk of violence.

"It's a challenging situation," said Phyllis Carlson-Riehm, executive director of the Action Ohio Coalition for Battered Women. "Our constitution guarantees the right to own guns, but studies indicate having a weapon increases the risk to battered victims."

She said the best thing cities can do is try to teach people about the laws and encourage them to keep an eye out for their friends and family.