In the 2017 legislative session, the Georgia General Assembly passed House Bill 280 amending state law regarding the carrying of handguns on Georgia’s college campuses.  The bill was signed by Governor Deal, and it goes into effect on July 1, 2017.

The purpose of this post is to share information about the bill.  It is not to debate the merits of the bill, pro or con.

The first distinction that needs to be discussed is that this bill allows for Georgia Weapons Carry License (GWCL) holders to carry concealed handguns in certain places on campus.  It is important to stress the word “concealed” as otherwise, the GWCL allows for open and/or concealed carry, and yes, the GWCL is required for open carry.

The bill did not amend 16-11-127.1 O.C.G.A. as it pertains to other weapons.  So, if you are a GWCL holder, you will be able to carry a pistol on campus, but your pocket knife with a blade of more than two inches in length would still be illegal.  Remember, this is government; it doesn’t have to make sense.

Below is an excerpt of 16-11-127.1 containing the definition of weapons that are prohibited on campus (prior to the change allowing for concealed handguns):

 “Weapon” means and includes any pistol, revolver, or any weapon designed or intended to propel a missile of any kind, or any dirk, bowie knife, switchblade knife, ballistic knife, any other knife having a blade of two or more inches, straight-edge razor, razor blade, spring stick, knuckles, whether made from metal, thermoplastic, wood, or other similar material, blackjack, any bat, club, or other bludgeon-type weapon, or any flailing instrument consisting of two or more rigid parts connected in such a manner as to allow them to swing freely, which may be known as a nun chahka, nun chuck, nunchaku, shuriken, or fighting chain, or any disc, of whatever configuration, having at least two points or pointed blades which is designed to be thrown or propelled and which may be known as a throwing star or oriental dart, or any weapon of like kind, and any stun gun or taser as defined in subsection (a) of Code Section 16-11-106. This paragraph excludes any of these instruments used for classroom work authorized by the teacher.

Again, everything on that list, except concealed handguns, will still be illegal to carry on college campuses.

As for concealed, here is your definition:

‘Concealed’ means carried in such a fashion that does not actively solicit the  attention of others and is not prominently, openly, and intentionally displayed except for purposes of defense of self or others. Such term shall include, but not be limited to, carrying on one’s person while such handgun is substantially, but not necessarily completely, covered by an article of clothing which is worn by such person, carrying within a bag of a nondescript nature which is being carried about by such person, or carrying in any other fashion as to not be clearly discernible by the passive observation of others.

As for where you can carry:

Any weapons carry license holder when he or she is in any building or on real property owned by or leased to any public technical school, vocational school, college, or university, or other public institution of postsecondary education;

and where you can’t:

•  buildings or property used for athletic sporting events or student housing, including, but not limited to, fraternity and sorority houses;
• any preschool or childcare space located within such buildings or real property
• any room or space being used for classes related to a college and career academy or other specialized school as provided for under Code Section 20-4-37;
• any room or space being used for classes in which high school students are enrolled through a dual enrollment program, including, but not limited to, classes related to the ‘Move on When Ready Act’ as provided for under Code Section 20-2-161.3;
• faculty, staff, or administrative offices or rooms where disciplinary  proceedings are conducted;

NOTE: In 2016, the General Assembly passed HB 792 which made made carrying “electro shock weapons” on campus legal for those over 18, but as of the writing of this article, they have not been removed from the prohibited weapons under 16-11-127.1 per the published code sections.

As I wrote previously, the Miranda warning is a fiction created by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). Nowhere in the Constitution will you find anything even close to a requirement to advise criminal suspects of their rights.

Miranda is grossly misunderstood. Movies and television give the impression that Miranda must be read immediately upon arrest or the arrest is invalid. This is far from the case. Miranda is two pronged. The first prong is that a person must be in custody. The second prong is that a person must be being asked investigative questions. A person not in custody can be freely questioned without having been read the warning as long as the person consents to the questioning.

Let us examine the following scenario:

A peace officer on patrol spots a bandit snatching a purse from a lady. The peace officer chases down the bandit, captures him, and then hauls him to jail. The peace officer never asks the suspect any questions about the crime and the Miranda warning is never read.

Good arrest? Bad arrest? Will the case be tanked due to the lack of the warning?

The answer is good arrest with no Miranda issues.

Now, if the peace officer, after having captured the suspect, had chosen to ask the suspect questions about the crime, the warning would have been required. Failure to do read the warning would have resulted in any evidence obtained as a result of the questioning being thrown out of court. It is important to note that the initial arrest would still be a good arrest.

Since we have gotten all of the above out of the way, we can move on to the point of this piece which is the public safety exception. This exception is triggered only when there is immediate danger. It originated in the case of New York v. Quarles, 467 U.S. 649 (1984), in which officers responding to a reported rape approached a suspect in a grocery store and captured him after a short chase. During a frisk of the suspect, an empty holster was discovered, and upon being asked where the gun was, the suspect gave up the location. He was later Mirandized and formally questioned.

At trial, the court tossed the disclosure of the firearm’s location as well as all resulting questioning. The ruling was appealed and initially upheld, but the SCOTUS reversed the rulings of the lower courts and held that the initial questions were prompted by an immediate concern for public safety.

Note the use of the word “immediate”. The Court didn’t establish a blanket exception here. It only established an exception when there is an immediate public safety concern. Once that initial immediate public safety concern is alleviated the exception no longer applies. In the scenario of the Quarles case, once the firearm was located the officers read the warning prior to formally questioning the suspect.

So, suppose a bombing suspect was hiding in a boat in someone’s back yard, and a swarm of cops descended upon the scene to capture him. Whilst doing so, if they asked about bombs and weapons in an attempt to safely secure the suspect and the scene, then such questions would be good to go. However, when that suspect, should he survive his wounds, is formally questioned about his involvement in the bombing and ties to terror organizations, Miranda will most definitely apply.

None of this would matter in the first place if SCOTUS had not created the Miranda warning in the first place.

Perhaps I should have titled this piece “There Is No Firearms Registration in Georgia” because that is the case.  Please understand that this piece is not an argument in favor of or a call for such a system.  It is simply informational.

Frequently, citizens will come by the Sheriff’s Office because they have lawfully received a firearm and want to “register” it. The fact of the matter is that there is no method or mechanism for firearms registration in Georgia.  There is no means to register a particular firearm to a particular person.

In a previous piece about the so-called “gun show loophole“, I discussed the fact that firearms sales by licensed dealers are governed by the same rules whether at a gun show or their normal place of business and that such sales by private citizens are governed by the same applicable laws governing private sales at any other time.  When a firearm passes through the hands of a licensed dealer and is transferred to another owner a form 4473 is completed.  This creates a record of the transaction but it does not “register” the firearm.  In Georgia, private parties can sell a firearms to other private parties without the transaction having to go through a federally licensed firearms dealer.  The laws concerning private sales vary from state to state.

When a gun is traced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF); the agency is simply going through its records and checking for the form 4473.  This check will only be able to track the instances in which the firearm in question passed through the inventory of a licensed dealer.  It will not track legal transactions made by private parties in states where private parties can sell firearms without having to go through a licensed dealer.  Therefore, if a Georgia resident buys a firearm from a licensed dealer and then sells it in a private party transaction, an ATF trace would show the firearm having been transferred to the original purchaser alone.

While it is understandable that private citizens might confused on this subject, it is troublesome that apparently there are law enforcement agencies in Georgia that get this wrong.  I recently learned of a instance in Georgia in which an agency is refusing to return a recovered stolen firearm to its rightful owner. The agency returned the other recovered items to the victim, but they are withholding the firearm.  The reason they are giving is that the ATF trace shows the firearm as being “registered” to another individual.  I used the plural in the first sentence in this paragraph because I know of at least one other agency using a similar approach.

I wonder if they made the victim show proof of registration for the other items?  Why is it that some items that the victim possessed legally were stolen, recovered, and returned but an item that victim owned legally was stolen, recovered, but withheld?  This is a fundamentally illogical approach.

A recent report was aired by WMAZ out of Macon, Georgia, in which Bibb County School District Police Chief DeCoursey was purported as citing a 2010 revision to Georgia’s weapon carry laws as removing his officers’ authority to direct traffic on streets adjacent to campus properties. It should be noted that the original story at the link has been updated by WMAZ with comments from State Senator Mitch Seabaugh, the primary sponsor of the bill. The video at the link still airs in its original format.

I contacted State Representative Terry England concerning the story. Representative England was in the General Assembly in 2010, and he voted in favor of SB308. He told me that he did not believe that anything in the bill changed the jurisdiction of the campus police.

After viewing the report, I contacted Chief DeCoursey, and asked him to cite the provision in Senate Bill 308 that prohibited officers from directing traffic in front of schools. He cited section 1.4 of the bill and its change in the definition of the term “school safety zone”. He told me that the department’s legal counsel interpreted the definition of “school safety zone” as the jurisdictional boundary for his agency and that the change brought about by the code section revision thus in turn limited his agency’s jurisdiction to the real property boundaries actual campus properties.

I want to make it clear that the conversation was respectful and courteous on both sides and that Chief DeCoursey did not at any time express any opposition to citizens legally carrying firearms. With that being said, I disagree with the interpretation of the law being put forth by the Chief. The cited provision of Senate Bill 308 altered the definition of “school safety zone” as it applied to code section 16-11-1271 O.C.G.A. The code section in question in both its current and former versions pertains only to the carry of weapons. The very words in the code section are “As used in this code section” just prior to defining the term “school safety zone”; therefore, the subsequent definition applies only to the particular code section in question. The code section, past or present, does not address the jurisdictional boundaries of school system police. School system police are established under 20-8-5 O.C.G.A.

I invite the readers of this article to research case law and the relevant code sections and show otherwise.

The entertainment industry paints a picture of constant excitement and a never ending supply of dramatic cases with intricate legal issues.  In reality, the career of a peace officer is filled with mundane tasks making up the general routine, but sometimes a vital legal issue comes along and prompts much discussion.  Unfortunately, this isn’t one of those instances as the subject matter for this article is that of parking on private property.

Here is the scenario: a citizen finds a vehicle parked on their property that has not been authorized to do so.  The citizen suppresses the urge to slash the tires of said vehicle or otherwise damage it as the citizen realizes that this would lead to their own legal troubles.  The citizen then calls for a peace officer to come to the scene.  The citizen has expectations that the peace officer will arrive on scene and justice will prevail.  Unfortunately, Georgia law is rather mute on the issue in that it does not grant peace officers an effective remedy for this citizen’s predicament.  There is a code section that deals with parking spaces provided by merchants (see 40-6-252 O.C.G.A.), but remember, our scenario described a vehicle parked on private residential property.  I can find no code section that authorizes a peace officer to issue a citation or remove the vehicle in such an instance.

To muddy the waters even more, in order for a wrecker company to remove a vehicle from private property, the wrecker company must jump through bureaucratic hoops and register with the Public Service Commission (PSC).  A wrecker company that has not done so may be fined by the PSC.  I know of one company that did indeed receive such a fine in the amount of $2500.00.  Please understand that the above refers to non-consensual tows and not the actual owner of a vehicle wanting to have their own vehicle towed.  You can read more about the non-consensual towing requirements on the PSC webpage as well as here.  Towing companies removing vehicles from private property as part of a law enforcement function such as the recovery of a stolen vehicle or a vehicle being otherwise taken into evidence do not have to be registered with the PSC.

Please note that one of the requirements is that a private property must have a contract in place with a towing company prior to their removing a vehicle.  Furthermore, a private property owner who has a vehicle removed incurs certain reporting requirements as well.  As we have already discussed, a peace officer has no authority to remove a vehicle from private property simply because the owner does not want it there (exception for places of business as cited above).  It is up to the property owner to have a vehicle removed if they so desire.

By now I am sure that some readers are wondering how the criminal trespass code section (16-7-21 O.C.G.A.) applies to such situations.  This code section applies when a person enters onto another’s property for an unlawful purpose or they enter or remain on the land or premises of another after having been served notice by the property owner or an authorized agent not to do so.  The driver/occupants of the vehicle could be then be charged with criminal trespass, but the vehicle would still be on your property.

Finally, it would be a violation of Georgia Crime Information Center (GCIC) regulations for an agency to use the system to identify such a vehicle’s owner and then provide that information to the property owner. It would be possible for the property owner to go through the Tax Commissioner’s office to obtain such information; however, providing that information would be a decision made by the respective Tax Commissioner.

I am prepared to stand corrected.  If any reader of this finds information to the contrary they are encouraged to bring it to my attention.