This week on the Now We Defend podcast, we’re going to be unpacking guns and how they work under the law and what laws apply to them, and where you can go wrong and where you have to go right in order to be effective in being a not only responsible gun owner, but gun user, like we talked about in our last episode when we talked about self-defense, the Castle Doctrine, and the Stand Your Ground laws. We thought this week would be a good week to go back to this topic a little bit, but really focus more on specifically firearms. Um, as I think pretty much everybody knows, the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution, uh, codifies that we have a right as a society, as adults to bear arms. Uh, that’s a very sacred right. Uh, and in Pennsylvania here where we practice, it’s a fairly proud tradition that we have. And I think there’s a lot of firearm owners in Pennsylvania. We’re a big hunting state. Uh, we’re also a big state on, you know, protecting your rights, protecting your family, and protecting yourself. I know all three of us here at Kearney Law. You know, we’re firearm owners. Uh, we are a concealed carry permit holders, and we regularly exercise those rights is, I think, a lot of people specifically in York County where we practice regularly, but in Pennsylvania at large. So we want everybody to kind of generally be aware of the laws surrounding this, because I think there’s a lot of times that folks will be firearm owners or be carrying, but not know all the laws surrounding that. And sometimes that can land you in hot water. So we hope this episode gives you that knowledge so you feel more confident in your rights and your ability to do this. Um, I think to start, there’s really two kind of ways people carry at least handguns, you know, open carrying a handgun and concealed carrying of a handgun. And there are very specific laws about this. I’m going to kick it over here to Justin and Tim and let you guys introduce yourselves. Say hi. Hey, fellas. Way to say hi. Yeah. All right. Um, so I’m gonna, uh, first I’ll turn to you. Justin. Um, tell me about, you know, open carry a little bit what the laws are surrounding that maybe why it’s not smart to do that even though it’s legal in certain arenas. And then also let’s get into concealed carry a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. So in Pennsylvania, excuse me, if you are over the age of eighteen, you can open carry a firearm. However, um, it used to be prohibited in Philadelphia. Um, but that prohibition was struck down in twenty twenty five by the Superior Court. Uh, you cannot possess a firearm legally if you are under eighteen, whether that’s open carry, concealed carry, etc.. Right. So cut in here, you need to be eighteen years old to own and carry a firearm. Yes. Okay. Um, but that’s only if it’s open carrying. Right. If you’re concealed carrying, there’s a different age. Yes. Twenty one. Twenty one. Uh, and there’s more rules about that. You have to get a permit to carry. Yes. Tell me about that a little bit. What’s the process? What does that look like? How easy or not easy is that? Yeah. So, uh, it’s it’s honestly a fairly easy process, uh, depending on the county that you’re in, uh, here in Pennsylvania, you’re probably looking anywhere from twenty to thirty dollars. We’ll put twenty five as the, the median or the average. You must be twenty one years or older to obtain that. Um, you would then be able to, if you obtain that, uh, to carry a concealed firearm on or about your person. Um, and essentially you would have to go down to your local sheriff’s department or sheriff’s office. Uh, I live in Dauphin County, so I had to go to the Dauphin County Courthouse, uh, pay the fee, a lot of counties, I will say this to only accept cash, I think, or money order. Can’t take a check or pay with a card. Um, yeah. Of course. To allow you to carry a gun, they’re going to take cash, right? That’s the government for you. But in any event, um, you know, that said, this is an easy, easy thing to do. But the penalty if you don’t do it and you get caught concealed carrying is enormous. Absolutely. Um, tell us about that. Like what can happen if you literally just don’t go pay twenty five dollars and get the concealed carry? Yeah. So I think the biggest thing to remember with this is, uh, the charge. If you are caught with a concealed, uh, firearm on your person or in your vehicle and you don’t have a concealed carry permit, it’s called firearm without a license. Without going into all the elements just specifically, again, you have a concealed weapon either in your vehicle or on your person without that permit. Um, the, uh, go to or standard, uh, grading of that is a misdemeanor one. However, if there’s any other crime, um, or maybe Tim can correct me on this. Is it if it’s in the vehicle, is it the felony three? No, it’s it’s treated the same way either way. Okay. But you’re right. You’re saying about if you’re in the commission of another. Yeah. So say you’re driving with a concealed carry or excuse me, a concealed weapon in your vehicle and you don’t have the permit and you get a DUI, or you have a small amount of marijuana or paraphernalia or something like that, it’s upgraded to a felony. Three. That’s crazy. Yeah. Like let’s, let’s talk about that for a second here. Sorry, I’m getting all discombobulated with the buttons. Okay, there we go. Back at me. All right. So understand this. This is a big deal. The concealed carry permit keeps you away from this problem completely. So please understand that if you get a concealed carry permit, you’re not going to ever get charged with carrying a firearm without a license because you have a license. But if you don’t pay the twenty five dollars and you don’t take the ten minutes or twenty minutes to go down to your local sheriff’s department and get a concealed carry permit, you don’t have a license and you have that in your vehicle. Well, think about it. When you get pulled over. You’re already getting pulled over because you’re likely in the commission of some crime allegedly at that point. So if you have a firearm in your car, you’re pretty much no pun intended, staring down the barrel of a felony charge right out of the gate because it’s you’re getting charged with a crime. And then you’re also carrying without a license that, as Justin just said, upgrades it to a felony charge. This is huge. Understand this, protect yourself and avoid this. It’s twenty five dollars. Like just get a permit. Yeah. So, uh, Justin, um, back to you here. You know, I wanted to hammer that home because, like, dude, I see that Kate, that type of case so much in this office, like, and I say to the person in the meeting, hey, man, why didn’t you, like, just go get a permit? You would have avoided this mess. Absolutely. And I think one of the biggest things to remember when it’s upgraded to that felony, even if you have no prior criminal history, meaning nothing, you’d be technically eligible for A or D. However, in Pennsylvania, as we talked about in previous episodes, we’re a guideline state, and to determine the guidelines for each charge, they have what’s called the offense gravity score. And obviously these are firearms charges. So they’re taking, uh, taken much more serious by the legislature. So they jacked that offense gravity score up. So with zero prior record zero prior criminal history, if you are caught with a concealed weapon on your person or in your vehicle and you are in the commission of another crime, it’s a felony three offense and the standard range is twelve to eighteen months. That’s a state prison sentence. That is a state prison sentence. Because in Pennsylvania, if your maximum penalty is more than or two years or more, which really means your minimum penalty is a year or more, you are serving that in state prison. So by your by your discussion there, you’re literally saying, if you get caught with this and you didn’t pay your twenty five dollars and you get charged with that felony and you have no criminal record, zero, You could go to state prison, state prison. A lot of times, though, they are willing to negotiate with us. Like we can do things to mitigate that. They may agree to knock it down to a misdemeanor. So some. And the the disparity to Justin’s point between the felony three and the M one in terms of prison exposure is pretty dramatic. I think if I think with M one, uh, with zero prior record, I think it’s twenty four months probation. I have to double check that. Either way, it’s significantly, significantly less. Yeah. Oh, you’re talking about the penalty the jail time. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I completely agree with you, Tim. Like, you are absolutely right about this. If you find yourself in this scenario, we’re telling you this information so you understand your exposure, but we’re also telling it to you to encourage you get a lawyer because this is absolutely, a lot of times negotiable down. Like Tim was just saying, and even if you have a concealed carry, not to change the subject too much, but there is kind of a little bit of a similarity here, even with a concealed carry, because if you’re in the commission of another crime, even with a permit, they could tack on deadly weapon enhancements to you. So even if you’re in the if you’re even if the firearm is in no way involved in the crime itself, depending on how gung ho the prosecutor is to really come after you, you could get a deadly weapon possessed enhancement, and that’s going to jack your guidelines up more than it would normally be. And, and that can be done for things like DUI and drug possession and stuff like that. And for those of you that don’t understand, we’re saying the word guidelines. This is a range of sentencing that the legislators have essentially promulgated or said is appropriate for this crime. And that’s based upon your prior record score and your offense gravity score, which is how serious they’ve graded that crime. So just for those of you that understand kind of that verbiage of guidelines, that’s what we’re talking about. So again, to recap here, guys, like if you find yourself in this situation, you are staring down the barrel of a state prison sentence. Protect yourself, get a lawyer. It is absolutely, a. A lot of times fixable. You might even see zero jail time whatsoever if you handle it appropriately, responsibly. And as attorneys, we’re going to get that person into our office and we’re going to get them working on some proactive things. Like, for instance, there’s a specific firearm safety course that we use regularly here at this law firm at Kearney Law. And we have a lot of our clients enroll in this class. It’s in person. It’s one day there’s an NRA instructor that does the class. It’s known to the prosecutors. We use it regularly, and it allows us to show the prosecutors that our client is taking steps to learn from this. I think he also does virtual. Does he? I think he does. I’ve never had a client do it virtually, but maybe he does. I think he does. Yeah, he’s been very helpful for me. I have a he’s great. A younger guy up in Dauphin County that essentially is getting a r d for a felony firearm without a license. I had the same thing in Lebanon County. Yeah. And that’s not very common here in New York. You would never get that. No firearm charges. Typically the D a s perspective on that was felony gun charge? No. Yeah. So that’s how it is in York, right? I mean, having him be proactive and do things and, you know, getting him involved early on. Uh, another thing, like we’ve talked on previous episodes, he was super cooperative. Yeah. You know what I mean? So that went a long way with the state trooper. It was up in, uh, upper Dauphin County. So more of a country setting than, you know, the city. Um, but again, he was super cooperative and, uh, got me involved in his case early. We got him set up with the course, um, you know, showed up at his prelim. We were able to work it out and I contacted the DA’s office like, hey, you know, can we work this out? Troopers are open to it. Um, and ultimately what she came back was like, we want him to do the ARD program. So again, that’s not a common thing. Uh, again, you can’t get that here in York County, but other counties will offer it. Like Tim said, he got a guy a very, very good result in Lebanon. Yeah. So yeah. So again, guys, I mean, baseline here is people don’t do anything. They show up their prelims and they haven’t prepared. They haven’t gotten a lawyer. Now that’s not everybody. And we encourage you to do that. But many people just stick their head in the sand and go, oh, it’s just a prelim. I’ll figure it out. Do not do that. What do they think? The outcome is set in stone. You know, like, yeah, it’s not charged with a felony. And this is just what I’m stuck with. And, you know, without any input from you or any proactivity on your part. The Da may come to you and they may be inclined to give you an offer. Maybe they’re giving you a house arrest instead of state prison, and you just think that’s the best that you can do. But again, how many times have you guys been at a prelim and the Da comes up to you and says, well, what does your client done? Yeah, right. You know, in preparation for today. Everyone every single time. And I can tell you that that conversation a lot of times, like even with the case with the guy in, in Lebanon County, you know, that county, the way they operate, you really, you’re not going to really iron everything out at the prelim. Like there’s not going to be a deal that’s struck at the preliminary hearing most times. I mean, there are a lot there sometimes can be. And there is some case cases. We’re going to talk about firearms cases here that we do actually sometimes resolve it. I’m saying the way that county operates, they kind of expect you to waive the hearing Which county? Lebanon. Okay. And in some cases, Dauphin and some other counties. I mean, there is kind of an expectation that if you want to come to the table and negotiate, you waive the preliminary hearing. Right? Because it’s a gesture of good faith. So you’re using the preliminary hearing there to set the stage. And I was playing so many seeds at the preliminary hearing. This is what this guy. This is what my guys done. I had him do X, Y, Z, you know, all kinds of stuff. By the way, like down the road. I know, I know, you’re not going to commit to anything now, by the way. Like if, if we can do a r d, that’d be great. If we can’t do a r d, what do you say about a reduction to a misdemeanor? All that. I was throwing all of that out. You’re literally negotiating a plea offer at that prelim. And and the D.A. was like, was totally receptive to it. I mean, they’re going to hear you out unless you did something really bad. They’re not just going to shut you down. Absolutely. So sometimes you will get nothing in the immediate. You’re we’re giving them something for nothing in the immediate term, but you’re having paid dividends long run. Yeah. And guys, you’re having those conversations with prosecutors. These are people we regularly deal with. We don’t burn each other, right? Like we make deals with these folks and we have trust with them. And we communicate and make. And they sometimes they can’t say, this is your absolute offer end of the case today, but they can all but get you there and just say, hey, we have to make sure he’s got to finish up some counseling and we’ll get to the point later. They just want to make sure that some time goes by and you’re not continuing to get into trouble, or they’re just learning about the case too, right? Maybe they haven’t seen all the discovery either. Right. But you can like you said, Tim, I like the analogy. You’re planting seeds to literally resolve that at a later point. Highly favorable to your client. Sometimes clients are a little uncomfortable with that because they’re like, I’m giving something up. I’m not getting anything in return. And they don’t know the prosecutors like we do. Right. But I’m trying to tell them like, you know, we’re we’re laying a foundation here. Yeah. And that’s our job. I mean, that’s why people hire us is we have these relationships. And it’s important to not only know how to set your client up, but to have that relationship so you can properly communicate it and they will hear you out and they will listen. Yeah. Because what’s the alternative? The alternative is you you make everybody angry. You take a hearing that could be contentious between you and the prosecutor and then the prosecutor. The note that gets written down in the file is defendants not taking any responsibility. Wants to fight about everything. No deal, no deals. Yeah. That’s the that’s what gets written down. This is kind of more general. But you know, I know we’ll probably do a, um, an episode on this eventually, but, uh, one of the things that we hear every now and again, and I’m lucky to, you know, not have had this really happen so far since, you know, I’ve been back, uh, here at the firm. Um, but you’ll have people that are just like, you know, uh, you’re working with the cops or you’re working with the prosecutor. It’s like we want to work with them because that’s what’s going to get you the best result at the end. You know, we don’t, it’s not that we’re working like behind the scenes in some back door with them to screw our client. Absolutely. That would be not only, not only would that be highly unethical, we would never do that, but it would we’d probably lose our law license if we did that. But you know, third, that is completely ridiculous to assume that. Yeah. And I know we’ve had people that have come to us and said, oh, you’re talking to the prosecution. You must be working with them. Well, in a way, we are working with them in your benefit and that benefits the client. So please understand that that it is highly beneficial to you, the client, if we engage properly, heavily and early with the prosecution and understand too that we are doing that in your benefit, we are not doing it outside of that or there’s nothing kind of janky happening like behind the scenes. We need to do that to get you the best result, and that’s how we get the best results. Yeah. We’re not trying to screw anybody over. I mean, that wouldn’t be how would that be helpful to us? We would never get business. Exactly. We’d go out of business. And I think, you know, and I’ve, I’ve had this a few times where I’ve actually had officers tell me to my face that they want to give me something so that it makes me look good for their client, which is a weird thing for your client. Yeah. Yeah. Because they want because the officer actually understands. And it’s a weird thing to hear, say like, it’s kind of taken me back a couple of times where they understand too, that it’s in their interest for the client to trust me. So if they can concede something for me, that means I get to hand my client a win. And that in turn makes the relationship between me and the client stronger and it and it makes it easier to negotiate with the officer. So there are some officers, I mean, we talk about the difference between checkers and chess. This is not a this is not checkers. And there are officers that understand this game has a lot of levels to it too. Yeah. Oh, and I think most of them do. Most of them do. And honestly, when that type of thing happens to him and I think I mean, there are officers that watch our podcast like, and I’ve talked to them about it, like having those good back and forth relationships with the police that we’ve established over the years. It’s invaluable. Yeah, absolutely. Especially because guys, again, all three of us are former prosecutors. We were on the same side as them for years, and now we’re on defense and we still treat them decent. We still go to bat for our clients with them. But at the end of the day, if we maintain those relationships, we’re getting certain outcomes because we have decent relationships. I want to be the kind of attorney that that they know that if I’m going to fight about something, they’re like, okay, you’re doing it for a reason. This is serious. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody likes that was one of the things I hated as a prosecutor was getting motions from defense attorneys, especially like, you know, suppressions habeas, where it’s just they’re filing it to file it. Right. You know, there’s, there’s no real issue. Um, and of course, you know, judges are going to hear these motions and you’re going to have to go through it. Um, but it didn’t make me want to, you know, resolve it favorably for their person. And as a prosecutor, you know, you can’t just hold it against the attorney because it’s not always the client. But like Tim said, you know, if we’re actually going to fight about something and go to a hearing or file a motion. It’s be you know, there’s a reason behind it. We’re not just doing it to do it or because the clients, you know, I want you to file this, that, or the other, you know, we have an ethical duty to not file frivolous motions. So if there is something to file or there’s something to fight about, we’re going to, you know, we’ll file it, we’ll fight about it. But having a good relationship with these officers, even when you get to those moments, you’re able to have a conversation with them and say, hey, this is what I think the issue is. Can we work around it? Great. If if you can’t, we’re going to file it. And, you know, everybody’s aware of what’s going on. Um, and those types of situations and handling cases in that way from my opinion and my experience as a prosecutor, as a defense attorney, it keeps those relationships strong and there’s just a certain level of respect there. You know, like that’s what ultimately I think gets us the best results for people is that people respect us because we respect them. Yeah. There’s a there’s a country song. I can’t remember the artist. I think it’s Zach Brown, but it’s, um, it’s essentially something to the effect of we’re all in the same boat here. Okay. And life is a lot more enjoyable for everybody involved in this situation, including our clients. When people deal with each other on a reasonable basis. Now, on the times you do challenge, you save those for the real times that you need to do it. And when you do do it, the court, the judges, and the cops respect you for it because you don’t waste it on things that are inappropriate and not necessary and frivolous, like you said. Okay guys, we got a little off topic there, but I think that was a really important discussion to have because it really talks about kind of behind the scenes how this works and maintaining those relationships and really how we, in the end, benefit our clients. And it’s probably important, or it’s probably nowhere more important than it is on a gun charge. Absolutely. So let’s exceptions. Absolutely. So let’s bring it back to this. Tim, I want to pop over to you real quick. When we were talking about open carrying and concealed carry permits. What we’re talking about there is handguns. Okay. So I want to talk just briefly about I mean, there’s a few different rules about long guns, rifles. Tell us a little bit about that and what that kind of is, how that’s handled under the law. Um, yeah. So carry, I mean, technically, I think we are a state where you can, you can open carry long guns. And we were talking a little bit about that because we’re going to get into a section on like fixed like knives and swords and stuff. And that’s one of those things where I do always kind of, and I know other people that do too, where you do kind of raise your eyebrows if somebody’s walking around with a rifle, you do kind of. I think it’s a natural reaction. Yeah. We actually had an issue with that here in New York City. I think it was two years ago where, uh, teenagers were carrying long guns around the city openly, and it was causing a lot of alarm for folks down here in the city. Right. And I think there was a big crackdown on that, and it went away fairly quickly. But I remember actually driving back to the office from some hearings that I was at and seeing what looked to me like teenage boys walking around the city carrying rifles. Right. And I’m like, what are we in a malicious state? Like, what is going on? They charge people. And I prosecuted the case that had three juveniles with long guns walking around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here in York, here in New York, I think a lot of it depends on intent. It depends on the context that you’re carrying it. You know, and we’ve said this before, discretion is super important. And for anyone who’s carrying a firearm, discretion should be even more important. So I mean, you got to make. We talk about moral choices. We talk about, uh, just philosophical choices. And, you know, you got to be smart and this is one of them. You’re allowed, I think, to carry long guns. Is it prudent to do so? In most cases, probably not if we’re being honest. Um, so you just gotta, you got to think about that. You’re gonna draw attention. If you do that, you cannot carry them loaded in your car. And that’s, that’s. Tell me about that a little bit. Carrying a long gun in your car. You don’t have to have a concealed carry permit to do that. Um, so Say that again. You do not have to have a concealed carry permit to have a long gun in your car. Um, yeah, if it’s assuming it’s unloaded. And even if you do have a concealed carry permit, you can’t carry a loaded long gun in your car. A loaded, long gun loaded long guns are always prohibited, so you can’t have it loaded in your car. There are some, I think, exceptions to that, but we talked about not wanting to muddy the waters too much. Yeah. Um, generally the rule is you got to carry the ammo and the gun separately in the car. Um, and the same is true for if you don’t have a concealed carry permit, you got to transport the firearms separately from the ammo ammo. Okay. So the general rule here, guys with long guns, especially in your car, because this is where we see it come up, I think the most is that you can carry them in your vehicle if you’re of age to have a firearm, but you have to keep the long gun or the rifle and the ammunition separate, it cannot be loaded. And to be extra safe, I would actually have them him in separate areas of the vehicle. Like for instance, I would have the long gun in the trunk secured, and I would maybe have the ammunition in the back seat or in the front seat or something like that, where they’re not even literally close to each other. That’s going to protect you the most. I mean, would you would you say that’s right, Tim? Yeah, I think that’s the best advice. And to be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve looked through the exceptions because it’s a very it’s a very verbose statute. It’s very wordy statute. Um, and it’s not necessarily the best in terms of wording, but the general rule is you can’t go wrong as long as your rifle is unloaded and the ammo is stored separately. It’s just, it’s just the best thing for you to do. Um, and if you get pulled over, tell the police officer up front in a non alarming way. I do have a firearm in the vehicle because you’re going to put them at ease in that vehicle stop. Whereas if they find it and it pops out of the blue to them, things can get a little sketchy then. Yeah. I mean I it is central I think to the maxim, you know, for a concealed carry that it’s not a problem if people don’t know about it. I mean, that’s kind of central to concealed carry, but it is probably a good idea to notify officers if you’re interacting with them. I have had interactions with officers where I have not told them I do. As far as I’m aware, and we’re not a duty to notify state. No we’re not, and I didn’t mean it with that. I’m just saying like, if you find yourself getting pulled over and that turns into a scenario where, yes, maybe you’re under suspicion for DUI, that makes sense, or you’re going to get out of the car. Yeah. Like you should probably tell that cop. Just so you know, I am a concealed carry permit holder. I do have a firearm secured in the vehicle. It’s located in this location. Right. And I’ve, I’ve heard of some groups that will recommend to that when, you know, you give your license, registration insurance, give your concealed carry permit as well. And then that’s kind of like putting the officer on notice that you’re lawfully carrying a firearm. And then the officer can inquire further if they really want to. The issue is, you know, sometimes. And I’ve seen it both ways. I mean, you get you may tell an officer that you’re carrying a firearm and it may they may be at ease. They may tell you something cheesy like, I’m not I’m not going to reach for mine. If you if you don’t reach for yours, they’ll say that line, you know, and that’s fine. You can you joke. And everybody’s, you know, it’s not tense, but you may have some officers too, that their, their hair starts standing up on the back of their neck in York County, obviously, we’ve had some very, very terrible cases recently where officers were killed. So there might be a heightened alert. And if you’re interacting with an officer just for a routine traffic stop, you know, you don’t technically have a duty to tell them that you’re lawfully carrying, but compose yourself and comport yourself appropriately. If they’re going to cite you for having a tail light out. Take the citation. Be polite and go on your way. And then there hasn’t been an issue. I think Tim, I think that’s great advice. Um, and I think there’s ways to do it both ways, correct. Appropriately and just kind of read the situation and be reasonable person. Um, I want to move to concealed carry permits specifically here. Um, and one question I and we’re going to unpack it, but one question I get on a concealed carry permit all the time is if I get a concealed carry permit, can I also have a medical marijuana card or can I not have both? And the answer is, well, to get a concealed carry permit, it is discretionary to an extent with the Sheriff’s department in the county within which you’re seeking the concealed carry permit. So if you carry a medical marijuana card, I know at least here in York County, our sheriff has taken the position that they are not issuing concealed carry permits to people who have medical marijuana cards, because they view that as, you know, somebody who is an unlawful or not unlawful because it is lawful, but somebody who’s potentially addicted to a controlled substance, marijuana, um, which I don’t necessarily agree with that stance, but that is the stance that’s happening right now. So again, I get that question all the time. And I just wanted to unpack that for people because I actually have gotten that on our, um, our socials when we post these videos on TikTok, Instagram, people have asked me like in the comments, can I get both? Can I get a concealed carry permit and a medical marijuana card? And, you know, it’s a, it’s a tough question because some areas of the state, maybe they will permit that. But I think by and large, the general stance is no. So I just want you guys to keep that in mind. If you’re somebody who does want to have both, you kind of have to pick one or the other. Um, but I want to shift over here, Justin, to you briefly tell us a little bit about like, what are the rules about getting a concealed carry permit? Because again, it is discretionary with the sheriff, but what are the like criteria he looks at? Yeah. So there’s a number of different things. Essentially the way the statute reads is the sheriff shall issue if no good cause exists to deny the license. So what does that mean? So so first of all, the word shall. Yes is means must. Yes. Okay. And we actually see this in statutes in the law. Right. And we the difference of may versus shall. Shall means must issue the permit. If no good cause exists to deny it. Yes. But then that’s where you get into the weeds. What’s good? Cause. Right. So tell us about that. Yeah. And a number of things that, you know, I think just come up over the years. And I don’t know if all of these are essentially contained within the statute, but a person whose character or reputation is such that they are likely to be a danger to public safety. So one of the things that we talked about earlier when we were prepping this, I mean, I think this is a good time to mention. So if you’re charged with a crime, haven’t been convicted yet, you’re going to be denied. If you already have a permit and then you get charged, they’re going to revoke that because that’s what they’re going to, you know, they’re going to say you fall into that character or reputation that you are likely doesn’t mean you are likely to be a danger to public safety. Yeah. And I want to I want to just unpack that a little bit more because that’s a big deal. This happens a lot. Yes. Like I’ve had a lot of vehicle stops where the person gets, first of all, and we’re going to talk. We should talk about this too. They take the firearm. So say it’s a DUI. The firearm is not even involved in the crime. But the police seize the firearm. You know, maybe they’re doing it under officer safety or the vehicle is being towed, and we don’t want to leave it on the side of the road type of situation. So they seize it, and then the person finds themselves in a situation where the police are now in possession of their firearm. They want to get their gun back because it’s their property and they can’t, you know, and that’s and the question is why? Why can’t I get it back? I’ve seen that. I actually do have a client where we’re, we’re working through an issue that’s very similar to that. And I mean, my position on that is that it’s an unlawful seizure of the firearm. And that is my position on that. Um, and, and I think that the correct answer for officers is if you identify that there’s a firearm involved, you should probably render it safe. And if at all possible, you should return it to the either to the owner or to somebody who is is able to take possession of that firearm. Now, it’s very hard for you to do that because you you can’t just turn the firearm over to somebody you don’t know. They do technically have to pass a pics check, but if at all possible, to leave the firearm in the custody of the person who it belongs to, who’s currently in possession of it, that really is the right answer. You shouldn’t be seizing the firearm just because you’ve found a small amount of marijuana on the person and you’re seizing the marijuana, and you’re also going to seize the firearm. I’ve seen that happen. And in the case where we’re dealing with it, the firearm wasn’t involved in anything. They didn’t bring firearm charges against this person. It really was wrong for them to seek to for them to take the firearm. Like you’re saying, even though it’s wrong. And again, I know there’s officers, there’s no remedy. Watch our podcast. But and I want them to kind of know this because it puts our clients in a situation where they’ve lost their property, right? It is now within the position of being at the police department and then to get it back. I mean, I tell my clients we have to go through the police department to do that. So we contact the police department and they say, hey, yeah, we’re not charging anything involving the firearm. The firearm was legal, right? But what do we have to do to give it back to you? A picture check a picture, which means that now the decision as to whether that firearm is returned to you is not even in the hands of the police department. It’s now in the hands of the state police. So the state police will make the determination based on the pics, check whether or not they’re going to flag you or whether or not they’re going to grant that you can take possession of the. What is a pics check? Tim. It’s the Pennsylvania Instant Criminal system. I don’t some I don’t remember what it’s basically it’s the NICs equivalent for Pennsylvania, which is the national instant. What it is, is they have to actually run you through the state police to see if they can provide you the firearm back before they can give it back to you from their property. And what happens is, if you’ve been charged with another crime, like a small amount of marijuana, DUI, something that might not feel major to the gun, is now going to flag that they can’t give the gun back to you because you have an open, as Justin was saying, criminal case that is charged against you. So guess what? Your firearm continues to sit there at the police department for months and months and years until you eventually resolve your case and then try to scrape to get it back. Then, and this could easily turn into a situation, and we’ll talk about this in a little bit, but this could turn into a situation where you’re actually never allowed to get that firearm back. Yeah. Right. So they could essentially, they could charge you with something that is not an enumerated offense under Pennsylvania law, but it ends up resulting in you being disqualified or disarmed or disabled is really the proper terminology under federal law. So your Second Amendment rights would be disabled under federal law. And that means that even though Pennsylvania, as far as they’re concerned, you can still possess firearms. As far as the national government is concerned, you cannot. And so you will never get that firearm back, even though it was seized for no legitimate reason. That’s a good point, Tim. Uh, it really is. Um, and I’ll tell you guys the times where I’ve actually been successful getting that gun back, it’s a race against the clock. Because if the if the police have not charged you yet with the crime, but they have seized the firearm as part of the stop, if you can get to the police before they charge you, you will pass the pics, check still and then you can actually get it back. But the moment the charges hit the system, you’re stuck because you’re in the pics check cycle of having to go through that with an active case. So it is really a race against the clock to get your firearm back in those scenarios. So again, I say it all the time, contact us as soon as you can because sometimes we can actually intervene early. Um, even if you’re not in a situation where you’re getting charged with a firearm crime just to get your property, your lawful property back. The unfortunate thing, and I said this, but I just want to illustrate the point again, is that there is no real remedy here for you. Is that even if the police seize your firearm and then they charge you with something completely unrelated, there’s very little you can do at that point. We could file a motion for the return of your property, but just as you said, you still have to pass a background check. Yeah, the judge can order it, and then they still have to put you through the pics check, and you’re still not getting it back. So you could get really stuck in that situation. And it’s unfortunate. Yeah. All right. Justin, um, you were starting to talk to us about actually, if you have a concealed carry permit. Not, not so much about the gun itself and the property, but if you have a concealed carry permit and you are getting charged with a crime, you could lose your concealed carry permit, meaning the sheriff can send you a letter that says you have to turn it in and revoke it. I’ve seen that. I think in one hundred percent of cases that I’ve had with people with concealed, pretty vigilant about doing that. It depends on the county because I’ve seen like there are other counties that will at least wait until you’re convicted. Yeah. York is not specific to York County. I’ve had multiple clients over the last few months that, you know, within a few days of getting their charges, they’re getting the letter from the sheriff’s office saying you have, you know, three days. I’ve seen it in Cumberland County as well. And to be honest, there again, like, I mean, my opinion of that is that that’s premature. Yeah. And the charges could go away altogether. And then now you’re putting this person into a position where they have to reapply for the concealed carry. And that’s essentially it. You’re just taxing them at that point. It’s just a tax. And I would agree with that. You know, um, because people are always like, okay, well, if these charges get resolved or this happens or, you know, the charges are reduced, then what do I do to get it back? You have to reapply, right? So again, it’s not the most expensive thing to apply for in the world, but still got to pay. But it’s a tax. It’s a tax. Yeah. Well I guess it’s a twenty five dollars tax. But but the other thing too is it’s, it’s not only a financial tax like even a small one, but it’s a time tax, right? Because you’re losing your rights for what could be years. And then you have to go back into the sheriff’s department, get your picture taken and all that stuff, like go through the ATF form again, you know, and that’s going to get into what we’re going to talk about here in a moment, which is people are sometimes checking the wrong box on that ATF form and getting charged with felony crimes for doing that. But before we shift to that next, I do want to go back, Justin, to you through the rest. Yeah. I want you to go through the rest. We got a little off topic. So what we were talking about there is what does the sheriff actually look at in the criteria when issuing a concealed carry permit? Yeah. So they’re going to look if you have ever been convicted of a drug offense under the uh. What is it, title thirty five. Yeah. It’s a drug and cosmetic act. Drug and cosmetic act. So if you’ve been charged with small amount of marijuana paraphernalia, etc., you’re you’re not eligible for a concealed carry permit. I have a buddy who’s avid hunter. You know, Beau owns guns, can’t get a concealed carry permit because he had a paraphernalia charge. I mean, this is probably eleven, twelve years ago at this point. Um, and if he had been a juvenile at the time and adjudicated delinquent after ten years, he would be eligible. Or if he had gone through ARD or if he had gone through ARD, but because he was an adult and ultimately pled guilty to that, he’s not eligible for a concealed carry permit. Okay. Boom. I want to jump in here. This is a big deal, right? What Justin is saying to you guys is if you have a little weed charge on your record, you might get stuck not being able to get a concealed carry permit. That’s crazy. Like, that’s lunacy to me. And that drug charge could be years ago. Yeah. And you could go up twelve years ago. Yeah. You can go apply and the sheriff can say, oh, nope, there it is. Denied. And it’s discretionary. And they’re leaning on this whole addicted or unlawful user of drugs. Well, that was twelve years ago. Yeah. And what is it? Habitual drunkard. Mhm. So if you’re an alcoholic, if you’ve been convicted of a crime with a max punishment of more than one year. If you have previously been committed to or admitted to a mental health facility or institution, I want to jump in on that one. That’s another one I see a lot. People were in a mental health institution involuntarily committed um, years ago. Voluntary as well. Okay. No, voluntary doesn’t disable you. Okay. It’s just three oh two. It’s the three oh two and three oh three. So if you’re involuntarily committed, involuntarily committed, but this happens a lot like off the cuff, like somebody like a young teenager. And they’re involuntarily committed to a mental health hospital, maybe for like two days, three days and that and then they go on with their life and they’re now forty years old and they go and they fill out this firearm form to try to get a permit to carry. And they say, have you ever been involuntary committed to a mental facility? The question says that and they check no. And they just committed a felony crime. Yeah. I think the probably the main two that we see for the checking the box, which I’m sure we’ll talk a little bit more about here in a moment is going to be the probably the mental institution and then convicted of a crime with a punishment of max punishment of more than one year. Um, they also can deny, uh, if you are a fugitive, uh, in illegal alien, illegal alien, uh, if you are a veteran with a dishonorable discharge. Um, and then, uh, if you had been convicted of a crime in section sixty one hundred and five, uh, C of the crimes code, which essentially is the persons not to possess, uh, statute. So, uh, it, the way that statute is written in, Tim and I have had so many conversations about this. It’s so poorly written. Um, but essentially sixty one hundred and five lays out the enumerated offenses that again, Pennsylvania, uh, considers, uh, a person prohibited from possessing a firearm if they had been convicted of, uh, one of those crimes other than I think receiving stolen property, you have to have two felonies. Um, but, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of, Disqualifiers will say, yeah, and crimes that you might not even think of. There’s like a laundry list of crimes that if you’ve been convicted of them, you become a person not allowed to possess a firearm under the law, which means it’s literally illegal. It’s an upgraded charge, right? And you’re definitely going to state prison if you get convicted of that for sure. Yeah. Um, talk about that, I guess. So, um, I want to, uh, kick it over to you here, Tim, for a second. Um, before you go into that, I wanted to say one thing about the three hundred and twos. Yeah, go for it. So the three hundred and twos can be expunged. Mhm. Oh, yeah. Tim, you do a lot of that. Tell us about that a little bit. So unlike expungement for like A or D or some of the normal kinds of expungement, there is a very strict time limit on expunging a three hundred and two. You have six months from when you got released, when you got. Yeah. From the commitment. From the commitment. So and usually and usually that’s the same day or within the same day. Um, you have six months to request the expungement and the way that the expungement for three hundred two commitment works is the only way that it can be expunged is if you get a judge to agree that the basis for the involuntary commitment was not sufficient at the time, which means that and I go through this with people all the time. I mean, there’s a lot of case law on this. You could go and get cleared by a, a therapist or a, by a mental health provider. You could have a forensic evaluation done, which is like the most kind of comprehensive mental health and guns kind of assessment you could get. That’s not coming in. It’s inadmissible. So, Tim, if I understand you correctly, if you are involuntarily committed to a mental hospital, correct. Which could be a three hundred and two for two or three days of your life, not only did you just lose your firearm rights, potentially. Yeah. But if you don’t seek to get it expunged within six months of the commitment. Yep. You’re Sol. Yeah. And when I say potentially, I mean you may have lost them forever. Yeah. Right. Potentially. That’s what I’m saying. Um, yeah. You have six months to request the expungement and you cannot. The only way you can expunge it is by attacking the basis for the commitment in the first place, right? So if and if you’re like, I’ve had people where it’s like they were, they, they were in the attempt to commit suicide. And like, if a firearm is present and there’s a suicide note or, you know, whatever, or you’re engaged in some kind of act of violence. Every judge in the Commonwealth, hands down, is going to say there was sufficient basis to commit you. Right? So but again, it’s important to know that because like most times when you’re six months out from an involuntarily mental health commitment, you’re not thinking, oh, I got to make sure I get my get this expunged so I can get my firearm rights back. It’s not until thirty years go by and you’re going to get your hunting license, and the ship has sailed. Now, there is a remedy that we have under our statutes. It’s six thousand one hundred and five F, which allows you to petition for the reinstatement of your firearms rights. Uh, this is a petition that will basically allow a judge to say, okay, this person can possess firearms without being a danger to themselves or to others. Um, and I won’t go into like the details of that process, but there is, there’s, we would have a burden of production burden of proof there. And, um, essentially the judge can deny that and then you’re still stuck or a judge can grant it. And then as far as Pennsylvania would be concerned, you could possess firearms that would, however, not help you with the federal system, because there is also a federal prohibition for people who’ve been involuntarily committed. So if you got your sixty one hundred and five petition granted, you’d be allowed to possess firearms in Pennsylvania as far as Pennsylvania’s law is concerned, but not according to federal law, which means you’re still you’re still stuck out of luck. Yeah. All right. Um, again, Tim, actually here at our firm does a lot of those, uh, mental health commitment expungements. But as he said, it’s limited. So we get calls about that stuff all the time. And Tim, in those situations, a lot of times has to be the bearer of bad news and say, hey, unfortunately, you’re not eligible. But for those of you that are listening to this, if you find yourself in this situation. Remember this. And if you can call us in time so we can possibly seek that remedy for you and three hundred and three, which is more long term. So that’s if you’ve been three hundred two, I think they have seventy two hours commitment for three hundred and two. And if they if they believe that you need to be committed longer, then that becomes a three hundred and three commitment or three oh four three oh five three oh six I think it’s like up to ten days, then thirty days, sixty days and ninety days. And the only ones that can be expunged are three hundred twos. Okay. Everything beyond that you’re stuck with. So if you get a three hundred and three beyond the three days, you’re you cannot expunge that pretty much. No. And, and the reason for that is because a medical health professional has assessed you after that three day time period and has made it, there’s a rigorous standard that they have to meet. And at that point, you’ve essentially had due process at that point, and the determination has been made that you need more long term care. Okay. Yeah. Well, guys, you heard it here. Protect your rights, know what you’re dealing with if you’re in that situation. All right. I’m going to move to the checking the wrong box situation. So guys, this is the one that I regularly see here. I know you guys have had a number of these as well. And I’ll tell you almost every call I get, I’m being charged with a felony for essentially what turns out to be I checked the wrong box on a firearm forum when I went to purchase a gun, or I went to get a concealed carry permit. Turns out that it’s really usually an unknowing, innocent mistake, but turns out to be putting this person in an awful situation where they’re being charged, likely with a felony crime. So I want to touch on this because as we said earlier, there are really there’s a lot of ways you can check the wrong box on the ATF form for anybody out there who has ever purchased a gun, you know, you have to fill out this whole form and there’s a whole bunch of boxes you have to check yes, no, yes, no. And if you don’t understand what you’re checking and you check the wrong box, this is how you find yourself in these scenarios. There’s a lot of ways that can happen, but there’s two main ones if you have been convicted of a crime that carries more than a year of the possible penalty. So understand what I said there. The possible penalty is more than a year. Not what you got. Okay. So this is in prison? It’s not what you got. You might have got probation for six months, but the penalty was more than a year possible. You have to check yes to that question. Have you been convicted of a crime that could have carried a penalty of more than one year incarceration? The second one, which we just essentially beat to death, was the mental health commitment. Have you ever been convicted? I’m sorry. Uh, placed involuntarily in a mental health facility. This would be your short three day, three hundred and two commitment years ago, when you were a teenager. That might you might have forgotten about. Maybe you got a little crazy and wanted to, you know, trying to hurt yourself or threatening to hurt yourself. And your parents got scared and they called and you got three hundred two committed briefly. That’s on your record. That can disable you from getting a concealed carry permit. Those are the two big ones. The other one I see sometimes, and Justin touched on this, is if you are under information, which means you’re charged with a crime that could carry a penalty of more than a year, that can also disable you under this form. These forms you guys are filling out, these are federal ATF forms. So technically, you’re also not only are you violating a state law, but you’re also violating federal law. And you can be punished extremely heavily for these crimes. So a lot of times I get a call from a guy, a gal who has went out, you know, they’re fifty years old and their son is getting into hunting. They’ve never been a hunter. They want to go hunting with their son. Okay. So they go ahead and they go out to to Dick’s Sporting Goods or they go out to, um, you know, local gun shop and they want to get a gun and they fill out the permit and they don’t, they forget, oh, I had a second offense, DUI twenty years ago. And by the way, second offense DUI tier three can carry a penalty of five years up to five years. So you’re already way above the possibly more than a year. And they check no to that. Not realizing that the penalty could have been more than a year. And then guess what? Pennsylvania State Police or a local police department comes ringing on their phone or knocking on their door, and now they’re getting charged with felony crimes. So we protect people from that a lot. And there are ways to do that the right way and to avoid ever going to prison and frankly, even becoming a felon. But you got to handle them appropriately, get a lawyer and do it right. So I want to unpack that with you guys. Okay. The PFA is the other big one to PFA is another one. Um, so Tim, I’ll shift back over to you. Uh, tell me a little bit about the PFA part. Sure. But then also I want to kind of get into what we need to do in those scenarios. When you did check the wrong box and you’re getting charged. Yeah. Um, so let me just start by saying, and these are just my opinions, but here’s a hard pill to swallow. I think for people is that the form is really. We may say that it’s a complicated form, but if you read the form, it’s really not all that complicated there. Yes or no questions. If you don’t understand something, don’t fill the form out. That’s the bottom line. Gun owners gun possessors are held to a much higher standard. And that is, I think, the way that it should be. So Tim, I actually get calls from people who flag this on their own. Yeah. Like they go to fill out the form and they’re like, wait a second, I don’t get that. Or that’s worded weird or, and then they stop. This applies to me. Yeah, right. Or I don’t know if this applies to me. They stop, they don’t submit the form, they call us. And then we sit down with them and we break the form down. Always easier to do it upfront than to do it because you’re signing under penalty of law that everything’s correct. Yeah. And that’s why you get charged. So and talk to a lawyer. Yeah. It’s a state form and it’s also an ATF form. I think our state form is is SF one nineteen. And then the ATF form, I think is the forty four. Seventy four. You have to fill both of those forms out in Pennsylvania, and you could be charged for false statements on either one of those forms under Pennsylvania law. So you got to be careful. And, you know, it really isn’t an excuse, especially as far as the law’s concerned to say, I didn’t know what I was doing. Right. It’s not an excuse. Tell me about the PFAs, Tim. So and I’ll tell you all about the other stuff too. Like what we need to do with the PFAs. If you currently have a PFA out and you’re the subject of that protection from abuse order, you can’t possess a firearm under most circumstances. There’s some weird situations that we’ll talk about here in a second, but, um, as it relates to what to do if you’ve been charged generally the same kind of thing we that we talked about earlier, we’re going to want to do like a gun safety course to demonstrate. And again, the course that we have, you won’t have to handle firearms. So you’re not going to break the law by completing this course. But the course is going to cover things like the, uh, application for sale of a firearm process and covered like the contents of those forms and educate you about that process. So that’s something that also is very good that that prosecutors like to see. And we didn’t mention this earlier, but the instructor who does that writes a letter after the completion of the course, you get a certificate. But he also writes a letter about what they covered in that course, a real nice letter so that the prosecutor can see, okay, we addressed some of the things that led to this charge. That’s part of why we use him. Yeah. And we talked to him ahead of time about tailoring the class and tailoring what he’s teaching them to the situation they’re in, because there’s so many situations involving guns and the laws that you can break. One of them being this checking the wrong box. And he does actually tailor a class to that issue very frequently. That’s a that’s valuable in negotiation. One of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen with this was a guy who, uh, he was convicted of a crime in a state that actually, uh, has had common law offenses. So the other thing that I, that I, and the reason I’m bringing this up is because people will say, well, I didn’t know that the maximum penalty was over a year. But you did though, because at the time of your plea, you are told what the maximum penalties are, and that’s a requirement by law. The Supreme Court has said you have for your plea to be knowing, voluntary and intelligent, you have to know the maximum penalty. And in fact, that’s why it’s in the colloquy that you signed. Yeah. Like the maximum penalty is written usually by your lawyer, if you have one. And if you don’t, it’s written by the prosecutor or the court or a judge will do it on the record. Right. Or they’ll tell you on the record what your maximum penalty is. And a lot of times people don’t care about that because they’re not getting that maximum, or they may get it at the time. But then ten years later, they forgot that the maximum penalty that they could have gotten was five years in jail. So that’s why I say, I mean, the hard pill to swallow here is you got to know that the form that those things don’t apply to you. And if you don’t know, then you should just pump the brakes. Don’t do something that’s going to be a crime. Um, and the other thing that we were talking about with the, uh, with the, um, the form itself is we’re typically trying to negotiate for those charges, dropping the felony, dropping it down because there’s a lot of drop counts that they can do. There’s felonies, there’s misdemeanors. And generally, a lot of times they’ll land on like a misdemeanor of the third degree, which is the lowest level misdemeanor. And if you do really well and we can, uh, we can talk them down even further, they perhaps will even agree to like a summary offense. Yeah. I brought up the common law thing just to say that in that state where this guy was convicted, technically there was no maximum penalty, the maximum penalty. And I spoke to a prosecutor in that county where he was convicted. Their philosophy, their thinking was, well, the maximum penalties, whatever the judge said you got, that’s the maximum penalty. So in that case, I was making the argument to the Da and to the officer. If he was given one year, then the maximum penalty was one year based on their own logic. And so he wouldn’t have technically violated that law. Uh, so you do run into some weird things, but most of the time these cases are pretty they’re pretty locked in because they’ve got a false statement and they usually have the forms, and they have witnesses from the gun shop coming to testify that you filled out the form. So these are hard cases to beat. All right. Well, um, I think that’s really important. One of the things that you said there, Tim, that I want to again reiterate, if you are in this situation, please talk to us because again, a lot of times we can get these reduced to misdemeanors or summary tickets where you end up literally getting nothing additional on your record. You don’t even end up with probation, but handled incorrectly. This is a felony that could put you in prison. So understand that please. And again, you want to be proactive in addressing these matters. All right. Um, I want to move to some federal case developments. Um, there is some, uh, discussion in federal court about when somebody gets a PFA against them. And, uh, Justin, I want to pop to you for this real quick to start us off on this in a PFA situation where somebody a PFA by the way, is protection from abuse order, meaning if you get an order issued against you by a judge that protects you from abusing, as it’s defined under the law, another person that can be disabling to your firearm rights and many times actually is disabling to your firearm rights. But again, there is under the law a way it cannot be disabling to your firearm rights, even though that’s not always how it works, which we’ve experienced in court where literally we’ve gotten we’ve avoided that disabling disability to our client, but then it’s not handled the right way by the sheriffs, even though it’s court ordered. Yeah, but talk to me outside of that, just generally how that works with PFAs and how that can disable your rights and how you can protect against that. Yeah. So, um, essentially if you have a protection from abuse order against you, meaning you or the defendant. You’re the one that’s prohibited contact, etc.. Um, if you go to a hearing rather than come to an agreement or work something out, um, if the judge makes a finding, uh, that um, a finding of abuse will say, or a finding on the record that, uh, that person, uh, poses a threat to the physical safety of another, uh, you’re going to be disqualified from, from owning a firearm. Um, now, on the other hand, if you are able to work out an agreement, um, PFA by agreement, PFA by consent, etc. usually in that case, what happens is you agree with the other party to a length of time, uh, the level of contact and you can essentially agree to leave out the firearm portion or the firearm, uh, disability or disability, however you want to put that because you’re agreeing without admitting to the allegations that are contained in the application. The judge isn’t making a finding of abuse or making a finding that that, you know, you pose a threat to someone. Essentially, you’re just saying, I’m not going to admit to these allegations that were put out, but I will agree to a no contact order. Right. So there’s no finding of abuse, which is huge, not only for, you know, we’ll just plug this real quick, not only for, uh, firearm rights, but a lot of other things, right? There’s a finding of abuse on you that can affect you in many other ways. Yeah. What if you have criminal charges on top of that, and then you go to a PFA hearing, you challenge it, the judge finds you liable and finds that finding of abuse. And now you’re also trying to fight criminal charges on the outside with that finding of abuse hanging on to you. Because that transcript can be introduced against you at trial. Right. And you got to be careful about testifying in your PFA hearing too, because again you’re doing that under oath. Yeah. They can use that against you like you said. And the other thing to remember with those things is that um you could also have it used against you in non-criminal settings like custody. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, it can affect your, uh, that affects, I think, your child abuse clearances and different FBI clearances. Oh big time. So you could potentially, you know, if you work in schools or government buildings, that could affect you in that way. If you need to get the child abuse clearances to coach your kid’s sports and you can’t get them now because you got this problem. Yeah. Yeah. But I think the biggest thing to take away again is, um, if you are the subject of a PFA or someone files a PFA against you, you know, get an attorney, um, talk with them, especially if you are a firearm owner, uh, or own firearms. That way, you know, your attorney can ultimately try to work something out for a PFA by consent or PFA by agreement. And one of the things I’ll say with that is in my experience doing PFAs and, um, not that they’re my favorite types of cases in the world, but I feel like I’ve done quite a few of them, uh, especially in the last six months. Um, judges want agreements like, especially here in York County, Dauphin County, you know, they’re going to, um, you know, not be pushy, but it’s, it’s usually better for everyone if the parties can agree again on a length of time. Uh, whether it’s no contact, no abusive contact, contact limited to children. Uh, what is it? Health, safety, health, safety and well-being. Um, that’s what they want because again, they don’t want to make that finding of abuse. Yeah. And that again, that, that is such a big deal for these PFAs. And, and we could probably do an episode on PFAs and we probably should. Yeah. But the finding of abuse thing, if you reach an agreement, you avoid the finding of abuse. Yeah. Understand that like and also understand having a PFA against you is not a criminal charge. This is a civil action. This is not going on your criminal record. So many people call me and they think with a PFA like, oh, I’ve been charged with a crime or this is like somehow going to hurt my criminal record. Yeah it’s not. Now if you violate the PFA, then you do get charged with a crime. Well, I think too, one of the things that that makes PFA so difficult is when people get to that point, whether you’re the plaintiff or the defendant, you know, there’s so much bad blood already. Oh yeah. Everybody’s angry. Yeah. It’s like, well, I don’t want to come to an agreement or, you know, I don’t want that. Well, if you don’t want contact with each other, just agree to it. Yeah. Sometimes when you break it down to people that way and you’re like, wait, so you guys were dating, you broke up. You don’t have any children together. Do you want to keep contacting this person? And they’re always like, no, I don’t want anything to do with it. Well, who cares about the PFA? And you get your gun rights back when the PFA expires anyway, assuming they were taken. Yeah, assuming they were taken. But if you reach the agreement, as you were saying, Justin, you can work into the agreement only if it’s an agreement that you don’t lose your firearm rights. Yeah, such a big deal. And why it’s relevant to this discussion. Yeah. Specifically in Pennsylvania, I think it’s called a weapons relinquishment. Yeah. That’s like the section of the the PFA order. And the judge is empowered by the statute for PFA to subject you to a relinquishment order as part of a final order. But they have discretion. They don’t have to do that. Right. So if you if you agree to the PFA, they don’t have to order weapons relinquishment. Now this gets muddy pretty quickly because under that same statute, that same title twenty three. In order for you to get your firearms back, if they’ve already been relinquished, you you have to pass a Pecs check. And so the issue that we’re seeing come up now is that, uh, the there, there are some entities out there that are claiming that if you have a final PFA order at all, you’re disabled, you’re not going to pass the Pecs check. Well, that’s problematic. And I think that the law potentially is not on that side of it doesn’t agree with that assessment, especially with the the Supreme Court case that Justin mentioned. There has to be a finding of abuse. And the US Supreme Court has said without that finding, you can’t disable somebody’s firearm rights. Um, so there is a mechanism that exists to challenge a Pecs denial. It’s a bit outside the scope of today’s episode, but if you had no relinquishment order in your final PFA and you’re being denied on the Pecs, check, that is something you can appeal. And in theory, you know, like worst case scenario, you could probably sue the state police in federal court, under the under Brune and its progeny to try to get that firearm relinquished back to you again. Okay, but that’s worst case scenario. Sounds like a mess. Yeah, yeah, it sounds like take a while, too. By the time you actually won that case, you might not even have the PFA anymore. Correct. Correct. Yeah. So I mean, that’s unfortunately, the wheels of justice are slow even when we try to speed them along, you know? Um, okay. I want to move to, uh, just some frequently asked questions. Um, uh, we’ve been kind of cruising along here. Uh, Tim, uh, let’s talk about that a little bit. So, um, first of all, tell me about concealed carry permits. Is that information about who has it, who doesn’t? Is it public? How does that work? No, it’s not public. There are lots of like activist groups out there that would love for that information to be made public. But in Pennsylvania, at least as of now, the information on who has a concealed carry permit, where they live, all that kind of stuff is not public. Okay, so the frequently asked question here is my concealed carry. The fact that I have the permit, can other people figure that out and find it and get that information through public sources? The answer is no. No. Okay. Um, how about getting a concealed carry permit? Um, some states require you to undergo a firearm safety course to get a concealed carry permit. Does Pennsylvania require that? No. Okay. What about. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. Because we want you to be responsible. But what about Maryland, which is right below the border of York County, Pennsylvania? I don’t know. You asked me that question. I’m assuming the answer is yes. They do require you to. Again, I only know that because a lot of clients, uh, you know, we’re so close to the border of Maryland have told me like, yeah, I actually had to take a full class down here to get my permit in Maryland when I was. Go ahead. I was gonna say, I think some just plug real quick here. If you do have a concealed carry permit and you’re planning on traveling out of state with your firearm, please check the reciprocity. Oh, dude, that’s what I was gonna say. Huge. I mean, because essentially, I think almost every surrounding state test does not have reciprocity. The People’s Republic of Maryland, new Jersey, Delaware, New York, Ohio. So the takeaway, guys, is having a license to carry in a state is a license to carry a firearm in that state, but nowhere else. Well, and reciprocity unless there’s reciprocity. But I’ll give you a case example. I had a teacher, wonderful guy from Delaware. Yeah, okay. He’s a teacher in Delaware. He came to York, Pennsylvania for a wedding, brought his handgun with him, had a concealed carry permit in the state of Delaware, got pulled over after the wedding because he was swerving on the road. Suspicion of DUI got charged with it. Guess what? He also got charged with driving without a license, carrying a firearm, without a license, felony charge. Which to be honest, like, I mean, obviously it’s a tangent and the episode’s gone long enough, but like, I for one, just don’t like that in general. I mean, like, you don’t get a driver’s license in one state and then drive into another state and the state tells you, by the way, you can’t drive a car here. So I think. I think we’re heading with the way the law has been. I could see a day down the road where the concept of reciprocity goes away. Yeah, but that’s going to be probably a long time. Like, I don’t think that’s happening anytime soon. Yeah. And needless to say, in the case example I just gave you after I showed the prosecutor that my client was a good guy, just didn’t understand the whole reciprocity thing, made a mistake, but otherwise was decent. They dropped the charge. Right. I mean, so again, it’s getting into the weeds with prosecutors. But at the same time he had to deal with that. He had to litigate it. Yeah. We had to go to court. You know, we had and he had to you know, it was not a fight for it. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, that’s something very good to mention. I’m glad you brought that up, Justin. Okay. Um, how about this? Uh, I’ll kick this to either one of you. You walk, you’re walking into Walmart or a grocery store, and there’s a sign on the wall that says no guns on, you know, in this premises or whatever. Um, you have a concealed carry permit. You got your firearm on you concealed on your person. What do you do? What’s your rights there? Walk on in. Yep. Yeah it is. I mean, I mean, like I said earlier, I mean, the whole point of concealing is people don’t know about it, right? So like if nobody knows about it, it’s not a problem. Now you can be potentially opening yourself up to some liability. Like if somebody becomes aware that you have a firearm and you’re asked to leave, you have to leave because at that point you can be charged with disorderly conduct or defiant trespass. But there is no per se offense to disregarding one of those signs and wonders, how would they ever know you had a firearm if it was truly concealed and you weren’t breaking it out? Well, it kind of implies that you are being disorderly, right? Right. Yeah. Because you’ve gotten your firearm out and it’s now visible. So there’s another problem. Yeah. Um, yeah. But the bottom line is, I mean, again, you don’t have to not go into the store. But again, if you’re asked to leave, you do have to leave. But yeah, you’d be being asked to leave because they were aware of your firearm, which means there’s another problem. You shouldn’t linger there at that point. Yeah. I mean, if I mean and even if they just became incidentally aware of it, like they saw it print or something on your shirt or whatever, like you just probably don’t want to linger in that situation because you’re drawing attention. You want to get out of there. And I think the biggest thing we talked about this with, like, you know, school zones and certain other prohibited places, um, there are exceptions to that. The biggest, I think we’ll call it the catchall is for any lawful purpose, which if essentially you say self-defense is a lawful purpose. Yeah. Does that mean you should be doing that? That’s for you to decide. I mean, because you’re again, I mean, you’re kind of like exposing yourself to the possibility that this could become a problem. So be aware of it at a heightened standard. Yeah. Make good decisions. And schools are like a big one for this because like, technically you probably shouldn’t have a firearm if you’re on school grounds and you definitely could be looked at sideways and possibly prosecuted if you do. But if you’re carrying that firearm for a lawful purpose, safer self-defense, right? You would possibly have a defense if you were charged with. I think I think the way the current law is, you definitely have a defense there. Yeah. I mean, I know Commonwealth versus Goslin, which is which I think is pretty clear on that. Like you you wouldn’t be able to open carry on school grounds, but I think you can conceal carry. And as a prosecutor, there were several cases where I got calls as the on call Da from officers who had a case where it became known that somebody on school grounds had a firearm. The first questions out of my mouth were, are they a lawful CCP holder? Where was the firearm? Did they point it at anyone? Did they ever draw it? And in one case, one of the recent cases, no, this person, this person just identified that he had a firearm to dispatch. He was calling police for another reason and told them, I have a firearm in my car, which is parked on school grounds. Valid concealed carry permit holder. My recommendation was no charges and I. I was told by my higher ups they agreed with that call. So I think generally speaking, if you’re concealing on school grounds, you can do it. But again, you run the risk that somebody could charge you or somebody could somebody could kick you out or there could be a scene. Yeah. Okay. Um, now there are some areas where you literally are just not allowed to have a firearm, period. Right. Justin, what are some of those areas? So biggest ones, obviously, since we’re attorneys, the courthouse, uh, courthouses, I should say, uh, jails or prisons, um, airports, there are definitely certain government buildings, um, mental hospitals. Those are going to be the main ones. Um, yeah. And I mean, I, and I can, you know, chime in here too. I mean, you guys all know this because we’ve all done it. If you have your firearm on you, when you’re, say, walking over to court to do a hearing and you’re just concealed carrying because you have a concealed carry permit, you literally have to check that firearm at the gate, which is a luxury in York County. Yeah. Not not all counties do that. Yeah. That’s true. Yeah. That’s true. York County does have like lock boxes. And you have to go through the sheriff’s department to do it. And they check you in and check you out so you can sign it in and sign it out when you’re ready to leave. Which is cool. Yeah. Not many places in central PA. Not many courthouses, right? Yeah. But let’s talk about magistrate courts. You walk into a magistrate court, you’re technically not supposed to have your firearm on you in that magistrate court. That’s a big one. And they don’t have lockboxes there. So again, we have to be aware of that. Some of them do have lockboxes, but I think it’s just for law enforcement. Like I don’t I’ve never seen one. I think I’ve seen a couple of them around. I know I’ve seen for cell phones. Is that what that’s for? Yes. I always assumed that was for fire. I think it’s judge s box office has one. Um, but yeah, no, firearms are a big no no, especially here in York County. And I know that, uh, when we were in the DA’s office, there was an incident at one of the MJ’s where, um, without going into it, people came in with firearms. They were law enforcement officers technically, but came in with firearms and didn’t tell anyone that they were law enforcement. They were law enforcement. And the judge was not happy. The Da was not happy. Nobody was really happy because it kind of caught everybody by surprise. So I think, you know, depending on if you are a police officer or some sort of, uh, agent or something like that, you need to identify yourself if you’re carrying. Yeah. You know, that’s just common courtesy. I, yeah, I would agree. I mean, I guess the law technically doesn’t place a duty on them to do that, but obviously, like they, that could have been a scene too. And imagine then I mean, you got, you got blue on blue. Now you potentially have law enforcement on law enforcement. Like that’s just a stupid situation to put yourself in. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, again, I mean, most places though, outside of the disqualifiers, which you said, Justin, are pretty presumably able to carry if you’re a lawful concealed carry permit. Oh, that’s a good point. You cannot carry in casinos. Nice. I didn’t know that in Pennsylvania, at least. Okay. Yeah. That’s a that’s a big I mean, we’ve got a a big casino here in York, Pennsylvania. Yeah. I know there’s some in Dauphin County. Like there’s casinos pretty much regularly everywhere now. That’s by statute. Okay. That’s that’s it. Well and they’re governed by the gaming. What is it. Gaming control board. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um. All right. Uh, kind of the last topic I want to jump to here. Let’s just talk about knives, for instance. This isn’t part of a guns, right? But knives and swords. I mean, some weird stuff here. Um, in Pennsylvania, we have the, uh. There’s a crime for, uh, possessing a prohibited offensive weapon is what that’s that’s charged. And there’s actually a laundry list of things that are considered prohibited offensive weapons. And until recently, switchblades were on that list. Twenty twenty four. Yeah. It was I think the law was signed by Governor Wolf. It was signed. And so that would be twenty twenty two. Oh, well, I said recently that went into effect in twenty twenty three. So it is recent, three years ago, within the last few years. Yeah. I mean, and I would have young kids who go down to the boardwalk, get a switchblade, you know, it costs them five bucks and they’re carrying around and they don’t even they get caught for something stupid. And then they’re charged with this crime. Yeah. Because for a while there were certain types of knives that were defined in that statute. But when the law changed in twenty twenty three, it went into effect. I think it was at the beginning of the year. They removed knives from that statute altogether. So now there is no knife. That is a prohibited offensive weapon. And it was funny because I had a guy call in to the DA’s office I was working at at the time and asked me if about the law change and if he would be charged with, you know, if he had a switchblade. And I was like, wait, so you had a guy, did he identify himself? Yeah, yeah. Hi, my name’s Joe Smith. He was like, I’m currently committing this crime. No, he was like, I want to get a switchblade. Like, I’ve picked one out. And if I get it, like, am I gonna be charged? And I was like, why are you asking me this dude? And so he told me about the law because like, I didn’t know that it had changed. I went and looked it up and I called him back and was like, look, I based on what I’m seeing, I don’t think you can be charged. I mean, unless you stab somebody with it, then you’re getting charged. Yeah. You know, just having it. No, I don’t think so. And I circulated an email around the office because I think none of us really knew the law had changed. And then a few days later, one of the prosecutors in the office came in and he was like, hey, I went down to the beach. I think, like you said, he’s like, I was out of state and I bought a switchblade and he showed it to me. He was like, these are legal now I’m gonna start carrying one too. Yeah. So so yeah, switchblades out the front, blade, knives and everything. They’re all legal in Pennsylvania. Yeah. No cane swords or brass knuckles. Cane swords. What is a cane sword? So a cane sword is just what it sounds like. It’s essentially a cane with a. You can pull the, I guess the handle out. It’s got. The blade is concealed concealed in the cane in the cane. Uh, brass knuckles are probably the biggest ones that are most common. Yeah, that is on the list. Yeah. And can be counted. I think you have to have a permit for them to Billy clubs. Billy clubs. Well, I think black nightsticks. Black blackjacks. Or what about nightsticks. I’m pretty sure it’s gonna depend. So I had a case where a guy, uh, his car, they ended up seizing it, uh, got a search warrant because he had told the trooper that he had a cane sword. It looked like a cane sword. Ultimately, they searched the car. It ends up being. It’s like a super hard, thick plastic cane. But on the handles that kind of had two, um, like cones with a point. So, uh, there was this debate because he was charged with prohibited offensive weapons. However, uh, because of how that is defined under the statute, the judge ended up finding that it did not qualify as a prohibited offensive weapon. Uh, but it could have qualified as, uh, what is it? Possession of an instrument of crime. Right. Because essentially what he had testified to regarding it was like, oh, well, I bought it for my girlfriend to like, carry around the Eagles games or something in case someone attacks her. So essentially he’s saying, I bought it as a weapon to employ criminal. Yeah. Um, so she’s going to become like a ninja immediately. I mean, I’ll tell you, I pick that thing up. It probably weighed a good twenty pounds. And I mean, it wasn’t wow, it wasn’t carrying around a tree limb with him. It was, it was probably about, you know, three feet high. I mean, it was, it was it was heavy duty. It could definitely. If you swung that at someone’s head very easily, could have killed them. Nice. Wow. Wow. Um, yeah. That’s interesting. I mean, I, again, I wanted to touch on that prohibitive offensive weapons because there has been some, we’ll call it recent changes. Uh, but I’m actually seeing less of it than I used to. Well, it’s because they’re not charging you with knives anymore. And I think there was a time too, where there was kind of like a rule, like no fixed blades or no, like if the blades bigger than your palm. That was what my my father always told me growing up as a kid, like, don’t carry a blade if it’s more than, longer than your palm. But now none of that’s really in play. I think obviously, again, be tasteful if you’re walking around with a machete. Pete, you’re gonna draw attention. Yeah, but like a modest fixed blade knife, even you can’t. I mean, it’s it’s not a crime, right? Good. All right, guys, well, um, thank you for listening to the, uh, now We Defend podcast and, um, we like to touch on these very important, uh, topics that are very, very relevant to a lot of people. We’re really, really big on protecting yourself and protecting your rights. But to be big on protecting your rights, you got to know your rights. And you got to know how to affect your rights. And what you’re doing is legal. Part of the reason we do these podcasts, we want to give you that information. So again, guys, this is Kearney Law. This is the Now We Defend podcast. We appreciate you listening. Please comment ask questions. We will interact with you. We love when you do that. I say that every episode. Um, remember to look for the little secret thing in our studio here. And again, if you comment about it, I’ll get in touch with you and we’ll hopefully get you some merch. Uh, I say it every episode like us on our socials, guys. Uh, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram. It really does help us. Uh, and it lets us know that we’re reaching the people that, uh, are, these things are important to, in these topics matter to. So we look forward to hopefully getting a chance to talk to you. Thanks again for listening. Bye.
