By: Teresa Mull
Sixty-four-year-old Ronald Stolarczyk of Oneida County, New York could be charged with a felony for using a gun to defend himself against criminals in his own home.
Stolarczyk, The Daily Signal reports, was in his kitchen one day when two intruders entered his home.
According to the Signal:
Stolarczyk then yelled at the burglars to leave, hoping that knowledge of his presence would scare them away. The burglars were undeterred by his warning, and one even aggressively advanced toward him.
Stolarczyk now feared for his life, both because his home had previously been broken into and because he was aware of recent home invasions that resulted in the death of the homeowner.
Stolarczyk quickly retrieved his deceased father’s .38-caliber Rossi revolver and fired several rounds at the burglars, both of whom were killed.
After making sure he was safe from all threats, Stolarczyk immediately called the police and walked to the far end of his driveway to wait for their arrival.
Once they arrived, the responding officers investigated the incident and the Oneida County district attorney concluded that the shooting was likely justified, and that Stolarczyk would not face homicide charges.
The state police, however, arrested Stolarczyk on a charge of felony criminal possession of a firearm.
Syracuse.com reports that Stolarczyk’s lawyer said his client was “scared to death and thought he was going to die.
“Yesterday he was minding his own business in his kitchen,” he said, “and today he’s in jail.”
Stolarczyk, you see, used a revolver his late father had left to him when he died. The revolver had been registered legally when Stolarczyk’s father lived with him, but because Stolarczyk himself didn’t go through the onerous process of filling out pages of paperwork and shelling out hundreds of dollars to register the gun in his own name and get a handgun permit, Stolarczyk could become a felon.
The Daily Signal reports:
Thus, under state law, this otherwise law-abiding citizen was “guilty” of a Class E felony punishable by up to four years in state prison and the permanent loss of his Second Amendment rights.
Additionally, the local government seized possession of Stolarczyk’s house, claiming it was in violation of local housing codes, purportedly because he could not afford running water or electricity and kept the house full of old electronics.
All of this happened because Stolarczyk—who couldn’t even afford a standard cellphone plan—failed to properly jump through all the hoops necessary to gain the government’s permission to possess a firearm in his home for self-defense.
Gun owners know the unconstitutional gun control mandates we have in place are not working. All they do, as we see in Stolarczyk’s case, is make the lives of otherwise law-abiding citizens a nightmare.
Background checks are a key tenant to the licensing requirements many states require. Yet Breitbart informs us many of the most recent mass shooters went through the legal steps to obtain their firearms. These include:
"…the attackers at Las Vegas and Orlando, the Tree of Life Synagogue attacker (October 27, 2018), the Texas church attacker (November 5, 2017), the Alexandria attacker (June 14, 2017), the San Bernardino attackers (December 2, 2015), the Colorado Springs attacker (October 31, 2015), the Umpqua Community College attacker (October 1, 2015), Alison Parker’s attacker (August 26, 2015), the Lafayette movie theater attacker (July 23, 2015), the Chattanooga attacker (July 16, 2015), the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal attacker (Jun 17, 2015), the Muhammad Carton Contest attackers (May 3, 2014), the Las Vegas cop killers (June 9, 2015), the Santa Barbara attacker (May 23, 2014), the Fort Hood attacker (April 2, 2014), the Arapahoe High School attacker (December 13, 2013), the D.C. Navy Yard attacker (September 16, 2013), the Aurora movie theater attacker (July 20, 2012), the Fort Hood attacker (November 5, 2009), and the Virginia Tech attacker (April 16, 2007)."
The thing is, in these instances, the shooters were not criminals until they carried out their mass shootings. Background checks did nothing to stop them. In cases where a background check would stop a criminal from getting a gun, guess what? Criminals avoid the background check system all together. The Department of Justice recently released the 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates (SPI), revealing that of the prisoners who had possessed a firearm during their offense, a huge majority of them did not jump through gun control hoops to obtain their gun(s).
The survey finds:
"An estimated 287,400 prisoners had possessed a firearm during their offense. Among these, more than half (56%) had either stolen it (6%), found it at the scene of the crime (7%), or obtained it off the street or from the underground market (43%). Most of the remainder (25%) had obtained it from a family member or friend, or as a gift. Seven percent had purchased it under their own name from a licensed firearm dealer.
"Among prisoners who possessed a gun during their offense, 90% did not obtain it from a retail source.
"The survey also found: "Handguns were the most common type of firearm possessed by state and federal prisoners (18% each); 11% of all prisoners used a handgun," and "Among prisoners who possessed a firearm during their offense, 0.8% obtained it at a gun show."
Teresa Mull is editor of Gunpowder Magazine. Contact her at [email protected].