A federal judge has ruled that a Long Island couple's Second Amendment rights were violated after the Nassau County Police Department's Pistol License Section revoked their permits and ordered them to turn over their firearms after their daughter had expressed thoughts of depression and harming herself with a rope. Even after multiple physicians determined the child wasn't in danger of harming herself, the police refused to reinstate Dennis and Lisa Wysocki's licenses, and more than three years after their guns were surrendered the Wysocki's have yet to get them back.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Sanket Bulsara granted the couple's request for summary judgment based on a violation of their Second Amendment rights, writing that the police department "present zero evidence that the PLS's actions are consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation," instead relying on the Rahimi decision to justify their actions.
Rahimi addressed the constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), which disarms individuals subject to certain domestic violence protective orders. The Supreme Court upheld the provision based on a historical tradition of disarming individuals that pose a clear threat of physical violence to another person.
Defendants contend that the founding-era surety and going-armed laws in Rahimi establish a more general principle: the government may act in a "targeted and time-limited way, based on reliable evidence of dangerousness, to prevent serious harm while the risk is appropriately managed." But Rahimi does not establish such a such a broad exception to the Second Amendment. It only condoned the Government's ability "to disarm individuals who present a credible threat to the physical safety of others."
The disarmament here is not based on the Wysockis posing a credible threat to the safety of others nor to prevent their misuse of firearms. Defendants' initial firearms seizure and license revocation was not based upon their risk to others (or their risk of misuse). Instead, it was based on the Wysockis' daughter's mental-health emergency and her danger to herself, based on firearms owned by others. And Defendants' ongoing refusal to return the firearms or licenses appears to be entirely arbitrary or unlawful—it is based not on any existence of mental health treatment or even current threat that the daughter poses to herself or others.
The evidence in the record is that that threat long ago dissipated (if it ever existed at all). Yet, Defendants refuse to let the Wysockis have their firearms or licenses and have imposed a set of requirements—additional letters from mental health practitioners and the purchases of particular kinds of safes—not based on any policy or laws, but on requirements of Defendants' own-making. While "[a]nalogical reasoning requires only that the government identify a well-established and representative historical analogue," not a "historical twin or 'dead ringer,'" the Defendants have failed to provide any relevant analogy, historical evidence, or relevant argument at all. Defendants' conduct is a plain violation of the Second Amendment.
The Wysockis were subjected to a Kafka-esque nightmare after their daughter told a school counselor that she'd been feeling depressed and had thought about using a rope to harm herself.
Concerned for her wellbeing, they took their daughter to see a psychiatrist, who determined that she didn't "represent an imminent danger to self or others.” The very next day the couple received a visit from Child Protective Services and the Nassau County PD. The police examined their gun safes and confirmed that their guns were stored in locked safes with trigger locks.
Two days after that, on February 13, 2023, Dennis Wysocki called the PLS and spoke with Officer Vito Scaglione to report his daughter’s comments as well as the visit from the local police. He relayed that the officers had examined the safes, confirmed that their firearms were properly stored, and that his daughter had been evaluated and discharged by the psychiatrist as not an imminent danger to herself or others.
Scaglione responded by informing Wysocki that he and his wife's pistol licenses were going to be suspended and their guns were going to be confiscated. Instead, the couple transferred their firearms to a local FFL for safekeeping and presented the receipt to Scaglione, who informed them that they both needed to provide written statements about what had transpired.
The Wysockis submitted the statements explaining the incident with their daughter, along with Dr. Stein’s letter on February 14, 2023. They then submitted on April 18, 2023 a letter from CPS that the investigation was closed as “unfounded.” Scaglione instructed them to provide a letter from their daughter’s treating doctor stating that it was safe for her to live in a home where guns are kept, and that he would continue the investigation and would see them “in about 8–12 months."
At this point two months have already gone by, and now the officer is telling them it could be another year before they get their guns back, and only if a doctor writes a letter saying it's okay for their daughter to live in a home where firearms are kept in a locked safe. And as it turns out, the Wysockis would be waiting a lot longer than twelve months to have their firearms returned.
In June 2023, Dennis informed the PLS that they were unable to obtain a letter from a doctor stating that it was safe for their daughter to live in a home with firearms. The Wysockis maintain that Scaglione informed them that even with such a letter, their licenses would not be reinstated until they purchased two biometric safes, which they have no intention of purchasing, and that if their daughter “ever did anything like this again” they would never have their licenses returned. The Wysockis’ pistol licenses remain insuspended status and the PLS investigation remains open.
Our Second Amendment rights aren't contingent on getting a doctor to sign off, nor can they be violated based on some arbitrary or capricious decision from a police officer. As the judge wrote:
Defendants’ ongoing refusal to return the firearms or licenses appears to be entirely arbitrary or unlawful—it is based not on any existence of mental health treatment or even current threat that the daughter poses to herself or others. The evidence in the record is that that threat long ago dissipated (if it ever existed at all). Yet, Defendants refuse to let the Wysockis have their firearms or licenses and have imposed a set of requirements—additional letters from mental health practitioners and the purchases of particular kinds of safes—not based on any policy or laws, but on requirements of Defendants’ own-making.
Bulsara added that it appears the PLS had no authority to suspend their licenses in the first place, and that the couple are "entitled to an injunction requiring the return of their firearms and the reinstatement of their pistol licenses."
Even that bit of common sense comes with a twist worthy of a M. Night Shyamalan movie, though. The Wysockis and their attorney Amy Bellantoni had also raised a facial challenge to Penal Law § 400.00(11), as well as a Monell claim, under which a municipality may be held liable under § 1983 if the deprivationof the plaintiff’s constitutional rights “is caused by a governmental custom, policy, or usage of the municipality.”
Bulsara denied summary judgment to those claims, and informed the couple that while they're entitled to an injunction that would reinstate their licenses and see their firearms returned, "entry of such injunction must wait until entry of final judgment, absent a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b), in light of the remaining claims for trial: the Fourth Amendment and Monell claims." The judge then set a deadline of August 21, 2026 for the parities to file a joint pretrial order, so any injunctive relief won't be granted until then at the earliest.
At least the Wysockis can now see some light at the end of the tunnel, but what they've been subjected to over the past three years is absolutely appalling. What the Nassau County Police Department has done should infuriate gun owners and mental health advocates alike, because the department has made it pretty clear that even if parents do the right thing and seek help for a child who has expressed thoughts of depression or self-harm, they'll be punished for it. That is not the message authorities should be sending, and it's sickening to me that the NCPD is still trying to defend the actions of Officer Scaglione and the Pistol Licensing Section.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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