Crime & Safety
Bloomfield Township Ordinances Enforced in BB Gun Incident
Carrying a BB gun is not a crime in Bloomfield Township, but officers have the discretion and authority to confiscate them on an individual basis, officials said.
Last month, we featured a story about two Bloomfield Township teens who surrendered their realistic-looking BB guns to police after neighbors called about armed men walking around the Wabeek subdivision. And Patch readers took notice, commenting on everything ranging from police authority and the right to bear arms, to neighborhood security.
Capt. Scott McCanham of the Bloomfield Township Police Department did not want to address specific comments or questions posed by the readers who posted more than two dozen comments. He did, however, take the time to explain to explain to Bloomfield-Bloomfield Hills Patch that the township ordinances on firearms, including, BB guns, are pretty straightforward.
The Incident
Officers with the Bloomfield Township Police Department encountered the two adults, ages 18 and 19, shortly after a resident said he saw two individuals walking down the street holding guns at about 5 p.m. on April 17 on Wabeek Lake Drive, reports said. Though officers confirmed the guns — a rifle and a pistol — were BB guns, they noted in their report how real the firearms looked, and that they lacked the brighter colors one might expect with typical BB, or air-propelled weapons.
The two men, who also reside in the neighborhood with their parents, acknowleged that the guns looked real enough to be a concern and understood why someone would call the police, according to reports.
McCanham said they told officers they were not openly firing the weapons, but that they did intend to shoot them as part of a game and at each other in a different part of the subdivision. They surrendered the guns to the police upon request and there is no indication of any protest.
The officers verbally warned the men and confiscated the weapons for destruction. They did not write up misdemeanor tickets for local ordinance violations and no further action is expected, McCanham said.
Mixed Reaction
Some Bloomfield-Bloomfield Hills Patch readers said they believed the police overstepped their boundaries by confiscating items that can be legally purchased and brandished in Michigan without a license.
“Michigan is an open-carry state, so a verbal warning for what? Confiscated why, and disposed of why?” Steve Herrington wrote.
Others agreed, but also expressed the need to balance individual rights with public safety concerns.
“It's not unreasonable for people to call the police if they had the guns in their hands,” Joshua Hunter wrote. “What's unreasonable is the police response. It's not really "voluntary" when a group of people with badges and guns detains you to coerce you into surrendering your property.”
McCanham reiterated the owners voluntarily surrendered the guns, and that the officers used their discretion in evaluating the specific incident and potential threat to the public.
Exercising Local Control
Though readers like Herrington are correct that Michigan is an ‘open-carry’ state — allowing any law-abiding citizen 18 or older to carry a weapon in places not exempt by state law or concealed-weapons regulations — police officers to have leeway in how it is enforced.
McCanham said that Bloomfield Township currently has two ordinances that apply to the Wabeek situation, including one that gives police the authority to prevent and prohibit the discharge of a firearm within township borders. Here they are verbatim, according to links provided by the township’s website:
- Ordinance 22-253 (adopted in 1970): “No person shall discharge any firearm, air rifle, air pistol within the township, except when lawfully acting in the defense of persons or property or the enforcement of law or at a duly established range, the operation of which has been approved by the board of trustees.“
- Ordinance 22-256: “No person shall use or possess any firearm designed and manufactured exclusively for propelling BB's not exceeding .177 caliber by means of spring, gas, or air, outside the curtilage of his domicile within the township. The firearm may be used only to shoot at a designated target within a safe location so as to avoid BB's from leaving the curtilage of the domicile.”
It’s possible the officers could have just verified the weapons were BB guns and told the teens go use them somewhere else and not carry them openly to alarm neighbors. However, McCanham said they used their discretion on two key points: the guns were not easily identifiable from afar; and that the men said they intended to use the guns in the near future, and not likely to use a designated target in a safe area.
“These guns did not have any red markings or anything like that which would indicate they were not real weapons when the officers approached,” he said. “It’s likely to set off some concerns with residents and it is entirely within the officer’s discretion to take the appropriate action, which they did.”
Do you agree with how the officers applied local ordinances here, and how would you feel about these type of weapons carried openly in the community?
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