Ralph Yarl, 17, filed a civil suit in Clay County Court seeking monetary damages from Andrew “Dan” Lester, along with Lester’s homeowners’ association. The HOA failed to take precautions about a “potentially dangerous individual,” the lawsuit says.
That would be great, but police can barely take a person’s guns away if they aren’t actively involved in a crime. I’d be shocked if a court found an HOA to have that power. I’m not against it but I don’t even think the Supreme Court of 12 years ago would do for it, much less this Supreme Court.
I doubt that fine would be legal. The most I’ve seen is just a standard requirement for a license/permit (i.e. legal ownership), and maybe restricting open/concealed-carry in the neighborhood (but outside the house. Inside your house is out of the HOA’s grasp, though.)
HOAs implement illegal rules all the time. They were literally first used to end run discrimination laws. It doesn’t even have to be insurance, it could be something else to frustrate gun owners lives. That’s the beauty of selective enforcement /s
Illicit rule making being in their repertoire wouldn’t make it any more just (two wrongs, and everything) or enforceable, as the gun owner could easily just not abide by or pay it. Also, Making any regulation/fee or anything to “frustrate” gun owners could also be seen as harassment.
There is no indication that the guy ever used or brandished the gun outside his home, which is where the HOA’s jurisdiction would be. Like I said, the HOA can’t do a damn thing about what goes on inside someone’s home. If they were to try, it would fall flat the minute it gets challenged especially with Kansas being one of the states having a castle doctrine which implies the possibile use of a gun (i.e. deadly force) for defense.
The case is likely going to be about the castle doctrine and it’s limits on whether someone standing on your doorstep constitutes a threat, (which it doesn’t) along with trying to prove that the kid was trying to break in (this I doubt) which could justify an imminent threat.
I am in no way on the side of the old man. I actually think he was completely in the wrong (also got off way too easy) and the kid was legitimately just at the wrong house.
My opinion is the man should be evaluated for mental fitness and if unfit would be required to need a caretaker, of sorts. If no mental issues, be tried and convicted for the first degree assault (attempted homicide) charge.
The HOA however does not have any actual stake in it that I’ve found, as the kid was shot from behind the storm door by the old man who was inside his house.
Yes. I’m not saying that they wouldn’t try to come up with bogus/farfetched regulations, but they legitimately cannot do anything about what goes on behind closed doors in someone’s house. To do otherwise would be a breach in that person’s right to privacy. It’d be like an HOA telling you, you have to vacuum/sweep/mop every other day, otherwise you can be fined. (or saying you can’t have sex on Sundays)
HOAs do have some extralegal clout, but the right to privacy stops them from interfering in anything you do that isn’t openly visible. (i.e. Doing a meatspin in front of a window facing the street can be penalized, but taking a dump in your kitchen sink can’t, unless the sink is in front of a window facing the street and the blinds/curtains/shutters are open.)
Ah yes, let’s ensure only the well off can afford firearms.
Let’s be fair, half the point of an HOA is keeping the poors (and ethnics, but they aren’t allowed to say that part out loud any more) out of your neighborhood to maintain property values. So your HOA requiring you to carry some kind of gun insurance wouldn’t be completely unreasonable, if you can’t afford it (or anything else they want) you shouldn’t be living under that HOA.
Also why I don’t live in an HOA, and having an HOA was a red flag when I was looking for a house.
Guns aren’t cheap. If you can buy a gun, and you can buy ammo, you can afford insurance. It’s only the well off who already can afford firearms so I don’t get what you’re arguing? You wanna give guns to poor people?
No, all of that is wrong, and yes, the poor people should have guns. Everyone has the right to self defense.
Guns can be cheap, ammo is generally affordable, and there could be many who could afford both but not insurance. $250 one time purchase versus $hundreds or $thousands annually.
Also, there’s no way in hell you could put a requirement to pay regular insurance costs as a requirement to exercise a Constitutional right. The courts would flush that down the shithole immediately.
I’d be shocked if a court found an HOA to have that power.
Courts have pretty consistently found that HOA’s have more power than local authorities. That’s why they can set their own laughably restrictive bylaws.
Second amendment violations may not fly, but that’s a constitutionality problem, not a limit specifically on HOAs.
I hate HOA’s, but some people like them. Regardless of how I feel about HOA’s I still think it’s dumb as hell that they should have any sort of liability for a member of an hoa doing something like this.
The percentage of people I know that like HOAs is absurdly small, including neighbors and acquaintances from the last HOA I was in. Almost everyone I know hates them but is forced to deal with them because almost every neighborhood has one. Towns require them for new zoning because it allows them to pass the buck on code enforcement and then a handful of people love them because it lets them power trip The vast majority are just stuck with them due to lack of options.
I’ve ran into a lot of people living in them who like em. Some people are just anal about wanting to only see trimmed uniform lawns and no trashcans or broken down vehicles anywhere near them.
I think it’s dumb to let others have a say in what color I make my house or how long I can have a car sit as a driveway ornament.
We specifically only looked for houses without HOAs, then during closing it was revealed that there was one the realtor “missed” because it was basically defunct. Within weeks of moving in we got a letter saying how the HOA was stepping up its game to make up for the last few years and it became the bane of our existence. One of the board members was obsessed with issuing citations and fining people for backing cars into their driveways because “the CCRs say that you can’t park a vehicle in an extreme state of disrepair for more than 48 hours so if you back it in I can’t see if it has a current registration sticker on the license plate.” The only people I’ve ever met that like them are control freak karens like that dude.
You should have bailed at closing and fired your realtor with prejudice. Most realtors are almost bigger pieces of scum than hoa’s. Taking like 12 grand each for doing up a bit of paperwork. You can pay a lawyer $1500 and find your own place on zilliw or Facebook marketplace. I bought my house in 2010 with no realtors or lawyers at all (seller also didn’t have one). Just met up at the bank I was getting the home loan through and filed some generic stuff. Done deal.
It wasn’t worth starting over again with the way the market was. It was Seattle area in 2017 where every sale was a bidding war. There are good realtors, that just wasn’t one.
When moving to an unfamiliar area there’s tons of value to a good realtor. To know what the local market is like, which school districts matter to which people. Which roads can flood and what your morning commute is going to be like or how loud the planes are going to be over the house. I can spend weeks doing all the leg work myself but realistically, my time is worth more than that to me. A shitty realtor doesn’t give much value, a good one absolutely can. Also, working as an intermediary with shitty sellers or buyers to insulate you from other peoples unreasonableness is one of their main jobs.
The realtor we used to buy that HOA house saw us as a zero effort easy payday. The one that sold that house for us did an absolutely amazing job and the one we used to buy our current home got us a house we absolutely love for less than we were looking to spend.
That, or a developer buys a plot of land, makes a neighborhood with some amenities, and then it’s damn near impossible to kill because of those amenities. My HOA is pretty lightweight - half our budget pays the trash bill. But we do have a few plots of land that belong to the association, don’t even have any structures on them, and if the HOA were to dissolve someone would need to assume responsibility for those spots. I can only imagine what it would be like if we had a pool.
Yeah, that part of the suit will fail. But I think it’s worth trying to expand the dragnet of responsible parties regardless. The more people at risk of going to jail for shootings, the more people might support gun control.
It isn’t the same as parents getting jailed for their kid’s mass shooting. But I kinda feel a little bit like it’s still worth trying just to increase a societal sense of culpability.
I 100% disagree. There shouldn’t be any sort of dragnet for a crime beyond the people who did it or planned it.
Where does it stop? Blame the auto manufacturer for making a fast car used as a getaway vehicle for a robbery?
Blame the knife manufacturer for a stabbing? Blaming the company that sold the knife manufacturer the steel blanks, knowing they were getting made into knives? Blame the mining company that sold the iron ore to the steel company? It’s all an idiotic well of useless accountability. No one else should be accountable outside of the stabber. Same for guns, ammo manufacturers, steel factories, etc.
You can commit crimes with almost anything. Maybe I’ll shove kleenex down your throat until you pass out and you can sue kleenex for it.
Could you imagine if the thing that kills HOAs ended up being liability for the actions of their members?
Go Ralph go!
I’m a little hard.
Just make sure it isn’t visible from the curb.
That would be great, but police can barely take a person’s guns away if they aren’t actively involved in a crime. I’d be shocked if a court found an HOA to have that power. I’m not against it but I don’t even think the Supreme Court of 12 years ago would do for it, much less this Supreme Court.
It wouldn’t be “no guns”, it would be “carry this insurance if you have guns” and then fining the people who don’t or won’t carry the insurance.
I doubt that fine would be legal.
The most I’ve seen is just a standard requirement for a license/permit (i.e. legal ownership), and maybe restricting open/concealed-carry in the neighborhood (but outside the house. Inside your house is out of the HOA’s grasp, though.)https://vinteum.io/security/qas-about-guns-in-your-hoa/
Edit: Kansas actually doesn’t require any license or permit to buy or own a gun. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Kansas
HOAs implement illegal rules all the time. They were literally first used to end run discrimination laws. It doesn’t even have to be insurance, it could be something else to frustrate gun owners lives. That’s the beauty of selective enforcement /s
Illicit rule making being in their repertoire wouldn’t make it any more just (two wrongs, and everything) or enforceable, as the gun owner could easily just not abide by or pay it. Also, Making any regulation/fee or anything to “frustrate” gun owners could also be seen as harassment.
There is no indication that the guy ever used or brandished the gun outside his home, which is where the HOA’s jurisdiction would be. Like I said, the HOA can’t do a damn thing about what goes on inside someone’s home. If they were to try, it would fall flat the minute it gets challenged especially with Kansas being one of the states having a castle doctrine which implies the possibile use of a gun (i.e. deadly force) for defense.
The case is likely going to be about the castle doctrine and it’s limits on whether someone standing on your doorstep constitutes a threat, (which it doesn’t) along with trying to prove that the kid was trying to break in (this I doubt) which could justify an imminent threat.
I am in no way on the side of the old man. I actually think he was completely in the wrong (also got off way too easy) and the kid was legitimately just at the wrong house.
My opinion is the man should be evaluated for mental fitness and if unfit would be required to need a caretaker, of sorts. If no mental issues, be tried and convicted for the first degree assault (attempted homicide) charge.
The HOA however does not have any actual stake in it that I’ve found, as the kid was shot from behind the storm door by the old man who was inside his house.
It’s pissing into the wind to assume an hoa won’t do the wrong thing.
There’s existing mechanisms to enforce fines.
I’m not talking about this article just HOAs in general
Yes. I’m not saying that they wouldn’t try to come up with bogus/farfetched regulations, but they legitimately cannot do anything about what goes on behind closed doors in someone’s house. To do otherwise would be a breach in that person’s right to privacy. It’d be like an HOA telling you, you have to vacuum/sweep/mop every other day, otherwise you can be fined. (or saying you can’t have sex on Sundays)
HOAs do have some extralegal clout, but the right to privacy stops them from interfering in anything you do that isn’t openly visible. (i.e. Doing a meatspin in front of a window facing the street can be penalized, but taking a dump in your kitchen sink can’t, unless the sink is in front of a window facing the street and the blinds/curtains/shutters are open.)
This is the point, there are options for illegitimate fuckery
Shooting your gun makes a loud noise that can lower property value hence gun use falls under hoa purview.
So HOA mandated suppressors… sweet.
Ah yes, let’s ensure only the well off can afford firearms.
You’re right. Let’s give everyone good free gun insurance. We can call it Otrumpacare
Let’s be fair, half the point of an HOA is keeping the poors (and ethnics, but they aren’t allowed to say that part out loud any more) out of your neighborhood to maintain property values. So your HOA requiring you to carry some kind of gun insurance wouldn’t be completely unreasonable, if you can’t afford it (or anything else they want) you shouldn’t be living under that HOA.
Also why I don’t live in an HOA, and having an HOA was a red flag when I was looking for a house.
Guns aren’t cheap. If you can buy a gun, and you can buy ammo, you can afford insurance. It’s only the well off who already can afford firearms so I don’t get what you’re arguing? You wanna give guns to poor people?
No, all of that is wrong, and yes, the poor people should have guns. Everyone has the right to self defense.
Guns can be cheap, ammo is generally affordable, and there could be many who could afford both but not insurance. $250 one time purchase versus $hundreds or $thousands annually.
Also, there’s no way in hell you could put a requirement to pay regular insurance costs as a requirement to exercise a Constitutional right. The courts would flush that down the shithole immediately.
Have you seen the price of ammo lately? That’s pretty much the system we have now.
Courts have pretty consistently found that HOA’s have more power than local authorities. That’s why they can set their own laughably restrictive bylaws.
Second amendment violations may not fly, but that’s a constitutionality problem, not a limit specifically on HOAs.
I hate HOA’s, but some people like them. Regardless of how I feel about HOA’s I still think it’s dumb as hell that they should have any sort of liability for a member of an hoa doing something like this.
The percentage of people I know that like HOAs is absurdly small, including neighbors and acquaintances from the last HOA I was in. Almost everyone I know hates them but is forced to deal with them because almost every neighborhood has one. Towns require them for new zoning because it allows them to pass the buck on code enforcement and then a handful of people love them because it lets them power trip The vast majority are just stuck with them due to lack of options.
I’ve ran into a lot of people living in them who like em. Some people are just anal about wanting to only see trimmed uniform lawns and no trashcans or broken down vehicles anywhere near them.
I think it’s dumb to let others have a say in what color I make my house or how long I can have a car sit as a driveway ornament.
We specifically only looked for houses without HOAs, then during closing it was revealed that there was one the realtor “missed” because it was basically defunct. Within weeks of moving in we got a letter saying how the HOA was stepping up its game to make up for the last few years and it became the bane of our existence. One of the board members was obsessed with issuing citations and fining people for backing cars into their driveways because “the CCRs say that you can’t park a vehicle in an extreme state of disrepair for more than 48 hours so if you back it in I can’t see if it has a current registration sticker on the license plate.” The only people I’ve ever met that like them are control freak karens like that dude.
Fuck HOAs.
You should have bailed at closing and fired your realtor with prejudice. Most realtors are almost bigger pieces of scum than hoa’s. Taking like 12 grand each for doing up a bit of paperwork. You can pay a lawyer $1500 and find your own place on zilliw or Facebook marketplace. I bought my house in 2010 with no realtors or lawyers at all (seller also didn’t have one). Just met up at the bank I was getting the home loan through and filed some generic stuff. Done deal.
It wasn’t worth starting over again with the way the market was. It was Seattle area in 2017 where every sale was a bidding war. There are good realtors, that just wasn’t one.
Yeah? On a normal home purchase where the house is being looked at by the purchaser before deciding on it, what good is a realtor?
When moving to an unfamiliar area there’s tons of value to a good realtor. To know what the local market is like, which school districts matter to which people. Which roads can flood and what your morning commute is going to be like or how loud the planes are going to be over the house. I can spend weeks doing all the leg work myself but realistically, my time is worth more than that to me. A shitty realtor doesn’t give much value, a good one absolutely can. Also, working as an intermediary with shitty sellers or buyers to insulate you from other peoples unreasonableness is one of their main jobs.
The realtor we used to buy that HOA house saw us as a zero effort easy payday. The one that sold that house for us did an absolutely amazing job and the one we used to buy our current home got us a house we absolutely love for less than we were looking to spend.
That, or a developer buys a plot of land, makes a neighborhood with some amenities, and then it’s damn near impossible to kill because of those amenities. My HOA is pretty lightweight - half our budget pays the trash bill. But we do have a few plots of land that belong to the association, don’t even have any structures on them, and if the HOA were to dissolve someone would need to assume responsibility for those spots. I can only imagine what it would be like if we had a pool.
Yeah, that part of the suit will fail. But I think it’s worth trying to expand the dragnet of responsible parties regardless. The more people at risk of going to jail for shootings, the more people might support gun control.
It isn’t the same as parents getting jailed for their kid’s mass shooting. But I kinda feel a little bit like it’s still worth trying just to increase a societal sense of culpability.
I 100% disagree. There shouldn’t be any sort of dragnet for a crime beyond the people who did it or planned it.
Where does it stop? Blame the auto manufacturer for making a fast car used as a getaway vehicle for a robbery?
Blame the knife manufacturer for a stabbing? Blaming the company that sold the knife manufacturer the steel blanks, knowing they were getting made into knives? Blame the mining company that sold the iron ore to the steel company? It’s all an idiotic well of useless accountability. No one else should be accountable outside of the stabber. Same for guns, ammo manufacturers, steel factories, etc.
You can commit crimes with almost anything. Maybe I’ll shove kleenex down your throat until you pass out and you can sue kleenex for it.