Millon Mom March chapter president arrested after firearm found at home

The Springfield (IL) State Journal-Register is reporting that the president of a Springfield, Illinois chapter of the Million Mom March, who began lobbying against gun violence after her son was shot to death in 2002, was arrested last week when police allegedly found an illegal gun and drugs in her home. Press reports also said Stevens did not have the ID card required of Illinois firearms owners.

Annette "Flirty" Stevens, however, accuses law enforcement (normally entrusted with the utmost respect by Million Mom Marchers whenever one offers up anti-gun rhetoric), of plot to get her to give up information about unsolved crime in the city.

From the story:

The handgun, which had a scratched-off serial number, and drugs allegedly were discovered Friday morning inside Stevens' home in the 2500 block of South 15th Street. Authorities said they obtained a search warrant for the residence as part of an ongoing investigation of a recent series of drive-by shootings. No one has been hurt in the gunplay.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives assisted in the search.
Although police declined to get into specifics, Stevens has a "close connection" with one of two feuding groups involved in the shootings, Lt. Rickey Davis said Monday.

Stevens, 47, who is free on bond, admitted she does know some of the people allegedly involved in the drive-by shootings. But she said she only knows them because her interest in stopping gun violence - sparked by the shooting death of her son Jericko Clark, 20, on July 13, 2002 - has her in the neighborhoods talking to the youths.

She said the police wrongly believe she is the ringleader of the shootings, and they think she has information to solve those cases, as well as others, including the December murder of Andre Ayers, 22, who was shot as a procession of cars wound through the city's east side.

"This is a blatant attempt to try and undermine me," she said Monday night. "... They can't solve these crimes, and I'm familiar with these individuals, so they're going after me because I socialize with all of them."

Police told the newspaper they began taking a closer look at Stevens after her name came up in interviews with witnesses and informants.

"Basically, she has a close connection with individuals that have been involved in one side of these two groups that are feuding," Davis is quoted as saying, declining to elaborate.

Stevens admits to having the illegal in the house, but reportedly she said it belonged to her son. She didn't find it until six or seven months after he died. Not knowing what to do with it, she wrapped it up, put it in a drawer and forgot about it. The story offers no word on why, if the didn’t want the illegal weapon, this Million Mom March chapter president did not take it to all one of the gun “buy-back” schemes her organization loves to promote as helping to take illegal guns off the street.

Again, from the story:

Last fall, she appeared with other anti-gun advocates at a Statehouse news conference to urge federal officials to renew a ban against semiautomatic assault weapons.

Jonathan Lackland, Midwest regional director of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the march's partner organization, said he was shocked to hear about Stevens' arrest.

He wished to withhold comment on the case until he learned more about it, but he did say he knew Stevens was dedicated to the cause.

"I know Miss Stevens, and I know her character," Lackland said. "I know after the death of her son, it really prompted her to jump full force into activism in terms of gun-violence prevention.

"She has been a staunch supporter of gun-violence-prevention measures," Lackland added. "She has lived by (the theme of) 'I don't want anyone to go through the pain and misery I have gone through. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.'"

Stevens has not been formally connected to any crime directly related to the drive-by shootings. But Friday's discoveries could lead to her being charged with defacing the identification marks on a handgun, manufacture/delivery of a controlled substance and having no valid firearm owner's ID card, police said.

Last week, in a blast email to subscribers on her website, Ohio gun ban extremist Toby Hoover asked rhetorically, “Is there some guarantee that gun owners can give us that they will always be ‘law abiding’?”

The response we offered at the time deserves a slight modification:

Is there any guarantee Toby can give that SHE will? Lately, not even Ohio Supreme Court justices and Ohio police officers [and Million Mom March chapter presidents] seem able to provide assurance that they can always be trusted to obey the law.

Click on the “Read More…” link below for a press release addressing this revelation from the Citizens’ Committee on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

ILLINOIS ANTI-GUN ACTIVIST ARRESTED, CCRKBA SAYS 'WELCOME TO THE PARTY'

The arrest of a Springfield, IL anti-gun activist by police who allegedly found an illegal handgun and drugs in her home during a contested search prompted the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms to bid Annette "Flirty" Stevens a "welcome to the party."

Stevens became an activist with the Million Mom March after her son was gunned down in 2002. She has acknowledged having the gun – from which the serial number had been removed – in her home. The handgun belonged to her late son, Jericko Clark, she insisted, and she had simply wrapped it up and forgotten about it after finding it several months after his slaying. She claims the search was illegal.

"Annette Stevens may now understand why so many law-abiding people are fed up with the kind of gun laws that are promoted by the Million Mom March and other extremist gun control organizations," said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. "Ironically, the law against filing serial numbers off firearms is one that gun rights activists and organizations have long supported. Yet here she is, this ‘poster mom' for gun control, acknowledging that she has kept an illegally-altered handgun in her home while she's been campaigning to deprive other citizens of their firearms.

"In the kind of Draconian anti-gun society Stevens and her cohorts are trying to create," Gottlieb continued, "it wouldn't matter if she were innocent as she claims. Under the laws her group supports, gun owners are essentially considered guilty until they prove themselves otherwise. That's everything from background checks to waiting periods, and certainly the Illinois requirement that gun owners have a Firearms Owners Identification Card. Stevens has no FOID card, so there's another gun law violation. There are thousands of local and state laws across the country that the Million Moms support, none of which have done anything to prevent a single crime. All they do is chip away at the gun rights of law-abiding citizens.

"If Stevens is so convinced guns don't belong in society," Gottlieb observed, "then why didn't she immediately turn that gun over to the police when she found it more than two years ago? Why did she keep it? What's wrong with this picture? Ms. Stevens is about to learn that supporting gun control is like keeping a vicious dog. They sometimes bite the hands that feed them."

With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.

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