Good Guy with a Gun #259: Oakland County, MI
A restraining order, a red-flag order, two confiscated guns. He was still one defender away from killing his ex-girlfriend. | Original incident: July 17, 2024
These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is significantly updated from the calendar version.
67-year-old Galen Gavitt had lived with a woman for seventeen years. Things apparently turned sour: She left him and moved into her stepdaughter’s house.
Gavitt had told her, more than once, that he meant to kill her.
So she did the paperwork. She got a personal protection order (PPO) that ordered him not to go into her home. On June 12, she got an Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO).
ERPOs are made possible by “red flag laws”. As the Michigan Attorney General puts it:
These orders let civil courts temporarily prevent people at risk of harming themselves or others from possessing or buying guns....
A respondent does not need to currently own a gun for an ERPO to be requested. An active ERPO will let law enforcement take any guns the person currently has in their possession. It will also stop the respondent from legally obtaining a firearm for up to one year. The ERPO can be extended one or more times by either the petitioner or the court. Extensions are effective for one year after the previous order expires.
Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO), michigan.gov
Using the Michigan red flag law, on the woman’s behalf, deputies hauled two guns out of Gavitt’s house.
It bought her five weeks.
Just after 10 AM on Wednesday, July 17, Gavitt broke a rear window with an axe and let himself in. The woman and her stepson, 36, ran for an upstairs bedroom — he held the door, she locked herself in the bathroom next to it. The stepson called 911, telling dispatchers about Gavitt breaking in and the personal protection order.
Gavitt also brought a .38 revolver.
That sounds “unpossible,” I know — there was an ERPO! But taking weapons away from violent people isn’t much more effective than telling them not to be violent. Investigators believe Gavitt got the revolver from his ex-wife.
He fired a shot through the bedroom door. The round missed the stepson, who went down to the floor as the door gave way.
Gavitt came through and pointed the revolver at him. “I’m here for her,” he said, and stepped over the stepson to get to the bathroom door.
But the stepson was armed, too. He fired once, hitting Gavitt in the head.
The police came and tried to save Gavitt, but he died at the scene.
Neither the woman nor her stepson was hurt. Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard called the shooting justified self-defense that afternoon, and nothing since suggests the stepson faced so much as a follow-up call from the prosecutor’s office, let alone a charge.
Asked how a blind shot through a door missed the stepson bracing it, Sheriff Bouchard said: “By the grace of God.” He added that he wouldn’t have been surprised if Gavitt had meant to commit a murder-suicide — he’s seen that pattern too many times.
The PPO, the ERPO, two confiscated guns — none of it stopped Gavitt from getting a gun and trying to kill his ex-girlfriend.
A stepson standing between a bedroom door and his stepmother’s life did.
Sources
Local news
Sheriff Bouchard held a good press conference, which formed the basis of everyone’s reporting.
Outlets that covered this story include CBS News, Lake Orion Review, WNEM 5, Fox 2 Detroit, ClickOnDetroit, Patch, Mlive, and Detroit News (paywalled).
2A / specialist media
Ammoland and USA Carry’s Sean Holt filed standard write-ups. Though they mentioned protection orders, Cam Edwards at Bearing Arms and Colion Noir used this incident as their central example of red-flag-law limits.