In July 2024, Joseph Leitz walked into a red brick sheriff’s office building in the small Western Washington city of Shelton and turned in two handguns.

A court commissioner had ordered Leitz to do so after his then wife, Lauryn Berg, secured a domestic violence protection order, alleging he had beaten and raped her, threatened to take their kids, and held an unloaded gun to his head, pulling the trigger three times. Leitz denies the allegations.

The commissioner later determined that Leitz no longer possessed any firearms, based on Leitz’s word and documentation from the Mason County Sheriff’s Office. But Berg believed her ex-husband still had nearly a dozen other firearms, including an AR-style semi-automatic shotgun that he stored in a safe during their 12-year relationship.

“I’ve se

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