Barbara Saldinger, 47, is a medical doctor with a degree from Stanford who raises horses as a hobby. She is also at the center of a major gun rights case. Ironically, the only gun she’s ever owned is a BB gun.
Saldinger and her husband have a horse breeding farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Back in 2006, her neighbors Jack Bloxham and his sister Janette Magoc were having some work done on their property, but the sound of the chainsaws removing trees were causing Saldinger’s horses to buck. That day, Saldinger says, she saw two women wandering near the property line between her and Bloxham’s land. She worried that the horses might injure them, and went to get them off her land.
That’s where the dispute begins. The actual property line is not clearly demarcated, so it is actually in dispute as to where the incident took place. Then there is the gun issue. Saldinger appeared waving a BB gun, which she had received from her husband to scare off deer. Magoc and her friend did not know it was a BB gun and thought that their neighbor was threatening to kill them—on their own property. Fortunately for Magoc, her brother and co-owner Jack Bloxham is also an attorney.
When the case appeared in court, Saldinger argued that she was within her legal rights to protect her property by brandishing a gun. Furthermore she said, even if they had not yet trespassed, they were about to. Finally, she says, she did not point it at the women, but simply waved it above her head. The jury did not buy it and sentenced her to 60 days. She has since been fighting the conviction.
Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that Second Amendment rights to bear a firearm cannot be overruled by state laws, the legal battle has heated up again. Gun advocates are siding with Saldinger, saying that “a woman has a federal constitutional right to peacefully carry a BB gun on her own property for the defense of it.”
While local prosecutors and the Sheriff’s Department tend to side with Bloxham and Magoc, Saldinger has found some powerful friends. Read more at Santa Cruz Sentinel.
Second Amendment Case Surrounds BB Gun
