Red flag laws have been flaring across America, as someone can complain he or she has a “fear” of someone else, and a judge without even contacting the target can order his or her guns confiscated.
Promoters claim it is a way to protect the public, but in reality what it has done is forcibly disarm law-abiding citizens multiple times.
Those statutes so far have been based state by state, but Joe Biden, in his war on self-protection, now has launched a plan for a national “red flag center.”
Which, two experts have argued, he didn’t have the constitutional right to do.
It is John R. Lott Jr., chief of the Crime Prevention Research Center, and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who have written at the Federalist that Congress, controlled by Democrats at the time, provided authorization for the president to hand out grants to states with those red flag laws.
Are Democrats in power looking to completely disarm anyone who doesn’t agree with their leftist agenda?
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“But never was he authorized to establish a federal red flag center,” they explained.
They note that Kamala Harras has been bragging about Biden’s new “National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center.”
She said the goal is to see to the “effective implementation of state red flag laws” and “keep guns out of the hands of people who pose a threat to themselves or others.”
But Biden has “confused” “grants” for state programs with “an entirely new center.”
The state programs already are raising questions, they note.
Under ordinary laws, they explain, “If you worry that someone is dangerous, you can tell the police your concerns. If the police agree that there is a ‘reasonable’ chance the person is a danger to themselves or others, mental health professionals will evaluate the individual. If the professionals give their consent, an emergency court hearing is held. A lawyer is provided to those who cannot afford one. Judges have recourse to a wide range of options, such as outpatient mental health care or driver’s license suspension. Gun confiscation or involuntary commitment may also be options, but only after going through the proper legal process.”
Red flag laws bypass routine restraints, the charge.
There “a judge acts solely on the basis of a written complaint. He never talks to the person who made the complaint or the person against whom it was made. States vary on how quickly hearings must occur, but they all require that they take place within a month after one’s guns are taken away. But the steep cost of legal representation often deters defendants from seeking counsel, as lawyers can charge upwards of $10,000 for a hearing.”
Only 29% of the public, they note from survey evidence, support such extremism.
They point out that suicides are not necessarily prevented, as there are methods not involving guns. And violence isn’t always prevented as a criminal can drive a car into a crowd and injure.
And, they found, “Allowing for easy gun confiscation can leave good, law-abiding people defenseless. Andrew Pollack, who lost his daughter in the 2017 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, recently had an Extreme Risk Protection Order used against him by a neighbor in rural Oregon. When Pollack finally had his hearing in court, the judge didn’t even need to hear a defense because there was no evidence that Pollack had threatened anyone. Unfortunately, while disarmed, he faced a mountain lion outside his home. His dog tangled with the mountain lion, requiring 50 stitches on his side. As is virtually always the case, there was no punishment for the neighbors bringing the false claim.”
A report at Liberty Nation explained, “Considering the hostility with which government at all levels have often viewed the private ownership of firearms, such laws are, of course, ripe for potential abuse.”
And the report noted Massie’s reaction was blunt, on social media: “What the hell is this evil? A Federal Red Flag center? We did not authorize this.”
The report charged, “The anti-gun lobby was likely hopeful that red flag laws would facilitate a sort of slow-moving gun-confiscation program, but media investigations have shown that such laws are, in fact, rarely used – hence the creation of this new resource center, one can assume. According to the Associated Press, only four ERPOs were enforced in Chicago between 2020 and 2022, while there were 8,500 shootings resulting in 1,800 deaths during the same period. Red flag laws were used eight times in New Mexico over the same two years – the state had 600 gun homicides. Massachusetts used red flag laws 12 times and had about 300 fatal shootings.”
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