If you heard some shouting coming from the vicinity of Washington, DC, lately, you might be surprised to learn it wasn’t Leftists this microsecond. With the help of 14 Republican Senators, a new gun control bill called the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act will be brought before the Senate for debate and what proponents hope will be passage. That number swelled to 15 when it was brought to a vote, ensuring the bill’s passage and sending it to the House of Representatives for a vote. As you might expect from a government body who can’t balance its/our own checkbook, it’s a mixed bag of good ideas (more funding for mental health in communities) and letting-Eric-Swalwell-write-anti-spying-legislation-level bad ideas.
One of the items in the bill is an idea that Leftists have been promoting for a couple of years now called “red flag laws.” Where does this idea fall on the good-to-Swalwell scale? Let’s find out!
red flag laws
What the Left thinks it means – laws designed to prevent potential shooters from committing mass shootings before they happen
What it really means – the latest in a long line of gun control measures destined to fail
Without going too far into the weeds with terminology, here are the basics behind red flag laws. If a gun owner takes actions that suggest he or she will harm himself/herself or others, family members and/or law enforcement can ask a judge to intervene and prohibit the gun owner from accessing his/her guns. This is meant to be a temporary measure so the gun owner can get the help he/she needs to deal with the issues that raised the red flags in the first place. Surely this is a good idea, right?
Take a drive over to the road to Hell and let me know what you find.
Aside from the obvious “Minority Report” vibe, there are more than a few things wrong with red flag laws. The biggest issue is the fact just about anything can be seen as a trigger (see what I did there?) to raise red flags. If you suddenly do a lot of searching on the Interwebs for guns, that can be a red flag. If you suddenly do a lot of searching on the Interwebs for yoga, that can’t be a red flag, but it may certainly put your Man Card in jeopardy. That applies to you, too, ladies.
If anything can be a red flag, than everything can be, which creates an environment where a gun owner who has not committed a crime is automatically assumed to be the next mass shooter with zero hard evidence. Maybe the gun owner was trying to do comparison shopping for his or her next purchase and decided to look up gun reviews online. Or maybe he/she had a question about legal modifications for a gun or rifle he/she already owned. To the Left, these are red flags that can cause the legal ball a-rollin’.
And that’s where things get really messy, legally. The concerned family member or law enforcement officer goes to a judge to issue a temporary injunction on the basis of public safety. Oh, I forgot to mention this tiny detail: the gun owner doesn’t even need to be at the hearing for the injunction to be approved.
Hey, wait a minute. Isn’t there something about the accused being able to face his accusers in some document that’s fairly important to Americans? Well, there is the Sixth Amendment that deals with criminal trials requiring a swift trial before a jury of one’s peers, so that doesn’t necessarily apply here. However, there are several good arguments to be made with the Seventh and Eighth Amendments that would apply. The Seventh secures the right to a jury trial “In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars…” (which would cover pretty much all firearms, especially with inflation these days, amirite) and the Eight states, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” Although the Sixth Amendment argument is more emotionally compelling, the stronger case is made with the Seventh and Eight Amendments in my opinion.
You can quit laughing now.
Still, the fact a gun owner can have his/her guns taken by a judge, even temporarily, without an opportunity to offer a defense isn’t a good look. It’s made worse by the idea there are some judges on various benches who would rubber-stamp any possible red flag as legitimate. Subscribe to the wrong political ideology, express your freedoms in a way someone else doesn’t like, take your Starbucks without whipped cream and sprinkles, order the wrong color wine with your meal, the possibilities are endless. And they’re also very stupid and easy to abuse. All it takes is one pissed-off ex who carries a grudge and a pro-gun control judge to get your property taken from you without recourse, all without you committing a criminal or civil infraction.
All in the name of public safety. Preemptive public safety, that is.
Or at least that’s what fans of red flag laws will tell you. How are they doing in practice? Welllllll…that’s a bit of a hard one to answer. Currently there are 19 states with red flag laws in place, as well as the District of Columbia. As of this writing, the jury is still out on whether red flag laws are effective in dealing with potential mass shootings, which makes it hard to make the argument they work. After all, in order to confirm the effectiveness of said laws, the shooter would almost have to admit he or she was dissuaded from shooting people because of the red flag laws. And last time I checked, I don’t think that’s happened yet, if ever. However, red flag laws have had a definite impact on…suicide attempts, which represent a significant portion of annual gun deaths. Although this is a good thing, it’s not evidence of the laws’ effectiveness against mass shootings.
By the way, Illinois has red flag laws in place, but they still have several shootings every weekend. Why, it’s almost as if…people who are bound and determined to ignore the law will…ignore the law! In some cases, a desire to skirt the law makes lawbreakers creative. Right now there are any number of ways to avoid red flag laws altogether, including buying black market guns or hiding existing guns well in advance so they wouldn’t be confiscated. No matter how different red flag laws are from previous gun laws, they will invariably end in failure and fatalities.
Which is precisely what they’re intended to do.
Government isn’t in the problem-solving business because a) they don’t know how, and b) solving problems leads to less power and money going to politicians. Politicians need there to be mass shootings to justify power grabs disguised as long-overdue gun safety measures. But with each law that gets passed, we get further away from actual safety and personal freedom.
And red flag laws are waaaaaaaaay off in Leftist field, which is just down the road from Totalitarianville on the bad side of town.
All is not lost, however. Oklahoma actually has an anti-red flag law on the books, which is a step in the right direction. Any law that forces law-abiding citizens to compromise basic Constitutional rights on the promise of safety without a guarantee of it needs to be counteracted within the system of government. Even so, we cannot rely on the courts for favorable rulings, especially when you consider there will be a sitting Supreme Court Justice who couldn’t define what a woman is in spite of being one. If you hear of a politician pushing for red flag laws where you live, speak up and challenge the idea.
And if you’re in a state where any of the 15 Republican Senators who voted to pass the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, give them hell for not standing up for Constitutional rights.
And you can tell them I sent you.
Tag: gun safety
Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week
After every mass shooting (except for the ones that occur nearly every weekend in Leftist utopia Chicago), Leftists bring up the need for “common sense gun control.” Of course, they never come out and say what that would look like, but, dammit, they care!
With the most recent shooting in Uvalde, Texas, though, Leftists changed tactics. Instead of calling for gun control, they’re now calling for gun safety. On the surface, that’s a move in the right direction since it seems to be an area of common ground between gun owners and gun control advocates.
If you’re expecting a “but” here, you should. There’s more to this concept than the Left wants us to know.
gun safety
What the Left thinks it means – a movement to curb gun violence as much as possible
What it really means – repackaged gun control
Advertisers love to play with phrasing to get consumers to believe a certain product is better than another or to gin up new interest in an existing product. That’s why you see “new and improved” in ads and on packaging. The idea is to get you to think a certain way that will either reinforce your current buying habits or get you to consider changing them.
The same principle is at work here. By switching from a pointed phrase (“gun control”) to one that seems more neutral (“gun safety”), the Left is hoping you will consider changing your opinion on gun control. After all, who wouldn’t be in favor of gun safety? Maybe Alec Baldwin, but he’s an outlier.
The thing is gun safety means different things to different people. Most gun owners already practice gun safety, such as not pointing guns at others and keeping guns and ammunition secured and stored in separate places. These are actions people can do themselves without having Big Brother giving us direction on how to do it. And considering the federal government has utter morons running departments, if not full branches, maybe we don’t need their help.
To Leftists, gun safety has nothing to do with what individuals can do, but rather what the government can do because they believe government is the source of all good (except if that government is run by those evil Republicans who take money from the National Rife Association to prevent meaningful and sensible gun laws from being passed). That’s why all of their solutions to the gun problem revolve around passing more laws, banning more guns, and demanding more from gun owners than they expect from the criminals who commit gun violence. But there is one common thread throughout these efforts.
Leftists don’t know shit about guns.
That fact alone should render their opinions on gun safety as irrelevant as Joe Biden’s teleprompter. Yet, with their emotional appeals whenever a shooting happens, no one stops to think whether we’ve tried some of these suggestions before. News Flash: we have. And it hasn’t stopped mass shootings at all. What it has done, however, is make the vast majority of mass shooters legal gun owners. That’s right. Most of the mass shooters (outside of Chicago, of course) have passed the background checks the Left have demanded. What’s next? More background checks to make up for the background checks we were told would stop mass shootings and didn’t? More hoops for law-abiding citizens to jump through that criminals will ignore?
The truth is the Left needs there to be more mass shootings to justify their power grabs in this case and to protect themselves from the inevitable backlash once enough gun owners get tired of being treated like potential criminals for merely wanting to own firearms. Now, if you’ve been paying attention (and I know you have), this runs counter to what the Left is saying they want now, gun safety. Banning certain guns doesn’t make them or us safer. The same with background checks, limits to ammunition purchases, or the number of bullets a gun or rifle can shoot before needing to be reloaded. In fact, nothing they’ve proposed have anything to do with safety, but everything to do with controlling people.
Just as it was intended.
There is one thing the Left can do to show their commitment to gun safety, that being offering gun safety training. Of course, they’ll have some competition from…the NRA. Yep, that same NRA that is super-duper evil and wants to kill schoolchildren so Bubba can have an AR-15 (according to the Left). Why haven’t gun safety advocates on the Left come up with something similar?
Because it’s all about getting rid of guns altogether. Oh, sure, Leftists won’t come out and say it unless they’re in friendly company, but that’s been their goal for a while now. No matter how they rebrand their approach, the endgame is always get rid of guns.
So, what do we do? Call out the newly-minted gun safety crowd and ask them what they’re going to do about actual gun safety and not the laundry list of Leftist demands that always come out after a shooting. And don’t let them get by with bullshit answers, either. Press them like they want to press gun owners to comply. Then, when they fail (and they will), point it out and tell everyone who will listen about their real agenda.
But if you want to really push for gun safety, Leftists, I have a piece of advise. Don’t arm yourselves. Leave it to the police to protect you. You know, the police you want to revamp/defund and have called racists with badges?
Have your next of kin let me know how that works out for you.