Why Red Flag Laws Won’t Work

After the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, TX, an allegedly “bipartisan” group of legislators are trying to come up with new gun laws to, in their minds, stop such incidents. Among their ideas: “red flag laws” at the state and federal levels.

The House of Representatives plans to vote on a bill that would authorize federal courts to issue “red flag” orders prohibiting people from possessing firearms when they are deemed a threat to themselves or others. Meanwhile, legislation encouraging states to pass and enforce their own red flag laws has emerged as a possible point of compromise between Senate Democrats who favor new gun restrictions and Senate Republicans who are skeptical of that approach.

The article quoted above mentions several problems with such laws:

• Predicting who’s likely to commit violence isn’t easy. (Minority Report, anyone?)
• Innocent people will be falsely accused and lose their constitutional rights (probably without due process).
• Threats and other indications that someone may commit gun violence currently are either not noticed, are ignored, or are too often passed off as jokes.
• “[P]olicies targeting individuals based on risk factors would result in an extremely high rate of false positives.”
• Too many people as authorized reporters may lead to “abuse” of the system and the violation of a person’s constitutional rights.
• Some laws don’t include punishment for those who abuse the system via deliberately false reports.

Who gets to be the “decider?” Who determines who loses their constitutional rights? Based upon what criteria?

We already have unelected bureaucrats and some elected officials declaring that entire groups of citizens (as many as half the population!) are “potential domestic terrorists.”

We have biased woke technicians working at social media companies unilaterally censoring users’ free speech, based upon their own perceptions of what constitutes fact, “misinformation,” or “disinformation.”

One notable reason that red flag laws aren’t going to work in today’s woke world, which is not mentioned in the above cited article:

As soon as red flag laws go into effect, DIE (diversity, inclusion, equity) activists will begin their usual mantra that “persons of color” or other “oppressed” groups are “disproportionately” and unfairly impacted by them.

This has already begun in California, where the state legislature just passed a bill to end mandatory reporting of students who threaten violence. Their reasoning?

Decades of research show the long-term harm to young people of even minimal contact with the juvenile or criminal legal systems. Once students make contact with law enforcement, they are less likely to graduate high school and more likely to wind up in jail or prison. These harms fall disproportionately on students from marginalized groups: Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students, as well as students with disabilities, are disproportionately referred to law enforcement, cited, and arrested.

SB 1273 (Bradford) empowers educators, protects students, and restores educator discretion by:

• Eliminating state mandates for school notification of law enforcement of many types of incidents, thereby empowering schools to adopt non-punitive, supportive, trauma-informed and health-based approaches to school related behaviors.

• Increasing educator discretion in determining when to notify law enforcement about a student’s school related behaviors.

• Eliminating prosecution of school staff who fail to report incidents of alleged assaults or physical threats against school employees.

• Eliminating the criminal penalty for students for the “willful disturbance” of public schools and public school meetings.

So you see, yet again, there will be two systems of “justice.” One for “whites” and another for those from “marginalized groups.”

Tucker Carlson provided interesting commentary on the incident in Uvalde, with regard to how it’s being politicized deliberately in order to allow some to effect a “power grab.”

Since red flag laws won’t be the ticket, what might be?

Try locking the doors!

But for an unlocked door, 21 people in Uvalde, TX, would still be alive. (According to school safety protocols, all doors were supposed to be locked. It remains to be seen why the door the shooter entered was not.)

Gun control supporters argue that schools can’t be turned into armed camps or militarized zones.

Do they want to save childrens’ lives or not?

Think about it. Do these same individuals lock the doors to their own homes? If so, why do they choose to live in a “hardened zone?”  Why don’t they leave their own doors unlocked?

Will all the politicians currently promoting a ban on “assault rifles” (that aren’t) and 9mm pistols do away with their own security guards and all safety precautions, like fences, walls, and locked doors? Will their guards be disarmed? If not, why not?

Safety for me but not for thee.

That seems to be their mantra.

If someone takes a poll among parents of school-aged children and the children themselves, how do you think most would answer this question?

Do you support mandatory locked doors at all schools and an armed guard on the premises at all times?

What child or parent would say no?

Consider this:

(hat tip to a commenter at this link.)

Only a tiny percentage of the guns used in crimes were purchased legally by the criminal. Virtually none of the prisoners passed a background check.

How many of these criminals, no matter the source of the weapon they used, were already legally forbidden to own guns due to past felonies?

How about we enforce all the gun laws we currently have on the books?

What part of

shall not be infringed

don’t these people get?

We’re constantly bombarded with the phrase “weapons of war” these days, as if 22-caliber hunting rifles fit that description.

We’re bombarded by wanna-be totalitarians asking over and over again, “Who needs weapons of war?”

If only these people could go back in time to ask George Washington the answer to their question.

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