Red Flag Gun Laws – Public Safety or Abuse of the Innocent?

U.S.A. – They are called Extreme-Risk Protection Orders. Some people call them Red-Flag Gun Confiscation. Whatever you call it, we’re supposed to call the cops and stop a bad man with a gun before he hurts someone. That sounds more like the script from a cop-drama on TV than what happens in real life. In practice, these laws are designed for abuse. We’ve already seen them fail to stop violent crime. We’ve also seen police kill gun owners during early morning Red Flag raids. At best, innocent individuals have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to get their rights restored after they’ve been served with a red-flag order.

Is that the unavoidable price of freedom, or is that the bigoted abuse of a disfavored minority for political gain? These gun confiscation laws were proposed so that politicians could get facetime on the news and could increase their campaign contributions. When you read beyond the press releases, you’ll see that these laws are a tax on gun owners, particularly on poor gun owners. We know that violence is a very tough problem to solve and red-flag gun confiscation isn’t the solution. 

We never know enough to be sure: do you know if someone will be violent?

We think we do, but our memory plays tricks on us. We remember the time a local kid was arrested and we said, “I knew he was headed for trouble.” We forget all the times when we find out that one spouse has fled their home, and all we can say is, “I never knew there was a problem.” We like to think we’re right, so we remember our good guesses and forget the times we were wrong, sometimes sadly wrong.