“What is it about gun owners that make us argue stupid things? We get all facts and logic about something but the reality is that facts and logic don’t change minds. If facts and logic worked to change minds, no one would be pro-gun control.
Case in point. So-called “Red Flag” laws. Sometimes called “Extreme Risk Protection Orders,” these laws basically say that someone can report you to the government, usually in secret, and a judge will secretly order your guns seized without ever giving you a chance to dispute it in court. At some later date, you are expected to show up in court, with a lawyer you’ve paid for, and try to get the judge to agree that you’re not a danger to anyone.
Cue the gun rights activists:
“WHAT ABOUT DUE PROCESS OF LAW?!!!
This seems like a fair criticism, doesn’t it? Secret Star Chamber rulings that take away enumerated fundamental civil rights seems like it would be totally against the Constitution. Kind of a slam dunk 4th and 14th Amendment violations.
Here’s the problem.
NO ONE CARES
Is that a little harsh for you? Too bad. No one gives two hoots in hell about the due process of law for gun owners. The gun grabbers actively want to prevent you from getting any due process, and the middle ground people just don’t give a damn one way or another.
Why does this matter? Because gun owners are so stupid that they make unpersuasive arguments that no one but they care about. Only gun owners actually care about due process of law for gun owners. So stop making the argument and pretending that you’re moving public opinion.
NO ONE CARES.
To my mind, there’s a much better argument against the so-called “Red Flag” laws.
They don’t work.
It’s not because they are gun control laws and gun control laws by their very nature just don’t work. No, “Red Flag” laws don’t work because they were never intended to work. They literally cannot achieve their stated purpose.
Let’s take a look…
Imagine that you were a person of goodwill, just trying to prevent crazy people from doing damage to the rest of society with their craziness. For the purpose of this discussion, “crazy” encompasses everything from “psychotic” to “hate people because of their skin color.” While technically being a racist isn’t in the DSM-V (as far as I know), people who murder others based on their skin tone are crazy for our purposes. Regular well-adjusted people (even racist ones) don’t murder people. Only crazy people do that.
For the purposes of this discussion, we’re going to imagine the “best-case scenario.” In this case, the “Red Flag” law works EXACTLY as it is intended. Nothing at all goes wrong. No one does anything foolish, stupid, venal, or criminal in the process. Everything works perfectly.
- A person is actually dangerously crazy for whatever reason.
- A person with a legitimate concern goes to the appropriate reporting agency and reports that the person is dangerous.
- The reporting agency does its due diligence and verifies all the information given to them.
- That agency takes the reporting person in front of a judge, who carefully evaluates the reports of the person reporting and the agency that evaluated the situation
- After careful review, the judge comes to the correct conclusion that the dangerously crazy person is actually a danger to himself or others and authorizes the seizure of his/her firearms.
- The local police, in a carefully planned and perfectly executed mission capture the dangerously crazy person, expertly search his house, car, and all his possessions, and seize every single firearm the dangerously crazy person has.
- Then they walk away, leaving the dangerously crazy person free to do whatever he wants with the kitchen knives, gasoline, and the chemicals under the sink.
Remember, this scenario is the BEST CASE SCENARIO.
Let Gru explain the process to you:
Would anyone with even half a brain have come up with this stupidity? Get a judge to rule that a person is dangerously crazy but instead of putting him somewhere he can be helped (or punished) just leave him on the side of the road after taking his guns? No one with a lick of sense would even consider a law this dumb. A two-year-old could figure out that if a person is so dangerous that you need to take his firearms, he’s so dangerous that you need to invite him for a custodial stay at the happy place with the nice young men in clean white coats. Or he needs to go to jail.
This is how you know that the gun grabbers are lying. They say, “It’s not about the guns, it’s about safety!” But in the end, all they’ve done is seize the guns. No attempt is made to put the dangerously crazy person in a mental institution. Nope, just take the guns. It’ll be fine!
So-called “Red Flag” laws are a lie. There’s no way to make them work. They aren’t designed to work. They’re designed to violate your civil rights while not actually solving the problem of preventing crazy people from killing themselves or others.
Stop making the weak Due Process argument. Judges might be interested in that argument once it gets into court, but the public doesn’t care. Use a stronger argument. That argument is “If you’ve gone to all the trouble to convince a judge that dude is nuts, why not take dude down to a safe and secure location where he can get the treatment he needs?”
Anyone who cannot be trusted with a firearm cannot be trusted without a custodian.”
Fingers on Fire 