Abuse of the Innocent

Rob Morse has a post over at his blog, Slow Facts that challenges the current rush to create so called "Red Flag" laws entitled Red Flag Laws: Public Safety or Abuse of the Innocent. Morse's point is that these laws encourage abuse of the innocent by design. Even if these laws sound reasonable on their face, they will in practice be used by unscrupulous attorneys and anti-gun judges to take away the Second Amendment rights of innocent people, while leaving criminals largely untouched.

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.

Morse also makes the point that predicting violent behavior is a tricky thing, and even those whose very job should be to predict whether someone strikes out violently have a poor record in fact:

Psychiatrists who have access to complete medical records often have to assess if a patient will be violent. They make that assessment for the safety of the patient and for the safety of hospital staff. These doctors make the correct prediction 60% of the time when they are predicting behavior for the next 24 hours. That means they are slightly better than flipping a coin while they are looking a day into the future. They have no idea if the patient will be violent in the next week, the next month, or the next year. These highly educated and dedicated specialists can’t predict the future. That record will get worse as red-flag laws let non-professionals disarm near strangers with a phone call.

Today, we want a court judge to do the impossible with Red-Flag laws. Your vindictive relative can make a phone call based on a post in social media. You’ll have your firearms confiscated..at no cost to them, but at the cost of tens-of-thousands of dollars to you.. or worse. We’ve already killed gun owners during midnight police raids instigated by a Red-Flag complaint. The dead gun owner had no record of violent or criminal behavior.

Morse writes that these laws are designed for abuse. A gun owner becomes embroiled on the basis of an accusation, which doesn't actually have to be substantiated. Domestic abusers will use red flag laws to disarm their innocent victims. And of course, busy body do gooders who believe they are riding the world of weapons will use these laws to disarm friends and neighbors anonymously. No doubt that may be part of the fun. On the other hand, truly dangerous criminals are unlikely to fall victim to a red falg law because the tend to associate with other criminals. Other criminals, whatever else, understand the need for self defense.

Please read all of Mr. Morse's piece at Slow Facts. You will, I think, see why we are against these laws. There is no way to write this type of law that actually doesn't abuse the innocent.