Red Flag laws sound reasonable (flag people that are threats, and take their guns away temporarily), but they aren't.
~ Aristotle Sabouni
Created: 2019-08-09 |
There's this idea that Red Flag laws might help -- that people could flag people who are at risk and get their guns taken away from them. It sounds good, as long as you don't think about it. However if you think it through:
- (a) most mass shooters most don't give warnings = all false positives
- (b) if you lower the bar enough that the red-flag laws apply, then everyone is guilty = all false negatives
- (c) it only forces shooters to wait
- (d) they just get/steal other guns or they can go to more deadly methods
- (e) it's already been abused where tried
- (f) Think SWATting someone
- (g) there's never been a study that shows that they help prevent gun violence (and they've tried to find justification in the past, many times).
So while I'm not against the theory, there's no practical way to implement it, that wouldn't be a cluster-fuck and worse than doing nothing. On top of that, 75-80% of gun violence is gang related, so Democrats have blocked Republicans efforts to get Red Flag laws applied to Gangs: seriously. (They don't want to fix the problem, they want to punish the innocent).
| Left | Right |
|---|---|
| The left pretends that we could make laws (Red Flag Laws) that take guns away from suspected dangerous people would save lives, and wouldn't be abused. It is popular in polls. | The facts are, there's no evidence to support their efficacy, and you can't take away rights without evidence. They would enable false claims or abuses by government (as has happened). Most threats wouldn't flag, and most people flagged wouldn't be a threat (more false positives than real positives). Even the real threats would just have to wait or use other means (so it wouldn't change outcomes). Trying to take guns leads to more deaths than they would prevent. It's easy to get on lists, and nearly impossible to get off (no Fly Lists are infamously dirty). It wouldn't pass legal scrutiny so would be a waste of time. And if you know who the threats are, it's easier to just lock them up. If you don't have the evidence to do that, then you don't have evidence to take away their other civil liberties. Oh, and it's only popular in polls with people that don't know how Red Flag laws work, and the other sides concerns. |
Examples[edit | edit source]
- 2019.10.11 Crossing Guard and Veteran loses guns - For an 84 year old crossing guard, Korean War Veteran and 60 year police veteran (Stephen Nichols), had his guns seized and his license to carry revoked over someone mishearing something they overheard in a diner (he was criticizing a school resource officer in a conversation with a friend). Red Flag laws turn us into 1984.
- Ammo Control - Anti-gunners are trying to end-run the Constitution (2A) by enacting "Ammo Control" (like California's Prop 63). It created a surge in ammo purchases, more stockpiling, smuggling, a black market, wasting resources, and has had zero effect on crime (other than to incentivize it for ammo smuggling).
- FEE's 7 Reasons (against Red Flag) - FEE did a 7 Reasons article that lists the following reasons why Red Flag Laws are a bad idea. (1) Don't reduce violence (2) Congress lacks authority (3) States that tried had no good results (4) Due Process violations (5) More violence (6) False Positives (7) Pre-crime -- guilt by assumption of what you might do.
- Not for gangs? - 75-80% of gun violence is gang related, so Democrats have blocked Republicans efforts to get Red Flag laws applied to Gangs: seriously. Democrats don't want to fix the problem (that would take away their excuses to attack legal gun owners), they want to punish the innocent and make the problem worse.
More[edit | edit source]
- Cherokee County gun store put up a billdboard mocking four Congresswomen, calling them idiots. [1] The left called this a call for violence (it wasn't). But if they had their way, they could use their fake cries of a threat, to take away others (like the gun stores) real rights to own a gun. If you don't think the left would stoop to these measures, you haven't been paying attention.
- the VA (Veterans Affairs) was flagging people for taking issue with Veterans Affairs
- Gary J. Willis, 60 was killed in Maryland because police came to his house to take his guns and he resisted. I'm not saying he was bright to fight it, but deaths like these are going to happen if you try to take away people's civil liberties. [2]
- Marine in Oregon said that "If antifa gets to the point where they start killing us, I’m going to kill them next... I’d slaughter them and I have a detailed plan on how I would wipe out antifa." so for saying less violent thing than Antifa has said, they used Red Flag laws to take away his guns and put him in a mental hospital for 20 days. Why? MAGA hat. [3]
- Imagine a wife abuser or rapists who calls it on his target so he'll know that she's defenseless when he comes over
- Imagine the cops kick in your door at 2:00am without announcing themselves. If you show up armed to the party, you die. Why? Because angry progressives didn't like something you posted, so reported you were dangerous to trigger a Red Flag. At best it'll take weeks or months to get your life back. At worst, you die. This is already done and is called SWATting someone. It has a name for a reason. Making it easier, is not a good thing.
Conclusion[edit | edit source]
Fortunately for the left, their base isn't about deep thought before reacting, it's always, "DO SOMETHING"! No matter how dumb that something is.
But as soon as you think it through, it can't actually work. Either it's tuned too low -- and it isn't flagging anyone. Or it's too sensitive and you're flagging 99% innocents for the 1% that are potentially guilty. Even that 1% is ineffectual as it is so easy to defeat as to be useless: they just wait a few weeks, steal someone else's gun, use a quieter knife/club, all while having MORE time to plan. Most mass shooters have been in psychotherapy before, so they're not going to suddenly get cured in the few weeks it takes to get through the system. The idiot-left thinks that it's just a heat of the moment thing, but if you study the topic, most plan for weeks or months -- a few more weeks isn't going to change their mind. Worse, they might go to other more effective methods like Trucks or Bombs, which both have a higher kill rate. (Even knives are nearly as effective, but hopolophobes don't understand that). So it can't do any real good, but it can be easily abused... and will be. How do we know? Because the places it has been tried, already lead to abuse, and no known preventions.
Of course I don't think reason will change many of the gun-grabbers minds. If you hate your neighbors having the tools of defense, then mere facts aren't going to get in their feelings. But hopefully, there's a few with enough intellectual curiosity and objectivity to read something like this, smack their head with their palm, and go, "Duh! That's fucking useless:", and grow as a human being. But if all of them did, then Democrats would go extinct.
Sixth Amendment[edit source]
 |
Fourth Amendment[edit source]
|
| You can get a whiff of the bias at Wikipedia if you read the section on Red Flag Laws (especially Talk). Those opposed to Red Flag Laws offered information about Gary Willis, Fee, and the consequences/tradeoffs. All was blocked/suppressed under various excuses. Suppressing one side of the story, is not objective. |
🔗 More
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
🔗 Links
- https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2019/08/08/vas-flagging-vets-shows-red-flag-laws-bad-idea/
- https://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2019/08/07/warning-how-the-va-redflags-patriots-n2551313
- https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/allen-west/allen-west-real-red-flag-america-red-flag-progressive-socialism
- https://reason.com/2019/08/07/republicans-who-support-gun-confiscation-laws-imagine-due-process-that-does-not-exist-on-paper-or-in-practice/
- https://crimeresearch.org/2022/09/original-research-support-for-red-flag-laws-depends-on-people-not-understanding-how-red-flag-laws-operate/
FakeStudies
There is a set of Fake Studies that try to pretend they're research, but their mythology is laughable (and not in a good way).
- (Kivisto and Peter Phalen) tried to couple Indiana’s Red Flag law to a drop in "Firearm suicides". (1) we don't care, we care about all suicides (2) any positive effects (and those were well below the margin of error) were likely because improved focus on mental health, not because a suicidal person couldn't jump off a bridge or walk in front of a bus. So it's dishonest. https://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ps.201700250
- Swanson tries to look at gun seizures and their imagined successes, and ignores the real failures (false positives, false negatives), and concludes it saves lives (without factoring in how many it might cost): that's not a study, that's propaganda: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=4830&context=lcp
- What the illiteratti argue is that many people who committed mass shootings have some pattern of mental illness, they don't explain whether we're going to take away the civil rights of everyone who flags as slightly depressed, or by what criteria you could weed out the dangerous from the non-dangerous (as the vast majority are non-dangerous). This was summed up by a 2017 paper (Rozel & Mulvey), that to prevent one random homicide by a person diagnosed with schizophrenia (that's not even with guns), 35,000 others would need to be rounded up and forcible treated and have their rights stripped from them. Is that a price you're willing to pay? If it is, you're an asshole: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-021815-093459
- https://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-justice/mass-shootings-red-flag-laws/
- https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2022/06/16/gov-tom-wolf-posts-a-cartoon-version-of-how-red-flag-laws-work-to-prevent-mass-shootings/
Tags: Wikipedia Guns Laws RGL GunFAQ
- ↑ https://bearingarms.com/cam-e/2019/08/03/is-the-nc-gun-shop-billboard-controversy-good-for-business-but-bad-for-gun-rights/
- ↑ Gary J. Willis: https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-aa-shooting-20181105-story.html
- ↑ Marine: https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2019/08/an-ex-marine-said-hed-slaughter-antifa-the-fbi-using-oregons-new-red-flag-law-took-his-guns-away.html
