The primary tool anti-gunners have found to get around the Second Amendment is the most controversial – red flag laws. Red flag laws enable ex-girlfriends, neighbors, old bosses, and distant family relatives to get local police to confiscate your firearms without you doing one thing wrong. All they have to do is say they fear you are a danger to yourself and/or others, and you own firearms.
There is no due process. Armed police will enter your home and take your firearms – just like in Nazi Germany.
The totalitarian measure has a singular source: Far-left anti-gunners. Many of them are funded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his billions via Everytown for Gun Safety and political funding. Bloomberg and other anti-gunners like him want to disarm civilized society, much like New York City does its most to disarm its law-abiding residents.
While there is a singular source backing extremist laws like red flag laws, a diverse group opposes them. The one uniting principle is a simple and very potent one: Red flag laws violate civil rights. Specifically, they violate the rights to due process, self-defense, and the Second Amendment.
The ACLU cautions against red flag laws and their “impact on civil liberties, and the precedent it sets for the use of coercive measures against individuals, not because they are alleged to have committed any crime, but because somebody believes they might, someday, commit one.”
The ACLU says red flag laws enable a court to violate civil rights without any real evidence someone is an “imminent threat.” The simple, unfounded fear that someone might cause harm to others without any evidence of prior history or overt threats of firearms violence is all it takes to violate civil rights under red flag laws.
The accused does not even have the right to legal representation. The court simply reviews claims and issues orders to confiscate firearms based on fear instead of reality.
Worse, the ACLU says red flag laws can be used to punish free speech and political advocacy. Police can use social media to declare a law-abiding gun owner a member of a criminal gang and use that as leverage to get a red flag warrant issued to seize firearms.
Someone who dislikes “overblown political rhetoric” could be targeted with a red flag law orders, the ACLU argues. And, police could be forced to tell others the person in question is considered an imminent threat of violence. That is nothing short of slander based on differing political views. Imagine your Hillary loving Aunt or nephew calls the cops on you because he dared disagree with him at the dinner table.
The opposition to red flag laws is wide-ranging, with conservatives and liberals truly focused on civil rights opposing them. That includes organizations as diverse as the NRA and the ACLU. That is because those organizations truly focus on rights for all. Red flag laws epitomize the unfounded fears anti-gunners have regarding firearms in general.
We already have background checks in place to review lawful gun purchases. Those background checks need better execution to become truly effective. Instead of invoking laws violating civil rights, improving existing laws would prove far more effective at preventing the wrong people from buying firearms and using them against others during blatantly illegal acts.
