Red Flag Laws are Bullshit

It’s via Bloomberg’s propaganda outlet The Trace, that we learn of a “successful” use of Vermont’s Bloomberg-bought-and-paid-for “Red Flag” law:

They say through interviews, investigators learned the suspects planned to get guns and bring them to school Dec. 18 at noon to shoot a student. They learned a second student volunteered to get guns from a relative.

One suspect was taken to Porter Medical Center for psychiatric counseling and treatment in the custody of DCF.

Prosecutors got an Extreme Risk Order so the guns could be seized from the other student’s relative’s home.

Woah, back up there. Let me make sure I understand this: Red Flag laws mean that if I’m targeted by a conspiracy by two individuals related to me to steal my property and misuse it, that I can lose my guns? Who’s the victim here? How can this possibly be constitutional?

Remember this: Bloomberg’s people consider this a success. A man was targeted to have his guns stolen, so the state decided to come in and steal them first. This is success, according to them. It’s how the system is supposed to work. It used to be the solution to something like this would be to lock up the thieves. Conspiracy to commit a crime is illegal, if they took any steps to further the conspiracy. Once they were on the police radar, this is what should have been done.

25 thoughts on “Red Flag Laws are Bullshit”

  1. I hope they can afford lawyers sufficient to bounce the rubble and have the suit spoken of in hushed tones generations from now.

    1. Ideed. Note that This is not the /susect’s/ weapons or even weapons that were owned by a cohabitant of the suspect.

      By the logic the State can seize any property that any suspect /plans/ to take to facilitate a crime.

      How convenient.

      1. I am planning to use all of Bloomberg’s money to commit a crime. Ah, hell, Soros’s money too.

        1. It’s very likely that someone, somewhere, right now is planning to steal the guns from Bloomberg’s bodyguards and use them for terrorism.

          Bloomberg’s bodyguards need to be stripped of all their weapons.

    2. One imagines GOA or NRA might well get involved with this sort of errant nonsense.

      1. It depends on the details of the people in question, but this may be a case to get a far /more/ favorable defendant to a Red Flag law.

        With a lot of other people who would be in a suit against such a law they’d be ones who someone has gotten the Police to go along with them being “a potential danger.”

        Not so here.

      2. BS, the NRA has Never represented the 2nd Amendment, or our God given right’s to protect ourselves from a Police State. We’re in a soft concentration camp. The Uni-Party’s busy adding enough inmates to control every aspect of our lives!

        The NRA’s controlled opposition and nothing more than controlled opposition. Either they protect Patriots, or they protect the leisure hunting and shooting sports industry? They clearly only support hunters! NRA’s just like Alex Jones, controlled opposition!

        1. Please tell that to former NRA President Marion Hammer, who made Florida CCW reform happen and thus help start CCW reform across the country.

          The NRA stopped being a hunters/target shooters only organization years ago.

  2. As all of us here at PAGunBlog knew, the erosion of the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments was the number 1 goal of these Red Flag Laws. The 2nd Amendment was/is just the Trojan Horse for it. These Red Flag Laws are also setting up for a National “War on Guns and Gun Owners” modeled of what the War On Drugs has wrought.

    The outright assasination of the entirety of The Bill Of Rights is going on. If we in the Gun Rights Movement, from the top-down, do not start getting a ground-game going to defend our entire Bill Of Rights as vocally as we do the 2nd Amendment, then everything we stand for is all for nothing.

  3. Involuntary commitment laws would accomplish the same end without disarming the lawful owner. And red flag laws do nothing for gasoline, knives, or cars.

  4. Meanwhile I there is still no update on the Red Flag killing of 61 year old gun owner Gary J Willis, shot to death 5:17 AM November 5th by police, as he stood in his own doorway in Glen Burnie Maryland.

    https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-aa-shooting-20181105-story.html

    Suspiciously there has never been any reporting on the race of Gary. Probably because you have a Red Flag incident where white cops killed a black man.

    Holy Crap! Look at what Pennsylvanian politicians are saying. The say the Gary shooting is an example of Red Flag laws working well!

    http://www.witf.org/news/2018/12/red-flag-laws-and-the-push-for-one-in-pa-explained.php

    1. In the not so distant future, there WILL be another “Waco” incident that makes the 1993 Stand-Off look like a joke.

      It’s coming down the pike. Another analogy will be that of there being another “Alexandria Baseball Shooting Incident” too. However, the next “James T Hodgkinson” WILL NOT be a leftwing Maoist, but on the other side of the center. The 2017 incident will look like a joke too.

      With Piglosi back in as SPOTH, 2019 and 2020 are gonna be ugly. When you have Maoist filth like Eric Salwell fantasizing using nuclear weapons against American Gun Owners, all the while kissing the ass-end of the Communist Chinese, making friends with the Iranian Ayatollahs yet calling American Conservatives “Nazis”, and wanting to give amnesty and US Citizenship to 3rd World Illegal Aliens,…….

      You get a USA that is now a literal powder-keg.

    2. I don’t understand why they were there at 5:17 AM. If someone pounds on my door at 5:17 AM, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to bring a gun to the door. I don’t blame the officers for defending themselves, but I do question how the situation was handled.

      1. Exactly. It was probably still dark out. There’s tons about this incident which screams incompetence and/or stupidity. That such a pall of media silence has descended on the matter is both infuriating and highly suspicious at the same time.

  5. I noticed that too.

    Its complete bullshit that a person who had NO involvement in the crime was punished. Because GUNS.

  6. NRA-ILA thinks they’re great now apparently.
    “Finally, we appreciate President Trump’s support for keeping firearms out of the hands of those who have been adjudicated by a court to be a danger to themselves or others in the form of state Extreme Risk Protection Orders — provided they include strong due process protections, require mental health treatment, and include penalties against those who file frivolous charges to harass law-abiding citizens.”

    http://assets.nraila.org/articles/20181218/nra-ilas-chris-w-cox-releases-statement-on-school-safety-report

    These laws won’t have real due process. The VT case shows how these unfold.

    My theory is that now that NRA has changed the process for getting potential directors nominated they feel safe falling back to a fuddier status quo.

    So much for “stand and fight!” and “freedom’s safest place.”

    1. While there was always a vocal contingent of gun folks who trolled the NRA on their social media accounts, the last month or so has seen them and their “spokespeople” get eviscerated over these ERPOs and the bump stock ban. It was only a matter of time before the pro-LEO, “law and order” strategy came back to bite them.

    2. I think it’s a case of losing on the issue, so better to have a fallback position that loses on more favorable terms. They did the same thing with Instant background checks when the Brady Bill picked up real momentum, which had not-so-instant background checks.

      1. It also allows the NRA to go “No True Scotsman” when red flag laws are abused, as in cases like this.

  7. Since the Red Flag laws were to take guns of the “violent and mentally ill,” I can’t how they worded the application to fit a victim who’s gun was stolen so the government could steal the rest of his guns.

    1. It has been a commonly applied standard for several years that “denying access” to either criminals or the mentally ill includes not allowing them to live in a home with firearms, whether they are the homeowner or not. Spouse, children, houseguests, all of them have been allowed to count.

      The difference between that and the current “red-flag” laws is that there had to be an actual trial to convict the person access was being denied to.

  8. Gun rights advocates made a big mistake with Sandy Point and Parkland shooting They pushed the problem is with mentally ill people So they came up with Red flag laws that are sweeping the states. These are just excuses to take guns from law abiding people.

    1. But that is the problem. Red flag laws do nothing for non-gun mass murders. From the presentation I will be doing at Lincoln Memorial University Law School Ja. 18:

      “Mass murder is not at all new; Americans have used a wide variety of weapons for mass murder

      “Limiting firearms at best will change the choices to other weapons, many of which are impractical to restrict:

      “$1 of gasoline (87 dead, New York City, 1990)

      “Can of cigarette lighter fluid (33 dead, UpStairs Lounge, New Orleans, 1973)

      “Bottle of camp stove fuel (97 dead, DuPont Plaza Hotel, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1986)

      “Only one of these was planned; the others were spur of the moment”

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