'Red-flag' gun laws are constitutional and sensible By Andrew C. McCarthy

[mystery-ak]

'Red-flag' gun laws are constitutional and sensible
By Andrew C. McCarthy, opinion contributor — 08/08/19 09:30 AM EDT

In the wake of the latest mass-murder attacks by gunmen in El Paso and Dayton, so-called “red-flag” laws have come to the forefront of the public debate. Such laws would permit state governments, with federal encouragement, to deny firearms to people whom a judge finds solid grounds to believe may be unstable.

Concerns that these laws would impinge on the right to lawful gun ownership are understandable but overblown.

I say that as a Second Amendment advocate. The rights of self-defense and self-determination are not given to us by the Constitution; they are natural rights that the Constitution safeguards. They are vital to liberty. Indeed, we can be confident that the Constitution would not have been adopted in the first place if the states and the people were not satisfied that the right to keep and bear arms was guaranteed.

more
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/456649-red-flag-gun-laws-are-constitutional-and-sensible

[edpc]

Sometimes, the due process burden on government is extraordinarily high. In criminal prosecutions, for example, in which the stakes include the extensive loss of our most precious rights to liberty and property (and, in capital cases, the right to life itself), the government must establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt at trial. An accused, moreover, is accorded a broad array of due process protections — the right to counsel, to confront witnesses, to present a defense, to testify or choose not to do so, to be charged only if a grand jury approves, and so on.


I suppose I’m not particularly confident the government has an interest in making this burden extraordinarily high on themselves.

[Smokin Joe]

What's the big liberal mantra? "If it saves just one life....."?

Too late. Of 114 red flag reports in MD, one fatality.

https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2018/11/05/fatal-officer-involved-shooting-in-anne-arundel-county/

Now, let's extrapolate that kill rate to 80 million gunowners. and we get over 700,000 murdered by police.
Of course, it would not work that way, because in this case only the gunowner was harmed.

What would make Leftists more happy than to have the Police and law abiding citizens in mortal combat?

From the Article linked above,

Police continue to investigate the shooting. At this time it’s not clear who called police to alert them about Willis.

Anne Arundel County Police have only had nine “red flag” calls so far.

(emphasis mine).. THe 114 calls is for the whole State.

At the rate of fatalities per complaint in that county, Americans can expect roughly 9 million fatalities to have these laws to make them "safe". There is nothing 'reasonable' about anything that has such potential for bloodshed, and considering police don't know who made the complaint (per the article), there are no safeguards that the complainant even knows the person and hasn't just selected them at random, maybe name and address off a piece of discarded junk mail.

To advocate for something with such real potential for widespread bloodshed, to institutionalize something with such extraordinary potential for abuse, in the face of all the Constitutional Rights it would violate is insanity.

[Jazzhead]

Kudos to Mr. McCarthy - he hits this one out of the park. 

[truth_seeker]

What if we did severalthings, better?

--Identify problem people,
and Act on such identifications

--Make access to guns more difficule for problem people

--Use predictive Big Tech, to steer problem people towards the help and change they need

--Incentivise/rewards for identification of problem people

[dfwgator]

"Sensible"

I don't think that word means what you think it means, Andy.

[Right_in_Virginia]

This is an absolute must read essay!  A MUST read!

[Smokin Joe]

Kudos to Mr. McCarthy - he hits this one out of the park.

Easy to do when you aren't in the park to begin with.

If legislatures compose red-flag laws with sufficient due process rights, it would be unreasonable to oppose them. They would represent a meaningful precautionary step, which the public favors after too many massacres. They would not burden the vast majority of law-abiding gun owners.

...is the same as "If we can just find a way around that pesky Constitution thing we can sate the howling of the mob (ginned up by the media and totalitarians drooling over the prospects of having the means of attacking anyone) and take Rights away.

Have you even considered that the anonymous person calling in and claiming to know the target on the raid might assert that someone who doesn't even have a firearm is an armed and dangerous maniac.

Suppose someone left a hot tip (burner phone) with the local police that YOU have a machine gun and were threatening to shoot up (fill in with local event). That you had been doing so many drugs that you were totally off your nut and you had to be stopped....Up goes the Red flag, in goes the SWAT team, and demands you surrender the weapon you claim not to have--IF you live through the doorkicking event and don't grab for your phone (Oops, it looked like he was going for a gun...) YOU are incarcerated for not surrendering the weapon you never had, but wasn't on the records because it was obtained illegally.

Gee whiz, this could be interesting.

But now go back and review the numbers, that "vast majority" of gunowners who would not be inconvenienced, and revisit the MD incident, which was the deadly outcome of one of one hundred fourteen complaints statewide (and one of nine in the county).

Depending on how you work with the numbers, why, that's less than 1% (0.877%) of those who had complaints made about them who got killed statewide (much higher if we just consider the county).

Is that "acceptable" inconvenience? After all, over 99% didn't get killed.

But translate that percentage to all the gun owners in America, and just the gun owners, not the people who get 'swatted' by an ex G/F over the cat or something, and you would end up with well over 700,000 people killed over unsubstantiated complaints of unsure provenance and veracity--people who had committed no crime.

There is Nothing reasonable about that. Not at all. It exceeds the number of troops killed (both sides) in the Civil War, and that's just police acting on a 'reasonable' law?

Between Dayton and El Paso, 0.000009% of Americans were killed. That's tragic, unfortunate, seriously bad, but orders of magnitude fewer, percentage wise, than the people already killed in red flag raids in just one State so far.  Considering one of the victims was the sister of the shooter (in Dayton), the whole thing might not have been quite a random as it is being presented.

[austingirl]

No sale, Andrew C. McCarthy. Shame on you!

[EdJames]

Sorry, Andy, no dice.

[EdJames]

Easy to do when you aren't in the park to begin with.

...is the same as "If we can just find a way around that pesky Constitution thing we can sate the howling of the mob (ginned up by the media and totalitarians drooling over the prospects of having the means of attacking anyone) and take Rights away.

Have you even considered that the anonymous person calling in and claiming to know the target on the raid might assert that someone who doesn't even have a firearm is an armed and dangerous maniac.

Suppose someone left a hot tip (burner phone) with the local police that YOU have a machine gun and were threatening to shoot up (fill in with local event). That you had been doing so many drugs that you were totally off your nut and you had to be stopped....Up goes the Red flag, in goes the SWAT team, and demands you surrender the weapon you claim not to have--IF you live through the doorkicking event and don't grab for your phone (Oops, it looked like he was going for a gun...) YOU are incarcerated for not surrendering the weapon you never had, but wasn't on the records because it was obtained illegally.

Gee whiz, this could be interesting.

But now go back and review the numbers, that "vast majority" of gunowners who would not be inconvenienced, and revisit the MD incident, which was the deadly outcome of one of one hundred fourteen complaints statewide (and one of nine in the county).

Depending on how you work with the numbers, why, that's less than 1% (0.877%) of those who had complaints made about them who got killed statewide (much higher if we just consider the county).

Is that "acceptable" inconvenience? After all, over 99% didn't get killed.

But translate that percentage to all the gun owners in America, and just the gun owners, not the people who get 'swatted' by an ex G/F over the cat or something, and you would end up with well over 700,000 people killed over unsubstantiated complaints of unsure provenance and veracity--people who had committed no crime.

There is Nothing reasonable about that. Not at all. It exceeds the number of troops killed (both sides) in the Civil War, and that's just police acting on a 'reasonable' law?

Between Dayton and El Paso, 0.000009% of Americans were killed. That's tragic, unfortunate, seriously bad, but orders of magnitude fewer, percentage wise, than the people already killed in red flag raids in just one State so far.  Considering one of the victims was the sister of the shooter (in Dayton), the whole thing might not have been quite a random as it is being presented.

 

[EdJames]

What if we did severalthings, better?

--Identify problem people,
and Act on such identifications

--Make access to guns more difficule for problem people

--Use predictive Big Tech, to steer problem people towards the help and change they need

--Incentivise/rewards for identification of problem people

Comment on your last two items:

--"Use predictive Big Tech, to steer problem people towards the help and change they need"

Do you really think that it is a good idea to have "Big Tech" developing algorithms to identify and 'steer' people?  How do you think conservatives and Trump-supporting folks would fair in that kind of identification and 'steering?'

--"Incentivise/rewards for identification of problem people"

Exactly which entities to you propose to pay out these bounties for the "identification of problem people?"  Who defines who the "problem people" are?  (Same question applies for your first item in the list.)


 

[Smokin Joe]

Comment on your last two items:

--"Use predictive Big Tech, to steer problem people towards the help and change they need"

Do you really think that it is a good idea to have "Big Tech" developing algorithms to identify and 'steer' people?  How do you think conservatives and Trump-supporting folks would fair in that kind of identification and 'steering?'

--"Incentivise/rewards for identification of problem people"

Exactly which entities to you propose to pay out these bounties for the "identification of problem people?"  Who defines who the "problem people" are?  (Same question applies for your first item in the list.)


 

Wow. Bounties? Turn in 'so and so' for the money?
Ya think there might be a profit motive in that?
Not just 'paybacks' for the neighbor's dog barking at 3AM?

I can't think of a faster way to throughly corrupt any well-meaning process than to introduce politics or money.

Those who won't own their own guns will use the guns of the police to attack those who do own guns. Got it.
What a haven for cowards!

[EdJames]

Wow. Bounties? Turn in 'so and so' for the money?
Ya think there might be a profit motive in that?
Not just 'paybacks' for the neighbor's dog barking at 3AM?

I can't think of a faster way to throughly corrupt any well-meaning process than to introduce politics or money.

Those who won't own their own guns will use the guns of the police to attack those who do own guns. Got it.
What a haven for cowards!

To be fair, “bounty” was my word, not TS’s, but thatis what it sounded like to me...

 

[Right_in_Virginia]

FTA

If legislatures compose red-flag laws with sufficient due process rights, it would be unreasonable to oppose them. They would represent a meaningful precautionary step, which the public favors after too many massacres.

They would not burden the vast majority of law-abiding gun owners. And if reasonable action is not taken, it will become increasingly difficult to stave off unreasonable restrictions — which are favored by many Democrats and much of the judiciary.

[Right_in_Virginia]

I've made this point several times ... albeit not quite as eloquently.  Yet it's shrugged off. 

The 2nd Amendment is no more important to the whole of the 1st Amendment in a free society.  But we accept this without panic:

Nevertheless, no constitutional right is absolute. And many are highly qualified: On its face, for example, the First Amendment may appear to brook no congressional burdens on free expression; yet, that liberty has always been understood to be limited by laws against libel, profanity and incitement, as well as time, place and manner restrictions.

[Smokin Joe]

FTA

FYI:

Only one of 114 flagged gun owners in MD has been killed by police so far ( in a 5AM raid) under their Red Flag law.

While the vast majority of gunowners in MD were not inconvenienced, that's a kill rate of 870/100,000.

By contrast, Baltimore's homicide rate is only 55.8/100,000, even though it is touted as one of the worst in the nation.

[roamer_1]

What if we did severalthings, better?

--Identify problem people,
and Act on such identifications

@truth_seeker
According to whom? Who is the decider?

--Make access to guns more difficule for problem people

Nonsense. That's impossible.

--Use predictive Big Tech, to steer problem people towards the help and change they need

What, Minority Report? You've got to be kidding me.

--Incentivise/rewards for identification of problem people

Soviet style - Turn your neighbors into spies...

great. 

[roamer_1]

I've made this point several times ... albeit not quite as eloquently.  Yet it's shrugged off. 

The 2nd Amendment is no more important to the whole of the 1st Amendment in a free society.  But we accept this without panic:

Without the 1st, you don't have the 2nd.
Without the 2nd, you won't have the 1st.