A deeper discussion about Red Flag Laws

May 19, 2019 | Featured

With 15 states having Red Flag Laws (also known as Extreme Risk Protection Orders), Dr. John Lott joined Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Colorado Weld County Sheriff Steve Reams, who has promised not to enforce Colorado’s new Red Flag Law, to discuss the problems with these laws. Lott discussed the Crime Prevention Research Center’s new research on Red Flag Laws.

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6 Comments

  1. Tom Campbell

    Excellent. Just excellent.

  2. Eric Blust

    Red Flag Laws will be used to target and silence political enimies. If you have never been convicted of a crime, it is a great indicator that the “suspect” is law abiding and will not commit a future crime…. Disgruntled co workers or police officers, to angery politicians will use Red Flag Laws as a vehicle to have the state commit tyranny on their behalf….

    • David Oldham

      In Tulsa we are seeing a rash of ex parte protective orders issued by judges. Most are being sought by female Democrats against male opponents. There was also a city counselor who sought one against a man she dislikes, who regularly attends city council meetings. The link between them all is a liberal/socialist attorney who even previously represented one of the men she now has sought orders against for her new clients.
      We have also had 2 arrests based on these orders. One was a man running for Democrat party office, who was arrested for showing up to a meeting with the “protected” already inside. He had been previously prevented by the order from attending the party convention necessary to run for another party office. The other gentleman showed up for the regular city council meeting and was arrested.
      Silencing of opposing political voices, then taken to another level of improper government force, and so far without repercussions on any of the accusers who have all been accused of fabricating the charges.

  3. Cody

    The NRA supported state level Red Flag Abomination, and its variants, implicate the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th Amendments. A Federal RF Law implicates the 9th and 10th, as well. The one critical issue that most 2A folks, especially the NRA leadership, miss is that the Bill of Rights stands as a singular document, containing 10 essential elements aka the individual amendment. Each amendment is designed to act as an integral reinforcement for the other amendments. So, there is no such thing as bifurcating the Bill of Rights, no matter how urgent unsupported allegations may make disarming an accused person seem. Take one amendment out and the others fall. So, you can’t “take the guns first, then get due process later.”

    • David Oldham

      “So, you can’t ‘take the guns first, then get due process later.'”
      It sort of violates the right to be secure in their person and effects, doesn’t it?

  4. John Sutherland

    Excellent interview. I live in Colorado, an open carry state (the last time I checked), but I do not live in Weld County. This interview is exactly how government representatives should be bringing controversial subjects to the people. Thank you, Thomas Massie. This particular interview was, in my opinion, well balanced and very appealing to the reasonable man. Of course, the gun control advocates and supporters do not appear as ‘reasonable’ men & women to people like me. But, maybe that’s just good old anarchist me, eh?

    John Lott made one point that does not get made often enough. People inside government often, maybe invariably, believe they are in place to ‘do something,’ so they pass new laws, not understanding that by doing so they are increasingly destroying the American individual’s personal freedoms – freedom, that basic concept and foundation on which this country was originally created. We all should know by now that freedom is the absence of legislation, especially government legislation, which is always enforced through the threat or actual use of force and violence on the people. The more laws, the more potential crimes get committed. Note that the loss of freedom is not a problem with legislation as found in voluntary organizations, as they are by definition ‘voluntary.’ But government legislation is mandatory, and hence we have the problem of government’s use of force and violence against the people.

    Another subject that was not mentioned in the interview is the fact that gun related crimes in the US have been declining for the past few decades (yes, really), while police killings of unarmed civilians has been steady or rising, and amount to about 100 per month – that we know of. To my knowledge, while civilian stats are collected, documented, and archived by the FBI, there is no FBI database for police killings, or for any other government employee killings of civilians. What police brutality stats we have to review are often obtained by researchers who use FOIA and state versions of FOIA to disclose police killings of civilians. Governments invariably try to hide killings and other crimes committed against the people. In fact, and to their credit, the Orange County Register (California) ran a three part series in the 1980s that disclosed that fully one third of all Orange claims settlements were due to police brutality settlements. For me, this was a problem. Thank you Orange County Register for that series. That’s exactly how newspaper journalism is supposed to work.

    My simple question to many legislators and want-to-be legislators has always been, why don’t you take laws off the books? A country with an estimated 2 million laws can hardly be considered a free country, and, in fact, the plethora of these laws has caused the United States to have the highest incarceration rate of any country in the allegedly civilized world. In fact, someone (maybe Lott) has already figured out that more than 80% of those incarcerated are in jail for ‘victimless’ crimes. Really? The reasonable man has to ask – what’s THAT all about? And, of course, that gets us into the definition of the term ‘crime.’ When I was young, a crime always had to have a specific victim. Today crimes do not appear to require victims. Big mistake. And, as well, the private prison systems are also a HUGE mistake. In my opinion.

    So, in my own little corner of the world, the most significant concern of life in America in 2019 is our declining individual freedoms and liberties, and I really wish that a majority of our legislators would focus on actually fixing that problem and other problems we have, rather than worrying about how much aid, aka US taxpayer wealth, should be given to israel. Things are NOT going in the right direction in 2019 in America.

    All of which brings me back to my review of this interview – it was a ray of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy weather forecast. Thanks again.

    Have a great day!

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