RED-FLAG LAWS
Once again, we try to find a solution to these mass shootings. Without breaking down, head in hands.
Maybe not a solution, per se. For in this country, a solution may not be possible just yet. But there must be ways to limit the damage done by punks and crazies who get ahold of rifled, semi-automatic long-guns equipped with large magazines. Some of us refuse to believe that nothing can be done.
We’ve editorialized this many times in the past, and not a few times in the last month: Schools should harden their shells. If we can afford to send $40 billion to Ukraine to fight a war, we can spend money to hire off-duty police to patrol American schools. We think it’s a good idea to raise the age limit for buying rifled long-guns to 21 years. And there is more.
There seems to be some movement — bipartisan movement — on red-flag laws.
Such laws could allow courts to take away firearms from disturbed people when law enforcement or family testify for the need. According to wire reports, U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal, of different political parties (!), are working out details on a proposal.
The two senators are trying to tweak a red-flag bill they co-sponsored in 2019. CBS News says the senators hope, with minor changes to their previous bill, that a majority of senators will lend support to a current one.
According to the network: “At this stage, their updated proposal would focus on establishing federal grants for states to create or bolster ‘red flag’ laws. A red flag law, in most instances nationwide, enables law-enforcement officials to temporarily seize firearms from individuals who are seen as threat to themselves or other people, if given a court order to do so.” This might be a state-to-state battle, for firearm laws (most of them, at least) are made at the state level.
Notice that a court order is required to sign off before anybody has a gun taken away. That’s called due process. And the red-flag laws we’ve seen have rehearings after a time to see if the firearms should be returned. Again, due process.
“In the past, the National Rifle Association has not forcefully opposed the suggestion of red-flag laws, but it largely remains opposed to any new restrictions on guns.” To not have the NRA actively opposing such a proposal might give Republican politicians cover enough to vote for it. Once again, we don’t need to talk about the theoretical, but the reality of American politics. The situation is too dire to do otherwise.
(The 18-year-old who shot up a school in Uvalde, Texas, and killed 19 elementary kids and two teachers, said he would do that very thing online before he locked-and-loaded. The 19-year-old who killed 17 people in Parkland, Fla., had the cops to his house, CNN reports, 45 times. These people could be poster boys for red-flag laws.)
Currently, only 19 states have such laws. No matter what you might hear from the sputtering class, these laws are rarely used. And only in extreme circumstances. Dispatches say that the large state of California has had less than two dozen cases in the last two years of people who’ve been disarmed by a court after threatening violence. That’s in a state with more than 39 million people.
There will be opposition. Just as there will be opposition to any new gun laws. But a person shouldn’t be able to die, or kill, with his rights on. The Constitution of the United States, it was once said, isn’t a suicide pact. Or certainly shouldn’t be.
Better a red-flag law than the white flag. And some of us aren’t willing to give up. Not when it comes to protecting kids in school from the crazy, disturbed and/or bloodthirsty.