Robust red-flag law delivered 1,800 guns to N.Y. police in ’23
State’s statute requires law enforcement to pursue seizure orders
The unusual phone calls began last year.
So many guns were being seized by the New York State Police, several evidence custodians told a union official, space to store them was running out.
The guns were tagged and arranged neatly, lined up on shelves or in cabinets. “People were saying, ‘Where the heck are we going to put all this?’” recalled Timothy Dymond, the president of the New York State Police Investigators Association.
The packed evidence rooms were a direct result of one of the most ambitious experiments ever attempted with red-flag laws, a relatively new tool states are deploying to combat gun violence. Such laws are used to prevent people at risk of harming themselves or others from possessing or buying firearms.
In New York, the state’s civil court judges approved more than 4,300 final orders under the law last year, up from 222 in 2021. At least 1,800 guns were removed by the state police and local law enforcement agencies in 2023.
New York’s approach was driven by the nation’s rising gun deaths. After a massacre at a Buffalo supermarket in 2022, in which a white gunman shot 10 Black shoppers to death, New York strengthened its red-flag law in a manner unlike any other state, making it a requirement rather than an option for law enforcement authorities to pursue such orders.
Last year, the law was used to respond to an array of possible dangers, from suicide to mass violence: a student who brought a gun to school and allegedly talked about shooting a teacher; a teenager who police said brandished a gun on a school bus; a man who threatened to shoot up a supermarket with his father’s gun; a woman experiencing delusions who brought a shotgun to a gas station.
Research has shown such laws are associated with a decrease in the rate of firearm suicides, which account for more than half of the nation’s gun deaths. In Connecticut — the first state to pass a red-flag law — researchers estimated one suicide was averted for every 10 or 11 gun removals. The laws have also been used hundreds of times in cases of people threatening mass shootings, a recent study found.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, has hailed the redflag push as a way to prevent violence. In her annual address to lawmakers on Jan. 9, she said the gun-control legislation enacted by the state is “a model for the rest of the nation.”
Gun rights groups, however, have called the expanded use of the red-flag law overzealous and unconstitutional. Such groups won a major victory last year when the Supreme Court struck down a century-old New York law governing who could carry a concealed weapon. So far, the court seems inclined to uphold laws that remove guns from those considered dangerous.
New York is one of 21 states that have passed red-flag laws, the majority of them within in the last six years. The measures typically allow law enforcement and family members to petition a court to temporarily take guns away from someone at risk of harming themselves or others. During the time the order is in effect — usually a year — the person is also barred from buying weapons.
“It’s a very tailored intervention,” said April Zeoli, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health who studies red-flag laws.
Researchers say the impact of the laws has been weakened by inconsistent application. Some jurisdictions, such as the city of San Diego, have embraced the law as a tool, using it often. Meanwhile, in states such as Nevada and New Mexico, fewer than 30% of counties have issued such orders, according to the research arm of Everytown for Gun Safety.