Texas weighs ‘red flag’ laws for firearms
Bill would keep guns from people at risk
“(A red flag law) might help be a tipping point for states who have been traditionally opposed to any gun violence prevention.”
John Rosenthal Stop Handgun Violence
AUSTIN – As President Trump met Thursday with some survivors of the Santa Fe High School shooting, Texas lawmakers mulled over Gov. Greg Abbott’s wide-ranging plan to reduce gun violence and prevent school shootings.
Tucked on Page 34 of the Republican governor’s 40-point plan is a pitch to study “red flag” laws, which allow a judge to temporarily remove weapons from the home of an individual considered a risk to himself or others.
Eight states have similar laws — including California, Florida and Vermont — and 29 others have introduced such bills. Backers say red flag laws probably would have prevented the shootings at a Sutherland Springs, Texas, church in November that killed 26 and at a high school in Parkland, Fla., in February that left 17 dead.
Ten people were killed May 18 in the school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas. Trump, in Texas Thursday for fundraisers, spent more than an hour offering private condolences to some of the families affected by the shooting.
Of all the gun initiatives, such as uniform background checks or bans on assault-style weapons, red flag law proposals seem to have the greatest momentum since the Parkland shooting, winning bipartisan support in several states, said John Rosenthal, cofounder of Stop Handgun Violence.
“It’s the new and probably most prevalent discussion around gun violence prevention, post-Parkland,” he said.
If a similar law is passed in Texas, a gun-friendly state, the initiative could get a boost nationally. “It might help be a tipping point for states who have been traditionally opposed to any gun violence prevention,” Rosenthal said.
The laws, known as a “gun violence restraining order” or “extreme risk protection order,” allow family members or law enforcement officials to seek a court order temporarily restricting an individual’s access to firearms when the person shows “red flags” of being a danger to himself or others.
The firearms are taken away for three weeks to a year. Afterward, the owner can petition the court to have the weapons returned.
In his “School and Firearm Safety Action Plan,” Abbott urges the Texas Senate and House to consider allowing “law enforcement, a family member, school employee or a district attorney to file a petition seeking the removal of firearms from a potentially dangerous person only after legal due process is provided.”
After the release of Abbott’s plan, Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, RSan Antonio, called on the House Criminal Jurisprudence committee to study the initiative and come up with a legal process to implement it.
“It’s critically important that students and parents know when they return to school in August that schools are significantly safer and less vulnerable to a shooting tragedy, and today the state has taken the first steps toward giving them that assurance,” Straus said in a statement.
Critics say it would infringe on constitutionally protected rights by having guns removed after a court hearing often not attended by the gun owner.
“As in the film Minority Report, Americans are stripped of their fundamental constitutional rights based on the subjective possibility of a ‘future crime,’ ” Michael Hammond, legislative counsel for Gun Owners of America, a gun rights organization, wrote in an April editorial in USA TODAY.
“And we know from our limited experience that many accusers lie or make mistakes — even more reach delusional conclusions — and the target is frequently an abused victim who is most in need of the wherewithal to protect against an abuser,” he wrote.
Supporters of a red flag law say the gun owner would have due process through the court, but the measure would address immediate threats to prevent them from being carried out.
A red flag law could drastically cut gun suicides, advocates say. Of the 96 people killed by gun violence each day, 59 — or 61% — die from suicides, according to the Washington-based Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
A Duke University study in 2017 found that Connecticut’s red flag law averted at least 72 suicides.
Connecticut’s law offered several layers of due process, said Jeffrey Swanson, a Duke University sociologist. “There are lots of people who do pose a risk of harming others or themselves who would pass a gun background check,” he said. “Here’s a law designed to point out who those people are.”