Is this different than executing an arrest warrant? If I replace “seizes their guns” with “arrests them and puts them in jail for processing” does it suddenly become totally fine with you?
The warrant is part of due process. It’s even mentioned in the 4th Amendment. And included in that process is the right to an attorney, the right to compel witnesses, the right to confront accusers, the right to testify on ones own behalf. In many places red flag laws don’t allow for any of this. All it takes is for one Karen to screw a guys life up.
But let’s say, for a moment, that you have a guy who is a threat. He’s been going around saying how he wants to kill a bunch of kids, and other nutty things. Are you just going to take away his guns and that’s that? End of threat? Really?
That is the same way we issue search and arrest warrants. You generally don’t have the ability to contest those prior to issuance and execution. You also don’t have the ability to contest a temporary psychiatric hold in an hearing prior to it being imposed generally speaking.
It would be weird to believe our constitution lets the government seize evidence from your home, or seize your physical body without a hearing in which you get to object before hand, but for the specific corner case of firearms this is invalid. In the cases of warrants, psychiatric holds et cetera the constitution has been found to be satisfied as long as there is some due process to challenge it at some point, it does not have to occur before hand. In the case of arrest and psychiatric holds you generally have to get some sort of hearing quite quickly as a check against the government just acting egregiously bad. Is it your assertion a temporary seizure of firearms should be held to a higher standard of scrutiny than a temporary detainment of a human person in jail?
And yet police regularly take the guns they find from someone away from them for “police protection”, despite not knowing for sure if “they have other guns.” Are you saying the police are behaving illogically in those cases?
And yet, police routinely disarm people they interact with for “officer safety”, are you saying the police are behaving illogically?
FWIW red flag seizures of guns should go through a “sufficient level of due process”, which to me would mean the initial order should be similar to acquiring a warrant, and sustaining the order should require some hearing that has due process and the ability of the subject to object with legal counsel (this is how psychiatric commitments work.) The objections @pkbites have laid out are poorly argued and illogical and have nothing to do with due process.
Before you get taken away and put in a cell?
If you’re claiming red flag laws don’t allow the person to get a hearing to argue for their guns back, I’d need proof that this is how they’re constructed.
As a layman, I would think one constitutional issue would be the level of evidence needed to seize the guns. If Karen says, “Grandpa is always yelling at the kids on the lawn. I’m afraid he’s going to shoot them.” with nothing else and no evidence and that is sufficient testimony, that should be a problem.
You’re talking about a police contact where an armed individual could constitute an immediate imminent threat. If the person is free to go lawfully possessed weapons are returned.
Otherwise you have not answered my question. If a person is a threat to themselves and/or others why the focus on just one tool? Why not confiscate everything they have that could hurt someone? Including vehicles? Why not mandating psychological analysis? Why this belief that just removing guns makes a dangerous person harmless? Either a person is a threat or they are not.
But that is exactly where this is headed and exactly where red flag supporters want it headed. It is a back door confiscation plan. It has nothing to do with saving lives. If it did they would focus more on the individual who is acting nutty. Just taking his guns (the ones you know about) and letting Mr Nutball be solves nothing.
That’s a fucking lie. There ARE people in this thread who don’t give a shit about saving lives, but it ain’t the ones who want red flag laws.
That didn’t take you long.
What didn’t take long, to point out you’re a liar? You should expect that when you lie.
And yet:
You’re fine with police disarming people preemptively with no firm evidence. Either the person is a threat or they aren’t. If they’re a threat, maybe they should be handcuffed immediately?
No, it didn’t take long for you to start calling names as that is the only recourse your side has.
If red flag laws were about saving lives from someone who is a threat there would be far, far more to it than just removing guns. But there isn’t.
Warning for Cheesesteak, you cannot insult other posters outside the Pit. You can go after his post. You can try to show why they’re wrong. But you really cannot call them a liar.
And please, flag such posts in the future. Replies like this are fairly borderline.
This topic was automatically opened after 8 minutes.
If you’re going to get upset about people saying your statements are lies, perhaps don’t accuse other people of lying about their own motivations. Your idea–that folks advocating red flag laws aren’t doing so out of a belief that they’ll save lives–is as preposterous as it is pernicious. You offer it with zero evidence. I won’t pretend to know why you’d do so, but it’s a statement so devoid of content that it barely rises to the level of false.
It’s only binding in CT, but it’s my understanding that courts routinely look to other jurisdictions for precedent, so it’s still relevant. And if a review of the case histories show that the issue has come up 12 times in 12 different states (or whatever) with the same result in each, it’s probably safe to say that that’s the same way a federal court would rule, as well.
Funny thing, if guns didn’t take the lives of 30,000 Americans a year, I wouldn’t care if you drove around with a 50 caliber machine gun attached to your roof of your car. Deaths are literally the only reason anyone wants anything to do with your precious guns.
For all your claims that new laws won’t work, you and your side haven’t come up with a single thing that does work. All we’re getting from you is nonsense about how taking someone’s gun based on a claim and a warrant is more unconstitutional than throwing them in a cage based on a claim and a warrant.
Not only that, in his world it’s fine for a police officer–someone who is often hired specifically due to lower intelligence (cite), and who is rarely educated in the law, to just disarm anyone they want on any mere pretense or “because they’re scared.” But he’s against a judge, highly educated, trained in the law, being able to issue a writ that disarms someone after a procedural hearing.