Sure as the gods made little green apples, Red Flag laws are back in the headlines.
For the people who think these are a great idea, I have one simple question:
How many people have been convicted of misusing a Red Flag law?
Whatever you want to call it — “Misusing”, “False filing”, “Obtaining under perjury”, whatever — a fraudulently-obtained Red Flag law denies the person it was obtained against a civil right. Civil rights that the Government should be bending over backwards to protect.
The first Red Flag law was passed in 1999. 23 years ago. People are people, and someone has blatantly lied to obtain a Red Flag order against someone.
Someone in the last 23 years has misused a Red Flag law to harass someone else. So. Show me their conviction for doing so.
I know about the time someone tried to get a Red Flag order against the cops, and that doesn’t count — some animals being more equal to other animals, and all that.
I’m talking about Joe Average having his civil rights taken away for a year with a misused Red Flag order. It has happened — we all know that it has happened — and I want to see the criminal record of the person who fraudulently deprived someone else of their Second Amendment right for a year.
Any claim of “Well, they’re so well checked that it’s never been abused” it complete and utter horse-puckey — I was in law enforcement for 26 years, that isn’t going to fly.
Absent a conviction, I will accept the name of a judge who rubber-stamped every Red Flag request to cross his desk, never turned one down, and was removed from office because of it.
If you don’t have that information, then your opinion on Red Flag laws means nothing; and you should be ignored.
LawDog