{"id":117664,"date":"2026-07-02T15:47:57","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T20:47:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=117664"},"modified":"2026-07-02T15:47:57","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T20:47:57","slug":"117664","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=117664","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Evidence-Free: How the Gun Control Industry Justifies Red Flag Gun Confiscations.<\/a><\/p>\n

According to\u00a0a recent editorial<\/a>\u00a0by an anti-gun spokesman, Florida\u2019s version of a\u00a0\u201cred flag\u201d law<\/a>\u2014also known as an Extreme Risk Protection Order law\u2014is a \u201csuccess\u201d simply because it\u2019s being used. By that standard, perhaps he would consider constitutional carry laws a similar success because millions of Americans lawfully carry in the 29 states where such laws exist.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll just have to wait for that particular editorial, but we won\u2019t hold our breath.<\/p>\n

The author, Christopher Carita, is a retired law enforcement officer who serves as an \u201cadvisor\u201d to the anti-gun organization called\u00a097Percent<\/a>\u2014a name derived from a long discredited poll that tried to claim that 97% of gun owners support so-called \u201cuniversal background checks.\u201d Besides working in law enforcement, Carita was also indoctrinated at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg (yes,\u00a0that<\/em>\u00a0Bloomberg<\/a>) School of Public Health, where he was a Bloomberg American Health Initiative Fellow.<\/p>\n

That \u201cConstitutional Carry Success\u201d editorial is seeming less likely all the time.<\/p>\n

Florida\u2019s \u201cred flag\u201d law, which Carita refers to as a Risk Protection Order law, is a little different than what many anti-gun states have implemented. Most \u201cred flag\u201d laws allow virtually anyone to allege a gun owner represents a danger to themselves or others, which could compel the removal of the individual\u2019s firearms as a sufficient resolution to the perceived risk of threat or harm. Most of these laws allow for the suspension of due process, including the right of the accused to face their accuser.<\/p>\n

In Florida, however, petitioning for an ERPO must be instigated by law enforcement. While that doesn\u2019t negate the threat of the law being abused and the rights of law-abiding gun owners being infringed upon, some argue that\u2019s a type of safeguard.<\/p>\n

As for the \u201csuccess\u201d touted by Carita, the only \u201cevidence\u201d of this success he mentions is that \u201c[n]early 4,700 RPO petitions were filed in the first two years\u201d of the law. He also mentions that, after the state trained officers in working with the law, \u201cRPO filings increased roughly 58%.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the success of a law shouldn\u2019t be measured by how often police officers try to enforce it. Laws are intended to spell out what behavior is prohibited, with the actual goal being that people will obey the law and refrain from doing that which is prohibited. Police, after all, aren\u2019t expected to be everywhere at all times to thwart the commission of a crime.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Probably the most famous motto of law enforcement, adopted by a number of departments, is, \u201cTo protect and serve.\u201d The best measure of a law\u2019s success, in other words, is whether it protects the public. Capturing individuals who actually commit crimes so that they can be appropriately punished is probably the best way for police to protect the public.<\/p>\n

The \u201cserve\u201d in that saying, it should be noted, isn\u2019t intended to mean serving orders that could lead to the loss of a constitutionally protected civil right because someone believes you might do something illegal at some unspecified future time.<\/p>\n

So, does Florida\u2019s ERPO law protect the public? To figure that out, one would first need to understand the intent of ERPOs\u2014at least, the claimed intent. Some argue they\u2019re intended to disarm individuals who exhibit signs\u2014often some sort of mental distress\u2014that they may be inclined to commit violence in the near future.<\/p>\n

97Percent specifically says the goal of ERPOs is to ensure \u201cthose at high risk of committing violence\u2026cannot access a gun.\u201d Note that they don\u2019t say they want to eliminate \u2014 or at least minimize \u2014 the risk of the individual \u201ccommitting violence.\u201d They apparently just prefer they not commit violence with a legally-possessed gun.<\/p>\n

But as we\u2019ve\u00a0sadly noted<\/a>\u00a0time<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0time<\/a>\u00a0again<\/a>, the primary defect of \u201cred flag\u201d\/ERPO laws is the underlying philosophy that compelling the removal of a person\u2019s firearms is a sufficient resolution of any risk or threat of harm.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, because someone was disarmed and they didn\u2019t commit an act of violence isn\u2019t proof that the law worked. While the individual\u2019s firearms may have been removed under the law, the individual may very well have never been remotely in danger of committing a crime of any sort, let alone a violent one involving a gun.<\/p>\n

After all, we don\u2019t have the \u201cprecrime\u201d police capabilities portrayed in the Cruise\/Speilberg movie\u00a0\u201cMinority Report,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0where psychics prevent homicides before they happen by being able to predict them.<\/p>\n

Taking it a step further, if someone is in such a mental health crisis that a government operative determines they should have their firearms seized, why simply leave them to continue to operate freely in that apparently dangerous state of precarious mental health? If the individual was truly in danger of committing an act of violence with a gun, why would he or she not simply find another means to do it, as has\u00a0actually happened<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Returning to the idea that the law in Florida has been a \u201csuccess,\u201d one would think that there would be plenty of actual evidence available to indicate so, considering it\u2019s been on the books for several years. Something beyond, that is, the frequency of its use. A significant drop in suicide or homicide rates in the areas where the ERPOs have been used the most, for example.\u00a0But Carita offers nothing to show any such correlation.<\/em><\/p>\n

Could this be because the actual goal of ERPOs is to simply disarm individuals, either temporarily or permanently? One of 97Percent\u2019s other stated goals is to lower the threshold for losing the right to arms, which would lead to disarming more individuals.<\/p>\n

97Percent also wants to see all states implement a requirement for all gun owners to obtain a permit before lawfully possessing a firearm and wants to impose state-based background checks (in addition to the federal one) on all firearm purchases.\u00a0\u00a0Imposing more government restrictions on gun owners and potential gun owners is a standard tactic of anti-gun proponents to dissuade people from obtaining firearms.<\/p>\n

Even if Carita could point to data indicating Florida\u2019s ERPO law might be linked to a decline in violence\u2014something he has not done\u2014would that justify a law that would seem to involve a number of violations of constitutional protections? Would he also support, for example, a government agency reviewing his editorials before being published to ensure he does not write anything that could be construed as criminally libelous? Yes, libel is generally a civil offense, but there are some jurisdictions that have made it a criminal offense.\u00a0\u00a0Is pre-publication review OK, just to be sure no law is broken, or would Carita rightfully object under First Amendment principles?<\/p>\n

NRA-ILA will continue to raise objections to any laws that infringe upon our rights protected under the Second Amendment, especially when they deprive law-abiding citizens of their right to arms or do so by violating other protections, like the right to due process. And if others raise claims about the purported effectiveness of red flag firearm seizure laws, we\u2019ll report on them, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Evidence-Free: How the Gun Control Industry Justifies Red Flag Gun Confiscations. According to\u00a0a recent editorial\u00a0by an anti-gun spokesman, Florida\u2019s version of a\u00a0\u201cred flag\u201d law\u2014also known as an Extreme Risk Protection Order law\u2014is a \u201csuccess\u201d simply because it\u2019s being used. By that standard, perhaps he would consider constitutional carry laws a similar success because millions of … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rights","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117664"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117665,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117664\/revisions\/117665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=117664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=117664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}