So, I was engaged in a debate about red flag laws last night. Red flag laws seem to have bipartisan support despite, as far as I can tell, being unconstitutional. Still, I asked the person to give me one success story and this is what he came up with.
If this is a success story, I don't wanna know what a failure looks like.
A man was killed by police at his own doorstep because someone called the cops to take his gun. Nobody, including the person who called the cops, have given a reason why his guns should be taken. The best guess I think an honest person can make given the information would be that the concern was that he'd harm himself with the gun. Okay, so the success story is that the cops murdered him in order to prevent him from committing suicide. Success!
But, also understand that the context in which this story was presented as an argument for red flag law was that it was provided by a passionate BLM supporter. Yet, somehow, this isn't a cautionary tale for him. "Well, he answered the door with a gun." Yeah, if someone came banging at my door at 5am, I might answer the door with a gun myself. Then the exact same people who have advocated to smashing windows and lighting fires after people have been killed by police in the process of resisting make an exception in this case. "See, this guy was killed because he was resisting arrest; so, this was a justified shooting."
No, the cops come banging on his door at an ungodly hour for most people to seize his property under no suspicion of a crime. One can also assume that the red flag order would have the cops entering his house and invading his privacy to make sure that they seize all of the guns. Yeah, I'd be pissed, too. Again, this is being done with no suspicion that he's guilty of anything.
The icing on the cake was when I responded by saying that, if the victim were a black man, my opponent in this discussion would be smashing windows in protest. His response was surreal. He decided to say that, if the victim were black, the police wouldn't have given him the opportunity to comply before shooting him.
How is that not making my point. If we all agree with that, that ultimate argument against red flag laws. It's basically legalized swatting. Anybody who wants a black dude dead can just call the cops and say that he's got a gun and might harm himself.
No matter how you put it, red flag laws introduce two cops with guns into a situation where the cops are assuming that the person answering the door has a gun and is somehow dangerous. They're doing so on a hunch with no probable cause that the person has committed a crime with the full intent to violate the Constitutional right of the citizen, to enter his or her property, to violate his or her privacy. To support these laws and not realize that this is a powder keg that's ready to create an explosion of violence by police is to not rub to brain cells together.