Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
New York – -(AmmoLand.com)- Deadly Red-Flag laws. This restrictive gun policy objective entails expanding the list of individuals who are not permitted to own or possess firearms.
New Progressive Left Democratic Party candidates for U.S. President—namely, the front runners—all support across the board State enactment of so-called “Red Flag” laws.
Several States have already enacted such laws, and all of them either directly infringe the Second Amendment or otherwise come dangerously close to doing so and certainly impinge upon one's exercise of the Second Amendment right of the people to keep and bear arms. Although the text of these laws as they presently exist in those jurisdictions that presently have them, or that are otherwise in the process of enacting Red Flag laws or considering enacting Red Flag laws, do vary from State to State.
But, all of these Red Flag laws have one defining characteristic: they all operate ex parte. What does that mean? It means that Courts conduct hearings where only one party to the action is present at the hearing, namely the party who is attempting to obtain a Court order against another party who is not initially present at the Court hearing to defend his interests.
The interest at stake here is retention of one's personal property, namely, one's firearms. In an ex parte hearing, under Red Flag laws, one party, or side, at the hearing seeks a Court order requiring the other party, who isn't present at the hearing, an American citizen who has committed no crime but whom the accuser is claiming is nonetheless dangerous because that person has firearms in his or her possession,. to surrender those firearms to Governmental authority. Thus, the accuser is seeking the removal of that person’s personal property, that person’s firearms— prior to the affected party’s ability to present a case in his or her defense, who would obviously wish to keep his personal property but cannot do so because the affected party has no opportunity to confront the accuser until some point subsequent to the actual removal of the person’s personality, their firearms, assuming the Court issues an order requiring the surrendering of weapons to Governmental authority. It is only after the fact, the removal of the firearms–the personal property–takes place, that a hearing is conducted where both sides are present and the party, against whom the action was taken, attempts to make a case for restoration of his personal property. All of these “Red Flag” laws, play on some variation of this theme and all of them impinge upon or are in danger of impinging upon the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. So, all of these “Red Flag” laws are Constitutionally suspect and they all should be scrutinized before enactment to see if they pass Constitutional muster. But, that never happens.
The question is do we really need these laws to protect society from the possibility of danger. And that notion of ‘possibility' is a red herring.
We would ask: How “possible” is that possibility of danger, and how do we know that a person, whomever it is that may target a person’s firearms, is doing so with an honest motive. And even if the accuser has an ostensibly honest motive for bringing action against a gun owner, forcing a person to forsake his personal property by Court order, under a State’s “Red Flag” law, the machinery of justice is, for all that, moving against a person who has committed no crime. The Court is faced with the dubious task of rendering an adverse decision against a person without having actually met with the person and therefore has no opportunity to conduct and to preside over an adversarial proceeding to which all American citizens are entitled. Ex parte proceedings are, not surprisingly, frowned on in the law, as they are by nature, contrary to our Nation's sacred jurisprudential principles.
Generally, a fully adversarial proceeding can, and should be, conducted. Likely, we would see that the person who is making a claim against individual without having to confront that person in open Court, would think twice about the danger presented, if a fully adversarial hearing were conducted. But, suppose the danger is imminent or appears to be truly imminent. In that event, every State has mechanisms by which a person can request a Court to order a personal protection order against that person who is deemed a threat. That too is handled ex parte, and a Court if convinced that a threat is imminent could certainly issue an ex parte order requiring of the person who is deemed a threat, to relinquish his or her firearms if they have any. Thus, Red Flag laws don’t do anything that personal protection orders don’t already accomplish except that they make it easier for more people to make spurious, specious claims against people, often for ulterior motives, and yet avoid having to face the consequences for making those false claims. Red Flag laws do not generally, if not invariably, provide a mechanism through which a person wrongly targeted can bring action against his or her accuser.
Red Flag Laws Are Dangerous to Our Liberty
Secondly, under federal law, 18 U.S.C § 922(g) and (n), individuals, including those convicted of felonies and those who had been institutionalized for mental illness, are not permitted to own or possess firearms, unless they have obtained a certificate of relief from their disability. Red Flag laws operate as a backdoor for expanding the domain of individuals not permitted to own or possess a firearm. Since antigun proponents denounce out-of-hand the right of the people to keep and bear arms, it should not come as a surprise that they would look for seemingly plausible ways to expand the domain of people considered unfit to own and possess firearms beyond those categories that already exist in federal law, claiming as they always do, that what motivates them is the desire to protect society though that is patently untrue. What really motivates these people is a desire to reduce the Second Amendment to a nullity, under the pretext that they give a damn about the life, safety, and well-being of others.
But they don’t because they don’t recognize that a person has a right of self-defense and don’t care that a firearm is the best means by which a person can effectively defend themselves against attack; Since they place their faith in the Government to control the masses, and don’t trust the citizenry, their entire view of man and man’s relationship to Government, and to each other, is the obverse of that of the founders of our Nation.
The Second Amendment isn’t consistent with the tenets of Collectivism.
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