Addendum

I did not include this in the text of the letter because I doubt the sincerity of the politicians raising this issue, and therefore its real rhetorical force. However, I note that these 'Red Flag' laws run into the teeth of the entire Black Lives Matter / Defund the Police movement's stated goals. Some activists may really care about it, so it's worth noting separately.

These aggressive 'Red Flag' laws are going to be enforced disproportionately against the black community, because that is where policing resources are already disproportionately focused. Likewise, rural sheriffs like mine are not going to enforce these laws because they won't believe in them. It could very well be that black Americans end up being the chief victims of these midnight raids by armed agents of the state into the sanctity of their homes, when they have committed no actual crime. It may well be that the accidental police shootings that will inevitably occur from these policies will chiefly affect the black community.

And even though I assume the police won't intend to kill anyone, the risks are great. They are being dispatched to someone's home whom they've been assured is so potentially dangerous that they must go disarm him right now. They're going to be on edge, and will deploy with officer safety in mind. The chances of someone getting accidentally shot are very high.

Indeed, if these raids are conducted at night when children are home, there's a high probability that this policy will actually kill more American children than the school shootings it is meant to prevent. This is because school shootings are random acts by a tiny fraction of the population, whereas these Red Flag laws would be enforced systematically across the country by organized police forces on a daily basis. Even though the police would not be intending to kill any one, the far greater incidence of these events coupled with their high risks make it likely that more innocent lives will be lost than saved. 

By night, these will sometimes include children who were sleeping at home. America will have relocated its gun violence problem from its schools to its homes, while dramatically intensifying the problem's incidence and scale.

4 comments:

J Melcher said...

The ghost of David Koresh nods, affirming this analysis.

raven said...

I suspect like most of these sorts of laws, it will be used against political opposition rather than "mass killer threats". This means you, Maga Man!

Also, are they saying the person is so dangerous they are a threat to the public, and that magically the threat goes away if they do not (unlikely) have a gun?
Tell it to a Rwandan. Or a Uighur.

The goal is to disarm the political opposition - all the rest is obfuscation for idiots.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Good additional thoughts here. These laws will not make us safer, and the analysis is not difficult to understand. My suspicion is that cultural victory, not safety, is the real purpose behind these laws, and thus the arguments will be ignored. The rather childish fantasy that "If we didn't have all these gun people doing gun things in America the problems would mostly go away" is a strong feeling among their reliable voters who do not much follow events as react to the dramatic ones and show up at elections to vote their feelings.

Reassuring that group that they are "doing something" but bad selfish people are opposing them is the real meaning. You can get a lot of votes for very little effort out of that crowd.

sykes.1 said...

Not one politician of either party takes the carnage in the black ghettos seriously. Yet Chicago alone gets about 800 blacks killed and SEVERAL THOUSAND wounded. It’s worse than the wars of Afghanistan and Iraq combined.

The total number of active gang bangers cannot be more than a percent or so of the black underclass, maybe less than 100,000 total nationwide. That should be a manageable number, but black politicians like Obama, Mayor Lightfoot, and DA Foxx actively prevent any action being taken.

Black Lives do not Matter.