Well this is a strategy I've never seen before: https://twitter.com/projectlincoln/status/1280457599884935168 It's a political ad with an audience of one. Its sole purpose is to fuck with Trump's head.
While I appreciate your clear expertise on the American legal system, having a judge make civil judgments to revoke firearms based on reports of vaguely defined “threats” is a shitty policy.
Where are you seeing that? Nothing I'm finding doesn't mention this at all. According to this piece from a law professor, states have used have used domestic violence restraining orders as a template for red flag laws. Judges have been using civil protective orders to keep people accused of domestic violence away from their victims until their cases have been adjudicated. How is this different with regard to gun ownership?
I mean all those black people in NYC were law abiding obviously a cop stopping and frisking them won’t have anything to worry about right? Sigh. My abortion analogy was to point out the left’s good faith “reasonable commonsense” solutions are just a smokescreen not unlike the anti-abort crowd’s tactics. They’ve shown their hand too many times that any reasonable stances you might have would be trampled past mighty quick (see Joe Biden’s pandering stances). We are going to disagree how much government regulation should be taken to save us from ourselves. Sorry but if the negotiation table is going to be forever a one way street don’t count on much support from the opposition. I think if a Democrat came out and proposed something like universal background checks in exchange for taking silencers of the nfa, selling over the counter like most of Europe, you’d see even the absolutist sit down at the table. But that is just my fantastical idea. It would be doa in their party. How about federal licenses and training requirements but we do away with the Hughes amendment that outlaws new machine guns for civilian purchase? Nothing? Just more laws for an ill defined concept of improved outcomes? Come on.
I’m talking about the historical nature of gun control laws where many of the proto-versions of the red flag laws were used nefariously. Cause you don’t have a constitutional right to beat the shit out of your spouse? This isn’t an Islamic country.
That's part of the issue I'm having: we're going from one extreme to the other, based on the fact that these guys have no reason or ability to collaborate. If you asked a bunch of Somerfield house wives how to handle gun control, it's going to be just as bad as asking a bunch of Texas ICP officers. I think we still have to do SOMETHING, because mass shootings are an issue. But if you don't bring gun owners to the table to discuss real solutions, it relegates these measures to pure fantasy (unless we elect Thanos and he snaps away 300,000,000 firearms), and political theater.
I know you said that in jest, but this is exactly how this is abused and is exactly why it's terrifying. A more real-world version would be: "Hey cops, my neighbor keeps talking about Virginia Tech and is acting really weird. I'm worried he's mentally unstable." A civilian making a mental health judgment with real-world consequences is terrifying. Moreover, people lie often and for nefarious purposes. Red flag laws are the perfect medium for exacting revenge on an ex lover or someone you dislike. Plus, a judge should be making legal decisions, not medical.
You don't think there is a difference between banning the sale of automatic weapons and a judge temporarily removing guns from someone who poses a threat to themselves or others? It isn't as if these people wouldn't be getting them back. They do, provided they aren't breaking the law. Well okay, but we're talking different things. I'm talking about the constitutionality of a judge removing firearms from a potentially dangerous person to prevent harm to themselves and others. Which, per the article I linked, seems like it's constitutionally sound. I used domestic violence as an example of judges using civil protective orders to curtail the rights of people not even accused of a crime, and nobody seems to have an issue with that. My contention is that if you don't have an issue with that, then logically, it doesn't make sense to be against a red flag law either. The mechanisms to issue protective orders and remove guns are the same thing.
I think we are talking about the same thing. I agree with red flag laws in theory, but I don’t implicitly trust the government to do the right thing by them or anything, for that matter. I’m never, ever going to. It’s surprising that given all the issues we have with law enforcement and the judicial system completely fucking people over, many people want to trust them on this.
I can't speak to the other states that have them, but I can speak to mine, and it doesn't work like that. Washington State's red flag law can only be applied if it comes from a family member of a dangerous person, someone who shares a residence with that dangerous person, or the police. There needs to be demonstrated evidence that the person poses a significant danger, including danger as a result of threatening or violent behavior. That last sentence comes from the statute itself. Having a bad feeling about somebody isn't evidence and I'd be willing to bet that there are other evidentiary requirements on these red flag laws for other states too. This is a story from a collaboration between 10 different public media newsrooms about the effect of guns in America. It talks about who these red flag laws have been used on in the two years since it was enacted in Oregon. In those two years, there have been 166 incidents where the law was used to remove guns from someone. 112 were for people who were at risk of suicide and 39 were for domestic violence. That leaves a grand total of 15 of which we don't know what the cause was. That's 9%. That means the other 91% of the time, it removed firearms from someone who was threatening to kill themselves or harm their families. I totally understand distrusting the government, really I do. However, given how well it's been working in Oregon, I'm okay with gun owners being inconvenienced until they can prove that they are no longer a danger to themselves or others.
Look, I get it. The target is zero accidents/murders, etc. with privately owned firearms. There aren't any (well, many) gun owners that don't have a vested interest in seeing a decrease in gun-related crime. It just feels like its getting into some Minority Report-type shit. I'm not going to pick apart the source you're citing, so I'll assume the stats put forth are legit. That's great and hopeful that the implementation in Oregon is successful so far. Unfortunately it's been heavily abused in MA, so I'm not as optimistic about it.
What exactly do you mean when it's been heavily abused? Are you talking about police chiefs revoking licenses or red flag laws? If it's the latter, the source that I found (a public media newsroom WBUR) said it had only been used 20 times from August 2018 to July 2019, and in 15 of those times, it resulted in guns being removed from the owner. If it's the former, then yeah, that's pretty fucked up just on its face. One guy with no oversight seems bad.
Well it’s all parts of a whole. As I mentioned, AG has full authority to implement any gun control policy, so she delegated down to local jurisdictions on enforcement. Cops can confiscate your firearms for almost any reason here, let alone not allowing you to have a permit in the first place. When I lived in Boston, the BPD would not give Class A permits to anyone. Sure, you can sue them and win every time, but that red tape is completely fucked up. Adding in another law where guns can be taken away without due process doesn’t seem like it’s solving that issue.
I expect that any such law will have emergency provisions for taking guns with appeal and review provisions also attached, so there are due process considerations included, as there are in involuntary commitment laws. There has to be a balance between protected individual rights and the need for immediate intervention in both cases, red flag laws and involuntary commitment proceedings. You can’t wait for judicial review if someone is announcing he’s going to go shoot up the local Walmart.
If theres any issue the left wants to shoot themselves in the dick with, it will be anything gun related. It's a loser every time because theres plenty of gun owners on the left as well. We've already made our bed with guns because after Sandy Hook, nothing was done. If a couple dozen 5 year olds getting got wasn't enough to move the needle, nothing will. Biden will be smart to avoid the issue all together. If people want to see quick meaningful gun law changes, black people should start buying guns at the same rate as the rest of the country. Nothing would make conservatives squirm more than a bunch of new gun ownership in the hands of people they don't want owning them.
I mean....with BLM in such a swing, maybe the answer is more gun ownership. The left can embrace that narrative, right? The first folks you should ask about gun control are the gun owners currently obeying the law, right? To my knowledge that step never took place, and they either asked the NRA who apparently wants to arm rabbits because "fuck Elmer Fudds pussy ass", or Karen's with dead kids who have no idea what a bump stock is. The scarier part is they are just as ignorant when legislating the internet....
I firmly believe the GOP would never win another election if the left could keep their dickbeaters off of the 2nd amendment. Or, the Democrats would never win another if the GOP would let women choose. A lot of ship jumpers would bolt to the other side if one or the other changed their stance on those issues.
The way you win elections is by CREATING more of your own. The best way to do that is by trying your best not to make things difficult for the people who vote for your rival. Insulting them won’t make them turn if you’re losing. My idea: Whoever ends the drug war first, full stop, wins whatever election they are in. Because that’s a hero to everyone no matter what team you play for.
You underestimate how many people get their rocks off telling other people what they should do with their bodies.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/07/trumps-bad-bet-white-christian-america/613954/ "That electorate is unrecognizable now. The nonpartisan States of Change project has forecast that non-college-educated white Americans will likely constitute 42 percent of voters in November, slightly more than half their share in 1968. States of Change anticipates that both college-educated white voters and voters of color will represent about 30 percent of voters in 2020. For the former group, that’s about twice their share in 1968; for the latter, that’s somewhere between a three- and fourfold increase. latest national figures. The groups that have grown since then reflect the nation’s increasing racial and religious diversity. In 1968, nonwhite Christians represented only 8 percent of Americans; now that’s tripled to just more than 24 percent in the PRRI study. Most explosive has been the growth of those who identify as secular or unaffiliated with any religious tradition. They represented just 3 percent of Americans in 1968; now it’s 24 percent." This is a good explanation of the "win at all costs" rationale: they are outnumbered and recognize that as ground that's shifted beneath their feet.