

The concept of red-flag laws have become a popular topic of discussion in the wake of several tragic shootings. They may seem like an easy answer to a difficult issue, but red-flag laws have some pretty serious limitations and inherent dangers. Not only have they been proven not to be effective in their intended purpose (the Chicago Highland Park shooter is a prime example), but they are ripe for abuse. I just wrote the other day about an example of the potential abuse of red-flag laws when a warrantless ATF agent and Delaware State Police showed up to a citizen’s house and demanded to see the firearms he had purchased because he had apparently triggered some red-flag notification that he should be investigated for his purchase.
Another possible scenario is the abuse of red-flag laws by reporting people who need not truly be reported in an effort to eliminate or hinder political opposition– essentially a legal loophole to disarm those who dare to dissent. In a time when the FBI is labeling moms at school board meetings “domestic terrorists” for their “dangerous” dissenting views and political opinions, how easy would it be for someone to report, say, a woman with a bunch of children, 10 guns, and political opinions that the left considers to be “dangerous” or “violent?” How easy would it be for politically motivated officials to justify removing the guns from her possession by using red-flag laws to claim she poses a threat to her family or society based on opinions they and their political allies arbitrarily consider to be “dangerous?”
A prime example of this possibility is this video of a CPS social worker who is apparently triggered by Trump paraphernalia in the yard of a house they had to visit. This individual is in a position of some social influence and authority. How can the American public trust that a social worker who does home visits and assesses family situations, and who is so triggered by the political views of a family they are assessing that they record and post a video of them almost hyperventilating before making contact, wouldn’t go out of their way to fabricate a reason to report that family as dangerous or unstable under red-flag laws?
The fact that this person fears this family simply based on pro-Trump merchandise means that this person necessarily believes that such political opinions and views are dangerous to themselves or society. And red-flag laws are all about identifying and disarming “dangerous” people. The most important question is, who decides what constituters “dangerous,” and how can we possibly trust that social workers like this one won’t go out of their way to weaponize red-flag laws against families like the one they are visiting in an effort to disarm them as “dangerous” because of their political views and opinions?
If you ever wondered who might abuse red-flag laws to eliminate those they see as political opponents…
— Natalie Argyle (@NatalieArgyle) July 22, 2022
Also, they have to hype themselves up to pretend to care about freedom and a constitutional right foundational to that freedom? 🤔 #redflaglaws #freedom #2A https://t.co/fFc6IuN5G3
Maybe it’s just me, but is it concerning to anyone else that this person has to literally hype themselves up to pretend to care about “freedom” and a fundamental constitutional right of all Americans?
Slippery slopes and authority figures abusing power to target and disable political opponents is a very serious issue for any constitutional republic, made more significant after the many recent examples of systemic authoritarian corruption and targeted political attacks intended to silence dissents, particularly those with conservative voices. If COVID taught us anything, it’s that we must safeguard our freedoms, especially our 2nd Amendment rights.
3 Comments
I’ve been waiting for problems like this. It would crop up most openly with CPS. CPS has been a menace for quite a while. Under the best of circumstances they are a problem: skipping dangerous parents to go after less serious cases where they don’t agree with people, believing in a world where no real discipline is necessary….
I know women who grew up needing and wanting rescue, who were, and they both STILL hated CPS. Passionately.
Luckily, in California, they cannot take a child immediately without the police walking through and checking it out—and more than half the time the police or deputies tell them to back off.
Children are hauled into the doctor for moles and birth marks.
They become upset when children are made to go to religious services.
Doctors, and lawyers and police refer to it as “parent abuse.
I had a friend who worked as a trained social worker for a while in one of the small group homes for “troubled” teenagers. Troubled was an understatement. The discipline system was set up for CPS’s ideals, and turned all the adults against them:
The teenagers could not be made to clean up the mess they made, even if they managed to lock themselves in the car and rubbed leg shaving cream into every inch of all surfaces. (That one was so far that the adults faked helping so that they couldn’t be fired for making the teens fix it.)
If they misbehaved, they had their person attendance at that weekend’s movie cancelled. That was it. They were supposed to curse or scream at the adults, steal things, etc.
BUT: no chores, no making a sandwich, no insistence if they refused to do homework, no scoldings, nothing. Just a cancelled movie…which you can never do more than two weeks in advance, and they didn’t like that. That was to be the discipline for all the above and then some.
These kids were there because they were to violent and unselfcontrolled to be in a normal foster home. They include thieves, recovering addicts, muggers, and the occasional prostitute, all females between fifteen and seventeen.
CPS was livid for several years because a long term study said that “borderline” cases–kids not really abused, for example, but smoking and drinking and common cussing in a low class home–did much better when left at home.
They ignore that.
They are already extra-hostile against Christians.
Add in politics and no one will ever be in peace—except the parents that are really scary.
Among many other immutable laws of the universe, there is one that applies to Red Flag Laws. Here it is: Any program or system that CAN be abused and corrupted will be abused and corrupted sooner or later.
If you don’t think Red Flag Laws will be abused and used for corrupt purposes, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’m willing to sell to the right buyer.
Absolutely true. And naive to believe it wouldn’t happen after the blatant abuse of power we’ve witnessed the last few years, all in the name of the greater good.