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Here we go again. The Beltway Swamp’s ineluctable impulse to (Pretend To) Do Something in the wake of a mass school shooting committed by a homicidal maniac has put America on the brink of greenlighting untold civil liberties abuses in the name of “safety.” The grandstanding gun-grabbing reflex is a hard habit to break.
Shamefully, 10 zucchini noodle-spined Senate Republicans led by Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn back a federal gun-control plan that would bribe states to adopt so-called “red-flag” (a.k.a. Extreme Risk Protection Order) laws. These psychological profiling weapons — now in effect in 19 states — empower disgruntled strangers, duplicitous family members, biased police and ideologically driven judges to disarm citizens by labeling them mental health threats to themselves and others. Anti-Second Amendment activists cite scientific research like a new University of California, Davis, study as evidence that red-flag laws are “saving lives.” But the science is untrustworthy.
Effectiveness data are limited. “Part of the problem,” two researchers noted in Wired magazine, “is these laws are so new there isn’t much data available. Before 2018, only five states had implemented any form of red flag law, limiting our ability to test for significant effects on gun violence.” Indeed, the associations between suicide/homicide reduction and red-flag policies are weak or nonexistent. The fine print is filled with caveats like this disclaimer from UC Davis’ research team in 2019, which admitted: “It is impossible to know whether violence would have occurred had (orders) not been issued, and the authors make no claim of a causal relationship.”
Because these mass shootings are so rare to begin with, candid researchers like one RAND team acknowledge that “their rarity makes it difficult to extract generalizable information to identify useful predictors of risk.” Moreover, policies like red-flag laws that target individuals based on risk factors “would result in an extremely high rate of false positives; even the best available risk factors can identify only a subpopulation in which the risk of committing a mass shooting is on the order of one in a million.”
What we do know is that real-world exploitation of existing red-flag laws have indeed created real-world nightmares for innocent Americans. Who will keep a database on these invisible civil-liberties casualties and mourn their victimization on the Senate floor? In my adopted home state of Colorado, which enacted the policy in 2020, it’s guilty until proven innocent. Individuals accused of posing safety threats can be stripped of firearms for a year under a civil hearing process where the accused are barred from responding to allegations and the standard of proof is lowered. Second Amendment advocates have warned from the get-go that ax-grinders would wield the law to exact vengeance. They were dead-on.
In April, after perpetrating a five-year hoax nightmare, Fort Collins, Colorado, mother Susan Holmes was convicted of lying on a red-flag petition about a Colorado State University police officer who had been cleared in the suicide-by-cop death of her son in 2017. Holmes had falsely claimed to be a relative of the targeted officer. She is scheduled to be sentenced this month.
In Florida, overzealous sheriffs have wielded the Republican-supported red-flag law to crack down on children as young as 8 years old. Good luck clearing your falsely accused kid’s name when his or her juvenile records — unprotected by Florida’s red-flag law — get into the hands of sensationalist, pro-gun-control media.
Military veterans know the pain and damage that can be inflicted by a “red-flag retaliation first, due process later” regime. I’ve reported previously on how the Department of Veterans Affairs has recklessly red-flagged “disruptive” military patients without due process, transparency or accountability in the name of “safety” based on arbitrary definitions of who and what constitutes a mental health menace.
If you dare vent “frustration about VA services and/or wait times” (which led to scores of deaths during the Obama years), threaten lawsuits or make “frequent unwarranted visits to the emergency department or telephone calls to facility staff,” you can be branded, blacklisted and restricted by “Disruptive Behavior Committees” from accessing health care by the government that sent you off to war to defend everyone else’s lives.
VA red-flaggers can “manufacture tone, the content of what you’re saying, and will even ascribe actions to you that you did not perform,” Army veteran David Scott Strain told me three years ago, when he warned of parallel risks with civilian red-flag laws. Disabled Air Force veteran and veterans advocate/attorney Benjamin Krause, who exposes the Soviet-style targeting of veterans flagged for exercising their First Amendment rights, calls the feds’ star-chamber procedures “straight out of a totalitarian regime.”
The potential for mass deprivation of civil liberties simply cannot be understated in the context of end-stage America’s woke psychosis. If you stray from the politically correct position on VA incompetence, guns, masks, vaccines, transgenders in sports, Drag Queen Story Hour, election fraud, demographic transformation, Black Lives Matter or abortion, you and your children can be tagged, flagged and bagged for life. The inmates run the asylum — and Republican traitors are supplying the keys.
Michelle Malkin’s email address is [email protected].
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Mrs. Malkin, I don’t know all your background, but there’s a good chance in my mind that you were not even in this country during the days of the Cold War, with Soviet and Chinese hard-core Communism going on. Why is it that YOU know very well the stupidity of letting these Totalitarian laws be passed, while most, even the supposed Conservative, Americans are what, forgetful, or stupid?
Most Americans understood back then that in the USSR, a Government or Government-approved psychiatrist could put anyone away for his life. Now, that can happen here, as once the guns are gone, who exactly will be resisting the incarceration of any American the Potomac Regime has a problem with?
We did a great job in conquering Communism around the world, yet American are so stupid as to not see it happening in their own front yard!
I quote the illustrious Russian writer Alex Solzhenitsyn after the tag:
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
Nah, we don’t all deserve it, just the stupid and cowardly do. We can all be dragged down with them, if we don’t take care …
Hold onto your integrity with humor and Faith. It will be needed much more intensely in future days. For example, don't expect the November elections to be fair choices by legally voting American citizens. The January 6 show trial is making that abundantly clear.
Objecting to the probability of another cooked election result is now an official act of sedition.Replies: @Anon
Obviously once red flag laws are passed, we should expect systematically to disarm all gun owners. Red flag number 1, a person believes he or she needs to carry a gun outside the home. Clear sign of mental illness. Red flag number 2, a person goes to a shooting range to practice shooting. Clear demonstration of intent to use a gun. Sign the person never should be armed. Red flag number 3, person obtains a carry permit. Clear sign of premeditation. A person needs a carry permit only if they plan to shoot someone outside their home. Carry permit holders are likely to “find” themselves. in circumstances where they can plead “self defense.” Like the kid in Wisconsin with the AR-15 carried around a military rifle for “self defense.” Red flag number 4, a person has multiple guns in multiple calibers. That person is plainly mentally ill because they think they need different kinds of guns just to be sure they hurt others. Red flag number 5, a parent tells the kids not to talk to people, especially police or school teachers, about daddy’s guns. What other things do “daddy’s” tell kids not to tell anyone? Again, sure sign of mental illness. The formula will become quite systematic. The process routine. It is like Catch 22. If you think you need a gun, you are clearly the kind of person who plans to kill someone and cannot be allowed to have a gun.
Most Americans understood back then that in the USSR, a Government or Government-approved psychiatrist could put anyone away for his life. Now, that can happen here, as once the guns are gone, who exactly will be resisting the incarceration of any American the Potomac Regime has a problem with?
We did a great job in conquering Communism around the world, yet American are so stupid as to not see it happening in their own front yard!
I quote the illustrious Russian writer Alex Solzhenitsyn after the tag:
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
Nah, we don't all deserve it, just the stupid and cowardly do. We can all be dragged down with them, if we don't take care ...Replies: @Emslander, @Anonymous, @Anonymous
The followers of Solzhenitsyn would amend that sentiment now for the USA. Rather than confronting the violence of excessive “progressive” government, the wiser move would be extreme concealment. Ensure that all your genuine sentiments about the way the public schools corrupt children, the dominance of an abortion mentality in the media, the bullying by every level of government bureaucracy, etc. are deeply concealed. Ensure that any defensive devices are preserved in concealment for the future generations that will need them.
Hold onto your integrity with humor and Faith. It will be needed much more intensely in future days. For example, don’t expect the November elections to be fair choices by legally voting American citizens. The January 6 show trial is making that abundantly clear.
Objecting to the probability of another cooked election result is now an official act of sedition.
Red flag number 1: person is a white male.
There are many more Republican RINOs than that…the rest are just being quiet only 10 are needed to get this past.
By now it should be evident to the most dim-witted that only one party exists in this country.
I hate them.
By now it should be evident to the most dim-witted that only one party exists in this country.Replies: @Realist, @Robert Dolan
Should read…are needed to get this passed.
“The potential for mass deprivation of civil liberties simply cannot be understated in the context of end-stage America.’” Should be “overstated,” Michelle.
“The potential for mass deprivation of civil liberties simply cannot be understated in the context of end-stage America.” Should be “overstated, ” Michelle. In other words, you cannot highlight it sufficiently, emphasize it enough, say enough about it. Thanks for all you do…..
‘ potential for mass deprivation of civil liberties simply cannot be understated ‘– Maybe was meant overstated, can’t be overstated. If so true enough, also as example;
‘ Individuals accused of posing safety threats can be stripped of firearms for a year under a civil hearing process where the accused are barred from responding to allegations and the standard of proof is lowered. ‘
The tactics should be seen as what they are. It could be argued the constitution isn’t what we assume, however as those in govrmnt claim as means to dictate to the rest of us, yet impede speech, is double talk. Their assuming to dictate what we can say or not, is not equality. Gross obvious example of using cover distraction, they scribbled supposed ‘obscenity’ law to pretend ‘civil society’, then, claimed first amendment to ‘legalize’ smut, when photos and videos -aren’t speech. The double talk tactics are obvious.
We forget natural law, such as if others use threat speech to stop our speech, and we didn’t speak, it hands over our ability. To that, Emslander’s comment above, disagree. We don’t ‘conceal’ facts and truth for ‘later’, because there isn’t going to be a ‘later’ if people fail to speak or make effort today. That is natural law. It’s not hard, speech can be as little as sharing info, focus where we live. That’s always been the way anyway. ‘wa dc’ is distraction.
Several of Maulkin’s points when combined make example, more so if look at the double talk tactic. Suggest note tactic, as in pen and paper, paper has more solidity to our minds. Last thought on tactics, beside bogus femy ‘be safe’ act -as they do incursions, they also use tactic of -projection, accusing others of what they are doing, such as the ‘red flag’ tyranical threats, as they point at others as threat. Obvious tactic.
Appreciate the article.
Suppose I know Lori Lightbrain’s bodyguards and I feel they are a threat. Can I report them and have their firearms taken away?
I hope Mitch McConnell loses to Thomas Massie (!) in 2026!
The nutters are in charge and the “news” are screenplays created by the Truman Show. Seems reasonable to me.
Hold onto your integrity with humor and Faith. It will be needed much more intensely in future days. For example, don't expect the November elections to be fair choices by legally voting American citizens. The January 6 show trial is making that abundantly clear.
Objecting to the probability of another cooked election result is now an official act of sedition.Replies: @Anon
You are 100% wrong. Shame on you.
By now it should be evident to the most dim-witted that only one party exists in this country.Replies: @Realist, @Robert Dolan
The GOP are filth…..that’s why I really don’t care if they win or not.
I hate them.
I drive around my neighborhood and see all of the “Back the Blue” signs.
It is really shocking how stupid people are.
‘ potential for mass deprivation of civil liberties simply cannot be understated ‘– Maybe was meant overstated, can’t be overstated. If so true enough, also;
‘ Individuals accused of posing safety threats can be stripped of firearms for a year under a civil hearing process where the accused are barred from responding to allegations and the standard of proof is lowered. ‘
Is very double standard, when someone or group claims we can’t speak -while they speak to dictate. Seeing tactics is clarifying, because we tend to be distracted looking at one thing or another, instead of see schemes. It could be argued the constitution isn’t what we assume, however as those in govermnt claim as means of dictating, if they want to impede our speech, it’s of course double standard, and not the equality they go on and on about. Another tactic is doing false cover on one hand while pushing opposite on the other, i.e. scribbling supposed obscenity law to pretend civil society, then claiming first amendment to ‘legalize’ smut, when photos and videos -aren’t speech. Suggest note tactics, can help remind in applying to other instances.
As practical matter if others use threat speech to stop our speech, and we don’t speak, it hands over our ability. And it’s not hard, just sharing info, focus where we live, basic example. Last thought on tactics, beside those they also use tactic of -projection, accusing others of what they are doing, such as the ‘red flag’ tyrany, as they point at others as threat. Again tactic, used in many ways. Appreciate the article.
This legislation is also a dangerous attack on free speech.
Straight from the Devil’s tongue. Appreciate the clarity.
How? On the theory that shooting up a school is a speech act? I will concede that shooting up a school is definitively a form of performative utterance.
Your essay on red flag laws reminds me of Benjamin Franklin’s statement: “Those who would give up a little freedom for additional security deserve neither.”
Most state red flag laws bypass any semblance of due process which makes them unconstitutional given that they violate the 4th amendment. Typically the guns are confiscated by police (back the blue!!) before you can even defend yourself in court and the individual who was just stripped of his 2nd amendment rights must incur all court fees in an attempt to get them back.
The Republicans are now failing to conserve the second amendment just like they have failed to conserve anything else their voters care about.
Most Americans understood back then that in the USSR, a Government or Government-approved psychiatrist could put anyone away for his life. Now, that can happen here, as once the guns are gone, who exactly will be resisting the incarceration of any American the Potomac Regime has a problem with?
We did a great job in conquering Communism around the world, yet American are so stupid as to not see it happening in their own front yard!
I quote the illustrious Russian writer Alex Solzhenitsyn after the tag:
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
Nah, we don't all deserve it, just the stupid and cowardly do. We can all be dragged down with them, if we don't take care ...Replies: @Emslander, @Anonymous, @Anonymous
If Trump retakes the presidency and sends out the military to force vaxx the population, I would not expect, nor look to survive the encounter. I will not be taking the pod person conversion shot.
Ron DeSantis for President!.
See one of my first good impressions of him in "Federalism Rumble: DeSantis v Bai Dien".
Most Americans understood back then that in the USSR, a Government or Government-approved psychiatrist could put anyone away for his life. Now, that can happen here, as once the guns are gone, who exactly will be resisting the incarceration of any American the Potomac Regime has a problem with?
We did a great job in conquering Communism around the world, yet American are so stupid as to not see it happening in their own front yard!
I quote the illustrious Russian writer Alex Solzhenitsyn after the tag:
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
Nah, we don't all deserve it, just the stupid and cowardly do. We can all be dragged down with them, if we don't take care ...Replies: @Emslander, @Anonymous, @Anonymous
Is there an inside story here? Serving a warrant? All deaths are unfortunate, but something doesn’t smell right. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/02/two-fbi-agents-shot-dead-florida
No I won’t be taking it either, #176, but I also don’t think that’s something that a President Trump would do. If he’s mentioned that, it’s just because he’s a big bullshitter. He’s a bullshitter and he was incompetent as President, but he is not evil and doesn’t hate regular Americans like the rest of them in power..
Ron DeSantis for President!.
See one of my first good impressions of him in “Federalism Rumble: DeSantis v Bai Dien”.