Editorials
Could this bill banning ‘red flag’ gun laws make Kansas a sanctuary state for danger?
It would be a manifest tragedy if a Kansan had reason to suspect someone was about to commit a mass shooting and did nothing to stop it.
It would be an even greater monstrosity if Kansas law actually prevented such a lifesaving intervention.
But that’s precisely what some state lawmakers want the law to do, by banning the enforcement of any federal “red flag” law that allows concerned relatives and authorities to seek a court’s help to temporarily keep guns out of the hands of those who clearly pose an imminent risk to themselves or others.
The U.S. House Judiciary Committee in September approved a red flag bill that would provide grants to states that enact such laws, and create a federal “extreme risk protection orders” program.
It’s hard to think of a better example of that long-sought “common sense gun control” everyone has been talking about, particularly after each horrid mass shooting.
Still, state Rep. Michael Houser, a Republican from Columbus, and state Sen. Richard Hilderbrand, a Republican from Galena, have pre-filed the “Kansas Anti-Red-Flag Act” in their respective chambers of the Kansas Legislature that would prohibit any private citizen or official at any level of state or local government — including law enforcement — from aiding federal authorities in enforcing any federal red flag law.
In fact, participating in the red flag process to prevent a mass shooting would be a felony. Imagine that: being put in prison for taking lawful steps to save lives. It would essentially turn Kansas into a sanctuary state for the dangerous.
It seems inconceivable.
Yet, Houser and Hilderbrand are not the only ones to conceive of it. A state senator in Oklahoma has filed a similar bill prohibiting any cooperation with federal red flag laws. Meanwhile, nearly half the counties in Colorado declared themselves Second Amendment “sanctuaries” earlier this year. And more than 100 counties and municipalities in Virginia have designated their communities as Second Amendment sanctuaries amid talk in Democratic legislative circles that the governor there should use the National Guard to enforce gun laws.
It’s a bit of hysteria, to be sure, though it must be said there are legitimate concerns among Second Amendment advocates that red flag laws could infringe on Second, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights. Those rights include not only the right to bear arms, but also the right to be protected against unreasonable searches and seizures and the rights to due process, confronting accusers and to legal counsel.
So noted. But those rights can and must be protected by due process procedures in red flag laws. If they’re not, the laws deserve to be struck down by the courts.
Moreover, it cannot rationally be argued that it’s an “unreasonable” search or seizure that keeps firearms out of the hands of people who demonstrably exhibit a danger to themselves or others. It’s the absolute height of reasonableness.
In addition, red flag laws must include penalties for abusing them. Absent some stiff punishments, it would simply be too easy and tempting for a political foe or angry antagonist to falsely claim that the other is a danger and must have his or her firearms temporarily taken away.
In any event, no such taking can be allowed to occur without comprehensive due process for the gun owner.
Certainly lawful and peaceful gun owners feel their liberty is at stake. And their concerns must be written into any red flag laws.
Even so, the greater threat is to life and limb. Surely reasonable, constitutional steps can be taken to temporarily separate guns from people who are in severe crisis or who are simply depraved.
For Kansas to turn the act of preventing a mass shooting into a felony is its own sort of depravity.
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