Think you support universal background
checks, red flag laws? Let's test that
By Joe D. "Buck" Ruth. Oct 16, 2024
Article Source
Polls frequently show that gun owners who otherwise strongly support the Second Amendment are in favor of universal background checks and red flag laws.
On their face, such laws might seem reasonable. Nobody, after all, wants a firearm to end up in the hands of someone of ill intent who is a threat to anyone's safety.
Let's look at a few scenarios, courtesy of John Lott's Crime Prevention Research Center, and see if you really support such measures — which, by the way, would be counter to other rights, such as due process.
Scenario 1
Suppose you're a woman whose ex-boyfriend is a state trooper who falsely committed you to a mental health facility after assaulting you. The trooper intentionally misrepresented texts you had sent him, all to exert his control over you.
You are held involuntarily for 72 hours for a psychiatric evaluation without any due-process hearing under the assumption that you were a danger to yourself and to others — all because a law-enforcement officer had doctored your text messages.
This was an actual scenario in Pennsylvania in September 2023.
Under red flag laws, you could potentially lose access to your firearms temporarily at a time when you definitely needed to protect yourself.
Scenario 2
Suppose a stalker is threatening a female friend of yours or even your daughter late on a Saturday night. Your friend or daughter is trained with no criminal record and has asked if she could borrow your handgun until she has a chance and the money to buy one and go through the background process.
You loan her your .38 revolver for a few days.
Under a law of universal background checks, you would be considered a felon, and you could lose your future access to firearms after serving your sentence.
Does that seem fair?
Scenario 3
You live in an area where violent crime has increased in the past year, including robbery, rape, murder, and drug-related crimes.
The number of "extreme risk protection" orders has increased from 95 in one year to 584 the next as a result of red flag laws, which had been determined by the state's supreme court to be unconstitutional.
The increased number of firearm seizures — some of which are the result of cases like in the first scenario — is keeping overwhelmed law enforcement officers from investigating other crimes that have occurred. It is also keeping them from tracking down child predators and drug dealers.
This is what occurred in New York in 2023 after Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order in May 2022 to enact the unconstitutional measure that failed to accomplish the stated goal and actually proved to be counterproductive.
In addition to scenarios presented by Lott's group, imagine others that could do more harm than good. Here are just a few:
- Suppose your name ends up on the U.S. Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) watch list, as has occurred to Tulsi Gabbard.
- Imagine being a grandfather who looks forward to handing down to his granddaughter his 1920s single-shot shotgun, only to be told they'd both have to go through a bureaucracy to make that transfer.
- What if, after universal background checks were required, the state or federal agency decided to enact a fee of $200 for every check and a 30-day waiting period? Upon seeing the fee's windfall, the agency decides to double or even triple the background check without your vote to do so.
- Imagine you're the woman in scenario 1 and had your firearms removed. How quickly and simply do you really think you would get them returned without jumping through hoops?
The Constitution's Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791 with the long term in mind, despite what some might claim. Your rights are as important now as they were then — maybe even more so. Don't give them up so willingly under the guise of security.
As the quote often attributed to Benjamin Franklin goes, "Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Joe D. "Buck" Ruth, a longtime small-game hunter and gun owner who spent nearly three decades in the news industry, is the website and social-media manager for Buckeye Firearms Association.
