And We Just Thought We Knew the Red Flag Law Pitfalls

There are a ton of red flags with red flag laws. I’ve written about them aplenty. You’ve read about them, both here and elsewhere aplenty. They’re bad for a number of reasons, and we all know every single one of those reasons.

Or, well, we just thought we did.

See, one of the reasons the anti-Second Amendment crowd wants a national red flag law is because then it doesn’t matter what state one lives in; they could still be disarmed based on someone freaking out, regardless of the validity of that freaking out.

Yet judges in Washington state seem to feel borders are just suggestions and they can reach across state lines just the same.

I have detected some really ugly gun control leaking into Montana from liberal states.

How can that happen, you ask. The Legislature is not in session, and even when it is, MSSA kills any gun control bills so they can’t become bad law here.

Here is how it happens. An upstanding guy married and living in Montana called an old girlfriend living in the Seattle area, to ask a question. That’s all he did, ask a question.

The former girlfriend contacted local (in Washington) police and reported that she’d felt threatened. Washington has Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs or a “Red Flag Law”) (Note – Montana law prohibits ERPOs), under which a judge can issue a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) in an “ex parte” (only the accuser’s side of the story is told) manner.

A Washington judge issued a TRO that, among other restraints, prohibited this Montana guy from possessing firearms.

The TRO was communicated to the town where the Montana guy lives and the local police department enforced the TRO by confiscating all of this Montana guy’s firearms. Done.

Because this guy had not been to Washington in three decades and because the accusing girlfriend recanted her story of threat, the judge reviewing the TRO dismissed it.

However, this Montana victim still cannot get his firearms returned.

Now, the issue of a red flag order leading to a TRO is not quite how I remember that working, but since I’m not a lawyer, I’m going to take that at face value here.

And if that’s how it works, then that’s a major problem. See, TROs do cross state lines. This is by design and for a good reason. If a psycho is stalking someone, for example, they shouldn’t be able to see their victim as fair game when they’re on vacation.

The fact that Washington state did this is bad, but the fact that it’s now been dismissed after the woman recanted her claims and he still can’t get his guns back is probably even more troubling. It seems the court has to wait 10 days before notifying the department that the TRO has been dismissed, even though Montana has no such waiting periods for firearms.

And since the TRO was placed in the NICS database, the victim here is listed as prohibited, even though he’s not.

Look, the truth of the matter is that this is beyond ridiculous. There are times when some laws absolutely should apply across state lines. Murder, for example, shouldn’t be excused simply because the accused moved to another state. The problems with that are too obvious to get into.

But the idea that gun laws from one state can impact someone in another is a big issue for me, especially with a state like Washington being so anti-gun of late.

If ever there was an argument for federal preemption of gun laws, this is it.

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