Let’s Talk About the Insidious Failures of Red Flag Laws

We’ve spilled a lot of digital ink discussing red flag laws over the years. For about five minutes, I was open to the idea of addressing dangerous people, but then I smacked myself in the face to put some sense back into my head, because nothing about these things is anything but nuts.

And we’ve continued to fight against them ever since.

We’re not alone in that, either.

Over at America’s 1st Freedom, NRA-ILA executive director John Commerford took issue with how Michigan’s red flag law is being used, and folks, it’s worse than pretty much anywhere else.

In March, however, The Detroit News ran an article chronicling the first year of Michigan’s gun-confiscation law. Some of the findings were downright shocking.

Case in point is how red-flag orders have targeted young kids, who are themselves already legally ineligible to acquire firearms, to disarm their entire families. The piece explained:

“Michigan’s red flag law has been used … within the K-12 school system, including cases in which guns have been seized from homes because elementary-age children were deemed a threat to themselves or others, according to state records,” the article noted. It went on to point out that a “6-year-old appears to be the youngest individual subjected” to a red-flag order and that the “next youngest child was an 8-year-old.”

As a practical matter, a reasonable person might wonder how the judicial system provides meaningful due process to a 6-year-old subject to civil process. As a political matter, some might find it curious that the same politicians who targeted grade schoolers with red-flag laws raised the age of criminal responsibility from 17 to 18 in 2019.

The Detroit News report, moreover, indicated this application of the law was by design. It stated: “Michigan’s red flag law, one lawmaker said, is unique from other states because it specifically addresses situations involving minors and allows officers to confiscate unsecured firearms from parents or guardians even though the actual order is in the child’s name.” According to state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, “That aspect, particularly related to juveniles, was something we were very intentional about.”

This is particularly distressing to hear, especially since juveniles are much more easily manipulated than adults, which means someone could essentially groom them into expressing concerning thoughts, which would then be used to justify taking the parents’ guns.

Make no mistake, this will be replicated in other states in due course, which means gun rights are even more at risk.

I find it particularly interesting, though, that we see this here and now, but we also know proponents of this measure will outright ignore the fact that a red flag law in Florida failed to stop the Florida State University shooting. There wasn’t even a case of anyone seeking such an order for the alleged shooter.

But we should totally strip the gun rights from family members because a kid said something troubling.

The six-year-old mentioned above, for example, might not have even known where guns were in the house. They may have been put somewhere that was technically unsecured but still inaccessible to such a small child. It doesn’t matter because that child supposedly said something that worried an adult, and now everything has to be turned upside down because of it.

So we can add this to all of the other problems we have with red flag laws.

As if we didn’t have enough already.