Use of Red Flag Laws Doesn’t Mean They’re Effective

Red flag laws are one of those things that are far too popular for anyone’s own good. I get the idea of disarming dangerous people. The problem is that there’s already a mechanism to do that lawfully. People get their due process rights observed and, if it turns out they’re really dangerous, they get their gun rights revoked. They’d basically become someone else’s responsibility, much like a child in many regards.

It’s not an easy thing to do, but these are people’s rights we’re talking about here. It shouldn’t be easy.

Red flag laws skip this due process entirely and just take the guns based on one party’s word that they seem dangerous. The problem is that the aforementioned method, we always had put someone in charge of keeping that person out of trouble. Red flag laws don’t. They just treat the gun as the source of all problems.

And I’m more than sick of stories about how the problem is that it’s just not implemented more.

Now, 21 states and the District of Columbia have such laws. Voters in Maine will decide in November whether to join that list. The use of extreme risk protection orders has surged in recent years, with petitions filed across states that have such laws jumping by 59% in 2023 over the previous year, according to data collected by Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control research and advocacy group.

But the laws’ effectiveness relies on their implementation, supporters say: Law enforcement and judges must be trained properly and the public needs to be aware that the law exists.

“The challenge in this is that too many people, too many law enforcement people, too many families, are not aware that there is an extreme risk law in their state,” Sarah Burd-Sharps, the senior director of research at Everytown, told Stateline.

A Stateline analysis shows the usage rates rose from six petitions filed per 100,000 residents in 2022, to 10 per 100,000 in 2023. The analysis used Everytown’s petition data and U.S. Census Bureau population estimates for the District of Columbia and the 19 states with active red flag laws in 2023.

In 2023, there were 46,728 gun-related deaths in the United States, including suicides, murders and accidents, with a national rate of 14 gun deaths per 100,000 people, according to the latest data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In other words, the primary metric for the effectiveness of red flag laws is how often they’re used and if they’re not used more, then it must be because the police and judges don’t know any better.

But at least this report tries to go beyond that. I’m going to give them credit for it, because it’s nice to see someone try to discuss the effectiveness of these laws beyond just how often it’s used.

Suicides accounted for nearly 6 in 10 of the gun deaths. Recent research on the protection orders’ impact estimates that one suicide is prevented for every 17 to 23 petitions filed. Based on this estimate, nearly 990 lives could have been saved in 2023 for every 17 petitions filed.

Sure, that’s what they study reported, and the researchers noted the variability above by saying, “Estimates varied depending on the assumed probability that a gun owner who attempts suicide will use a gun.” I’ll give them credit for acknowledging that someone might not use a gun to some degree or another.

But first, these are estimates and a couple of states that have red flag laws were excluded from the study, such as Colorado and Florida. In the case of Colorado, there weren’t enough red flag cases to be a valid sample and in Florida, they couldn’t obtain death records. That means some of the data may well be skewed because these states might represent something different than what the study claims to have found.

Even without those two states, though, let’s look at the numbers for a second. 

While the researchers claimed due process is observed in the case of a red flag order, they’re wrong. These laws do not give anyone the benefit of the doubt, the accused doesn’t get a day in court until well after he’s been stripped of his rights, and it all hinges on the word of third-parties who are usually not trained in psychology or anything else that would allow them to actually know if someone is a threat to themselves or others.

So it looks like for every person they get it right on, 16 to 22 others are unjustly stripped of their right to keep and bear arms.

How many innocent people have to be penalized before it’s a bridge too far for gun control advocates? How many people must be stripped of their rights before it’s a problem?

Right now, a guy named Mahmoud Kalil is the center of a lot of attention. Many of the same people who favor red flag laws are up in arms because this man, who isn’t an American citizen and who was one of the ringleaders in the violent uprisings at Columbia over the last year, is facing deportation because of a reported lack of due process.

If one terrorist sympathizer being deported is an incredibly unjust act that is too far, how is stripping so many people of their gun rights for no reason at all not far worse?

Somehow, I doubt any of them will answer it.

Still, let’s think about those numbers for a bit. We’re not seeing the suicide rate drop despite so many states having these on the books. We’re seeing a whole lot of people getting their guns taken away and not actually being a threat to anyone. 

It sure looks like no matter how often the red flag laws are used, they’re not particularly effective. It’s time to abandon this insane plan completely.

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