In a move indicating that they have no intention of ending their tax-funded attacks on the right to keep and bear arms, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Kamala Harris with great fanfare used taxpayer funds to announce that the Biden Administration has created a new bureau to “help” state governments impose so-called “Red Flag Laws” on their residents.
At last count, 22 states have passed, and 21 have enforced, these “laws,” which they've given myriad Orwellian titles, such as “Extreme Risk Protection Order,” “Risk Warrant” (that term used in Connecticut, a title that undermines the meaning of the word “warrant”), “Gun Violence Restraining Order” (that, in California, and if it’s a “restraining order,” why does the state seize a personal belonging without trial?), and more -- and the state of Maine has a “Yellow Flag Order” that allows the government to arrest a targeted person, put him or her through a psychological exam, THEN, get a “court order” (not a warrant to search for and seize property, as is required by the Fourth Amendment) and take a gun without any trial or even an accusation of criminal activity.
Evidently aware that this kind of towering malfeasance on the part of government gets a lot of pushback on a national level, Harris, Garland, and their ilk have done what Biden has done when it comes to making taxpayers cover the debt of college loan recipients – they’ve made an end-run around clear Constitutional prohibitions that SHOULD stop them.
Richard Luscombe writes for The Guardian:
“The launch of the federal Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center (Erpo) follows Joe Biden’s establishment of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention in September, which the president tapped Harris to lead.
Operated through the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, and paid for by a justice department grant, Erpo is designed to help state and local governments, law enforcement, and others – including behavioral health and social service providers – ‘optimize’ the use of red flag laws, Harris said.”
Curiously, despite the fact that the Constitution contains no provision for the feds to give “grants” to colleges, and despite the clear wording of the Second Amendment stating that “Congress shall make no law infringing the right to keep and bear arms,” Luscombe also observes that this new office will:
“…provide training and technical assistance, including educational opportunities and workshops ‘for a wide variety of stakeholders’.”
How nice. And we get to enjoy that “stakeholder” term again. It’s the current rhetorical fave that tyrants use when trying to look “inclusive” -- when attempting make people believe they are respecting individual rights, while they attack individual rights and decide that YOU are not your OWN stakeholder with God-given rights.
It seems a lot like a velvet glove around the iron fist of fascism.
Luscombe continues:
“Only 21 states have implemented red flag laws, and the White House said that only six of those states had taken advantage of $750m in funding that the Biden administration made available through the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) for crisis-intervention initiatives such as red flag programs and mental health, drug and veteran treatment courts.”
Of course, if you watch local news in any of those areas, you’re likely going to see unquestioning celebration of the funds. You’ll likely see little to no questions regarding the unconstitutionality or immorality of the “Red Flag Laws” or the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.”
Related: First Two Weeks of New Jersey’s Red Flag Gun Statute: State Went After One Person Per Day | MRCTV
And you won’t see any such questions in Luscombe’s Guardian piece, despite his report having a direct tie to a profoundly important portion of the Constitution and despite the threats to liberty such “Red Flag” statutes represent.
One person who HAS bothered to pay attention to rights and the Constitution is Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY), who Saturday posted this on X:
“What the hell is this evil? A Federal Red Flag center; We did not authorize this. Announced, of course, just hours after the omnibus passes.”
And Massie also re-posted the fatuous self-congratulations Merrick Garland issued as part of his and Kamala’s public relations blitz, that’s the one in which he said:
“The launch of the National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center will provide our partners across the country with valuable resources to keep firearms out of the hands of individuals who pose a threat to themselves or others. The establishment of the Center is the latest example of the Justice Department’s work to use every tool provided by the landmark Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to protect communities from gun violence.”
Since, of course, all political governments operate only by threatening people with violence if those people don’t want to hand over their hard-earned cash, and since all government attempts to infringe on our right to keep and bear arms are enacted with the threat of government-held guns behind them, that kind of language from Garland is more than a bit hard to swallow.
But it’s worse than just the inverted morality. It’s bigger than the assumptive rhetoric and the fact that there is no enumerated power for this money-shoveling or the feds to even open such an office.
As I have noted for MRCTV, all so-called “Red Flag” statutes breach numerous portions of the Bill of Rights. Such a statute is:
“…a towering infringement of the Second Amendment, the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unwarranted search and seizure based on probable cause and suspicion of a real crime, the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition against government depriving people of “life, liberty, or property without due process of law” (i.e. a jury trial), the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition against the taking of property without “just compensation” (which already assumes for the government too much power), the Sixth Amendment’s specific requirement of a trial by an impartial jury, to a lawyer, and to due process allowing the accused to address his accuser, and the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.”
How can a person be punished if he or she hasn’t been accused of a crime or found guilty after due process? This incredible attack on the Constitution and rights not only presents such questions, it already has seen terrible abuses. On November 5, 2018, police in Anne Arundle County, MD, killed Ferndale resident Gary Willis shortly after 5 AM, as they attacked his home under the unconstitutional and immoral auspices of executing a "Red Flag" statute.
And how can Americans stand against this affront to, and attack on, their rights if reporters like Luscombe and others don’t engage their critical faculties and ask how this government behavior in any way comports with the oaths Harris, Garland, and their cronies take to protect and defend the US Constitution?
We can do a lot by repeating what Thomas Massie has done on X. We can spread the information and ask people to stand on principle.
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California cops forced to censor suspects' faces with emojis because of stupid new law “protecting” non-violent offenders. https://t.co/XG1PgjySuG
— MRCTV (@mrctv) March 24, 2024