Thoughts on ERPO (red flag) Gun Laws


A correction from Tim Schmidt. Someone flat screwed up, support for ERPO’s is not a position the USCCA in any way endorses.

All joking aside as far left as both the APA, AMA, and Psychiatry as a profession have all gone you could probably get most “mental health professionals” to say that anyone who feels the need to keep firearms for self protection absent a protective order is suffering from some delusional psychosis and/or paranoia.

The biggest danger of these types of laws is that they will prevent people who do need help but aren’t yet over the edge from seeking it.

“temporarily”

I’m sure that’s what the words “SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED” really meant. :roll_eyes:

That doesn’t exactly sound like due process. Sounds more like an opportunity for leftist gun grabbers to do Judge shopping.

Often after a shooting we hear friends/family of the shooter say, “He never should have had those guns in the first place…”

That’s not always the case, but it happens enough to trigger ERPO laws in response.

And there ARE times when the shooter shouldn’t have had the guns. And even current laws fully enforced wouldn’t have prevented him from having the weaponry.

These sorts of things are easy to see in retrospect.

The problem with ERPO laws (implemented or proposed) is that they are far more invasive and draconian than needed. They probably would have confiscated from the shooter who precipitated the law (had it been in place before he pulled the trigger), but they would also disarm dozens others who shouldn’t be bothered.

We have a problem (and it’s a growing problem) that I’ll address in a subsequent reply. But as usual, our politicians are trying to address it with the only hammer they know how to wield.

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” (John Adams).

“We have staked the whole future of our new nation, not upon the power of government; far from it. We have staked the future of all our political constitutions upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments of God.” (James Madison).

The assumption in the Constitution was that people would know right from wrong; they wouldn’t need every jot and tittle of behavior spelled out for them in law. The Bill of Rights was to control an a-moral Government. (A-moral because it’s not a person, not a soul, doesn’t have a conscience. Not necessarily IMmoral. Just not guided by a moral code.) People, on the other hand, were expected to know right from wrong without force of Government, because they were guided by something higher than the Government.

But no. We are not that. We have evolved as a society, wringing all vestiges of religion from the public square – fully herded in that trajectory by our government and our judiciary. And without that moral underpinning, we have devalued life, chipping away at multiple facets, increasingly emphasizing that the easiest solution to a problem is to kill it. And increasingly, absent the moral principle not to take our neighbor’s life, we’re seeing the fruits of that in shooting after shooting. This is the culture we’ve been fermenting for generations, and we’re reaping the fruits of that now.

Madison and Adams foreshadowed in their statements what we have today. Too many people can NOT conduct themselves according to some basic moral principles – ones that extend beyond even the Ten Commandments by basic Natural Law.

Perhaps the Age of the Constitution of the United States of America has ended. I really hope it has not, but man, it’s just not looking good out there right now.

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Hindsight is always more clear than foresight. If foresight was reliable, there would be virtually no crime and Vegas wouldn’t exist.

Exactly.

And ERPO laws are just guessing games, as effective as your average Vegas bettor.

Yep. And another thing is that for every “ he should have never had a gun” there are at least a dozen “we never saw this coming.” The only way to prevent these sort of shooting incidents is to assume everyone is capable of and so may eventually do one, therefore, everyone must be disarmed. Which is exactly what they are trying to achieve by getting laws like these over the threshold.

That’s exactly how due process works. Under existing law if you are involuntarily committed and found to be a danger to yourself and others you lose your RTK&B.

The problem as I see it is that under ERPO laws anyone can report you as being dangerous and the police come knocking to take away your guns with no due process at all and the allegation against you that justified the warrant does not have to be supported by any actual evidence prior.

The 2nd biggest issue is that someone that may need to seek psychological or psychiatric help will be afraid to do so out of fear of losing their firearms.

If you look back in our recent history since the sixties traditional morality and ethics have been steadily under attack. The more immoral we become as a nation the more divided we become and the more force of gov’t is then required to keep the peace and control the people.

This is exactly what the totalitarian left desires and what they have been steadily working towards since that time.