For our side, the question is not WHETHER we will be seeing red-flag laws, but WHO will be writing them and signing them into law.
It can be Trump, with input from the NRA, Rush, Sean, and others, or it can be AOC, or one of her people (whoever gets elected in 2020).
Like it or not, we’ve lost the public opinion war - either Trump will be signing in the new laws, or at least making a damn good case as to why they shouldn’t be signed, or Trump could easily lose 2020 by ‘standing on principle’ and not signing anything, and we’ll be at the hands of a Fascist Democrat signing in the next round of laws.
So do we ‘punish’ Trump if he signs a red-flag law that still protects our rights, or do we still get angry and thus allow ourselves to be non-players, as the Dems win 2020 and go much, much, further - literally taking ALL of our guns.
Our choice.
I can't think of any.
That's not to say that the Democrats aren't gun-grabbing A-holes. I'm just pointing out that a lot of them face tremendous pressure from their own constituents who support the Second Amendment.
You may be right. We can also insist on constitutional protections such as: (1) the right to a trial by jury; (2) the right to court-appointed counsel (not just that the court will try to get the defendant pro bono counsel, as the Blumenthal bill provides); (3) much more stringent grounds than “a risk” or “a danger” or “personal injury” or “harm,” as I’ve seen in two bills; (4) a much higher burden of proof than “probable cause” or “reasonable cause” for an ex parte order, or “preponderance of the evidence” (!) for the issuance of a final order, as the House bill provides; (5) applications to be made under oath and based on personal knowledge (not hearsay or belief) of specific facts (not conclusions) supporting the appropriate findings. Also, make filing a false application a felony (in addition to perjury) and impose civil liability for the respondent’s attorney’s fees, actual damages, and some set amount of statutory additional damages.
Of course, this will make the program unworkable and its proponents can never agree to any of them. But that just exposes the fundamental problem of a “red flag” law. And how can they argue against something so basic as the right to a trial by jury?
You may be right. We can also insist on constitutional protections such as: (1) the right to a trial by jury; (2) the right to court-appointed counsel (not just that the court will try to get the defendant pro bono counsel, as the Blumenthal bill provides); (3) much more stringent grounds than “a risk” or “a danger” or “personal injury” or “harm,” as I’ve seen in two bills; (4) a much higher burden of proof than “probable cause” or “reasonable cause” for an ex parte order, or “preponderance of the evidence” (!) for the issuance of a final order, as the House bill provides; (5) applications to be made under oath and based on personal knowledge (not hearsay or belief) of specific facts (not conclusions) supporting the appropriate findings. Also, make filing a false application a felony (in addition to perjury) and impose civil liability for the respondent’s attorney’s fees, actual damages, and some set amount of statutory additional damages (maybe the greater of $10,000 or treble the attorney fees and actual damages).
Of course, this will make the program unworkable and its proponents can never agree to any of them. But that just exposes the fundamental problem of a “red flag” law. And how can they argue against something so basic as the right to a trial by jury?
It isn’t who will be signing the red flag laws that matters, and eventually it will be a liberal in charge of that. It is the judges, with all their biases who will be in charge, and freerepublic is full of articles lambasting bad judges. In fact it will vary from the judge who has never denied denied a seizure order to the one who has never upheld one, and everything in between.
And we haven’t lost the public opinion war, we never presented an argument.
Trump will rightfully deserve the blame if he signs legislation that will be the basis for eventually subverting the second amendment.
That kind of thinking will boil the frog slowly.
If we see red flag laws we’ve thrown the entire Constitution away so quite frankly it doesn’t matter who writes them.