Posted on 09/12/2019 6:38:05 PM PDT by familyop
Mike DeWine knows he’s in for a challenge.
The Ohio governor, a Republican trying to push gun control proposals through a legislature where the GOP holds supermajorities in both chambers, saw his predecessor, John Kasich, try the same thing without success.
“No one said this is going to be particularly easy,” DeWine said in a phone interview.
As the deaths mount from high-profile mass shootings, like those last month in Texas and Ohio, the public is pressuring elected officials across the country to act. Proposals to tighten easy access to guns in the U.S. are popular, and gun control advocates say it’s a factor that separates the U.S. from other developed countries that see far fewer gun deaths per year. National polls consistently show 60 percent or more of respondents favor stricter laws.
Some state governments are adopting a new tool: so-called red flag laws, which allow law enforcement or a family to petition to confiscate an individual’s guns. These efforts coincide with work in Congress, where the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday began to consider several gun measures including one to establish a federal red flag law.
At the time of the Feb. 14, 2018, mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, only five states had such laws. Since then, 12 states and the District of Columbia have enacted them.
But in many other places, the interests that have thwarted gun control efforts for years remain strong. And while the issue is not strictly partisan, opponents of new gun limits hold particular sway among Republicans.
“It’s certainly encouraging that Gov. DeWine has endorsed policies, that there [are Republicans] signed on to co-sponsor the background checks law,” said William Rosen, managing director of state policy and government affairs at Everytown for Gun Safety, the advocacy group founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “These are still going to be big fights.”
Gun rights activists consider red flag proposals, a version of which is the centerpiece to DeWine’s 17-point plan, problematic for several reasons, including the potential for misuse. A disgruntled family member could report a non-threatening gun owner in an effort to harass, they say, and they argue the policies lack due process provisions to ensure rights are protected.
“Our organization 100 percent opposes red flag laws because of the due process problem,” said Dean Rieck, executive director of the Buckeye Firearms Association, a gun rights group that endorsed DeWine and gave him an ‘A’ rating in 2018.
Proposals to expand background checks also run afoul of gun rights groups, who often see them as impeding Second Amendment rights without meaningfully improving safety because some current checks sometimes allow a person to pass who shouldn’t. Gun rights groups have supported improving the current system rather than adding laws.
Red flag laws and expanded background checks are among the top policy priorities for gun control advocates. Rosen said the current background check system has been effective, stopping more than 3 million sales, but can be improved. Red flag laws create another tool for removing guns from the hands of people who shouldn’t have them, he said.
This is the balancing act DeWine sees. “How do you protect the Second Amendment, but at the same time protect the public?” he said.
No tidal wave
Most Americans support additional gun control policies. An APM Research Lab/Guns & America/Call To Mind poll conducted last month found 70 percent of respondents favored red flag laws that would give police the power to initiate a removal order. That number went up when the question asked about a family-initiated order. Gun owners and Republicans also favored the idea at 60 and 67 percent, respectively.
Research is unclear if mass shootings are becoming more common, but they are more often in the news. They’re also seemingly deadlier. A gunman killed 50 at an Orlando, Florida, nightclub in June 2016, making it the deadliest such event in national history at the time. That distinction lasted until the following October, when a shooter at a Las Vegas concert killed 59.
The violence has inspired political activism and some changes.
The 2018 Parkland shooting, where a gunman with a history of displaying warning signs killed 14 high schoolers and three staff members, was something of a turning point for red flag laws. Then-Gov. Rick Scott and his fellow Republican leaders enacted such a law afterward.
“Sometimes it takes a tragedy … to loosen the gun lobby’s grip,” Rosen said.
[Gun control legislation again faces political headwinds following three deadly shootings]
In addition to Scott, Republican governors signed four of the 11 other red flag laws that have passed since Parkland, a fact gun control advocates promote to show their cause is bipartisan.
But other than Florida, those cases all involved traditionally blue states — Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts and Vermont — where Democrats controlled the legislatures and moderate GOP governors were running for reelection.
Recently, New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed bills to expand background checks and create a red flag law. GOP legislative leaders in North Carolina and Wisconsin ignored or rejected calls from their Democratic governors to take up similar measures.
Peggy Lehner, a Republican state senator from the Dayton, Ohio, area who supports red flag laws and expanded background checks, called DeWine’s push “encouraging,” but said shootings haven’t otherwise had a huge effect on members of her party.
“I certainly don’t see a tidal wave of change,” she said.
As anti-gun Republicans remain the exception at the state level, they continue to seek solutions that don’t restrict gun access. They’ve called to increase funding for school security and mental health care, for example.
Turmoil in Texas Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, dealing with the aftermath of the racially motivated shooting that claimed 22 lives in El Paso last month, is following a similar course to one he charted after a shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, last year.
Abbott, a Republican, comfortably won election in 2014 and reelection last year running as a friend to pro-gun interests.
At the National Rifle Association’s Institute of Legislative Affairs leadership forum in 2018, Abbott told the group that “the answer to gun violence … is to strengthen Second Amendment rights for law-abiding citizens.”
[NRA shows signs of decline, even in Trump’s America]
But he followed that with a line that guns should be taken “out of the hands of those mentally unfit to have” them. More recently, he listed improving enforcement of existing laws on background checks and emergency protective orders that take guns away from people convicted of domestic assault.
The NRA did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Ed Scruggs, vice chairman of the board of Texas Gun Sense, a group that pushes for stronger gun regulations, said Abbott’s approach isn’t enough, but has been a positive step.
Abbott included Scruggs in a roundtable comprising elected Republicans and Democrats, police and advocates on both sides of the issue. The group’s first meeting was scheduled for two hours but went four. It was in a post-meeting news conference that Abbott raised the issue of better enforcing background checks and protective orders.
“There were several strategies that were put on the table that we will continue to talk about,” Abbott said.
The roundtable was modeled on those Abbott convened after the Santa Fe shooting, which Scruggs said was a breakthrough in a state where gun rights are a powerful issue for Republican primary voters and officials have traditionally been hesitant to even consider additional regulations. After the 2018 meetings focused on school safety, this round has been about gun violence and mass shootings more generally, he said.
“You wouldn’t call it action-oriented,” Scruggs said of Abbott’s approach. “I wouldn’t say it was a politically bold step. But it was a step to take, and I would say the talks were serious.”
Rough road ahead in Ohio DeWine’s red flag proposal, he believes, allays concerns over due process because it would require a court hearing and a judge’s order before a gun can be seized.
At a follow-up hearing 12 days after an order, prosecutors would have to show “clear and convincing” evidence the gun owner is a threat for the order to be sustained.
The governor hopes such provisions are enough to win over gun rights advocates, though Luke Entelis, counsel for Everytown, said such provisions are standard in such laws.
DeWine’s 17-point proposal — of which the red flag and background check plans are only two — includes increasing penalties for gun violations, increased funding for behavioral health services and school safety programs, all measures that could win over conservatives.
DeWine has involved gun advocates, whom he calls “our Second Amendment friends,” in the process. There’s little indication many will back the package.
Rieck said his group opposes red flag laws and expanded background checks.
“The problem with the way all red flag laws to date have been structured is property is seized first and then the legal process happens afterward,” he said. “This is the sort of thing that can be abused.”
Only two Ohio Senate Republicans, Lehner and suburban Columbus’ Stephanie Kunze, have signed on to co-sponsor any gun control bills.
Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder said there were “quite a few” issues with the governor’s proposal and appeared to tamp down expectations by saying it would be “very, very difficult” to pass, according to local reports.
DeWine has won points from Rieck’s group for seeking to address their concerns. Senate President Larry Obhof, a Republican, hasn’t taken a position on the proposal but has said that DeWine’s approach helped alleviate due process concerns that were in “past proposals.”
But Lehner said her GOP colleagues remain beholden to the NRA and other gun groups’ advocacy campaigns. The state senator, who is term-limited from running for election, said DeWine’s proposals could face a similar end as Kasich’s, which she also supported.
“They didn’t get done for the very same reasons that this may not get done: The NRA is a very powerful lobbying group,” she said.
“I suspect that most of those folks who are not supporting this legislation would not say that it’s their NRA scorecard that they’re concerned about,” she said.
“But I believe it is. That’s an extremely powerful weapon.”
Statists have no concerns regarding “the due process problem” and will be happy to kill anyone who does.
No, it takes a truckload of bull$hit from the media combined with spineless RINOs to do it.
It will be like socialism, you can vote your way in but you will have to shoot your way out.
Once it is in place for firearms the progs will expand it to areas unheard of today.
.
Red flag laws are meant to be used as a weapon against law abiding gun owners.. It’s a gun grabber’s wet dream.
I think I liked
“Russia, Russia, Russia”
Better.
Ohio PING
The only reason they are pushing so hard is because they have given up 2020. I think they just reset the clock, and are trying to lay some ground work for a future coup in 2024+ after they find a suitible manchurian candidate who can continue the insurrection of all our alphabet departments.
Red Flag laws are a class warfare weapon against the symbolic enemy of liberals, which is perceived to be a fat middle aged white male toting an AR-15 who hates Muslims.
I’m all of those things. F*** liberalism!!
Good luck in finding them them all.
I wish the Supreme Court could put some teeth into the reaction to some of these 2nd Amendment violations.
The b*tch Rosen never mentions that Parkland happened because the useless FBI did NOTHING with the many warnings they received about Nikolai Cruz.
The Palm Beach Sheriffs Dept. was equally worthless.
What lunacy . There is no “plague of mass shootings” . I call complete BS on this illogical, dishonest premise.
That’s been tried with Lautenberg Amendment cases. If I remember correctly, the Supreme Court refused to hear them.
No worries mr ohio.. Pence told us there is an administration approved gun control package in congress. The gun grab has support from our prez who thought a bump stock ban would fix it.
CBS commie news runs one sided hysteria every morning. Screeching female reporters with that hyper-urgent tone of voice. Like nails on a chalkboard.
I knew DeWine was a Bush League Republican.
You can never trust a Bush League Republican.
That’s exactly what I was thinking when I saw this headline....
What “plague” of “mass shootings?”
which sadly some on the right support
[[House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday began to consider several gun measures including one to establish a federal red flag law.
At the time of the Feb. 14, 2018, mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, only five states had such laws. Since then, 12 states and the District of Columbia have enacted them. ]]
12 states folks- 12 states are violating the constitution-
[[“The problem with the way all red flag laws to date have been structured is property is seized first and then the legal process happens afterward,”]]
The problem is that many folks will NOT be able to fight the courts to get their property back, so they lose them forever- being deemed a ‘threat to society’ because they didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer to prove that they are NOT a threat to society
The laws WILL create felons out of law abiding citizens who can’t afford to defend themselves legally in a court of law- They become felons unjustly, and can never again own a gun- States WILL be seizing law abiding citizen’s private property and NOT giving it back because the law abiding people can’t afford to effectively fight them in court-
of law- They become felons unjustly, and can never again own a gun- States WILL be seizing law abiding citizen’s private property and NOT giving it back because the law abiding people can’t afford to effectively fight them in court-
**That Awkward Moment When You're Toting The Crazy Gun-Lover's Guns To The Squad Car, And You Realize He Has Some Unregistered Weapons**
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