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Townhall.com

In the aftermath of the February 2018 mass murder at a Parkland, Florida high school, it became readily apparent that danger signs and evidence abounded that a disturbed former student at the school was likely going to commit such a heinous crime.  Despite local, state and federal law enforcement officials having possession of such knowledge, they failed to act on that information even though they had lawful and ready means to do so.

Now, rather than hold responsible those who failed in their responsibilities in that tragedy, and to address specifically the reasons why our law enforcement and judicial systems failed in that instance, state governments and the Congress of the United States are moving to dramatically reduce due process protections for everyone, or at least for everyone who owns a firearm. The vehicle being used to thus undermine citizens’ rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment, are so-called “red flag” laws (also known as “Emergency Risk Protections Orders”).

The problems evident in the Parkland mass murder and others – Sutherland Springs, Texas in 2017, Charleston, SC in 2015, and Sandy Hook in 2012 — are very real and very serious; and need to be addressed.  However, doing so in ways that expand the government’s power to confiscate law-abiding citizens’ firearms without affording them long-standing and constitutionally-based due process, is neither necessary nor appropriate.  Yet this is precisely what is happening.

To gun-control advocates like 2020 presidential hopeful Sen. Cory Booker, every mass shooting is the result of insufficient gun-control laws – “loopholes” in Liberal Speak. To them, the failure on the part of law enforcement and other government agencies to have used the training, laws and procedures already available to them prior to a shooting tragedy, is not the problem.  The problem always is that there were not enough gun control laws in the first place.  In this worldview, the default solution is to give government more power to control and limit firearms.  Thus – red flag laws.

“Restraining orders” – that is, orders issued by judges that prevent individuals from doing something – are not new.  Courts in our country, using procedures inherited in large measure from the English common law, have long recognized that there will be situations in which threatened or anticipated harm can provide a basis for a court doing something not normally favored or allowed – taking a person’s property or freedom without full opportunity for that person to defend against such action. Such procedures are the exception to the rule, however, and must be – and to this point, have been – carefully circumscribed and limited.  Only in the rarest of circumstances are such restraining orders issued ex parte; that is, without notice to the target of the order to defend against the action.

The new red flag law proposals now being enacted by several states, and aided by proposals being pushed in the Congress by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and others, take the concept of a judicial restraining order to a new, and problematic level.   These proposals create a new category of restraining orders applicable to owners of firearms, and would permit virtually anyone at any time to enlist local law enforcement and a judge to issue ex parte orders (sometimes by phone) directing law enforcement to seize a person’s firearms based on fear that they might in the future commit a bad act with a gun.

The concerns fueling these “red flag” proposals are genuine, and they are urgent.   The solution, however, is not to toss due process out the window in the name of “public safety.”  The question we ought to be asking (and to which we should be demanding answers) is why the powers and the tools already possessed by police agencies and our courts at all levels of government, are not being employed when and how they should be.

The problem is greatly exacerbated because state governments have for years failed in their responsibility to provide adequate funding and personnel resources with which to address mental health issued displayed, often openly, by individuals like Nikolas Cruz in Parkland prior to their deadly rampages.

Yet, rather than address these long-standing problems, with better training, more funding, and holding accountable bureaucrats and law enforcement officials who fail in their responsibilities, state governments are rushing to enact red flag laws and the Congress, as evident in last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on this very topic, appears ready to donate tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to state governments to establish such procedures.

Red flag laws offer a comforting solution to an exceedingly complex problem; but they come at a heavy cost to our Bill of Rights.

Townhall.com

The year before what likely will be the most contentious presidential election in modern history is not a good time to suffer an identity crisis; but that is precisely the position in which the Democrats finds themselves right now.

While the Party may try to put on a happy, unified public face in opposing President Donald Trump, the full throes of such an identity crisis are wreaking havoc behind the scenes. To describe it as a conflict of “multiple personalities” would not even explain the half of it. Democrats are in a complete existential meltdown.

Let’s start with a quick overview of where the Democratic Party is today. The two Establishment front runners for the 2020 Presidential Sweepstakes nomination are Sens. Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren.  The first is a former prosecutor criticized by Liberals for having been tough on minorities by locking up gang bangers; the other is a woman who employed what the Left has labelled “cultural appropriation” to portray herself as a minority in order advance her career.

Then there’s the “people’s favorite” (as measured by small donor-fundraising) – Sen. Bernie Sanders, a septuagenarian socialist whose popularity soared by rebuking the Democratic establishment, represented by Sens. Harris and Warren.

Things are no easier for Democrats in the House, where an aging Rep. Nancy Pelosi struggles to maintain control over a crop of freshman Members who have made clear their desire to not play by the rules. Tensions bubbled to the surface earlier this month when Pelosi threw a bucket of cold water on Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s “hot” Green New Deal. “The green dream, or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it, right?” Pelosi said dismissively.

Jockeying to define the tone and future direction of either of the two major political parties is typical in any presidential election cycle, but the Democratic Party’s current identity crisis goes much deeper. The utter collapse of the Clinton dynasty in 2016 following Barack Obama’s largely rudderless eight years, left a huge vacuum yet to be filled by Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, or anyone else. The glaring albatross around the neck of the national Democratic Party is “what does the Party stand for?”

Taking a cue from previous campaigns, those candidates currently “leading” the Democrat field, have chosen the easier path of defining what they are not, rather than offering a coherent description of what they stand for.  Sooner or later, such waffling will catch up to them, but for now it is somewhat amusing to watch them squirm when asked if they are – like Bernie Sanders proudly admits he is – “Democratic Socialists.”

When she recently was asked in New Hampshire to define what a “Democratic Socialist” was — since she recently had declared herself not to be one — Harris demurred, smiled awkwardly and mumbled generalities about the wonderful things she would do if elected president. What should have been an easy declaration that she believes in mainstream and time-honored principles of Democratic presidents past rather than socialism, Harris instead offered a lesson in obfuscation.

Harris’ verbal floundering reveals the rocky shoals awaiting any Democrat who dares advocate even a slightly more mature policy agenda than the “free stuff for everyone” approach being hawked by Sanders and the Ocasio-Cortez youth wing of the Party.  Sen. Amy Klobuchar, for example, received a heavy dose of public scorn from her fellow “progressives” recently, when she audaciously expressed a mild level of caution about rushing toward the “Medicare for all” rainbow that has mesmerized so much of the Democrat electorate.  And Liberals ripped into Sen. Dianne Feinstein just last week when she lectured a group of school children and their adult chaperones against blindly buying into the absurdly costly and poorly constructed “Green New Deal” they childishly demanded.

In an environment where endorsing even slightly moderate positions is met with immediate and severe scorn, Kamala Harris will not be the last of her Party’s contenders to duck questions that otherwise would force at least a degree of substance and reasoned thought.  The real danger in candidates taking such squishy stands is that the policy vacuum stays unfilled, leaving the Democratic Party itself to continue twisting slowly in the wind.   Whether the GOP is sufficiently grounded in policy and principles to take advantage of that weakness, however, remains – as always – a very open question.