Florida ‘red flag’ gun law used 3,500 times

[98valk]

https://apnews.com/6560501986455adcb0ef57fdb370035a

To get an order in Florida, police agencies must file a request with a civil court, citing serious mental illness or threats a person has made. If the judge agrees, the person must surrender their firearms to police. Within two weeks, a hearing is held during which the judge decides whether to take the person’s weapons away for a year. Police agencies can apply for an extension if there is evidence a person remains a threat after a year. If not, the guns are returned.

Orlando attorney Kendra Parris, who is trying to get a case before the state Supreme Court to overturn the law, says it doesn’t adequately define some terms, such as what constitutes serious mental health issues. And in any case, she says, other Florida statutes, such as misdemeanor breach of the peace, already allow police to take firearms from the truly dangerous before they act. That statute could easily have been invoked against the Stoneman Douglas shooter, she said.

“Probably two dozen times this guy could have been charged for breach of the peace and had his firearms removed,” Parris said.

The AP analysis shows that from March 2018, when the law was enacted, through December 2019, there was a wide disparity in its per capita usage in Florida’s 67 counties. Twenty issued at least one for every 5,500 residents during that time period, the statewide average. Three issued at least one for every 2,000 residents, including Gualtieri’s Pinellas County, which includes the Tampa Bay area, and has nearly 1 million people. Highlands County, near Lake Okeechobee, ranked No. 1, issuing one for every 850 residents.

[Pappy!]

And they are doing it on the QT.
Hardly ever hear of it. Stealthy bastards!

[Jess from VA]

I appreciate any attempt to go after lunatics instead of straight for firearms.

Fed Flag goes after both, and if it was judiciously used only for genuine, legitimate threats it might not be so bad, but with no right to any due process hearing before they come to take them, and the obvious ability to use it for revenge or payback or doxing or simple dislike of a neighbor, it seems ripe for abuse.  Any Red Flag law should have clear penalties for abuse of that process by any claimant.

I read where one county always used other family members to intervene and talk the relative into giving them his guns (and not give them back until approved), so cops were not kicking doors (with the obvious potential for confrontation), and that seemed like a very good idea.  

We are probably getting one in VA but I have not seen the actual language yet.

The other thing Red Flag clearly does is limit (or chill) free speech.  Under Red Flag, any firearm owner better be pretty careful in anything he says or writes on-line (or anywhere).  Discussing insurrection or armed conflict in the abstract or hypothetical is not the same thing as directly threatening to harm people or property or self, but angry words getting close to the edge could obviously get you Red Flagged.  

Go back to the American Revolution and all the writings published by Thomas Paine, Jefferson and many others.  It was great writing leading to the foundations of our republic, and they all could have probably been red flagged.  When in the course of human events....

And once your firearms are in the authorities hands, it's always going to be an uphill and disadvantaged fight for the firearm owner.  With a hearing before confiscation, the Govt would have the burden of proving you are crazy and/or a threat to self or others.  After confiscation, the burden is seemingly on the firearm owner to prove he's not crazy or a threat to self or others.  Now imagine how angry you would be if this happened to you, but you better not be angry in your hearing.  Even in your hearing, your free speech would be chilled.  

And a judge, having decided to issue an ex-parte (one party) Red Flag order, has a natural self interest in ruling he was right in the first place, rather than overrule himself and return firearms.  And judges will always be worried about their own personal liability if they do order return of firearms, and things go wrong later with those firearms.  Especially elected judges.

Those jurisdictions that have and use these laws should be keeping close and objective and very public disclosure of statistics and continuing study of the practice, so that careful oversight can be exercised over the process, with regular inputs from all sides (mental health, cops, judges, state bar, and even the ACLU) being considered.

3500 seems like an awful lot of cases to me.  Another article said.. So far, judges have gone along with law enforcement a vast majority of the time — nearly 97 percent of temporary orders and 99 percent of final orders are granted statewide.  One can only hope that level of approval is fully justified in each case, and not some kind of rubber stamp being used.

[Jersey mike]

The picking apart of rights is a nice slow process, it’s not designed to be an all at once movement but a nice slow disassembly while still leaving the original rights on the books so it appears as though nothing has been changed.