Of course, it doesn't always work that way.
Anything knives, vehicles, planes, pressure cookerscan become a weapon when wielded with deadly intentions.
With these red flag gun laws, the stated intention is to disarm individuals who are potential threats" to "stop dangerous people before they act."
While in theory it appears perfectly reasonable to want to disarm individuals who are clearly suicidal and/or pose an "immediate danger" to themselves or others, where the problem arises is when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.
Now consider the ramifications of giving police the authority to preemptively raid homes in order to neutralize a potential threat.
It's a powder keg waiting for a lit match.
Under these red flag laws, what happened to Duncan Lempwho was gunned down in his bedroom during an early morning, no-knock SWAT team raid on his family's homecould very well happen to more people.
At 4:30 a.m. on March 12, 2020, in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic that had most of the country under a partial lockdown and sheltering at home, a masked SWAT teamdeployed to execute a "high risk" search warrant for unauthorized firearmsstormed the suburban house where 21-year-old Duncan, a software engineer and Second Amendment advocate, lived with his parents and 19-year-old brother.
The entire household, including Lemp and his girlfriend, was reportedly asleep when the SWAT team directed flash bang grenades and gunfire through Lemp's bedroom window.
Lemp was killed and his girlfriend injured.
No one in the house that morning, including Lemp, had a criminal record.
No one in the house that morning, including Lemp, was considered an "imminent threat" to law enforcement or the public, at least not according to the search warrant.
So what was so urgent that militarized police felt compelled to employ battlefield tactics in the pre-dawn hours of a day when most people are asleep in bed, not to mention stuck at home as part of a nationwide lockdown?
According to police, they were tipped off that Lemp was in possession of "firearms."
Thus, rather than approaching the house by the front door at a reasonable hour in order to investigate this complaintwhich is what the Fourth Amendment requirespolice instead strapped on their guns, loaded up their flash bang grenades and acted like battle-crazed warriors.
This is the blowback from all that military weaponry flowing to domestic police departments.
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