Weeks after she was denied a protection order, a Michigan woman and her family are dead – A judge denied the order June 27, saying there was insufficient evidence of immediate or irreparable injury. The woman and her family were found dead Sunday, officials said. [More]
The prohibitionists will say this proves the need for “red flag laws.”
Who thinks a piece of paper would have stopped this maniac or prevented him from getting his hands on whatever he wanted for a butchery spree?
Look what they (purposely) didn’t tell us when they report he “bought a gun.”
The only way to prevent such atrocities, proven once more, is to separate the threat from the victim pool. With full due process.
That may not be foolproof? Anybody see any guarantees in life? And a system could be set up that would do that and do a much better job of considering individual circumstances and probabilities than one-size-fits-all prior restraints.
The alternative is denying rights to the innocent. We call governments that do that “tyrannical” for a reason. We’re supposed to accept that because of statistically rare aberrations lawmakers refuse to more effectively address, mostly for political reasons?
[Via Steve T]
This puts me in mind of two incidents.
One comes from a town in Massachusetts, where the police chief first denied a woman’s application go a gun license because “you don’t have sufficient reason to be in fear of your life from your ex-husband” — and then, when she got out of the hospital with her bruises and scars healing, denied it again because now “you have a history of violence.”
The second, triggered by your unfortunate use of the phrase “separate the threat from the victim pool” (because the incident occurred by their pool) is the sad story of Polly Przybyl, rest her soul for being the poster girl for how red-flag laws can be used to help murder someone.
And there are too many more, like the stories of Phillip Michael Coleman, Bonnie Elmasri, and others.