(ThyBlackMan.com) Back in May of 2018, the Republican-controlled statehouse in Colorado rejected House Bill 1436, a highly controversial measure that would have allowed Colorado judges to order the seizure of guns from people considered “a significant risk to themselves or others.”
When Democrats took over the Colorado statehouse in 2019, they wasted no time in re-introducing the “red flag” bill, which, as I write this, is heading to the Colorado Senate for floor debate.
Earlier this month, in the midst of a Democrat push for federal “red flag” legislation, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said that firearm confiscation laws and other similar measures known as “extreme risk protection orders” represent a manner by which Democrats and Republicans can “come together.”
Come together?
CNN reported that Graham has long supported red flag laws, and CNBC pointed out that Graham’s willingness to hold hearings on gun control is “a remarkable development in the GOP-dominated Senate.”
Well, maybe not so much …
One of the bigger wake-up calls conservatives and others who value the rule of law have experienced over the last several years (other than the apparent intent of the Washington establishment to implement a megalithic socialist government whether we like it or not) is the realization that perhaps nine-tenths of all Republican politicians are every bit as dedicated to this statist ascension as are Democrats.
Despite Graham having retained his status as some kind of quasi-conservative in the eyes of profoundly misguided Republican voters, he is a creature of the Washington establishment, through and through. Red flag legislation empowers courts to issue firearm confiscation orders for individuals deemed “a threat to themselves or others.”
My first question is “deemed by whom?” You see, when politicians offer up stealth liberty-stultifying measures, it is invariably argued as being for the greater good. This is why mentally indolent voters support such measures. Of course we don’t want mentally unbalanced individuals to have access to firearms, and we should let these kind, wise bastions of government take care of that for us.
A mentally unbalanced person who has heretofore not acted upon any irrational or dangerous impulses should be left to his own devices, despite the risk of acting out antisocially.
This is their right, and it is the law. Or was the law.
There are two key aspects which make red flag laws a dangerous and slippery slope – apart from their restricting firearms possession in the first place.
1. The first goes back to the question relating to precisely who makes evaluations of these potential spree killers. Is it a 23-year-old psychological clinician with six months of training, who has never fired a firearm in her life? Is it a court-contracted psychologist who doesn’t believe that private citizens should possess firearms at all? Perhaps the say-so of a neighbor with a gripe or a school official will be enough cause for the Imperial Stormtroopers to descend upon an unwitting sufferer’s home.
2. One thing that really chills me is that no one is asking the question of how red flag laws might be abused. And gun control laws are almost always abused, since their objective is not to protect the public, but to increasingly narrow the range of acceptable criteria for firearms ownership. In the end, the only people who will be able to get near firearms will be police, the military, well-connected elites and those who protect them.
Hardened criminals, who get their weapons through black market channels anyway, will remain armed. Unarmed, law-abiding citizens will be at their mercy in the modern, socialist paradise.
Even more on the RINO front: Last Thursday, the Senate passed a resolution to end President Donald Trump’s national emergency on the border. There was less than a veto-proof majority, but the bill had a noteworthy number of Republicans voting for it. The House passed its version of the resolution in February with the aid of 13 Republicans.
This gives rise to another question: Given what so many of us already know relative to the malignancy of the Deep State and designs of Beltway statists, why would any Republican lawmaker of good conscience so overtly oppose such a popular measure and one that is in keeping with the president’s chief campaign promise?
The answer to this is that there are precious few GOP lawmakers who are of good conscience and who operate in good faith. This week, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, expressed marked confusion on a social media platform as to why President Trump would “disparage” the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., whom Romney referenced as “courageous,” “patriotic” and a few other superlatives.
As I’ve maintained for years, Romney is probably the poster boy for closeted GOP progressives with McCain gone. It escapes my reasoning that there are still many Republican voters who think Romney is a conservative.
Consider the vast number of scandalous affairs in which those on the left – Democrat and Republican – have been involved in recent months alone, and not just those in the arena of politics. The Hollywood university admittance scandal, CNN being sued for their slanderous coverage of Covington Catholic High School students, revelations that the Justice Department under Barack Obama was ordered not to charge Hillary Clinton in her email server scandal – all of these and many other transgressions telegraph the reality that the Beltway establishment intends to mortally destabilize the administration of a duly elected president and compromise Americans’ liberties on an unprecedented scale.
This is far bigger than the left’s antipathy for the president. The subversive actions and positions of congressional Republican lawmakers evidence where their allegiances lie – and if we remain in denial as to their implicit expressions of intent, we don the mantle of victimhood willingly.
Written by Erik Rush
Official website; http://www.erikrush.com
