‘Red flag laws’ may reduce gun violence

Associated Press

After a white supremacist discussed plans on Facebook for a mass shooting at a synagogue, police in Washington used a new law to quickly seize his 12 firearms, long before he was convicted of any crime.

But when a Tennessee father became alarmed about his son after receiving a suicidal text message, he said the police determined they could not take his son’s guns away. A few months later, the man showed up at a church and shot seven worshippers one Sunday morning, killing one.

Family members and police routinely face agonizing decisions when otherwise lawful gun owners reveal an impulse to harm themselves or others, and more states are enacting laws that let authorities take away their weapons.

With bipartisan support in many cases, 17 states and Washington D.C. have now passed “red flag laws” that allow the court-ordered removal of guns from people who are considered to be dangerous. The back-to-back shootings that killed 31 people this month in Texas and Ohio have given new momentum to proposals pending in several other states and to a plan in Congress to provide grant money to states that adopt such measures.

In a rare victory for gun control advocates, the laws have spread since the February 2018 shooting that killed 17 students and staff members at a high school in Parkland, Florida. New York’s new law took effect Saturday, while New Jersey’s begins Sept. 1. The proliferation of such laws comes despite opposition from gun rights activists and others who say the measures go too far.

Since most of the laws are new, research on their effectiveness is limited. A study published last year estimated that the two states with the longest-standing laws, Connecticut and Indiana, may have had 500 fewer gun suicides over a decade as a result of the measures. Another study estimated that Connecticut, which adopted its law in 1999 after a mass shooting at the state lottery office, prevented one suicide for every 10 to 20 people subjected to gun seizures.

A study published this week about California’s law found 21 examples in which people who had threatened public shootings were successfully disarmed.

In jurisdictions where red flag laws have been aggressively enforced, officials say the measures have likely prevented some suicides, workplace shootings and domestic killings.