Pitfalls of 'red flag' laws

Presently there are many people who want to make it a criminal offense to possess guns that can hold more than a specified number of bullets.

People with the same mindset also want to pass “red flag” laws. Red flag laws will allow someone to flag, or mark, you as a bad or unstable person who needs to have your guns taken away immediately — without a hearing or a trial. It is most likely the person “flagging” you will be an ex-spouse or ex-lover. They will be telling the authorities that you are mentally unstable. The person in authority will decide whether to give the police authority to bust your door down, enter your house and take away any guns you might have.

Because of the HIIPA Privacy Rule, odds are you will not get a public trial. It has long been public policy that trials concerning your mental condition, including commitments to mental hospitals, are held in private. Since President Trump is considering the passing of red flag laws, they will be federal law. It will probably be a federal magistrate or “commissar” who has been appointed by the president who will determine if you should have your firearms taken away.

It has also been suggested that believing in conspiracy theories will be grounds for having the police take one’s guns away. Do my Democratic friends believe that President Trump conspired with Russia to steal the election? Do they agree with Dr. Allen Frances, former chairman of the Psychiatry Department at Duke University who stated on CNN, “Trump is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin, Mao in the last century. He may be responsible for many more million deaths than they were.”

It also surprises me that my Republican friends who believe that the powers who wanted us to go to war in Iraq planted explosives in the Twin Towers would support such laws. And it especially surprises me that college professors and historians, who have studied the fall of Rome and other governments, don’t see any danger of our government collapsing under the weight of our $22 trillion national debt, our welfare state and our super polarized political society.

According to “Why Jews Hate Guns” by Rabbi Dovid Bendory, “Governments are historically the greatest threat to Jews (or anyone), responsible for horrendous mass-murder campaigns and pogroms (organized massacres of a particular ethnic groups) throughout history. Murder by government, democide, is by far the greatest killer of innocent human beings. People imbued with the intoxicating power of government authority exterminated 262 million people in the 20th century, according to political scientist R. J. Rummel.”

I cannot but wonder: if the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, whom held off the Nazi war machine for 30 days with their inferior rifles and small number of hand guns; if they had had one assault-style rifle per household in the ghetto of 400,000 residents; is it possible they would have stopped the Holocaust for the duration of the war? If a future Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim Il-sung or Genghis Khan attempts to enslave or murder my friends and family, I will want to have the best military-style weapons. And I will be very tolerant of anyone “crazy” enough to join me.

Therefore, while I will support freedom-loving candidates to the best of my ability, I will not give anything to candidates who support red flag laws, gun capacity restrictions or other infringements on our Second Amendment, or to any organization that supports the election of these candidates.

Jerry O’Neil is a former Republican member of the Montana House of Representatives, representing Columbia Falls from 2011 to 2015. He lives in Columbia Falls.