(Opinion editor’s note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.)
The new year started with news of the tragic shootings of two children in the Twin Cities when shots were fired into their homes. In Minneapolis, an 11-year-old girl was shot in the face while in her North Side bedroom. And in St. Paul, a 10-year-old boy was hit in the stomach by gunfire directed at his Frogtown-area home.
It’s impossible to know whether the red-flag law that went into effect Jan. 1 in Minnesota could have prevented that horror. But it might have made a difference in the Minneapolis case, where the suspect randomly fired an AR-15 rifle into the air to celebrate the new year. The accused is a Fridley man who is a convicted felon barred from having a firearm. The ban wasn’t enough, but had someone close to him who knew he had the rifle sought an order under the new law, the rifle might have been taken away from him.
Public awareness is key with red-flag law (startribune.com)
Let’s review the case:
- Shooting into the air for no reason endangering the public is illegal.
- Felon in possession of a firearm also illegal.
- Felon shooting a gun is also very illegal.
Just the first one is enough to immediately call 911. After that the proper enforcement of the laws broken should be enough to send the Felon back to prison for a long time.
But the message by the Star Tribune Editorial Board is that those felonies and the blatant endangering of human life by the felon is simply not enough to call the cops and have him arrested thus possibly preventing a tragedy. No, the solution is to pass and support Red Flag laws and just like Socialism, this time we will have peace and security and not the failures we had with other laws like felon in possession or assault with a deadly weapon or even murder.
And once Red Flags fails and another Flavor Du Jour Gun Control idea pops up, we will have the editorial board once again bemoaning about how ERPOs are not enough, but this time the new law will take us to Paradise.
USA- Unbelievably Stupid Americans, liberal think- we have all these laws we passed, felons regularly break these laws. so rather than enforce the broken laws liberals pontificate gee, these laws don’t work so we need to pass MORE laws…then when that fails they come up with more laws…. pretty soon we will be just like the uk… We the People need to get control of society away from the lunatics.
Wait a second.
Felon in possession of a firearm is already justification for calling the cops, but for some reason the editorial opinion is a red flag law would have allowed people to call the police?
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What, in the opinion of the writer, is the proper number of laws that must be violated before one should call the cops? It is, apparently two.
The ban wasn’t enough, but had someone close to him who knew he had the rifle sought an order under the new law, the rifle might have been taken away from him.
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Of course the existing ban wasn’t enough! It will never be enough! Repeat after me, for the umpteenth time: It’s impossible to pass enough laws to force law-breakers to abide by them.
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But supposing we take the editorial at its word, had someone who knew he illegally possessed the rifle:
1. ERPOs wouldn’t have been necessary, as “felon in possession” is already enough to call in.
2. Gunfire in public is generally already enough to call in.
3. Most importantly for this comment, ERPO or not, calling it in doesn’t immediately bring a SWAT team down to take a rifle from a felon. They’d have sent a couple of officers to investigate and make sure it’s not a crank call or “SWATting” attempt, and given that most police departments are already stretched thin, that might have happened … sometime in the next few weeks (read: AFTER the “celebratory” shooting), if it happened at all. “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
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ERPOs didn’t change the calculus by making a felon in possession “moar illegaller”. The legal tools were already there — have been for decades at both federal and state levels — but people can’t use them because they’ve defunded police departments and created a political climate in which officers are resigning or retiring faster than departments can replace them. Police manpower — or the lack thereof — is the bottleneck here, not laws, and it’s a bottleneck of the Left’s own making.
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Adding more legal tools won’t and can’t help if there’s nobody to send out. It just further harasses peaceable gun owners, which I’m pretty sure is the whole point.