A catch-all solution? No. But a step in the right direction.
Congress earlier this month passed a bipartisan gun control law that has drawn mixed reviews from experts. Among its provisions was federal funding that would incentivize states to pass so-called Red Flag Laws.
Image Credit/The New York Times
The legislation has been heralded as a major breakthrough — the most significant gun control bill to be signed into law since former President Bill Clinton passed the assault weapons ban in 1994. It was proposed, written, passed through both bodies of Congress, and signed by President Joe Biden all in a matter of weeks after a shooter killed 21 people in a Texas elementary school. So what does the landmark gun control bill that is now law actually do? Of its cornerstones, the bill’s most widely discussed — and lauded — amendment, is its designation of federal dollars to incentive states to pass Red Flag Laws.
The basic idea of these laws is to stop would-be shooters before they have a chance to act, but they go much deeper than that, and can take on a range of appearances.
What do they do?
Red flag laws are dressed up protection orders that allow the police to confiscate weapons from people if a judge finds them to be a danger to themselves or their community. The states that have these laws vary on who can report someone for behavior that is deemed to be violent or dangerous. In Massachusetts, for example, a family member or a household member can request such an order, otherwise known as an Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO). Florida has a Red Flag Law, but only the police are allowed to request a judge to confiscate someone’s weapons. Those on the receiving end of these orders are allowed to request a lawyer to defend them in court. There is no established standard for how long these orders last, but it is typically up to the judge’s discretion. To be clear, the new gun control bill does not establish a federal Red Flag Law. It only sets aside funds that will go to states that choose to enact them.
What states have them?
As of now, 19 states have some form of Red Flag law in place, according to Everytown, a national gun control group. Most of those states are reliably blue, but there are a few notable exceptions, including Florida. Legislators in some Republican-led states, like Texas, have signaled strong opposition to the prospect of any kind of extreme risk law, even with the benefits offered to them under the new federal gun control bill. They claim such laws violate due process, though legal scholars have repeatedly rejected that argument, and the laws have held up to a number of challenges in court.
States highlighted in blue have a Red Flag Law on the books. Image Credit: Everytown
Are they effective?
Generally speaking, yes. By nature, the effectiveness of these laws is difficult to measure, because there is no established average number of shootings in each state. That figure ebbs and flows. Further, when a state’s shootings decline, it’s difficult to tie that trend to any one law. And when the laws do their job correctly, they stop shootings — but it’s impossible to know who, if any, of those who had their guns confiscated would have gone on to perpetrate an act of violence if there had been no legal intervention. Still, there is some promising data to support the effectiveness of these laws. Most notably, experts believe Red Flag Laws dramatically reduce the number of suicides committed. In Connecticut, for example, researchers estimated that the state’s extreme risk law prevented a suicide in one of every ten cases in which a gun was seized. Researchers found that the suicide rate in Indiana dipped 7.5 percent in the decade after its Red Flag law was enacted. Its also well-documented that states that have Red Flag laws and other restrictions on gun ownership have fewer shootings. And in principle, if executed correctly, these laws should stop mass shooters. Everytown found that 56 percent of mass shooters displayed some sort of “dangerous warning sign” before they acted. That statistic points to one obvious caveat: these laws will never stop every shooting from happening. Experts believe a framework of gun control rules would be required to truly reduce the number of firearm deaths in the US. But Red Flag laws are a key part of that puzzle.
