Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA), who will be leaving office at the end of the year, tweeted out a nice little graphic of what happens under the so-called “red flag” laws. Due process of law, he tells us, is part of it.

But look at the graphic.

Jane’s social media contact, Randy, posts photos of guns & cryptic messages.

Followed by:

Jane calls the police to report the posts.

What does “cryptic” mean?

adjective Also cryp·ti·cal.

1. mysterious in meaning; puzzling; ambiguous: a cryptic message.
2. abrupt; terse; short:
3. a cryptic note. secret; occult:
4. a cryptic writing. involving or using cipher, code, etc.

So, if Jane simply doesn’t understand Randy’s message, Governor Wolf wants her to call the cops!

Then follow the next steps:

The police petition in court to temporarily remove Randy’s guns.

Police provide evidence that Randy is a danger to himself/others.

The court agrees to a temporary removal of Randy’s weapons.

You know what you don’t see in there? You don’t see any notification to Randy, and presumably Randy’s attorney, that he is under investigation to see if he “is a danger to himself/others,” because, just like any search warrant, the court and the police do not want the subject of the warrant to know the police are coming to enter his home and seize evidence. Due to Jane’s puzzlement over Randy’s message, the police show up, enter his home, possibly forcibly, and seize his property, all without Randy having had a chance to defend himself before the court.

Now, up to this point, Randy has committed no crime! Rather, because Jane is worried about him, she has sicced the cops on him, and don’t fool yourself: while police officers are normally more politically conservative than liberal, there’s nothing the police, or at least police chiefs, like more than a disarmed public. As they view Jane’s complaint, if they are going to err, they are more likely to err on the side of wanting Randy’s guns removed.

There’s even an incentive there: if they don’t try to have Randy’s firearms taken away, and it turns out that he does commit a crime, or even suicide, with his weapons, and it comes out that the police had Jane’s complaint and didn’t try to take Randy’s guns, they, or their city or jurisdiction, could be held liable in a civil suit. But Jane, doubtlessly, will be shielded from legal action for calling in a genuine concern, and I can see the red flag laws the left want passed keeping her identity confidential.

The police are not the only ones who do not like an armed citizenry; prosecutors don’t care for it much, either, so persuading the prosecutor or city attorney or whomever needs to petition the judge for the removal order might not be difficult. Judges, though not liable for the consequences of their decisions, might well feel their own internal pressure to prevent a tragedy.

So, what’s missing in all of this? As Jane, and the police, and the city attorneys, and the judges, several people, are all at least somewhat motivated by the idea that they could prevent a tragedy, there’s no one involved to protect Randy’s rights.

Enter Jeff Goldstein, and Robert Stacy McCain’s story on his problems:

Crazy People Are Dangerous (and the Problem With ‘Red Flag’ Laws)

Saturday, June 18, 2022

You haven’t forgotten Deb Frisch, have you? In October 2018, Frisch — whose harassment of Protein Wisdom blogger Jeff Goldstein lasted a dozen years — was finally sentenced to four years in a Colorado prison. When last we heard about her, in August 2021, she had been denied parole after ranting insanely at her parole board hearing.

This morning, I noticed I’d gotten some extra traffic to one of my posts about Frisch, and investigation led to Not The Bee: If you need a reason to oppose“red flag” gun laws, this writer’s harrowing 12-year tale of terrifying stalking and harassment might just do the trick.

To cut a long story short, the lovely Miss Frisch became obsessed with Mr Goldstein for some insane reason or other, and when things didn’t go the way she wanted, she started attacking, online, of course, not physically, Mr Goldstein and his family, in particular his then two-year-old son. Miss Frisch made baseless accusations that Mr Goldstein was molesting his son, all of which had to get the attention of local law enforcement; allegations of child sexual abuse are always things which trigger law enforcement investigations.

Mr McCain concluded:

The way our legal system operates — the built-in prejudices of courts, based on decades of precedents intended to “protect” the rights of the mentally ill — it is very difficult to get a dangerously deranged person locked up. Whenever a mentally ill person commits an atrocity (or gets shot by the cops), you’ll see commentators saying that this shows problems with our nation’s mental health system, when in fact it was liberal judges in the 1970s and ’80s who decided it should be nearly impossible to keep crazy people locked up in lunatic asylums, where they belong. These same judges, however, will probably be willing to sign “red flag” orders based on unproven claims, without due process for those targeted by such orders.

According to Governor Wolf, the gun owners do receive due process, even though they don’t get any chance to defend themselves until after their homes have already been invaded by the police and their legally-owned firearms seized, all on the word of someone who doesn’t like a “cryptic” message.

Now, there’s a difference between Jane, who thought Randy’s social media posting had a “cryptic” message, and Miss Frisch, who accused Mr Goldstein of child sexual abuse, but the result is the same: without any actual evidence of a crime beyond someone’s stated ‘concern,’ both “Randy” and Mr Goldstein had to defend themselves through the legal system, costing them expensive attorney’s fees — Mr Goldstein specifically mentioned that he’d had attorneys — to regain their weapons. The fictional Jane in Governor Wolf’s tweet might have had motives as pure as the wind-driven snow, but Miss Frisch’s were wholly malevolent, and (seemingly) driven by obsession and mental illness.

But the police and the courts have no choice but to take allegations of child sexual abuse seriously, and the same will be true of “red flag” law accusations. How can anyone know, prior to an investigation, whether the accuser or ‘tipster’ is being either deliberately fraudulent or simply concerned, but they’ll have to act.

It could be an estranged husband or wife, trying to gain leverage in child custody or support. It could be someone who can’t stand the thought of Bambi getting killed who calls the cops on a guy just before deer season. It could be one gang trying to get another gang disarmed. Or it really could be a concerned citizen who believes he has seen something of legitimate concern. The trouble is that you can never know unless the police actually investigate, and that means records and trouble and quite possibly a suspension of his constitutional rights for an innocent civilian, along with possible attorney’s fees.

The real secret is actual law enforcement. Remember Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 people and wounded 17 others in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting? There were continual warnings about him, and at least 23 incidents where the Broward County Sheriff’s Department had calls about him, but nothing was done. Had the Sheriff’s deputies done something really radical like arrested him and charged him with crimes, he could have been convicted, and barred from buying a weapon. The Broward County schools knew of his behavioral problems, transferred him from school-to-school, but, in an effort to keep him out of the so-called ‘school-to-prison pipeline,’ did not notify law enforcement when he assaulted another student.

If law enforcement had done their job, Mr Cruz would not have been able to buy, legally, the weapons he did. If the school district had done their jobs, he would have been reported to law enforcement in a manner which could not be ignored.

So, because the people who are charged, under the law, with notifying law enforcement about someone like Mr Cruz haven’t been doing their jobs, Governor Wolf and the left want ordinary citizens like the fictitious “Jane” to do the job, and to create a system where Jane’s speculation and word have legal weight. After all, it’s for people’s safety, right?

Well, there are a lot of constitutional rights which could be ignored, to improve public safety! We could do away with the need to prove guilt, and just imprison, or execute, anyone we just “knew” was a bad guy. We could suspend the rights of free speech and free association, to keep the bad guys apart. Given that half the country seemed to think that the right of free association and assembly could be suspended over COVID-19, and a bunch of state governors got away with it, well surely that right isn’t really important, right?

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” It seems that a whole lot of Americans have decided that they deserve neither liberty nor safety.