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Conservatives Mobilize Against Republicans Supporting ‘Red Flag’ Gun Confiscation Law

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Pro-gun activists are launching a nationwide pressure campaign to stop a proposed “red flag” bill announced in the U.S. Congress by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).

In the wake of the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, President Donald Trump has called for a condemnation of white supremacism, stronger background checks, and reform of mental health laws, among other measures. Washington lawmakers are looking to harness the national outrage over the shootings to pass a federal red flag bill.

The activists hope that Trump will eventually reject such a bill, which would likely create financial incentives from the federal government for states to install broadly written programs for gun confiscation. This kind of program, which is already active in 17 states and Washington, allows gun owners’ relatives, police, and possibly members of the community to petition to remove firearms from gun owners who are perceived to be an imminent threat to themselves or others.

‘Scary Precedent’

“People need to be able to defend themselves,” said former South Carolina state Sen. Lee Bright as a grassroots movement develops in the state to block Graham and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) from passing the bill.

“I wish they were leading in the direction of liberty, and not infringing on the Second Amendment. Anytime something like this happens, the Left uses this as an opportunity to take away people’s rights. I wish my senators would lead in the right direction. I always considered Tim Scott a friend, but we have to respectfully disagree on this issue.”

Former Maine state Sen. Eric Brakey told The Epoch Times: “You wouldn’t even know you were being targeted until government agents were knocking on your door.

“Earlier this year, Maine people by the thousands told our state politicians to reject red flag gun confiscation. Senator [Susan] Collins and Senator King should think twice about supporting this unconstitutional gun control proposal against the Maine people,” said Brakey, who ran against U.S. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) in 2018.

In Mississippi, state Rep. Dana Criswell is urging his state’s U.S. senators to influence party leadership on the issue.

“If they were standing in front of me right now, I would say please you’ve got to stand against the red flag laws,” Criswell told The Epoch Times, referring to Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.).

“They are undermining our Constitution. When someone can report you at random and the police show up and want to confiscate your guns—even if they say it’s just temporary—that is a dangerous scary precedent. I beg them to fight against it. I hope that they will see the error in this and appeal to the president and say, ‘We’ve got to find another way.’”

“I would beg them to stop this now, by speaking out vocally against it. Speak out very loudly against this. The people of Mississippi do not want this,” Criswell said.

Thune a Target

“Every single red flag gun confiscation law passed at the state level is a rights-shredding, due process-violating abomination,” Dudley Brown, president of the National Association for Gun Rights, told The Epoch Times, predicting a massive activist campaign to stop the red flag effort by focusing primarily on South Dakota’s Sen. John Thune and other Republicans.

“The fact that Sen. Thune wants the federal government to dole out millions of dollars to state coffers in order to bribe them into passing gun confiscation won’t sit well with his constituents in South Dakota,” Brown said. “Thune is finally showing his true colors. He’ll give up your gun rights to appease the D.C. Swamp and left-wing media.”

In South Dakota, activist Shad Olson, state Sen. Stace Nelson, Bennett County commissioner Judd Schomp, and Oglala Sioux Tribe official Bruce Whalen are pressing Thune to urge him to reject the red flag program. More South Dakota lawmakers were expected to join the effort.

“It is with great disappointment and even greater sense of urgency that the undersigned legislative and civic leaders from your home state of South Dakota stringently urge you to reconsider your vocalized support for Red Flag Gun Confiscation laws, in any form, and reconsider your stated intention of pushing such legislation in the United States Senate,” according to a letter, obtained by The Epoch Times, to Thune from the South Dakotans.

“Red Flag Gun Laws are a violation of due process under Constitutional jurisprudence and a clear infringement on the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms of all law abiding American citizens who are now being targeted by political opportunism and the most tyrannical threat to gun rights thus far seen in America’s embattled struggle to preserve our Bill of Rights,” the letter states.

“Beyond these blatantly catastrophic connotations, unintended consequences of such an abandonment of Constitutional liberty include disproportionate impacts on our brave combat veterans who will be deprived of defending themselves after defending our nation courageously and at great cost, as well as potential avenues of personal and vindictive retaliation against law enforcement officers and first responders via reports made by the very violent criminals they protect our communities against,” the letter states.

“We urge you, Senator Thune, and the rest of your U.S. Senate colleagues, in the most serious possible language, to abandon what would be a disastrous course of manipulated destruction of the 2nd Amendment and erasure of due process and the crucial American assumption of innocence until proven guilty,” the letter states.

Alaska and Alabama

Conservatives elsewhere in the country are activating.

“Alaskans won’t tolerate having either of their senators vote for any Constitution-destroying red flag legislation,” former Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller, a Republican, told The Epoch Times.

“With one of the highest levels of gun ownership in the United States, and the highest percentage of veterans, Alaskans understand that their rights are on the line. They will not submit to any irrational, knee-jerk gun control efforts that undercut their Second Amendment rights,” Miller said.

In Alabama, conservative U.S. Senate candidate and former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore is fighting the federal bill.

“Liberals never let a crisis go to waste. Red Flag bills allowing weapons to be seized merely upon the complaint of another without due process of law are unconstitutional under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. What’s next after Red Flag bills? Your car or perhaps the person itself? Red Flag bills should receive a red flag,” Moore said in a statement.

Like ‘Minority Report’

Gun expert John Lott told The Epoch Times that the red flag federal proposal is a dangerous mistake for Republicans.

“Everyone wants to stop mass shooting, but let’s do something that’ll work. Red flag laws will cause more problems than they’ll solve,” Lott said. “I know a woman whose husband was murdered in front of her. She was being stalked, and her husband was killed by her stalker. She was depressed. If she knew that speaking to relatives could result in informing on her, she wouldn’t speak to anyone.”

“Police officers are frequently depressed because of horrors they see on the job. Do we really want to be in a position that LEOs [law enforcement officers] don’t want to talk about what they see on the job because they can lose their jobs and their guns as a result? This is like ‘Minority Report’ without the psychics,” Lott said, referring to the Hollywood movie about a system in which the government enforces “pre-crime.”

“The president focuses on mental illness, but ERPOs [Extreme Risk Protection Orders] don’t focus on mental illness,” Lott said. “The big thing here is to predict who’s going to commit crime. Criminal history. Male. Age,” Lott said. “In the past, you’ve had to have a criminal record for courts to remove your gun rights. Red flag laws stop rights with merely a complaint.”

Kris Kobach, a Kansas U.S. Senate candidate and close informal adviser to Trump, told The Epoch Times that “red flag laws that have been passed at the state level deny due process in multiple ways to the targets of individual gun confiscation complaints.”

Kobach said that under many existing red flag state laws, any person who has lived in a target’s house—including ex-girlfriends or boyfriends—can be considered a family member for purposes of lodging gun confiscation complaints.

“The standard of proof is very low. They have a hearing where they seize the person’s guns right away without even being told,” Kobach said. “The standard for disarming the individual is very low, it’s not a beyond reasonable doubt standard.”

Kobach said that “reckless storage of a firearm” could be used to disarm people who sleep with their guns near their beds. He noted that while it’s not impossible for Congress to pass a red flag bill that avoids due process concerns, the state laws on the books “are not good.”

Kobach said he hasn’t yet spoken to Trump on this issue, but if given the opportunity, would advise the president on the potential danger of a federal red flag bill. (For more from the author of “Conservatives Mobilize Against Republicans Supporting ‘Red Flag’ Gun Confiscation Law” please click HERE)

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Republicans Move to Take Most Significant Gun Control Action in Decades

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Following the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio this weekend that claimed the lives of over 30 innocent people and injured dozens others, President Trump delivered prepared remarks Monday in which he called for bipartisan action on gun control, particularly “red flag” laws. Now, Republicans in the Senate are reportedly unifying behind legislation which would be, as The New York Times puts it, “the most significant gun control legislation enacted in 20 years.”

After condemning white supremacy and all forms of racial bigotry, Trump urged legislators to take bipartisan action to prevent future atrocities. Among the priorities he listed for moving forward are doing a more effective job of “identifying and acting on early warning signs” and making sure that those who “pose a grave risk to public safety do not have access to firearms.”

“We must make sure that those judged to pose a grave risk to public safety do not have access to firearms, and that if they do, those firearms can be taken through rapid due process. That is why I have called for red-flag laws, also known as Extreme Risk Protection Orders,” Trump said in his list of “just a few of the areas of cooperation that we can pursue.”

“Republicans and Democrats have proven that we can join together in a bipartisan fashion to address this plague,” he stressed, citing the legislation on school protection and gun violence enacted in 2018. “Last year we enacted the Stop School Violence and Fix NICS Acts into law, providing grants to improve school safety and strengthening critical background checks for firearm purchases. At my direction, the Department of Justice banned bump stocks. Last year we prosecuted a record number of firearms offenses. But there is so much more that we have to do.”

Following Trump’s speech, the Times’ Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported that Republicans are “coalescing around legislation to help law enforcement take guns from those who pose an imminent danger.” As examples of the increased unification on the issue, Stolberg cites multiple Republicans expressing support, including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who has proposed federal grants to help enact state red flag laws, Sen. John Thune (R-SD), who expressed confidence Tuesday that Congress “will be able to find common ground on the so-called red flag issue,” and Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-OH), who pledged to support not only a red flag law but a “military-style” weapons ban and magazine limit. ​(Read more from “Republicans Move to Take Most Significant Gun Control Action in Decades” HERE)

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Millions of Records Added to Federal Background Check System Following Passage of 2018 ‘Fix NICS’ Bill

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It’s been just over a year since President Trump signed legislation passed by a GOP-controlled Congress designed to better enforce existing gun background check laws. So what’s changed so far?

According to exclusive numbers obtained from a Department of Justice official by Blaze Media, implementation of the 2018 “Fix NICS Act” has led to the addition of millions of previously unreported records to America’s gun background check system.

The data show a total increase of almost six million additional records added across the three databases searched during a standard National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) check over the 14-month period between April 2018 and June 2019.

In the same time period, there was also a 13 percent increase of records in the NICS Indices database, which contains records provided by local, state, tribal, and federal agencies about prohibited persons and is a key record source for disqualifying mental health and illegal immigration records.

The Fix NICS Act was passed in March 2018 and aimed to increase compliance with federal background check laws by providing additional reporting resources, imposing penalties on federal agencies that fail to comply and promoting state-level compliance through incentives and public reporting of those who don’t comply.

The DOJ numbers also indicate that the department has now received implementation plans from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and 71 federal agencies. The plans are meant to evaluate and improve current NICS reporting practices.

The goal of the Fix NICS bill was to address insufficient state, local, tribal, and federal agency reporting to the current background check system. The effort gained more traction after the horrific shooting in Sutherland Springs in November 2017.

The Sutherland Springs shooter should not have been able to purchase a firearm, but he passed a background check because the Air Force failed to report the records from a 2012 court-martial. Air Force officials conceded that this failure “was not an isolated incident,” and an inspector general’s report revealed that the service branch failed to report disqualifying information on this one shooter four times.

“Just one record that’s not properly reported can lead to tragedy,” bill sponsor Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said when introducing the legislation in the aftermath of the shooting. “This bill aims to help fix what’s become a nationwide, systemic problem so we can better prevent criminals and domestic abusers from obtaining firearms.”

The Fix NICS implementation data provided to Blaze Media also says that available military-related records on the databases have “tripled” since November 2017. (For more from the author of “Millions of Records Added to Federal Background Check System Following Passage of 2018 ‘Fix NICS’ Bill” please click HERE)

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Gun Control Gaining Republican Momentum After Texas and Ohio Shootings

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The following is an excerpt from Blaze Media’s daily Capitol Hill Brief email newsletter:

In the aftermath of the weekend’s shootings, the push for gun control is getting stronger. During a formal address from the White House yesterday, President Donald Trump voiced his support for “red flag” gun confiscation laws, which are intended to strip gun rights away from people deemed to be threats to public safety. Congressional Democrats responded to that address by calling for the Senate to come back from recess to pass a background check bill that wouldn’t have done anythingto prevent the weekend’s shootings.

At the same time, Sens. Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey are teaming up to bring back a background check bill that failed in the Senate after the Sandy Hook massacre, and Lindsey Graham says he’s working on a “red flag” bill with anti-gun Democrat Richard Blumenthal. A Republican House member, Adam Kinzinger, also announced his support for “red flag” laws.

The problem with searching for a magical policy solution to mass shootings is that the numbers don’t support one. (For more from the author of “Gun Control Gaining Republican Momentum After Texas and Ohio Shootings” please click HERE)

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WATCH: President Trump Calls for ‘Red Flag’ Gun Confiscation Laws

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Following two mass killings in Texas and Ohio over the weekend, President Donald Trump called for gun control in a statement from the White House Monday morning, in the form of expanded background checks and “red flag” gun confiscation laws.

“The first lady and I join all Americans in praying and grieving for the victims, their families, and the survivors,” Trump said near the beginning of his address. “We will stand by their side forever. We will never forget. These barbaric slaughters are an assault upon our communities, an attack upon our nation, and a crime against all of humanity.”

The president also unequivocally denounced the racist ideology that appears to have motivated the El Paso suspect.

“The shooter in El Paso posted a manifesto online consumed by racist hate,” Trump noted. “In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart, and devours the soul.”

In discussing how to respond on a policy level later in the address, the president voiced his support for so-called “red flag” laws, which empower judges to take people’s guns away by court order if the person is deemed to be a “grave risk to public safety.”

“We must make sure that those judged to pose a grave risk to public safety do not have access to firearms and that if they do, those firearms can be taken through rapid due process,” Trump said. “That is why I have called for red flag laws, also known as extreme risk protection orders.”

While the impulse to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people is an understandable one, the devil is always in the details. Not all so-called “red flag” laws are created equal, and they can often be nightmares for due process rights.

Taking Second Amendment rights away from people for non-criminal reasons is already on the books. Someone who has been adjudicated “as a mental defective” or involuntarily committed to a mental institution can’t buy a gun.

But again, due process is key.

As Independent Institute Research Director Dave Kopel explained to Congress back in March, while some state laws stipulate that only law enforcement can bring a red flag petition to a judge, newer versions allow petitions to be brought by “spurned dating partners or relationships from long ago.”

Another problem with some so-called red flag laws is that they allow confiscation orders to be issued ex parte, meaning that they can be issued when a judge only hears one side of the story and the target of the petition is not permitted to defend himself.

In addition to the confiscation laws, the president also called for other “real bipartisan solutions” in response to the shootings, which include reforms to America’s mental health care system to “better identify mentally disturbed individuals who may commit acts of violence” for treatment and “when necessary, involuntary confinement.”

He also voiced support for legislation ensuring that mass shooters would get the death penalty “and that this capital punishment be delivered quickly, decisively, and without years of needless delay.”

Trump’s full remarks can be found here.

(For more from the author of “President Trump Calls for ‘Red Flag’ Gun Confiscation Laws” please click HERE)

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Shooting at a Packed Nightclub in Canada, Where Gun Control Is Already Way Stricter Than the U.S.

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Shots rang out at a packed Toronto nightclub as an altercation involving a firearm sent five people to the hospital, one with life-threatening injuries, according to local police.

A Toronto police official told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation said that it was “fortunate there’s five victims only,” because “the club was completely full.”

The CBC reports that 3 victims from the early Monday morning shooting were found at the scene, while two fled and took themselves to the hospital.

“It’s very concerning,” the official added, “the club was packed with patrons.”

The story also notes two other shootings in Toronto over the weekend.

As I pointed out for a different story earlier this year (which was also about circumventing Canada’s firearm laws), Canada’s gun control situation looks much like what the gun control lobby says it wants right now, as opposed to the more draconian laws in most European countries, which look like what more extreme voices in the gun control movement actually want:

While most long guns are classified as “non-restricted” in Canada, most handguns are deemed “restricted” firearms (some are banned) and are under extensive regulation.

All gun owners have to be licensed, and there are extra licensure requirements for “restricted” firearms.

License applications require third-party references.

Concealed carry is virtually nonexistent unless you need to carry for work.

All “restricted” guns have to be registered with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The government regulates private gun storage.

Last year, the country’s liberal government proposed expanding background checks to cover a person’s entire life history and requiring government authorization for the transportation of privately owned guns. Now, Canadian gun control advocates believe that a full handgun ban is “within our reach.”

U.S. politicians have responded to shootings in Ohio and Texas over the weekend by proposing different forms of reactionary gun control. President Trump gave an address from the White House in support of “red flag” gun confiscation laws, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., put out a joint statement calling for expanded background check legislation. (For more from the author of “Shooting at a Packed Nightclub in Canada, Where Gun Control Is Already Way Stricter Than the U.S.” please click HERE)

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Mass Shootings: The Unicorn Gun Control Policy as the Magic Solution

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Inevitably after a mass shooting, the discussion turns to the weapon. Well, if we can’t identify this unique profile of evil mass murderers before they strike, what if we ensured they never got a gun?

That certainly is a laudable goal. After all, we all want to make sure that bad guys or those who are mentally unstable don’t have access to a gun — or any other weapon. But show me the piece of legislation that would prevent most of these attacks.

It’s clear that the advent of social media is fueling a copycat mentality, which is why so many of them are now writing “manifestos.” There is no doubt that if none of these people got any notoriety, the copycat mentality would be limited, but how is that feasible with today’s technology?

Leftists would argue that if they were allowed to pass some magic gun bill, it would deny these people the means with which to commit these acts. But they need to consider the following:

Violent crime and murder have dropped precipitously, almost miraculously, since 1993. This is probably the only positive social trend we’ve enjoyed in recent years. This period coincided directly with the trend of loosening of gun laws in most states, particularly right-to-carry laws. In 1993, fewer than 30 percent of Americans lived in right-to-carry states; now that number has grown to 70 percent. According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, there are now 17.25 million people who hold concealed carry permits, a 273 percent increase since 2007. Violent crime, including from gun homicides, got cut in halfwhile the number of guns owned has increased over 60 percent since the 1990s. While this doesn’t categorically prove that more guns equal less crime, it certainly refutes the thesis of the Left that more gun control is the answer.

Over the past few years, after two decades of a steady decline in murder, violent crime has risen in some major liberal citiesdirectly after they enacted stricter licensing and background checks, “assault weapons” bans, and magazine capacity limitations. Meanwhile, most other jurisdictions continue to experience a drop in crime.

While the mass shootings are shocking, any public policy debate must look at crime and gun violence in totality.

While the rise in mass shootings is devastating, we should not lose sight of the fact that in 1993, there were 24,530 homicides, compared with 17,284 in 2017, despite the massive growth in population. The homicide numbers in most parts of the country are still historically low, even factoring in the mass shootings.

The Left will want to focus on AR-15-style rifles in particular, but even in 2017, with the worst mass shooting ever, only 403 of the 15,129 homicide victims died from a rifle shot, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting [table 8]. Almost four times as many people died from knife attacks, and 696 died from fists or other physical “personal weapons.” The overwhelming majority of murders were obviously from simple handguns, which no legislation will remove from the streets.

Most of those murders are caused by career criminals in the daily gang and inner-city warfare taking place in cities like Chicago and Baltimore. Particularly in Chicago, “a substantial portion of the city’s violent crime” is perpetrated by gangs working for the Mexican cartels empowered by our open border, according to the DEA. That is a much bigger public policy issue with much easier answers.

In my hometown of Baltimore, we have stricter rules than anything Democrats realistically want to enact at the federal level. Remember, Maryland requires a full license, not just a background check, just to own a gun in one’s home and not carry it. Yet gun violence in Maryland is soaring. In addition, following Sandy Hook, Maryland enacted a ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds and banned the sale of 45 commonly owned semi-automatic rifles that have been used in some of these mass shootings.

It’s simply not credible to support letting gun felons out of jail under the guise of “criminal justice reform,” loosening sentencing of known criminals, refusing to lock up any violent juvenile, such as the Parkland shooter, handcuffing the police, and encouraging sanctuary cities – but then suddenly claim a magical, gun-based solution to the vexing problem of first-time mass murderers. Liberals refuse to get tough on the elements of crime that drive most homicides in this nation, and in fact want looser standards for criminals, wishing at the same time to strip law-abiding citizens of the right to arm themselves. Many of the major cities in this country stand as a testament to this point.

The soft-on-crime crowd can’t have it both ways. They can’t seek tougher laws on guns while seeking lenient laws on the violent criminals. They can’t promote federal policies that incentivize or bully states into putting more names in a NICs database while promoting policies that encourage states to lock up as few criminals as possible. The entire criminal justice “reform” movement has created a culture, pressure, and incentive for cops and county governments to be as lenient as possible on incarcerating juveniles, the exact opposite of the cultural pressure from the past two decades.

This is why we need to focus on stopping violence in totality, not just one form of it, especially when we first need to learn the source of the trend. To virtue-signal about guns and Trump as a white supremacist while not only ignoring the homicide problem but promoting policies that will lock up fewer murderers is no virtue at all. It’s merely signaling to the media to further divide the country rather then pursuing commonsense solutions based on rational thought.

If “doing something” is limited to releasing criminals from jail while locking up the guns, it’s better to do nothing at all. (For more from the author of “Mass Shootings: The Unicorn Gun Control Policy as the Magic Solution” please click HERE)

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WATCH: No, the United States Doesn’t Lead the World in Mass Shootings

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. . .A common myth you can expect to hear a lot in the coming days and weeks is that the United States “leads the world in mass shootings” and therefore we must pass some law that will do nothing to stop future mass shootings, but will infringe on the rights of law-abiding gun owners.

What you might not hear is that this claim is completely bogus.

Sure, if you following conservative media, you’re probably aware of this. Townhall, The Daily Signal, Bearing Arms, FEE, The Washington Examiner, and others have all previously reported on how the myth that the United States leads the world in mass shootings is based on a deeply flawed study, which has been debunked by the Crime Prevention Research Center. . .

The following video from John Stossel explains how the myth got started and why it’s bogus:

. . .

In the end, the problem of mass shootings (and gun violence in general) is not one to be solved by knee jerk reactions, finger-pointing, useless legislation or unconstitutional gun grabs. The left will do whatever they can to politicize these incidents because they think they can gain power from it. They don’t expect most Americans to do the research required to fully understand the big picture. (Read more from “No, the United States Doesn’t Lead the World in Mass Shootings” HERE)

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Supreme Court May Hear Case That Could Leave the 2A in Disarray

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North Carolina-based Remington Arms has asked the Supreme Court to decide, once and for all, if gun manufacturers should be held responsible for crimes committed with their product. Remington has been in a drawn out legal battle with a survivor and families of the Sandy Hook shooting that took place in Sandy Hook, Connecticut in 2012. The gunman used a Bushmaster XM15-E2S, commonly referred to as an AR-15, to carry out his attack that left 26 dead, including 20 children and seven adults. One of the victims was his mother.

The request comes after the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that Remington, Busmaster’s parent company, could be sued on state law because of how the rifle was marketed to the public, the Associated Press reported. A lower court judge had originally threw the case out, saying Remington was protected under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which protects firearms manufacturers and dealers from being held liable when a person commits a crime with one of their products.

“The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act was passed with bipartisan support in order rightfully assign responsibility and accountability to those who commit crimes,” the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Director of Public Affairs, Mark Oliva, told Townhall. “Those seeking to hold manufacturers responsible for the crimes of individuals who purposefully and criminally misuse firearms are wrongfully assigning blame. This would be no different than holding Ford responsible for this who commit heinous crimes with their vehicles.

Remington lawyers made their appeal to the high court.

“Congress enacted the (law) to ensure that firearms — so central to American society that the Founders safeguarded their ownership and use in the Bill of Rights — would be regulated only through the democratic process rather than the vagaries of litigation,” Remington lawyers Scott Keller and Stephanie Cagniart wrote to the U.S. Supreme Court. (Read more from “Supreme Court May Hear Case That Could Leave the 2A in Disarray” HERE)

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The Gilroy Shooting Is Horrible Reminder That Gun-Free Zones Are a Dangerous Illusion

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Another atrocious shooting over the weekend. Unsurprisingly, it has already led to more calls for gun control. But here’s the grim reality. We’re still waiting to find out details about what might have motivated the animal who committed this heinous crime, but we do know that the victims here had one major factor in common with the victims of so many other mass shootings: They were unarmed.

The Gilroy Garlic Festival was supposed to be gun-free. In fact, guidelines showed that attendees couldn’t bring in so much as a pocket knife, under a prohibition of “any kind of weapon.” There were metal detectors and screening points set up to keep weapons from getting in, but law enforcement says that the shooter found a way around it.

According to the Sacramento Bee, Gilroy Police Chief Scot Smithee said that the suspect used a tool to cut through a fence near a creek area outside the festival grounds to get a “long-barreled rifle” around the security measures.

Efforts to keep weapons out of places where people just want to have a fun Sunday afternoon with their families are undoubtedly well-intentioned. Indeed, it would be wonderful if nobody even had to think about the issue. The problem is that efforts to keep weapons out of public places don’t work against those determined to disregard or outfox them.

When “no weapons” rules and signs are disregarded, when fences are cut and metal detectors are circumvented, we’re once again back to the reality that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Fortunately for the countless others who might have been hurt or killed, good guys with guns — police — were nearby and were able to neutralize the threat in a matter of minutes, but not before four people were killed and more wounded.

The question for those who want to use this as a springboard for their gun control agenda remains the same: A weapons-free policy didn’t keep these people safe from an armed criminal at a contained event in a state with stringent gun laws. Why should we ever believe that more gun control on a nationwide level would do any better? (For more from the author of “The Gilroy Shooting Is Horrible Reminder That Gun-Free Zones Are a Dangerous Illusion” please click HERE)