A Lesson From France About Why Red Flag Laws Don’t Work
I’m told it isn’t easy to get a gun in France. The place has still had multiple and horrific attacks with guns over the last half decade. I’m not sure red flag laws would make any difference for the shooters and terrorists who’ve been heavily armed. They somehow have plans and somehow get their hands on firearms and plenty of ammunition, however.
It’s not just the big terrorist operations that show us the futility of gun control. A French waiter was shot dead by an angry customer this past weekend. The gunman left the place hungry. It appears there hasn’t yet been an arrest. He was angry because he believed his sandwich should’ve been ready to eat quickly. It wasn’t.
he didn’t post on Facebook hours or days in advance he planned to shoot the waiter.
Media is dancing all around the possibility the killer was a migrant from North Africa.
A few points to make. A guy from a foreign country gets his hands on a gun in a country where guns are supposedly hard to find. He doesn’t appear to have planned what he did. It was an emotional outburst. In other words, he didn’t post on Facebook hours or days in advance he planned to shoot the waiter.
Had he been identified as angry and unwilling to abide by French culture would it have made a difference? It depends. Does the French government want to hurt the feelings of hundreds of thousands of newcomers? Just because someone has different customs and may be frustrated learning about his new home shouldn’t be cause to label him a danger.
Again, this raises many questions we haven’t answered in America. And we’ve got a Bill of Rights and something called due process of law.
Red flag laws appear to stop suicides. Not homicides.
Like the case in France, most gun crimes in the USA involve handguns and not long guns. Like an AR-15. Taking long guns away mostly means you cancel hunting season.
Not that any of this bothers liberals. If they can take something from you they can prove their ideology powerful. The one about controlling their neighbors.