(Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection - Letter to the Editor)

Following mass shootings are calls for more gun control. Democrats’ solution to end mass shootings is the disarmament of Americans. Disarmament of the citizenry is not the solution, as was proven by the recent mass shootings on Australia’s Bondi Beach. Australia has strict gun control ensuring none of the victims had guns to defend themselves. The Bondi Beach shootings showed that determined deranged individuals can always obtain weapons.

One solution which could help prevent many mass shootings, though not all, is properly written and applied red-flag laws.

Many states are enacting red-flag laws of their own and sadly many of these states are setting themselves up to have their red-flag laws overturned because their laws contain no “due process” provision.

Amendment V of the U.S. Constitution reads, in brief, “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law,” and firearms are property.

Also, Amendment II of the U.S. Constitution reads “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

Therefore, a poorly applied red-flag law would be an infringement of Amendment II.

With any red-flag law, is a huge potential for false accusations being used for harassment or for leverage in divorce battles and in custody fights. False accusations of domestic violence or tendencies toward violence abound in family law. Sadly, mere accusations of domestic violence without a shred of physical evidene can cost an individual not only their firearms but their freedom, their career, their friends and their life savings, in defending themselves from such false accusations.

Those who support the Second Amendment believe the answer is “dangerous person control,” not gun control, and will not accept “red-flag laws” with their potential harm to innocent citizens without a swift and fair due process, with provisions for severe penalties for those who make false accusations. These elements are notably absent from most, if not all of the current red-flag gun control schemes.

Clearly, in Democrat controlled “blue states,” the ultimate goal of red-flag laws is to deprive, as many citizens as possible, of their firearms, with no provisions of having their firearms returned, even when they are proven innocent of any wrongdoing.

The fate of states no due process red-flag laws will eventually be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Steve Wolverton

Parkersburg