BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation is cautioning the public about a new “toolkit” for gun control lobbying groups to help them campaign for passage of so-called “red flag” laws that create “Extreme Risk Protection Orders” designed to take firearms from people based on allegations from family members, intimate partners or others, raising concerns about due process.
The document was produced jointly by the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, the Giffords gun control group and the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence.
“This document,” noted SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “raises alarms because there’s a lot in it about taking someone’s guns, but only two paragraphs about returning firearms to their rightful owner.”
He recalled an earlier 80-page guide, reportedly paid for by Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns, discovered during an Internet search, that provided strategies to anti-gun groups for mounting gun control campaigns in their communities. He co-authored a book about that experience titled “Dancing In Blood: Exposing the Gun Ban Lobby’s Playbook to Destroy Your Rights.”
Gottlieb’s alarms were raised by the inclusion of a letter from a California sheriff’s official that referred to a May 2014 multiple murder in Isla Vista, California as “a shooting spree.”
“Six victims in that rampage were stabbed or slashed to death,” Gottlieb recalled. “It also suggests the shooting occurred at the University of California, Santa Barbara campus, but it didn’t. The term ‘gun violence’ appears throughout, but there’s not a word about ‘knife violence’ nor any mention of the fact that the killer bought three firearms, all legally with background checks and waiting periods.
“We’re all for preventing violent crimes and tragedies such as suicide,” he added, “but there are genuine civil rights and due process concerns related to the use of such orders to disarm someone, following a court hearing they may not even be aware of, before they have a chance to defend against any allegations. This guide asserts guns are ‘temporarily’ removed, but that is not really be the case in some instances.
“This document calls itself a ‘toolkit’ for saving lives,” Gottlieb said, “but it talks more about taking guns from people than protecting their rights and means of self-defense. So far as we can tell, this is just another gun control strategy guide aimed at preventing gun ownership rather than preventing tragedies.”