DOJ: 'National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center' Will Help Enforce Red Flag Laws

"Red Flag Laws" are another arrow in the quiver of anti-Second Amendment activists and politicians, and while they are of questionable constitutionality, that hasn't stopped various states and localities from passing these laws. On Saturday, the Justice Department announced the formation of a "National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center" to help train local officials to enforce these laws.

“The launch of the National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center will provide our partners across the country with valuable resources to keep firearms out of the hands of individuals who pose a threat to themselves or others,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “The establishment of the Center is the latest example of the Justice Department’s work to use every tool provided by the landmark Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to protect communities from gun violence.”

The Vice President has weighed in, presumably, on this same effort:

President Biden and I have invested $750M to help states implement red flag laws that save lives.

Today, I am calling on every state to take action, and we are launching a national red flag resource center to assist.
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) March 23, 2024

President Biden and VP Harris have not "invested" one red cent; they are instead spending taxpayers' money, not their own, as the VP implies in this statement.

Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) has also weighed in:

What the hell is this evil?
A Federal Red Flag center;
We did not authorize this.
Announced, of course, just hours after the omnibus passes. https://t.co/IkuK0aTeV8
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) March 23, 2024

And, once again: There is no such thing as "gun violence," any more than there is "knife violence" or "fist violence," so the very premise here is based on a fallacy.

Be that as it may, red flag laws are questionable on a constitutional basis, as they seek to deprive people of their property with minimal or no due process, and almost certainly violate of the Second Amendment. But there's another problem with initiatives like this.

Obama Judge Rules Illegal Aliens Have the Right to Own Guns

In January, the Department of Justice ballyhooed another federal effort to sidestep the Second Amendment, this one having to do with "enhanced" background checks. Here's the key point:

Since implementing BSCA’s enhanced background checks in October 2022, the FBI NICS Section has conducted enhanced background checks on more than 200,000 transactions. Those checks have kept more than 1,900 firearms out of the hands of dangerous and prohibited persons, and over a quarter of those denials — 527 as of the first week of January — were based solely on information received through the additional BSCA-enabled outreach. Without the enhanced outreach required by BSCA, these 527 U21 transactions would likely have proceeded because the disqualifying information was otherwise unavailable to NICS.

While keeping guns out of the hands of bad guys seems like a good idea on the surface, let's take a closer look at what the DOJ is really saying here.

Out of 200,000 background checks, the DOJ claims that the enhanced checks kept 1,900 firearms "out of the hands of dangerous and prohibited persons." Further, they claim that 527 had happened in the month before releasing this report. Consider that it is a federal felony for a prohibited person to attempt to purchase a firearm, and consider further that it is also a crime to falsify information on Form 4473 that is part of the mandated process for purchase. Since there is no evidence that any of these 1,900 people were prosecuted, then we can only draw two conclusions: 1) The laws aren't being enforced, or 2) the people, or at least a portion of them, were wrongly denied their natural rights under the Second Amendment.

That will doubtless be the case with this new Department of Justice effort. Like so many activist projects by the federal government, most especially under Merrick Garland's Justice Department, this is, as the Bard said, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."