WEBVTT - Can Red Flag Laws Help Prevent Mass Shootings? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.760 Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain 0:00:06.800 --> 0:00:10.920 Stuff Lauren boglebam Here in California, the manager of a 0:00:10.920 --> 0:00:15.040 car dealership contacted police and described a scary situation. An 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:18.040 employee allegedly had confided to a coworker that if he 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:20.720 was fired from his job, he would shoot his supervisor 0:00:20.760 --> 0:00:23.319 and other employees, though he would warn the coworker in 0:00:23.360 --> 0:00:27.240 advance so the coworker could escape. Thanks to the red 0:00:27.240 --> 0:00:30.880 flag law the California enacted in the police could take 0:00:30.880 --> 0:00:33.520 action in this case right away without having to charge 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:36.520 the employee with a crime. The cops obtained a court 0:00:36.640 --> 0:00:40.000 order and the next day seized five firearms. The court 0:00:40.040 --> 0:00:43.519 subsequently issued another order allowing authorities to hold on to 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:47.199 the weapons for a year. That case, described in an 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:50.400 article by University of California Davis researchers that was published 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:52.559 in August of nineteen in the Journal and Alls of 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:55.880 Internal Medicine, is an example of what many advocate as 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:58.400 a way to prevent the mass shootings that have increasingly 0:00:58.440 --> 0:01:02.720 plagued the United States. Red flag laws are designed to 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:05.200 give authorities a way to intervene and take guns away 0:01:05.200 --> 0:01:08.520 from a person who's perceived as a possible threat. They 0:01:08.520 --> 0:01:10.120 can do that even if the person doesn't have a 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:13.800 criminal record, or a history of being institutionalized for mental illness, 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:16.040 or other factors that might show up in the federal 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:18.920 instant background check system and prevent the person from buying 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:22.040 again from a dealer in the first place. The problem 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:24.560 is that loopholes and emissions in state records submitted to 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:27.480 the background check system have often enabled people who went 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:30.400 on to become mass shooters to obtain guns even when 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:34.240 they should have been disqualified. We spoke with Jeffrey Swanson, 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:37.560 a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:41.280 School of Medicine. He said, we focus all his attention 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:44.080 on the point of sale upon people who have felony, 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:47.480 criminal record or mental health record. Those rules are too 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:51.080 narrow and too broad. They identify lots of people because 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:53.760 they had an involuntary commitment twenty five years ago and 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:57.080 wouldn't hurt anybody, and they also failed to identify people 0:01:57.160 --> 0:02:02.080 who do pose a risk. We also spoke with Daniel J. Flannery, 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:05.040 director of the Begun Center for Violence Prevention, Research and 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:09.359 Education at Case Western Reserve University. He said, this is 0:02:09.400 --> 0:02:12.239 about putting protocols in place so that when an individual 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:14.960 is identified as potentially being a threat to themselves or 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:18.040 other people, police and courts would have the authority to 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:22.960 remove firearms. According to Flannery, red flag laws try to 0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:26.840 strike a middle ground between protecting public safety and individual rights. 0:02:27.400 --> 0:02:30.280 A person who's flagged isn't arrested or charged with a crime, 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:32.680 and authorities have to be able to convince a judge 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:36.200 that them having guns poses a risk, and the person 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:38.639 has an opportunity to get the weapons back at some point. 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:42.320 Flannery said there's a due process to that so that 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:47.000 it's not automatic and not permanent. So far, red flag 0:02:47.040 --> 0:02:49.720 laws have been enacted by seventeen states, plus the District 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:52.840 of Columbia. In Florida, where a red flag law was 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:54.960 enacted in twenty eighteen in the wake of the Marjorie 0:02:54.960 --> 0:02:58.120 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, authorities have utilized it to 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:00.280 take guns away from more than two thousand pep bowl. 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:05.120 Red flag laws have attracted some strong public support. A 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:08.160 Washington Post and ABC News poll conducted an early of 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:11.600 September twenty nineteen, for example, found that eighty six percent 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:14.440 of Americans supported allowing the police to take guns away 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:21.280 from people whom a judge finds dangerous. That included of Democrats, Republicans, 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:26.560 and eighty two percent of independence polled this August. Even 0:03:26.600 --> 0:03:29.560 President Donald Trump, who otherwise mostly has been an opponent 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:32.680 of gun control, indicated his support for red flag laws. 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:37.040 On the other side, the National Rifle Association's website criticizes 0:03:37.080 --> 0:03:40.840 existing red flag laws as violating gun owners Second Amendment rights. 0:03:41.600 --> 0:03:44.640 Civil rights and Second Amendment advocates that are against red 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:47.640 flag laws say the seizures of these individuals weapons is 0:03:47.640 --> 0:03:50.560 a violation of the u S constitutions guarantee to do process, 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:53.160 which means the people should have the right to argue 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:56.320 their case in court before their guns are taken, not after. 0:03:57.600 --> 0:04:00.320 And whether or not red flag laws do much prevent 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:04.080 mass shootings is a difficult question to answer. The study 0:04:04.120 --> 0:04:06.280 we mentioned at the top of this episode, conducted by 0:04:06.320 --> 0:04:09.360 the u C. Davis researchers, cited twenty one cases in 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:11.840 California in which a court issued in order to seize 0:04:11.840 --> 0:04:14.800 guns quote after the subject of the order had made 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:17.520 a clear declaration of intent to commit a bass shooting 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:21.920 or had exhibited behavior suggesting such an intent, but it's 0:04:21.960 --> 0:04:24.839 not really possible to prove conclusively that any of the 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:29.640 individuals actually would have committed such an act. Swanson wrote 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:32.200 in a Washington Post opinion piece that red flag laws 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:35.640 aren't necessarily going to prevent killings by mass shooters, except 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:38.360 in instances in which an alert citizen notices that an 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:43.159 angry young man is amassing and arsenal. Nevertheless, Swanson supports 0:04:43.240 --> 0:04:46.040 such laws because he and other researchers have found strong 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:48.440 evidence that they reduce another sort of gun violence that 0:04:48.560 --> 0:04:53.640 cumulatively inflicts a much higher death toll, suicide by firearm 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:57.440 in he and colleagues calculated that for every twenty guns 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:02.080 seized through red flag law, one suicide is prevented. Preventing 0:05:02.080 --> 0:05:05.000 people with the potential to develop suicidal ideation from getting 0:05:05.000 --> 0:05:08.400 guns does save lives because research shows that people who 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:12.559 attempt suicide by other methods end up surviving of the time, 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:15.920 but with a gun, they're effective at killing themselves almost 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:19.000 all of the time. Swanson said, from the picture of 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:21.800 public health, that's a good enough reason for red flag laws. 0:05:27.000 --> 0:05:29.560 Today's episode was written by Patrick Jake Tiger and produced 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:31.960 by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of I 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:34.160 Heart Radio's has Stuff Works. For more on this and 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:36.440 lots of other topics, visit our home planet how Stuff 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:39.279 Works dot com and for more podcast my heart Radio, 0:05:39.480 --> 0:05:42.040 visit that I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever 0:05:42.080 --> 0:05:43.400 you listen to your favorite shows.