Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren boglebam Here in California, the manager of a
Speaker 1: car dealership contacted police and described a scary situation. An
Speaker 1: employee allegedly had confided to a coworker that if he
Speaker 1: was fired from his job, he would shoot his supervisor
Speaker 1: and other employees, though he would warn the coworker in
Speaker 1: advance so the coworker could escape. Thanks to the red
Speaker 1: flag law the California enacted in the police could take
Speaker 1: action in this case right away without having to charge
Speaker 1: the employee with a crime. The cops obtained a court
Speaker 1: order and the next day seized five firearms. The court
Speaker 1: subsequently issued another order allowing authorities to hold on to
Speaker 1: the weapons for a year. That case, described in an
Speaker 1: article by University of California Davis researchers that was published
Speaker 1: in August of nineteen in the Journal and Alls of
Speaker 1: Internal Medicine, is an example of what many advocate as
Speaker 1: a way to prevent the mass shootings that have increasingly
Speaker 1: plagued the United States. Red flag laws are designed to
Speaker 1: give authorities a way to intervene and take guns away
Speaker 1: from a person who's perceived as a possible threat. They
Speaker 1: can do that even if the person doesn't have a
Speaker 1: criminal record, or a history of being institutionalized for mental illness,
Speaker 1: or other factors that might show up in the federal
Speaker 1: instant background check system and prevent the person from buying
Speaker 1: again from a dealer in the first place. The problem
Speaker 1: is that loopholes and emissions in state records submitted to
Speaker 1: the background check system have often enabled people who went
Speaker 1: on to become mass shooters to obtain guns even when
Speaker 1: they should have been disqualified. We spoke with Jeffrey Swanson,
Speaker 1: a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University
Speaker 1: School of Medicine. He said, we focus all his attention
Speaker 1: on the point of sale upon people who have felony,
Speaker 1: criminal record or mental health record. Those rules are too
Speaker 1: narrow and too broad. They identify lots of people because
Speaker 1: they had an involuntary commitment twenty five years ago and
Speaker 1: wouldn't hurt anybody, and they also failed to identify people
Speaker 1: who do pose a risk. We also spoke with Daniel J. Flannery,
Speaker 1: director of the Begun Center for Violence Prevention, Research and
Speaker 1: Education at Case Western Reserve University. He said, this is
Speaker 1: about putting protocols in place so that when an individual
Speaker 1: is identified as potentially being a threat to themselves or
Speaker 1: other people, police and courts would have the authority to
Speaker 1: remove firearms. According to Flannery, red flag laws try to
Speaker 1: strike a middle ground between protecting public safety and individual rights.
Speaker 1: A person who's flagged isn't arrested or charged with a crime,
Speaker 1: and authorities have to be able to convince a judge
Speaker 1: that them having guns poses a risk, and the person
Speaker 1: has an opportunity to get the weapons back at some point.
Speaker 1: Flannery said there's a due process to that so that
Speaker 1: it's not automatic and not permanent. So far, red flag
Speaker 1: laws have been enacted by seventeen states, plus the District
Speaker 1: of Columbia. In Florida, where a red flag law was
Speaker 1: enacted in twenty eighteen in the wake of the Marjorie
Speaker 1: Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, authorities have utilized it to
Speaker 1: take guns away from more than two thousand pep bowl.
Speaker 1: Red flag laws have attracted some strong public support. A
Speaker 1: Washington Post and ABC News poll conducted an early of
Speaker 1: September twenty nineteen, for example, found that eighty six percent
Speaker 1: of Americans supported allowing the police to take guns away
Speaker 1: from people whom a judge finds dangerous. That included of Democrats, Republicans,
Speaker 1: and eighty two percent of independence polled this August. Even
Speaker 1: President Donald Trump, who otherwise mostly has been an opponent
Speaker 1: of gun control, indicated his support for red flag laws.
Speaker 1: On the other side, the National Rifle Association's website criticizes
Speaker 1: existing red flag laws as violating gun owners Second Amendment rights.
Speaker 1: Civil rights and Second Amendment advocates that are against red
Speaker 1: flag laws say the seizures of these individuals weapons is
Speaker 1: a violation of the u S constitutions guarantee to do process,
Speaker 1: which means the people should have the right to argue
Speaker 1: their case in court before their guns are taken, not after.
Speaker 1: And whether or not red flag laws do much prevent
Speaker 1: mass shootings is a difficult question to answer. The study
Speaker 1: we mentioned at the top of this episode, conducted by
Speaker 1: the u C. Davis researchers, cited twenty one cases in
Speaker 1: California in which a court issued in order to seize
Speaker 1: guns quote after the subject of the order had made
Speaker 1: a clear declaration of intent to commit a bass shooting
Speaker 1: or had exhibited behavior suggesting such an intent, but it's
Speaker 1: not really possible to prove conclusively that any of the
Speaker 1: individuals actually would have committed such an act. Swanson wrote
Speaker 1: in a Washington Post opinion piece that red flag laws
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily going to prevent killings by mass shooters, except
Speaker 1: in instances in which an alert citizen notices that an
Speaker 1: angry young man is amassing and arsenal. Nevertheless, Swanson supports
Speaker 1: such laws because he and other researchers have found strong
Speaker 1: evidence that they reduce another sort of gun violence that
Speaker 1: cumulatively inflicts a much higher death toll, suicide by firearm
Speaker 1: in he and colleagues calculated that for every twenty guns
Speaker 1: seized through red flag law, one suicide is prevented. Preventing
Speaker 1: people with the potential to develop suicidal ideation from getting
Speaker 1: guns does save lives because research shows that people who
Speaker 1: attempt suicide by other methods end up surviving of the time,
Speaker 1: but with a gun, they're effective at killing themselves almost
Speaker 1: all of the time. Swanson said, from the picture of
Speaker 1: public health, that's a good enough reason for red flag laws.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Patrick Jake Tiger and produced
Speaker 1: by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of I
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