We see violations of civil liberties in the future. Red flag laws give authorities the power to take guns away from people who, though they have committed no crime, are deemed dangerous by courts. Passed by 15 states, such laws, writes Jon Miltimore, are dangerously close to the idea of pre-crime from the science fiction movie, Minority Report:
The film is based on a 1956 novel written by Philip K. Dick, the same author whose literary works inspired such films as Blade Runner, The Man in the High Castle, and Total Recall. If there’s a central theme running through Dick’s work, it’s the idea that the future will increasingly find individual autonomy under threat from creeping authoritarianism and omnipresent technology.
In Dick’s Minority Report, we see that defeating crime is easy with the help of so-called “precogs,” humans who have been weaponized by the state to allow authorities to prevent crimes (not just murder, as was the case in the movie) before they occur. Everything goes smoothly until John Anderton, the creator of PreCrime, is accused of killing a man he has never met or heard of. […]
Red flag laws don’t involve precogs seeing into the future. Yet, like pre-crime, they are designed to prevent a crime before it happens—even if it means violating civil rights in the process.
“Take the guns first, go through due process second,” President Trump famously said at a meeting with lawmakers on school safety and gun violence.
To many people, seizing someone’s firearm before they can use it in a crime sounds perfectly reasonable, which is precisely why red flag laws pose such a threat to civil liberties. Many supporters of red flag laws seem disinterested in how the guns get taken, so long as they are taken. But the “how” matters.
What standard of evidence is used to determine if a gun owner is a threat? Are there penalties for people who use false evidence to claim someone is a danger? The idea that the government can prevent crimes before they happen whiffs of utopianism and could threaten individual liberty.
Can people who are flagged as threats be involuntarily committed? Are they appointed legal counsel? Will a federal database be established to track flagged citizens?
These are questions that civil libertarians should be asking—especially since many people who are “red flagged” will have committed no crime. They will simply be, like Anderton, people whomight commit one or might be a danger to someone.
[Jon Miltimore, “Red Flag Gun Laws Are a Page Out of Dystopian Science Fiction Novels,” Foundation for Economic Education, April 19]
