North Dakota isn’t a state you think of when you think “gun control” by any stretch of the imagination. While it’s not immune to progressive and anti-gun voices, it’s not a state where that type of thinking would get much traction. At least, not in most people’s minds, anyway.

Yet red flag laws are insidious. They look and sound like an option to temporarily disarm people who might be a danger and not have an impact on other people in the long term.

There are problems with that, though. Those are problems that the National Rifle Association (NRA) brought up regarding a proposal for a red flag law in North Dakota.

“Nobody wants dangerous people to have access to firearms which is why the NRA supports risk protection orders that respects the due process of rights and ensures those found mentally ill receive the care they need. Most of the red flag laws passed last year, unfortunately, do none of that,” according to National Rifle Association’s Catherine Mortensen.

“Not only do they fail to provide any sort of mental health treatment but they allow the state to deny law-abiding gun owners their due process of rights. If the state can deny due process to these law-abiding residents then what’s to stop them from denying any right to any group of people?”

Mortensen brings up an excellent point.

The truth of the matter is that even if the red flag laws are a temporary measure, it’s still trampling on people’s rights. As a nation, we do that all the time, but generally only after they’ve been given due process. There’s a process in place.

But guns are generally treated differently. Guns scare people, so they tend to be relegated to second-class status.

While anti-gun lawmakers don’t care about that, they probably would if due process was ignored in any number of other issues. Or, at least, they would pretend to care.

They should.

Though they like to claim there are also limits on rights other than the right to keep and bear arms, ignoring due process in one instance can be used to justify ignoring due process in another. That should terrify everyone.

Yet it won’t. That’s because the people who claim to care about people and their rights, espousing ideas like “equality” and “justice” without really understanding what those words mean, will continue using any justification they can to run all over our constitutionally protected rights. They want their own preserved but screw the rest of us.

Red flag laws need due process protections. If they’re going to exist, they need them in place to minimize good people from being disarmed by well-intentioned loved ones, but also from such laws being used to punish people who may espouse unpopular opinions. Otherwise, red flag laws become nothing more than a perfectly legal swatting technique.

What the NRA is demanding is far more reasonable than opponents want to grant, but they’ll oppose it for one reason above all. They’ll oppose it because the NRA supports it.