My default position is that if Vice President Kamala Harris says something, assume it's a bad idea until proven otherwise.
So far, it hasn't been proven otherwise.
Sometimes, though, it's easier to tell something is a bad idea than others. It's never difficult with this administration, but sometimes they might as well put it up there with eating babies or something.
When Harris started talking about a federal "red flag center," it was one of those times.
Yet John Lott and Rep. Thomas Massie note that there are even bigger issues than the normal problems with such an anti-gun proposal.
On Saturday, Vice President Kamala Harris touted the administration’s new National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center, which will “support the effective implementation of state red flag laws” and “keep guns out of the hands of people who pose a threat to themselves or others.” But there is a problem: Congress never authorized the U.S. Department of Justice to create this resource center. The administration confuses “grants … to implement state … mental health courts, drug courts, veterans’ courts, and extreme risk protection order programs” with creating an entirely new center for one of these areas.
This isn’t the first time the Biden administration has gone beyond what the law allows and done more harm than good.
The pair don't really get into all the examples of where the Biden administration has done that, but honestly, this is at The Federalist and they don't have the bandwidth for an exhaustive list.
The Department of Defense doesn't have the bandwidth for that.
But they do bring up an example of why I have a major problem with red flag laws that's worth discussing a bit.
Allowing for easy gun confiscation can leave good, law-abiding people defenseless. Andrew Pollack, who lost his daughter in the 2017 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, recently had an Extreme Risk Protection Order used against him by a neighbor in rural Oregon. When Pollack finally had his hearing in court, the judge didn’t even need to hear a defense because there was no evidence that Pollack had threatened anyone. Unfortunately, while disarmed, he faced a mountain lion outside his home. His dog tangled with the mountain lion, requiring 50 stitches on his side. As is virtually always the case, there was no punishment for the neighbors bringing the false claim.
And this, of course, is what the "red flag center" is being stood up to create more of.
Red flag laws really do create a problem for so many reasons, especially when we already have a method for removing guns from those who are a risk to the public. This just makes it easier, but as we see, that creates problems for those who simply annoy a neighbor.
Yet the underlying point, that the Biden administration has no authority to set up a red flag center, is the important one just this second.
Part of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act was money for states to implement red flag laws, but creating an entire bureaucracy is a different matter entirely.
Bureaucracies are created for one purpose, but in time the purpose of any bureaucracy is to protect the bureaucracy. They will use whatever means available to them to justify their existence and to expand their power.
Look at the ATF, for example. It started out as a revenue collection agency and now is can unitlaterally ban whatever firearm-related products it wants, apparently.
Is there any reason to believe that a red flag center will be any different; that it won't find a way to expand its existence and potentially create back door gun laws? If there's a way, it will, which is why there are questions about the constitutionality of such a thing.
It was always a terrible idea, even if Congress had authorized it, but without that, it's an even worse one.
