Extreme risk protection orders are all the rage these days. The idea of someone being able to ask for guns to be taken away from someone else is tempting, especially for people who don’t see the right to keep and bear arms as a sacred, protected right. In other words, anti-gunners love these things because it makes it easier to take guns from people.
In Virginia, Democrats are working to pass what is described as an emergency bill that will bring ERPOs to that state.
Lawmakers are working on ways to help law enforcement officers prevent gun violence. One idea is to let officers temporarily take guns away from people determined to be at risk to do harm.
Some call it gun control. Some call it common sense in the case of an emergency. Others call it the government taking people’s guns.
Del. Chris Hurst, D-Blacksburg, held a town-hall style discussion Wednesday on VMI’s post in Lexington. Police chiefs, sheriffs, commonwealth’s attorneys, legal experts and other Democratic lawmakers spoke.
Hurst hopes to present a bill in the Virginia Legislature in the 2019 session that gives police more power to take action in emergency situations.
The proposal is called an Extreme Risk Protection Order. It lets officers take someone’s guns for a two-week period if they get a warrant. These are cases where someone is a serious, imminent threat to themselves or others.
It could come into play if someone’s drunk and threatening someone, if someone posts on social media threatening to shoot someone or if there’s reason to believe someone might hurt themselves.
Hurst said officers had plenty of questions about how to carry out the seizures and how citizens can get due process, but overall they’d like to have the authority outlined in the bill.
Look, if someone’s threatening someone, that’s called “making a terroristic threat” and they should be arrested. Period. If they’re locked up, they’re not a threat to anyone.
But saying that police would like the authority outlined in the bill isn’t surprising. I’m also sure that the fox would be delighted to have the keys to the hen house.
I’ve known a lot of police officers in my life and the vast majority are fantastic people who just want to do good in someone else’s life. They want to help, to make a difference. I get and respect that.
I also know that they’re not talking to rank and file officers. They’re talking to the political animals that tend to get made chief of police in many of these larger cities, and those creatures tend to reflect the anti-gun biases of their bosses in local government. Telling me that an anti-gun progressive wants the power to take my guns away is akin to telling me the sky is blue. Both elicit the inevitable, “Duh!”
It’s also why we should never give a single inch. After all, people like this are those who will take advantage of that moment of weakness.