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Commentary By Charles Fain Lehman

Can We Make Red Flag Laws Work?

Public Safety Policing, Crime Control

Why they don’t obviate the need to make hard choices about guns.

The horrific murder of 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, has brought guns back to the public debate. One side renews its demands for national legislators to do something to tamp down on gun violence. The other insists on the importance of Second Amendment rights, and claims the answer is more guns, not fewer.

Amid this dispute, a small but vocal group is pushing for a policy it sees as a détente in America’s never-ending war over guns: red flag laws. 

Also sometimes called “Gun Violence Restraining Orders” or “Extreme Risk Protection Orders,” red flag laws allow a court to temporarily seize a person’s guns if he poses a threat to himself or others. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia currently have some form of the provision, and incentives for more states to pass them are under discussion in Congress.

Continue reading the entire piece here at The Dispatch

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Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Follow him on Twitter here.

This piece originally appeared in The Dispatch