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Home » News » Commentary » “Red Flag Laws” Are a Set Up for Gun Confiscation: Bobby Charles
Commentary

“Red Flag Laws” Are a Set Up for Gun Confiscation: Bobby Charles

The State's authority to confiscate firearms is being run under the guise of "Red Flag Laws"
Robert "Bobby" CharlesBy Robert "Bobby" CharlesApril 8, 2024Updated:April 8, 20245 Comments4 Mins Read
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“Set ups” are not right. In Maine and the Nation, law abiding gun-owners – Republicans, Independents, and Democrats – are under attack, being legislatively “set up” for a 2nd Amendment takedown.

How?

In disguise, confiscation authority is being green-lighted as so-called “red flag laws.”

[RELATED: Maine Democrats Sneak in Last-Minute Gun Grab Measure…]

Take Maine as a leading example of how the anti-gun ownership lobby works, how they twist the discussion, ignore facts, and push the idea that what is patently bad, fundamentally unconstitutional, inexcusable, and dangerous, is somehow good.

[RELATED: Troy Jackson Backs Gun Control After Gun Control Group Hires His Son’s Firm…]

In Maine, the latest slight-of-hand is LD 2283, a bill which cleverly – some might say, cynically – takes the 2023 tragedy in Lewiston, Maine, involving a guardsman with mental health issues, to whom “yellow flag laws” applied, and makes him into an excuse to strip Mainers of core gun rights.

[RELATED: Cases Less Severe Than Robert Card Triggered Maine’s Yellow Flag Law Firearm Restrictions…]

The basic method used, which Democrats in Maine’s legislature know but seldom talk about, is to take a tragedy, fan the public fear that attended it, and turn that fear against law abiding gun owners, thus chilling their defense of historic gun rights, and opening the door to confiscation.

This is, without a doubt, happening in Maine – and across the nation. LD 2283 aims to disenfranchise gun owners by allowing anyone to complain about them to police, converting a strong disagreement, exchange of words, social media post, or physical encounter into a “threat.”

With no more than an attestation that someone feels “threatened,” the official state harassment, police engagement, and confiscation can begin. This so-called “red flag law” is a foil, as in New Mexico where opposition was high, for gradually disarming those who differ with gunowners.

The difference in Maine is – or should be – that gun ownership is not correlated with political party, at least outside of left-leaning enclaves in the southeast part of the state, where fear of guns and former New York state citizenship both run high.

Throughout most of the state, whether someone grew up Democrat, Independent, Republican or none-of-the-above, people tend to respect gun rights, gun ownership, gun utility, and know how to use a gun, just as they use cars, trucks, plows, chainsaws, hammers, axes, knives, and shovels.

Notably, everything on that list could be used by a mentally unstable person to do harm, a lot of harm, but Mainers would never think of depriving a fellow citizen – call them “old Americans” as opposed to “new Americans” – from use of an implement our Founders gave them rights to.

[RELATED: Top Maine Democrat to Hunters: Support Gun Control If You Want to Keep Hunting…]

This LD 2283 is, frankly, written to be vague, understood to be likely unconstitutional, and is being pushed – with instate and out-of-state money – to turn Maine into a place where people are put in fear, made to fear, resent, complain about, and disrespect each other’s rights.

Is that who we are? Is that who the more thoughtful Democrats in the legislature really are? Independents? Republicans? Are we ready to be chided, cajoled, coerced, and chilled into being other than who we have been? We should not be.

[RELATED: Maine Dems Hold Closed-Door Meeting with ATF Official Amid Push for Stricter Gun Control Measures…]

Maine already has “yellow flag laws,” which are effective when law enforcement understands and uses them properly. We don’t need more intrusion, lost rights, and top-down direction about who can own guns, what gun-owners say in public – or who should lose their guns. Existing laws cover the rare cases, cover the mentally unfit. We do not need more laws. We do not need progressive confiscation in Maine, snuck into law end of session.

It’s just not right. Everyone should oppose LD 2283, a “set up.”

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Robert "Bobby" Charles

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC).

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<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="27246 https://www.themainewire.com/?p=27246">5 Comments

  1. Bill on April 8, 2024 11:19 AM

    Ayuh,…. Downstate democrats are like a cancer, ‘n need to be treated as such,…
    Vote them out of office,….

    The current yellow flag law, would have worked just fine, if the deputy had done his job,…..

  2. beachmom on April 8, 2024 12:37 PM

    Out of staters and dishonest people using them and their big city fears to try to become tyrannical rulers.
    To do that they need us all unarmed and defenseless.

  3. sandy feet on April 9, 2024 8:36 AM

    Just an other way to limit our right’s to be proved guilty with out a trial

  4. Gardiner Schneider on April 9, 2024 9:26 AM

    While I am sure that our ForeFathers used guns to hunt deer for their dinner, the Second Ammendment was not written in furtherence of deer hunting.

  5. Esau on May 7, 2024 8:02 PM

    Any of those law enforcement officers get fired for not utilizing the current yellow flag law in order to prevent cards mass murder?

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