Comments by "josh fritz" (@joshfritz5345) on "Red Flag Laws For Dummies 🚩🚩🚩" video.

I'm a libertarian. I'm fine with gay marriage, weed, whatever. But I'm very strongly opposed to rights being infringed on by the government because I'm hyper aware of how prone government authority is to abuse. I find the more I read up on the government's activities, the less I trust them to regulate the rights of myself or anyone else. The government engages in what would be considered criminal activity if any citizen did the same with alarming regularity. And I mean serious stuff too, your tax dollars fund terrorism and the murder of innocents.
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Red flag laws are one of the few gun laws that may actually save a few lives. I'm saying this as a gun owner and critic of gun control. HOWEVER, I absolutely do not support red flag laws because while they may actually save a few lives, they represent a very, very serious expansion of state power and infringement on multiple core rights, including the right to due process. Frankly, even if I wasn't a gun guy (and I am,) I would not consider the trade off worth it. A few dozen lives is not worth abolishing the entire concept of innocent until proven guilty. The cost of saving these lives will be countless innocent people locked up or otherwise punished without trial in the future. The government should not have the power to punish someone without first giving them a chance to defend their innocence in court.
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I'm a Libertarian as well, and I hear your position, but I'd be extremely hesitant about any such bill being passed requiring a mental health evaluation. Such a thing seems ripe for abuse, and the Gov't will, without a shadow of a doubt, abuse that power to make owning a gun legally an impossibility for anyone without political connections. Maybe, maybe if it were very cleverly written in order to minimize the potential for abuse, and if it were passed as part of a bill that repealed some other major gun legislation I'd consider it.
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@AndyDrake-FOOKYT It's entirely possible. But it's impossible to tell how many lives are saved by red flag laws since you can't track a crime that hasn't occurred. We KNOW that red flag laws kill, we don't know how many lives they would actually save.
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@AndyDrake-FOOKYT I'm pretty open about being a gun owner. I also vocally oppose every step the government takes towards reducing the liberty of the people. Considering the dark path we're going down, I accept that it's entirely possible I'll be targeted by either government agents or statist actors like Antifa, but frankly I don't give a shit. I refuse to back down, I don't have it in me to stay silent when every principle and right I have is being violated by violent statists.
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Warrants are only issued on reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. Red flag laws can be enacted at any time for any reason with zero evidence. Warrants don't usually result in the immediate confiscation of property and you are guaranteed a chance to prove your innocence in court. Red flag laws can make it almost impossible to recover your confiscated property. Warrants are to make a temporary arrest and very short term detention on suspicion of a serious crime having already being committed. Red flag laws are punishing someone premptively for a crime they did NOT commit, and likely never would have.
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My girlfriend is Polish. Her grandparents and parents lived through Nazi and Soviet occupation respectively. I assure you, there is no reason to own a gun more compelling than hearing stories from someone who has lived through the horrors of totalitarianism. The Gestapo couldn't have done what they did if every jew had a gun. The Stasi and Red Guard could never have hauled off political dissenters to Gulags had the dissenters been armed. And red flag laws themselves represent an effort to repeal the entire concept of presumption of innocence, and pave the way for a totalitarian police state.
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If you're willing to respect the freedom we have here, or what's left of it anyways and vote to preserve that freedom, I'd be more than happy to welcome you as a fellow American.
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Red flag laws may actually be one of the very few gun control proposals that save lives, but considering the ramifications of what they do to due process and constitutional rights, they are NOT worth it. For every life they might save, many, many more will be ruined, and it paves the way for the abolition of "innocent until proven guilty" as a legal precedent in US law.
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