CV NEWS FEED // Conservatives slammed the Biden administration’s launch of a new resource center for officials who implement “red flag laws” targeting “extreme” gun owners.
The administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) unveiled its new National Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) Resource Center on Saturday.
Per a press release from the DOJ, the center will serve to “provide training and technical assistance to law enforcement officials, prosecutors, attorneys, judges, clinicians,” and other authorities “responsible for implementing laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of people who pose a threat to themselves or others.”
Critics say these laws, popularly known as “red flag laws,” infringe upon Americans’ Second Amendment rights.
Vice President Kamala Harris took to X (formerly Twitter) Sunday morning to express support for these controversial initiatives.
“The memory of what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas will never be erased,” Harris wrote, referring to the 2018 Parkland high school shooting. “We know what works: Universal background checks. Red flag laws. An assault weapons ban. Now, legislators must act.”
Following this message, the vice president posted a picture of her visit to the high school’s memorial to slain students.
Elected Republicans and other conservatives rebuked the newly announced effort.
“What the hell is this evil?” Rep. Thomas Massie, R-KY, wrote on X Saturday. He noted that Congress “did not authorize” the center which was “[a]nnounced, of course, just hours after the omnibus passe[d].”
Massie was among the slight majority of House Republicans who voted against last week’s deeply controversial spending package.
>> CONSERVATIVES SLAM $1 TRILLION SPENDING BILL, HOUSE PASSES IT ANYWAY <<
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-AL, also pointed out that the creation of the center “didn’t come through Congress.”
“[The Biden] Administration will do everything in their power to destroy the Constitution and the God given rights of Americans,” Tuberville wrote.
Rep. Mary Miller, R-IL, made a similar observation: “Hours after 101 House Republicans joined with Democrats to fund a new $200M headquarters for the FBI, the FBI announced they are creating a new national ‘red-flag’ gun control center to seize guns from American citizens.”
Oklahoma State Sen. Nathan Dahm reacted to the blue-state Republican lawmaker’s post.
“None of that money can be used by any Oklahoma agency for red flag laws because of my Anti Red Flag Act,” wrote Dahm, who also currently chairs the Oklahoma Republican Party.
Former assistant Arizona Attorney General Jennifer Wright also weighed in on the DOJ’s new center.
“Red flag laws were always intended to disarm the masses,” the lawyer wrote.
FBI whistleblower and 2023 CatholicVote Hero of the Year Kyle Seraphin wrote that “Red flag laws are repugnant to the Constitution.”
“They must ignore ‘due process’ and the right to ‘keep and bear arms’ which is protected from government infringement,” he added.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is an agency of the DOJ.
Attorney and former Army Ranger sniper Ryan Cleckner posted to X an illustrated diagram showing “[w]hy red flag laws are horrible.”
“By the way, need proof [the federal government will] do this instead of peaceably confront someone during the day away from their home?” Cleckner asked.
“Look what they did to the director of the Little Rock Airport last week,” he added.
The New York Post reported Friday that “[t]he executive director of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport who was killed in a shootout with federal agents raiding his Arkansas home was illegally dealing guns.”
The Post continued:
Bryan Malinowski, 53, was being actively investigated for buying and reselling more than 150 guns between May 2021 and February 2024 without a dealer’s license, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) stated in a heavily redacted affidavit made public Thursday.
The Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), a Second Amendment rights group, responded to the DOJ’s creation of the center on Sunday, writing that “[n]ow seems like a good time to remind everybody” of the FPC’s Policy Brief on Red Flag Laws.
The group wrote in the brief that the controversial laws “invite domestic terrorists to weaponize the court system to strip the rights of their enemies or political opponents.”
Comedian and political commentator Tim Young noted on X that the “$1.2 trillion government spending bill that the HOUSE GOP helped pass Friday included … Red Flag laws,” among other things. “[The bill] was 1,012 pages…. not a single person who voted for it had time to read it… not that they would have.”
Tradesman and civil liberties advocate Michael Oxford called the new DOJ initiative “Red Flag Laws on steroids.”
“It’s a gun grab,” he explained on X:
It gives the government the authority to issue “Extreme Risk Protection Orders”, that a judge can sign off on, which allows them to confiscate your firearms.
I cannot express how dangerous this is, especially with intelligence agencies having access to data dragnet tools like Palantir.
With these tools, not only can they aggregate and sift through everyone’s data – at lightning speed – including purchases, location, and everything you’ve ever said online, they can create lists of people they deem to be a threat.
Oxford made headlines last year when he was fired from his job in California for not wearing a mask – nearly three years after authorities first instituted COVID-era restrictions.
Finally, an Army veteran wrote on X that “[r]ed flag gun laws are just a totalitarian measure to try and disarm the population.”
He claimed that the laws’ proponents in the government “want to erase history so that American citizens don’t realize that it was gun control measures from the British that started the first American Revolution.”
“This time, the enemy is within,” the veteran added.
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