Our reader, the indefatigable JK, has sent along a column by David French about “gun-violence restraining orders”, or GVROs. Mr. French argues that they are a plausible compromise between the community’s collective interest and the individual right guaranteed (not “granted”, mind you!) by the Second Amendment.
Mr. French outlines some limitations that would, in his opinion, need to be in place:
While there are various versions of these laws working their way through the states (California passed a GVRO statute in 2014, and it went into effect in 2016), broadly speaking they permit a spouse, parent, sibling, or person living with a troubled individual to petition a court for an order enabling law enforcement to temporarily take that individual’s guns right away. A well-crafted GVRO should contain the following elements (“petitioners’ are those who seek the order, “the respondent’ is its subject):
1. It should limit those who have standing to seek the order to a narrowly defined class of people (close relatives, those living with the respondent);
2. It should require petitioners to come forward with clear, convincing, admissible evidence that the respondent is a significant danger to himself or others;
3. It should grant the respondent an opportunity to contest the claims against him;
4. In the event of an emergency, ex parte order (an order granted before the respondent can contest the claims), a full hearing should be scheduled quickly ”” preferably within 72 hours; and
5. The order should lapse after a defined period of time unless petitioners can come forward with clear and convincing evidence that it should remain in place.
Really the question is: at what point in a descent into madness does a person become incapable of being a reliable party to the social contract that forms the framework under which our rights are respected? We already exclude some parties: children, felons, non-citizens, etc.
Mr. French continues:
Let’s empower the people who have the most to lose, and let’s place accountability on the lowest possible level of government: the local judges who consistently and regularly adjudicate similar claims in the context of family and criminal law.
Advocates for GVROs have been mostly clustered on the left, but there is nothing inherently leftist about the concept. After all, the GVRO is consistent with and recognizes both the inherent right of self-defense and the inherent right of due process. It is not collective punishment. It is precisely targeted.
I haven’t yet looked to see if there have been challenges to the constitutionality of California’s law. I have a feeling that, given the Second-Amendment limitations that even conservative members of the courts have already found permissible, it would be allowed to stand. I would also strongly prefer that such laws be left to the States (but then there are very, very few things that I ever prefer to see implemented at the Federal level).
My inclination is that this is a reasonable proposal. Unlike the ignorant, ineffective, and inflammatory “solutions” that cringing Eloi hoplophobes seek to impose on every law-abiding American, GVROs might actually save a life now and then, while having a minimal, and far more justifiable, impact on our rights and liberties.
Might they be subject to abuse? Yes. But if they are imposed narrowly and individually in local courts, with demanding criteria, the tradeoff might be an acceptable one. (Readers will know that I am no moderate when it comes to gun rights — but the other side of the tradeoff is to have people like Nikolas Cruz armed for slaughter. Nothing is simple.)
What say you, readers?
P.S. David French responds to a critic, here.
P.P.S. Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway): no matter what we end up doing about GVROs, we should protect our schools. How can any reasonable person disagree?
9 Comments
Well, this is an ‘interesting’ idea.
Now, instead of just having a situation where pissed off wives and girlfriends are able to steal a man’s gun rights away with a frivolous claim of domestic violence, men will be able to do this as well.
Why not seriously address the cause of the school shooting problem?
* Bring back institutionalization for the mentally ill
* Public executions of pushers of SSRIs and opoids
* Deportations of alien peoples to reduce the extent to which our young men are ‘Bowling Alone’
Very pessimistic that any amount of due process is going to be meaningful. GVROs will quickly become part of first-day filings in divorce cases, for shock and awe purposes if nothing else, and routinely granted and renewed. (This means women disproportionately file for them against men, of course, men being on average more interested in both guns and being able to engage in violence if necessary, and women being disproportionately responsible for shock and awe divorce filings.) And “temporarily” taking people’s guns isn’t going to be so temporary in a lot of big cities. Purge the leftists from the judiciary and the big city police brass and maybe we can talk.
Fair objections. The question of abuse is primary.
French’s critic, Jacob Sullum, makes the same point:
French responds:
My own knee-jerk reaction is to resist this GVRO idea, for exactly the reasons our commenters so far have pointed out. But it is also the case that there are people out there who are known by everyone around them to be extremely dangerous and unstable — people for whom it is only a matter of time before they murder someone. Isn’t there a reasonable interest in finding something we can do about that, before innocent people die? We should raise the bar high, and be vigilant about abuse. I’m not convinced that widespread abuse is so certain, despite all conceivable safeguards, that the idea shouldn’t be tried.
In the old days, there was a saying: “Some people just need killing.” Best all round would be if such a person finally drew his weapon to do others harm and was immediately shot dead. Short of that, though, is there really nothing that can be done?
Yes RL there’s good cause for pessimism and especially so as you note “first-day filings in divorce cases.” And yep, right you are with the “big cities likelihoods” given how we’ve all been provided examples galore where “due process” is more overdue and the “process” part a running joke.
I provide by way of example a suburb of my own state of Arkansas’ capital city, Little Rock, Tu es un objet de dÁ©rision, un paria professionnel rÁ©duit Á Á peine exercer son mÁ©tier d’avocat (if y’all will pardon my French).
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/11/15/arkansas-town-agrees-criminal-justice-reform-ensure-poor-are-not-jailed
And precisely owing to both that in your latter instance and personal experience from your former I, in email with Malcolm communicated that crafting any such legislation sufficient numbers from our side can support will be exceedingly tricky.
But my genuine fear is: There is coming, inevitably, legislation and if that legislation be Federal as opposed to coming from the several States, what all we good citizens ought be rightfully concerned at the prospect of, shall be hastened; again almost certainly, inevitably.
So my thought is – mighten we all do some brainstorming and come up with some good ideas?
I yield.
No tinkering around the edges of the legal system is of any value without virtue in the hearts of our people. That is what is missing, and that is what legislation cannot instill, can only diminish further. In an ideal world, every able-bodied man should be ready, able and willing to kill them that need killing and to go after one of these lunatics. That’s why I carry. I hope I never have to find out if I actually possess the necessary virtue, but I work to build it, and preparedness is part of building that virtue.
I work neck-deep in the legal system. If you’re not a prog after law school, you’re one remarkably stubborn mule.
What could be done? Involuntary mental commitment laws exist and could be actually used. Actual calls to the FBI could be followed up on instead of ignored. (If you ever wonder why people think some of these school shootings are false flags…)
But it comes back to virtue. No amount of tinkering with legislation and judicial procedure is going to make any significant difference, and anything that can be spun as uniquely blaming the gun, or treating the gun as a dangerous item fit only for the professionals, is a negative. We are free men. We bear arms in defense of our homes, our families, our communities. We lay down the righteous violence of the Almighty on people that need killing. Lawyers and judges can’t do that. Men do.
My apologies for occupying your comment boxes with rant, Mr. Pollack. Really do enjoy your blog.
RL,
you are right about loss of virtue in our society. Malcolm’s post of several days ago spoke to this better than anything I have read:http://malcolmpollack.com/2018/02/16/reaping-the-whirlwind/
No pol and no nationally legislated policy will restore the decades of rot.
It is telling that our schools and churches are now prime targets for victims. Not long ago these two institutions were cornerstones of healthy communities where parents could send their children and be confident the values taught at home were safely reinforced at school and church.
So nothing RL can be at hand to forestall?
(Short of maybe the farmers starving the cities?)
RL,
Well, that’s the question here. (If you’ve read the post Whitewall linked to, you know that I agree with you that the real problem, the fatal problem, is the death of civic virtue.)
But: here we have a proposal to tinker around the edges. I object to it in principle, but I think it might in fact be of some small practical value; the question is whether that practical value is real, and whether it is outweighed by the possible consequences we are all rightly concerned about.
To settle the empirical question, I think it would be worthwhile to see a few states try a suitably strict implementation, and see how it goes.
And don’t worry about the rant. I agree with your view. Thank you for reading and commenting.
Occasionally one hears of some crazed malefactor being taken into custody by the police, and the ensuing revelations of their amassed armory of “…hundreds of rounds of ammunition.” Hundreds of rounds? What would these people make of my armory and ammunition cache? Our twenty-first century Prohibitionists would consider me a dangerous gun fetishist.
But there are people who should be kept far from weapons of all and every kind. I would gladly sacrifice their second amendment rights to protect my own, and the public safety. But I’m with Malcolm and many others, I assume: how to control the creeping expansion and abuse of even the most well-crafted such proscription on a constitutional guarantee.