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Maryland’s ‘Red Flag’ Law Turns Deadly: Officer Kills Man Who Refused To Turn In Gun

Rucker61 said:
If someone is unstable and poses a real danger to him/herself and others, why don't you want all knives and blunt instruments taken away, and anything that could used to hang/suffocate him/herself taken away?
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Here we go again. Know of many mass stabbings, bludgeonings, smotherings, or hangings in America nowadays? I’ll bet you’ve heard of a few mass shootings though.
 
RaleBulgarian said:
Here we go again. Know of many mass stabbings, bludgeonings, smotherings, or hangings in America nowadays? I’ll bet you’ve heard of a few mass shootings though.
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So it really isn't about protecting people or the gun owner. It's about optics. Don't want a mass shooting in our location, but a suicide or homicide is no big deal.

Knife homicides, bludgeoning homicides and hanging suicides exceed deaths from mass shootings by thousands every year.
 
jaeger19 said:
He initially set the firearm down. What if he picked it up to hand to officers?
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The right thing to do would be to step back and let the officers take the gun.

jaeger19 said:
Again.. we don't really know how this went down.
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Bull**** we know exactly what happened.
 
Rucker61 said:
So it really isn't about protecting people or the gun owner. It’s about optics. Don't want a mass shooting in our location, but a suicide or homicide is no big deal.
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If “optics” means stopping another senseless mass slaughter to you then yes, I agree.
Rucker61 said:
Knife homicides, bludgeoning homicides and hanging suicides exceed deaths from mass shootings by thousands every year.
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Conflating mass shootings with other causes of death as an argument against red flag gun laws is apples and oranges. One is a crime on many and the others is a crime on individuals (with the exception of suicide, which is a mental health issue). Different problems require different solutions.
 
RaleBulgarian said:
If “optics” means stopping another senseless mass slaughter to you then yes, I agree.
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That's not the purpose of a red flag law.

Conflating mass shootings with other causes of death as an argument against red flag gun laws is apples and oranges. One is a crime on many and the others is a crime on individuals (with the exception of suicide, which is a mental health issue). Different problems require different solutions.
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If you're going to have a red flag law to identify those are are a danger to themselves and others, then enforce them to actually protect against the violence the law was written to protect against. Red flag laws are not just for mass shootings. I would bet most don't even mention mass shootings.
 
Rucker61 said:
That's not the purpose of a red flag law.
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Really? Have you read the red laws in effect? How do you know that possibly preventing mass shootings/killings isn’t an intended byproduct of the law?
Rucker61 said:
If you're going to have a red flag law to identify those are are a danger to themselves and others, then enforce them to actually protect against the violence the law was written to protect against. Red flag laws are not just for mass shootings. I would bet most don't even mention mass shootings.
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The officers in this thread were attempting to do just that, protect Willis from himself and possibly harming others, before Willis made the tragic decision to pick the pistol up and fight one of the officers.
 
RaleBulgarian said:
Really? Have you read the red laws in effect? How do you know that possibly preventing mass shootings/killings isn’t an intended byproduct of the law?
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It's intended only to prevent homicide or suicide by a gun. The level of homicide is not an issue. If even a single person is threatened by the gun owner the law comes into play. If the person hasn't threatened homicide but is threatening suicide the law comes into play.

The officers in this thread were attempting to do just that, protect Willis from himself and possibly harming others, before Willis made the tragic decision to pick the pistol up and fight one of the officers.
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Were they sent there to prevent a mass shooting? Were they concerned that he could have killed someone with a knife? Were they concerned that he might have hung himself after they left with his gun? No, they were not.
 
RaleBulgarian said:
That has yet to be proven in this thread.
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The very subject of this thread is what this is all about. The police seized, or tried to seize, the now deceased victim's guns when the now deceased victim had not gone through due process.
 
DebateChallenge said:
The very subject of this thread is what this is all about. The police seized, or tried to seize, the now deceased victim's guns when the now deceased victim had not gone through due process.
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My point. Nobody has yet to actually prove that due process requirements were not met. Only conjecture.
 
Wayne Jr said:
The right thing to do would be to step back and let the officers take the gun.


Bull**** we know exactly what happened.
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One we don't know how this went down.

One.. the smart thing for the officers to do would have been to aske the person to come outside .. or whatever to talk with them to take him away from the firearm

Secondly.. he might have been ASKED by one of the officers to hand him the firearm. I actually was once asked by a police officer when I was stopped at a traffic stop to hand him my carry pistol. Being a reserve officer..I did not want to touch the firearm and stated such to the officer. We got into a discussion about it because I did not want to touch the firearm. AS we were discussing it.. a state patrolman walked up to back up the local PD.
Later,when I was given a warning for a broken tail light...and the two policemen where there.. I asked the state police officer.."what would you have done if when you were walking up, you saw me take my firearm out"...he said " I would have SHOT YOU".

I then turned to the local pd and told him... THATS why I did not want to touch my firearm and hand it to you...

This sort of things DOES happen.. and I gosh darn guarantee you.. that if that officer had shot me.... the officer who told me to hand him the firearm.. would never have put that in his report. And it would have gone down as a good shoot of a man who was stupid and reached for a gun when the police were there.


The circumstances stated here stink to high heaven. He initially put down the gun. Procedure should have been to get the person away from the firearm. Then the gun went off only after the other officer struggled with the man for the gun. There are a lot of questions here.
 
jaeger19 said:
One we don't know how this went down.

One.. the smart thing for the officers to do would have been to aske the person to come outside .. or whatever to talk with them to take him away from the firearm

Secondly.. he might have been ASKED by one of the officers to hand him the firearm. I actually was once asked by a police officer when I was stopped at a traffic stop to hand him my carry pistol. Being a reserve officer..I did not want to touch the firearm and stated such to the officer. We got into a discussion about it because I did not want to touch the firearm. AS we were discussing it.. a state patrolman walked up to back up the local PD.
Later,when I was given a warning for a broken tail light...and the two policemen where there.. I asked the state police officer.."what would you have done if when you were walking up, you saw me take my firearm out"...he said " I would have SHOT YOU".

I then turned to the local pd and told him... THATS why I did not want to touch my firearm and hand it to you...

This sort of things DOES happen.. and I gosh darn guarantee you.. that if that officer had shot me.... the officer who told me to hand him the firearm.. would never have put that in his report. And it would have gone down as a good shoot of a man who was stupid and reached for a gun when the police were there.


The circumstances stated here stink to high heaven. He initially put down the gun. Procedure should have been to get the person away from the firearm. Then the gun went off only after the other officer struggled with the man for the gun. There are a lot of questions here.
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This wasn't a traffic stop and Willis was not a reserve officer. Please review the actual facts of this particular situation before commenting further.
 
DebateChallenge said:
Nope, they did not go through due process.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz1MqbGY2qY&t=1s
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You must have mistakenly posted the wrong video because the non-lawyer, non-sworn officer posting the video repeatedly said that he doesn’t know all of the details and has not read the report. That was made clear by the fact that he repeatedly said the individual initiating the order “called it in”.. We already know from the original article that a sworn/signed affidavit must be submitted before anything happens, and that cannot be done over the phone. And directly to the point you were hoping to make, the narrator offered no evidence whatsoever that due process was violated.

Bottom line, the video was nothing more than an opinion posted by someone uninvolved and ignorant of many critical factors.
 
RaleBulgarian said:
If it were your choice, what would you have done to prevent the possibility of Willis shooting himself and/or others to death?
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So if you had a gun, you would kill your family?
 
Chillfolks said:
From how it's being reported it appears the police escalated the tense situation when they tried to wrestle the gun away.

It will be intresting to see who requested the guns be confiscated. Hopefully his death will draw attention to how these kinds of laws are enforced and if they are even constitutional
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There are a few things concerning. Taking away his gun at 5:15 AM being one of them.

What ever happened to due process, and the rights to own a weapon? I could see how someone could believe these were fake police. Just because you wear a uniform doesn't mean you are really a police officer.
 
Rucker61 said:
Is this based on a person being considered dangerous to himself/herself or others?
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Here is a writeup I found in searches that predicted problems:

Instead, the General Assembly has created the truly terrifying spectre of heavily armed SWAT teams showing up, without warning or notice, on the doorsteps of gun owners with ex parte seizure orders in hand. The potential for tragedy is obvious. You can be certain that this legislation, if it becomes law, will be abused by persons with animus toward a particular gun owner or toward gun owners in general. What's next, legislation that provides that a "Scarlet G" shall be branded on the forehead of every gun owner? Let the harassment and debasement begin. Gun owners will now have to consider whether they should go underground and be silent about possessing firearms for fear of being subjected to this harassment. And I can't blame them. It is just one more step in pursuit of the gun grabbers' attack on the rights preserved by the Second Amendment. This time they are violating the Equal Protection Clause and chilling the exercise of First Amendment rights as well.
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https://www.marylandshallissue.org/...so-called-extreme-risk-protection-orders-bill
 
Rucker61 said:
If the person in question is a danger, why doesn't the State actually protect that person and the public?

Why is the danger limited to this person's guns?
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So we can become a police state.
 
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