Senator Rick Scott Rationalizes Red Flag Gun Confiscation
Jose Nino
|
Florida Senator Rick Scott recently penned a piece at The Washington Post in favor of red flag gun confiscation legislation for The Washington Post.
Scott gained notoriety as Florida Governor by making Florida one of the first red states to pass a red flag law in the wake of the 2018 Parkland shootings.
He rationalized his decision to take gun control action in the following passage:
Let me be clear: I am a gun owner, a member of the National Rifle Association and a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. But the horror of Parkland demanded a swift, practical legislative response to try to prevent future such nightmares.
After the El Paso and Dayton shootings, Scott declared that “Washington should stop the partisan bickering and get to work on solutions.”
The solution Scott wants is a “red flag” provision to gun policy, just like he enacted in Florida last year. He describes it as a “common-sense public safety measure.”
Scott went on to say that “our culture has produced an underclass of predominantly white young men who place no value on human life, who live purposeless lives of anonymity and digital dependency, and who increasingly act on their most evil desires, sometimes with racial hatred.”
He concluded, “Progress can be made in the legislative and judicial arenas, but no amount of new laws can completely stop criminals or cure the root causes of violence. The problems go deeper than guns or any inanimate pieces of hardware.”
Despite D.C.’s urgency to pass red flag gun laws, there is reason to believe that they are not a cure-all for gun violence. Gun advocate John Lott argues that “Red Flag laws appear to have had no significant effect on murder, suicide, the number of people killed in mass public shootings, robbery, aggravated assault or burglary. There is some evidence that rape rates rise. These laws apparently do not save lives.” This is based off research he conducted from 1970 through 2017.
Just looking at Connecticut also shows that red flag laws might not be worth the hype they’re receiving. The state enacted a red flag law in 1999, which made it one of the first states to have such legislation on the books. However, this law could not prevent a madman from carrying out a massacre at Sandy Hook in 2012.
Share: