The NRA has announced support for firearm confiscation orders on the same day the White House announced its support for allowing the guns of citizens to be taken away via court order.
Breitbart News reported that the White House outlined support for California-style gun confiscation laws in a Monday press release.
California adopted the orders in 2015, months after Elliot Rodger used a handgun — legally purchased and registered — to shoot and kill three people in Santa Barbara. Breitbart News reported that Rodger also only used magazines holding 10-rounds or less.
Instead of seeing gun control’s impotency via the fact that Rodger complied with gun law upon gun law, California Democrats responded by passing Gun Violence Restraining Orders. The orders allow police to enter a citizen’s home and confiscate firearms upon issuance of a court order.
The Trump White House is pushing similar orders, calling them Extreme Risk Protection Orders, and the NRA is voicing support for them as well.
NRA-ILA’s Chris Cox said, “We need to stop dangerous people before they act, so Congress should provide funding for states to adopt risk protection orders. This can help prevent violent behavior before it turns into a tragedy. These laws allow a court to intervene and temporarily remove firearms when a person threatens violence to themselves or others.”
When California instituted confiscation orders, UCLA law professor and gun control proponent Adam Winkler warned that they would not deliver the safety promised. He bolstered his position by explaining that the orders, which require a family member to report another family member, would not have prevented the Sandy Hook Elementary School attack. He told National Journal this was the case because Adam Lanza’s mother, Nancy Lanza, “did not recognize the potential for violence.”
In the same way, the family Florida school gunman Nikolas Cruz lived with persuaded law enforcement to take it easy on him in November, citing the emotional struggle he was facing at the time.
On February 23 Breitbart News reported, “The family with which [Cruz] was staying repeatedly called the police on him in November 2017 but refused to file charges when sheriff’s deputies arrived. A member of the family with which Cruz was staying explained away Cruz’s erratic behavior by saying he ‘had been suffering significantly from the loss of his mother’ earlier in the month.”
It is difficult to believe California-style gun confiscation laws would have made a difference.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.