Senate Gun Control Deal Uses Byrne Grants to Incentivize States to Adopt Red Flag Laws

The Senate gun control legislation introduced Tuesday uses Byrne Grants as incentives for the adoption of red flag laws.

Section 12003 is titled “Use of Byrne Grants for Implementation of State Crisis Intervention Programs.”

The funds are to be used to create “mental health courts,” “drug courts,” “veterans courts,” and establish “extreme risk protection orders,” aka, red flag laws.

On June 20, 2022, the day before the Senate gun control language was revealed, Mark W. Smith used a Breitbart column to say that Republicans were “busy betraying their base while simultaneously shooting themselves in the foot.”

Smith wrote, “[Republicans] are doing it by embracing so-called “red flag laws,” which is a euphemism for the creation of a separate legal system designed to target a single class of Americans (gun owners) and exact a severe penalty (gun confiscation).”

He also opined, “Republicans have somehow concluded that targeting their political base (gun owners) by depriving those Americans of their fundamental constitutional right to keep and bear arms (the Supreme Court’s words, not mine) is constitutional, good public policy, and smart politics. These Republicans are wrong on all counts.”

The gun control deal that Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) worked on side-by-side with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) uses federal funds, aka, taxpayer money, to convince states to adopt the very laws Smith criticized.

California has a red flag law, and so many other gun controls that Mike Bloomberg-affiliated Everytown for Gun Safety ranks the state number one for gun law strength.

Despite a red flag law and all the other controls, California is also number one for “active shooter incidents.”