One of the common objections to the use (and existence) of “red flag” laws is that they miss the mark by targeting an inanimate object and not the owner, even though that person has been deemed by a judge to pose a danger to themselves or others. Extreme Risk Protection Orders take away someone’s ability to legally purchase and possess firearms, but that doesn’t prevent them from illegally acquiring a gun or using something else to hurt themselves or others… which is exactly what happened over the weekend in Portland, Oregon.
Police say a former employee of the Multnomah Athletic Club drove a car filled with propane tanks and pipe bombs into the building around 3 a.m. Saturday morning, “completely destroying” the first floor of the eight-story building and causing millions of dollars in damage. The former employee had been the subject of two “red flag” orders in recent years, both related to his fixation on the MAC after he was fired.
The suspect, 48-year-old Bruce Whitman, was the subject of two “red flag” orders, in 2022 and in February this year, after he was fired from his job as a bartender at the MAC and became fixated on the private club, terrorizing members and threatening violence. A Portland police officer with the bureau’s behavioral health unit filed the requests for both extreme risk protection orders, which allow police and household members to petition a judge to temporarily remove firearms from individuals threatening violence or suicide.
Whitman was forced to surrender two guns in February, court records show.
In June 2022, Portland police Officer Michael Hansen told the court Whitman had been fired from the MAC and that he “has consistently had the belief people associated with the MAC have been conspiring against him and are involved in a campaign of harassment and wanting to cause physical harm.”
The court granted the order, records show.Earlier this year, in February, Hansen was listed as a petitioner on another red flag order after Whitman shot himself in the head, court records show.
Oregon’s Extreme Risk Protection Order law doesn’t require the state offer any kind of mental health services to someone after they’ve been deemed to be a danger to themselves or others, and there’s no indication that Whitman was involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, even after he tried to take his own life just a couple of months ago.
Instead, he was left to his own devices, and was apparently able to assemble multiple pipe bombs, purchase several propane tanks, and rent the car that he used to smash through the glass doors of the building on Saturday morning.
Amazingly, The Oregonian newspaper described this incident as proof that the state’s red flag law is working, instead of acknowledging its failure to stop Whitman from carrying out an act of violence.
Oregon’s extreme risk protection order law, also known as the “red flag” gun law, is one of the least-used protective orders in the state, according to a 2023 state report.
But it may have been a key safeguard in the case of the man suspected of driving a car packed with explosives into the Multnomah Athletic Club early Saturday — and a reason no one other than the suspect died in his alleged attack.
The attack took place around 3 o’clock in the morning, when hardly anyone was in the building. That’s the biggest reason why no one other than Whitman was hurt or killed. If he’d carried out his attack just a few hours earlier or waited until later Saturday morning when more people would have been inside the MAC it could have been a very different story.
The attack on the MAC isn’t evidence that Oregon’s “red flag” law works. It’s proof that it allows dangerous people to do dangerous things, even after their ability to legally possess a gun has been taken from them. Whitman needed to be in some kind of secure facility, whether it was a prison cell or a psychiatric unit. Instead, after the “red flag” petition was granted the state considered the problem solved. Supposedly, he was no longer a danger because he no longer had access to his legally-owned firearms.
Clearly, that wasn’t the case. The “red flag” order didn’t make anyone safer, and it certainly didn’t make Whitman any less dangerous… to himself or those he was hoping to harm.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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