Kentucky currently lacks a legal mechanism (aka red flag law) to temporarily confiscate firearms from individuals deemed a threat to themselves or others. A proposed bill, known as the Crisis Aversion and Rights Retention (CARR) Act, seeks to address this gap, although efforts to pass it during the 2024 legislative session were unsuccessful, according to Spectrum News 1.

The CARR bill would empower law enforcement to “temporarily” remove firearms from individuals considered dangerous. State Senator David Yates, a Democrat (of course!) from Louisville and a co-sponsor of the 2024 version of the bill, remains determined to reintroduce the legislation in 2025. He believes the bill could save lives without infringing on gun rights.

“We’ve got to keep moving forward,” Yates said, expressing his frustration over inaction in the face of ongoing violence.

Opposition to the CARR bill stems from concerns over Second Amendment rights and confusion about its purpose. Yates, along with outgoing Republican (surprising!) co-sponsor Senator Whitney Westerfield, faced resistance from those who saw the legislation as an infringement on gun ownership rights. However, a poll conducted by UpONE Insights in January 2024 showed that 72% of Republican voters supported the bill, with strong backing from rural residents, NRA supporters and even Donald Trump’s base.

Yates remains optimistic about finding more support from his colleagues in the Senate to reintroduce the bill in the next session.

“Ultimately, who steps forward, I don’t know,” he said.

The bill has gained the backing of organizations like Sandy Hook Promise, which argues that the CARR Act is a practical measure to prevent violence. Aurora Vasquez, the organization’s vice president of state policy and engagement, emphasized that the bill doesn’t permanently take away guns but temporarily removes them from those at immediate risk.

“This is merely a temporary transfer of a firearm away from someone who is at imminent risk… so that they can get help,” Vasquez explained.

Yates, who is a gun owner himself, stresses that the bill respects Second Amendment rights while addressing mental health crises.

“I respect the Second Amendment. I do not want to take people’s guns,” Yates said. “What I do want to do is make sure someone that is suffering from mental illness…has that temporary removal with the proper oversight.”

According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, 21 states and Washington, D.C., have implemented similar laws, and research from Indiana showed a 7.5% reduction in firearm suicides after adopting comparable legislation, the Spectrum article reported.

As Yates prepares to reintroduce the CARR bill in the future, he and supporters of the bill will be out selling the benefits of such a measure, but will likely ignore the concerns of those opposed to it, dooming it to continued failure. Likely the real key to supporters’s ability to get the bill passed will be:

• including steps for due process of those an ERPO is filed against to be written into the language of the bill
• providing a short, say 72-hour or less window, 24 hours would be better, for a person to receive a hearing when a complaint is lodged against them that threatens to have their firearms removed
• an immediate return of firearms at no cost to the individual if they are deemed stable as well as possible compensation for any firearms and ammunition damaged or lost during a removal
• language that calls for criminal charges for people who unjustly lodge a complaint agains a person in order to prevent false reports, i.e. an ex-spouse or angry neighbor.

Most people, gun owner and non-gun owner alike, agree on one thing: nobody wants to see armed mentally unstable people nor do they want to see people at risk of harming themselves able to easily do it with a firearm either. But the rights issue, particularly a process for a person to be quickly heard before their rights are violated, must be written into any language before the larger community can get behind the legislation and support it.