A while back, a study was done that looked at how well people on different sides of politics could articulate the position of the other side. A lot of people were shocked when it turned out that people on the right understood and articulated the left’s positions far better than those on the left could.

It’s not surprising. People on the right have no choice but to be inundated with the left’s arguments. They’re on the news, in films and television, and pretty much everywhere we turn.

Views from the right, views like gun rights, aren’t.

But many in the media would have to be exposed to them to some degree. They’d interview people who support things light gun rights and at least hear the arguments why we oppose certain things, even if they opt not to include them in their stories.

Despite that fact, though, it’s pretty clear they’re not listening based on this editorial out of Massachusetts.

But no matter how this legal challenge plays out, we trust even the staunchest of gun-rights advocates should want to retain the red-flag additions included in this legislation.

The new law expands the 2018 Extreme Risk Protection Orders – commonly known as “red flag” laws – to allow school administrators and licensed health-care providers to petition a court to temporarily remove firearms from someone deemed a threat to themselves or others.

Healey’s office said the law clarifies that a person who has had their firearm license revoked under the “red flag” law cannot obtain any new firearm licenses or identification cards while the Extreme Risk Protection Order remains in place.

These additions further strengthen an already stringent statute.

…

Even gun ownership advocates believe more efforts should be directed at the mental health component of these tragic events.

So, let’s keep the beefed-up red flag laws on the books.

Yes, they really believe we should support red flag laws. What’s more, they invoke Lewiston to justify it, despite the fact that licensed mental health professionals failed to use the state’s yellow flag law to disarm the killer, probably because it’s not as easy to see the future as many would like to believe.

First, Lewiston is evidence that such laws won’t necessarily prevent anything.

However, my big gripe about this whole screed is the idea that we, as gun rights supporters, should be fine with people’s guns being taken without due process of law, forcing them into a situation where they have to prove their innocence, and do so at their own expense without any help from an attorney unless they’ve got the bank balance to hire one.

That’s the antithesis of defending people’s rights, so why would any self-respecting gun rights advocate be down with that?

Especially since the burden of evidence is so pathetic with these laws that literally anyone can claim they heard something alarming and have someone disarmed because of it. 

Red flag laws continue the anti-gun trend of pretending that the gun is the issue rather than the individual. These laws take guns away from allegedly dangerous people, but they leave these allegedly dangerous people running around with access to any manner of other ways to murder innocent people.

So no, gun rights advocates shouldn’t want to leave that provision alone. They should want to do the opposite with extreme prejudice.