MIAMI – An activist with the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence said Florida’s new “red flag law” enacted last year allowing confiscation of firearms from people who have exhibited unstable behavior is an effective deterrent to stop violence.
"Properly implemented and utilized extreme risk protection orders have great potential to prevent mass shootings, suicides and other types of gun violence as demonstrated by their use in Florida, California and elsewhere,” Allison Anderman, senior counsel at the Giffords Law Center, told the Florida Record.
The Giffords Law Center is a national public interest law center which provides legal assistance to elected officials, government attorneys and activists in the United States to promote gun control. The organization promotes gun control ordinances and conducts litigation to defend gun control laws against challenges.
The red flag law is a gun control law that permits police or family members to petition a state court to order the temporary removal of firearms from a person who may exhibit a danger to others or themselves. A judge issues an order based on statements and actions made by the gun owner in question.
Refusal to comply is punishable as a criminal offense.
The law has reportedly been used 3,500 times to take weapons away from disturbed people and was enacted last year in the wake of a shooting where a mentally disturbed man killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
A 2019 Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research study found that 66 percent of gun owners and 76 percent of Republicans surveyed supported such policies.
An approving judge can order a person's guns seized immediately for up to 14 days without allowing the person an opportunity to oppose the temporary order in a court.
The court sets a hearing to consider a "final order," that could result in a person being barred from owning or buying a gun for up to a year. The hearing is the first opportunity a person has to legally protest confiscation.
A CNN report said from 2018 to 2019, 255 petitions were filed to remove guns from owners in Broward County. Most of the petitions filed were against men, according to a study done by the Giffords Law Center.
The average age of a person for which a petition was filed against was 38. Ages ranged from 14 to 83 in petitions reviewed by the Giffords Center.
“Research suggests there are warning signs observable to others before most acts of violence,” Anderman said. “Extreme risk protection orders offer community members a way to prevent tragedies while protecting an alleged person's due process rights.”