2 May 18
“… if it saves just one life”
In Colorado, the recently-introduced “Extreme Risk Protection Act” is currently being debated in Denver.
This legislation will empower any judge, on the flimsiest of pretexts, to order the indefinite forcible seizure of every one of an individual citizen’s guns, when the judge decides the citizen in question (having never even met him, and in the absence of any expert testimony) might represent a “significant risk to himself or others.”
The vagueness of the bill’s language (always a leftist trademark) is of great concern!
Anyone, even someone you don’t know and who lacks the slightest credentials to make judgments about your, nor anyone’s, mental health, can arbitrarily decide that you are “about to snap!”
His secret, uncorroborated, non-expert testimony before a judge (and it isn’t even sworn testimony, just his word)-
and your Second Amendments Rights are cancelled, maybe forever!
An innocent citizen, who has made no crime (nor has even been accused of a crime) has his legally-owned guns precipitously ripped from his hands, without warning, on the basis of secret, non-expert, unsworn “testimony” of a single individual!
Prior to your guns be forcibly seized, there is no opportunity for you to challenge “testimony” of the one making the complaint, nor even to know whom his is!
Your guns are forcibly confiscated for at least six months, maybe longer at the whim of the judge.
It’s all such an “emergency,” you know. There is no time for any pesky “due process!”
There is an ambiguously-worded “appeal-process,” after the fact, of course.
After thousands in legal fees, endless “appearances,” and interminable delays (six months at least), your guns may be returned, but not before you’ve somehow managed to “prove” you’re not crazy, however that is done!
At your own expense, you have to “appeal” to the court in order to get your guns back and your rights restored.
When you don’t take the initiative to appeal, your guns are never returned.
In the interim, you’re completely defenseless. You cannot legally buy, nor borrow, a gun of any kind. When you’re subsequently murdered by a violent criminal against whom you cannot defend yourself, apparently that is of no concern. Yours is not the “just one life” they apparently care about!
And, there is no specification for where, nor by whom, your guns are stored. You never get to know. If they are ever returned to you, they may be ruinously marred, encrusted with rust, and essentially ruined. There is no provision for you to be compensated for damage.
This is a typical vaguely-worded, invariably leftist, anti-gun bill that is invariably stampeded through the legislative process (another leftist trademark), so that embarrassing questions are never asked, and no one ever reads inconvenient details.
Leftists hate details, almost as much as they hate armed citizens!
“There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law”
Charles de Montesquieu
/John