General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumsthe reddest flag
In some countries, people manage to own guns without enabling hordes of trigger-happy killers, but sadly, we do not live in such a country. Trigger-happy killers are abundant here, and we are forced to act accordingly. So we enact "red flag" laws to identify who we really should consider not giving guns to.
And in our culture, just wanting to have a gun is already a red flag in itself. When you say you want to keep one or more guns in your house, I feel that you are already letting me know that you have a dark side I can never fully trust.
But that's not the reddest flag. The thing that really lets me know you're not someone I want to trust with a gun is if you show clear racism. I suspect this country has a lot of racists in it who want guns just for when the day comes that they can open fire on people of color. In self-defense, of course, if only in their own minds. They think the threat they will someday need guns for is most likely to be black people.
If a red flag law was really designed to be effective, it would examine people not just for a violent history or mental instability or bloodthirsty ideation or drunkenness, but also for bigotry. Of course, the howls of protest at the unfairness at that would be deafening. They'd say we were just trying to take guns away from everyone who wants one... which in practice might not be all that far off.
Nictuku
(3,617 posts)This, I think is the conundrum. Invasion of ones personal papers, (social media) is going to have to be the price everyone pays. And I don't like that one bit. It is data collection, which could be used to hunt you down and kill you (I have a fertile imagination).
Never the less, it is an invasion of privacy. On the one hand, how else are we going to find these freaks? On the other, that data can be misused if sold to the wrong hands (and you can bet you life that the data will be sold, and resold and resold...)
This is the world we live in.
I don't know how I would support this or not. On the one hand, it will have to be OK to look through all my social media so they can catch the wack-jobs and red flag them.
On the other, they are going through my social media and collecting data about me (and my political stances)
Slippery