Rhode Island's Red Flag laws: because if threatening an officer, exposing yourself, and urinating in a police car isn't enough, what is?
The Boston Globe recently published a harrowing story about a murder-suicide that took place in Rhode Island. Aside from the obvious horror of it—every murder-suicide is an awful tragedy regardless—this particular also illuminated some of the unfortunate shortcomings of so-called "Red Flag" laws.
Rhode Island is one of the states that has actually tried to implement some sort of legal system that would prevent certain people who have demonstrated a repeated tendency towards violence from obtaining firearms—even if the National Instant Criminal background check system would otherwise allow it. As The Globe explains:
The Hopkinton police didn't want Joseph Francis to be able to buy a gun.
Twice, they denied his applications to buy firearms. He hadn't been convicted of a felony, so he could pass a national criminal background check. But a Rhode Island law passed in 2020 also requires local police chiefs to do extensive background checks on residents who apply to buy firearms, and the Hopkinton police saw things that left them concerned.
Francis had been arrested for disorderly conduct. He'd threatened suicide. He drove erratically, causing an accident, and when he was arrested, Francis threatened the officer, exposed himself, and urinated in the back seat of a cruiser. The Johnston police denied his request for a permit to carry a concealed weapon because he lied on his application. And, Francis had been charged with cyber-harassment of a woman, a misdemeanor.
A reasonable person might think, "Yeah, this guy sounds a little dangerous, and probably shouldn't have a gun!" But because Joseph Francis was never actually convicted of any felonies, the Rhode Island Second Amendment Coalition was able to override the authority of the local police department, and make sure that Francis was able to exercise his legal right to non-infringed firearm access.
Which led to tragedy. I've written a lot about gun violence over the years. As I wrote in 2018:
An existing history of violence against family or loved ones is the greatest indicator of a person's penchant for gun violence. An American woman is shot and killed by her partner every 16 hours, according to the Trace, and more male shooters attack their own families than schools or public places. In terms of the sheer number of deaths, the money we spend on terrorism would be better focused on the threat of husbands.
Perhaps none of this is surprising—but for some reason, we still don't do anything about it. While the NRA loves to whinge on about self-defense, they ignore the fact that abused women are five times more likely to be killed by partners who own firearms, and 90% of women imprisoned for killing men had previously been abused by those same men.
That's what I mean when I say "We have a problem."
Felony offenses for domestic violence are supposed to mean that an American loses their right to gun ownership. But this requires the person to willingly turn their private property over to the government, or for the ATF to actively pursue civil asset forfeiture on those guns—neither of which is a very practical solution.
So what can we do? Legally, it's complicated. But states like Rhode Island, California, Washington, and New York have recently enacted laws to prevent guns from even failing into the hands of misdemeanor* domestic abusers, and quite frankly, I don't see a reason why that can't be enacted everywhere. It'll save lives, and it won't infringe on the rights and freedoms of law-abiding gun-owners, or people at greater risk of being victims of violence. We can also improve the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (which even the NRA has mockingly acknowledged to be flawed) by standardizing the information that states and military are required to submit, under threat of financial penalty.
(*The one caveat I will acknowledge: this requires people to actually cooperate with authorities. And that's easier said than done, for a number of social reasons that are difficult to legislate.)
Like Joseph Francis, I also had to sit down for an interview with the local police department to get my gun license—a process I chronicled for an article (I also had to pass a target test, which I embarrassingly bombed the first time around). At the time, I was personally comforted by the interview I had with that police officer, and at least appreciated the idea that my city had some sort of "smell check" / "gut check" system in place, just in case anyone inclined towards violence slipped through the (many) cracks of the NIC system. That being said, I also recognized that there was a strange subjectivity put into place there that I wasn't totally comfortable about compromising. Police officers are not always known for their honesty; hell, look what just happened right here in Massachusetts with Karen Read.
So, empowering police to make arbitrary decisions about who can or cannot have a gun is … not a perfect system. Perhaps it's better than the alternative! But it's still not great.
However, in the case of Joseph Francis above, it sure seems like the Hopkinton Police were trying to do their job and acting within their power to prevent future acts of violence. That's the ideal scenario for that sort of gun-permitting process — even though, at the same time, it does conflict with the idea of "innocent until proven guilty." The idea of restricting or suspending someone's rights without a formal trial is generally frowned upon (except in situations where it can be abused to oppress people).
Unfortunately, where it failed was in the Red Flag laws. Despite the good intentions of those laws — and again, they make sense to me in theory, and are probably better than the alternative! — they are essentially ineffective unless you can ensure that a potential offender has already been convicted of a felony. And in order to do that, you need to tighten up legal bureaucracies in ways that could very well end up harming other people.
In cases of domestic violence, a victim may be hesitant to formally press charges against their partner — either because they are scared of physical retaliation or because they don't think it'll make a difference in court. And unfortunately, those are valid fears. The people who comprise the legal system are typically men, and many of them are often willing to give the benefit of the doubt to a domestic offender. American police officers, in particular, are two to four times more likely to be perpetrators of domestic violence when compared to the general population. So they're also more likely to accept the offender's claim that it was just this one time, that he didn't mean it. They'll give him community service, and he'll be on his way — free to re-offend and free to buy a firearm.
In order to tighten that system so that Red Flag laws can work, we need to increasingly rely on police support and a legal bureaucracy that it is much more rigid in punishment and enforcement. In some ways, that could be good, particularly when it comes to domestic offenders. Unfortunately, it could also get very Draconian pretty quickly and will almost certainly be weaponized to harm already marginalized populations — people who might very well have a very valid need for self-defense!
This is not to say that Red Flag laws are a lost cause; just that, well, it's going to take a lot of work to get them right.
Local police didn't want him to have guns. He was allowed to buy them anyway. Then he killed his wife — and himself. [Amanda Milkovits / Boston Globe]
Gun Violence Isn't a Problem—it's actually 5 Problems, with Different Solutions [Thom Dunn / Medium]
