What did Trump mean by “Take the firearms first…”?
Let’s look at what Trump said, in context:
Vice President Mike Pence:
Violence, restraining orders, California has a version of this. And I think in your meeting with governors earlier this week, individually, and as a group, we spoke about the states taking steps. But the focus is to literally give families and give local law enforcement additional tools if an individual is reported to be a potential danger to themselves or others. Allow due process so no one’s rights are trampled but the ability to go to court, obtain an order and collect not only the firearms but any weapons in the possession.
President Trump:
Or, Mike, take the firearms first and then go to court. Because that’s another system. A lot of times by the time you go to court, it takes so long to go to court, to get the due process procedures. I like taking the guns early. Like in this crazy man’s case that just took place in Florida. He had a lot of firearms. They saw everything. To go to court would have taken a long time. You could do exactly what you’re saying but take the guns first, go through due process second.
As is true with so many things Trump says, it’s hard to figure out exactly what Trump meant by that last sentence I quoted. His words certainly can be interpreted as meaning “away with due process, just grab the guns!” His imprecision in speech is both regrettable and exploitable, and in addition that imprecision often goes in the direction of sounding like it expresses a tyrannical impulse.
Before Trump took office, this was a trait of his that very much alarmed me. Before he had a track record in government, I believed some of his utterances to be a strong indication that he would be governing as a tyrant. But since he’s been president, although the language of the tyrannic impulse (or something that sounds like that, and certainly could be that) is still there at times in his speech, I don’t see action from him that falls into that category. In fact, I saw more of that sort of thing from Obama.
So I look to another explanation of what Trump meant here. Fortunately, I don’t have to look far. I’m not interested in twisting Trump’s words to make them seem benign when they’re not, but I actually think he probably meant something far more benign in this case, and that this is supported by the context. For example, I’ve noticed—way before he made this statement—that Trump seems to emphasize the mental health aspects of mass shooting prevention, and to differentiate those from the strictly legal model involved in police arrests and the like.
Now, those two systems are actually both ultimately governed by the legal system, but with different emphases. In other words, there is due process involved in the mental health system in the sense that taking someone’s rights away (infringing on liberty through involuntary commitment and/or gun removal, for example) requires some sort of due process that complies with rules to limit that action to situations in which it is deemed necessary. But I think that here, Trump is using “due process” to talk about the strictly law-and-order system (i.e., arrest and prosecution, whether under the adult rules or the rules for juveniles) rather than the mental health system that can end up involving the court system at times. This distinction is also indicated by Trump’s words, “…that’s another system,” in the second sentence of that second paragraph in the quote.
It seems to me that Trump is actually talking about something like the red flag legislation he has advocated in the past, statutes that allow for preventive and temporary removal of firearms from persons deemed dangerous who have not yet committed any crimes, with a court hearing coming later. These laws work like this [emphasis mine]:
The laws allow weapons to be seized for a brief time ”” typically two or three weeks ”” after which a petitioner, usually a police agency, must go back to court to let a judge decide whether the gun owner’s behavior amounts to a threat to himself or others and whether the weapons should be held longer.
Trump failed to make that clear, but I’m almost certain that’s what he meant. But in failing to make it clear, he gave ammunition (pun intended) to his opponents, an opportunity they will not fail to use.
Salena Zito noted during the 2016 campaign that Trump’s opponents take him literally but not seriously while Trump’s supporters take him seriously but not literally.
Likewise, Glenn Reynolds has frequently cautioned readers to pay attention to what Trump does rather than what he says.
IMO both of these are good observations, we shall see if they typify this recent situation.
Neo… I think you’ve got it right.
Trump is thinking fast intervention — and a rapid-fire pleading through the court system.
He knows that most court issues proceed at a glacial pace.
The difficulty is of course, in reliably and objectively determining who is and who is not an actual threat. The likelihood of abuse is high both on a personal and political level.
Most importantly, no system will catch every nutjob before they manifest their murderous intent. As just the Vegas shooting demonstrates.
The result will be a continuation of the incessant demands for banning categories of guns. Until incrementally, near total gun confiscation has been achieved.
Too many Americans have drunk too deeply of the Left’s Kool-Aid. Each succeeding generation is manifesting a deeper level of indoctrination. The majority of today’s young adults are enabling the fashioning of the future chains of their oppression. Most are utterly unwilling to make the sacrifices neccessary to liberty and thus are unworthy of it.
Actions have consequences and the consequence of dismissing liberty’s value is the loss of it.
Note that Trump has moved the discussion from “Take everyone’s guns,” to emphasis on the mental health factor and the provocations and limits of emergent confiscation with subsequent due process justification or denial of same.
The Libs don’t want to talk about mental health issues, since it was they who de-institutionalized the mentally ill, but Trump is raising that flag & forcing them to salute it, so to speak. He has a knack for doing this.
We’ll see what kind of sausage emerges from the grinder, eh?
David Blackmon at PoliZette has a different idea about this, which has some merit.
This is tricky stuff, I had a nice conversation with an old, 80 years old fellow bird hunter and psychiatrist mostly retired but still lectures and he held a chair at the OU medical center for a number of years. I was up in Oklahoma visiting family and had time to spend several hours discussing mental health and guns.
What I understood is that prior to the mid 1980’s it was easier for a doc to have someone committed if there were enough factors to indicate the patient might harm himself or others. There was also more sharing of information about the mental state of individuals who had problems. The doc told me that today there is a lengthy process to commit someone and any sharing of information due to HIPPA could lead to the Dr. being sued, until there was an actual act of violence.
He agreed that there had been abuse in the old way of doing things but there had been a lot of destruction, mayhem and death the way things are done now. Just having something show up on official records which would flag a gun sale because of a doc’s concern about a troubled individual, with current laws is an invasion of privacy and HIPPA regs. At least that is what I heard in the discussion, it seems as if it is an all or nothing the way things are being done.
I suspect that what Trump was trying to say and it kind of makes sense is that we need a look closer flag that pops up when a check is run for the purchase of a gun. In the recent disaster in Florida it appears that criminal acts could have been reported numerous time on the shooter but the school and law enforcement had made decisions to handle criminal actions in a manner to keep them from showing up on public records.
I am open to discussion about this fall through the crack thing and also to having legal way to make an intervention with rapid recourse to due process. I put all of the fault of this last shooting first on the shooter and then on the local law, school and FBI because they were not doing their jobs however us gun guys and not well served if all we do is point out their faults and say, “Go Pee Up a Tree” not my problem.
blert Says:
March 1st, 2018 at 4:02 pm
Neo… I think you’ve got it right.
Trump is thinking fast intervention – and a rapid-fire pleading through the court system.
He knows that most court issues proceed at a glacial pace.
* * *
The idea of having a sequence of Flag, Inspect, Confiscate, Adjudicate looks good on paper, but needs to be balanced by the fact that, due to the glacial pace of the court system, it could be years (not weeks or days) before the falsely-accused gun owner regains his property, if he ever does.
Once the weapons are in the hands of the police, they are going to be loath to let them go.
See: civil asset forfeiture.
I don’t think it’s just an imprecision in language. I think he genuinely thinks like this. An executive agency preforms an action. Courts review the action. That’s due process.
I guess he thinks actions taken by the executive must meet certain criteria, like being reasonable or whatever.
dexiansheng Says:
March 1st, 2018 at 8:26 pm
I don’t think it’s just an imprecision in language. I think he genuinely thinks like this. An executive agency preforms an action. Courts review the action. That’s due process.
I guess he thinks actions taken by the executive must meet certain criteria, like being reasonable or whatever.
* * *
You may be close to correct on Trump’s thinking.
(He is not alone in misunderstanding the Constitutional and statutorial situation; cue Andy McCarthy.)
However, the desired “executive actions” must conform to a certain amount of due process (“meet certain criteria”) before being taken, then the courts follow a different type of due process before the accused can be judged, and another variant before he can be found guilty, and another in sentencing.
Due process covers a lot of territory in our increasingly litigious world.
I take your point. I think it must be very technical. I checked out the entry for due process over at the Legal Information Institute. I was surprised to find this idea of “the new property”.
I agree that Trump’s words were imprecise and have been taken out of context and misinterpreted. Trump supporters such as Laura Ingraham and others are now labeling him a sellout gun grabber.
Because virtually every mass shooting has been committed by a mentally unstable person, the goal is to identify them and stop them before they act. Since most of these shooters were identified by at least a few people before they acted, it seems a worthy goal to attempt.
These Gun Violence Restraining Orders (GVROs) must be carefully crafted by lawyers, mental health experts, and law enforcement. Well thought out criteria – aggressiveness, cruelty to animals, threats, obsessive about guns, etc. These are just my inept attempts to try to identify characteristics of those who could be dangerous. Experts would be much more precise and spell out the traits in more detail. Procedures could be crafted from the report by a concerned citizen, interview, detention, gun removal, further evaluation, and adjudication of the person’s fate. Certainly, any detention or restricting of firearms should be temporary and involve mental health evaluation by a qualified psychiatrist – not a social worker. The law must also spell out what happens if the subject is found to be mentally impaired and too dangerous to be released into society, guns or not. We must assume that some of these cases would involve people who should not be loose in society. Most would, hopefully, be treatable and able to be habilitated, but some might be treatable but unable to own firearms.
I look at GVROs as a cautionary action to prevent mentally ill, dangerous people from carrying out a mass shooting. IMO, it’s worth a try – at least in a few states to see how it works. Careful evaluation would be necessary, and if the process is abused, it could be modified or ended.
Anyway, I’m not concerned about Trump taking our guns away. I’m more concerned about tariffs. Those he can do without Congress. We don’t know how the new tariffs on steel and aluminum will damage trade, but I’m not optimistic.
The optimism by some that a sincere attempt will be made at objectivity with proper respect for the Constitutional rights of someone accused of mental instability are quite frankly, laughable when the liberal left’s attitude toward guns, disregard for the rule of law and dismissal of the Constitution is considered.
This issue for the left is solely an opportunity to ratchet society a step closer to their goal of a disarmed populace. The left is cynically using the decency of those on the right and well meaning liberals and their concern for children’s safety to further their agenda of officially approved guns only being in the hands of the government. Look to Europe for the future they envision and then look to Europe’s “no-go zones” that are metasticizing for the future they are creating.
He doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s just a scatterbrained celebrity and heiress, like Paris Hilton.
That’s why his major accomplishment is an inheritance: The Obama Recovery. Hopefully he doesn’t screw this inheritance up like he did his last one. The last thing we need is anti-capitalist America-first neo-marxist protectionism.
But I doubt he’ll do anything on that front either. Don’t worry. Be Happy.
Concerning tariffs, I’m a free trader. He makes an argument on national security grounds, which I’m willing to consider. But the Secretary of Defense doesn’t seemed to thrilled about this.
I think it could go really bad. The economy is doing fine, that’s people’s top concern. Democrats can’t talk about anything but Dreamers and Guns. Now we’ve gone and given them a potentially powerful wedge issue.
We’ll just have to wait and see. I know what theory tells us, but one can hope. And it’s not like anyone can say this is a complete surprise. He’s always been very vocal about this. Hopefully China doesn’t respond by deporting me.
An heiress? The Trumphaters are really confused about gender. Manju, do you know which bathroom to use?
Trum is just sounding out the room, the way people like me do when testing people. He won’t make an actual final decision until he figures out what is going on. This is similar to Bush II’s method, although Trum relies on his charisma and people manipulation skills rather than Bush’s IQ.
To Manju:
The Obama Recovery Inheritance?
Surely you jest……..
People react like Trump is a dictator. Really – so what if he says that due process comes later? That isn’t the law and doesn’t become so because he says so. Even if it did somehow – who is going to enforce it? Contrast this to illegal immigration (like some have) and marijuana laws. The state and local authorities are not going to enforce the laws. They are not legally obligated to enforce Federal law. What laws would they be? Most gun laws are state laws and the procedures concerning mental health are state laws, etc. I actually think this debate could shed some light on the due process issues with the No Fly List and the claim that it should be used to bar gun purchases.
Geoffrey Britain Says:
March 2nd, 2018 at 12:40 am
This issue for the left is solely an opportunity to ratchet society a step closer to their goal of a disarmed populace.
* * *
http://thelawdogfiles.blogspot.com/2017/10/gun-rights-cake-analogy.html
Lawdog here is kvetching about the way nifty posts get plagiarized on the interwebz, but he does link to this earlier post which actually contains the analogy, along with some history and general snarking:
https://thelawdogfiles.blogspot.com/2013/01/a-repost.html
“Let’s say I have this cake. It is a very nice cake, with “GUN RIGHTS” written across the top in lovely floral icing. Along you come and say, “Give me that cake.”
I say, “No, it’s my cake.”
You say, “Let’s compromise. Give me half.” I respond by asking what I get out of this compromise, and you reply that I get to keep half of my cake.
Okay, we compromise. Let us call this compromise The National Firearms Act of 1934.
This leaves me with half of my cake and there I am, enjoying my cake when you walk back up and say, “Give me that cake.”
I say — again: “No, it’s my cake.”
You say, “Let’s compromise.” What do I get out of this compromise? Why, I get to keep half of what’s left of the cake I already own.
So, we compromise — let us call this one the Gun Control Act of 1968 — and this time I’m left holding what is now just a quarter of my cake.
And I’m sitting in the corner with my quarter piece of cake, and here you come again. You want my cake. Again.
This time you take several bites — we’ll call this compromise the Clinton Executive Orders — and I’m left with about a tenth of what has always been MY DAMN CAKE and you’ve got nine-tenths of it.
Let me restate that: I started out with MY CAKE and you have already ‘compromised’ me out of ninety percent of MY CAKE …
… and here you come again. Compromise! … Lautenberg Act (nibble, nibble). Compromise! … The HUD/Smith and Wesson agreement (nibble, nibble). Compromise! … The Brady Law (NOM NOM NOM). Compromise! … The School Safety and Law Enforcement Improvement Act (sweet tap-dancing Freyja, my finger!)
After every one of these “compromises” — in which I lose rights and you lose NOTHING — I’m left holding crumbs of what was once a large and satisfying cake, and you’re standing there with most of MY CAKE, making anime eyes and whining about being “reasonable”, and wondering “why we won’t compromise” as you try for the rest of my cake.”