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.
So why is it a failure of red flag laws, and not a failure of all the other laws he broke up to that point. If he’s a FELON, you don’t even need a red flag law in that case, because federal (and state) laws make ownership illegal.
Francis had been arrested for disorderly conduct… 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… And, Francis had been charged with cyber-harassment of a woman, a misdemeanor.
That’s a fair number of charges. You’re telling me ALL of them were misdemeanors? People do serve time with misdemeanors, was he convicted and sentenced? Was he on a probation that would kick up a later offense to a felony?. Was the cyber-harassment considered domestic violence, because that can strip your gun rights even as a misdemeanor. Were all of these charges just dropped?
It seems to me the Red Flag Law was just the last domino to topple, after all of the other laws he broke also failed.
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.
So it’s a Catch-22? You tighten up laws so that people like this guy don’t keep worming their way through, but you end up cracking down on people who just fucked up and don’t deserve the same punishment?
I agree this whole situation is tragic and frustrating. In general the way we handle domestic violence is with indifference at best. Sometimes it feels like actual malice. This was even a clear case where I would agree with the use a Red Flag law being implemented. But the failure I think rests in the whole damn system which failed multiple times.
PS @thomdunn I appreciate your well thought out and nuanced post.
