The Improbable Promise of Red Flag Laws - Zenzele Isoke

The Improbable Promise of Red Flag Laws

by Zenzele Isoke (with na’im madyun)

August 4, 2022

Buffalo, Uvalde, Highland Park; Chicago, Saint Louis, Minneapolis; Tulsa, El Paso, Atlanta. 

So many communities, so many mass shootings by so many people with so many guns. Politicians are once again taking notice and proposing so-called “common sense measures” like “red flag” laws.

Giving up on a serious bipartisan effort for an assault weapons ban or a high capacity magazine ban, members of Congress seem now to be working together to pass legislation to prevent shooting deaths. While red flag laws are designed to prevent the legal acquisition of new guns, it seems they will do very little to stop existing gun owners from using their weapons to harm themselves or others. And they seem to do even less to end the heavy trafficking of illegal firearms in our homes and communities. 

So what are red flag laws anyway? 

Red flag laws allow a judge to confiscate a person’s gun based upon a reasonable suspicion that they will use it to hurt themselves or another person. These laws allow family members, police officers and even doctors to petition a judge to temporarily suspend a person’s right to possess a firearm. For example, if you notice a family member or loved one taking pictures with guns on social media and publishing hateful manifestos, or threatening to kill people, you can petition a judge to have that person’s guns taken away. 

The implementation of these laws, including who can file a petition to activate a suspension of gun possession, vary from state to state. Many states already have them. Federal legislation is necessary to more evenly distribute how our cultural attitudes and regional tendencies will impact the implementation and enforcement of state laws. 

It is hard to believe that red flags will slow the epidemic of gun violence and mass murder in the United States.  Honestly, after an hour of conversation between two PhD’s (one in Educational Psychology and another in Gender Studies), we were more than a little unconvinced that these laws could do much to reduce the undeniable prevalence of death and injury caused by guns. Here are some questions that came to mind as we reacted to two recent waves of headlines and tweets on Red Flag legislation that swelled after the Uvalde school massacre and again after the Highland Park, July 4th parade killings.

The conversation between my partner and I went something like this:

“Can you red flag a mental health breakdown?

Can you red flag feelings of compounded victimization?

Can you red flag revenge fantasies?

Can you red flag the drinking that precedes a game of Russian roulette?

Can you red flag road rage?

Can you red flag a person who has a low tolerance for being bullied?

Can you red flag a four year old child who wants to go into their mother’s backpack and use her gun to play?

Can you red flag a rich man with no criminal history who just up and decides to shoot over sixty people at a sold-out concert?

Can you red flag a poor man who felt he was mistreated by his doctor?

Can you red flag a person who purchases a gun from his best friend so they can sell drugs and rob people?

Can you red flag a person who lives in fear that their people are being erased by society?

Can you red flag a person for seeking mental health care for depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder? Should you?

Can you red flag a person who relentlessly obsesses about guns and potential targets in their free time?

Can you red flag a person who is cheated on and abandoned by their partner two times? Three times? Should you?

Can you red flag an adult who has no one to love and lacks any kind of physical intimacy with another human being?

Even if you could red flag the majority of the potentially, problematic lived experiences, how preemptively might we begin the flagging? Do we red flag the report cards of middle schoolers, if we deem them to be trending towards wanting to shoot another person?

Will those with the authority to flag be required to recertify their flagging credentials every three years? Will their flagging record be evaluated?

If we preemptively flag, should we also retroactively flag? Do we flag current gun owners who expressed homicidal tendencies in the past 3 years? 5 years?

All humans suffer enormously in this world. People without guns are forced to sit with their pain and find less lethal outlets for relief and healing. It is the people who are suffering with guns that cause mass death and destruction. 

Red flagging humans who have human emotions will not prevent mass shootings. The whole culture is a 3,794,100 square mile gigantic red flag! We are all at risk of not being protected from ourselves. The hard-to-digest truth is that we have to believe in the promise of red flag laws to create change without adding even more suffering to gun owners.

As you can see, the whole idea of red flag laws left at least one of us with a bad taste in the mouth and a funky attitude. The terminology of red flag makes my shoulders tight; my brows fur and my lips twist up like I just took a big bite out of a half rotten lemon.

Another way to say this is that it invokes a feeling of irritation and aversion that is undeniably expressed in body language, speech and tone. The only good feeling is the flood of gratitude I feel for not owning a gun because l want to shoot the New York Times app on my cell phone or, worse, go down to the neighborhood sporting goods store and shoot the clerk for selling guns.

In such a hopelessly reactive mind state, I certainly can’t listen and consider deeply. I am unable to appreciate the sincerity of long grieving parents who have organized for years to pass red flag laws. I can’t take seriously the earnest and nuanced growing tower of evidence that policy makers and researchers have built to show that these laws can and do save lives. I can’t sense into the anticipation and zeal of advocates in liminality waiting for just the right moment to have their proposals funded and implemented. In my own state of worked-upness, cynicism and hard hearted self- righteousness, I become, in my mind and heart exactly the kind of person who can be driven to shoot out my frustration.

I want guns to be wholly and entirely abolished from society but I live in a country historically wedded to guns and gun violence.

This is the very definition of dukkha: Being defined by my own dissatisfaction about the way things are. Aversive mind states and attitudes are the result of craving, or desire. Wanting something badly tightens the heart and narrows the vision, making it difficult to relate to others with compassion and clear-seeing—what we call wisdom. Wisdom emerges with the practice of right mindfulness. With right mindfulness comes the possibility of living in harmony with the way things are, whether we like them or not. In this way, genuine emotional and spiritual independence from ever changing causes and conditions becomes possible. 

What is a “sista” to do?

I can only do what I can.  And then let go. 

And so I do. 

It is the only way to free my own heart, and so doing, become able to more fully connect to this culture with an open-minded and understanding spirit. When we sit, we can become closer to the ways in which we contribute to our own suffering and those around us. We can feel the tightness of our bodies and mind and breathe deeply into the sadness there. We can take care of the sadness and allow tenderness—a sweet ache to emerge. That ache is like the cooing of a newborn just wanting to be held close. And when you hold that precious infant close, and breathe in its newness, you relax and smile. You just spontaneously wish for the baby’s safety, happiness, and love.

The world is that way too. Even though it is not as loveable as a newborn, it still needs a bit of our TLC (tender loving care)  just like us. Feeling deeply into feelings of helplessness and futility is the first step, so that it is possible to see that these feelings are actually the result of Wrong View.

As practitioners, it is important to become more fully aware of how black and white, absolutist, binary thinking and inflexibility blocks a spirit of understanding that can water the thirsty seeds of hope both in our own hearts and those of others—including those we may vehemently disagree with. In a recent speech given by abolitionist and political philosopher, Angela Y. Davis, she argued that hope is a discipline. It is something we have to practice and work at every single day. That includes learning how to support even the tiniest and seemingly imperceptible sideway steps, towards  something better. Choosing to hope anyway, to see the possibilities of change anyway is part of the wisdom of virya paramita, the wisdom of energy or vigor. 

In the essay, “No Separate Thing”, Ejo McMullen writes, “This is not vigor just for vigor’s sake. This is the energy that comes from realizing our responsibility toward, and our entanglement with, beings and things.”  It is from this realization that liberation becomes an ever more graspable possibility–in spite of the violence and in spite of all the guns. Allow me to explain:

Many policy experts on this issue believe that red flag laws can prevent people who threaten others with violence from hurting others by taking away their guns. This includes those who use social media or go into schools or workplaces issuing threats. Family members who have lost loved ones to gun-related suicides also believe that the implementation of these laws can prevent death. It would be a challenge to measure the effectiveness of red flag laws. It is hard to fully appreciate and measure horrific tragedies that don’t happen. Our attention is usually intensely focused on the suffering that is present and not the absence of suffering.

Laws that hold real potential to lessen the lethality of gun trafficking and use in our communities are better than thoughts and prayers, cynicism and naysaying, even our own. Perhaps, the promise of red flag laws in a society that has learned to swim in a sea of guns is a gift. The opportunity to focus our attention on the absence of suffering that can result from these laws is an invitation to practice with joyful, vigorous, and diligent effort in the face of the improbable.