How States Are Using Red Flag Laws to Try to Avert Mass Shootings

Judges in 19 states and the District of Columbia are issuing orders to keep guns out of the hands of people deemed dangerous, like a Fort Lauderdale teenager who threatened a school shooting.

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After a former student made a threat against Seagull Alternative High School in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the police moved quickly to seek an order barring him from possessing guns.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Seagull Alternative High School sits behind locked gates and a chain-link fence, a complex of low-slung buildings that provides an academic home for pregnant teenagers and students at risk of dropping out. On a Tuesday in early October, it was a target of the kind of threat that every school official dreads.

“I just might come to yo school and kill everybody,” a 17-year-old who had previously attended the school wrote in an Instagram message to a student, according to police records. He singled out the principal and a behavioral specialist and sent a chilling photograph: a handgun and an assault rifle, splayed out on a bed, with Seagull Alternative High School written across the top of the image.

Informed of the threat, law enforcement officials in Fort Lauderdale moved quickly. Making use of Florida’s so-called red flag law, the police obtained an order from a judge allowing them to remove any guns in the young man’s possession.

Gun safety activists and public health experts say that such orders — often known as extreme risk protection orders, or ERPOs — are a way to prevent mass shootings in a country that has been plagued by them. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia now have red flag laws, up from just two states a decade ago.

Advocates are pressing for more states — including Michigan and Minnesota, where Democrats recently took control of state legislatures — to pass them this year. Only two states controlled by Republicans, Florida and Indiana, have such laws.

What Are Red Flag Laws?

Sheryl Gay StolbergReporting on gun policy and public health

What Are Red Flag Laws?

Sheryl Gay StolbergReporting on gun policy and public healthBrendan McDermid/Reuters

Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have red flag laws, which authorize courts to issue temporary orders enabling law enforcement to remove firearms from people who are deemed dangerous.

Here’s how the laws work →

What Are Red Flag Laws?

Sheryl Gay StolbergReporting on gun policy and public healthDakota Santiago for The New York Times

If a gun owner poses a threat, the police — and in some states, family members — may petition a judge for an order, often called an extreme risk protection order. The subject of an order must surrender his or her weapons to law enforcement and is barred from purchasing firearms for a limited period of time.

What Are Red Flag Laws?

Sheryl Gay StolbergReporting on gun policy and public health

There are no criminal penalties for extreme risk protection orders because they are civil orders.

There are two types:

An emergency order, issued in the face of an immediate threat, lasts for a short period of time, often 14 days.
A final order is issued after a judge holds a hearing. It typically lasts no more than a year before it must be renewed. Instead of issuing a final order, a judge can also order the weapons returned to their owner.

What Are Red Flag Laws?

Sheryl Gay StolbergReporting on gun policy and public healthAnnie Mulligan for The New York Times

Gun rights groups say that red flag laws violate due process — the right to have one’s case heard in court — and they argue that the laws do not work. Backers of the laws say the problem is they are not used often enough.

What Are Red Flag Laws?

Sheryl Gay StolbergReporting on gun policy and public healthTamir Kalifa for The New York Times

In a bipartisan gun safety bill enacted last year, Congress provided funding to help states set up or bolster red flag laws. Advocates hope that Michigan and Minnesota, where Democrats recently took control of state legislatures, will pass their own laws this year.