Tucker Carlson: Red flag laws will end due process
WARNING—Graphic footage: Fox News host Tucker Carlson reacts to calls for red flag laws following the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'
Joe Biden's publicist just announced with a straight face that he plans to run again in 2024. We'll address that at some length tomorrow. But first, another crisis in the news. So, after the killings in Buffalo and Uvalde a few weeks ago, you begin to hear people on television talk about something called red flag laws. The government, they informed us, could actually end mass shootings tomorrow simply by taking the guns away from mass shooters before they commit mass shootings. It's not complicated.
In fact, it's such an obvious solution that you had to wonder why we weren't already doing that. Who doesn't want to prevent mass shootings? Well, only the gun lobby. Everybody else cares about children. So, a lot of Americans, not surprisingly, now say they want red flag laws, and why wouldn't they? Like supporting Black Lives Matter or fighting climate change or getting the COVID shot or standing with the brave people of Ukraine. Red flag laws seem like one of those ideas that no decent person could possibly oppose.
You want crazy people to have guns? Of course, you don't. Who would? So naturally, you're for red flag laws and in fact, we may soon get red flag walks across the country. So, what would that mean if we do?
Well, two things you should know. First: Red flag laws will not end mass shootings, but red flag laws will end due process. Due process is a simple concept, but it's the key to everything that is good about America.
In our system of justice, citizens cannot be punished without first being charged with a crime. Politicians cannot just decide to hurt you, throw you in handcuffs, lock you in jail, seize your property simply because they don't like how you think or how you vote. No. Before they punish you, they have to go through a formal process in which they describe which specific law you broke and exactly how you broke it. They have to prove it.
MSNBC HOST COMPARES GUNS TO SLAVERY: ‘LINCOLN WAS CRITICIZED FOR MOVING TOO SLOWLY’ TO ‘END SLAVERY’
For serious crimes with big penalties, the government has to convince a group of your fellow citizens first. It's called a grand jury and this government must convince them that you deserve to be punished or they cannot proceed. None of this is new. This is the way we've done things in America for more than 200 years, and it's exactly why we have and have always had the fairest justice system in the world. People move to this country from all over the globe to benefit from it. But red flag laws will end this.
Under red flag laws, the government doesn't have to prove you did anything wrong in order to strip you of your most basic rights. All that's required to punish you is a complaint, possibly even an anonymous complaint in which somebody says you seem dangerous. Now, that complaint doesn't come from a grand jury. It can come from anyone, including someone who hates you or someone who simply doesn't like your politics. It doesn't matter because no jury will ever see it. On the basis of that unproven complaint, you lose your freedom and your ability to defend yourself and your family.
Now, how could that possibly happen in this country? Well, the Supreme Court has said unequivocally that it can't happen here. A year ago, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Caniglia vs Strom. Police in Rhode Island had seized the personal firearms of a 68-year-old man whose wife had called in a complaint against him after they had an argument. That man had committed no crime. He'd never been convicted of a crime, and he was judged by doctors to be sane. And yet the authorities took away his guns anyway.
He sued under the Fourth Amendment and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The result was not even close. The Supreme Court sided with the gun owner in that case in a rare nine-zero decision. That means that every justice, liberal and conservative, agreed that authorities cannot just seize your property or throw you in jail because they don't like the way you look or because someone is mad at you. So, red flag laws are unconstitutional, period. We don't need to guess about that. And yet the Biden administration is pushing them anyway. Why? Because they don't care.
How is Joe Biden able to ignore a Supreme Court decision from last year? Simple. He declares an emergency and does what he wants. He's done it before. The White House did the same thing with the eviction moratorium and vaccine mandates last year. "It's an emergency. We don't have time for due process!"
So, you can see why Democrats love emergencies. Nothing gives them more power more quickly. They've declared the atrocities in Uvalde and Buffalo an emergency, unlike the daily mass shootings in Baltimore and Chicago, cities they run and whose killings they therefore assiduously ignore. And on the base of that emergency, they can move forward with gun confiscation.
The White House now wants Congress to pass a law paying the states to enact red flag laws. And here's the amazing part: At least ten Republican senators are backing this effort from the Biden White House and that means this is virtually guaranteed to pass. What's the reasoning? Well, here's one of those senators, John Cornyn of Texas.
REP. MASSIE SAYS 'GOOD GUYS' WITH GUNS STOPPING 'BAD GUYS' IS 'INCONVENIENT TRUTH' FOR DEMS
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) speaks on a proposed Democratic tax plan, at the U.S. Capitol on August 04, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
REPORTER: You have colleagues on the other, in the other chamber who are already coming out against this before you even put out a proposal.
SEN. JOHN CORNYN: I'm not surprised. Some people will not want to touch this with a ten-foot pole because they're concerned about the politics of it, but I think this is a time where hopefully we can transcend that personal political interest and do what we think will save lives. To me, that's the ultimate goal. We can do something sensible that does not undermine the rights of law-abiding citizens under the Constitution to keep and bear arms.
So there are two things to notice about that soundbite, which is so revealing. The first is the use of the term "sensible." Now that is a Democratic talking point approved by the DNC. "It's sensible gun safety regulation." So here you have John Cornyn taking Nancy Pelosi's language and he's doing it on purpose and then you hear him describe anyone who disagrees with him. Why would you disagree with John Cornyn? Well, according to John Cornyn, anyone who disagrees with them is "concerned about the politics" of red flag laws, not the wisdom of red flag laws, not whether or not red flag laws are constitutional, but the grubby politics.
In other words, says John Cornyn, anyone who disagrees with me is low and unethical.
Now, if you're not used to hearing liberal demagoguery like that from Republicans, you should know that John Cornyn is not the only one engaging in it. He is joined in this effort by Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Rob Portman of Ohio, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Mitt Romney of course of Utah, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, needless to say, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina (always on board for any bad idea) and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
Particularly interesting to see Lindsey Graham on board, the person who encouraged Capitol Hill police to shoot more Trump voters, who has no problem with violence, whose life is organized around worshiping it, telling you that you can't have a gun. Now, all the senators whose names we just read, many of whom are retiring so they're beyond the reach of voters, have the backing of the top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell.
So, what exactly are they backing when they back red flag laws?
Well, we can take Florida's experience as an example. In Florida, the police can seize guns from people who pose a "significant danger" based on "any relevant evidence." Huh? That's it, any relevant evidence. The law raises some obvious questions, and the most obvious is if you can seize people's guns without proving that they committed a crime, why can't you imprison them without proving they committed a crime? If you can take their guns, why can't you take their homes? Why can't you empty their bank accounts? Oh, sound paranoid? Alex Jones stuff? That just happened in Canada.
FLORIDA BROTHERS, 11 AND 14, ARRESTED FOR STEALING GUNS, AMMO FROM GUN SHOP, POLICE SAY
What stops it from happening here? We already know the authorities are abusing the red flag laws already on the books. Kendra Parris is a lawyer based in Florida who specializes in them. In a recent interview, she said clients are able to hire lawyers, have "vastly higher" odds of getting their firearms back from the government.
Of course, laws like this always penalize the weakest. She said courts are taking it "better safe than sorry approach" to avoid political blowback and the police are taking advantage of that. So, court records show that cops in Florida often show up to the homes of citizens who present them with "stipulations." If you agree in writing to surrender your firearms, you have a chance of getting them back after a year. Now, as it happens, that's a pretty tempting offer to offer when you have armed people in your living room. But it is and it remains and again, we don't need to guess about it because the Supreme Court just ruled on this, it's unconstitutional.
It is for several reasons. It's a clear violation of the search and seizure prohibition on the Fourth Amendment, but it's also applied unfairly. And even the people who wrote our current red flag laws admit that. In New York, for example, Assembly member Jo Anne Simon co-sponsored the state's red flag law. "Basically, it's all over the place," Simon admitted. "You have places where we have one filed, in other places where it's 38 filed."
So, how will these laws be applied? Well, of course, they will be applied along political lines, just like everything else currently is in this highly politicized country. So, if you don't like someone, if you don't like what someone believes, that person will be a target for unconstitutional search and seizure. Armed authorities showing up in somebody's home and taking their personal property at gunpoint. And if you doubt that, that will happen, look at this.
This is the guy, the very same member of Congress who had sex with a Chinese spy demanding that cops disarm Ben Shapiro because Ben Shapiro says things the Chinese government disagrees with. This is from Eric Swalwell: "Please tell me this lunatic does not own a gun. Reason number 1,578 that America needs red flag laws." Eric Swalwell wrote that.
Now what would qualify as a trigger for gun seizure in the view of Eric Swalwell under the red flag was that he supports and now Republicans in the Senate support? Well, here's the video that Ben Shapiro made that Swalwell thinks qualifies him for red flag law. Watch.
BEN SHAPIRO: If you come tell me that you're going to indoctrinate my kids in a particular policy and that I can't pull my kid out of the school and send my kid to a school I want to send them to, that I can't go to the church or synagogue that I want to go to, and if you make that national policy, not just California policy where I can move, but national policy, people are not going to stand for that. I now have two choices. One is to leave the country utterly. Two is to pick up a gun. Those are the only choices that you have left me and now people are on " Oh this is, how could you say something like that? How could you be so extreme?" It's not extreme to defend the fundamental rights the Constitution was created in order to protect. These rights pre-exist government.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) delivers remarks during the House Judiciary Committee markup of H.R. 7120, the "George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020," on Capitol Hill on June 17, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images)
"These rights pre-exist government." Well, actually our founding documents make that point which he is merely repeating, but on the basis of effectively quoting the founding documents of the country we live in, Eric Swalwell says the police should show up at Ben Shapiro's house and take his firearms away. Does anybody, even Eric Swalwell, who is deranged, sincerely believe that Ben Shapiro is a violent threat to anyone? No, of course not. Ben Shapiro is an ideological threat and an ideological threat is the only kind of threat people like Eric Swalwell actually care about and you know that when you look at the laws that they're pushing and that Republicans are backing.
If these laws were actually designed to fight gun crime, they would, among other things, force prosecutors to enforce existing gun laws against people who are committing all the murders and it's not Ben Shapiro. In Los Angeles and many other cities, that's not happening and that's why those criminals openly support the Soros-backed prosecutor, George Gascon. Watch.
WILLIE WILKERSON, GANG MEMBER CHARGED WITH MURDER: I told you last time he wanna hurry up and try to get something did before they re-elect somebody else besides Gascon and bring back that little, uh, b------- life without parole and uh the death penalty. If he could get the manslaughter, then s---.Manslaughter only carries six, nine, 12.
Yeah. So that's just one tape. We can play you video, as we often do, of what's happening in our city. What you're looking at is anarchy, tyranny. People who are favored by the regime can do whatever they want. You vote the right way, commit whatever crimes you want, in jail for 10 minutes, you're out, go do it again, no problem. Baltimore can happen, mass killings on an ongoing basis for decades and no one will say a word. But if you're disfavored by the regime, no punishment is too strong, no infraction too small.
None of the gun legislation that John Cornyn and all these other pompous buffoons who were siding with Nancy Pelosi support, none of that legislation would do anything about the core problem, which is DAs like George Gascon, who are failing to enforce existing gun laws, gun laws that, by the way, George Gascon himself, to name one example, is breaking.
A whistleblower in Gascon's office says he was fired for complaining about Gascon's habit of illegally carrying firearms aboard airplanes. So, why haven't the cops red-flagged George Gascon and disarmed him? Is anyone going to red-flag Hunter Biden, who lied on a federal drug form, was a drug addict carrying a illegally obtained weapon? No, of course not, because red flag laws aren't designed to punish the politically loyal. And that's why you get scenes like this in New Orleans, which the police do nothing about.
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST: GUNS HARM CHILDREN MORE THAN CHILD PORNOGRAPHY, SO LET'S RESTRICT THEM
So hey, John Cornyn, will your legislation do anything about that? Because anybody who's okay with that or what's happening in downtown Chicago or downtown Baltimore or Gary, Indiana or Detroit, just pick a city, every day of the week – fix those things and get back to me about the AR in my closet.
By the way in New Orleans, the Soros-backed DA there, Jason Williams isn't worried about what you just saw. Last year, his office dismissed more than 60% of violent felony cases that came to his office, most of them involving firearms. So, they just dismissed him. These are the people worried about gun crime. For perspective, the previous administration dismissed only 16% of those cases.
Another Soros-backed DA in Philadelphia has a similar record. In the first half of last year, Larry Krasner's office withdrew or dismissed 65% of all gun charges. Does that seem high? Well, it is because in 2015, that figure was just 17%. New ideology, new outcome, and of course, the outcome is more dead people. But this law does nothing about that. It ignores it completely in favor of redefining you as a violent threat and giving the authorities controlled by the Biden administration the right to march into your house with guns drawn and disarm you.
So, what are they ignoring? Well, let's see. Last year in Philadelphia, we set a record set for homicides. Already this year, more than 200 people have been shot to death in the city of Philadelphia, which is not a huge city, and it's getting smaller. On Friday, for example, a 14-year-old boy was killed in a drive-by. On Saturday, a man was shot five times in West Philadelphia. Did you see that on the news? Probably not.
On Sunday night, a man taking care of his mother in North Philadelphia was shot in the back of the head. So, if you're actually worried about gun crimes, gun atrocities (and for the record we are because unlike Lindsay Graham. We actually hate violence) you would do something about this and punish the people who are committing gun crimes.
But no. They want to prevent you from defending your family, from buying or holding guns. Why is that? Well, we don't need to guess because they're telling us. Watch what the attorney general of the United States, and just to restate, this guy actually is the attorney general. He's more than a craven political hack. He runs the DOJ. Watch him describe, Mr. Merrick Garland, the biggest threat facing this country today.
MERRICK GARLAND, US ATTORNEY GENERAL: In the FBI's view, the top domestic violent extremist threat comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocated for the superiority of the White race.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks to announce a team to conduct a critical incident review of the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, during a media availability at the Department of Justice , Wednesday, June 8, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
That's just a total lie, actually, and we have numbers to prove it, but, you know, it's a lie. There's no justification rationally for what Merrick Garland just said. It's ridiculous. It's an obvious untruth and anyone living in a major city knows that.
So, why do they keep telling you that?
Well, because nothing the Biden administration is doing and nothing that is happening in Congress right now will actually address gun violence. That's not the point, John Cornyn. The point is to allow the Democratic Party to become even more powerful, and if it feels like it, to send its armed agents to raid the homes of Ben Shapiro and other disobedient people the Democratic Party doesn't like.