CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and other Republican AGs say a new hub created by the U.S. Department of Justice “pushes for the more aggressive use of so-called ‘red flag’ gun laws.”
Morrisey is leading a 19-state coalition in taking issue with the newly formed National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center, which was formed earlier this year. In announcing the center, the DOJ said it will provide training and technical assistance to law enforcement officials, prosecutors, attorneys, judges, clinicians, victim service and social service providers, community organizations, and behavioral health professionals responsible for implementing laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of people who pose a threat to themselves or others.
“In a simpler term: it’s a program that pushes for the more aggressive use of so-called ‘red flag’ gun laws,” Morrisey said. “The center is a joint effort by the DOJ and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, home of the Center for Gun Violence Solutions.
“The launch of the National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center will provide our partners across the country with valuable resources to keep firearms out of the hands of individuals who pose a threat to themselves or others,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a press release. “The establishment of the center is the latest example of the Justice Department’s work to use every tool provided by the landmark Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to protect communities from gun violence.”
The DOJ says ERPO laws, which are modeled off domestic violence protection orders, create a civil process allowing law enforcement, family members (in most states), and medical professionals or other groups (in some states) to petition a court to temporarily prohibit someone at risk of harming themselves or others from purchasing and possessing firearms for the duration of the order.
As of March, 21 states and the District of Columbia had enacted ERPO laws. The DOJ says successful and effective ERPO implementation requires a comprehensive and holistic approach that incorporates a wide range of stakeholders. It also says the center is designed to provide resources consistent with that need.
Morrisey led a letter urging U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to rethink the department’s approach.
“How much more obvious can this get: this program is misguided and is nothing more than an infringement of Americans’ Constitutional rights,” Morrisey said, adding in the letter that red-flag laws of the sort pushed by the program “empower governmental authorities to suspend fundamental rights under the Second Amendment with no genuine due process —w hile also stigmatizing persons with mental health issues along the way.”
Morrisey said red-flag laws raise questions beyond the Second Amendment, asking “how can officers enter a home and seize a gun without such as a warrant in a way that’s consistent with the Fourth Amendment? How can ex parte proceedings that lead to firearm seizure be good enough under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments?”
Several Republican lawmakers also blasted the program as an effort to seize guns from law-abiding Americans through unconstitutional means.
Joining Morrisey in the letter to Garland are his counterparts in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming.