There’s a lot of controversy around extreme risk protective orders, more commonly known as “red flag orders.” The laws that created them essentially argue that gun rights can and should be taken from people without due process. In doing so, they essentially concede that they don’t view Second Amendment rights as the same as other rights.
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And, of course, we know the kind of people who commonly support such laws. One would be hard-pressed to find an extreme leftist, for example, who favors such laws. Sure, not all Democrats are anti-gun, but the kind of people who, say, vocally support Hamas aren’t exactly members of the NRA, either. They tend tot think that red flag laws are good ideas.
It seems that some of those same folks are very upset at one being used.
When police searched the home of two Students for Justice in Palestine leaders, a pair of sisters at George Mason University, their allies painted a sympathetic picture.
The students were targeted, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), for engaging in “anti-genocide events on campus.” The Intercept reported that police found “antique firearms” registered to the students’ brother and brought gun-related charges as a result of his family’s “pro-Palestine activism.”
Excluded from those descriptions was the crime the sisters are suspected of committing. A group of student radicals defaced George Mason’s student center in August, spray painting messages that warned of a “student intifada.” In its coverage of the incident, the Washington Post wrote that “activists spray-painted words on Wilkins Plaza outside the university’s Johnson Center.”
Those activists caused thousands of dollars in damage, a felony in the state of Virginia, and police suspect the SJP leaders, sisters Jena and Noor Chanaa, led the group of vandals. Weeks after the incident, in November, a county judge granted a warrant—which is under seal until February, according to a Fairfax County court representative—allowing police to seize electronics from the Chanaa family home.
When officers entered the Chanaa family home, they found firearms—modern weapons, not antiques—as well as scores of ammunition and foreign passports, all of which sat in plain view, according to court documents obtained by the Free Beacon and sources familiar with the investigation.
They also found pro-terror materials, including Hamas and Hezbollah flags and signs that read “death to America” and “death to Jews,” according to court documents and sources familiar.
Police seized the weapons under Virginia’s red flag law, arguing that Mohammad Chanaa, the students’ brother and a George Mason alumnus, was “linked to destruction of property in connection with a large group of people with like-minded rhetoric” and posed a danger to others given his possession of “terroristic” materials.
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So these two sisters allegedly committed a felony, supported two different terrorist groups rather vocally, and then got hit with a red flag order–the same kind of thing that you or I might endure just for expressing the wrong opinion–and now it’s a problem?
Plus, it seems those guns weren’t antiques like CAIR claims. Then again, there are allegations that CAIR is supportive of terrorism as a general thing, so one shouldn’t be surprised they’d make claims unsupported by the facts. Whether they were lied to initially or whether they’re lying to the world is something I can’t say definitively, though I have my suggestions.
Now, I don’t like red flag laws. What that means is that while I’m kind of amused about this situation, I don’t actually like seeing it happen. Sure, it happened to the kind of people I don’t generally like, but that’s not how rights work. You can’t just turn a blind eye to someone you dislike having their rights abridged just because you dislike them.
This is called “consistency” and it matters a great deal to me.
But the flip side is that it makes it so much sweeter to note that many of those who would be supportive of the sisters, their cause, and CAIR in general actually support red flag laws. They believe they’re absolutely essential tools necessary to stop the spread of so-called gun violence.
Now, they’re big mad that someone actually used one on somebody they actually like.
It’s downright hilarious. More accurately, it would be if it weren’t for the fact that none of these people will look at this and realize the problem with these laws. They’ll just chalk it up to Islamophobia, racism, or whatever other term they’d rather use other than acknowledge that it’s the law they support that did this.
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