“When a judge issues an Extreme Risk Protection Order,” adds White Plains attorney Peter Tilem, “what he’s doing is he is authorizing the police to go to a person’s house, break down their door in the middle of the night, drag them out of bed, and remove all the guns from the house.” Leaving the alleged “dangerous person” to still be dangerous. Red Flag legislation is nothing more than gun confiscation. Without due process.
Counsel for people whose firearms are subject to seizures under New York’s expanded Red Flag Law—impinging on the right to bear arms—vowed to monitor the impact of lawmakers’ recent infusion of $10 million to assist state police in investigating and enforcing the statute.
The beefed-up statute, which Gov. Kathy Hochul signed in June, a month after the racially-motivated shooting massacre in Buffalo, broadened who could petition a judge to remove guns from a person who’s been deemed a threat to himself or others.
Two upstate trial court judges have since declared the expanded law unconstitutional.
Nick Passalacqua, managing attorney for Passalacqua & Associates of Utica, said: “Whether you like the law or not, it’s kind of irrelevant to the fact that it’s going to continually be challenged and scrutinized until probably the Supreme Court hears it, because the state obviously has no intention of easing it or changing it, or they would be at least undertaking those discussions, which I haven’t heard that they are even considering. They’re just throwing more money at it.”
By Brian Lee
