Editor's Note: This article is from Gun Pulse, an email-only newsletter from The Sentinel published six days per week to cover the battle over the Second Amendment.
South Carolina Democratic State Senator Darrell Jackson authored a bill that would allow law enforcement to seize weapons from those deemed a threat to themselves or others.
The newly proposed red flag bill would allow either a solicitor or two law enforcement officers to request a warrant from a judge to immediately seize weapons from a resident, holding the firearms for as long as a year if a probate court considers that resident to be an imminent risk.
“You have families whose lives have been tragically, tragically impacted by someone who should never have a gun, never have a weapon,” Jackson said of his legislation.
The citizen must then attend a hearing in probate court within seven days of the weapons seizure, where the judge must consider whether that citizen recklessly used or brandished the firearm, has a history of physical force or substance abuse, or was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. The state must prove at the hearing that the citizen poses an imminent risk.
Second Amendment advocates criticize red flag gun confiscation laws because they do not afford due process rights to citizens before their firearms are removed from them.
Gun Owners of South Carolina president Jerry Stoudemire told local news that the bill does not have a “steering wheel” and warned that officials would abuse the legislation if passed.
“They would go in a person’s house and clean all the firearms out of it,” Stoudemire cautioned. “These are people that hunt, they fish, they carry while they are fishing too.”
The proposal of the red flag gun confiscation bill comes months after Republican primary voters in South Carolina dealt a severe blow to the establishment in the state, removing multiple Republican lawmakers who oppose gun rights. Several lawmakers who opposed constitutional carry and other conservative priorities indeed witnessed heavy losses in their primary elections.
