Last month, President Joe Biden signed the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act,” which included incentives for states to pass red flag laws.
A red flag law would allow authorities to confiscate guns from a mentally unstable individual if that person were deemed a threat to others or themselves by a judge.
State Rep. Andrew Sorrell (R-Muscle Shoals), who is currently the Republican nominee for state auditor, filed a bill in 2020 that would prevent enforcement by the state of any federal red flag laws. He also sponsored the constitutional carry bill that passed last session.
Tuesday on WVNN’s “The Yaffee Program,” Sorrell discussed whether Alabama would ever pass any red flag laws.
“I don’t think that red flag laws are going to pass in Alabama,” Sorrell said, “but it is something we need to be really, really vigilant about.”
The state lawmaker said he hoped Alabama did not follow the current trend across the country to pass these type of gun control laws.
“They’ve become a thing in 19 states and the District of Columbia, so it’s something we really have to watch out for,” he argued. “And you also have to watch out for bad policy being passed in the first year of the quadrennium, which of course is next year. That’s when a lot of the worst stuff flips through, the tax increases and whatnot.”
Sorrell also reacted to State Rep. Merika Coleman (D-Birmingham), a candidate for Alabama State Senate, who has introduced red flag bills in the past and has said recently she planned to introduce one again in the next session.
“We need to be really scared of Merika Coleman,” he warned. “She’s highly intelligent, she’s an excellent debater, she over prepares, and she argues her point really, really well on the floor, and in the Senate, she’s three times as powerful as a House seat, so, yes, we need to be on the lookout for this.”
The state auditor candidate argued that red flag laws were not just bad policy but also unconstitutional because they violatd the Second, Fourth, Fifth and 14th Amendments.
“I think civil asset forfeiture, I think red flag laws, and I think even constitutional carry could and should all be taken to the Supreme Court,” he said, “and I think with the Supreme Court that we have now we might actually win those cases…this shouldn’t even be a discussion. All of these red flag bills should be thrown out all across America because they are blatantly unconstitutional.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” Weekdays 9-11am on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
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