Click here to urge the Joint Committee on the Judiciary to oppose no due process gun confiscation.

Due Process.

It’s a simple concept, but not so simple that the “gun grabbers” are capable of understanding it.

Proposed legislation, LD 1068, (SP 336) would explicitly add gun confiscation to the consequences of being the subject of a “harassment order.”  It is thereby intended to encourage courts to strip the constitutional rights of people who are targeted by those orders.

So what’s wrong with that?

Well, the most serious problem is that those orders may be issued “ex parte” — without the ability of the target of the harassment order to present his or her side of the story.

That’s it:  A phone call to a judge in the middle of the night.  And we can guarantee that the judge will ALWAYS grant the order (without the benefit of hearing both sides).  And, the next thing you know, the SWAT Team descends on the home of the gun owner — also in the middle of the night.

If the gun owner is LUCKY, the only thing that will happen is that his constitutional rights will be stripped without due process.  If he is unlucky, like a 62-year-old black man in Ferndale, Maryland, he will be shot to death.  (Ironically, Maryland had repealed capital punishment.  So the only capital crime in that state is being a law-abiding gun owner).

Criminologist John Lott has done a study of states with these types of “red flag” laws.  He has found that they don’t have reduced rates of domestic violence, and don’t have reduced murder rates or crime rates.  In fact, the only respect in which they differ from states that respect due process is that the “red flag” states, for some reason, have higher rates of rape.

So Maine should not follow Massachusetts, California and New York in abolishing due process for the purpose of enacting politically correct gun control that does not work.

The Joint Committee on Judiciary has scheduled a work session on LD 1068 for Thursday, January 13, and they need to hear your opposition to LD 1068, the Abolish Due Process  Act, SP 336.  Please click here to urge the committee to reject LD 1068.