Extent to apply red flag laws to prevent the next mass shooter?

Reporter: Justin Kase
Published: Updated:
FILE: Law enforcement sources tell CBS News this is a surveillance video image of the gunman walking into the Walmart. (Credit: CBS News/FILE)

Are you willing to give up any freedoms or privacy in the name of safety?

“If I had to pick one over the other,” Allison Gardner said, “I’d rather pick safety.”

“I’d give up the privacy,” Alan Wood said. “I mean, we can’t go on having mass shootings. I mean, you have to draw a line somewhere.”

The question of giving up safety to increase privacy or sacrificing privacy for the sake of safety has been brought to the forefront of a national conversation following two mass shootings last weekend.

The questions are asked when it comes to red flag laws and potentially stopping the next mass shooter. Those laws allow a judge to order police to remove guns from a person suspected to be a danger to the community.

“You don’t know what anybody [is] thinking; they got in their mind,” Maxo Clermont said. “You know what I’m saying? They could harm anything with a gun.”

Some people WINK News spoke with said it is a simple decision. If giving up privacy, our speech, makes us safer, we should do it. Then, some worry what police might label as red flags.

“When does it become, you know, ‘work blows’ to a Facebook status that you’re sharing with your friends about a rough Monday,” Gardner said, “to an actual threat upon all of your peers in your workplace?”

Garnder would support a red flag law that makes it clear to everyone what exactly is a credible threat. However, she said it needs to be more clearly defined. It is a viewpoint that Chris Norbits shares.

“I just want it to be a little bit more specific,” Norbits said. “Not have knee jerk reactions to something someone may say.”

A heated topic that many lawmakers are trying to make a national law.

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