White House Considering Confiscating Guns From "Dangerous People"

President Trump confirmed on Friday that he would support stricter firearms regulations, including a proposal to strengthen the federal background check system and raising the minimum age for buying a semi-automatic weapon to 21 - something the powerful National Rifle Association has said it opposes.

But, as Bloomberg reports, The White House is considering the idea of using restraining orders to take firearms away from people considered "dangerous" as part of its response to last week’s massacre at a Florida high school, two people familiar with the matter said.

Under extreme risk protection orders, which are also known as red flag laws or gun violence restraining orders,firearms can be confiscated from people found to be at risk.

As The New Yorks Times reports, it is difficult to measure the effectiveness of red flag laws, in part because it is impossible to count mass shootings, or other tragedies, that were avoided.

That said, the authorities in states with the laws, including Connecticut, Indiana, Oregon and Washington, say they have seen patterns: upticks in the use of such laws after mass shootings in other places.

The measures were also used in situations far different from the mass shooting scenarios they were originally conceived to prevent. Most often, guns were removed from people not seen as threats to large groups or public gatherings, but as risks to themselves or to their families, or suffering from debilitating illnesses such as Alzheimer’s or alcoholism.

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