Troubled Waters

I’ll be the first to admit I have trust issues. Without going into detail, or regaling you with the past twenty years of my life, let’s just say my trust issues are well-founded and justified. This is doubly true when the trust I am asked to extend is not toward an individual but rather a government apparatus, notorious for overreach, and at this point in time about as trustworthy as a guy with a gold tooth and a pinky ring trying to sell you on a pyramid scheme having to do with recycled toilet tissue. Only two spots left, and all it costs is fifty grand. Best deal of your life, guaranteed!

It’s not a sin to be skeptical, and even the Word declares that a man who trusts in man or in the arm of the flesh, whose heart has departed from the Lord, is cursed.

Ronald Reagan famously said that the most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help. I cannot disagree with this sentiment, especially when the current crop of misfits in government are set on stripping the average citizen of their rights at every turn.

I know that this will not land well with some of you, but truth rarely does.

The big hubbub of late has been the notion of red flag laws and how they are now a necessity. Without having committed a crime, without having gone through due process, if a paper pusher on some rung of the governmental ladder concludes that you will, at some point, be a danger to yourself or others, then they deem it their right to do as they will, including detainment.

My only question, the only question that is of any import, is who determines the parameters by which one is judged as setting off one of these red flags? Is it the same group of folks who insist that there are 73 genders, or that transgenderism is perfectly normal and not at all a mental disorder?

Will the same people who are trying to normalize pedophilia be in charge of determining whether or not you are mentally competent to own a firearm?

Pardon my skepticism, but if you think this is in any way a good idea or something to strive for, you have not thought it through, and have no idea the can of worms this will very likely open.

Will having served in the military disqualify someone from owning a firearm because they might have PTSD? Will believing in God disqualify someone?

What? Too much? Farfetched? Impossible? There are current sitting senators who insisted that supremely qualified individuals were to be excluded from serving on the Supreme Court simply because they believed in God, or because they were practicing Christians.

It’s all about who sets the parameters and who determines what these red flags are. As of yet, they are ethereal, able to be whatever the people in power decide they are, from whether you still have your wisdom teeth, or were prescribed Ritalin when you were ten.

To say that the system will get abused is the understatement of the century. Imagine how many disgruntled, angry, or unhinged neighbors will be calling the hotline to report what they deem to be red flags? Imagine how many law-abiding citizens who did nothing wrong will get visits by the police in the middle of the night for no other reason than because pencil-pushing dolts think they can run your life better than you can. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.