This Psychiatrist Has Big Concerns About Red Flag Laws

By BearingArms.com Staff

The following column is authored by Dr. Dennis Petrocelli, a clinical and forensic psychiatrist in Virginia.

Gun control advocates pretend that if red flag laws were universally in place, mass murderers would be stopped before they killed, and that without these laws, killers will continue to fall through the cracks in the criminal justice and mental health treatment systems (1). Nothing could be further from the truth.

Court testimony about risk must use methods that meet standards that include a known error rate, review and approval of their peers, and wide acceptance (2). No such scientific method exists for predicting mass murder because experts disagree about the best way to assess risk. Definitive proclamations of dangerousness are frowned upon because they aren’t supported by science. Without acceptable professional standards, and because the bills don’t require the subject’s behavior to match any specific description of risky behavior, we have a prescription for a gun-grab free-for-all. Although The National Threat Assessment Center identified several risk factors that suggest increased risk, the number of people encompassed by that profile is vast and clearly includes huge numbers of people who would not go on harm anyone (3)

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Source:: Bearing Arms