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Ben Shapiro’s recent clip warning about “red flag” laws lays out a sensible conservative anxiety: well-intentioned reforms can become instruments of coercion if they lack ironclad due process. He has said he supports mechanisms to keep dangerous people from accessing weapons in principle, but he repeatedly emphasizes that sloppy laws and politicized enforcement invite abuse and erosion of liberty.
The core problem Shapiro highlights is institutional distrust. When one side of the political aisle treats its opponents as perpetual villains, any tool ostensibly designed to protect the public becomes a potential cudgel for partisan retribution, and conservatives have reason to be skeptical of handing more discretionary power to judges and bureaucrats.
Conservatives who care about both safety and liberty aren’t reflexively opposed to preventing violence; they demand rules that protect rights as robustly as they protect lives. A system that permits frivolous claims or weak standards will inevitably punish the innocent and chill lawful behavior, turning a safety measure into a mechanism for confiscation and control.
We should be blunt: giving authorities the power to deprive citizens of constitutional rights on nebulous grounds without meaningful penalties for bad-faith petitions is a recipe for abuse. Shapiro’s warning that due-process protections must be central, not optional, is not alarmism—it’s a core conservative instinct to check government overreach before it becomes entrenched.
The media’s inconsistent coverage of violence only deepens the problem, because selective outrage lets the narrative shape policy rather than facts shaping fair lawmaking. When press cycles and partisan activists magnify certain incidents and ignore others, legislators rush to appear responsive rather than careful, and the result is poorly drafted statutes that invite exploitation.
If conservatives are serious about preventing tragedy without surrendering civil liberties, the path is clear: insist on clear statutory definitions, in-person judicial hearings, strict evidentiary thresholds, and stiff consequences for malicious or fraudulent petitions. Those are common-sense safeguards that protect communities while preventing the state from converting emergency powers into permanent encroachments.
This isn’t a rejection of public safety; it’s a defense of the Constitution against mission creep. Reasonable people can agree that weapons should not fall into the hands of dangerous individuals—but reasonable people must also insist that the state prove danger under standards that respect liberty, because once rights are surrendered lightly, they are rarely reclaimed.
