COLBERT COUNTY – Colbert County Sheriff Frank Williamson addresses the idea of an Alabama so-called “Red Flag Law”
“State Representative Merica Coleman is preparing a bill for the Alabama Legislature for a so-called Red Flag law. I want to see what the bill is, if it is filed, before taking a position. I’m a defender of the 2nd Amendment. I support and defend it. Every person who can legally own a firearm has the Constitutional Right to keep and bear arms.
Red flag laws vary among the various states that have them. I certainly believe that persons who do not pose a threat to themselves or others and are not convicted felons have the right to own and carry firearms in Alabama.
My fear regarding these so-called Red Flag laws is the potential for them to become abused and used in a way that would interfere with our Constitutional rights. I do not want to see these laws become a slippery slope toward broad firearm confiscation.
Having said this, something has to be done about the rampant violence that we see all across the Nation. We suffer from violence involving firearms in our communities practically every week. It’s one thing to talk about gun violence, but just ask our Deputies what they feel whenever they have to respond to a call where a simple argument or a family dispute disintegrates into gunfire. It makes us sick. I don’t like the politicization of this issue, but we have it. I don’t want to take anybody’s guns from them, but the question is obvious… If you knew somebody posed the clear and present danger to others involving a gun… What would you do to lessen the odds of violence? What would you do?”
Op-Ed by Colbert County Sheriff Frank Williamson
