6th Amendment to the US Constitution Confrontation Clause gives criminal defendants the right to confront and cross-examine witnesses ... -- Wikipedia.
That is a huge huge thing in law and, in practice, very often the only reason for bothering to hold a trial. You'll remember in the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic, the primary witness against him was a secret witness, who's identity was not revealed nor his face seen during the trial, and so the trial was only conducted to give the accused a chance to cross-examine the secret witness via teleconference. Many states already have "rape shield" laws to protect victims of sexual assault from having their personal private sexual lives being pried into, but even in that case sometimes these rape shield laws can result in injustice for the accused man. (i.e. a woman who's made all sorts of absurd allegations against men in the past, and the jury is not allowed to hear about it)
All those sound nice, but most of would be a bad idea in practice. Sounds like a liberal mentality, demand more "rights". But these rights are just on a piece of paper. And besides that, potentially conflict with someone else's rights. The only one I can agree with is "notice of the release or escape of the accused".
Red flag laws are for votes, not for constituents' interests, which are no longer politicians' interests, especially democrats.
Red flag laws are a bunch of pieced together feel-good crap. They are harmful to the people these politicians represent, but they sound -- I don't know -- soothing or something? Actually, truth be known, I don't think the public is all that frightened by gun violence. It's all media hype and political grandstanding lies for power and total control. It is absolutely deplorable.
I think it's actually a passive aggressive angst and stab against White gritty rural and working-class conservatives. That, and we all have a tendency to assume everyone else is/thinks the same way we do, and liberals (on some level) don't think they themselves can be individually trusted. (Might be some truth to that) I think with the "liberal" lifestyle, you might just be trading one freedom for another. Most of this push in Pennsylvania is probably coming from the Eastern Philadelphia area, which is nearby New York City and New Jersey. They will think of all sorts of tactics to scare conservatives in the rest of the state into supporting their policies.
Yes, I've wondered if liberals aren't subliminally trying to pass laws against themselves. And yes, I would agree that this is aggression by urban America against rural America is misdirected. A great deal of the guns -- if not most of the guns -- in urban America are already illegal and gun laws make no difference to the urban dwellers causing serious gun problems that make the news on a daily basis.
One wonders if the actual reason really has to do with wanting to reduce crime. A cynical person might observe how they seem very focused on those conservative rural areas, even though there's not very much crime going on there.
Cynical? Ha. That's not cynical but exactly what is going on. Why do you couch your remark in such a way as to appear that you aren't thinking it? Or are you being sarcastic? Anyway, of course it doesn't have anything to do with wanting to reduce crime. They don't want to reduce crime. They want lots and lots of it. The more crime, the stronger appears their case to confiscate firearms. They love crime. It's even possible -- I'd say likely -- that Obama and Holder provided the guns to criminals at one point. That's not cynical either.
What about due process for the accused? You can't have an open system with so many secrets and so many ways to keep secrets. What happens when the accused is innocent? How do they get compensation? All of this reeks of the accused being guilty until proven innocent, with no recourse when that assumption fails...
