[zopa]

Thanks for the link to the paper. But I don't think that 10-20 seizures per prevented suicide estimate you mention can tell us anything about probable cause or the lack thereof. It's a guess at the rate of prevented deaths from suicide attempts, when the subject used a something other than a gun, but would have used a gun if the cops hadn't taken it from them. It's not an estimate of how many suicide attempts were prevented: it's just a measure of how much less deadly the suicide attempts that happened anyway were. A gun seizure is a big dramatic intervention; it's pretty plausible that it sometimes interrupts a bad moment that's essentially a one-off, and sometimes leads to people getting the help they need. Neither of those effects play into the estimate you cited.

Just on the legal standard: it's probable cause that there's a risk, not probable cause that the risky event will happen. If you have 51% certainty that the subject has a 25% chance of harming themselves or someone else, that is likely to be good enough. And while it gives me no joy to defend the US criminal justice system, to me that's appropriate here. Living with someone who's making violent threats towards you or themselves is no fun at all, even if there's only a 1 in 4 chance that they'll follow through.

[giantg2]

"Just on the legal standard: it's probable cause that there's a risk, not probable cause that the risky event will happen. If you have 51% certainty that the subject has a 25% chance of harming themselves or someone else, that is likely to be good enough."

Do you have some citation on that? Frankly, if it's so ill defined that we don't know what level of risk justifies restrictions under the law, then we should all be opposing it as it can be used against anyone. Perhaps you play violent videos and that's enough risk?

"Living with someone who's making violent threats towards you or themselves is no fun at all, even if there's only a 1 in 4 chance that they'll follow through."

There are criminal charges that can be filed against this type of behavior. This does not require a hookie workaround. That's how we end up with things like civil assest forfeiture.

[LorenPechtel]

If it's a one-off then it's unlikely a red flag will matter. It will either have already been done or will not be done, the flag comes too late to intervene.

[zopa]

I don't know what the response time usually is in urgent cases, do you? There's a quote on pg 16 of the study that makes same-day sound unremarkable. It starts:

> A lot of times the people who have their weapons seized are not having a bad life—they’re having a bad moment.

It's an ex-prosecutor's illustrative hypothetical, so take it for what it's worth. Still the same logic applies if we're talking about bad weeks instead of bad evenings.