Minnesota’s red flag law took effect Monday, January 1, 2024, and allows police or family members to petition a judge for an order to have guns taken from certain individuals.
CBS News reported Minnesota’s red flag law is built on varying degrees of extreme risk orders, enabling guns to be confiscated for a period of time lasting anywhere from two weeks to one year.
Minnesota Police Chief Association president, Renville County Sheriff Scott Hable, was asked how officers and deputies will approach the task of seizing firearms and he indicated his hope that people will surrender their guns peacefully.
In instances where gun owners do not willingly hand over firearms, Hable indicated that law enforcement will execute search warrants.
California adopted the nation’s first red flag law in 2014 and it went into effect in 2016. California’s law, like the one in Minnesota, is built upon extreme risk orders.
Five years after the red flag law took effect, California led the nation in “active shooter incidents.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010, a speaker at the 2023 Western Conservative Summit, and he holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at
