Perhaps you’ve heard of the “prank” known as “swatting.” Perhaps you’re even aware of the “swatting” incident that turned deadly. It took place in Wichita, KS back in December of 2017.
In a nutshell, a “prankster” in California made a call to the 9-1-1 operator in Wichita, claiming he was being held hostage at a Wichita home, and that a murder had already occurred there. The caller thought the address he gave was that of an online gamer with whom he was involved in a feud, but that person had tricked him into giving police the address of Andrew Finch, who was not involved in the feud and was at home minding his own business.
Long story short, the Wichita SWAT team responded, and when Andrew Finch stepped out his front door to see what all the commotion was about, the officers, thinking he was the murderer and hostage-taker and that he was reaching for a weapon, shot him dead.
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Everyone, all around the country and across the political spectrum, was outraged at this incident, and rightly so. The perpetrator of the hoax received a lengthy prison sentence, and Kansas passed a new law, the Andrew Finch Act, which increased penalties for such irresponsible hoaxes.
Why do I mention this? Because, even though it was easy enough for anyone to see how very wrong it was for someone to be able to make a call, even from halfway across the continent, that would result in a perfectly innocent person unexpectedly finding himself the target of a SWAT team at his front door, the “red flag laws” now being proposed to keep guns out of the hands of mentally unstable persons will actually legitimize and institutionalize “swatting.” Such laws will enable anyone, anywhere, essentially to call down a police raid on another person, no matter how spurious the “evidence” of mental instability, for the purpose of seizing the “unstable” person’s firearms.
