RUSH: Now we got red flag laws. (sigh) Red flag laws. Do you know what a red flag law is? Well, a red flag law is a law which would allow law enforcement to identify a deranged individual before he goes out and shoots. In other words, you could apprehend somebody before they do it if they exhibit red flag-type behavior, like if they’re mentally ill or if they’ve attended a Trump rally, or who knows what it would be.

It is a pipeline to gun control, and the Republicans are signing on to it so fast today, your head can’t spin fast enough to keep up with it because, of course, everybody’s got to try to mollify the media. (sobbing) “Everybody’s gotta try to get the media to quiet down. They’re ripping us to shreds. They’re tearing us apart! Everybody’s gotta do something to stop Twitter. Twitter’s going berserk.” It’s the same cycle repeating. We are reacting, trying to explain the critics, trying to tell them, “No, no, no! We are not who you think we are!”

Folks, they know we’re not white supremacists. They know we’re not white nationalist. They don’t care what is and what isn’t. Byron York had an interesting tweet here. “Some who in past have said violent movies do not inspire mass killers, who have said violent video games do not inspire mass killers, now ascribe enormous powers to President Trump to inspire mass killers.”

So the same people that pooh-pooh the idea that violent movies inspire mass killers, the same people that pooh-pooh violent video games inspiring mass killers, now saying Trump inspires mass killers with his words. How does that work? I’ll tell you what they say. “Come on, Rush, a movie is not president. A video game isn’t president. He’s president of the United States. Of course, his words are gonna impact people.” They’ll have an answer for everything, folks, if you get into it…

You can’t take them on rationally. They are not rational. You can’t take them on. All you can do is point out for everybody else’s consumption the abject hypocrisy and damage these people on the left are causing. It is they causing the damage here. It isn’t us!

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RUSH: So President Trump today did offer the Democrats a compromise. He offered to support red flag laws. Now, I have some problems, what I would call deep “preguntas,” deep questions about red flag laws, because I think they could end up being used to target law-abiding gun owners in order to confiscate their guns. Once you open up the avenue of taking guns away or imprisoning people before they do anything? (Snort!) You can see the red flag of that. But, on its face, and how it will appeal to most people, it’s supposed to make sure that mentally ill people don’t get guns, and that’s how it’s gonna be sold.

Who could oppose that, see? “Who could oppose the mentally ill not getting guns? “If it takes a red flag law to do it, Limbaugh, then we gotta support it — and, if you don’t agree with this, it just means you’re too big of a… You’re just.. You’re just… You’re just not flexible enough, Limbaugh!” That’s what people will say. Now, it’s a Democrat idea, which is its first disqualifier to me. It means it sucks from the get-go. But I’m going to be flexible here. I think it’s their way of incrementally getting what they want, which is your gun or guns.

Now the politics of it. With Trump willing to negotiate on it, he’s taken… Well, in reality he’s taken the gun issue away from the Democrats, but they’re not gonna let that happen. No matter how much Trump says he’s for the red flag law, Democrats are still gonna say that he’s bought and paid for by the NRA. Just like they’re lying about white supremacy, they’ll lie about Trump and guns, whatever. No matter what he does. No matter what he says.

But I know what they’re trying to do in the White House. They’re trying to remove the issue. They’re trying to take the issue away from the Democrats by agreeing to what they’re proposing. Not necessarily making it happen, just agree to it in words. You take the issue away. That’s the strategery. But the Democrats are not gonna compromise with Trump on anything! Especially now, a year and a half or less prior to the election.

Believe me, they want your guns. They want everybody’s guns. They’re just like the communists: They want your guns. They want full confiscation, and there is no majority for that in this country. But that’s not gonna stop them, either. So in this, Trump is forcing them further left. I mean, on all the real issues of the day, Trump is exposing these people for what they are. He is driving them further and further left like getting the Democrat Party to adopt the face of Ocasio-Cortez and her Squad.

I mean, the politics of this are working dramatically in Trump’s favor. It’s just, you will never… You’ve gotta know this in your heart. You’ve gotta know it on your own. You gotta believe me when I tell you, because you are not ever gonna see the take I just gave you in the Drive-By Media. Now, there’s one other thing about this red flag business. Remember when Obama could not wait for everybody’s medical records to be digitized? Remember how that was sold?

“Well, if we get everybody’s medical records electronically filed, it’ll speed up treatment! It will save lives. It will reduce paperwork and bureaucracy. It’ll be a wonderful thing.” Do you remember what happened, among many things, shortly after that? Doctors, especially pediatricians, began asking about guns in the home. So you take the kid to the pediatrician for whatever problem, and the doctor says — ’cause he’s got a checklist there. It’s part of digitizing health records. You’re gotta fill all this stuff out.

The federal government, Obamacare demands this information be provided. “Do you have guns in your house?” Remember? We had people calling here telling us about this. “Do you have guns in your house? What kind of guns are there in your house? Are your guns easily accessible? Does your child know there are guns are in the house? Does your child know where to get the guns? Are you guns safely locked?” All these gun questions begin in shortly after the digitization or the digitizing of medical records.

So it’s not a big leap. You take your kid in to the pediatrician and the pediatrician says, “Oh, there’s a history of mental illness in your family, and guns in your house! Hang on a minute while I call the authorities.” (dialing) They call authorities, they come over, the red flag law’s in place, guess what? In the case take your gun because you have a mentally ill child in your house. This is what they’re gonna do. Do not doubt me. This is the objective of red flag laws.

Now, they’re gonna sell it as, “No, Rush, no! No! This is to identify these shooters before they shoot.” Folks, can I be honest about it? How many of these shooters basically advertised that they’re gonna do it before they do it? A lot of them do. We don’t need an additional law to identify these people. We might need an additional law to be able to stop them in advance. But remember… (laughs) Can I remind you of something else? Every time something comes down the pike and people think it’s great, can I remind you of the shooter at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas.

Remember? Everybody knew who the shooter was but because Obama had new rules in effect that we could not imprison additional percentages of African-Americans on minorities, the cops couldn’t do anything about the guy! Do you remember this? So even with a red flag law in place at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school, three different times the cops passed on stopping a guy who had been bragging about his intentions because Obama had rules in place about protecting minorities, about not adding to the percentage of African-Americans in prison.

Because don’t you know, “America is so unfair. America’s prison rate is so out of balance. So many more minorities are in prison. It just isn’t fair, and this is because of inherent white racism and now white supremacy.” So even with… Before there were red flag laws, there was the ability to stop this shooter, I think it was three times, at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school, and they didn’t do it. And the guy… I forget the administrator’s name.

But he was an Obama administration guy who was working in the Chicago districts and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas district bought the guy. They imported guy, gave him a job down in Florida. And he brought… He’s the architect of that policy, which basically said, “No, no, no, no, no, no. We can’t apprehend if the perp or the almost perp or the might be a perp or could be a perp the red flag perp is minority, because we can’t mess with the percentages.” I’m not making this up. I’m sure you remember when I mention it to you.

In addition to that, you could say that red flags won’t work in a lot of cases for the very reason I gave you: Not reporting crimes by black men because they don’t want to feed the school-to-jail pipeline that means America is so-so racist. You know, this shooter in Dayton? Like a lot of these shooters, people had qualms about the guy. He had been open about his mental illness. Well, not that he had. It was obvious that he was.

He had been open about his hates and open about his intentions, and nobody did anything about it. The many so-called red flags of the Dayton shooter were ignored. His police record was expunged. Did you know that? So there was no record of his past bad behavior when he went to buy a gun. Same thing with the Marjory Stoneman Douglas kid. They could not charge, could not do anything that would add to the crime stats or the prison stats. So a lot of red flags to me with a red flag law.

They’re not only gonna chip away at the Second Amendment but the Fourth and Fifth Amendments as well. I mean, it’s a… Make no mistake what the left wants with red flag laws. Now, again, the politics… Trump hasn’t agreed to it. He just agreed to talk to them about it, which just in a political sense kind of takes the energy of the issue away from them. Robert Runcie was the name of the guy down at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the superintendent of the Broward school. Robert Runcie was the author of this policy, an Obama administration veteran.

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RUSH: You want some real dangerous irony, folks? The Democrat Party has no problem taking away civil rights and guns from people who have not committed any crimes. Yet what do they want to do so? They want to give the vote to convicted rapists and felons, mass murderers — and, of course, illegal immigrants. But if you haven’t committed a crime, they have no problem taking away your civil rights. That’s what we’re up against.

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RUSH: Look at this headline: “Trump Exploring Executive Action on Gun Violence.” Hmm. What kind of executive action could there be on gun violence? Well, we’ll have to wait and see what the reports are.

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RUSH: is Prince William County, Virginia. Simon, you’re next. I’m glad you waited, sir. Hi.

CALLER: Hey! Hey, I’m a 25-year, honorably discharged Special Forces vet, and folks like me are very concerned about the red flag laws. Because, you know, about 20 of my 25 years being in active wars and, you know — air quotes, “hidden wars” — most of us have PTSD, TBI, anxiety, depression, and sleep issues. And, you know, in the military, if you have sleep issues, you get spent to mental health, which is a buzzword under (crosstalk).

RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold it. I did not know that. So would you explain sleep issues, what qualifies a sleep issue and who would you report it to?

CALLER: (unintelligible)

RUSH: Well, who would you tell you’re having trouble sleeping?

CALLER: Yeah, so you talk to your team medic or your, you know, company medic and then it’s like, “You know, I’m not sleeping well at night.” You don’t have bad nightmares or anything like that, and they send you to the military hospital, and it’s under mental health for sleep issues. So I know. (chuckles) I personally know so many people that don’t go for help because they don’t want that on their records, and this is, like, years ago. And now mental health is on a red flag? You know, so folks like me, we’re very concerned about this because it’s a blanket policy, and we meet all the criteria.

RUSH: Hey, not only is it not blanket, it’s just the beginning. It’s just —

CALLER: Oh, no, it —

RUSH: One thing you gotta realize about left-wing solutions: They’re not solutions. They are the beginnings of new problems. So if there was ever a red flag law passed, it’s not to solve anything. It is to move the agenda forward. It’s just an incremental step in getting to where they want to go. And if you can identify somebody as mentally disturbed, whatever the classification is — like they’ve got sleep issues — you go take their gun, under the theory they may shoot up a school. And everybody will applaud you. (clapping) And then it only is gonna be expanded after that. But I had no idea that sleep issues got you qualified as having a mental disorder in the military or anywhere else, for that matter.

CALLER: No. You got sent to mental health. So I’m not — and don’t quote me. I’m not sure if it’s a mental disorder, but the office in the hospital you go to is mental health, and so we’re —

RUSH: Now, is this true in combat? If you go to somewhere… You’re in the middle of the combat, you’re in the middle of a skirmish somewhere — and tell somebody you can’t sleep, they’ll actually send you to…? They’ll take you off the battlefield for this?

CALLER: No. It’s like mostly when you’re in the rear and you go back and say, “Gahhh, I can’t sleep.” You know, so that’s the first place you go, mental health check.

RUSH: Okay. So it’s a peacetime thing. ‘Cause, I mean, who does sleep in combat? But you wait. That’s actually my exact point. Anyway, Simon, thank you.

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RUSH: Ruth in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it’s great to have you with us. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Love what you do. Mega dittos. I’m looking at this red flag law they’re trying to bring about now in Congress. I’m like, “When are they gonna quit trying to make themselves look good in the American public’s eye? That’s all this is, is an exercise to make it look like they’re doing something. But in fact, they’re doing nothing. Paper and words are empty if there are no actions. Instead of taking away more of our rights and giving government more reach into our private lives and mess with gun rights… I don’t own a gun, but if I want one, I want the right to be able to go get one.

Why don’t they…? Why doesn’t President Trump start a study or line up a board of psychiatrists, psychologists, common-sense teachers, good preachers, and some sociologists and study on how we approach this subject with our kids when they’re young, teach ’em how to alert authorities when they see things and their classmates without condemnation or retaliation or anything? How about we start teaching them and then making video games inaccessible without parental, you know, codes until a kid’s 18? It’s our culture! It’s our lack of virtue. It’s our culture that has become so rotted, and our kids are spending all these hours at a school with teachers who have been indoctrinated in the liberal colleges.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: They spend time with their peers and maybe what? Maybe an hour around the dinner table if that every night? It’s not enough. We gotta get involved, get engaged, and input to them the character we want them to have.

RUSH: You said something here that I have been thinking about the moment you said it. Not being a parent, I tell you, it’s why it caught my attention. You said, “We need to start teaching our “yutes” how to recognize the signs of dangerous, potentially violent behavior on part of their own classmates.” So I was… While you were making the rest of your comment, I was thinking about that, actually trying to envision that happening in an average American home, with the Parent A and Parent B sitting down with Kid C and saying, “Okay, kid. Here’s what to look for.”

Now, how do we know those parents know what they’re talking about? And how do we know the kid is old enough to be able to process it all? And kids being kids, if one kid somehow, someday doesn’t like another kid, why not just lie and say, “He was playing with guns! At the PE break, I saw him! He’s got ’em in his locker.” You know what that would do. Here comes School Principal D, Vice Principal E running to that kid’s locker. I don’t know, but I understand your point. I happen to think… (sigh) Think back to when you were in school, folks.

Grade school, middle school, high school. Think about it. Did you…? I mean, I didn’t go to a school where there was a shooting. I didn’t go to a school where there was a bomb. We did practical jokes — very clever, creative practical jokes — like solder all the locks the night before school so nobody could get in, but we didn’t plant bombs. (interruption) Oh, we had legions of stuff like that, but we didn’t plant bombs and fire guns or any of that. But we all knew who the ne’er-do-wells were.

We all knew who the bad actors were. You know how we knew? The girls all loved ’em. (laughing) So if we had had the ability to go snitch on ’em in today’s atmosphere? I don’t know. Those are… Any time you go down this road, you gotta be very careful how you do it. That’s why these red flag laws, I’m telling you: Democrats, this is made to order for them, ’cause you gotta look at the long-term objective. What do Democrats want? Your gun or guns.

They’ve been unable to do it by attacking the Second Amendment. But what happens if they can come up with some brilliant plan that will make you voluntarily get rid of your gun — or, worse than that, if they can come up with something that will make you support taking away somebody else’s gun on the basis that their kid is mentally ill and is showing all the signs of a mass shooter. I don’t know. We have to think about this very, very, very carefully.