What the hell is this evil?
A Federal Red Flag center;
We did not authorize this.
Announced, of course, just hours after the omnibus passes. https://t.co/IkuK0aTeV8

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) March 23, 2024

“The Justice Department launched the National Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) Resource Center (the Center) which will provide training and technical assistance to law enforcement officials, prosecutors, attorneys, judges, clinicians, victim service and social service providers, community organizations, and behavioral health professionals responsible for implementing laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of people who pose a threat to themselves or others.”

“ERPO laws, which are modeled off domestic violence protection orders, create a civil process allowing law enforcement, family members (in most states), and medical professionals or other groups (in some states) to petition a court to temporarily prohibit someone at risk of harming themselves or others from purchasing and possessing firearms for the duration of the order,” says the Justice Department press release linked in the above tweet, heralding the ERPO launch.

We have no idea if the spending bill actually contained funding and/or authorization for this, but if it did the reactions from Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene who tweeted “This comes right after Johnson fully funded Biden’s weaponized DOJ,” speak to them not doing their homework because if it was in there then they would have been screaming about it before the House passed it.

Now just as a thought experiment, imagine what it would look like if the Justice Department had launched a national marijuana user reporting center, where any friends or family members could flag a pothead so federal law enforcement could confiscate their weed and force them to attend mandatory marijuana abuse therapy. That would suck, right? And plenty of Democratic members of Congress would be tweeting about it, calling it an outrage and a direct attack on their voting base.

That’s what’s going on here with Massie and Greene and all the other MAGA Twitter accounts fuming over the government trying to prevent mentally unhinged gun owners from killing people.

It’s a direct attack on their voting base.