Yesterday, we broke the news that New Jersey is using funds from a Department of Justice program to promote awareness and use of the state’s “red flag” laws. The deeper reality is that this Biden-era program is alive and well, and still funding the implementation of “red flag” laws in states across the union, with no indication that the DOJ plans to roll back or curtail the program, as it has done with other offending issues related to 2A rights.
Background
In 2022, President Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA). The innocuous name undermined the reality of the measure, which instituted significant gun control measures. In fact, gun control group Giffords lauded it, calling it “the first new major federal gun safety law in nearly 30 years.”
Under that act, the Department of Justice, then run by Attorney General Merrick Garland, initially earmarked over $230 million of taxpayer dollars to fund “state crisis intervention court proceedings,” which also included Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) programs, commonly known as “red flag” laws.
These programs were administered by the department’s Office of Justice Programs’ Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), for the purpose of “implementation of extreme risk protection order programs, state crisis intervention court proceedings, and related gun violence reduction initiatives.” As we reported after the Biden White House’s year one progress report, the program was largely comprised of gun control initiatives under the guise of “public safety,” all funded by the taxpayer.
The BSCA authorized the creation of another level of bureaucracy to come up with a mechanism to distribute this funding (which totaled $1.4 billion over five years), which was called the Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program (Byrne SCIP). One of its primary objectives is to “[provide] formula funds to implement state crisis intervention court proceedings and related programs or initiatives, including, but not limited to, extreme risk protection order programs…”
The BSCA created even more government bloat with the March 2024 launch of the National Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) Resource Center, a partnership with the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, funded through a $2 million award.
The Johns Hopkins Center is no friend to gun owners, with a stated objective of treating “gun violence as a public health emergency.” The Center finds comfortable bedfellows with anti-civil liberty group Giffords, which frequently quotes the center’s formal reports as evidence in its push for gun control measures, such as in this 2020 report pushing for gun licensing.
Further, many of the people who work at the federally funded Johns Hopkins Center are gun control advocates with connections to gun control groups. For example, Josh Horwitz (currently Co-Director, Center for Gun Violence Solutions) served as Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, a gun control group with a stated policy of promoting “left-of-center firearm-restriction policies.”
Kathryn Fleisher (currently Assistant Policy Advisor, Center for Gun Violence Solutions) is a Giffords Courage Fellow with gun control group Giffords.
DOJ to Award $131 Million This Year
The key point is that the Biden-era programs outlined above are not only alive and well, but their funding mechanisms are continuing to funnel taxpayer money to gun control groups and anti-gun states, likely on a scale of which we have only scratched the surface.
Nearly every state received Byrne SCIP funds in fiscal year 2022/2023. But in 2026, the program is still funded, still active, and is even accepting applications now for which it will award funding this year, with a total of $131,254,426 yet to be awarded! In fact, today, May 12, and also May 19 are the two deadline dates to submit grant requests through the two portals. The program is formula-based with a long list of criteria and rules for how the funds may be used, outlined in an FAQ document.
In order for a state to qualify for funding under the Byrne SCIP, the BSCA explicitly states that there must be substantial due process safeguards in place. But as News2A contributor and legal expert Joe LoPorto wrote in an open letter to the Trump administration, not only does New Jersey (as one example) lack those safeguards, “That qualifier is a wide open door to cutting funding for states like New Jersey that provide little to no due process.” The New Jersey announcement from yesterday is a multi-year program.
The implementation of red flag laws is the most pernicious attack on gun ownership because of the inherent lack of due process measures, violating numerous constitutional rights along the way.
There are no major federal lawsuits challenging these types of laws. The Rahimi Supreme Court case is loosely interpreted as supporting the principle behind such laws because it affirmed that “[w]hen an individual poses a clear threat of physical violence to another, the threatening individual may be disarmed” temporarily. It’s the “how” that is contentious. At least one New Jersey case directly challenges red flag laws in the state.
In April, the DOJ introduced a comprehensive regulatory reform package specifically focused on ATF rules and regulations. They executed this in the context of President Trump’s February 2025 executive order to protect the Second Amendment. If the DOJ wants to remain true to that vision, it would significantly curtail or even end the dispersion of funds to states that fail to meet the threshold standards for ensuring due process required in the BCSA. Moreover, the GOP would hastily overturn the BSCA in full, seeing as it’s a Biden-era gun control scheme.
News2A reached out to the Department of Justice for comment, but at the time of this writing, it has not received a response.
