This month, Michigan’s judicial branch published the 2025 edition of its annual report on the state’s Extreme Risk Protection Order Act (red flag gun confiscation order statute). The eye-opening document revealed the extent to which Michiganders’ Second Amendment rights are being stripped without due process.
As with other states where such odious schemes have been enacted, Michigan’s red flag law empowers the government to extinguish a person’s Second Amendment rights and seize their firearms ex parte. This means that these “innovative” confiscation orders are issued without notice or a hearing or other opportunity for the target of the order to be heard and present evidence. The target of such an order need not be accused of having committed any crime. Moreover, this type of legislation typically permits the government to seize firearms based on weak and nebulous standards of evidence.
The current ex parte process in several states is so deficient that the arrival of law enforcement at a person’s home to seize their firearms may be the individual’s first notice whatsoever that their rights have been abrogated or were even under threat.
Implementation of Michigan’s law has been particularly detestable. As NRA-ILA pointed out last year, the Great Lakes State’s law specifically allows the issuance of orders against minors, uses an expansive definition of “possession or control” of a firearm, and allows for the confiscation of guns from persons who are not the subject of the order.
According to The Detroit News, the law has been invoked against children as young as six, eight, and ten years old. An order being issued against a child means that firearms at the family home are liable to be confiscated regardless of actual ownership, given that “possession and control” is an open-ended definition. The newspaper quoted a Michigan legislator who confirmed that the law “allows officers to confiscate unsecured firearms from parents or guardians even though the actual order is in the child’s name,” and that aspect “was something we were very intentional about.”
The 2025 annual report showed that 89-percent of all gun confiscation orders were issued ex parte. The document explained, “459 requests were made for an order to be issued without notice.” The number of ex parte confiscation orders was up more than 30-percent over 2024. The likelihood of an order being issued this way was extremely high; out of 459 requests, only 78 (17%) were denied.
Those concerned about racial equity might find some of the demographic data on red flag issuance to raise its own red flags. Of instances where the petitioner’s (the person seeking the order) race was known, 91% were white and 7% were black. However, among respondents (those subject to the order) whose race was known, 64% were white and nearly 34% were black.
Michigan’s annual report serves as a reoccurring testament to how red flag laws empower governments to infringe Second Amendment rights without due process of law.
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