ERPO for 11-Year-Old Girl
One of the main complaints against Red Flag Laws / Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPO) is that they are unnecessary and can be easily abused by the government. Here is an example.
A state Supreme Court justice in Ulster County ruled that the Attorney General’s petition seeking a protection order to keep guns away from a child constituted frivolous conduct.
An 11-year-old identified only as K.L., had a text exchange with a friend in which she told the friend that she was considering suicide. K.L.’s friend showed the texts to her mother, who contacted law enforcement, and State Police responded. Troopers interviewed K.L. in the presence of her parents and she made no comments about hurting herself and displayed no suicidal ideation in the trooper’s presence. After a voluntary search, troopers concluded that there were no guns in K.L.’s home. Nevertheless, State Police filed a petition for a temporary Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO), which Supreme Court Justice Julian D. Schreibman denied.
Schreibman held a hearing on Feb. 6 to determine whether to issue a final ERPO. Schreibman denied the ERPO and wrote: “It is illegal in the state of New York for an 11-year-old child to handle a firearm, much less to possess or own one … In short, before any ERPO petition was brought, K.L. was legally barred from possessing any gun.”
Also, under New York’s Environmental Conservation Law, the youngest a person can be issued a hunting license is 12, he noted.
“Thus, the foregoing provisions establish that there is a blanket prohibition, without exception, on 11-year-olds possessing firearms of any kind. In light of that comprehensive legal bar, it is plainly unwarranted under existing law to seek an ERPO against an 11-year-old child.”
Not to be denied, the Attorney General tried another tactic and argued that if an ERPO was issued and the parents bought any guns, they would have to store them in a secure location, away from K.L. But without an ERPO, the state argued, the parents could just leave guns out.
Schreibman said that was “flatly wrong.”
“Having an ERPO in place against a child does not create or increase the parents’ criminal liability for improper weapons storage,” Schreibman wrote. State law imposes the exact same responsibilities for safe storage and criminal consequences for non-compliance on any gun owner who lives with a person who is under 18.
“Based on the foregoing, the Court finds that, in the prosecution of an ERPO against … K.L., the office of the Attorney General engaged in frivolous conduct,” he wrote.
Kudos to the friend and all those involved in taking the suicide threat seriously.
Kudos to the judge who did not succumb to the pressure of finding for an ERPO.
Thumbs down to the State Police who filed for the ERPO and the Attorney General who never misses an opportunity to infringe on the Second Amendment. There are already sufficient other safeguards that both the State Police and the Attorney General chose to ignore.
https://nydailyrecord.com/2025/12/24/judge-denies-erpo-for-11-year-old-girl/
