When people hear the phrase “red flag” , they often picture a court order. A judge, evidence, a hearing, and a clear set of rules. But in a recent Long Island case, a family says something far less formal happened: police effectively disarmed two licensed gun owners based on a mental health concern in the home, then kept their pistol licenses suspended for years, with conditions that did not appear in any statute or written policy.
Last week, a federal judge in the Eastern District of New York ruled the parents are entitled to have their firearms and pistol licenses returned, concluding the county’s ongoing refusal to restore them violated the Second Amendment.
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What happened in Nassau County
The events began in February 2023, after a middle school student on Long Island told a school counselor she was feeling depressed and had previously thought about harming herself. When asked whether there were guns at home, she said yes, according to the judge’s decision.
The parents took their daughter to a hospital a couple days later. A psychiatrist evaluated her and wrote that she “does not represent an imminent danger to self or others,” according to a doctor’s note filed on the court docket. Police and caseworkers also visited the home and found the firearms secured in locked safes with trigger locks.
That storage detail matters because New York law requires gun owners to secure firearms in a safe or use a locking device if they live with someone under 18. The family, at least based on what officers observed, had already taken those steps.
How a “temporary” disarmament can become an indefinite one
After law enforcement came to the home, the father reported his daughter’s comments and the visit to the Nassau County Police Department’s pistol license section, according to court records. Even though officers who examined the safes found the firearms were safely locked, the lawsuit says an officer told the father by phone that both parents’ licenses would be suspended and they would need to turn in their guns because of the daughter’s statements about self-harm.
The parents complied. They brought their firearms to a gun store for safekeeping that same day, the ruling states. So the dispute was not only about physical custody. It was about losing lawful access, and then having no clear, rule-bound path to restoration.
Then came the part that tends to trigger constitutional alarms: what it took to get their rights back.
According to court records described in the judge’s decision, police told the parents their licenses would not be reinstated unless they satisfied conditions like purchasing two biometric safes. Police also required a doctor’s note stating it was safe for the daughter to live in a home with firearms. The parents said they could not obtain a note in that form and did not plan to keep trying.
In other words, the family says the state did not simply remove guns during a short, defined emergency. It created an open-ended process where the path to restoration depended on discretionary, extra-legal demands.
What the county argued
Nassau County argued in court papers that a “reasonable jury” could find it was appropriate for police to suspend the couple’s licenses and secure their weapons after learning a minor in the home had reported thoughts of suicide. The county characterized its actions as a “targeted and time-limited” measure while it managed a safety risk, and it also argued the couple’s gun safes did not eliminate the danger to their daughter.
The judge’s bottom line
U.S. District Judge Sanket Bulsara ruled in a 21-page decision that the parents are entitled to the return of their firearms and their pistol licenses, while other issues in the lawsuit continue.
On the Second Amendment claim, the opinion is blunt. The judge wrote that Nassau County offered “zero evidence” that its actions were consistent with the nation’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation.” He also said the county’s ongoing refusal to return the firearms and licenses “appears to be entirely arbitrary or unlawful.”
“Defendants’ conduct is a plain violation of the Second Amendment,” Judge Bulsara wrote.
Why this is also a due process story
Even though the ruling focused heavily on the Second Amendment, the practical problem most readers will recognize is a due process one: what procedures must the government follow before it takes a constitutional right away, and what procedures must exist to get it back?
In everyday terms, “due process” is the Constitution’s promise that the government cannot treat major rights like a light switch. If the state is going to disarm you, it generally needs a lawful basis and a fair method.
At minimum, due process usually requires:
- Clear legal authority. The government should be able to point to a statute, regulation, or court order that authorizes the deprivation.
- Notice. You should be told what is happening, why it is happening, and what rule the government says you violated or what risk it claims exists.
- A timely opportunity to challenge the action. Often this means a hearing before a neutral decision-maker, or at least a prompt hearing after an emergency action.
- Standards that limit discretion. The more a process depends on case-by-case demands that are not written down, the more it starts to look arbitrary.
This is why “temporary” seizures are constitutionally tricky. If the state can take property and suspend licenses quickly but offers no clear, prompt, rule-bound way to contest the decision, then a short-term intervention can become a long-term deprivation without meaningful review.
How red flag laws usually work
Many states, including New York, have some version of an extreme risk protection order process. The core concept is simple: if there is evidence someone poses a serious risk of harming themselves or others, the government can ask a court for a time-limited order restricting access to firearms.
The key constitutional feature is the court process. In a typical structure, the state must present evidence to a judge, the order has defined time limits, and the person affected has an avenue to challenge or terminate the restriction.
The Nassau County case drew attention because, to the family, the outcome functioned like a de facto risk-based restriction but appears to have been carried out through license suspension and informal conditions, not through a traditional court-issued risk order tied to a specific statutory scheme and a defined hearing schedule.
The safety stakes are real
It is important to say this plainly: families and schools do not raise mental health concerns as a paperwork exercise. And the risk of suicide is not hypothetical.
A recent analysis from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health reports that firearms were the leading cause of death for 1- to 17-year-olds in the United States in 2024, and that gun suicides reached a record high that year, accounting for about 60% of all firearm deaths.
So this is not a choice between “safety” and “rights” in the abstract. It is a question of whether we can design interventions that are both effective and constitutional.
What guardrails look like
When the government believes there is a genuine emergency, courts have long recognized that some actions can happen first, with process following quickly after. But the “following quickly after” part is doing a lot of work.
If a county wants the power to disarm people in crisis situations, it needs procedures that are predictable and reviewable. That means defined timelines, written criteria, and meaningful access to a judge or other neutral decision-maker. It also means that restoration cannot depend on ad hoc requirements that function like a moving target.
To put it in library terms: if the rules are not posted, and there is no appeal desk, the system stops feeling like law and starts feeling like luck.
What to watch next
The parents do not receive their firearms and licenses back immediately, because other legal issues in the case remain unresolved. Nassau County officials have said they are reviewing their processes. The Nassau County Police Department declined to comment on the pending litigation. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said in a statement that officials are “reviewing our processes to make sure there is no interference with constitutional rights.”
Meanwhile, the broader constitutional question is likely to keep resurfacing: as courts apply modern Second Amendment doctrine, how much flexibility do local governments have to create “time-limited” safety measures outside clearly defined legal frameworks?
A calm takeaway
This case is not a referendum on whether mental health crises should be taken seriously. They should. It is a reminder of something the Constitution insists on even in frightening circumstances: the government must use lawful tools, follow clear procedures, and provide a real chance to challenge a deprivation of rights.
If we want systems that protect people, we should also want systems that can explain themselves. Due process is how the law does that.