From the campaign
Due Process Is the Line: Where I Stand on Guns
An accusation is not a conviction. I learned that in a family court room, and it is how I read every gun bill that comes through Pierre.
In District 32, a gun is a deer rifle in the Hills in November. It is a pistol in the nightstand of a nurse who walks to her car alone after the late shift downtown. Ordinary, lawful, and about as controversial around here as a snow shovel.
My neighbors do not need a lecture about firearms. They need a legislator who will guard the line, so let me tell you exactly where I think that line sits and how I came to it.
I moved to this city because of a courtroom. A family court case brought my son to Rapid City in 2018. I followed him, bought a house, built a business, and eight years later this is home.
That courtroom is also where I learned to read a gun bill. An accusation is not a conviction. I have watched accusations do the work that evidence is supposed to do, and I have seen how fast a life comes apart when a system punishes first and sorts out the truth later, if it ever bothers getting to the truth at all. So when somebody proposes removing a constitutional right on the strength of an accusation, I do not have to imagine how that goes. I was in the room while it happened.
My position fits on an index card. Due process is the line. Conviction yes, accusation no. Expand lawful firearm rights. Rights come off only through a conviction carrying full due process, never by accusation alone.
Three things follow from that, and I will fight for each one.
Campus carry, government-employee carry, and reciprocity expansion. A law-abiding adult should not lose the right to carry because she stepped onto a public campus, clocked in at a government job, or drove across a state line.
No red flag laws. Not a softened version, not a pilot, not a compromise draft somebody hands me in committee.
Real penalties for knowingly false allegations used to strip a person's rights. The operative word there is knowingly, and I will come back to it.
Why "ever" is the only honest word
People tell me the "no red flag laws, ever" position sounds extreme. I understand why it lands that way, so here is the reasoning rather than the slogan.
Due process is not a dial. It is a switch. Either the government has to convict you before it takes your rights, or an accusation is enough on its own. There is no moderate version of punishment by accusation, because the moderation is all in the volume and none of it is in the principle. A gentle red flag law rests on exactly the same foundation as the harshest one. Once we accept that foundation for the Second Amendment, I would not count on the other rights holding very long.
So I will not negotiate over the foundation. Conviction yes. Accusation no.
On the word knowingly
A person who reports in good faith has nothing to fear from penalties for false allegations, even when the case cannot be proven. The penalty lands on one person: whoever deliberately lied to strip somebody else's rights.
Right now that lie usually costs the liar nothing and costs the target everything. His rights. His name. Sometimes his kids. Consequences for deliberate lies do not silence real victims, they protect them, because they keep the courtroom a place where telling the truth still carries an advantage.
Four other objections come up every time I say any of this out loud. My answers are published below, in the same words I use on a doorstep.
Both District 32 House seats are on the ballot November 3. I am asking for one of them, and the full platform is at zac4sd.com.
Strong Families. Strong South Dakota.
Anticipated pushbacks · prepared responses
Common questions on this issue
These are the questions and concerns that come up most often. The responses below are my honest answers, not talking points.
- Q. Red flag laws save lives. Why oppose them?
- A. Because of how they operate. A red flag law lets the government take your firearms on a petition and a judge's signature, often before you have said one word in your own defense. No charge, no conviction, sometimes no notice until law enforcement is at the door. That is rights removal by accusation, and I will not vote for it in any form. If a person has committed a crime, we already have laws. Arrest him, charge him, convict him. A conviction can absolutely cost you your rights, and that is due process working. In this country the process comes before the punishment. A tool that skips the process is not a safety tool, it is a weapon waiting for somebody willing to aim it.
- Q. Guns do not belong on a college campus.
- A. A campus boundary has never once stopped a person who came there to do harm. It disarms the people who follow rules. The adult with a permit is the same lawful carrier in a lecture hall that she is in a grocery store, and the same logic covers the government employee told to leave her rights at the door of her job. Campus carry, government-employee carry, and reciprocity all answer one question: does a law-abiding adult forfeit a constitutional right based on where she happens to be standing? My answer is no.
- Q. What about domestic violence victims?
- A. Victims deserve protection with teeth. Arrest, prosecution, conviction, and every rights consequence that follows a conviction. What protects nobody is a system handing out punishment on accusation alone, because that system gets weaponized. I came to this town through a family court case, and since finishing my law degree I have spent two legislative sessions working on family court reform in Pierre. I have watched accusations get used as leverage in custody fights. Where an accusation is rewarded, accusations multiply, and every false one drains credibility and resources from a true one. Victims are safest in a system where an allegation means something precisely because it gets tested, proven, and then acted on with full force.
- Q. Penalties for false allegations will silence real victims.
- A. The operative word in the position is knowingly. Somebody who reports in good faith has nothing to fear here, even if the case cannot be proven. The penalty reaches exactly one person: whoever deliberately lied to strip another person's rights. Today that lie usually costs the liar nothing and costs the target his rights, his name, and sometimes his kids. Consequences for deliberate lies protect victims rather than silencing them, because they keep the courtroom a place where the truth still carries weight.