While I think “red flag laws” are unconstitutional, maybe we could have a “red flag alert” system where people like you and I just broadcast lunatics acting deranged and the local police use it as probable cause to investigate them for potential threats to society. Like this dude, for instance, who is screaming about murdering all Republicans at the Young Republican table on the Arizona State University campus.

Unhinged @ASU student wants to “slash the throats” of all Trump supporters. pic.twitter.com/l1TuGQOd6E — Mark Dice (@MarkDice) February 6, 2020

This video makes me sad for a few reasons. One, humanity is in a steep decline when there are people out there who think it’s okay to do this in public. Two, I went to ASU (albeit for one party-plentiful year) and when I was there, the entire campus was run by the Young Republicans. It was lovely. There was one lefty who wrote for the student newspaper and every week there would be four or five editorials telling him where he went wrong the week before. It was a beautiful thing.

It was also a time when Republicans and Democrats debated civilly and went for drinks after. There was a Democrat law professor there who debated me on the college radio station once after a particularly scintillating editorial I wrote (mocking the editor) and he and I became good friends. Neither of us agreed with the other about affirmative action, which was the topic, but he found me fun and charming and I found him interesting and intelligent. He wrote to me for a long time after that, because people were NORMAL then. We did not scream obscenities and death threats at each other. Instead, we laid out our best arguments, poked holes in our opponents’ arguments, and then called it a day and hung out like friends and countrymen.

This current climate we are in, where at any moment some unhinged mental patient who should be immediately committed can just verbally assault you (or physically assault you) for handing out political flyers or wearing the wrong hat, is not a climate in which I want to reside. Please, someone…lock him/xim/xer up.

Megan Fox is the author of “Believe Evidence; The Death of Due Process from Salome to #MeToo,” and host of The Fringe podcast. Follow on Twitter @MeganFoxWriter