What Might Actually Help Stop Mass Shootings

By Jim Geraghty

Tuesday, May 31, 2022

 

If Congress or state legislatures want to change laws regulating firearms because of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, then logic dictates they should focus on enacting reforms that would have prevented the Uvalde shooter from obtaining his weapons. A seven-day waiting period might have briefly delayed his rampage but wouldn’t have stopped it. The so-called “gun-show loophole” had no role in the massacre. Limits on magazine capacity would not have made much difference when the police waited more than an hour before confronting the gunman.

 

The shooter passed a background check, and many Americans are likely reading stories of his horrific behavior and wondering just how that could’ve been allowed to happen.

 

One of his former friends said he had slashed his own face, “drove around with another friend at night sometimes and shot at random people with a BB gun,” and egged people’s cars. The shooter reportedly boasted about torturing animals:

 

One Yubo [a social-media platform] user graphically described to ABC News how “the shooter would allegedly publicize the abuse, and would ‘put cats in plastic bags, suspend them inside, throw them at the ground and throw them at people’s houses.’”

 

Users of that same social-media app said he had “told girls he would rape them, showed off a rifle he bought, and threatened to shoot up schools in livestreams.” Other classmates described the shooter getting into “about five” fistfights in middle school and junior high, and remembered him commenting he “wanted to join the Marines one day so he could kill people.” Police reportedly visited the home when the gunman got into angry arguments with his mother on more than one occasion, but no charges were filed. A former classmate told CNN other teens actually called him “school shooter.”

 

Quite a few of these actions — particularly the shooting others with a BB gun and making threats of violence — could have and should have spurred criminal charges. (Texas courts have upheld treating a BB gun as a deadly weapon because it is “capable of causing serious bodily injury.”) Texas law also states that a person commits the felony offense of “terroristic threat” if he “threatens to commit any offense involving violence to any person or property with intent to . . . place any person in fear of imminent serious bodily injury.”

 

If the shooter had been convicted of a crime, he would have been barred from purchasing a firearm.

 

The shooter also sounds like a prime candidate for being involuntarily committed for demonstrating behavior indicating he was a danger to himself or others. Under Texas law, if a person is committed for temporary or extended inpatient mental-health treatment, is found incompetent to stand trial after being charged with a crime or is acquitted of a criminal charge for reasons of insanity or mental defect, that information must be made available to the FBI for inclusion in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), where it would cause him to fail a mandatory background check if he tried to purchase a gun.

 

Texas law does not require the reporting of emergency mental-health detentions, admissions or warrants, or voluntary commitments to NICS. (That might be a useful change to the law, but had that change been in place, that would not have prevented this massacre.)

 

We have a national problem of angry young men, disturbed and fantasizing about inflicting horrific violence upon innocent people. These angry young men often make threats to others before carrying out their massacres, but those whom they threaten rarely feel compelled to report the threats to the police because they don’t think it will make a difference, or they fear they will be targeted for retribution after the police contact the person making the threats. It is hard to blame them; in far too many cases, law enforcement does not take significant action. (I think going to police and filing a complaint is a lot to ask of teenagers.)

 

Similarly, getting a troubled person committed to a mental institution requires someone who cares enough about the troubled person to take that action, and who knows how to navigate the legal process for this “last resort” in mental health.

 

Federal law bars those under age 18 from purchasing any firearm, and those under age 21 from purchasing a handgun. In the aftermath of the Uvalde shooting, a few governors, such as Phil Murphy in New Jersey and Kathy Hochul in New York, have announced an intention to pass legislation barring those under age 21 from purchasing any firearms. But the problem is not all 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds; the problem is emotionally disturbed and mayhem-minded 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds. (No institution in America puts more guns into the hands of 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds than the Pentagon.)

 

Our old friend David French notes that “in every one of the deadliest school shootings, the shooter exhibited behavior before the shooting that could have triggered a well-drafted red flag law.” To French, “well-drafted” means that “the law should contain abundant procedural safeguards, including imposing a burden of proof on the petitioner, hearing requirements, and a default expiration date unless the order is renewed through a clear showing of continued need.”

 

From what we now know about the Uvalde shooter, he seems like a slam-dunk case of demonstrating behavior indicating that he was a threat to others.

 

But my friend Cam Edwards points out that there’s a flaw in most of the red-flag laws on the books in the 19 states that have them. In just about all of the cases, the court system and police seize the firearms of the troubled individual and then . . . that’s it. There’s no requirement for subsequent counseling or mental-health treatment. The state has taken away that person’s guns and called it a day. That emotionally disturbed or threatening person is still free to attack someone with a kitchen knife or try to run down someone in their car. As D. J. Jaffe wrote in 2019, “It makes no sense to let people who are known to be seriously mentally ill and believed to be dangerous go without treatment, even if they have had their weapons taken away. It’s not compassionate. And it can be dangerous.”

 

Ideally, every state in the country would have a “red-flag law” that sorted out the legitimate cases of threatening behavior from people venting grievances by making unserious claims, that had a clear appeals process, and that took the mentally ill and treated them so that they were no longer a threat to others. And then, instead of just nicknaming a troubled teenager “school shooter,” people would take action to ensure that he did not actually become a school shooter.