The Problem With All The Background Checks And Red Flag Laws

I don't really have a dog in the whole Second Amendment fight; I don't own a gun and never have. I did some target shooting in my Boy Scout days and had an M1 issued to me in the ROTC, and that's about it. What bothers me about the current dispute in the wake of the Uvalde and Highland Park shootings is that existing laws and controls seem to have been observed only in the breach. For instance,

The mayor of Uvalde, Texas, visibly frustrated with the constantly changing information released about what happened the day 19 children and two teachers were gunned down, lashed out Tuesday, telling residents at a city council meeting he's tired of being kept in the dark about what evidence has been uncovered.

. . . McLaughlin sharply criticized the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and its leader, Col. Steven McCraw. The Texas Rangers, a DPS agency, are leading the investigation into the shooting and McLaughlin told residents he was upset that he and other city officials have never been briefed on how the investigation is going. He went on to say he thinks McCraw is making misleading statements to help distance the actions of the state troopers and Texas Rangers who responded to the shooting.

"There is compelling evidence that the law enforcement response to the attack at Robb Elementary was an abject failure and antithetical to everything we've learned over the last two decades since the Columbine massacre," McCraw told the Texas Senate Special Committee to Protect All Texans in Austin.

"Three minutes after the subject entered the West building, there was a sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor to isolate, distract and neutralize the subject," he continued. "The only thing stopping the hallway of dedicated officers from entering rooms 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander, who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children."

Exactly what happened at the incident is still unclear, especially given the finger-pointing among the actors, but it's hard to avoid thinking that bungling at all levels of law enforcement made the incident far worse than it could have been. The story continues,

In addition, [school police chief] Arredondo initially said that the responding officers needed more firepower and equipment to breach the doors. For example, at 11:40 a.m., Arredondo called the Uvalde Police Department's dispatch by phone shortly after the gunman fired at officers and requested further assistance and a radio, according to a DPS transcript.

"We don't have enough firepower right now, it's all pistol and he has an AR-15," Arredondo said, according to a DPS transcript.

However, two of the first officers to arrive to the scene had rifles, according to McCraw.

In the first minutes of their response, an officer also said a Halligan, a firefighting tool that is used for forcible entry, was on scene, according to the timeline. However, the tool wasn't brought into the school until an hour after officers arrived and was never used, the timeline said.

The short version of the story is that law enforcement had ample resources to minimize the effect of the disaster but for whatever reason lacked the will to use them.

So far, as relates to the Highland Park shooting, it's hard to avoid thinking an equivalent breakdown of controls that were already in place was a big part of the problem:

We’ve learned in the last couple of days that the alleged killer was yet another one of those “known wolves” that police were powerless to do anything about. What stands out in this case is what the parents may have done to enable their son.

Even more troubling is the killer’s history with police and likely mental illness — and the lengths the father apparently went to both to protect and to arm his son.

Ari Hoffman reported for the Post Millennial that the killer was “able to purchase firearms despite having been flagged as a ‘clear and present danger’ by police in 2019.”

Illinois police said in a statement Tuesday that the flag was a result of threats he made against his own family. He would have been 18 or 19 years old at the time, a legal adult.

Police took the young man’s knife collection away but then returned them after the father claimed they were his own.

Except that what's emerged is that the shooter lived with his mother and the knives were kept at his mother's home. And three months laterr, the father sponsored the shooter for a firearms identification card, which he needed to buy a weapon while he was under 21. In other words, existing laws and controls could, and should, have kept the shooter from buying a gun.

Thus I think Bp Barron's statement in response to the Highland Park shooting misses at least some of the point:

Now, look, I understand very well the complexities surrounding the issue of mass violence. I grasp the arguments on the many sides of the gun control question. But I just don't understand how a 21-year-old can legally purchase a firearm capable of such mass carnage.

The shooter's father, even after his son made direct threats against his family, continued to enable him by allowing his knife collection to be returned and even sponsored his permit to buy the weapon he used in the shooting. Bp Barron then endorses the appeal that four US bishops made in June to pass the gun control legislation that had come before the US Congress. What good are red flag laws if the red flags get lost in the shuffle, as happened in Illinois?

It seems to me that something beyond that is needed. There needs to be a call for some higher level of conscientiousness overall, in families, in government, in law enforcement. The problem is less that we need new laws than that people, like fathers or like some police, simply aren't doing their jobs, and right now, there's an overall sense in the community that this is OK. That's an area where bishops could be especially effective if they were to urge greater conscientiousness on the rest of us.