If there’s one mainstay of conservative rhetoric in response to mass shootings like in Buffalo and Uvalde, Tex., these days, it’s mental health. Republicans on Fox News and in Congress, like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), will repeatedly refer to the shooters as “psychopaths” and the like. The suggestion is that guns don’t kill people, psychopaths do.
But if we accept that framing, it leads to the obvious question: Even if you don’t broadly restrict gun ownership, what do you do about the “psychopaths”? One option even many Republicans have entertained and even done in recent years is taking guns away from such people.
As we wrote last week, conservative governors, GOP senators and even former president Donald Trump have at least momentarily entertained the idea of “red-flag” laws — that is, seeking court orders for law enforcement to prevent someone considered a danger to themselves or others from keeping or obtaining a gun. Florida Republicans passed one, among other laws, after the school shooting in Parkland in 2018. And after returning from Uvalde, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said he’d be in talks with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) about red-flag laws. The types of red flags incorporated into such laws are generally violent threats against others, suicidal thoughts and other mental health issues.
Precisely how much such laws could help prevent these tragedies is the subject of plenty of valid debate. (One hurdle, for example, arises when behavior that could rise to the level of a “red flag” isn’t brought to the attention of the relevant authorities.) Some studies have suggested that California’s red-flag law might have done so or that they reduced suicide rates in Connecticut and Indiana.
But a conservative governor in 2018 made perhaps one of the strongest cases for such red-flag laws. In his school-safety plan, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) detailed what were then the five deadliest school shootings. His takeaway: The biggest common denominator was missed red flags.
“In 5 out of 5 of the most deadly school shootings, the killers displayed warning signs of being a potential threat to themselves or others,” the report said. “This stunning fact illustrates the need for a legal tool to keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous individuals.” While that report focused on school shootings, other mass shootings in recent American history also fit this trend.
Red-flag laws differ in who can seek a court order against high-risk individuals and what is required to withhold firearms from them. Police reportedly decided that the recent alleged mass shooter in Buffalo didn’t meet New York’s requirement, though he’d talked about committing a murder-suicide at his school. And in recent days, we’ve learned the alleged Uvalde shooter frequently threatened teenage girls online with rape and kidnapping; at least one teen reported his threats to a social-media site, though The Post also reports that “these threats hadn’t been discovered by parents, friends or teachers.”
Indeed, what’s clear from the history of these tragedies is that there are very often significant red flags that could seemingly be targeted by such a law. As Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) put it in his own 2018 school-safety plan, “Properly designed, emergency risk protective orders could identify those intent on violence from firearms, but in a way that preserves fundamental rights under the second amendment.”
(Currently, 19 states and the District of Columbia have such laws, but only two of those are Republican-leaning states.)
With that in mind, we thought it worthwhile to expand on Ducey’s chart to show what kind of red flags may have shown up in mass shootings over the past two-plus decades.
Columbine (1999): A sheriff’s office had at least 15 contacts with the two shooters and had been warned that they were collecting guns and building bombs. One of them made angry threats on his website, and police were warned about one of them building pipe bombs.
Virginia Tech (2007): While issuing a detention order and ruling that the shooter be examined by a state doctor, a special justice declared him to be mentally ill, but a campus staff psychiatrist said in an evaluation that “there is no indication of psychosis, delusions, suicidal or homicidal ideation.” Later, the shooter wrote a paper for a fiction writing class about a young man who hates his fellow students and plans a murder-suicide but doesn’t follow through.
Sandy Hook (2012): The Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate later issued a report stating the shooter appeared to be on a “path to violence for some time.” The report said he "was not obviously psychotic” in the period leading up to the shooting. But he had written a very violent book in fifth grade that included images and descriptions of child murder. He was also admitted to an emergency room for a crisis evaluation amid a deteriorating mental and physical condition.
Navy Yard in Washington (2013): The shooter had displayed bizarre behaviors, including calling police to tell them he was hearing voices in his hotel room, and was arrested repeatedly for angry outbursts. He was treated at two Veterans Affairs Department hospitals after the hotel incident and shortly before the massacre.
Oregon (2015): The shooter had been in a mental hospital, with family acknowledging mood swings and anger problems. But his mother said he had never made explicit comments about hurting people.
Pulse nightclub in Orlando (2016): The shooter had been investigated by the FBI twice for alleged ties to Islamist extremism, but neither led to accusations of wrongdoing, and he was able to purchase two guns.
Sutherland Springs, Tex. (2017): The shooter had a history of violence that included a sentence of one year in a military prison for assaulting his wife and child. He had also escaped a mental health facility after being caught sneaking guns to “carry out death threats” against military superiors on an Air Force base, according to a police report.
Parkland, Fla. (2018): The shooter reportedly used to introduce himself to people by saying, “Hi, I’m Nick. I’m a school shooter.” He was reported to the FBI after online comments in his name stated “I wanna shoot people with my AR-15,” and “Im going to be a professional school shooter.” Police were reportedly called to his home 39 times in seven years.
El Paso (2019): The shooter’s attorney would later cite diagnosed “mental disabilities,” while arguing against the death penalty. But little was known about that before the shooting, with the shooter posting a manifesto only slightly beforehand.
Buffalo (2022): The alleged shooter was referred by law enforcement for psychiatric evaluation after he told a high school class that he planned to commit a murder-suicide. (No red-flag petition was filed because the threat was not viewed as specific enough under New York law.) He also detailed his plan to murder Black people online in the weeks before the shooting.
Uvalde (2022): The alleged shooter repeatedly threatened teenage girls on a social-media website with rape and kidnapping. Ten days before the shooting, as Ramos talked about his plans to purchase a gun, a person responded, "Are you going to shoot up a school or something?” He had also repeatedly gotten into fights at school and with strangers, according to classmates and friends, and at one point cut up his own face with a knife.
