On March 7, 1998, a disgruntled Connecticut State Lottery employee got up from his chair at work and began shooting and stabbing his superiors, before committing suicide. By the time the commotion was over, four people had been killed.
There may have been warning signs that posed some form of threat: severe depression, suicide attempts, and concern among colleagues for their general well-being, which could have been described as so-called “red flags.”
“That made me think, I was in the legislature at the time, can we find any mechanism that the police can use in these situations? And we did,” said Michael Lawlor, a former member of the Connecticut House. Representatives.
Lawlor was the author of the first law called the Red Flag in the United States, better known formally as the Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPO). These orders, issued by a judge or police officer, may temporarily restrict access to firearms to persons believed to be at risk of violence, either for themselves or against others.
The concept seems to be gaining momentum after the recent deadly shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, a possible compromise in the never-ending gun control debate.
However, it is not yet clear to what extent these laws can be effective and their effect on the prevention of other mass shootings.
Investigators remain silent for a moment over the victims of the Buffalo Supermarket shooting outside Tops Friendly Market on Saturday. New York is one of 19 states that have red flag laws. (Joshua Bessex / The Associated Press)
The idea behind these laws is that, according to some research, mass shooters have often shown a number of worrying behaviors prior to their attacks.
Laws, depending on the state, allow several individuals, including families, household members, community members, or law enforcement officers, to apply directly to a court for an ERPO, according to Giffords Law. Center To Prevent Gun Violence.
The definition of “red flag” may vary
What defines “red flag” behavior varies from state to state, and each uses different formulations to finally approve an ERPO, said Dr. Mark Rosenberg, founding director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
“Basically there has to be credible evidence that this person is very likely to hurt themselves or someone else,” he said. “It must be a very credible threat. It’s not that anyone has heard anyone say, ‘Oh, I hate these people.’ No, that’s not credible evidence of a threat.”
Jaclyn Schildkraut, interim executive director of the New York-based Rockefeller Institute of Government’s Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium, said officers must file a sworn arrest statement detailing why they want to arrest the person and describe their probable cause.
And anyone requesting an ERPO should still be able to articulate in court why the order would be necessary, he said.
To date, 19 states and the District of Columbia have enacted red flag laws. Although adoption has been slow, many states, including Florida, introduced these laws after the 2018 high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, when 17 people died.
Pat Gibson has a drawing of Meadow Pollack, a victim of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. The shooting prompted other states, including Florida, to implement red flag laws. (Lynne Sladky / Associated Press)
And while Republicans have generally rejected proposals for tighter gun control, red-flag laws have received some acceptance from conservatives and politicians in favor of gun rights. Several Republican senators have said they would be open to a red-flag federal law, though they have also said they would prefer to leave those decisions to individual states.
“If you see something, say something”
In Connecticut, police took a while to get comfortable with the law, and people followed the advice: “If you see something, say something,” Lawlor said.
But he said sworn statements in his state suggest that the orders have been used against people who actually posed threats and who have huge amounts of weapons at home, “not just a guy who is having a bad day and could have a gun in his house. “
“And very few of these people were already on the mental health radar screen,” Lawlor said. “And when you read these things, you start to appreciate the amount of these things that are being prepared.”
As for the effectiveness of these laws, Schildkraut suggests that some initial studies are promising. A Connecticut law study found that for every 10 to 20 gun withdrawals, one life was saved from a gun-related suicide, he said.
“Other studies have found that in cases where people were threatened with mass shootings and an extreme risk order was issued, none of these people committed mass shootings after a certain period of time,” he added.
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One such study by the University of California identified more than 20 cases in which the state’s red flag law was used to disarm people in an effort to prevent a mass shooting. None of the threatened shootings in these cases took place, the Washington Post reported.
However, the investigators could not definitively claim that California’s red flag law was responsible, and noted that it was impossible to know if any threats had actually been made.
And New York’s red flag law was not enough to prevent the recent mass shooting in Buffalo, where a gunman opened fire on a Tops supermarket in a Black neighborhood, leaving 10 dead and three injured. Reports say law enforcement had sent the suspect for a psychiatric evaluation after he made a threat to his school, but he was still able to gain access to a weapon and no petition was filed against him.
In this case, Fredrick E. Vars, a law professor at the University of Alabama Law School, said he believes police may have misread the statute. “I think they probably could have gone ahead with the red flag,” he said.
Vars noted that the biggest impact of red-flag laws seems to be on the prevention of gun-related suicides.
“In terms of [an] effect on homicide, or effect on mass shooting. I don’t think I’ve seen any really persuasive evidence in any direction yet, “he said.
Others have also questioned whether red-flag laws could violate defendants’ civil liberties. In 2018, the Rhode Island branch of the ACLU expressed “great concern” over the introduction of the state’s red flag laws and “their impact on civil liberties, and the precedent it sets for use of coercive measures against individuals, not because they are presumed to have committed any crime, but because someone believes that one day they might commit one. “
Kendra Parris, a Florida-based lawyer who has represented people subject to red-flag laws, said she is concerned that people see these laws as “a panacea” for armed violence.
“It’s a wide network. And the problem, like the one in Florida, was so wide … it really lets every court make that call,” he said.
“Psychiatrists cannot even accurately predict whether someone will be violent or not. What we are really asking for is for the laity, that is, the police and the courts, to make these summonses,” he added.
“So you take a ‘better prevention than regret’ approach? Because if they don’t and something goes wrong, they’ll get an egg in their face.”
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Meanwhile, Rosenberg said the United States is far behind in conducting research on what measures could prevent gun-related deaths, including red-flag laws.
“We know that there is no such thing as an intervention for which there is solid evidence in any way,” he said.
“And these things are so complicated. You can’t figure out if red flag laws will work for gun killings or gun suicides. There’s no way to know what works without doing the investigation.”