Mark Karlin: Red Flag Laws Are Helpful, But Riddled With Loopholes. The Highland Park Massacre Showed Us That.
July 8, 2022
Screen grab of one of many chilling images Robert Crimo posted in a video on YouTube in October of 2021, foretelling his mass murder on July 4. The video by Crimo was removed by YouTube within an hour of the massacre. Why didn’t this video raise a Red Flag?
MARK KARLIN - EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH
In 1988, a troubled woman named Laurie Dann made her way into a Hubbard Woods Elementary School and shot and killed one child and wounded four others. The school is in Winnetka, Illinois, two suburbs south of Highland Park.
More than three decades later, the United States has seen a pathology of more than 300 mass shootings this year alone. The wealthy North Shore of Chicago we saw on Monday cannot escape the curse of gun violence in America. We are a nation that needs no foreign enemies. In the clutches of the powerful gun lobby, we are hostages to an iron river of self-destruction.
Illinois passed a Red Flag law in 2019, making it one of 19 states and the District of Columbia with such restrictions. The laws enact what are called Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPO).
However, it didn’t work in the case of Crimo, even though not too long before obtaining an Illinois Firearm Owners Card (FOID)— in Illinois you need a FOID to legally own and buy guns without limit — the police department were called to his family home because Crimo was threatening to commit suicide. The Highland Park Police (the Crimos have since moved to Homewood, just north of Highland Park) also were summoned to the family home in 2019 because they received a call from a family member that Crimo was threatening to kill “everyone.” They seized 16 knives, a dagger and a sword. The police issued a “clear and present danger report.” In a sadly ironic development, Crimo’s father later retrieved the cutlery, claiming it was his, but obviously that meant the knives would still be in the home.
In spite of these incidents, the Illinois State Police issued a FOID card to Crimo. He was under 21, but there is a loophole that an adult can co-sign for someone under 21, and the applicant will be granted the card if he is not in violation of any of its provisions. Crimo’s father, who likely knew of his son’s mental illness, co-signed the FOID application. Crimo’s father has been cagey about whether he let his son have access to his guns. (Similarly, Laurie Dann’s father was aware that his daughter had access to a gun in the family home and did not secure it.) In fact, enabling family and friends are often reluctant to file a request for an RPO due to close ties to a potential shooter.
As a result, Crimo was granted the card, and when he turned 21 last year, he bought several firearms including the AR-15 style rifle used to maim and kill on Monday.
In a Wednesday email newsletter by The Trace, it was noted:
The shooter’s dark and violent online trail. Much of it was linked to a musical alias where he shared videos that included depicting shootings and other violent imagery. "It was pretty clear that this suspect had a history online of glorifying and fantasizing about violence, and to me that sends a red flag on top of a red flag," Jared Holt, an extremism expert, told NPR.
I managed to watch Crimo’s chilling video three times before YouTube took it down, probably not to incite other shooters, but also to protect the law enforcement community from questions on why the video didn’t precipitate a visit to Crimo.
There are a number of reasons to invoke a Red Flag seizure of weapons due to the danger posed to the community and one’s family and friends. But both the Crimo and Dann cases (although the Red Flag law was not in effect for Dann) show that many unstable, violent, hateful people are not kept from access to guns — and they don’t meet the stringent Red Flag gun temporary forfeiture criteria.
The recent weak national bipartisan gun bill allocates some money to help implement state Red Flag laws (although Congress won’t pass a national one). There are also some state groups, like The Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, that are trying to educate law enforcement, organizations and community members on how to use the law. They deserve much credit for their earnest efforts to try and reduce gun violence.
Red Flag laws may incrementally reduce gun violence, but the numbers of Red Flag gun seizures due to them is likely to remain relatively small. This is a nation that has many more guns than people, and many people that should probably have Red Flags applied to them, but are supported by the NRA as “the good guys.” Then you have the increasing threat of right-wing and white supremacist armed violence. And there are other armed individuals and groups who are enabled. Also, under Red Flag laws, the guns and denial of the right to gun ownership are time-limited (with some exceptions), all involving court orders.
You don’t need to be sane to buy a gun on the illegal market, from “amateur sellers” at gun shows, from a friend and so on. Remember Kyle Rittenhouse? A friend in Kenosha gave him the gun he used to murder three people.
In fact, it can be argued that the emphasis on “Red Flag” laws may shift attention from the major source of gun violence in America: the gun industry, legal and illegal — and the US historical heritage of being founded on the violence of slavery and genocide of Native-Americans.
BuzzFlash writer Steven Jonas recently wrote a commentary that sums this up nicely (although there are still more gun profiteers than listed here):
As has been pointed out, it has to be recognized by the gun control-regulation forces that the primary opponent to change is not the NRA. What has to be recognized is that the real opponents of gun safety/control legislation are the six major personal weapons industries: the rifle/long-gun/semi-automatic weapons industry; the handgun industry (sometimes the same as the one just above; sometimes not); the gun ammunition industry; the licensed gun 'dealers' industry (wholesale and retail); the gun show industry; and the online gun-sales industry (which can be connected to all of the above, or not). And, of course, there are private and illegal sales. The NRA is just their biggest brand name front organization.
It is to these segments of U.S. commerce, all major funders of the Republican Party and Republican politicians, to which major political, economic, and social pressure should be turned. Further, the point should be made that the primary reason that they want no gun-ownership restrictions of any kind is simply so that they can sell more guns, more ammunition, in more places, for more profit.
Since Laurie Dann heinously shot up a grade school classroom, the US advocates for reduced gun violence has now grown into many creative organizations, primarily due to the increasing number of mass and school shootings. Similarly, the approach to reducing gun violence, short of a ban, will require a full-court press of laws and, importantly, a transformation in our culture of violence. Red Flag laws are a toe in the door, but don’t have expectations beyond that, particularly when it comes to a massive number of urban shootings and deaths, which too are now a national emergency.
Mark Karlin has been Editor of BuzzFlash for more than 20 years. He was Chairman of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence — and helped keep Illinois at the forefront of gun control in the ‘80s and ‘90s, including the Land of Lincoln being the only state avoiding a pre-emption law on guns and preventing concealed-carry for 12 years. Since his departure, both laws are now pro-gun. He also helped establish some of the only cities (6) in the United States with handgun bans. They were all in Illinois. (They were struck down in the Supreme Court Heller decision in 2008.) Karlin proudly worked with a coalition of state groups for many years, particularly with media and capacity building.
In 1995, when the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence presented its annual “Lincoln Courage Award” to then President Bill Clinton, Clinton stated in his remarks: “I also want to thank Mark Karlin for his long and often lonely struggle against gun violence.”
He is a cum laude graduate of Yale University, with distinction in English.
This is the first in an occasional BuzzFlash series on the gun violence pathology in the US.
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