Jacksonville video game shooter (I refuse to use his name) had 26 police callouts to his home

[Va Lefty]

He was hospitalized twice in psychiatric units, took anti-psychotic drugs, and was deemed to have a capacity for violence by a psychologist. STILL passed gun buying checks!

[aikoaiko]

1. The new FL red flag law should help in these cases.

There wasn’t much time between it’s passage and this shooting, but there is a law in place to remove firearms from some like this now.

It’s too bad it wasn’t used or able to be used on this shooter.

There was always the possibility of involuntary commitment which would have prevented him from buying new guns but that is a higher bar to reach.

[jberryhill]

2. That FL law would have no effect whatsoever here

He did not reside in FL, nor did he acquire his weapon there.

[aikoaiko]

3. My mistake. I thought he was from FL.

Where did he reside?

[Afromania]

4. near Baltimore I think

[jberryhill]

6. Columbia, Maryland

It’s a suburban area just south of Baltimore.

[aikoaiko]

5. Google helped. Maryland which also has a New Red Flag law.

MD is known for its tough gun ownership laws.

[Lee-Lee]

9. Maryland has some of the most stringent background check laws

But they don’t do any good when the people who know the person is a danger to others don’t take any steps to make sure the system knows.

[Submariner]

7. We probably need one of these NRA gun humpers to shoot Wayne LaPierre,

preferably out in public, before the laws are changed to keep guns out of the hands of these mentally ill shooters.

[Lee-Lee]

8. And had people who had the ability done the right thing he would have been barred

Namely his parents, but others as well.

They had to call the police to the home 26 times, yet refused to ever press and charges so his name would be in the system when Maryland went to do the checks that they do before a handgun is purchased- some of the most stringent in the country.

They had him hospitalized using private systems twice, but refused to use the legal process to have him involuntarily committed so he would be ineligible to buy any guns.

They knew he was a danger, but intentionally kept him “out of the system” at every opportunity that they could have done much more.

At the parents divorce trial the the psychologist who treated him testified he had the potential to be violent and especially to be violent to his mother. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Yet that mental health professional and all the others who treated him never took steps to ensure he was put into NICS, despite being willing to testify in court he was a danger to others.

All the background check programs in the world are only as good as the info in the database. When people don’t do the right thing and make sure data gets entered then it’s an exercise in futility. It is a lot like how most people don’t record the serial numbers of valuable items. Well if the item gets stolen and turns up in a pawn shop and gets checked by serial number even though it’s a stolen item if the original owner couldn’t provide that serial number it won’t show up as stolen when checked.

There were failures here. The same ones that happened at Newtown. The same ones that happened in Aurora Colorado. The same ones that happened in Sutherland Texas- the system was there to prevent people from passing a background check but the people in a position to make sure the people were flagged in the system failed to do their part. It’s a pattern you can see over and over. The people who could have and should have made sure that the person they knew was a danger was known to the NICS and other systems as a danger eitehr intentionally didn’t do so or were just plain negligent.