The new federal gun law comes with fatal blind spots

Barely a week after the Supreme Court expanded already permissive gun rights, the nation suffered another mass shooting. 

A lone gunman in Highland Park, Ill. murdered seven people and wounded 25 others watching a Fourth of July parade. The attack followed fast on the heels of the May 14 shooting of African American shoppers in Buffalo, NY and the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde, Texas on May 24.  

The Highland Park killings happened less than two weeks after the president signed a bipartisan gun law. “God willing,” Biden declared, “It’s going to save a lot of lives.” 

While the investigation is ongoing, what we know so far suggests the measure would not have prevented the Fourth of July massacre. Here is why. 

Robert “Bobby” Crimo III confessed to conducting a carefully planned attack from a rooftop along the parade route. Using a high-powered rifle, which he purchased legally, he fired more than 80 rounds into the crowd in a matter of minutes.  

Wouldn’t the “red flag” laws called for in the federal statute have prevented the 21-year-old from buying weapons? Probably not. 

Illinois already has a red-flag law, which allows a family member to file a petition for a restraining order to prevent an individual deemed a threat from owning or purchasing a firearm. In April 2019, police came to Crimo’s house after the young man allegedly tried to kill himself. They returned in September when family members reported that he threatened to kill all of them. At that time officers confiscated 16 knives, a dagger and a sword from the home, but returned them later that day. Despite these disturbing incidents, no one petitioned a court under the red-flag law.  

Following the September incident, however, the Highland Park Police Department notified Illinois State Police, which issues the Firearm Owner’s Identification Card (FOID) necessary to own a weapon in the state. Illinois regulations stipulate that “a person whose mental condition is of such a nature that it poses a clear and present danger to the applicant, or any other person or the community” may be denied a card. The Highland Park Police determined that Crimo had met that threshold, but the State Police disagreed, so they issued him a card after he applied in December 2019. Because he was only 19, his father sponsored the application. The card allowed him to legally purchase the Smith and Wesson M&P 15 semi-automatic rifle he used in the massacre as well as four other guns. Our laws clearly need to be tougher. 

Second Amendment advocates have been swift to offer the usual arguments to deflect attention from the real cause of this tragedy: easy access to firearms. 

“We continue to ask that we come together in prayer and action to address the plague of violence and commit to better addressing mental health in Illinois and across the nation,” Republican gubernatorial candidate and proud NRA member Darren Bailey posted on his Facebook page after the Highland Park massacre. He also called for increased law enforcement funding to “ensure public safety” — prayers, mental health care and more police, but not gun control. 

Bailey apparently knows little of Highland Park. For more than 20 years, my family and I lived a few miles from the Northshore town. It is an affluent community with ample resources, good mental healthcare, excellent schools and a well-funded police force. It also has one of the strictest community gun laws in the state. None of that stopped Crimo. 

Mass shooters are obviously disturbed individuals, although most do not suffer from a diagnosed mental illness. Jillian Peterson and James Densley constructed a database of every mass shooting in the United States since 1966. They found a consistent pattern among perpetrators. 

“Early childhood trauma seems to be the foundation,” Peterson explained. “Then you see the build toward hopelessness, despair, isolation, self-loathing, oftentimes rejection from peers.” 

That self-loathing sometimes results in a suicide attempt, but eventually, it focuses on the people they intend to kill. 

Gun rights advocates rightly insist that we need better mental health care, though they are rarely willing to pay for it. Hiring more counselors will not, however, solve the problem of gun violence. Research reveals that mental illness contributes to only 4 percent of all violent incidents and an even lower percentage of gun violence. 

Every country has disturbed individuals, but no nation comes close to the United States in mass shootings. A recent study revealed that 73 percent of these incidents over the past 20 years occurred in the United States. During the first half of 2022, there have been 309 mass shootings.  

Dramatic though they are, these tragedies account for a fraction of gun deaths. According to the “Gun Violence Archive,” of the more than 22,000 gun deaths this year, the majority (more than 12,000) were suicides. The next largest group (more than 10,000) were homicides and accidental shootings. The United States has the highest per capita murder-by-firearm rate among the world’s wealthiest nations (4.12 per 100,000). From 2009-2021, 1,363 Americans died in mass shootings.  

These grim statistics paint a clear picture of what needs to be done. No amount of mental health care, law enforcement or school hardening will stop the killing. Keeping guns out of the hands of perpetrators will. Assault rifles belong on battlefields, not on American streets. No one needs a semiautomatic weapon or a high-capacity magazine. Only police and security guards should be allowed to carry firearms openly or concealed. If you are too young to drink legally, you are too young to buy a gun of any kind. The federal government must require universal background checks for all gun purchases.  

Anyone asserting their Second Amendment right to bear arms should be required to join a “well-regulated militia” (i.e., the National Guard), as the Second Amendment requires. They must also realize that a constitution written in the age of the smoothbore musket cannot be applied without modification to the era of the AR-15. 

Gun-control advocates have aptly described the new federal law as a first step in the right direction. That may be true, but the law does not go far enough. The right of children to watch parades and go to school in safety must take precedent over the right of adults to buy any weapon they choose. That safety requires more stringent gun-control laws. 

Tom Mockaitis is a professor of history at DePaul University and author of “Violent Extremists: Understanding the Domestic and International Terrorist Threat.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated July 8 at 3:24 p.m. to correct the timing associated with the number of gun deaths.