Mike Berry column: Why the law didn’t stop the Uvalde shootings
Of all of the questions being asked in the wake of the shootings of 21 people in Uvalde, Texas, last month, the most pervasive one to me is:
How was an 18-year-old kid able to spend $3,500 on two AR—15 style semiautomatic rifles and ammunition just by walking into a store?
Is the law in Texas so lax that such a thing is possible?
Well, Texas law doesn’t require a permit to purchase a handgun or long gun, but that puts it in the majority. The website gunstocarry.com breaks down gun laws by state (including the District of Columbia), and it shows that only 16 states require purchase permits.
Illinois is one of those states. The fact that neighboring states Wisconsin and Indiana, both within an hour’s drive of most Chicago neighborhoods, allow no-permit gun sales is often cited as a contributing factor to the high rate of fatal shootings in that city.
Among the states and D.C., 31 (including Illinois) require permits to carry a handgun. Only three require carry permits for long guns.
Open carry of guns is permitted in many states. Illinois allows this only for people while they’re hunting, hiking or fishing.
A question I had during a conversation around a table at the Senior Citizens Center the other day was: Didn’t the shooter in Texas have to show a Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) card to buy his guns and ammo? I thought those cards were required everywhere.
The answer is no. One of the guys at the table spoke of walking into a gun store in Florida and purchasing a handgun, no questions asked.
In fact, according to the Guns to Carry site, Illinois is the only state to require a gun purchaser to present a FOID card (or a concealed-carry permit, for which a FOID card is required) at a gun store. (A lot of good that does; see the above mention of gunshot deaths in Chicago.)
The FOID card has been the source of many complaints among gun owners I know. The problem is that one has to apply for it to the state police, and it can take a long time before the card arrives in the mail.
The state police merely check to see that the applicant for the FOID card doesn’t have a criminal record. They don’t look into the possibility that the applicant has a mental condition that might make it a bad idea for him or her to own a gun.
That’s where “red flag” laws would come in. Much discussed in the wake of the mass shootings in Uvalde and in Buffalo, N.Y. a few days earlier, these laws would allow law enforcement, family members or in some cases mental-health professionals to bar someone from buying guns based on their mental state.
There are hurdles to such laws; in some states, for example, a person seeking to buy a gun doesn’t have to be notified that someone’s trying to prevent the purchase.
Illinois is one of 19 states, along with the District of Columbia, that have red flag laws, which seem like a good idea to me.
I don’t know if either of the recent mass-shooting suspects — or any of the dozens more who went before them — would have been stopped with a red flag. But surely at least some of these horrendous incidents would have been stopped.
And in a time when there are many calls for the government to “do something” about mass shootings, the red flag laws might be a good approach.
This article originally appeared on Star Courier: Mike Berry column: Why the law didn’t stop the Uvalde shootings
