As the nation debates what laws could be passed to prevent another mass shooting, we should first make sure that the laws already in place are being enforced.

From National Review. The Nashville shooter purchased seven guns from five stores before the mass shooting at a Christian school, and there is mounting evidence that those purchases could have and should have been prevented. Nashville police said the shooter had been in a “doctor’s care for an emotional disorder.” The parents of the shooter believed their daughter should not own firearms because of that emotional disorder, and believed she did not own any. Both federal and Tennessee state law ban the sale of firearms to anyone who has been adjudicated to be a threat to themselves or others. Had the parents, or the shooter’s doctor, or anyone else taken legal action to have the shooter deemed “mentally defective” under the law, she would not have been able to purchase the firearms used in the massacre.

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The Nashville Shooter and the Law

You may have heard that the mass shooter in Nashville purchased the guns used in the attack legally. There is mounting evidence that the shooter should not have been able to purchase those guns legally.

Nashville police chief John Drake held a press conference Tuesday and said that the parents of the shooter told the police the shooter had been in a “doctor’s care for an emotional disorder.” The parents reportedly told police that they believed their daughter should not own guns and did not believe that she had any; they believed their child had purchased one gun and then sold it. The shooter reportedly told her parents that she had sold the firearm. …

The police chief did not elaborate on the emotional disorder, which doctor was providing the shooter care, or whether the shooter was on any medication. It is chillingly clear in retrospect that the shooter should have been institutionalized, or at minimum, legally ruled a potential threat to herself or others. …

Under federal law, it is illegal for “any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person, including as a juvenile” who has “been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution at 16 years of age or older.”

“Mental defective” is a term you don’t hear often anymore, and some may find it offensive, but under federal law, it has a specific meaning: a finding by any court, board, commission, or other lawful authority that a person “is a danger to himself or to others; or lacks the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs,” as a result of “marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease.”

The Nashville shooter was, indisputably, a danger to others, and that threat to others was almost certainly connected to her mental illness. The evidence was there for her to be declared legally mentally defective and barred from owning firearms. … But no one acted upon those concerns, and no one reached out to police.

Tennessee does not have a “red flag” law that would allow police to seize the firearms of individuals that are at elevated risk of harming themselves or others. However, under Tennessee law, anyone who has been deemed “mental defective” cannot purchase a firearm in the first place. …

You can argue that Tennessee should have a “red flag” law, but those laws only work if a concerned person goes to law enforcement and says, “I am afraid this person is a threat to themselves or others, and you must act to remove their firearms.” The process also usually requires convincing a judge. Alas, far too few people take those steps, apparently convincing themselves that the person they are concerned about will just get better on his or her own.

As of late last year, 19 states and the District of Columbia had red-flag laws; an Associated Press review found that, “Many U.S. states barely use the red flag laws.” In Chicago, “Amid more than 8,500 shootings resulting in 1,800 deaths since 2020, the law was used there just four times.”

As with every other mass shooting, many on the left side of the aisle will insist that horrors such as the one in Nashville could be avoided by passing by more gun-control laws. But a law is only as effective as its enforcement. …

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(Excerpt from National Review. Photo Credit: Canva)