Bloomberg Opinion
The mass shooting in downtown Louisville is the latest reminder of America's worsening epidemic of gun violence. It should be more than enough to spur elected officials to pass common-sense measures to keep guns away from unstable individuals.
Despite his mental-health issues, the shooter was able to legally purchase an AR-15-style rifle the week before.
Research shows that a majority of mass shooters exhibit warning signs before committing murder. Laws that aim to prevent these people from accessing firearms are a critical tool in reducing the likelihood of mass shootings. Known as red-flag laws, such measures allow police or family members to ask a court to temporarily confiscate weapons belonging to unstable individuals. They're one of the few gun-safety policies that command a degree of bipartisan support.
Last year, Congress passed the most significant federal legislation on guns in nearly three decades, which included federal grants to encourage states to institute red-flag policies of their own. Unfortunately, this push has only hardened opposition among lawmakers in Republican-controlled states. As of 2020, 19 states and the District of Columbia had red-flag laws on the books, with Florida and Indiana the only ones to pass them under Republican leadership. In the years since, despite scores of mass shootings, those numbers haven't changed.
Red-flag laws aren't fail-safe. In the past year, gunmen have carried out mass shootings in California, Colorado and New York, all of which have enacted such laws.
Yet these failures don't invalidate the broader concept; they show that more work is needed to ensure that red-flag laws are effective. States need to tighten such statutes to remove ambiguities and clarify when authorities should act.
Gun-rights extremists will surely continue to oppose such laws. But sensible people of both parties should recognize that they're the most promising approach yet devised to address the national scourge of mass shootings.