The gunman in the Indianapolis FedEx shooting legally purchased his weapons after having another weapon confiscated by authorities during a wellness check.
The 19-year-old gunman who fatally shot eight people at a FedEx plant Thursday used two legally purchased assault rifles, police said Saturday, raising new questions as many call for tighter restrictions on powerful firearms and more safeguards on who can own them.
Police said the shooter, a former employee at the facility, bought rifles legally last July and September — months after his mother said she feared her son would attempt “suicide by cop.” That led authorities to question Brandon Hole, temporarily detain him for mental health reasons and seize his shotgun. The gun was not returned, officials say.
Yet Hole went on to obtain more firearms, despite Indiana’s red-flag law aimed at keeping such weapons out of the hands of potentially dangerous people. Under that law, a measure adopted and debated in many states, officials can confiscate someone’s weapon and then argue to a judge that the person should be prevented for some time from having a gun. Indianapolis police said Saturday night that they cannot say why Hole was not barred from purchasing the weapons under red-flag laws or whether authorities had pursued it.
The attack Hole carried out Thursday night — the sixth mass shooting in the United States in the past five weeks — has anguished communities that are once again calling for action to stop such violent assaults, which have targeted offices, stores, places of worship, movie theaters, nightclubs, colleges and grade schools.
Ok, what is the point of red flag laws if the only people who use them are folks looking to exercise grudges.
Yes, I know that is not entirely true, but still, if the police actually confiscate a firearm for valid concerns, that person should get a red flag until they satisfy the court that they’re all good.Report
The confounding issue of many of these measures is the underlying disagreement about what they’re supposed to solve.Report
I find myself irritated at the number of these things that have, three days later, “oh yeah! The FBI knew about this guy.”Report
Urmm…the FBI doesn’t do local LE. It would have been his local cops who did the mental health check and whatever else they did or didn’t do.Report
Well, the fake news media needs to quit coming up with clickbait headlines like “Gunman in Indianapolis FedEx mass shooting was interviewed by FBI last year“.Report
Yeah that is right in the article. Well a different article then the one linked so umm yeah. Why would the FBI have been doing local LE? Not really explained. The FBI prob involved now due to it being a mass shooting. It is local LE that does mental health checks unless there is something far more to the story.
“fake news” lol…lolReport
I guess I’m completely misreading “Paul Keenan, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Indianapolis field office, said Friday that agents questioned Hole last year…”
I don’t know why reporters just parrot the things that law enforcement says.Report
FBI does the background checks. So the question is why the FBI didn’t flag the NICS record?
Local LE and Homeland and the FBI seem to be able to share threat data if you trigger the GWOT efforts, but apparently that’s it.Report
We saw two mass shootings in Florida where the problem seemed to be that although the FBI knew about him and told people, the local police didn’t view it as their problem.Report
Here is a thread that contains a bunch of mass shootings that the FBI was warned about beforehand:
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