As the devastating events of the Fourth of July parade unfolded in Highland Park, Illinois, experts say the new bipartisan gun law would not have been able to prevent the mass shooting.
According to NBC News, “Experts and congressional aides familiar with the law say it’s unlikely it would have stopped a person with the suspect’s profile from passing a background check and being able to buy firearms.”
Since this is a “what if” theory, a lot of factors are at play. There seems to be no simple remedy to the shooting that left seven people dead, many wounded, and a child orphaned.
The historic federal gun law recently passed could have been a testament to what laws can do to combat gun violence. Sadly, it was ineffective, and the suspect fell through the cracks.
This is not the first time the suspect had an encounter with local law enforcement. He was never actually convicted of a crime, so it is likely he would have passed the FBI background check. In this case, Illinois red flag laws, adopted in 2019, would have been their best bet.
“It’s not clear whether it would have prohibited the purchase,” said Nick Suplina, the senior vice president of law and policy for Everytown for Gun Safety. “But it may have led to other action from law enforcement — at least a flag that, hey, this young man that threatened to kill his family and himself is purchasing a gun.”
In reality, it is clear that the purchase was not prohibited, and a mass shooting broke out.
“Illinois has on the books a red flag law, but it’s a law that is not utilized very often,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) told CNN. “It’s an ineffective program. The bill we just passed through Congress a week and a half ago appropriates almost $1 billion to help states like Illinois teach law enforcement and first responders to use a red flag law well.”
Yet the bill that has been passed obviously was not implemented or effective. Democrats continue to press the fact that more gun control needs to be carried out, yet this bipartisan gun law, which took time to find compromise on, was found to be unsuccessful.
“Unfortunately, every time a mass shooting occurs it serves as a stark reminder that our gun laws often fall short of the rigorous standards that feel like common sense to most Americans,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in a statement.
So the solution is to create more gun laws? If politicians continue to believe that more funding and tighter gun restrictions will prevent massacres like this from happening, they are going to be grossly disappointed.
Esther Wickham is a summer 2022 Washington Examiner fellow.
