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Red flag laws get little use as shootings, gun deaths soar

An Associated Press analysis found many U.S. states barely use “red flag” laws that allow police to take guns away from people threatening to kill. FILE - Vehicles pass crosses placed to honor the victims of the shootings at Robb Elementary School, Thursday, Aug. 25, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. An Associated Press analysis found many U.S. states barely use the red flag laws touted as the most powerful tool to stop gun violence before it happens, a trend blamed on a lack of awareness of the laws and resistance by some authorities to enforce them even as shootings and gun deaths soar. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File) FILE - Sheriff Grady Judd, of Polk County, Fla., speaks during a state commission meeting as they investigate the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre and how Broward school district and others access threats, on Tuesday, July 10, 2018, in Sunrise, Fla. In 2022, he says, “We’re not going to wait for an Uvalde, Texas, or a Parkland or a Columbine if we have the information and people say that they’re going to shoot or kill. ... We’re going to use the tools that the state gave us.” (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File) FILE - A woman cries as she leaves the Uvalde Civic Center, Tuesday May 24, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. An Associated Press analysis found many U.S. states barely use the red flag laws touted as the most powerful tool to stop gun violence before it happens, a trend blamed on a lack of awareness of the laws and resistance by some authorities to enforce them even as shootings and gun deaths soar. (William Luther/The San Antonio Express-News via AP, File) FILE - Payton Gendron is led into the courtroom for a hearing at Erie County Court, in Buffalo, N.Y., Thursday, May 19, 2022. Gendron was a 17-year-old high school senior in 2021 when he was investigated by New York’s State Police and ordered hospitalized for a mental health evaluation for typing into an economics class online program that his future plans included “murder-suicide.” But since he was a minor, he wasn’t covered under the state’s red flag law and it didn’t prevent him from later buying the high-powered rifle authorities say he used to kill 10 Black people in a racially-motivated shooting at Buffalo supermarket in May. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File) FILE - In this image from surveillance video from the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District via the Austin American-Statesman, a gunman carrying an AR-15 style rifle enters and walks down a hallway at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Tuesday, May 24, 2022. Red flag laws, most of which came into effect over the last four years, allow police officers who believe gun owners are an imminent danger to themselves or others to petition a judge to order firearms surrendered or, barring that, seized for an “emergency” period, typically two weeks. (Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District/Austin American-Statesman via AP) FILE - In this image from a video feed from the Lake County, Ill., jail Robert E. Crimo III appears before Lake County Judge Theodore Potkonjak on Wednesday, July 6, 2022, in Waukegan, Ill. Crimo drew police attention three years earlier when he threatened to “kill everyone” in his house and officers acknowledged going to the home several times previously because of a “history of attempts” to take his own life. But Highland Park police never requested a gun surrender order, saying there was no gun belonging to Crimo to take away at the time, even though the law has a provision to block threatening people from making future purchases, too. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, Pool, File) FILE - A Lake Forest, Ill., police officer walks down Central Ave in Highland Park, Ill., on Monday, July 4, 2022, after a shooter fired on the Chicago northern suburb's Fourth of July parade. Chicago is one of the nation's gun violence hotspots and a seemingly ideal place to employ Illinois' "red flag” law that allows police to step in and take firearms away from people who threaten to kill. But amid more than 8,500 shootings resulting in 1,800 deaths since 2020, the law was used there just four times. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune via AP, File)
Red flag laws get little use as shootings, gun deaths soar