Indianapolis massacre, the flaw in the system that allowed the attacker to legally purchase two automatic rifles – time.news

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The two automatic rifles that 19-year-old Brandon Hole used to kill 8 people at the Indianapolis FedEx depot were legally purchased about six months before the massacre. A short time earlier, in March 2020, however, the police had seized another – less powerful – rifle from the boy at the request of his mother, who had reported his mental instability and propensity to commit suicide. Between these two events the control system got jammed: Despite the mother’s complaint and the seizure by law enforcement of a shotgun bought just 24 hours earlier, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Chief Randal Taylor explained (on, Afp photo), for the authorities Hole did not represent such a danger as to activate the “red flag” law, which would have labeled him a “dangerous” subject and prevented him from purchasing two new firearms in July and September.

Brandon Hole

According to Indiana’s “red flag” law, after a kidnapping the authorities have at their disposal two weeks to prove before a judge that a person is unstableor dangerous and he should not possess weapons for a maximum of one year: after which, either the public prosecution proves that the person is still dangerous, or the weapon is returned. However, Taylor believes that this hearing never took placedespite the fact that the police never returned the weapon to Hole. “I don’t know why we detained her, but it was a good thing,” the police chief said at a press conference on Saturday evening. “Hole, however, ended up buying two much more powerful weapons.” These two purchases, made respectively four and six months after the seizure, could only have happened if a “reg flag” law had never been enacted: it is still unclear, Taylor said, whether Hole ever went before a judge, but no cases associated with his name emerge from the local court file. .

The “red flag” laws have been passed in about fifteen states: the first was Connecticut, in 1999, after the shooting at the headquarters of the state lottery in which four people were killed; then Indiana itself, which in 2005 named it after agent Jake Laird, killed by a man with mental disorders the previous year. After the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, Florida, the “red flag” laws have ended up at the center of the national debate on gun control, and have been adopted in another ten states: according to these laws, explains the New York Times, a a person is considered dangerous if he presents “an immediate risk” to himself or to others, or if it meets some criteria, including uncontrolled mental illness or an obvious propensity for violence. According to a police report obtained by theIndianapolis Star, at the time of the kidnapping Hole – who committed suicide after killing 8 former colleagues – had been taken to the hospital for a psychic evaluation: most likely, however, before the judge he never got there.

April 18, 2021 (change April 18, 2021 | 12:06 pm)

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