So, it turns out that the kid who shot and killed 8 people at the FedEx depot in Indianapolis used two assault rifles that he legally purchased last year after the cops took away his shotgun after his mother complained that he was mentally ill.

              Hey – wait just a darn minute! I thought that Indiana had a ‘red flag’ law, which is a statute that allows the cops to disarm someone after a judge decides that the individual in question might otherwise be a danger to himself or someone else.

              In fact, Indiana does have a ‘red flag’ law, known as the Jake Laird law, which was passed in 2005.  The law allows the cops to disarm someone who they consider to be too dangerous to have access to guns, and then a court hearing must occur within two weeks to determine whether the guns stay in the police station or are returned.

              The guy who loses his guns can petition the Court to get them back after six months. The Court will then hold another hearing to determine whether or not the former gun owner is or is no longer a ‘danger’ to the community or to himself. If the guns don’t go back to the owner after five years, the Court can tell the cops to destroy the guns.

              Incidentally, the law was named after an Indianapolis cop who responded to a call that someone was walking down the street shooting an assault rifle. The shooter had already killed his mother and he then killed Tim Laird when the officer appeared on the scene. The shooter’s guns had been taken away the previous year after he threatened a cop but were returned to him several months before the fatal killings took place. Now let’s get back to last week.

              When the Indianapolis Police Chief, Randal Taylor, was asked about the FedEx shooter losing his shotgun but then going out and buying two assault rifles, he made a comment which I’m sure he would love to forget.  Referring to the fact that the cops didn’t return the kid’s shotgun he said, “I don’t know how we held on to it, but it’s good that we did.”

              The reason that Chief Taylor didn’t know that the kid’s shotgun was still sitting in the evidence locker at his Department is because after the gun was no longer in the possession of the shooter, no red flag hearing was ever held. And because there was never a hearing, the kid was able to go out and buy two more guns. God only knows how Chief Taylor could ever imagine that swapping a shotgun for two assault rifles was a good thing.

              But here’s the point of this sad tale. You can pass all the laws you want, but don’t ask me why, don’t ask me how, laws have a funny way of sometimes not being carried out. Recall back in 2015 that another young guy walked into a church in Charleston and killed 9 people who were attending a Bible class. In this case, the cops forgot to notify the FBI that the shooter should have been disqualified from buying the gun he used to commit his rampage because he took a plea on a drug charge.

              This communication failure between the local police and the FBI-NICS, or maybe the lack of information-sharing was between the court and the local cops, has come to be known as the ‘Charleston loophole.’ Except there was no loophole at all. Someone simply forgot to do what the law said they were supposed to do.

              Cops are paid for making arrests and closing as many cases as they can. They aren’t paid to sit around and update this or that database. As long as we continue to believe that we can reduce gun violence by making sure that all the information we have on gun owners is complete, like we say in IT, ‘garbage in, garbage out.’

Please don’t forget: https://www.change.org/bankillerhandgunsnow.