New York’s red flag law should have prevented the Buffalo grocery shooting, but the law failed to live up the promises made when it was enacted, Vox noted Tuesday.
The first paragraph of the Vox column got right to the point: “After a gunman killed 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket on Saturday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul publicly wondered why a state law designed to prohibit individuals like him from obtaining a gun didn’t work as intended.”
The column continued:
In 2019, New York enacted an extreme risk prevention law, otherwise known as a “red flag law,” that can bar individuals who present an immediate danger to themselves or others from possessing firearms. The Buffalo shooter didn’t have a previous criminal record, but he had made serious threats of violence that were brought to the attention of police.
Vox pointed to the fact that the 18-year-old Buffalo attacker was “required to undergo a psychological evaluation” at age 17, after allegedly saying “he wanted to commit murder-suicide at his high school.” No action was taken by law enforcement following the evaluation, so there was nothing in the attacker’s record to prevent him from passing a background check to buy a firearm.