The Daily Signal - What Could Have Prevented Highland Park Mass Shooting?

Episode Date: July 7, 2022

America recently has suffered through a spate of mass shootings. Most recently, a gunman fired on a crowd of people on the Fourth of July in Highland Park, Illinois. Seven were killed and more than 40 others were injured. Across the country, concerned citizens ask, "Why?" Why does this keep happening and what can we do about it? Amy Swearer, a legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation specializing in firearms and the Second Amendment, views it as a deeper issue involving the mental health of those who obtain weapons and go on to commit those crimes. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.) "There is this social contagion effect where people who are disgruntled, who are not in a good state of mind, who feel rejected or outcasts want to make a name for themselves," Swearer explains. Swearer adds that, many times, even if the person legally obtains the weapons they use in a mass shooting, it's generally because laws on the books weren't enforced or disqualifying behavior slips through the cracks. "The problem is either no one noticed or took official steps, or they hadn't quite reached a point under existing laws where they could be charged with a disqualifying felony or involuntarily committed," she says. "All of these gun laws are only as good as their enforcement. It's the same thing with red flag laws." Swearer joins the show to discuss the most recent mass shooting and what laws could actually help stop these shootings. Also on today’s show, we cover these stories:  The man accused of killing seven people in Highland Park, Illinois, confesses to the crime and reveals that he had planned a second attack. Georgia Democrats may have violated state election laws by building a field office too close to a polling place. California Gov. Gavin Newsom vacations in Montana, even though his state bans state employees from traveling there on business. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, July 7th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Doug Blair. America has suffered through a slew of mass shootings. Most recently, a shooter gunned down a crowd of people on the 4th of July in Highland Park, Illinois. Across the country, concerned citizens ask, why? Why does this keep happening? And what can we do about it?

Amy Swear, a Heritage Foundation legal fellow specializing in firearms and the Second Amendment, joins the show today to discuss that shooting and what laws could actually help to stop future mass shootings. Before we get to Doug's conversation with Amy Swearer, let's hit our top news stories of the day. The man accused of murdering seven people in a mass shooting during a 4th of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois, confessed to the crime and revealed to authorities that he had planned on committing a second attack. After the shooter fled Highland Park, he went to Madison, Wisconsin, where he seriously contemplated committing another shooting. Lake County Major Crime Task Force spokesman Chris Covelli said that the shooter,

had a rifle and 60 bullets in his car when he arrived in Madison. According to Covelli, authorities have no information to suggest that he planned on driving to Madison initially to commit another attack, but that they believe he was driving around after the first attack and saw the celebrations happening there. The shooter was initially charged with seven counts of first-degree murder, but no motive has been determined. Election officials down in Georgia may be getting out their tape measure to see if a new Democrat campaign office is too close to a polling location. Georgia law prohibits anyone from soliciting votes, promoting candidates, or displaying campaign literature within 150 feet of a voting location. But the Georgia Democratic Party just opened a field office a few doors down from Sherwood Event Hall,

which serves as a polling place during elections. Now someone may literally need to measure to see if the office location is in violation of Georgia law. Jason Sneed is the executive director of the Election Integrity Group, Honest Elections Project. He told Fox News that what Democrats are doing in Georgia, at the very least, is bending the rules, or maybe taking a tape measure and saying, or 151 feet away. Georgia's elections in November are expected to be a series of tight races. California Governor Gavin Newsom may not want his state to do business with Montana, but that didn't stop him from vacationing there.

Last summer, California Attorney General Rob Bonta added Montana to the list of states California officials are banned by state law from traveling to as a result of their legislation surrounding LGBT people. But California news site CalMatters reported that Newsom was visiting his family's ranch in the Treasure State. When Preston Wyatt was acceptable for Newsom to visit Montana, even though his government seems to think that the state is anti-LGBT, the governor's senior advisor for communications, Anthony York said, we don't legislate where people vacation, never have. The travel ban applies to expending state funds. The governor's travel is not being paid for by the state. However, when pressed if Californians are paying for Newsom's security while he's in Montana,

York said, we don't comment or provide details on the governor's security. That's all for headlines. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Amy Swear as we discuss the recent mass shooting in Highland Park. The Heritage Foundation takes the field on all. with their young leaders program. I'm Evelyn Homily from Hillsdale College. I'm Harrison Stewart from the University of Virginia. I'm a journalism intern with the Daily Signal.

I'm a digital productions intern in communications. For spring, summer, and fall semesters, the Heritage Foundation hosts undergraduate and postgraduate interns right here in the nation's capital to train our country's future conservative leaders. As a Daily Signal intern, I've had the opportunity to cover exciting events here in D.C. And work in a fast-paced environment

with some of the conservative movements best journalists. journalists. In YLP, interns are on the cutting edge of the conservative movement, attending exclusive briefings from heritage experts, members of Congress, and movement leaders fighting for the fate of our country. It's been exciting connecting with big names in the political world and better understanding our nation's greatest threats. If you want to go on offense with other passionate, dedicated conservatives, go to heritage.org slash intern to learn more about the Young Leaders Program. My guest today is Amy Swearer, a Heritage Foundation legal fellow specializing in firearms and the Second Amendment. Amy, welcome to the show.

Hey, thank you for having me. Of course. I wish we could talk under better circumstances, but we just had another mass shooting here. This time was in Highland Park near Chicago and Illinois. It seems like these things are starting to happen with alarming frequency. But big picture, what could some of the causes of these types of mass shootings be? First, I want to address the sort of idea that these are happening, you know, far more frequently than they did in the past. I think when you look at the data, it's not true. You know, what tends to happen is they tend to be cyclical. So you will see that there is this, what's called a contagion effect, that, you know, you tend to see them, you know, bunched. And I think, unfortunately,

we are in the midst of one of those cycles. But when you look at overall mass public shootings, like this. I think some of the feeling of why it feels like, oh, we haven't seen this in a while is you saw a dip during 2020 and 2021 during COVID lockdowns, largely because people were not outside and gathering in these places. So you had other problems associated with that. But I think it is sort of a shock to the system because, you know, we went through this extended period of time of not seeing this, which again, I think shows that there are sort of, you know, of other aspects to these shootings other than just guns and the proliferation of guns. But on the whole, I mean, not that, you know, average pace of mass shootings is good, obviously not.

But this is not some, you know, off the charts scenario. I think it just feels like that. But in terms of these underlying causes, again, there is this sort of social contagion effect where people who are disgruntled who are not in a good state of mind, who, you know, feel rejected or outcast want to make a name for themselves. There's sort of a variety of of broken, internal brokenness that goes into this. When they see others do it, it sort of lowers the barrier in their own minds for them to unfortunately take that next step and plan these. And it sort of becomes this almost like cultish issue within their minds where they obsess over it.

But, you know, on the whole, that's where you see these underlying issues. It's not necessarily people who are diagnosably mentally ill, but people who are obviously not in a good place, who are mentally unwell, who see this as their way to either make a name for themselves. A lot of times, you know, this was not the case in Highland Park, but a lot of times they are suicidal themselves. They sort of want to go out with a bang. They feel aggrieved in some sense. And unfortunately, I think a lot of those same factors seem to be at play in Highland Park, even as we're still learning more information. Now, speaking about this shooting in particular, there's a lot of different things that I'm hoping you could help us kind of understand. One of the things that we're seeing is that police are reporting the shooter used a weapon that is, quote, similar to an AR-15 and was a high-powered rifle or something along those lines.

Is there anything unique about the guns used in this particular attack that we don't see with other mass shootings? No. And in fact, this just goes back to sort of this longstanding theme of anytime something like this happens. You know, people find some way of trying to make it seem like this was some firearm that was so extraordinarily dangerous. No, you know, law-abiding citizens should own them. And from what it seems, it's just not the case. Certainly not in any previous mass shootings. It doesn't seem to be the case in this one. These are just semi-automatic. firearms, they are commonly owned by tens of millions of Americans. You know, I suspect that the phrasing of, you know, a gun like in AR-15 is simply because a lot of Americans understand sort of what that type of firearm is. In terms of whether or not it's high-powered, I mean, it's certainly possible that this gun was chambered in a different round than your standard AR-15. But from the looks of it, both in this one and and certainly, again, sort of standard throughout these mass shootings, it doesn't seem to be anything that isn't a common caliber.

You know, we're not talking about some true military weapon, you know, some 50 caliber, you know, fully automatic machine gun. These are standard civilian weapons. And unfortunately here it was used to great effect for evil, horrific reasons. Every single part of this process, it seems like from the reporting was that this was a, a weapon he obtained legally and that there's even reporting that the shooter's firearm owner's identification card, which is something you have to have in Illinois to have a gun, was co-sponsored by his father, even though the shooter had expressed violent thefts before. So at every step of the process, this was legally obtained.

Yeah. But like, I guess my question is, how does that happen? Like, how does it get to that point? Yeah, this is an unfortunate reality with mass shooters in particular. So for the rest of violent crime, you know, most of the time, you know, most of the time, you're dealing with individuals who were not in legal possession of their firearms. But with mass shooters with perhaps one or two exceptions, the reality is they are able to legally obtain their guns often, and again, as is the case here, despite this sort of longstanding behavior of

showing themselves to be very clearly a danger to themselves or others, the problem is either no one noticed that or took official steps or. They hadn't quite reached a point under existing laws where they could be, you know, charged with a disqualifying felony or involuntarily committed. And that's sort of this unfortunate reality, which, you know, again, raises this question of how do we intervene in those situations? Because I think we all agree that there are concerning patterns of behavior in this individual's history. You know, you brought up in Illinois in order to even possess a gun. To buy or possess a gun, you need a firearm owner's identification card known as a Ford card. You cannot get those under the age of 21 unless you are sponsored by a parent or guardian,

which is what happened here. So it appears that the shooter now is 21, but he obtained a lot of these firearms under the age of 21. with a FOID card sponsored by a parent. There's still a lot of information coming out. But from what I have seen, you know, between the FOID card and purchasing these guns, he passed something like five or six background checks in the last several years, which, again, given some of the earlier concerning behaviors, including, in instance, just six weeks prior to him getting that FOID card,

it raises questions of why none of these behaviors were considered concerned. turning enough for either him to receive help or for someone to say, hey, maybe this guy who we just seized a bunch of swords from because he's dangerous, maybe that's not the guy six weeks later that we allow his father to sponsor his FOID card. Right. Well, I mean, that brings up a really interesting point because Illinois has really strict gun laws already. And there's red flag laws on the books as well.

But it just doesn't seem like anything happened. Like all of those checks failed. You mentioned that he had five. How do they get to that point where five background checks don't quite pick that up? Yeah. So with respect to background checks specifically, background checks are only as good as the information the background check services receive. You know, there's not some, if you've ever seen the, oh, it's not the matrix, the pre-crime unit. Oh, a minority report.

Yeah, minority report. You know, the NIC system is not some sort of pre-crime unit where it can, you know, just, unilaterally search through and determine who is or is not dangerous. You know, it's based on records that are submitted to NICS from state and local police. And so if there's nothing in those records that are being submitted, well, of course, he's going to pass a background check. So the real question becomes, you know, how does someone with this history? And I'm more than happy to go into some of this history. You know, how does he get to a place where there's nothing official on his record keeping him even temporarily from obtaining a firearm.

And that becomes the real question. You know, all of these gun laws are only as good as their enforcement. It's the same thing with red flag laws. You know, if you have red flag laws and they are not, you know, and that's a whole other story about whether Illinois's red flag law is good or constitutional, but they have one. And it would seem that this is an individual who, if anybody should be red flagged, But if it's not happening, if those petitions are not being filed, they're no good to anybody at that point. You know, you mentioned Illinois having pretty strict gun laws and especially when you put Highland Park on top of that.

I mean, in Illinois, you need a license to possess a gun. You need a different license to carry a gun that's quite difficult and time-consuming and expensive to get. Open carry is generally prohibited. You know, they have universal background checks. You can only get a gun under 21 if your parents sponsor you. Highland Park in particular since 2013 has banned the possession of, quote, assault weapons like the ones used within city or within city limits. you know, and just a whole lot of other things. It's, you know, it's not New York City, but it is, you know, a fairly substantially difficult process for all of these things.

And again, I think that sort of speaks to the unique aspect that is mass shootings, mass public shootings. You know, these individuals plan this out for weeks, months in advance. They're, you know, they're often not, again, falling into those categories of prohibited persons, even though it's concerning. And they are very willing to sort of think through this process to get around all of these, you know, whatever gun laws you have in place. And it makes it very difficult for any gun law in that scenario. Absent, you know, complete confiscation, nobody gets any. It makes it very difficult when you have someone who can pass as a law abiding citizen. citizen, if you will. It makes it difficult for those gun laws to stop them.

Speaking of gun regulation and gun laws, the president signed a gun package last month that it seems almost inevitable that in the aftermath of this shooting we will see more calls for gun control, more calls for gun regulation. It sounds as if we have a bunch of laws on the books already that they're just not being very well enforced. Is there any way to sort of, maybe this is sort of redundant, but legally mandate this. these laws become enforced or is this just a matter of you got to enforce what's on the books already? I mean, you have to enforce what's on the books already, you know, whether it's for mass shooters, for people who are showing themselves to be dangerous, you know, and taking steps.

Again, this individual, just six weeks before he got his void card, police were called to his home because a family member said he was threatening to kill everyone. They confiscated a collection of swords, you know, and if someone is that dangerous that you're confiscating swords, you know, maybe that's the time. to think through your other laws about getting him help. But, you know, it is sort of this, I'm not sure if irony is the word, but, you know, in Chicago, they are dealing with a rogue prosecutor in general, who, as I've testified to several times, and as my colleagues, you know, Culley Simpson and Zach Smith have written about, you know,

getting prosecutors in Chicago to enforce any laws, including for much more, you know, common everyday occurrences, gang fights, shootouts, robberies, those sorts of things, has been a very difficult process. And so, you know, it's not very shocking that when you can't get prosecutors to charge people for having shootouts in broad daylight and residential neighborhoods, you know, it would seem to suggest you're going to have problems with other things like this. that sort of fall off the radar. Sure.

Now, like I mentioned at the top, and you've even said, it feels like these mass shootings are becoming more common. I guess the data doesn't play out that way. But Highland Park Mayor, Nancy Rotaring, said, following the shooting, let me be clear, there are mental health issues in every country in this world. There are not mass shootings on such a regular basis anywhere else. Now, we even mentioned in the news there was a story about a shooting in Virginia that was thwarted. Right.

But, like, again, it doesn't seem to happen in other countries that they have these types of issues, right? In England, we don't see this. In France, necessarily, we don't see this. So, like, what is it about America that seems to be like we have this problem? I think there are a couple of things. I mean, first of all, we do have a second amendment that other countries do not. It raises sort of unique parameters on what we can and can't do. You know, yeah, if you're in an island country where you largely ban semi-automatic firearms for most people and can confiscate them,

Yeah, there's a whole lot more you can do to ensure that none of your citizens have guns. You know, this idea that this happens nowhere else is simply not true. I can think of two mass public shootings in European countries within the last three weeks that we've seen despite their gun laws. And you can see the problem of mass attacks like we saw in, I believe it was Nice a couple years ago with, you know, 85 people killed in a, in a, a truck attack. You know, so certainly, yes, there is a problem with mental illness. There's a problem with guns, but it's much more complicated. I mean, you look at states like Vermont, New Hampshire, states that have very lax,

comparatively, gun laws, a whole lot of gun owners, but not seeing these sorts of mass attacks. You know, to try to boil it down to this simple relationship is not true. You see that even in just the non-firearm homicide rates in the United States, which are much higher than, you know, other countries, total homicide rates. Firearms are no firearms. You know, China roundly bans guns for its civilian population. They have a tremendous problem with knife attacks in schools and subway systems. You know, so I think there's certainly a lot we can and should do in terms of mental health. And in terms of intervention, because to some extent this is a unique problem, given our unique second amendment.

But our response cannot be the same. And it has to be based on a reality that this is much more complicated than, you know, these simple solutions, even now to just say, well, let's ban guns. How do you go about confiscating 400 million firearms? You know, we are not in a similar situation. It's much more complex than that. and we need to understand that for purposes of policy. Speaking of policy, I've noticed that there seems to be a pattern of young men within a certain age bracket who tend to commit these crimes. Obviously, this is what happened in Highland Park.

He fit that demo. Does that impact, that information impact maybe what policy is the most effective in dealing with these types of issues? Yeah. So, again, I think this falls into another one of those categories of, you know, quote, facts that people, think they know. But the reality is when you look at the average age of mass shooters across the board, it's actually much higher. The last time I checked, I think, there was something like 35. You know, you get a lot of workplace shooting. You look at Las Vegas in 2017, for example. I believe he was in his 50s. Same thing for Virginia Beach a couple years ago. You know, so I think you have seen

in maybe perhaps an increase in very successful, very high profile young adults falling into this category. I think some of that is this propensity, if you will, for them to, just in general, you know, that age group to become more disaffected and, you know, going through their brains are not fully developed to that capacity yet. But in terms of policy, whatever you think of. 18 to 21 year olds being treated as full-fledged adults. They are. We allow them to sign legally binding contracts. We will draft them into wars, send them to foreign countries, put a fully automatic

machine gun in their hands and tell them to die for their country. We put them on juries. We execute them for crimes against the state. We can have conversations about whether they should be treated that way, but they are. And they have a right just as any other law-abiding adult to keep and bear arms and to defend themselves. And the overwhelming majority of them, just like the overwhelming majority of gun owners generally, will never be a danger to themselves or others. Right. You know, this is at its core about pinpointing people who are dangerous, you know, and having targeted interventions and just generally, you know, raising healthy adults, you know, young adults who are not disaffected, who are less likely to become engaged in these violent ideologies. It's about at the end of the day, you cannot make this broad assumption about all young adults based on a small minority of them.

As we begin to wrap up here, I like that you mentioned that the mass majority of these gun owners don't do this. Obviously, there's 400 million firearms in the country and most people who own a gun aren't going to go out. of them were a problem, you would know. Right, right, exactly. And to that point, how should lawful gun owners respond to incidents like these? Obviously, the push will be from the government. The Biden administration has made it perfectly clear that they don't really believe in a strong Second Amendment. But what is the best way to balance these tragedies out with the very real implication that they will be used to grab guns?

Well, I think the first thing is start from a place of compassion. I know it's very easy. You know, as lawful gun owners, the attacks are coming, but you still need to start from a place of compassion. These are tragic. This is horrific. I cannot fathom, you know, being in a scenario like that. And I think we need to start from there, you know, start from a place of compassion and understanding. You know, and at the same time, we need to know the facts.

We need to know how to explain, you know, that this is not us. We had so many opportunities for intervention, you know, to be able to distinguish good and bad policies. But I think on top of all of that, you know, we as as law-abiding, responsible gun owners need to, the way I like to put it is we need to be the gun owners that the Second Amendment presumes we are. You know, responsible, well-trained, looking out for each other, you know, whether it's being able to know that we, if we were in a scenario where we have. had to defend ourselves or others that we could do so in an effective, responsible, lawful way, or whether it's, you know, talking about our own mental health. You know, two-thirds of gun deaths every year are suicides. Again, most of those by lawful gun owners, you know, we have a plan for every other violent contingency. What do we do when the threat is ourselves or someone in our

family? What do we do if it's our son or husband or child who is showing signs of being a danger to themselves or others? How do we address that? You know, how do we sort of keep, keep ourselves and those around us responsible so that, you know, we are not becoming the dangers. And I think, you know, we start there. You know, we lock ourselves down, if you will, as responsible gun owners. And then we go on about the policy battles, again, while also having that compassion for the fact that these are devastating events and that we are at the end of the day on the same team about this. We are all on the same team that this never should have happened. And it's about finding those effective solutions that, you know, stop bad individuals from doing

bad things without inhibiting the ability of good people to keep and bear arms. That was Amy Swearer, a Heritage Foundation legal fellow specializing in firearms and the Second Amendment. Amy, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening to the Daily Signal Podcast. And if you haven't done so already, please take a moment to subscribe to the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and IHeart Radio. It means so much to us to hear your feedback when you leave us reviews and five-star ratings. We read every single one on Apple podcasts. So thanks in advance for taking the time to do that. Thanks so much for listening,

and we're back with you all tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. The executive producers are Rob Blewey and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Doug Blair. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, please visit DailySignal.com.