Unfit To Bear Arms

Jared Loughner, after having a gun confiscated for disturbed behavior, went back to the same store and bought another.

Photo by Pima County Sheriff's Forensic Unit via Getty Images

In the last few days, investigators in Connecticut and Arizona have released thousands of pages of documents about the Tucson and Sandy Hook massacres. The documents, coupled with investigative leaks and with testimony about the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, paint a clearer picture of what caused these tragedies. It isn?t just high-capacity magazines or defenseless victims. It?s a failure to link firearms access to mental health information.

On Sept. 29, 2010, Pima Community College told the parents of a troubled student, Jared Loughner, that he was being suspended for a raving video he had made. College officials stipulated that before returning to campus, he would have to ?obtain a mental health clearance indicating [that], in the opinion of a mental health professional, his presence at the College does not present a danger to himself or others.? The officials advised Loughner?s parents, with whom he was living, to remove any firearms he might use. So Loughner?s dad took away the shotgun his son had bought from a local store in 2008. As compensation, the father gave his son money to cover part of what the gun had cost.

What did Loughner do with the money? He went back to the same store and bought a Glock pistol. The clerks at the store had no idea anything crucial about Loughner had changed since 2008. They made him sign the same form (ATF Form 4473) and go through the same background check, with the same result: He passed. After the shooting, they handed over his forms to the police, proudly explaining their strict protocol for verifying each customer?s identity. Mental fitness wasn?t part of the protocol.

On Dec. 6, a week after the Glock purchase and a month before the shooting, Loughner put two spent cartridge casings from the gun in an envelope, with a note describing them as proof that he had ?planned my assassination.? Police later found the envelope, along with The Anarchist Cookbook, in a safe in his room. Apparently, his parents hadn?t looked inside it.

Three weeks before the shooting, Loughner showed the Glock to a friend. It had an extended clip full of rounds. The friend later told police that Loughner had failed to give a satisfactory answer his question: ?Why the hell do you have this?? Noting that Loughner had ?crazy thoughts? about the government, the friend assured investigators that when Loughner showed up with the gun, ?I kicked him out of my house.? Fat lot of good that did.

Three hours before the shooting, Loughner tried to buy ammunition at a Walmart. The clerk, uneasy about Loughner?s agitation, told him the ammo wasn?t in stock. The press calls the clerk a hero: ?Tucson ammo seller lied to make Loughner go away.? So what did Loughner do? He went to the next Walmart and bought the same ammo 23 minutes later. Warnings don?t get passed, even between Walmarts.

A year after the Tucson shooting, James Holmes, a neuroscience student at the University of Colorado, began to unravel. Dr. Lynne Fenton, a psychiatrist at the university, has testified that she met with Holmes on June 11, 2012 and subsequently contacted a campus police officer in part ?to communicate my concerns? about him. Reports from Denver, citing sources close to the investigation, say that Fenton requested a criminal background check on Holmes and contacted colleagues on the university?s Behavioral Evaluation and Threat Assessment team because Holmes was fantasizing about killing "a lot of people."

What did Fenton and her colleagues do about this menace? Nothing, apparently. Holmes was already in the process of leaving the school. He had dropped out of the neuroscience program on June 10. By June 12, he no longer had access to campus facilities that required security clearance. He wasn?t the university?s problem anymore. So Fenton and the threat assessment team dropped the case. University officials never reported it to police in Aurora, where Holmes lived.

Over the next month, Holmes bought an arsenal of weapons and military gear from merchants who knew nothing about his condition. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms lists eight local and online purchases from June 13 to July 14, providing Holmes with a Glock, several 30-round magazines, a 100-round drum magazine, two laser sights, body armor, and chemicals for making bombs. He eventually stockpiled four guns and more than 6,000 rounds of ammunition, which he used on July 20 to kill 12 people and injure 58 more.

Adam Lanza?s atrocity came five months later, but the warning signs began years earlier. A New York Times article found by police at his home describes a shooting spree at Northern Illinois University that killed five people and injured more than 20 others. The date on the article, according to police records, is Feb. 18, 2008. Since that doesn?t match the Times? online archive, Lanza presumably clipped it from the print edition.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=61e1f4c9974a5a805ebdae563fff4944

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