sandy hook

Before the Lewiston, Maine spree shooting suspect began voicing plans to “shoot up” his community, there was already a red flag that he might someday commit a mass shooting. The same red flag was also present well before a Florida Republican donor shot his wife and then killed himself in a restaurant parking lot three weeks ago in Palm Beach, Florida. The same red flag had been flapping wildly for years before a shooter took the life of a Judge in Maryland four weeks ago. Each of the shooters, now all dead by suicide, had the same red flag waving from their past: domestic violence. Indeed, one of the strongest indicators that someone will commit gun violence, particularly a mass shooting, is if that person has previously committed violence against an intimate partner or family member.

As City Attorney of San Diego, I have used our state’s red flag laws, also known as gun violence restraining orders (GVROs), to disarm over a thousand truly dangerous people, a third of them domestic abusers. Having this common sense intervention available to law enforcement and the public is one of the reasons why California also has 43% fewer gun deaths than the rest of the country. Since California’s red flag law went into effect seven years ago, GVROs have been credited with disarming 58 potential mass shooters who had threatened to commit large-scale gun violence. Of the individuals who had firearms temporarily removed with a GVRO, nearly a third had an assault-type weapon such as an AR or AK-style rifle.