Following the shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, Congress passed the first major federal gun safety legislation in decades. The bill, which President Biden signed, is significant -- but will it work?
Leila Nadya Sadat is a professor of international criminal law at Washington University School of Law, and the founder of the Gun Violence and Human Rights Initiative. She said that red flag laws, which the bill incentivizes, have generally been effective.
"Senator Chris Murphy, who is one of the sponsors of this bipartisan legislation, pointed out that in Connecticut, they actually have removed guns from an individual who was about to carry out a mass shooting," she said. She added that they can also be useful for people in abusive relationships.
She also said that while mental health is a factor in gun violence, it's not the only thing causing mass shootings.
"One of the things we know is that the United States doesn't have a significantly more mentally health impaired population than any other country, but we have 100 times the shootings," she said. "And so we know it's actually the easy access to firearms, that is causing the shootings themselves. That said, mental health is surely a part of that picture."
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