Illinois is one of the 19 states in the country that has so-called "red flag laws." However, a mass shooting still occurred in the state this week -- and many are wondering why the red flag law didn't prevent it.
The shooting -- and revelations about the suspect's prior behavior -- had Lake County State's Attorney Eric Rinehart answering that question.
"There is an order -- primarily family members and other individuals can go to a court and ask that sombody have their firearms taken and not be able to purhcase firearms," Rinehart said. "To be very clear, that did not happen in Mr. Crimo's case."
Rinehart clarified that Crimo had never been involved in a red flag order -- and though there was an opportunity for him to be restrained from purchasing firearms, that opportunity was not taken.
Nobody in the Highland Park suspect's family went to court to request that Crimo's weapons be taken away. To the contrary, the suspect's father sponsored his gun permit application, months after relatives said he'd threatened to "kill everyone."
Rinehart said he hopes to raise awareness of the red flag law -- and also called for a ban of assault weapons.
"Illinois and the United States should ban these assault weapons. We had this ban from 1994 to 2004 with biparisan spport," he said. "Everything shows that these kinds of horrifying devastating incidents went down during that time."
If you're wondering why Illinois' "red flag law" didn't prevent this, it relies on family members reporting a person. But instead of doing that after relatives said the suspect threatened to "kill everyone," his father actually sponsored his son's gun permit application.
