Red flags will just hang like limp noodles if their flag-wavers go AWOL on breezeless days. Left unattended, those red bits of cloth will signal no warning alert, send no sense of alarm that urgent action is needed to save lives.
And the same goes for even our best-intentioned red flag laws – such as the one the Congress just approved, touching off a burst of belated bipartisan self-congratulation. Red flag laws can prove every bit as limp and useless as those bits of cloth, if the laws are left to somehow enforce themselves, by federal, state and local law enforcement officials who allow themselves to become the government’s equivalents of limp noodle bureaucrats.
That is one of the tragic lessons we are now being forced to confront after a twisted young shooter, armed with new combat-style weapons he was allowed to legally purchase – despite police warnings! – rained 83 flesh-ripping combat rounds down a family-friendly Fourth of July parade through Chicago’s picture-perfect northern suburb of Highland Park.
The director of the Illinois State Police, Brendan Kelly, wants to be sure you know his agency handled everything strictly by the book. Kelly told reporters Wednesday he believes his agency handled everything appropriately.
You be the judge. Here, Your Honors, is what Kelly’s state police knew before allowing Robert Crimo III to buy his arsenal, on the grounds that it didn’t have enough info to ask a judge to decide: