A ‘Red Flag’ Study Raises the Question of How Often People Who Talk About Mass Shootings Actually Commit Them

“Red flag” laws, which authorize “extreme risk protection orders” (ERPOs) prohibiting gun possession by people who are deemed a threat to themselves or others, aim to prevent homicides and suicides. That hope has persuaded legislators in 19 states and the District of Columbia to enact red flag laws, and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which Congress passed last year, included grants that encourage other jurisdictions to follow suit.

It nevertheless remains unclear whether these laws work as advertised, especially when it comes to stopping mass shootings, the main impetus driving such legislation. A recent RAND Corporation analysis found “inconclusive evidence” that red flag laws decrease suicides or violent crime and “no qualifying studies” showing an impact on mass shootings.

A study published last month in Preventive Medicine aims to start filling that evidence gap by analyzing a sample of 6,787 red flag cases from six states. University of Michigan public health researcher April M. Zeoli and her colleagues identified 662 cases involving alleged threats to multiple victims. “While we cannot know how many of the 662 ERPO cases precipitated by a threat would have resulted in a multiple victim/mass shooting event had ERPO laws not been used to prohibit the purchase and possession of firearms,” they say, “the study provides evidence at least that ERPOs are being used in six states in a substantial number of these kinds of cases that could have ended in tragedy.”

Although Zeoli et al. describe the threats in these cases as “credible,” there is reason to doubt that assessment. The research is nevertheless useful to the extent that it illuminates the question of how to weigh the purported benefits of red flag laws against the risk that people will lose their Second Amendment rights because they were mistakenly or maliciously portrayed as dangerous.

The most commonly used definition of mass shootings requires four or more fatalities. Because of data limitations, this study uses a broader definition, encompassing threats involving at least three other people. If a man threatened to kill his wife and her relatives, for example, that would qualify as a potential “multiple victim/mass shooting event.” So would a threat to attack a particular person in a location where bystanders would be present or a general threat to “shoot up” a public place.

ERPOs usually are presented as a way to prevent mass shootings. But data from Connecticut and Indiana, the first two states to enact red flag laws, indicate that ERPOs typically are deployed against respondents who are viewed as suicidal. “Earlier studies of the use of these kinds of laws,” Zeoli et al. note, “reported that 32% of ERPOs in Connecticut and 21% in Indiana were issued to mitigate a threat of harm to others.”

Curiously, the researchers do not say what the percentage was for their sample. Based on their analysis, we know that at least 10 percent of the respondents in ERPO cases were seen as a danger to others. That percentage surely would be higher if threats involving one or two potential victims were included, but how much higher is not clear from th