Highland Park Massacre: Ineffective Responses, Missed Red Flags

BUCK: That shooting in Highland Park, that mass murder by a clear psychopath in Highland Park over the weekend. Here are just some updated details, first off. He dressed as a woman. He wore women’s clothing to try to blend in with the crowd and afterwards get away. So he wore women’s clothing. He used a rifle. He killed in this massacre, reloaded twice, and was planning an additional shooting. With all of this, you also have more on his background and how he was already on police’s radar.

They had visited him. They took knives from him and a sword from his home because he had said he wanted to, quote, “Kill everybody.” This was a couple years ago. Illinois does have a red flag law, and the red flag law clearly did not work as people would like it to and hope that it will in a circumstance like this. But the Democrats are making this — as they always do — about guns, guns, guns. It’s only about guns, the only thing they ever want to talk about, and here is Attorney General Merrick Garland — who is a Democrat hack, unfortunately — speaking about this issue.

BUCK: Clay, everyone agrees. Everyone wants no mass shootings, okay? We have to start… I know the left doesn’t like to actually give any good faith to the other side. Democrats like to think Republicans are all monsters. We all want there to be no shootings. They need to stop acting like they have the answers, because they clearly don’t. If you can’t stop this person who is effectively visibly insane before this even happened… Look, if you were constructing a school or mass shooter for a movie, it would be this guy, and they didn’t stop him. So what are we supposed to take from this?

CLAY: What did we say yesterday, Buck? We said that you and I, who are far from trained psychologists or psychiatrists, could watch the videos that this kid put on social media and say he’s mentally unstable, mentally ill. And yesterday I said, as a dad of three, I don’t understand how a father and a mother could ever allow a kid like this to end up with a gun. We found out since that he threatened to kill the family, that he had 16 knives, that the police had been called multiple times to the house.

And I’m reading from FoxNews.com right now, Buck, and this is where I get fired up as a parent, “The father of the 21-year-old man charged with killing seven people … sponsored his son’s firearm owners identification card two and half years ago despite two instances of police being called to their home” after this kid threatened to kill everyone in the house. So, Buck, this is where I get really fired up about parenting out there. How in the world did this dad allow and facilitate his kid to get all of these firearms when he had threatened to kill the family and you had called the police because you were afraid of him yourself?

We can talk about all the laws we want to pass, and we can talk until we’re red in the face, blue in the face, whatever analogy you want to use. But ultimately, mom and dad are in the house with these kids all the time. They know them better than anyone, or at least they should. How did they do such an awful job? We don’t need the government involved here. This is just mom and dad in the house, your kid is so mentally ill that he’s threatening to kill the entire family with knives, and then you facilitate and sign on to him buying multiple weapons, multiple guns?

This is just parenting fail on steroids, Buck, and again, no one seems willing to even hardly have these conversations about moms and dads and the choices that they’re making. But I just… I am sickened that a dad would ever facilitate this when the kid is threatening to kill the whole family. He’s not safe in your house. Why would he be safe for other people outside of the house? This kid needed to be committed to an insane asylum.

BUCK: Yes. It seems the parents’ recklessness would seem to be an accurate description of the parents. Now we also know — get this — he was on law enforcement’s radar.

CLAY: Of course, he was!

BUCK: And we just had this huge debate — and when I say just, in the last few weeks about red flag laws and red flag laws. I forget who it was. I think it was Senator Murphy from Connecticut said this will save thousands of lives, a red flag law legislation that was just passed, bipartisan. It’s not gonna do anything. It’s just gonna annoy some people that are law-abiding and the criminals are gonna keep doing what they do. Here is Lake County sheriff’s deputy telling everybody yesterday that police knew the shooter and actually took weapons from him back in 2019.

BUCK: Put aside, Clay, just the due process violations that I think are just inherent in red flag legislation, right — and put aside all the ways that it could be abused and everything else. I’m not saying those aren’t important. I’m just saying for our discussion right now, just in terms of efficacy, Illinois has red flag laws to prevent the purchasing of firearms, right? That’s what Illinois has. Or to take away, I should say — to take away — your legally owned firearm. If it doesn’t stop this guy, if the law enforcement apparatus doesn’t stop this individual with those kinds of laws in place, who do they stop?

CLAY: Buck, again, I know there are a lot of parents out there reacting like I am to this. Your kid has 16 knives, a dagger, and a sword and is threatening to kill everyone in your family. And then you aid and abet him in going to buy four guns? Even if he wasn’t going to do violence to you and your family, which you evidently took seriously enough that you called the police, think about the kid doing violence to himself, Buck. I’m reading.

BUCK: Can I just say —

CLAY: Call police. They thought he was gonna kill himself.

BUCK: Clay, if you’re a gun dealer, would you feel good about selling a firearm to him? This guy walks in, all right? We all know what he looks like. We all know how he presents. Would you feel good about selling this guy a rifle? I know you say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” This cover was insane, obviously.

CLAY: Yeah. And again, the dad — I’m reading from this, that he bought was under 21 when he signed up: “[T]here was insufficient basis to establish a clear and present danger and deny the FOID application” in Illinois. How many kids ever have 16 knives, a dagger, and a sword in their possession? That’s weird in and of itself, all right? Let’s just be honest. And then you threaten your entire family, you threaten to kill yourself, and dad goes out and helps this mentally unstable kid? Even if he wasn’t going to behave violently towards others, what’s the number one way, I bet, teenagers kill themselves — young adults kill themselves — men? They shoot themselves. So why would you want him to have possession of weapons at all?

BUCK: So is it possible maybe here — ’cause I’m trying to make sense of this. You’re a parent. I’m not a parent yet. Did you ever see the movie The Good Son with Macaulay Culkin?

CLAY: Yeah, back in the day.

BUCK: Right. Way back in the day. He’s this little boy, and I forgot where it’s even set, and he’s basically evil. He’s a little 12-year-old boy, and he’s evil, and the parents of course don’t want to believe it. They don’t want to believe it. Are we just at a place where there are parents who are in denial of the possibility that you could have a child who is actually good it had to be evil? By the way, this guy’s an adult. The problem is, he looks 14. He’s actually 22.

CLAY: I would buy, maybe, that you don’t want to acknowledge that your kid’s evil — aand again, “evil” is probably the wrong word. Mentally ill.

BUCK: Is it the wrong word, though, with something like this?

CLAY: Well, it’s an interesting question. Yeah. He behaved in an evil fashion. But looking at these videos and everything else, I feel like the kid is so clearly mentally ill that it’s hard to even assess. But what I will say is, as a parent, you took his threats to kill the entire family seriously enough that you called the police. That to me means that you don’t just think, “Oh, I’m willfully blind. This kid’s not a threat.” You thought he was a threat to your own family. And certainly, he’s a threat to himself if he’s threatening to kill himself, and you aided and abetted him in going to get weapons?

BUCK: It feels like this is somebody… If you had a dog that was a danger to humans — and we all know what that is — a dog that had already bitten somebody, drawn real blood, sent someone to the hospital, and you decided, “You know what? I’m just gonna let it of on the leash and just run around the neighborhood just to see what happens,” you actually would be held criminally responsible for that.

CLAY: Yeah. Responsible for that. And it’s even worse than that. It’s like they had kids over and they said, “Oh, why don’t you go play with our dog in the backyard.” Everybody out there listening to us right now, you can be strongly in favor of the Second Amendment and gun rights, but if you have a kid that you believe can’t handle guns, you need to speak up and you need to speak out, seriously.

BUCK: So many missed red flags or just ineffective responses.