The Highland Park July 4 parade shooting suspect, 21-year-old Robert Crimo III, was issued a gun license four months after local police had to confiscate  weapons in an incident where family members said he threatened a massacre.

How was the suspect able to legally obtain firearms after a history of police intervention?

In April 2019, an emergency-911 caller reported that Crimo had attempted suicide.

In September 2019, the Highland Park police confiscated 16 knives, a dagger and sword from Crimo’s home. That didn’t stop the Illinois State Police from approving him for gun ownership in 2020. State police defended their actions, saying that because there was no formal legal complaint in the 2019 incident, a permit could not be denied. The suspect had a clean record, so they had no reason to reject his request.

The statement said: “The September 2019 Clear and Present Danger report made by the Highland Park Police Department was made in response to threats allegedly directed at the family, but the report indicates when police went to the home and asked the individual if he felt like harming himself or others, he responded ‘no.'”

“No one, including family, was willing to move forward on a complaint nor did they subsequently provide information on threats or mental health that would have allowed law enforcement to take additional action back in 2019.”

After that incident, at the age of 19, Crimo applied for a firearm owner’s identification card (FOID card), under his father’s sponsorship. Because there had been no legal or court action involving Crimo, “There was insufficient basis to establish a clear and present danger and deny the FOID application,” state police said.

Crimo passed all his background checks for the purchases of his guns in 2020 and 2021.

That is how Crimo slipped past the safeguards of Illinois “red flag” laws designed to prevent potentially violent people from purchasing guns.

The suspect was able to buy five firearms legally. One of them was used in Monday’s mass shooting. 

An AR-15-type of rifle was found on a roof at the scene, and the suspect had a similar weapon in his mother’s car when arrested, according to Sergeant Chris Covelli, a spokesman for the Lake County Sheriff’s office.

Last month Congress passed a national gun reform bill that includes federal funding to help states administer red flag laws. Will that help to keep guns out of the hands of unstable or potentially violent offenders? Time will tell.