More details are coming out about the murderer in Highland Park.
How exactly he was able to get the weapons that he used to kill so many people and
now there's this new element having to do with his father.
His father has spoken out, we can't show you the footage unfortunately because of
local news and all that but he says that he raised his son with good morals.
He said he's also not worried about a criminal investigation into his own
potential culpability after he signed off on the, what it was called an FOID,
the Firearm Owners ID Affidavit.
A thing that is necessary to get a firearm in that state,
to go through the background check process and all that.
We're gonna dive into a lot of the details about that and
whether perhaps there should be some culpability.
But I wanna start off with,
Ben I know that if you were to grow up, to have a child.
The child grows up and then they commit a horrendous act like that,
I can't even conceive of what that experience must be.
And so I generally approach this sort of thing with, I'm not necessarily going
to jump in and judge this person and their choices without a lot of evidence.
But I also believe nobody in America needs you to come out today and
say no, he had good morals after he killed a bunch of people.
I just feel you cannot say anything.
I think that's an option that you could take in the immediate aftermath of this.
Funerals are still being scheduled and all that.
So I feel you just wait a little bit.
I don't know, what do you think?
>> Yeah, I mean when you have a family member that does something
horrific, right?
, you know, we shouldn't be going to people saying, you know,
we demand that you condemn your family member, but also be respectful and
just maybe shut up, right?
Maybe shut up.
Maybe visit them when they're in jail if you really care for them and then kind of
just leave it at that and recognize that,, wow, this is somebody that I care for
and they did something that is absolutely un defensible and horrific and
nightmarish if you still feel you want to maintain a relationship with them that
does not require you to defend them in any way, shape or form.
It especially doesn't require you to make public statements about their supposed
good moral character.
You know? It's it's I think that speaks to sort of
another level.
I mean, there's a whole layer to this, look in our society,
we view racism as something that's just this normal background baseline thing,
if there's some edgy teenagers saying the N word on Xbox live,
you have a lot of parents that are, well that's just kids being kids and
and in this case we're seeing this to the extreme degree.
Yeah, 100%.
And, and I get that maybe he's just trying to say that I,
I tried to raise him with good morals, but again,
look, I know that you've got to be feeling really defensive or whatever, but
this really isn't about you, you don't need to make it about you.
, and the issue isn't about what message she's putting out,
It's about the choices that were actually made,
which understanding that all of what we're about to dive into is preliminary.
We don't, it is possible that some of this could be nuanced or whatever, but
when you start to look into it, it's looking, hey, maybe something could have
been done because a lot of people are pointing out that there are versions of
red flag laws in that state and no, they failed some on the right will then say,
well then there's no point in having them.
That's insanity to me.
, and also by the way, they don't even want them to exist.
So when they're critiquing their effectiveness or whatever,
understand that they don't want them to be there.
, the issue is damn this person for whom it seemed there were so many outward signs
that they were someone who might commit an act of violence, it didn't catch them,
but maybe it should have, maybe if people had been responsible,
if they had done what they should have done it could have, and, and to that,
I'm not purely hypothesizing, let's dive into what actually happened.
So as we pointed out in the intro, the father in this case bob sponsored his
son's firearm owners identification card 2.5 years ago.
This is despite the fact that there had been two instances of police being
called to their home over threatening behavior and we're going to
describe what those actually look and try to figure out using common sense.
Would you following these instances have made it possible for
your child to buy a gun?
So the Illinois police are saying Based on when that application came
in in January 2020, there was insufficient basis to reject it.
Okay, that again, could be nuanced.
Maybe they knew more than they're admitting to, but for
right now we're gonna focus on the dad.
So the dad at the time knew that police had been called to their home twice
earlier that same year because his son had threatened to kill himself And
the rest of his family back in April of 2019,
an individual contacted the Highland Park Police Department.
A week after learning of the sons attempted suicide.
And months later in september of that year, a family member reported that that
kid had a collection of knives and said he was going to quote, kill everyone.
Police responded to this, they went to the residents, they removed 16 knives,
a dagger and a sword from the home at the time though, they said there was no
probable cause to arrest and no complaints were signed by any of the victims.
Now, all of that being true, knowing that your son has talked about suicide,
has talked about killing other people to,
to then make it possible for them to buy a gun.
That's already enough for us to have a major issue with.
But look at this out of detail.
Apparently, the father claimed that all those knives were his and
they were being stored in the individuals, the son's closet for safekeeping based
upon that information, the highland park police gave the knives back.
So not only were the threats to self and others potential cause to trigger
red flag laws assuming someone around this person lets the authorities know,
but to effectively cover up who owned all of those weapons.
The fact that at least a a knife and sword arsenal had been accrued for
you to actively deceive the police to make it impossible for
them to do their job and to weed out people who might be a threat of violence.
Ben, that's where just saying the red flag laws failed is not going
nearly far enough.
Why did they fail?
Well, they failed seemingly because the father caused them to fail.
He hid evidence.
He made it possible for this kid to get those guns.
Yeah, I mean, and I would go a layer further because the reality is, and
this is something that I talked about a lot, which is just the fact that,,
ultimately laws only matter to the extent that they are enforced.
So a red flag law is only gonna be as good as the Police department that's
enforcing it.
And unfortunately, in the United States of America, it seems as though police
tend to sympathize more with people white nationalists and these violent right
winger types, then they, you know, empathize with basically anybody else.
So when they see in this circumstance, they they see a dad, right?
And they're, he's just me, and he's, you know, doing this, that or other thing,
he's taking care of his kid, hell, you know, don't worry about it, and
they see themselves right there empathizing more of these people then
the potential victims of this violence, and
it is this sort of patriarchal mindset that exists within police forces, right?
And this white supremacist mindset that exists within police forces,
where instead of thinking about the people that would potentially be victimized by
individuals this person who later, you know, committed a mass shooting, they're
thinking about how much they relate to these individuals, and so fundamentally,
these red flag laws are not going to make a difference unless we also pair it with,
real reformation and restructuring of our policing system.
Mhm.
Yeah. And also,,
definitely structural in terms of law enforcement.
Yeah, but also,, I think we can all agree with this father,
I think objectively made a lot of mistakes at the very least.
And those mistakes, you know, plausibly line can be drawn between that and
people losing their lives.
I don't think the father needed any guidance or
training to have done the right thing in these cases.
But I think we also socially and
culturally could start to let people know to maybe be on the lookout for
this sort of thing, not just to stop mass shootings from happening but to be,
I don't know, a little bit more compassionate about the people around you.
We live in very difficult times and
they're only getting worse seemingly on a daily basis.
Maybe we should start to watch out for each other in this particular case.
So I want to raise one additional point.
There's a few other things we're gonna dive into, but one is and and
maybe this is a failing of mine that I respond so often and
repetitive lee to stupid points that I hear constantly.
So this this killer had a bunch of knives, a sword and
all that and then went through the trouble of getting this fo I.
D.
Doing the background checks and getting a gun.
Now the system failed and didn't weed out the person at that point.
But plausibly it could have they could have in the process of doing
those background checks, looked into this person more and
maybe stopped them from committing their crime.
So why did the shooter go to all of this trouble to get the gun when some people
will assure us they could have killed as many people with the knives.
They already had the sword, they already had.
If those weapons were just as deadly wide, go to all the trouble and expense and
potentially be discovered and
stopped from committing your evil acts in getting the guns.
Of course, reasonable people understand that because they couldn't have possibly
done the damage that they did with a knife or with a sword, but
just in case there's an idiot watching this.
I wanted to respond to that by the way, additional details being revealed.
Apparently the highland park shooter also seriously contemplated doing
a shooting in Madison had driven there and then contemplated, but apparently
decided that they hadn't done enough planning at this point or something this.
So there could have been an even higher death toll before this person was
eventually discovered.
So I guess Ben, at least a little bit of good news that that didn't happen.
This person could have, you know, gone out in a, you know,
a misplaced blaze of glory shooting even more people.
It's good that at least that was stopped at some point.
Yeah, yeah.
But I mean that really just speaks to the failures that existed.
Everything, everyone failed, right?
Everyone failed in this instance, right?
the parents failed, The police failed.
everybody failed in this instance because they were clearly warning signs.
There were clearly things that led up to this.
I've even seen reporting that he had got kicked out of a synagogue
previously because they thought he was suspicious, right?
And so these types of things right there, plenty of warning signs.
But unfortunately our society, when our systems of enforcement see young white
man doing things this, they are more likely to be, well, but think about,
maybe he's got a hard life or this, that maybe he was bullied or whatever.
, but no, actually when things this happen, you actually need to step in and
do something and not just, you know, mope around and
try and empathize with the person.
Exactly.
Yeah. No, you know, who had a hard life,
the victims and the victims, families and friends, they have a hard life.
You know, you know, it's a hard life,
virtually everyone on some level has a hard life.
As far as I know you've been, you've never,
you've never shot up a place, right?
Yeah.
I never shot up a place or whatever.
I don't think that's asking too much