JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Police in Las Vegas have released more information about Shane Tamura, the 27-year-old man who, last week, drove to New York and killed four people then himself. Documents confirm he was twice taken in for what authorities called mental health crisis interventions. But as NPR's Martin Kaste reports, there is no indication that this affected his legal right to have a gun. A warning to listeners, there are several references to suicide in this story.
MARTIN KASTE, BYLINE: The most recent mental health intervention was last August. Here's a recording of the Las Vegas 911 dispatchers.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED DISPATCHER: Yeah, I got a call from the mother. She got a call from her son. Son called her crying, saying he was suicidal.
KASTE: His mother said he had anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder. She also said he'd owned a gun and might still have it. As first responders arrived, he was calm but glum. And the Las Vegas Metro Police officer filled out paperwork to get him a psychiatric check, sometimes called a mental health hold. It was his second one in two years. And so the question now after his attack in New York is, shouldn't those mental health holds have stopped him from legally buying guns?
JEFF SWANSON: Yeah, that's an important question, and the answer is, it depends.
KASTE: Jeff Swanson studies the intersection of law and psychiatry at Duke University. One thing he studied is the federal background check system for gun purchases. It's the list of people barred from buying guns for various reasons, including about 8 million people who've been adjudicated to be, in the words of the federal law, mental defectives. So wouldn't that list include someone who's had a mental health hold?
SWANSON: It depends on the state because about half the states do have a law that would render one of those short-term holds, a 72-hour hold, a - you know, a gun-disqualifying record.
KASTE: Nevada is not one of those states, Swanson says. Short-term mental health holds don't get uploaded into the federal background check system. But he also thinks people shouldn't put too much stock in that federal list when it comes to limiting the risk of gun violence.
SWANSON: They identify lots of people who are never going to be violent, but they might have had a civil commitment 20 years ago. And then there are a lot of other people who, you know, they might have really impulsive anger traits and, you know, a really short fuse, and they're not prohibited necessarily because they don't have one of these records.
KASTE: Swanson says a better way to reduce risk may be red flag laws through which police can get a temporary court order to separate a person from his or her guns during a mental health crisis. Studies show it can reduce the likelihood of a person in crisis using a gun, especially for suicide. And Nevada has a red flag law. Police could have blocked this man from buying guns in the year leading up to the shootings in New York. But there's no record they tried to do so.
APRIL ZEOLI: Mainly, this is on law enforcement and how much they know about it.
KASTE: April Zeoli of the University of Michigan studies how these laws are used. Some states use them thousands of times a year, while others, like Nevada, rarely.
ZEOLI: If a jurisdiction, a state, a locality isn't actively training law enforcement officers on how to use this, it won't be used.
KASTE: The Nevada attorney general's office has offered training sessions for local police in an effort to increase their numbers. But politics and local culture may also play a role. In some states, these red flag laws have become partisan issues. Nevada's law passed in 2019 without Republican support. And elsewhere in the West, some sheriffs have come out against using the laws, calling them a threat to Second Amendment rights. Martin Kaste, NPR News.
SUMMERS: And if you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
(SOUNDBITE OF JAKE XERXES FUSSELL SONG, "WASHINGTON") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
