Ex-FBI agent explains how a mass shooter can show up on law enforcement radar
After the Highland Park mass shooting, Americans are once again asking how the alleged shooter was able to fly under the radar while posting videos of mass shootings or school shootings.
Speaking on the MSNBC panel Tuesday, former FBI investigator Peter Strzok explained how all of the details that should foretell a mass shooter ultimately end up flying below the radar.
"If you look at social media, and if you look at the type of personality that manifests this sort of behavior, I think there is far more material than there are federal law enforcement officers, state and local law enforcement officers who are able to review that," he explained. "And the second thing is I don't know given the First Amendment as a society we want that level of invasive governmental look into what people are or are not doing online."
The problem with all of it, however, is that it's doing nothing more than treating the symptoms of a deadly cancer in the American population.
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"The fact of the matter is we have made — nobody should be surprised and nobody should think it is hard to do something that this suspect did," Strzok continued. "We have made it easier in the United States to buy a weapon than it is to go to your local animal shelter and adopt a pet. The fact is that he, like many of these other folks we're seeing, these sort of socially alienated 18, 19, 22-year-old awkward white males go into gun shops, lawfully buy, again, not handguns, not a musket, but a weapon designed starting in the Vietnam War to be a weapon of war. [They] buy that legally, and in some cases, then turn around, some with planning, some without and are able to do it."
He explained he isn't surprised when people look at social media or YouTube videos and see a pattern of violence. There are cases where police even investigated the stability of a person who turned into a mass shooter. The Parkland shooter who killed 17 people was firing off guns in his backyard. Neighbors complained and there were red flag laws in place, but everything was ignored.
"I wouldn't be surprised to find out more, but I don't think focusing on that we can have as many red flag laws as we want," Strzok said. "We can augment mental health programs as much as we want, but at the end of the day, all that is doing is treating the symptoms. The root issue here is the ready access to guns and in particular, the ready access to assault weapons that were designed to be used on a bat battlefield to kill as many people as possible."
See the full conversation below:
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