As Texas rampage renews push for "red flag" laws, a mother whose son killed 8 speaks out
Shelia Hole's son Brandon was troubled. So when he bought himself a gun, she used Indiana's "red flag" law to alert police.
Police did take her son's gun away, but prosecutors did not pursue a "red flag" designation that would have prevented him from buying any more firearms.
Hole's son bought two assault rifles a few months later and used them to storm a FedEx facility in Indianapolis in 2021, killing eight people before killing himself.
"I won't grieve his death because he made a choice to take others. So that's on him. I'll grieve for the victims because they did nothing," Hole told CBS News.
Indiana is one of 19 states that empower a judge to take away a firearm from anyone who poses an extreme risk to others or themselves. But Hole says a "red flag" law is only effective when it's enforced.
In Connecticut, for every 10 to 20 firearms removed, a life is saved, according to one study. In California, there have been at least 21 cases when a "red flag" law disarmed people threatening mass shootings.
"'Red flag' laws reduce the risk of gun violence," Dr. Celine Gounder, Kaiser Health News' public health editor-at-large, told CBS News. "It may not work 100% of the time, but if you can save even some proportion of those lives, that's had a real impact."
In Indiana, Hole's son didn't even have to be deemed mentally ill to be red-flagged.
Hole said she "100%" believes the FedEx facility victims would still be alive if the law had worked.
