Normally, I am not a fan of alternate history. There is an old saying if your aunt had balls she would be you uncle.  Oh wait, these days she could keep her balls and still be my aunt. 

There was a Mass shooting Newton, Kansas yesterday 3 dead plus the shooter and 14 wounded.  Cue the quotes:

One worker told KAKE News that Ford, of Newton, Kansas, had ‘mental issues’ and was ‘being teased a little bit’ when he worked at Excel. 

However, another said ‘he was the nicest guy I know’ and that they had been chatting as normal when they walked in the plant to clock in this morning. 

Local law enforcement has been forthcoming with information so that we know that he had previous felony convictions. He had posted numerous photographs of himself on Facebook holding firearms or shooting them. He had been served that day, with a protective order regarding family violence by the Sheriff’s Office.

In Kansas, it appears that any attorney can apply for a protective order and once it is issued give it to law enforcement for service and tracking.  If the subject of the order violates provisions of the order, then the violation is treated as a criminal matter and the subject becomes the defendant. I am not a Kansas attorney or peace officer and therefore may have missed a nuance or two.

It appears that there may have been other incidents in the past, stalking and harassment.  

There is a possibility that several opportunities to prevent the incident were missed.  Like the group of blind men trying to describe an elephant each description was wildly different, dependent on which part of the elephant a particular blind man had a hold of.  For example:

In all probability law enforcement knew of his domestic problems, assaultive behavior, stalking and harassment.  They knew he had felony convictions.  They may not have known about his firearms.  The girlfriend knew about the firearms, but may not have made the fact known to law enforcement.  If he never used them in assaulting the girlfriend she may not have considered them an issue.  Secondly, she may have purchased them and had a financial interest in them, that she didn’t want to lose.

In all probability, nobody ever contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) to get their view.  Under federal law a conviction for a felony crime of violence, precludes future gun ownership.  For their purposes a burglary involving forced entry is a crime of violence. This may or may not be the case under Kansas law. The Kansas officers may have investigated their options under Kansas law and found that felon in possession did not apply under state statute.

The photos from Facebook and any information gleaned from a follow up interview with the girlfriend probably would have been enough to support a Federal search warrant and criminal complaint alleging the shooter was a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. But first, somebody would have had to contact ATF. It appeared that didn’t happen.

This is all after the fact armchair quarterbacking and therefore practically useless.  If, in fact, a protective order can come from any direction then the court in conjunction with law enforcement should consider a “risk assessment tool”. This would do two things: First, in those instances where a protective order comes about without prior law enforcement involvement, the agency would have time to identify all of the issues from a law enforcement perspective. Secondly, it may help in identifying priorities in a particular situation.

There is no indication that anybody “dropped the ball” in this case.  There may have been some opportunities that, had they been fully exploited, could have prevented the incident. There is no indication that some type of “new” law would have prevented the shooting.

As to the response itself, local law enforcement did a great job under difficult circumstances.