Investigators are still looking into what could have been missed in the runup to the shooting at Annunciation Church and School two weeks ago, which killed two children and injured 21 other people in Minneapolis.
The mass shooting transpired just a year after a “red flag” law, known as the Extreme Risk Protection Order, went into effect in the state with the goal of separating people from guns before they can hurt themselves or others. But the Annunciation shooter, Robin Westman, was untouched by the law or other legal safeguards like background checks because she didn’t have an adult criminal record and her family didn’t appear to raise concerns with law enforcement.
The gun control organization Protect Minnesota was one of the groups strongly pushing for the red flag law to pass in the state for more than a decade. Executive director Maggiy Emery said the only legal filers for an extreme risk protection order in the state are immediate family members and law enforcement.
“Generally, a family member would notice or even a friend or neighbor would notice that there’s something not quite right going on, that someone is making threats, that they’re isolating themselves, that they’re accumulating and stockpiling firearms,” Emery said. They “would be able to then either submit that [protection order] petition themselves or refer it to law enforcement.”
The law allows people who are at risk of harming themselves or others to temporarily be disqualified from possessing or purchasing firearms. The emergency protection order is in effect for 14 days, while the long-term protection order approved by the court can last between six months and a year.
At least at the time of the shooting, Westman hadn’t left much of a digital trail that could have tipped off concerned family, friends or acquaintances. She scheduled two videos, which included excerpts from a disturbing journal filled with violent threats and hatred, to post only after the shooting occurred.
It’s not clear that Westman’s family or friends were aware of her fixations on mass shooters or firearms that were obvious in her videos, including what experts say is the most dangerous sign, a fixation and glorification of previous mass shooters.
The state also significantly tightened firearm background checks in 2023. But Westman’s lack of an adult criminal record or civil commitment means she wouldn’t have been disqualified from purchasing a firearm under the law.
Surveillance video first obtained by KSTP-TV shows Westman purchasing the firearms at a St. Louis Park gun shop. The owner has said the staff of the gun shop didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Even though the protection order would have been legally available at the time,
“It doesn’t put the impetus on a gun seller, it puts the impetus on family and law enforcement,” Emery said. “It really does rely on Minnesotans having the knowledge to first understand what is an extreme risk protection order.”
Data from the first year of Minnesota’s program shows that more than 70 percent of protection orders in the state are initiated by law enforcement, with only 16 percent filed by family members.
It’s not clear Westman ever had a brush with law enforcement. The closest public records come to showing that is a 2018 incident when police were called to Westman’s mother’s home in Eagan to perform a welfare check on an unnamed juvenile. It wouldn’t be unusual that no other steps were taken in the time before the red flag law, said Metro State University Professor James Densley, co-founder of the Violence Prevention Project.
“This is something we’ve heard time and time again from law enforcement as well, they’re frustrated by this. If a crime hasn’t been committed, you can’t arrest,” Densley said. “If there’s no immediate threat, you can’t hospitalize — so what ends up happening usually is limited follow up.”
One answer could be to integrate the law enforcement response with mental health practitioners and even school staff, Densley said.
“What could have then happened is greater follow-up, perhaps in the school setting where people were checking up with that student on a regular basis,” Densley said. “You can only really do those things if you build those systems in advance, and you have strong relationships with all your community partners and everyone is comfortable sharing information.”
Similar laws in other states
More than 20 states now have some sort of red flag laws, according to Lisa Geller, senior advisor for implementation at the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She said even states that have expanded their laws to allow school staff, like administrators, to file for an extreme risk protection order often fall back on reporting to law enforcement, rather than filing for the protection orders themselves.
Geller said the important thing is that schools and families know that there are tools they can use to report these sorts of behaviors.
“Often, in reviewing mass shooters after the fact, we find all the areas in which there could have been intervention but there wasn’t,” Geller said. “They didn’t say, ‘Oh yeah, I saw this manifesto online,’ or ‘Yeah, they wore a shirt to school emulating the Columbine shooter,’ or whoever. So it is really important that, to use that cliche phrase, ‘If you see something, say something.’”
One of Westman’s former teachers posted to social media after the shooting that she’d reported seeing evidence of self-harm on Westman. Both self-harm and suicidal ideation can also be danger signs that someone is considering violence, although they aren’t always associated. Densley said research shows that many mass shooters intend the violence to be their final act in life
“Any mass shooting is rooted in individual despair,” Densley said. “So being alert to those same warning signs like we would be with care and compassion for others who are going through those struggles can be part of the solution to get people off of that pathway.”
Experts said the most glaring red flag for people to be aware of is a fixation with past shooters and a sudden interest in amassing weaponry. Parents should be aware that there are very active online communities in both what’s called the right-wing “Saints” culture that celebrates mass violence and what’s referred to as the “true crime community,” who glorify and emulate school shooters, said Matthew Kriner, executive director for the Institute for Countering Digital Extremism. But there can be more subtle signs.
“The underlying anxieties that drive a lot of these grievances, look very similar to other pathways of frustration that individuals undergo in their daily lives that may or may not ever be attached to violence,” Kriner said. “It's those kinds of things that we would still encourage, if you think they need mental health support, see if you can help them find it, because we never know what it might help them with overall.”
Minnesota’s “red flag” law was used 135 times in its first year to report suicide threats, mass shooting concerns and domestic violence incidents. Geller said research has shown that the “red flag” laws were used about 75,000 times in the more than 20 states where they’ve been passed across the country, and that they've been effective in intervening in mass shootings, self-harm harm and domestic violence. In Indiana, for instance, researchers in 2019 found that one suicide death was prevented for every 10 firearm removal orders that were issued.
Geller said more awareness about how the law works and what it covers is needed if it’s to be effective.
“We can’t expect to see laws working that weren’t used,” Geller said. “There needs to be increased awareness about the tools that exist in Minnesota, including an extreme risk protection order to make sure that they’re used, and therefore have the potential to prevent these types of shootings.”
Geller’s Center for Gun Violence Solutions, along with the Hamline University-based Violence Prevention Project, recently created a 28-page document to help law enforcement officers, attorneys and community advocates navigate the state’s new red flag law.
