‘Second Amendment Sanctuary’ County Let Colorado Springs Shooter Keep Guns After Threat

The man accused of fatally shooting five people and injuring 25 others at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, had a reported history of domestic violence. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. There’s often a bloody but direct line from domestic abuse to mass shootings. A recent study shows that two-thirds of mass shootings are linked to domestic violence.

According to the El Paso County Sheriff’s department, the Club Q shooting suspect was arrested in June 2021 for allegedly threatening to attack his own mother, Laura Voepel, “with a homemade bomb, multiple weapons, and ammunition.” CNN confirms this, as you should never believe what the police tell you without backup.

The bomb threat reportedly forced residents in a southeast Colorado Springs neighborhood to evacuate from their homes for about three hours. The Club Q gunman was arrested after a standoff with police (that he survived — vive la whiteness!) and charged with kidnapping and felony menacing. However, he was never prosecuted. This is probably an entirely unrelated fact but Laura Voepel’s father is outgoing pro-insurrection Republican state Assemblyman Randy Voepel from California.

I usually avoid personally identifying punks with guns, but this situation is complicated because the shooter has gone by more than one name. Just before his 16th birthday, he changed his name from Nicholas Brink to Anderson Lee Aldrich. He’d endured some vicious bullying as a teen. The Washington Post reports that “at some point, a YouTube account was created under his name, featuring a crude, profanity-laden animation under the title, “Asian homosexual gets molested.”

PREVIOUSLY:

Colorado Springs Shooting Comes As Right-Wing Escalating War On LGBTQ People, Probably A Coincidence

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Laura Voepel was arrested for suspected arson when Aldrich was 12. It doesn’t seem to have been a winning environment for a child. However, any pity I might feel for Aldrich vanished with the lives he took. What concerns me most is how someone who was arrested last year for something more severe than running a red light got his sick hands on an assault weapon, every Republican’s best friend. Shouldn’t this have raised several red flags?

Colorado has Extreme Risk Protection Orders but it’s not an automatic process and requires cooperation from local law enforcement. Colorado Springs is part of El Paso County, which is one of at least 37 scofflaw counties that melodramatically describe themselves as a “Second Amendment sanctuary” and openly defy the state’s gun laws.

El Paso County commissioners unanimously passed a resolution in 2019 declaring the county a “Second Amendment preservation county.” They defied the state Legislature’s red flag bill that would allow temporary seizure of guns from people whom a court deems to be a risk to themselves or others.

The gun-loving commissioners claimed the Legislature’s bill wouldn’t “address mental health issues often at the root of gun violence, and it violates people’s constitutional rights, including the right to bear arms and the right to due process.” This is all nonsense. A court ruling that someone poses a serious threat is in fact “due process.” Republicans consistently scapegoat the mentally ill, who are more often the victims of gun violence.

El Paso County commissioners and law enforcement outright ignored the law. Just 39 risk protection order petitions were filed in El Paso County between January 2020, when the law went into effect, and November 2021. Only eight were granted, none of which were filed by law enforcement. Unlike in most Colorado counties, family and household members had to initiate every petition.

Allison Anderman, senior counsel and director of local policy at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, explained, “Oftentimes, law enforcement are the people who are coming into contact with individuals who pose a danger to themselves or others. If they’re not using [risk protection orders], they’re going to be less effective.”

Police should’ve put a flag on Aldrich after his 2021 arrest. They failed because El Paso commissioners and cops love guns more. A background check didn’t turn up the arrest because the case was never adjudicated so the charges against him were dropped. Aldrich was then able to legally purchase his death machines and ruin countless lives.

That’s a softness on crime that’s far more reckless and lethal than not summarily executing homeless people in San Francisco.

[The Trace / Washington Post]

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