On the menu today: If the U.S. or various states want to change their gun laws because of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, logic dictates that they should focus on enacting reforms that would have prevented the Uvalde shooter from obtaining his weapons. Based on anecdotes relayed by the shooter’s former friends and classmates, before the attack, he committed multiple felonies for which he was never charged and demonstrated behavior that suggested he was a danger to himself or others, making him a strong candidate for involuntary committal. Once again, the problem looks less like a lack of laws than a lack of enforcement of laws that are already on the books. In other news, the National Rifle Association’s board of directors is just fine with the job Wayne LaPierre is doing, and the U.S. is operating a lot more oil rigs than a year ago. Too bad we don’t have more refinery capacity. Oh, and when will Republicans finally have a Senate candidate in Pennsylvania?
If We’re Going to Change Gun Laws . . .
If Congress or state legislatures want to change laws regulating firearms because of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, then logic dictates they should focus on enacting reforms that would have prevented the Uvalde shooter from obtaining his weapons. A seven-day waiting period might have briefly delayed his rampage but wouldn’t have stopped it. The so-called “gun-show loophole” had no role in the massacre. Limits on magazine capacity would not have made much difference when the police waited more than an hour before confronting the gunman.
The shooter passed a background check, and many Americans are likely reading stories of his horrific behavior and wondering just how that could’ve been allowed to happen.
One of his former friends said he had slashed his own face, “drove around with another friend at night sometimes and shot at random people with a BB gun,” and egged people’s cars. The shooter reportedly boasted about torturing animals:
One Yubo [a social-media platform] user graphically described to ABC News how “the shooter would allegedly publicize the abuse, and would ‘put cats in plastic bags, suspend them inside, throw them at the ground and throw them at people’s houses.’”
Users of that same social-media app said he had “told girls he would rape them, showed off a rifle he bought, and threatened to shoot up schools in livestreams.” Other classmates described the shooter getting into “about five” fistfights in middle school and junior high, and remembered him commenting he “wanted to join the Marines one day so he could kill people.” Police reportedly visited the home when the gunman got into angry arguments with his mother on more than one occasion, but no charges were filed. A former classmate told CNN other teens actually called him “school shooter.”
Quite a few of these actions — particularly the shooting others with a BB gun and making threats of violence — could have and should have spurred criminal charges. (Texas courts have upheld treating a BB gun as a deadly weapon because it is “capable of causing serious bodily injury.”) Texas law also states that a person commits the felony offense of “terroristic threat” if he “threatens to commit any offense involving violence to any person or property with intent to . . . place any person in fear of imminent serious bodily injury.”
If the shooter had been convicted of a crime, he would have been barred from purchasing a firearm.
The shooter also sounds like a prime candidate for being involuntarily committed for demonstrating behavior indicating he was a danger to himself or others. Under Texas law, if a person is committed for temporary or extended inpatient mental-health treatment, is found incompetent to stand trial after being charged with a crime or is acquitted of a criminal charge for reasons of insanity or mental defect, that information must be made available to the FBI for inclusion in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), where it would cause him to fail a mandatory background check if he tried to purchase a gun.
Texas law does not require the reporting of emergency mental-health detentions, admissions or warrants, or voluntary commitments to NICS. (That might be a useful change to the law, but had that change been in place, that would not have prevented this massacre.)
We have a national problem of angry young men, disturbed and fantasizing about inflicting horrific violence upon innocent people. These angry young men often make threats to others before carrying out their massacres, but those whom they threaten rarely feel compelled to report the threats to the police because they don’t think it will make a difference, or they fear they will be targeted for retribution after the police contact the person making the threats. It is hard to blame them; in far too many cases, law enforcement does not take significant action. (I think going to police and filing a complaint is a lot to ask of teenagers.)
Similarly, getting a troubled person committed to a mental institution requires someone who cares enough about the troubled person to take that action, and who knows how to navigate the legal process for this “last resort” in mental health.
Federal law bars those under age 18 from purchasing any firearm, and those under age 21 from purchasing a handgun. In the aftermath of the Uvalde shooting, a few governors, such as Phil Murphy in New Jersey and Kathy Hochul in New York, have announced an intention to pass legislation barring those under age 21 from purchasing any firearms. But the problem is not all 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds; the problem is emotionally disturbed and mayhem-minded 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds. (No institution in America puts more guns into the hands of 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds than the Pentagon.)
Our old friend David French notes that “in every one of the deadliest school shootings, the shooter exhibited behavior before the shooting that could have triggered a well-drafted red flag law.” To French, “well-drafted” means that “the law should contain abundant procedural safeguards, including imposing a burden of proof on the petitioner, hearing requirements, and a default expiration date unless the order is renewed through a clear showing of continued need.”
From what we now know about the Uvalde shooter, he seems like a slam-dunk case of demonstrating behavior indicating that he was a threat to others.
But my friend Cam Edwards points out that there’s a flaw in most of the red-flag laws on the books in the 19 states that have them. In just about all of the cases, the court system and police seize the firearms of the troubled individual and then . . . that’s it. There’s no requirement for subsequent counseling or mental-health treatment. The state has taken away that person’s guns and called it a day. That emotionally disturbed or threatening person is still free to attack someone with a kitchen knife or try to run down someone in their car. As D. J. Jaffe wrote in 2019, “It makes no sense to let people who are known to be seriously mentally ill and believed to be dangerous go without treatment, even if they have had their weapons taken away. It’s not compassionate. And it can be dangerous.”
Ideally, every state in the country would have a “red-flag law” that sorted out the legitimate cases of threatening behavior from people venting grievances by making unserious claims, that had a clear appeals process, and that took the mentally ill and treated them so that they were no longer a threat to others. And then, instead of just nicknaming a troubled teenager “school shooter,” people would take action to ensure that he did not actually become a school shooter.
More of the Same for the NRA
On Monday, the National Rifle Association’s board of directors voted to keep Wayne LaPierre in place as executive vice president, with 54 votes in favor of keeping LaPierre, one vote for challenger Allen West, and seven abstentions. Fourteen members of the board were not in attendance. For perspective, that is 71 percent for LaPierre, 1.3 percent for West, 9.2 percent abstaining, and 18 percent absent.
Some outside observers have looked at the NRA’s operations and contended that the board’s gargantuan size of 76 members makes it unwieldy and resistant to change — and some speculate that may well be the point. For those wondering what it would take to replace the 72-year-old LaPierre, reform-minded members of the NRA would have to elect at least 38 members to the board. Each year, 25 members are elected to a three-year term, with the 76th member elected annually.
Lots More U.S. Rigs Are Pumping Oil Now
As of Friday, the U.S. had 727 oil rigs in operation. One year ago, that number was 457.
The Permian Basin is a giant patch of underground oil and natural gas in west Texas and southeastern New Mexico, and one of the most oil- and gas-rich portions of this area is the Delaware Basin. Now, long-planned investments to extract more oil and gas from this region is finally coming online, according to Rystad Energy:
Total hydrocarbon production in the Permian Delaware Basin, the top-producing play in the Permian, will hit a record 5.7 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) average in 2022, according to Rystad Energy research. Spurred on by high oil prices and appealing well economics, total production is set to grow by around 990,000 boepd, almost half of which — 433,000 boepd — is new oil production.
Investments in the basin are also expected to jump, surging more than 40 percent from 2021 levels to reach $25.7 billion this year. A significant contributor to this growth is the majors — ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and ConocoPhillips — who last year cut Permian Delaware investments by 33 percent vs. 2020. This year, the majors are expected to raise investments in the basin by 60 percent, bringing their total to $7.4 billion. Private operators’ share is also set to balloon in 2022, rising 50% percent from $5.8 billion in 2021 to nearly $9 billion in 2022. Cost inflation on the services side, which is expected to range between 10 percent and 15 percent this year, is also a contributor to the higher spend levels.
This production growth may seem like a reaction to the US government’s call for increased supply, but most of the drilling and capital expansion was already guided by the companies at the end of 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
As I keep reminding people, an increased ability to generate crude oil — whether it is from additional drilling, or releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — does not reduce gasoline prices unless there is additional capacity to refine that oil and turn it into gasoline. Bloomberg reported that, “Members of the National Economic Council, have been contacting industry players to inquire about the possibility of restarting refineries previously shut down in the latest attempt to rein in retail fuel prices.”
Restarting those refineries is going to be extremely difficult, because, as I laid out in the May 17 Morning Jolt, most of those refineries are well along the process of being converted to biofuel-production facilities, including the HollyFrontier refinery in Cheyenne, Wyo., and the Dakota Prairie refinery in Dickinson, N.D., with similar plans for the Shell refinery in Convent, La., and the Tesoro Marathon refinery in Martinez, Calif. We’re close to the point where the Biden administration will feel the need to tell oil companies to stop converting their oil refineries to biofuel facilities.
ADDENDUM: Pennsylvania held its primaries on May 17. Because the Senate race between Mehmet Oz and Dave McCormick is still so close — Oz leads by 922 votes according to the state’s count, as of this morning — it will go to an automatic recount . . . which won’t be finished until June 8.
I don’t want to rush anyone, but . . . three weeks to complete a count and recount?