One of the big selling points of so-called red flag laws is that they're good for preventing mass murders involving a firearm. These "mass shootings" are a problem, even if they're not as prevalent as some would like for you to believe. I've come to loathe the term myself, because it's nothing more than a way to demonize the firearms themselves.
But they happen, and they're all terrible.
However, a case out of Minnesota, of all places, is a prime example of why we don't need red flag laws to stop mass murders.
The FBI arrested an 18-year-old Minnesota man on October 6 and charged him with plotting a mass shooting at the Mall of America for the Islamic State group, minutes after he bought a rifle from an undercover employee, a federal complaint unsealed Wednesday states.
#FBIMinneapolis and the US Attorney’s Office of Minnesota announced the arrest of Twin Cities resident Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud, charged with his role in plotting to conduct a mass-shooting event in support of ISIS at the Mall of America.
— FBI Minneapolis (@FBIMinneapolis) October 7, 2026
Read more https://t.co/AFVCpb1Grh pic.twitter.com/M9ZsMWcvEOProsecutors said Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud wanted to kill 30 to 60 people at a festival at the mall on October 24 and had told a confidential FBI source he was committed to the plan. Agents sold him a disabled AK-47 rifle, four magazines, and about 200 rounds of live ammunition for roughly $600 before arresting him at gunpoint in a Richfield park, according to the complaint.
The Undercover Operation
Mohamud, a U.S.-born citizen who lived in Richfield, a Twin Cities suburb several miles from the mall, had been under investigation since December 2024, the affidavit states. Over roughly 21 months, he exchanged messages with a confidential FBI source across Telegram, Signal, Discord, and TikTok, discussing travel to Somalia to fight for a terrorist organization and later a mass-casualty attack in Minnesota.
See, what we need to understand here, believe it or not, is that plotting a mass casualty attack is a felony. You get caught doing that, you go to prison.
Unless you have a Soros-backed DA, then you might get a stern talking-to.
In most places, though, prison is in your future. Your status of having guns or not becomes irrelevant, because you're definitely not accessing them from inside. That's the point here. Plotting attacks like these is a crime. No one needs to swoop in and take their guns. What they need is probable cause to investigate what someone is up to, and making comments about plots sure looked like probable cause to me.
You don't need red flag laws. What we need is common sense out of lawmakers who will use the tools that already exist. I know, I might as well ask for a unicorn, but I think there's actually a world where this isn't a strange ask. Probably not this one, unfortunately.
After all, we already know that red flag laws aren't stopping mass killings anyway, so why not use the actual investigative tools to try and find people plotting these heinous acts and stop them while leaving the rest of us alone. You know, just to shake things up.
We have the laws already in place. We have the people already trained and in place. What we need to do is recognize that while terrorism is a terrible and real thing, it's not the only source of terrifying activity taking place in the United States.
Maybe some of these Discord servers where they're revering the Columbine killers or other mass murderers might be worth a look. Lord only knows what plotting is going on in some of those, to say nothing of a lot of shadier corners of the internet.
Don't mess with people just because they're weird, but on the same token, if you're seeing a pattern where people who revere mass killers become mass killers — and there are at least a few who have — then maybe look there and stop worrying about how to disarm the rest of us.
Unless, of course, it was never about mass killers.
