Shooting at Nebraska Target highlights gaps in gun laws

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — In the last three years of his life, Joseph Jones was repeatedly sent to psychiatric hospitals because of his schizophrenia and delusions that a drug cartel was after him. The Nebraska man once lay down on a highway in Kansas because he wanted to be run over by a truck, but officers tackled him as he ran in front of vehicles. Time and time again, his family and the police took away his guns.

But Jones was able to keep legally buying firearms and law enforcement could do little. Once a deputy returned a Glock pistol to him, while another time a sheriff's department confiscated his gun, although keeping it raised questions. Last month, Jones opened fire in an Omaha Target store using a legally purchased AR-15 rifle. No one was hit by Jones' gunfire, but police shot and killed the 32-year-old as shoppers fled in panic.

The episode demonstrates how gun laws fail to keep firearms out of the hands of deeply troubled people, despite a national effort to pass red-flag laws in recent years.

Mental health experts say most people with mental illness are not violent and that they are far more likely to be victims of violent crime. Access to firearms is a big part of the problem.

“For him to be allowed to buy a firearm, there’s no excuse for it,” Jones' uncle, Larry Derksen Jr., said. “It was just inevitable that something was going to happen."

In August 2021, a deputy was called because Derksen didn't want to return a gun to his nephew, who had just been released from a psychiatric hospital. Derksen said Jones was paranoid, had been hearing voices, and had traveled through several states fearing a cartel was chasing him, according to a Sarpy County Sheriff’s Office incident report.

But Jones told the deputy that he was taking medication, he felt fine and had...