In the early hours of Sunday, November 20, a gunman entered a club in Colorado Springs, CO, known to be a “gay-friendly” location.

Patrons were there to celebrate the upcoming holiday week, Transgender Day of Remembrance (November 19), and other normal, joyful events.

Instead, the night turned violent, and five innocent people lost their lives.

A year and a half before he entered the Colorado Springs club known as Club Q, Anderson Lee Aldrich allegedly threatened his mother with a homemade bomb.

Neighbors in surrounding homes were forced to evacuate as the bomb squad, and crisis negotiators talked him into surrendering.

But despite that clearly unbalanced and dangerous behavior, it does not appear that prosecutors moved forward with felony kidnapping and menacing charges or tried to trigger what’s known as Colorado’s “red flag” law that would have allowed authorities to seize the weapons and ammunition Aldrich’s mother said he had with him.

Aldrich’s June 2021 threat is a perfect example of an event that should disqualify someone from gun ownership, and yet people ignored their jobs. As a result, he was able to take his weapons into a club full of innocents and kill 5, injuring dozens more before brave patrons were able to wrestle him to the ground and hold him for the police.

Colorado State Representative Tom Sullivan (who lost a son in the Aurora theater shooting and sponsored the red flag law when it passed in 2019) said, “We need heroes beforehand – parents, co-workers, friends who are seeing someone go down this path. This should have alerted them, put him on their radar.”

Despite having now multiple high-profile mass shootings with horrifying casualty rates, Colorado has one of the lowest rates of red flag law usage despite being a state with high gun ownership rates.

There’s no use having laws on the books if authorities won’t enforce them – and if they won’t enforce them, who are they protecting?

Today, Colorado police announced that Aldrich will be charged with hate crimes.