Aldrich Never Should have had Opportunity to Kill Five People

   "I wish I can shoot all of you." Those words should have been enough to send Anderson Lee Aldrich, the mass killer in the Colorado Springs shooting last month, to jail.

   When he uttered them, he was on a flight from Californa to Colorado. He became disruptive, and made the threat -- which was caught on video. That should have been enough to convict him. The video showed him making the threat, and passengers heard it. Isn't that case closed?

  But, wait, he had made terroristic threats worse than that. He even once had a stand-off with a SWAT team. Seems he held his grandparents hostage in their own home and told them of bomb-making materials in the basement, and told them of his plans to become a mass killer.

  He livestreamed the standoff on Facebook. Seems that alone would be enough evidence to convict him at least of resisting arrest. His family refused to answer subpoenas and refused to cooperate. The district attorney then decided to drop charges. One wonders on that. The district attorney is responsible for prosecuting dangerous criminals. Other evidence existed besides the family's testimony. On a matter as serious as this, the attorney should have made a house call to the family, explaining to them why they needed to step up. One also wonders if they could have been forced to be hostile witnesses.

  What did the judge make of it all? Perhaps it is that she had no recourse but to accept the prosecuting attorney's request to drop charges. But, she knew the danger to society. "Wow, Just really, really scary," she said. "You clearly have been planning for something else, and it didn’t have to do with your grandma and grandpa," the judge said. "It was saving all these firearms and trying to make this bomb, and making statements about other people being involved in some sort of shootout and a huge thing," she said. "Things just went unhinged. And it looks like it could have been worse because you had plans for it to be worse," she said. 

  Colorado has a red flag law -- and, even if it didn't, there was enough evidence to put Anderson Lee Aldrich behind bars. Why wasn't he?