#Giffords Law Center

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Leading gunmakers made more than $1 billion from selling AR-15-style semiautomatic weapons in the last decade, a report from the House Committee on Oversight and Reform says.

These companies use "aggressive marketing tactics" to target young men by emphasizing masculinity, making veiled references to white supremacist groups, and touting military-grade weaponry, the Committee report said.

"The business practices of these gun manufacturers are deeply disturbing, exploitative, and reckless," Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, committee chairwoman, said in a statement.

Ryan Busse, a former firearms executive who is now a senior policy adviser to gun-safety advocacy group Giffords Law Center, told Insider that it is crucial to examine the ways that gun companies market their weapons.

Busse noted the change in how guns had been pitched over the years – from an emphasis on hunting and self-defense to selling military-grade weapons and tactical culture.

"The [gun] industry is both creating these customers and marketing to them. And therefore, it's propagating more of this radicalization," Ryan Busse said.

Busse, who testified before the House Committee last week, said that the revenue size is not surprising but what is important is "the dangerous ways that AR-15s are intertwined with political radicalization."

The House Committee began its investigation into the top five firearm makers in the country in May following the mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, that left 31 victims dead. Both gunmen used legally purchased semiautomatic rifles.

The primary target of gunmakers' advertising, according to Busse, is "this angry, young male, politically active, conservative, aggrieved, dreams of using the AR-15 to 'make things right in the world'."

"In other words– people who also fall right into domestic terror groups and radicalization and everything else."

AN EMPHASIS ON TACTICAL CULTURE, MASCULINITY, AND REFERENCES TO EXTREMIST GROUPS

The Committee report said that in their sales materials, gun manufacturers prey on masculinity by claiming their weapons will put people "at the top of the testosterone food chain."

An example of this is the "Man Card" campaign that AR-15 maker Bushmaster launched in 2010, which marketed its guns to a "Man's Man" in a "world of rapidly depleting testosterone."

Although the campaign ceased after the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012 where the 20-year-old gunmanwho killed 26, including 20 children aged six and seven, was aremd with a Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle, its successes set an example for other gunmakers to follow, Busse wrote in The Atlantic.

Last year, one gunmaker generated controversy by advertising a miniature AR-15 rifle for kids, called the "JR-15."

Some gunmakers have also appeared to make references to far-right groups.

One example of this political targeting is an AK-47-style pistol, produced by Palmetto State Armory, which is adorned with a pattern resembling the signature Hawaiian shirts worn by the Boogaloo Bois far-right extremist group.

There are approximately 19.8 million AR-15 style rifles in circulation in the US and while the vast majority of gun-owners never use their weapons to harm others, Busse said it's important to recognize the ways that gun marketing plays a role in contributing to radicalization.

Since 2010, gunmakers have increasingly marketed guns as the civilian equivalents of military-grade weapons and emphasized a tactical culture, Busse said.

This emphasis on tactical culture, previously reserved for the military, alludes to "specifically targeting humans, sort of as a life or death situation."

"I'd say maybe even a majority of the guns sold in the United States now are sold and marketed with the idea that the user, the owner, will use them in some sort of tactical operation," Busse said.

GUNMAKERS DEFLECT RESPONSIBILITY

While Democrats have called for greater gun control and to remove protections that make it harder to sue gun companies, Republicans have resisted further regulation.

Republicans on the committee have accused Democrats of blaming the gun industry instead of looking at the causes of violent crime.

"Republicans want to target criminals. Democrats want to target lawful gun owners and take away their guns," Rep. James Comer, the committee's top Republican, said.

Several gun company executives testified before the committee last week and denied responsibility for recent massacres by arguing that firearms are "inanimate."

"These acts are committed by murderers. The murderers are responsible," Marty Daniel, the founder and chief executive of Daniel Defense, told the Committee.

The CEO of Smith & Wesson, the country's second-largest rifle manufacturer, refused to testify. The Committee has subpoenaed the company after it failed to provide requested information on its profits, sales figures, and marketing materials.

"It's no secret why gun CEOs are so desperate to avoid taking responsibility for the deaths caused by their product," Rep. Maloney said, per NBC News.

"It seems to me that if a company really cared that its products were being used to kill scores of Americans, it would stop selling them," Maloney said. "But of course, the gun industry won't do that because they're making lots and lots of money from these weapons."

#us politics #news #business insider #2022 #ar 15 rifle #ar 15s #House Committee on Oversight and Reform #Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney #Ryan Busse #Giffords Law Center #mass shootings #mass shooters #gun violence #Bushmaster #the atlantic #Palmetto State Armory #boogaloo boys #Rep. James Comer #democrats #Republicans #Daniel Defense #Marty Daniel #Smith & Wesson #Instagram #alt right #white supremacists

[knightofchariot]

Tarot Books List - part one

1-2-3 Tarot: Answers in an Instant Donald Tyson 101 Tarot Spreads Sheilaa Hite 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card Mary K. Greer 22 Paths of Inperfection Matt Laws 360 Degrees of Wisdom Lynda Hill 365 Tarot Activities Deanna Anderson 78 Degrees of Wisdom Rachel Pollack 90 Days to Learning the Tarot Lorri Gifford A Guide To Mystic Faerie Tarot Barbara Moore A Guide to Tarot and Relationships Dolores Fitchie & Andrea K. Molina A Guide to the Nomadic Oracle Jon Mallek A Keeper of Words Anna-Marie Ferguson A Sephirothic Odyssey Harry Wendrich & Nicola Wendrich A Wicked Pack of Cards Michael Dummett & Ronald Decker & Thierry Depaulis A Year in the Wildwood Alison Cross Absolute Beginner's Guide to Tarot Mark McElroy Alchemy and the Tarot Robert M. Place All Love Goes Before Me Stewart S. Warren An Introduction to Transformative Tarot Counseling Katrina Wynne Ancient Mysteries Tarot: Keys To Divination And Initiation Roger Calverley Angel Readings for Beginners Elizabeth Foley Animals Divine Companion Lisa Hunt Best Tarot Practices Marcia Masino Beyond the Celtic Cross Paul Hughes-Barlow & Catherine Chapman Book of Thoth Aleister Crowley Brotherhood Tarot Companion Patric Stillman aka Pipa Phalange Buddha Tarot Companion Robert M. Place Chakra Wisdom Oracle Toolkit Tori Hartman Choice Centered Relating and the Tarot Gail Fairfield Chrysalis Tarot Holly Sierra & Toney Brooks Complete Guide to Tarot Illuminati Kim Huggens Confessions of a Tarot Reader Jane Stern Conscious Channeling From the Akashic Rozàlia Horvàth Balàzsi Creator's Tarot Nicole Richardson Daily Spread Tarot & Oracle Journal Alyssa Montalbano Dark Goddess Tarot Companion Ellen Lorenzi-Prince Designing Your Own Tarot Spreads Teresa Michelsen Destiny's Portal Barbara Moore Deviant Moon Tarot Patrick Valenza Discovering Runes Bob Oswald Discovering Your Self Through the Tarot Rose Gwain Easy Tarot Ciro Marchetti & Josephine Ellershaw Easy Tarot Guide Marcia Masino Easy Tarot Reading Josephine Ellershaw Encyclopedia of Tarot Volume IV Stuart Kaplan & Jean Huets Enochian Tarot Betty Schueler & Sally Ann Glassman & Gerald Schueler Essence of the Tarot: Modern Reflections on Ancient Wisdom Megan Skinner Explaining the Tarot Thierry Depaulis & Ross Caldwell & Marco Ponzi Explore the Major Arcana Judyth Sult & Gordana Curgus Exploring the Tarot Carl Japikse Fortune Stellar Christiana Gaudet Fortune's Lover: A Book of Tarot Poems Rachel Pollack Going Beyond the Little White Book Liz Worth Good Cat Spell Book Gillian Kemp Guide to the Sacred Rose Tarot Johanna Gargiulo-Sherman Heart of Tarot Amber K Hieros Gamos: Benediction of the Tarot Stewart S. Warren Holistic Tarot Benebell Wen Integral Tarot: Decoding the Essence Suzanne Wagner It's All in the Cards: Tarot Reading Made Easy John Mangiapane Jung and Tarot Sallie Nichols Kabbalistic Tarot Dovid Krafchow Kaleidoscope Tarot Leisa ReFalo Karmic Tarot William C. Lammey Learning Tarot Reversals Joan Bunning Learning the Tarot Joan Bunning Light-Of-Day: Tarot & Dream Work - A Practical Guide Gigi Miner Magic Words: A Dictionary Craig Conley Meditations on the Tarot Anonymous Messages from the Archetypes Toni Gilbert, RN, MA, HNC Mirror of the Free Nicholas Swift My Tarot Journal Katrina de Witt Mystical Origins of the Tarot: From Ancient Roots to Modern Usage

#tarot cards #free tarot #tarot reader #tarot community #tarocchi #tarot spreads #tarot reading #tarot #tarotblr #divination #tarot books list #tarot books #book list

[defensive-tactics]

Gun Buybacks Exposed

Michigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owners (MCRGO) Article

Self-defense organizations like MCRGO have historically been critical of gun buybacks. There's little evidence to support gun buybacks have any measurable effect on homicides, suicides, or nonfatal shootings and assaults in either the short-term or the long-term. Gun buybacks usually only collect a few hundred guns at a time. These firearms are often of low quality, poorly maintained, or even inoperable. Sellers are typically older individuals, often widows, who frequently live outside the community holding the buyback. In short, these aren't the firearms used in criminal activity.

However, gun buybacks are popular with gun control-friendly politicians. Gun buybacks are fast and easy to implement. Photos of firearms purchased at buybacks generate news stories that make it appear local officials are doing something to combat crime. Gun buybacks can serve as justification for state and federal grants to municipalities. They are used as a political organizing tool. Proponents argue that gun buybacks take guns off the street, recover illegally possessed firearms, and reduce the overall number of guns in circulation. But do they?

An exposé by the New York Times published on Sunday, December 10, 2023 shows that gun buybacks are "fueling a secondary arms market." Flint, Michigan is used as an example in the article with Mayor Sheldon Neely stating, “Gun violence continues to cause enormous grief and trauma,” Neeley adds, “I will not allow our city government to profit from our community’s pain by reselling weapons that can be turned against Flint residents.”

But the article goes on to point out that, "Flint’s guns were not going to be melted down. Instead, they made their way to a private company that has collected millions of dollars taking firearms from police agencies, destroying a single piece of each weapon stamped with the serial number and selling the rest as nearly complete gun kits. Buyers online can easily replace what’s missing and reconstitute the weapon."

Throughout the article, officials and gun safety advocates express shock and surprise at what the New York Times uncovered. The Rev. Chris Yaw, whose Episcopal church outside Detroit has sponsored buybacks with local officials, said in an interview that he was “aghast and appalled” when told by a reporter how the process works. Gun control groups, Everytown for Gun Safety and the Giffords Law Center, claim they had not realized that “destroyed” firearms were being sold in this way. In the article, Flint states, “The city was unaware that weapons were not being incinerated.”

However, a follow-up article fact-checking the New York Times piece, interviewed GunBusters, one of the companies involved in recycling guns purchased at buybacks. GunBusters president Scott Reed says, "We disagree with a number of points in the [New York Times] story, with our main disagreement being that law enforcement agencies are unaware of what is happening with the firearms. The implication that agencies are being deceived about how the firearms are destroyed and how GunBusters is funded is patently false.”

The statement from Reed went on to say that when the company has an initial meeting with police departments, the police are offered a choice for any guns turned over to be completely pulverized, for a fee, or for only the frames to be destroyed, for free, with the remainder of the weapon “salvaged.” Not surprisingly, many police departments choose the free option knowing full well firearms components are resold.

Gun buybacks are a failed public policy tool. They take attention and resources away from other measures, such as increased community policing and community mental health, which are more effective at reducing suicides and violent crime. But unlike gun buybacks, those measures are administratively and politically more difficult to implement, especially in cities like Flint, Detroit, and Grand Rapids dominated by elected officials sympathetic to calls to "defund the police."

[mariacallous]

This article is part of a symposium on the court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

Esther Sanchez-Gomez is the senior litigation attorney with Giffords Law Center.

Last week, the juris doctors of the Supreme Court looked at the gun violence epidemic in our country and prescribed more of what we already have in abundance: fear.

In recognizing a constitutionally protected right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense, the court is telling us all that we are unsafe, but our elected representatives cannot rely on evidence-backed solutions to this violence. Instead, we must defend ourselves with deadly force. This response does not seek to present a thorough discussion of the failings in Bruen. Time, and the collective brain trust of my more experienced colleagues, will bring these to light. Instead, I seek only to point out a few of the ways that the court has moved our country in a dangerous direction, in reckless disregard for the safety of our communities and our democracy.

In his opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas returns multiple times to the theme that somehow the Second Amendment has fallen into disfavor before the courts — that the means-end scrutiny of the now-defunct two-step analysis relegated to legislators and eventually judges the decision of whether protecting the right is “really worth insisting upon.” This theme has become popular among gun rights advocacy groups, though it has been thoroughly discredited.

One wonders whether Thomas himself is more fearful of the scientific method than of a town square full of guns, as there can be no doubt that he misunderstands it. Early in the opinion he tells us that public health research showing the efficacy of a certain law at reducing gun deaths, which could previously be used to defend gun regulations passed to protect public safety, was the government merely “posit[ing].” Justice Samuel Alito’s concurrence makes a similarly unscientific rebuke of data-driven analyses, but with an extra callous flair. “Why, for example, does the dissent think it is relevant to recount the mass showings that have occurred in recent years?” Alito asks. “What is the relevance of statistics about the use of guns to commit suicide?” Thomas’ newly-imposed methodology, however, requires government to make a “demonsrat[ion]” of history — and the court to reason by analogy. In so doing, he has untethered our public safety from the research that shows us how to protect it.

In further demonstration of his misunderstanding of the power of science to inform legislative judgments to the benefit of public safety, Thomas recycles a point made by Alito in McDonald v. City of Chicago, back in 2010: that the Second Amendment “is not the only constitutional right that has controversial public safety implications.” (Alito was referencing constitutional protections that attach for criminal defendants alongside an acknowledgment that those protections could cause danger to the public.) To whatever extent that point held water in McDonald, it strains credulity here.

The public safety implications of the right the court announced last week are far from controversial. As social scientists and public health researchers wrote in an amicus brief, “[T]he evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that unregulated possession of firearms leads to increased fatalities and other socially harmful consequences.” Beyond anti-scientific, it is straightforwardly cold-hearted to compare the ushering forward of predictable, violent deaths affecting entire communities, with the possible danger of the occasionally freed criminal defendant inherent in a criminal justice system that strives to protect possible innocence over false determinations of guilt.

Perhaps we can forgive Thomas, at least in part, for his discomfort with scientific reasoning by acknowledging the persuasive power of marketing. Impossible to ignore in this new deadly stalemate that we find ourselves in, is that this fear sells one thing: guns. For decades the gun industry has been pushing its ever-profitable “Big Lie”: convincing Americans that guns make us safer, when in actuality they do just the opposite.

Beyond the refusal to acknowledge the scientific evidence showing the dangers inherent in the “guns everywhere” world this decision seeks to manifest, conspicuously lacking is any clear expression of the important balance struck by our common law principles of what constitutes lawful self-defense. Thomas speaks passively — very much in the abstract — about the need for a handgun in case of “confrontation.” Not once does he make reference to the person being confronted or, importantly, the circumstances that would make killing — yes, killing a person — in such a confrontation lawful.

The majority’s neglect of these considerations leaves the impression of an endorsement of private violence and vigilantism by judicial fiat. Baked in is also the implication that handguns are not dangerous, merely because they are not unusual. But, as Giffords Law Center pointed out in our amicus brief, in our modern state the institutions of government are presumed to hold the monopoly on the use of deadly force to maintain order, subject to the due-process protections and other mechanisms of transparency and accountability. There is bold irony in the court’s callous allusion to the dangers of constitutional protections for the accused, while simultaneously inviting violence, for which a determination of lawfulness will depend on such protections.

At the very least, the court took pains to insist that the mere act of being armed in public does not cause terror in the people. In this context, one can only hope that the court will hold itself and the lower courts to this analysis of the historical record — faulty as the analysis may be. To find otherwise would mean that guns serve as both the reason and the justification for the deadly self-defense. Fear begets fear begets violence. And contrary to the justices’ dry discussion of confrontation, this argument is not hypothetical: It has already been made in a trial where self-defense was successfully raised.

With more guns in our public squares, we are likely to see more violence, more fear, and greater gun sales, exacerbating our already devastating epidemic of violence. There are many gun safety laws that survived constitutional scrutiny in Heller‘s wake and will continue to do so in Bruen‘s. But we will be faced with relitigating them, using a methodology untethered to the true thrust of our need to regulate firearms: public safety.

[follow-up-news]

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law Tuesday that clears the path for gun violence victims to file civil suits against the companies that manufacture the firearms used in crimes.

The move effectively tightens gun laws in California, which has the strictest gun safety measures in the nation, according to the Giffords Law Center.

"To the victims of gun violence and their families: California stands with you. The gun industry can no longer hide from the devastating harm their products cause," Newsom said in a news release.

California Assembly Bill 1594 "utilizes an exemption to the federal statute that allows gun makers or sellers to be sued for violations of state laws concerning the sale or marketing of firearms," according to the California news release.

#gun violence #gavin newsom #california

[beardedmrbean]

Less than a year after a white teenager in upstate New York was investigated for making a threatening statement at school, he legally purchased a firearm, which he is accused of using to gun down 10 Black people in a racist rampage, authorities said.

The massacre at Tops Friendly Market in Buffalo on Saturday should have been thwarted by New York’s red flag law, which aims to stop people from buying or possessing firearms when they show they’re threats to themselves or others, gun policy experts said.

“It was designed exactly for this circumstance,” said David Pucino, the deputy chief counsel at Giffords Law Center, a gun-safety group.

Instead, after Payton Gendron appeared on the radar of New York State Police in June over a chilling comment about a murder-suicide he made in the classroom while he was still a minor, he was evaluated and cleared, paving the way for him to legally buy the semi-automatic rifle he is accused of using in the shooting 11 months later, law enforcement officials and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said.

No official involved in the investigation in June initiated a court process that could have helped prevent Gendron from buying the rifle, a New York State Police spokesperson said Monday.

Now, state legislators are looking into whether those involved followed the proper protocol. “I’ve asked for the investigation of exactly what transpired there,” Hochul told Buffalo’s WKSE radio on Monday.

Hochul said a teacher had asked Gendron about his plans just before the start of summer vacation last year. He responded, “I want to murder and commit suicide,” Hochul said.

School officials immediately alerted police, Hochul said. Gendron underwent a psychiatric evaluation and was released, Hochul said, adding that there was “not a specific threat” or “something that seemed to be actionable.”

“There was nothing that flagged that he wouldn’t be able to — from that encounter, at the time — be able to go into a store and purchase a gun,” she said. “Now, we need to question that, as well. There’s a lot of layers here that we need to get to the bottom of and find out if changes need to be made.”

Enacted in 2019, New York’s red flag law empowers school administrators, law enforcement officials, prosecutors and family members to pursue court intervention when they believe they know someone who is at high risk of harming themselves or others.

Under the law, a judge could “very quickly” issue an extreme-risk protection order, which could order someone, a minor or an adult, to surrender any firearms, as well as not to try to have or buy any.

Such an order doesn’t come with criminal charges or penalties. It is meant to keep guns away from dangerous people, gun policy experts said.

Pucino said he believes a lack of awareness of the nearly three-year-old law likely led law enforcement not to request the court order. He said it’s difficult to second-guess the agency’s decision to clear Gendron, especially without all of the information the investigators had. But he said their determination was shocking and “baffling.”

“They’re investigating the risk and then determining that there wasn’t a risk. Obviously, that was wrong,” Pucino said, adding that there doesn’t need to be a specific threat for someone to request an extreme-risk protection order.

“If I had a situation where somebody was raising those kinds of threats," he added, "I think I would pursue every available option to make sure that they weren’t able to get a gun.”

Other proposed gun safety measures, including a ban on the sale of semi-automatic rifles to people under 21, might have helped stave off the Buffalo shooting, Pucino said. Courts recently struck down such a law in California as unconstitutional.

Since New York's red flag law went into effect on Aug. 25, 2019, 1,464 extreme-risk protection orders have been issued, a New York Unified State Courts spokesperson said. State Sen. Brian Kavanagh, who sponsored the legislation, said at least 530 orders were issued in the first year the law was implemented.

While there’s no way to measure whether any one order helped avoid a specific tragedy, Kavanagh and Pucino said peer-reviewed evidence has found that red flag laws in Indiana and Connecticut have prevented gun deaths, including suicides.

When the New York law was established, it was the first in the country to encourage school officials, including teachers, to use the court system to avert school shootings, Kavanagh said.

“We might learn something from this experience, make some change to the law if necessary," Kavanagh said. "But at this point, if there was evidence that this guy was dangerous last June, then somebody should have sought an extreme-risk order."

Meanwhile, amid congressional inaction on gun violence, Kavanagh said, violence, including shootings fueled by racist hatred, will continue as long as there is easy access to guns in America.

"We’re grieving and horrified," he said. "But we also have to recognize that these things will continue to happen until we take action."

#nunyas news #so the takeaway here seems to be #don't need new laws #just to enforce the ones already on the books #illinois has that problem too

[hummussexual]

Why US gun laws get looser after mass shootings

For decades, the US Congress failed to make meaningful movement on gun reform in the aftermath of mass shootings. But that weak federal response has obscured another story: that state gun laws change after mass shootings all the time. And a study found that, in Republican-controlled state legislatures, a mass shooting roughly doubles the number of laws loosening gun restrictions in the next year. In this video we look at Texas, where decades of mass shootings in the US have been met with laws that expand gun access. We spoke with Flo Rice, a survivor of the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting, where a gunman killed 10 people. Flo was shot six times. She and her husband, Scot, became advocates for gun safety, and tried to get tighter gun laws passed in Texas. Watch the piece above to see what happened, and what their story reveals about who has power when it comes to gun policy in the US.

SOURCES:

Here’s the 2020 study on gun laws we reference in the video: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...

The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence has lots of resources to understand gun laws in the US. We mention that the US has only had a few major federal laws enacted on guns. You can learn more about some of them here: https://giffords.org/lawcenter/gun-la...

The Texas Tribune has lots of information on the state’s gun laws. Here is one of James Barragán’s recent articles: https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/...

The Texas Tribune also has this timeline that helped us develop ours: https://apps.texastribune.org/feature...

The Texas Political Project tracks public opinion on gun laws every few months: ​​https://texaspolitics.utexas.edu/poll...

The RAND Corporation has been tracking gun laws across the country in their database: https://www.rand.org/pubs/tools/TLA24...

OpenSecrets has lots of data and resources on lobbying and political contributions: https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2022... 

#gun control #USA #gun laws #texas #republicans #democrats

[96thdayofrage]

The fact that the gunman responsible for this week’s massacre in Uvalde, Texas, was able to buy two AR-15s days after his 18th birthday highlights how much easier it is for Americans to purchase rifles than handguns.

Under federal law, Americans buying handguns from licensed dealers must be at least 21, which would have precluded Salvador Ramos from buying that type of weapon. That trumps Texas law, which only requires buyers of any type of firearm to be 18 or older.

Following Tuesday’s massacre at Robb Elementary School, which killed 19 children and two adults, a growing number of lawmakers in Texas and beyond are calling for the minimum age to purchase assault rifles to be raised to 21 from 18. Doing so would require undoing nearly two centuries of more permissive regulations on so-called long guns.

“It’s something that could happen at either the state or federal level, but I don’t see movement on either front,” said Sandra Guerra Thompson, a criminal law professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

Only six states — Florida, Washington, Vermont, California, Illinois and Hawaii — have increased the minimum purchase age for long guns to 21, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The majority did so following the 2018 massacre in Parkland, Florida, where a then-19-year-old assailant killed 17 people at a high school.

Several states have since faced legal challenges.

The National Rifle Association sought to repeal the Florida law.

“The ban infringes the right of all 18-to-20-year-olds to purchase firearms for the exercise of their Second Amendment rights, even for self-defense in the home,” the NRA argued in a court filing, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “The ban does not just limit the right, it obliterates it.”

Government attorneys, however, argued that because “18-to-20-year-olds are uniquely likely to engage in impulsive, emotional, and risky behaviors that offer immediate or short-term rewards, drawing the line for legal purchase of firearms at 21 is a reasonable method of addressing the Legislature’s public safety concerns.”

A federal judge upheld the law last year; the NRA is appealing.

A U.S. Court of Appeals recently ruled that California’s version of the law was unconstitutional, though it did uphold a provision that requires adults under 21 to obtain a hunting license before buying a rifle or shotgun.

After the shooting in Uvalde this week, lawmakers in New York and Utah also called on their states to raise the age limit for long gun purchases to 21. U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced federal legislation earlier this month — less than a week before the Uvalde shooting — that would raise the minimum age to purchase assault weapons to 21 from 18; the California Democrat said in a statement that it was in response to a shooting that killed 10 people at a Buffalo supermarket. That gunman also was 18 years old.

“It makes no sense that it’s illegal for someone under 21 to buy a handgun or even a beer, yet can legally buy an assault weapon,” she said.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Alabamians woke up Sunday with the right to carry a gun without a license.

The change, implemented by a state law passed last year, marked a major milestone: half of America’s 50 states now allow people to carry handguns without first seeking a permit.

Thirteen years ago, only two states — Vermont and Alaska — allowed its residents the unfettered right to carry a gun, relying on the Constitution’s Second Amendment as a blanket permit for all.

Since 2010, however, nearly two dozen states have followed suit, with 11 of them passing permitless carry laws in the last three years alone.

The growing movement has chalked up wins in state legislatures with remarkable speed, drawing cheers from gun rights advocates while raising fears among reformers that the changes will lead to more guns in the street — and likely more violence.

“If you are a law-abiding citizen, you should fully be able to exercise all of your constitutional rights,” said Andi Turner, legislative director for the Texas Rifle Association. “Half the states of the union are now recognizing it.”

Permit systems generally require applicants to demonstrate safe gun handling, as well as show knowledge of often-complicated gun laws and the use of lethal force.

“We’ve seen in the past decade a very concerted effort by the corporate gun lobby, especially the NRA,” said Nick Wilson, a gun violence researcher at the Center for American Progress. It has been a very successful campaign for the gun lobby. It helps their bottom line… But it’s very concerning to anyone worried about public safety.

The state legal changes have dovetailed with two other trends that auger well for gun advocates. First, the COVID-19 pandemic unleashed an unprecedented surge in sales. And second, people of color and women made up a larger share of the buyers, diversifying a gun-buying public that has traditionally skewed male, white and conservative.

Gun violence has also spiked since the pandemic began, with firearm deaths jumping 20% from 2019 to 2021, according to a recent study published by JAMA Network Open.

With big-ticket gun reforms like the Assault Weapons Ban or universal background checks stalled in Congress, the spate of state laws marks a defeat for the reform movement, which views the trend as a public security threat.

Sociological studies tend to show that increases in gun ownership generally track with increases in violence.

“It’s no coincidence that in states with very permissive approaches to guns in public, you have higher rates of gun death,” said Adam Skaggs, chief counsel for the Giffords Law Center, a nonpartisan reform group.

Over the last five years, researchers have increasingly shown that loosening restrictions on carrying handguns is also associated with problems like increased gun theft and road rage incidents, according to Stanford Law professor John Donohue.

Letting more people carry guns also impedes police work, Donohue said – partly from upticks in their caseloads of gun thefts and accidental shootings and partly because ramping up the risk of getting shot reduces police efficiency.

“One of the unintended consequences of putting more guns on the street is degrading police performance,” Donohue said. “You see clearance rates for all crimes drop when states move in the direction of letting more people carry guns.”

Tallying the number of states with permitless carry laws can exaggerate their reach, Skaggs noted. They tend to be small states with rural populations, while larger, more urban states like California and New York tend to favor a more restrictive approach toward firearms.

Just over one-third of Americans live in the 25 states embracing permitless carry.

And in the same way that gun rights groups have made speedy progress with permitless carry laws in red states, liberal-dominated legislatures have pushed opposing measures.

New York tightened its gun restrictions after last year’s mass shooting in Buffalo. Delaware enacted a state-level Assault Weapons Ban last year. A ballot measure passed last year by Oregon voters requires a permit for all gun purchases and restricts magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, though the law is tied up in the courts.

But the conservative-stacked Supreme Court’s landmark decision in the New York State Rifle and Pistol Co. v. Bruen case last year has also made it harder for state legislatures to keep people from carrying handguns. The ruling struck down a New York law that required applicants for concealed handgun licenses to demonstrate a specific need for carrying a weapon.

The ruling stopped short of scrapping permits for carrying handguns altogether, however.

“The opinion made very clear that there’s nothing in the Constitution that requires permitless carry,” Skaggs said. “Constitutional carry may sound good with its alliteration and the way it rolls off the tongue, but it’s fundamentally untrue and misleading. Guns in public have always been significantly regulated.”

Still, the Bruen decision could have major impacts on state-level gun debates, according to Mark Oliva, spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearm industry trade group.

“Left-leaning and right-leaning states will probably become more polarized,” Oliva said. “And you’re going to keep seeing them go to the courts and say, ‘what’s the truth here?’ And if the truth follows what came out of Bruen, they’re going to find assault weapons bans are unconstitutional, magazine restrictions are unconstitutional, age restrictions and background checks for ammunition purchases are unconstitutional.”

States with permitless carry could become the majority before the year’s end.

Virginia Delegate Marie March (R) pre-filed a constitutional carry bill in November for this year’s legislative session. However, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants the issue prioritized when Florida lawmakers reconvene in April.

In Nebraska, a permitless carry bill failed to break the threshold for overcoming a filibuster in the state Senate last year by two votes. Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts (R) plans to try again this year.

#us politics #news #huffington post #2023 #constitutional carry #permitless carry #gun control #gun rights #gun violence #conservatives #republicans #gop #second amendment #2nd amendment #assault weapons ban #magazine restrictions #background checks #age restrictions #New York State Rifle and Pistol Co. v. Bruen #gun thefts #accidental shootings #road rage #universal background checks

[yourreddancer]

Financing gunmakers How to make big banks like JPMorgan choose whether to be socially responsible

After a mass shooting in Parkland, Florida in February 2018, that left 17 people dead, JPMorgan Chase — America’s largest bank — publicly distanced itself from the firearm industry. Its chief financial officer reassured the media that the bank’s relationships with gunmakers “have come down significantly and are pretty limited.”

That was then. This past September, a new Texas law went into effect that bans state agencies from working with any firm that “discriminates” against companies or individuals in the gun industry. The law requires banks and other professional service firms submit written affirmations to the Texas attorney general that they comply with the law.

What was JPMorgan to do? Sticking with its high-minded policy of “significantly” reducing business with gun manufacturers would result in exclusion from Texas’s lucrative bond market. Texas sold more than $58 billion of bonds in 2020, and is currently the second largest bond market after California. (I’ll come back to California in a moment.)

JPMorgan Chase had been among the top bond underwriters for Texas. Between 2015 and 2020, the bank underwrote 138 Texas bond deals, raising $19 billion for the state, and generating nearly $80 million in fees for JPMorgan, according to Bloomberg. Yet since the new Texas law went into effect in September, the bank has been shut out of working for the state.

JPMorgan’s dilemma since Texas enacted its law has been particularly delicate because its chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, has been preaching the doctrine of corporate social responsibility — repeatedly telling the media that big banks like JPMorgan Chase have social duties to the communities they serve.

So what did JPMorgan decide to do about financing gun manufacturers, in light of the new Texas law? It caved to Texas. (Never mind that last year, the bank’s board granted Dimon a special $52.6-million award — which is almost three-quarters of the fees the bank received from underwriting Texas bonds between 2015 and 2020.)

On May 13 — one day before the Buffalo mass shooting and less than two weeks before the Texas shooting — JPMorgan sent a letter to the attorney general of Texas, declaring that the bank’s policy “does not discriminate against or prevent” it from doing business “with any firearm entity or firearm trade association based solely on its status as a firearm entity or firearm trade association,” adding that “these commercial relationships are important and valuable.”

The Texas law barring the state from doing business with any firm that discriminates against the gun industry is the first of its kind in the country. But similar laws — described by gun industry lobbyists as “FIND” laws, or firearm industry nondiscriminatory legislation — are now working their way through at least 10 statehouses, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. This year, Wyoming passed a law that allows gun companies to sue banks and other firms that refuse to do business with them.

The lesson here is twofold.

First, pay no attention to assertions by big banks or any other large corporations about their “social responsibilities” to their communities. When social responsibility requires sacrificing profits, it magically disappears — even when it entails financing gunmakers.

But secondly, no firm should be penalized by pro-gun states like Texas for trying to be socially responsible. How to counter Texas’s law? Lawmakers in progressive states like California (whose bond market is even larger than Texas’s) should immediately enact legislation that bars the state from dealing with any firm that finances the gun industry.

In other words: Big banks like JPMorgan should have to choose: either finance gunmakers and get access to the Texas bond market, or don’t finance them and gain access to the even larger California bond market.

Robert Reich

[abcnewspr]

"This Week" Listings: Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Nancy Mace Sunday on "This Week" with Co-Anchor Martha Raddatz

Media Advisory for Sunday, April 23, 2023

SEN. MARK WARNER & REP. NANCY MACE SUNDAY ON “THIS WEEK” WITH CO-ANCHOR MARTHA RADDATZ

Sen. Mark Warner

Chair, Senate Intelligence Committee

(D) Virginia

Exclusive

Rep. Nancy Mace

(R) South Carolina

Exclusive

GUN VIOLENCE PANEL

Chief Jason Armstrong

Apex, North Carolina Police Department

Allison Anderman

Director of Local Policy, Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence

THE POWERHOUSE ROUNDTABLE

Terry Moran

ABC News Senior National Correspondent

Heidi Heitkamp

Former North Dakota Senator

ABC News Contributor 

Sarah Isgur

Former Justice Department Spokesperson

ABC News Contributor

Marianna Sotomayor 

Washington Post Congressional Reporter

Plus, Martha has exclusive access to the House China Committee's China-Taiwan war game simulation, including interviews with Chairman Mike Gallagher and Ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi.

[reasoningdaily]

Could a Facial Recognition Gun Reduce Firearm Deaths?

The country’s first biometric smart gun started as a Boulder teenager’s high school science fair project.

Ten years later, Kai Kloepfer is bringing his smart gun to market in what could be the first weapon to break a decades-old political and manufacturing “log jam” that has kept smart guns from mass production.

Kloepfer’s Broomfield-based company, Biofire, on Thursday announced the sale of guns that use both fingerprint and facial recognition to make sure only authorized users can fire the weapon.

His goal is to reduce accidental deaths and suicides and to keep children from accessing their parents’ weapons. The gun will allow people to have a weapon at hand but want to make sure children, visitors or criminals can’t use it.

The gun is primarily marketed for use as a weapon for home defense, Kloepfer said. Gun owners must balance keeping a weapon easily accessible in case of emergency but also secure enough that others can’t access it.

“Home defense is an area that even for firearm experts remains a frictional area,” he said.

The 2012 Aurora theater shooting sparked Kloepfer’s interest in guns. The mass shooting an hour from his Boulder County home was the first time the then-sophomore seriously thought about gun violence.

As he researched, he learned that the toll of accidental shootings and gun suicides far outpaced deaths in mass shootings.

Over the next 10 years, Kloepfer developed more than 150 versions of the prototype, raised funds, recruited staff and learned how to run a business. He enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but stepped away to pursue Biofire full-time.

“It’s been a wild journey,” said Kloepfer, now 26.

How the gun works

The challenge with smart guns, Kloepfer said, is creating a locking system that unlocks for an authorized user instantly, every time, and in any environment.

Fingerprint readers are relatively established technology, he said. Most smartphones have the ability to read a fingerprint, but fingerprint technology can be unreliable if a person’s hands are wet or dirty.

That’s why Kloepfer used both a fingerprint scanner on the grip and a facial recognition system built into the back of the handgun — either can unlock the weapon. Dirty fingers don’t impact the effectiveness of facial recognition and conditions that might affect facial recognition, like lighting, don’t affect fingerprints.

The gun comes with a small tablet computer that is used to register new users and a charging dock for the its battery. The system is not connected to the internet and the data is encrypted.

Biofire on Thursday started accepting orders for the gun, which starts at $1,499. Guns will start to ship out to purchasers at the end of 2023, Kloepfer said.

While the aim is to minimize deaths, adding more guns to the hundreds of millions already in circulation carries its own risk — especially if people who wouldn’t purchase a standard gun decide to buy a smart gun. The presence of a gun increases the risk of deaths by suicide and accidental shootings, said Adam Skaggs, vice president of Giffords Law Center, citing numerous research studies.

While the technology might keep that person’s child from shooting themselves, it wouldn’t stop the authorized user.

“It’s kind of a brave new world,” Skaggs said. “In theory, there will be benefits and, in theory, there will be risks by putting these guns on the market. It’s hard to say.”

Pushback on smart guns

Researchers, entrepreneurs and the gun industry have pondered the creation of a smart gun for decades.

Other companies have produced guns that can be activated by a device worn by an authorized user, like a ring. But those technologies have not proved perfect.

A German company, Armatix, created a gun that unlocked when in proximity to a linked watch. But the gun lost viability after it was discovered it could also be unlocked with $15 worth of magnets.

Some gun stores that opted to sell the Armatix product faced death threats and boycotts from people who oppose smart guns.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation — the firearm industry’s trade association — does not oppose smart guns. However, the foundation opposes any laws or regulations that mandate the sale or use of smart guns and remains concerned about technology that could prove faulty in a moment of crisis.

“A ‘smart gun’ must work as safely and as reliably as current technology,” the foundation’s position statement reads.

Some of the backlash against smart guns can be traced to a since-changed 2002 New Jersey law that required all gun shops in the state to only sell smart guns once such guns became available. The mandate violated the Second Amendment, opponents said. In 2019, New Jersey lawmakers amended the law to require that licensed firearm retail dealers make smart guns available once they are included on a state roster of approved personalized handguns.

But the opposition to smart guns goes back even further.

Gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson in 1999 promised to invest in developing a smart gun as part of an agreement with the U.S. government following the shooting at Columbine High School in Jefferson County. But the company backed away from that work after the National Rifle Association organized a boycott that nearly destroyed the company, forced the ouster of its CEO, and prompted the sale of the company.

“There have been very strong headwinds against bringing smart gun technology to market in a robust way,” Skaggs said. “It could be that this is the first one to break the log jam and get out there.”

So far, Kloepfer hasn’t received any harassment or pushback for Biofire. Early reviews of the gun have been positive, he said.

Kloepfer doesn’t believe smart guns will or should replace all firearms in the U.S. But they will provide a solution to the “uniquely American challenge of gun deaths,” he said.

“We can have a very real impact,” he said.

#guns #smart guns #facial recognition guns #guns in america #Could a Facial Recognition Gun Reduce Firearm Deaths

[dnaamericaapp]

2 Shootings At Mistaken Addresses Have Renewed The Focus On 'Stand Your Ground' Laws

The recent shootings of two people who accidentally came to the wrong address — a 16-year-old boy in Kansas City and a 20-year-old woman in rural New York — have renewed concerns over the controversial self-defense laws known as "stand your ground."

Last Thursday, Ralph Yarl, a high school junior, came to the wrong address to pick up his younger siblings. After Yarl rang the doorbell, the 84-year-old homeowner shot him through the glass door, later telling police he was "scared to death."

Two days later, a group of friends were driving through rural upstate New York looking for a friend's house when they turned into the wrong driveway. As they were in the process of turning around, authorities say, the homeowner emerged from the house and fired at least two shots into the car, killing one of the passengers, Kaylin Gillis.

The shootings of Yarl and Gillis, 48 hours and some 1,200 miles apart, have reignited scrutiny and criticism of stand your ground statutes, which allow individuals to use deadly force in dangerous situations even when they could have safely retreated from the encounter.

Over the past 18 years, such laws have been adopted by more than two dozen states. Research shows that their proliferation has helped to drive an increase in firearm homicide rates nationwide.

Stand your ground is a modification to the traditional rules around self-defense. A person may use deadly force in public when they fear for their safety, "even if it can be proven that you knew you had safe alternatives to force and violence by stepping away," said Ari Freilich, the state policy director for the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

The modern wave of stand your ground laws began in 2005 in Florida, after lobbying by the National Rifle Association. Gun rights advocates argue that the laws empower people to defend themselves against violence.

Will stand your ground or castle doctrine laws come into play in these two shootings?

Stay tuned…

DNA America

“it’s what we know, not what you want us to believe.”

#dna #dnaamerica #news #politics

#dna #dnaamerica #news #politics

[hofculctr]

Hofstra University

Gun Violence Prevention Summit: Building Pathways Together

The Gun Violence Prevention Summit aims to identify innovative approaches to reducing gun violence. The Summit will look to interdisciplinary efforts that health care institutions and providers, lawyers, business and industry, and educators can offer, working together.

Keynote Speaker: Adam Skaggs, Vice President, Giffords Law Center

Presented by the Gitenstein Institute for Health Law and Policy at Hofstra Law, and the School of Health Professions and Human Services Master of Public Health at Hofstra University as part of the Garfunkel Wild, P.C. Thought Leadership in Action Speaker Series.

Wednesday, February 15, 7:45 a.m.-1 p.m. Hofstra University Club

This event is FREE and open to the public. Advance registration is required.

More info and to RSVP visit http://tiny.cc/zub4vz

#Hofstra #GunViolenceSummit