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    2 Veterans Found With Stolen Military Weapons and Nazi Material, Officials Say

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    The authorities said a soldier was assaulted with a hammer as the men tried to steal gear from a military base in Washington State. The theft led investigators to a house full of contraband.Two masked men dressed in fitness clothing worn by Army Rangers made their way onto a military base some 50 miles south of Seattle on Sunday night. The authorities said the men were intent on stealing thousands of dollars in combat equipment from an Army Ranger regiment there.However, the robbery quickly went awry.A soldier walked in and began asking questions as the two men were surrounded by piles of equipment. The soldier was bludgeoned with a hammer and one of the attackers brandished a knife.As the robbers fled, they dropped a bloody rucksack full of stolen combat gear. Handwritten on the rucksack was the name “Fields,” which investigators discovered matched the last name of a man whose identification had been scanned when he drove that day onto the military installation, Joint Base Lewis-McChord.His name led the authorities to a home elsewhere in Washington State, where they said they discovered a startling scene: rooms and rooms of Nazi and white supremacy paraphernalia and a stockpile of stolen weapons.That, according to a criminal complaint filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Washington, tells the story of the investigation that led to the two men, identified by the authorities as Charles Ethan Fields and Levi Austin Frakes, being charged with assault, robbery and theft of government property “by force and by violence and by intimidation.”The 11-page complaint and a Facebook post by the sheriff of Thurston County, Wash., so far amounts to the only public information about the activities of the two men, who were both identified in the complaint as veterans, leaving more questions than the authorities will currently answer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Supreme Court Blocks Mexico’s Suit Against U.S. Gunmakers

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      The case focused on whether the Mexican government could legally sue U.S. manufacturers over claims that they shared blame for violence by drug cartels.The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the Mexican government cannot sue U.S. gun manufacturers to hold them responsible for violence committed by drug cartels.In a unanimous decision by Justice Elena Kagan, the court held that a lawsuit by the Mexican government was barred by U.S. legislation that insulates gun makers from liability. Mexico, she wrote, had not plausibly argued that American gun manufacturers had aided and abetted in unlawful gun sales to Mexican drug traffickers.Mexico had argued that the gun industry’s production and sale of arms in the United States had helped fuel and supply drug cartels, harming the Mexican government. Mexican government lawyers also claimed the companies were aware that some of their guns were illegally trafficked, and that the country should therefore be allowed to sue.During an oral argument in early March, a majority of the justices appeared skeptical that Mexico could prove a direct link between gunmakers and cartel violence. Several justices appeared persuaded that a 2005 law shielding gun makers and distributors from most domestic lawsuits over injuries caused by firearms could also apply to the case brought by the Mexican government.The case began in 2021, when Mexico filed a lawsuit against a number of American gun makers and one distributor, arguing that they shared blame for drug cartel violence. The country asked them for $10 billion in damages.In the lawsuit filed in federal court in Massachusetts, the Mexican government alleged that the gun industry’s actions had burdened the nation’s police, military and judicial system. Mexico also argued that the U.S. gun industry had been negligent in marketing, distributing and selling high-capacity guns.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Justice Dept. Tries to Use Executive Privilege to Muzzle Fired Pardon Attorney

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      Senior officials at the Justice Department are trying to use executive privilege to prevent a lawyer dismissed from the department from testifying to Congress on Monday about the details of a disagreement with supervisors about restoring the gun rights of Mel Gibson, the actor and prominent supporter of President Trump.In a letter reviewed by The New York Times, a lawyer in the office of Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, warned Elizabeth G. Oyer, the Justice Department’s former pardon attorney, that she was “not authorized to disclose” records about the firearms rights issue to lawmakers.A lawyer for Ms. Oyer responded with his own missive, accusing the department of trying to intimidate a whistle-blower on the cusp of a congressional hearing.While the facts of the dispute are limited to a relatively narrow issue, the potential ripple effects could be far-reaching. The administration has already fired dozens of career prosecutors, some of whom have spoken publicly about their experiences, while others may yet still.The new conflict began Friday night, when Ms. Oyer learned that deputy U.S. Marshals were being sent to her home to deliver the Justice Department’s letter. After Ms. Oyer assured the department she had received the letter via email, the deputies’ delivery was canceled.Her lawyer, Michael Bromwich, noted in his letter to Mr. Blanche that Ms. Oyer’s teenage son was home alone at the time.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Justice Dept. Takes Broad View of Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardons

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      The department has increasingly taken the position that criminal behavior discovered during an investigation stemming from a suspect’s role in the Capitol attack is in fact related to Jan. 6.Four years ago, when F.B.I. agents searched the Florida home of Jeremy Brown, a former Special Forces soldier, in connection with his role in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, they found several illegal items: an unregistered assault rifle, two live fragmentation grenades and a classified “trip report” that Mr. Brown wrote while he was in the Army.Mr. Brown was ultimately tried in Tampa on charges of illegally possessing the weapons and the classified material. And after he was convicted, he was sentenced to more than seven years in prison — even before his Jan. 6 indictment had a chance to go in front of a jury.On Tuesday, however, federal prosecutors abruptly declared that because the second case was related to Jan. 6, it was covered by the sprawling clemency proclamation that President Trump issued on his first day in office to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the Capitol attack.And if a judge eventually agrees with that assessment, it could mean that Mr. Brown — whose Jan. 6 charges were already wiped out by the presidential pardon — will get to go free on his other case as well.The Justice Department’s position with regard to Mr. Brown is not the first time it has said in recent days that separate criminal cases emerging from the investigation of Jan. 6 — especially those involving weapons discovered during searches — should be covered by Mr. Trump’s sweeping reprieves.Ed Martin, the acting U.S. attorney in Washington, advanced that view on Tuesday in the case of another pardoned Jan. 6 defendant, Daniel Edwin Wilson.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sweden Plans Tighter Gun Laws After Orebro Mass Shooting

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      The changes would make it harder to access semiautomatic weapons, and enhance police and medical checks in license applications.Sweden will tighten its already strict gun laws, the government said on Friday, days after a lone gunman killed at least 10 people in an attack the prime minister has called the worst mass shooting in the country’s history.New legislation was already being planned, based on the findings of a 2022 inquiry. After the mass shooting on Tuesday, at an adult education center in the central city of Orebro, it has been fast-tracked.The proposal has not been formalized, but it will likely strengthen the basic requirements for acquiring a gun license, instructing the police to take into account age, weapons knowledge and skills as well as the person’s criminal history. It will also likely call for broader checks on the applicant’s medical history.The new rules would make it more difficult to access semiautomatic assault weapons such as AR-15-style rifles. The firearm, lightweight and compatible with large magazines, has been permitted as a hunting rifle in Sweden since 2023. Under the new act, access to the weapon and similar types of firearms will be greatly restricted.“The rules on gun possession are about balancing society’s interest in preventing crime and accidents involving firearms and the interest in individuals and organizations having the opportunity to possess firearms in justified cases,” the government said in a statement.“We want to ensure that only the right people have guns in Sweden,” Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told the Swedish news agency TT while on a working visit to Latvia.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ghost Gun Taken From Luigi Mangione Was Fully Homemade, Officials Say

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      The ghost gun that the authorities believe was used to kill UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson last week in Manhattan was an exceedingly rare variety.The police officers in Pennsylvania who on Monday arrested the man who has now been charged in the killing, Luigi Mangione, 26, said that he was found with a black pistol and a suppressor, often called a silencer. Both, the authorities said, had been fabricated with a 3-D printer, a device that sculpts a physical object from a digital model.Each year, authorities in the U.S. seize thousands of ghost guns, almost all of them originating from inexpensive kits bought online that can be assembled into a working weapon in as little as half an hour. But it is rare to recover a 3-D printed gun used in a crime, according to Tom Chittum, a former associate deputy director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives.“If the gun used in the New York assassination really was 3-D printed, it would certainly be the highest-profile crime ever committed with one, and it would be one of a small number overall,” said Mr. Chittum, who now works for a public safety technology company.A 3-D printer can be used to create a gun frame, which is the only individual part of a firearm that federal law regulates, and then assemble a working firearm by equipping it with commercially made aftermarket components that are not regulated, including the slide, barrel, and trigger mechanism, Mr. Chittum said.The Pennsylvania authorities said Mr. Mangione’s pistol had a plastic handle, a metal slide and a threaded metal barrel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Arizona Democrats Shut Down a Phoenix Campaign Office After Shootings

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      The Arizona Democratic Party shut down a campaign office in suburban Phoenix after it was struck by gunfire and a BB gun on three occasions over the past month, said a local official, Lauren Kuby, on Friday.Nobody was hurt in the shootings, but they raised concerns about the safety of campaign workers and volunteers in the thick of a bitterly fought election that has already seen assassination attempts against former President Donald J. Trump.Ms. Kuby, a Democratic candidate for the Arizona State Senate and former city council member in Tempe, said on Friday that people who had been working out of the office shifted to houses and other “undisclosed locations.” News of the office’s closure was first reported by The Arizona Republic.“We’re not giving up,” Ms. Kuby said in an interview. “People are determined not to be stopped.”Gunshots were fired through the front door of an office used by the Tempe Democratic National Committee in suburban Phoenix.Ray Stern/The Republic/USA TODAY NETWORK, via Imagn ImagesThe office in Tempe, which is home to Arizona State University, had been a bustling hub for gathering volunteers and starting voter-outreach efforts, Ms. Kuby said. The shootings left its windows scarred by bullet holes.The three shootings all happened between midnight and 1 a.m. local time when the office was empty, according to the Tempe Police Department. A BB gun was used in the first incident, on Sept. 16, and a firearm was used in the second and third shootings, on Sept. 23 and Oct. 6, the police said. The Tempe police said investigators were still working to determine what kind of gun was used. The police have not made any arrests or identified a motive. This week, the police identified a silver Toyota Highlander with unknown license plates as a “suspect vehicle.”The Arizona Democratic Party did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. More

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      Harris Has a Glock, She Says on ’60 Minutes’

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      Vice President Kamala Harris has a Glock. And she has taken it to the shooting range.In a wide-ranging interview that ran on Monday night during a “60 Minutes” election special on CBS News, Ms. Harris revealed more details about her firearm, which she had teased last month in an interview with Oprah Winfrey.“I have a Glock, and I’ve had it for quite some time,” she told her “60 Minutes” interviewer, Bill Whitaker. “Look, Bill, my background is in law enforcement, so there you go.” When he asked if she had fired it, Ms. Harris laughed. “Of course I have,” she said. “At a shooting range. Yes, of course I have.”In her September chat with Ms. Winfrey, Ms. Harris said, “If somebody breaks in my house, they’re getting shot,” which elicited laughter from the host and the crowd.Ms. Harris has been talking about guns in a new way for a Democrat, with a focus on “freedom,” while also saying she supports red-flag laws and universal background checks, policies she has long backed.And she has changed her stance on other gun issues. In 2019, she said she supported a rule that assault-weapons owners sell their guns to the government. At the time, she was among five Democratic candidates in the 2020 race who supported mandatory buybacks. In July, her campaign said this was no longer Ms. Harris’s position. She supports a ban on assault weapons but does not demand buybacks.Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Ms. Harris’s running mate, is also an avid shooter and has said he uses a shotgun to hunt pheasants.Before he joined the ticket, Mr. Walz previously received an A rating from the National Rifle Association, which once endorsed him, but that plummeted to an F after he began supporting tighter gun restrictions as governor.“I know guns. I’m a veteran. I’m a hunter. I was a better shot than most Republicans in Congress, and I have the trophies to prove it,” Mr. Walz said in his speech at the Democratic convention in August. “I believe in the Second Amendment, but I also believe that our first responsibility is to keep our kids safe.” More

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      Supreme Court to Decide Whether Mexico Can Sue U.S. Gun Makers

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      The justices will consider whether a 2005 law that gives gun makers broad immunity applies in the case, which accuses them of complicity in supplying cartels with weapons.The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether Mexico may sue gun manufacturers in the United States for aiding in the trafficking of weapons used by drug cartels.Mexico sued seven gun makers and one distributor in 2021, blaming them for rampant violence caused by illegal gun trafficking from the United States spurred by the demand of Mexican drug cartels for military-style weapons.Mexico has strict gun control laws that it says make it virtually impossible for criminals to obtain firearms legally. Indeed, the suit said, its single gun store issues fewer than 50 permits a year. But gun violence is rampant.The lawsuit, which seeks billions of dollars in damages, said that 70 to 90 percent of the guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico came from the United States and that gun dealers in border states sell twice as many firearms as dealers in other parts of the country.Judge Dennis F. Saylor, of the Federal District Court in Boston, dismissed Mexico’s lawsuit, saying it was barred by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a 2005 law that prohibits many kinds of suits against makers and distributors of firearms. The law, Judge Saylor wrote, “bars exactly this type of action from being brought in federal and state courts.”But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, revived the suit, saying that it qualified for an exception to the law, which authorizes claims for knowing violations of firearms laws that are a direct cause of the plaintiff’s injuriesIn urging the Supreme Court to hear the case, the gun makers said that “Mexico’s suit has no business in an American court.” Mexico’s legal theory, they added, was an “eight-step Rube Goldberg, starting with the lawful production and sale of firearms in the United States and ending with the harms that drug cartels inflict on the Mexican government.”“Absent this court’s intervention,” the gun makers’ petition continued, “Mexico’s multi-billion-dollar suit will hang over the American firearms industry for years, inflicting costly and intrusive discovery at the hands of a foreign sovereign that is trying to bully the industry into adopting a host of gun-control measures that have been repeatedly rejected by American voters.”In response, Mexico said the defendants were complicit in mass violence.“The flood of petitioners’ firearms from sources in the United States to cartels in Mexico is no accident,” Mexico’s brief said. “It results from petitioners’ knowing and deliberate choice to supply their products to bad actors, to allow reckless and unlawful practices that feed the crime-gun pipeline, and to design and market their products in ways that petitioners intend will drive up demand among the cartels.” More