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      Police investigate shootings at New Mexico officials’ homes and offices

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      Police investigate shootings at New Mexico officials’ homes and officesAlbuquerque police say houses and workplaces of state and county politicians have been hit by gunfire over the last month New Mexico authorities are investigating at least five shootings apparently directed at the homes and offices of local elected officials, the Albuquerque police department said on Thursday.Fears over lax security in Republican-controlled House two years after Capitol attackRead moreThe shootings occurred over approximately the past month and were directed at two county commissioners, two state senators and New Mexico’s new attorney general, according to KQRE News.Detectives are investigating whether the shootings are related. Nobody was hurt but three homes were damaged.The investigation comes as the US marks two years since the January 6 insurrection, when a mob of Trump supporters swarmed the US Capitol attempting to violently prevent members of Congress from certifying the election of Joe Biden to the presidency.Security concerns for lawmakers have only intensified since then. The US Capitol police reported 9,625 threats and directions of interest – that is, actions or statements that cause concern – against members of Congress in 2021, in comparison with 3,939 in 2017.Despite these concerns, Republicans fresh off their narrow majority win in the 2022 midterms have removed metal detectors that were installed outside the House chamber following the 2021 attack.The first shooting in Albuquerque that forms part of the investigation was on 4 December, when an unknown person fired eight rounds at the residence of the county commissioner, Adriann Barboa, police said.On 11 December, “more than a dozen gunshot impacts were identified on walls and the house” of former county commissioner Debbie O’Malley, and approximately eight shots were fired at the home of state senator Linda Lopez on 3 January. On Thursday, one shooting appeared to target state senator Moe Maestas’s law office.TopicsNew MexicoGun crimeUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Gun reformers feel history is on their side despite bleak outlook in Congress

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      Gun reformers feel history is on their side despite bleak outlook in CongressThe few Republican supporters of gun restrictions have faced backlash from the party faithful When Joe Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law this summer, he and congressional Democrats celebrated the enactment of the first significant gun control policy in decades in the US.The US president also acknowledged that the law, a bipartisan compromise brokered after the Uvalde tragedy that left 19 children and two adults dead, did not go nearly far enough to address the devastation caused by gun violence.“I know there’s much more work to do, and I’m never going to give up,” Biden said in June.Although Democrats and activists agree that much more needs to be done to combat gun violence, legislative progress on this lightning-rod issue could soon become even more difficult. With crucial midterm elections looming, the prospect of meaningful progress on gun reform now looks unlikely – despite widespread domestic revulsion at continuing gun violence and bafflement overseas at the US gun problem.If Republicans regain control of the House of Representatives after the midterm elections this November, as they are favored to do, proposed gun regulations will probably be dead on arrival in Congress. Despite those obstacles, anti–gun violence activists and their allies on Capitol Hill insist they are not giving up on their goal to see more desperately needed change in the months and years to come.The Democratic senator Chris Murphy, who played a leading role in negotiations over the BSCA, said on Tuesday that he considers the law to be proof of potential bipartisan cooperation on gun regulations.The compromise secured by Murphy and the Republican senator John Cornyn expanded background checks for firearm buyers under the age of 21, and it enacted new gun restrictions for those previously convicted on domestic violence charges. The legislation also provided financial incentives for states to enact “red-flag laws”, which help keep guns away from those deemed to be a danger to themselves or others, and it provided funding for more mental health services to children and families.Speaking at an event in Washington organized by the Common Ground Committee, Murphy credited the anti–gun violence movement and an engaged citizenry in forcing Congress to finally act nearly a decade after the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in his home state of Connecticut.“The reason that we found common ground this summer is because the American public had had enough of inaction,” Murphy said at George Washington University. “While Sandy Hook shook this country to the core, it’s really been the cumulative impact of mass shooting after mass shooting, as well as suicides and homicides continuing to spiral upward, that brought the public to a point this summer where they just weren’t willing to accept Congress retreating to their corners.”But while the passage of the BSCA offered some hope for supporters of stricter gun laws, the negotiation process also displayed the sharp partisan divides on this polarizing issue. Just 14 House Republicans supported the bill, while 193 opposed it. After playing a leading role in the negotiations over the bill, Cornyn was booed and heckled at a Republican convention in his home state of Texas.Former Republican congressman Will Hurd, who joined Murphy at Tuesday’s event, acknowledged the political pressure that members of his party face from some voters when they back new gun restrictions. Nodding to the widespread public support that policies like universal background checks and a higher age limit for gun purchases enjoy, Hurd encouraged his former colleagues to take proactive steps to prevent future tragedies.“This is something that people want to see happen and so don’t be afraid of some of these issues that might have had a different political constituency in the 90s,” Hurd told reporters after the event. He added, “It always requires political courage to do something that’s difficult and that is not embraced by everybody.”As of now, House Republicans have shown little interest in taking up new gun regulations if they regain control of the chamber in November. Even if Democrats retain control of the Senate, Republicans would be able to block any gun control bill in the House if they have the majority.But Hurd, who previously represented the Uvalde community in the House, said political pressure could change the calculus for Republican lawmakers if a similar tragedy occurs again.“If a terrible action like this happens in the future and there’s not going to be a response, I think you’re going to see a public backlash,” Hurd said.That grim possibility is a near certainty in the US, as Tuesday’s event vividly demonstrated. One audience member who posed a question to Murphy and Hurd said that he was a survivor of the Highland Park shooting, which left seven people dead. The attack unfolded just days after Biden signed the BSCA into law.In the face of such tragedy, anti–gun violence activists have doubled down on their commitment to push for more reform, regardless of who controls Congress after November.Murphy echoed that commitment, even as he conceded that Congress was unlikely to pass another gun control bill this year. Praising the anti–gun violence community as “one of the great social change movements in the history of this nation,” Murphy said he and his allies were just getting started.“All of those great social change movements that you read about in the history books, they failed a whole bunch of times before they ever changed the world,” Murphy said. “My hope is based upon the history books, which tell you – when your cause is right and you choose not to give up, in this country, in a democracy – you eventually prevail.”TopicsUS gun controlGun crimeUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      We hear Americans support gun control, but I know the truth is more complicated | Devika Bhat

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      We hear Americans support gun control, but I know the truth is more complicatedDevika BhatIt was only when I moved to the US that I understood that this issue, more than any other, encapsulates our differences The last of Uvalde’s slaughtered children had been laid to rest for barely three weeks before the latest mass shooting to terrorise America unfolded. This time it was a suburb of Chicago, its Independence Day celebrations shattered by a hail of bullets from a gunman with an assault rifle on a rooftop, killing seven and injuring dozens more.The month before, it was Philadelphia and Tennessee; before that, Oklahoma and Michigan, alongside a string of other incidents that hardly registered on a national, let alone global level. Such is the bar for international outrage on American shooting deaths, rising with every Columbine, Virginia Tech and Las Vegas. The horrific killings at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde were a another reminder that 10 years after Sandy Hook, even the smallest children are not safe from the violence wrought by a young man wielding an assault rifle – which he was easily able to easily and legally obtain, thanks to the anachronisms of the hallowed constitution.Uvalde, at least, spurred what no previous shootings have managed: to get some gun reforms actually signed into law, even if US president Joe Biden admitted the measures fell short of what he had hoped for. It is a step beyond what usually happens: an insistence from Democrats that it will be this particular tragedy, finally, that will lead to gun control laws having their day, followed by despair as barriers built into the legislative system prevent even modest changes passing Congress.It was a narrative that was already set in Washington when I moved there from the UK, just a few weeks after Sandy Hook in 2012. At the time it really felt as if change might – amazingly – be afoot. There was a sense of grim momentum: Barack Obama, recently re-elected to his second term, pledged at a memorial service to the young victims to “use all the power of his office” to prevent another tragedy, with tears and faltering voice shootings were still a fresh memory. Within weeks though, it became clear that there was no hope.US mass shootings are getting deadlier and more common, analysis showsRead moreI have never felt more alien – as non-Americans are charmingly termed under the visa system than when I saw those fraught weeks play out and realised that the mass murder of tiny children just a few years out of nappies was not to be, after all, the eureka moment that forced US lawmakers to rethink. It was the first in a series of wake-up calls for me about the problematic side of American exceptionalism: one tied in with a particular worldview born the country’s unique history, which values a perceived notion of individual freedom against the tyranny of the state above all else.It is a mindset not just limited to intransigent Republicans in the Senate. A common frustration voiced recently is that congressional inaction has been particularly egregious, given that most Americans favour gun controls. But though polling shows a clear majority in favour of background checks, the gap narrows when people are asked to consider other measures like banning specific guns or accessories. This is hardly surprising when 40% of Americans live in a household with a gun. What’s more, national polls may themselves overstate the reality of support for gun control, recent analysis by the New York Times suggests.Other nations may shake their collective heads and mutter “only in America”, quietly thankful their own children do not have to endure traumatic shooting drills and bulletproof rucksacks as routine necessities for an education. But this is a price many are willing to pay to uphold what they see as rights ordained by their forefathers.American civilians are estimated to hold a staggering 40% of the world’s firearms, despite accounting for only 4% of its population. As unpalatable as it might be to the rest of the world, not all these gun owners will be virulent NRA superfans, and many have complex, possibly contradictory views on gun ownership and regulation. Moreover, according to a Pew survey from 2017, while most gun owners could not entertain the thought of never owning a gun, the opposite did not appear to hold true: 52% of non-gun owners said they could see themselves owning a gun in the future.It was after Sandy Hook that the NRA’s president, Wayne LaPierre infamously declared that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”. As ludicrous as such talk sounds, it is not limited to the most aggressive of the pro-gun lobby. Similar language is found in the very laws of US states: legislation in Colorado enabling gun owners to shoot an intruder in self-defence is known as the Make My Day law. A similar appeal to an idealised history of uniquely American heroes versus villains was invoked in May by a judge in California, who ruled that the state’s ban on the purchase of semi-automatic firearms by under 21-year-olds was unconstitutional, on the basis that “America would not exist without the heroism of the young adults who fought and died in our revolutionary army”.Though we are familiar with this outlook, visible as it is in films, television, books and other behemoths of American soft power, it was only when I was living in the country that I was able to appreciate its reach. Guns may be at the extreme end of this particular brand of American exceptionalism, but it goes some way to explaining other matters too. There were echoes of something similar in the fraught debate over Obama’s other policy priority: the Affordable Care Act (2010), his signature healthcare reforms.The proposals were eviscerated by critics who held up the NHS as a warning of the ghastly horrors awaiting the US under Obamacare, never mind that the plan came nowhere close to being a fully nationalised health service. As if, scoffed those same critics, any other country could possibly have anything worthwhile to teach America.It was a dismaying wake-up call for a Brit who has deep ties to and a great admiration for the US, with its seductive promises of possibility and optimism. It is a promise that Obama himself has insisted he continues to believe in, even after the advent of Donald Trump’s presidency, and even after admitting that his failure to enact gun reforms were the greatest regret of his term in office. Others are less convinced: friends with the option to do so admit discussing whether to leave the country, as it rolls from one crisis to another. Each is a fresh reminder that its once-lauded system of government, with its supposedly unassailable checks and balances, may perhaps be failing the very democracy it was designed to protect.
      Devika Bhat is joint deputy head of International News at the Guardian
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      Highland Park shooting death toll rises to seven with 46 injured – as it happened

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      Americans grappled with another wave of gun violence that left seven people dead after a shooting in a Chicago suburb while two new polls paint a grim picture of Americans’ views of President Joe Biden, his handling of the economy, and the country’s institutions in general.Here’s a rundown of what’s happened today:
      A Chicago Sun-Times journalist wrote a harrowing account of the mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, that killed seven during an Independence Day parade.
      Biden awarded the Medal of Honor to four army veterans who fought in Vietnam.
      The head of Planned Parenthood talked to the Guardian about how the group will continue working to help women get abortions.
      Inflation and the overall cost of living remains Americans’ top concern, according to a poll released today that casts doubt on Democrats’ hopes that concerns about abortion and gun access will reverse Biden’s poor approval ratings.
      But if Biden is unpopular, he’s not alone. Americans’ confidence in almost all of their institutions has declined compared with last year, according to a different poll.
      Local authorities also announced the names of three more victims which had not been known yet. The identity of the seventh – and so far last – victim has not been released. The three new names are: Katherine Goldstein, 88 Irina McCarthy, 35 Kevin McCarthy, 37At a press conference police have detailed two previous incidents involving the alleged shooter Robert Crimo. The first happened in April, 2019 when police got a report from Crimo’s family that he had attempted suicide. The second occurred in September, 2019 when there was a report that Crimo had been making threats that he wanted to “kill everyone” and had a collection of knives.Police visited where Crimo was living and confiscated a collection of 16 knives, a dagger and a sword. The New York Times has some heartbreaking details on the third victim to be identified. The paper reports: Steve Straus, 88.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}A father of two, grandfather of four and a financial adviser who, at 88, still took the train every day from his Highland Park home to his office at a brokerage firm in Chicago, Steve Straus “should not have had to die this way,” his niece, Cynthia Straus, said in a phone interview.
      “He was an honorable man who worked his whole life and looked out for his family and gave everyone the best he had,” Ms Straus said. “He was kind and gentle and had huge intelligence and humor and wit.”
      He was devoted to his wife, she said, and intensely close with his brother, and extremely health conscious: “He exercised as if he were 50.”Biden has no plans yet to visit Highland Park, Illinois, site of Monday’s mass shooting that killed seven people, his press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.“We don’t have any plans right now to go to Chicago”, the city of which Highland Park is a suburb, Jean-Pierre said. However vice-president Kamala Harris is scheduled to be in the city later today to to address the National Education Association, “and she will speak to the devastation that we that we all saw with our own eyes yesterday in Highland Park”, according to Jean-Pierre.Biden will travel to Cleveland, Ohio on Wednesday for a speech regarding the economy.White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is holding the daily press briefing, and reiterated the Biden administration’s efforts to get WNBA star Brittney Griner released from prison in Russia.“We believe she was wrongfully detained. We believe she needs to come home, she should be home,” Jean-Pierre said, adding that Griner’s wife spoke with national security advisor Jake Sullivan over the weekend, their second phone call in the past 10 days.Griner wrote a letter to Biden asking him to push for her release, which Jean-Pierre said the president had read. “He takes this to heart, he takes this job very seriously, especially when it comes to bringing home US nationals who are wrongfully detained,” Jean-Pierre said.This post has been updated to clarify that Griner’s wife, not Griner herself, spoke to Jake Sullivan.’I’m terrified I might be here forever’: Brittney Griner appeals to Biden in letterRead morePresident Biden has ordered flags flown at half-staff across the United States and its embassies abroad until the end of the day on July 9 in memory of the people killed at the mass shooting in Highland Park.Biden had previously ordered flags flown at half-staff in May after the shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas that killed 19 children and two teachers.A seventh person has died following the July 4 shooting at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois, NBC Chicago reports.The death brings the toll of wounded in the shooting to 46, according to the broadcaster. Police have said the man suspected of carrying out the attack planned it for weeks and dressed as a woman in order to conceal his identity.Mississippi’s restrictions on abortion were at the center of the supreme court’s ruling last month overturning Roe v. Wade, but the litigation isn’t finished in the state.The Associated Press reports that Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the plaintiff in the supreme court case, is suing to stop a law that would ban almost all abortions in the state:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} The law — which state lawmakers passed before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 ruling that allowed abortions nationwide — is set to take effect Thursday.
      The Jackson Women’s Health Organization sought a temporary restraining order that would allow it to remain open, at least while the lawsuit remains in court.
      The closely watched lawsuit is part of a flurry of activity that has occurred nationwide since the Supreme Court ruled. Conservative states have moved to halt or limit abortions while others have sought to ensure abortion rights, all as some women try to obtain the medical procedure against the changing legal landscape.
      If Chancery Judge Debbra K. Halford grants the clinic’s request to block the new Mississippi law from taking effect, the decision could be quickly appealed to the state Supreme Court.Twenty-six states are expected to outlaw abortion entirely following the supreme court’s decision, and according to the Guttmacher Institute, six states have already done so.Maryland’s governor announced today that his state will change its requirements for licensing concealed weapons in response to last month’s ruling by the supreme court expanding Americans’ ability to possess a gun outside their homes.In light of a recent Supreme Court ruling and to ensure compliance with the Constitution, I am directing the Maryland State Police to suspend utilization of the ‘good and substantial reason’ standard when reviewing applications for Wear and Carry Permits.My full statement: pic.twitter.com/0wi1dzD8Aw— Governor Larry Hogan (@GovLarryHogan) July 5, 2022
      As its term came to a close in June, the court’s conservative majority overturned a New York law that had placed strict limits on carrying a firearm outside the home, which affected states with similar laws on their books, including Maryland.New York’s governor Kathy Hochul last week signed legislation designed to counter the supreme court’s ruling by prohibiting the carrying of weapons in certain locations such as bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, schools, government buildings and airports, as well as requiring owners to consent to people carrying guns on their property.US supreme court overturns New York handgun law in bitter blow to gun-control pushRead moreIn other January 6 news, Adam Kinzinger, one of only two Republicans sitting on the House committee investigating the insurrection, has released a compilation of threatening and profane phone calls his office has received.Threats of violence over politics has increased heavily in the last few years. But the darkness has reached new lows. My new interns made this compilation of recent calls they’ve received while serving in my DC office.WARNING: this video contains foul & graphic language. pic.twitter.com/yQJvvAHBVV— Adam Kinzinger (@RepKinzinger) July 5, 2022
      Last year, Kinzinger announced he would retire from Congress, where he’s served since 2011.A Georgia grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s attempts to subvert the 2020 election result in the state has issued subpoenas to a number of the former president’s attorneys and allies, including senator Lindsey Graham.The special grand jury empaneled in Fulton county, where the capital and largest city Atlanta lies, issued the subpoenas today, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} In addition to Giuliani, among those being summoned are John Eastman, Cleta Mitchell, Kenneth Chesbro and Jenna Ellis, all of whom advised Trump on strategies for overturning Democrat Joe Biden’s wins in Georgia and other swing states.
      The grand jury also subpoenaed South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s top allies in the U.S. Senate, and attorney and podcast host Jacki Pick Deason.
      The subpoenas, were filed July 5 and signed off by Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who is overseeing the special grand jury. Unlike subpoenas issued to Georgians, the summons were required to receive McBurney’s blessing since they are for people who reside outside the state.Viewers of the January 6 committee’s hearings will remember Eastman, the lawyer who, according to testimony from witnesses before the lawmakers, worked with Trump on his plot to undermine the results of the 2020 election. Eastman is among those who asked Trump for a pardon before he left office.At the press conference, investigators said the suspect Robert E Crimo III, 21, had legally bought the rifle allegedly used in the shootings and recovered at the scene – a high-powered rifle styled after an AR-15 – along with at least one more, as well as some pistols.The attack had evidently been planned for weeks, said Covelli, though investigators had not been tipped off to the social media videos posted by the suspect before the shooting.Authorities have still not said what charges Crimo faces, though another press conference is scheduled for later today.All six people killed were adults, Covelli said, and more than 30 others went to hospitals with bullet wounds.Covelli said there is no indication targets were picked out based on race, religion or any other federally protected status.The suspect in the 4 July shootings in Highland Park pre-planned the attack for several weeks, according to officials, and wore “women’s clothing” in what investigators said they believed was an effort to conceal his identity.According to Chris Covelli, the leader of a police taskforce investigating major crimes in the Illinois county that includes Highland Park, local officers recognized the suspect in surveillance footage they reviewed after the shooting, which helped them track him down. The suspect has prominent facial tattoos. Details continue to emerge about the mass shooting in a Chicago suburb yesterday, while two new polls paint a grim picture of Americans’ views of President Joe Biden, his handling of the economy, and the country’s institutions in general.Here’s a rundown of what’s happened so far today:
      A Chicago Sun-Times journalist wrote a harrowing account of the mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, that killed six during an Independence Day parade.
      Biden awarded the Medal of Honor to four army veterans who fought in Vietnam.
      The head of Planned Parenthood talked to the Guardian about how the group will continue working to help women get abortions.
      Inflation and the overall cost of living remains Americans’ top concern, according to a poll released today that casts doubt on Democrats’ hopes that concerns about abortion and gun access will reverse Biden’s poor approval ratings.
      But if Biden is unpopular, he’s not alone. Americans’ confidence in almost all of their institutions has declined compared with last year, according to a different poll.
      High inflation is just one reason why economists are worrying that the United States is poised to enter a recession.But if the economy does contract, The Wall Street Journal reports that it may not look like more recent downturns such as at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic or the global financial crisis. One key difference is that waves of layoffs that accompanied those downturns may not occur.From their article exploring the “very strange” situation the world’s largest economy finds itself in:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;} Today, something highly unusual is happening. Economic output fell in the first quarter and signs suggest it did so again in the second. Yet the job market showed little sign of faltering during the first half of the year. The jobless rate fell from 4% last December to 3.6% in May.
      It is the latest strange twist in the odd trajectory of the pandemic economy, and a riddle for those contemplating a recession. If the U.S. is in or near one, it doesn’t yet look like any other on record.
      Analysts sometimes talked about “jobless recoveries” after past recessions, in which economic output rose but employers kept shedding workers. The first half of 2022 was the mirror image—a “jobful” downturn, in which output fell and companies kept hiring. Whether it will spiral into a fuller and deeper recession isn’t known, though a growing number of economists believe it will.
      Some companies, especially in the tech sector, have given indications that they’re pulling back on hiring, though across the broad economy the job market has rarely looked stronger.Also unpopular with Americans: the country’s institutions.Gallup has today released a poll showing a decline in confidence for most of the 16 institutions they track, in particular the supreme court and the presidency.Americans’ confidence in major U.S. institutions has dropped to the lowest point in Gallup’s more than 40-year trend. https://t.co/G2frb7HXxk pic.twitter.com/OyWfUwXmjp— GallupNews (@GallupNews) July 5, 2022
      In the yearly survey, confidence in the supreme court dropped 11 percentage points from 2021 to 25 percent, while the presidency suffered a 15 point decline to 23 percent. The least popular institution was Congress, in which only seven percent of respondent had confidence, down five points from last year. Just above them was television news, in which only 11 percent of Americans had confidence. Small businesses were the most popular institution of those surveyed, with 68 percent confidence, a decline of only two percentage points from last year. The military was up next with 64 percent confidence, followed by the police, with 45 percent confidence. More

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      ‘Want real decisions’: Pulse shooting survivors mark grim anniversary

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      ‘Want real decisions’: Pulse shooting survivors mark grim anniversary In the aftermath of Buffalo and Uvalde, those who lived through the Orlando attack six years ago join calls for actionOn 12 June 2016, in one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history, 49 people were killed and more than 50 wounded in the Pulse LGBTQ+ nightclub in Orlando, Florida.Ahead of the sixth anniversary of the shooting, survivors decried lawmakers’ failure to pass meaningful federal gun law reform.‘Enough is enough’: thousands rally across US in gun control protestsRead more“It is incredibly disappointing,” said Ricardo Negron, a voting rights advocate and Pulse survivor. “It is triggering and it is infuriating that we have to continue living like this.”Patience Murray, an author, entrepreneur and survivor, said: “We’ve had so many survivors, so many families that have been left behind and they tell their story. And they’re vulnerable, pouring their hearts out to these leaders, and then nothing happens.”Mass shootings are widely held to be incidents in which four people not including the shooter are hurt or killed. Since Pulse, the deadliest attack on LGBTQ+ communities in US history, mass shootings have increased and affected almost every facet of American life. Within the past month, mass shootings have occurred in places including a church, a hospital, a school and a grocery store.America is haunted by gun violence. In 2020, more Americans died from gun-related causes in 2020 than any other year on record. Also rising were suicides with a firearm, which make up the majority of gun deaths, and murders involving a gun, accounting for 24,292 and 19,384 deaths respectively.For LBGTQ+ communities, gun violence is a persistent issue. While specific data on how gun violence impacts queer and trans demographics is lacking, available research shows that since 2013 more than two-thirds of fatal incidents involving transgender or gender non-conforming people have involved a firearm.LGBTQ+ people, especially youth, are also more likely to attempt suicide than members of the general population: incidents that are likely to involve a firearm.‘We’re still in the same place’For those who survived the Pulse shooting, the failure to address gun violence continues to be traumatic.“When I see mass shootings, in particular, and any gun violence, it always hits a point of hurt and sadness,” said Murray. “I’m reminded that we’re still in the same place that we were before, of hoping that we could see a change with policy.”Negron said each mass shootings is a reminder that such violence can always happen again. For him, the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in May, where 19 children and two teachers were killed, stoked fears that such an incident could happen at his nephews’ schools.“I’m transported to that mindset of this could literally happen in any school now,” he said.For Murray, seeing gun violence surge after Pulse with no tenable solutions offered brought up feelings of despondency.“When you encounter something like being held hostage for three hours and seeing other people around you dying,” she said, of her own experience, “and then see repeated instances of terror constantly on the news, it takes a certain level of tenacity and resilience to believe that anything that you say, or anything that you do on this world matters.“It’s hard to believe that when you feel like the conversations you’ve had for the past five going on six years, hasn’t seen any real difference in the gun violence that we’re seeing as a whole.”Negron and Murray agreed that required reforms include a ban on assault weapons and an expansion of background checks with a “mental health element”, as Murray put it.“With all the collective trauma that we’ve experienced as a country with Covid and consistent violence on communities, I think that we should really restrict access to powerful weapons of war,” Negron said.Both also said conservative alternatives to gun control, including arming teachers – a proposal teacher associations have rejected – ignore the cause of American gun violence.Referring to police in Uvalde, Texas, who failed to enter the classroom during the elementary school shooting, Negron said: “Even they themselves were afraid of the damage those type of weapons can do, and they’re trained police officers. For me, it’s just as another talking point to deflect from [Republicans’] responsibility as to why this continues to happen.”‘It’s never easy’The Pulse shooting does not get easier to talk about, Murray and Negron noted, even though they have both taken on advocacy roles. But both said it was important to speak about their experience, noting that groups they joined following Pulse have helped their own healing.“For me, and it’s always been important to bring in the perspective of someone who has been directly affected by what happened so that people can understand from [them],” said Negron. “It’s not that it gets easier. Sometimes it just becomes more manageable. But it’s never easy.”Murray, who will this year speak at a Pulse remembrance event for the first time, said: “When I see how people respond, like other advocates, and other activists for gun violence, it really just gives me hope. And it inspires me to share my story again.”Both Negron and Murray said now was the time for politicians to pass meaningful reform.“This goes beyond political parties and your political beliefs,” said Negron. “And this is really about the safety of everybody, right? It’s not just the safety of our kids in school, but it’s literally about the safety of everybody.”Murray said: “[It’s] time to make a decision and to choose something. We’re no longer just looking for the hoopla. We’re no longer just looking for the headlines of what we think could happen. We actually want to see real decisions being made.”TopicsOrlando terror attackUS gun controlGun crimeLGBT rightsUS politicsUS CongressfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Uvalde survivor, 11, tells House hearing she smeared herself with friend’s blood

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      Uvalde survivor, 11, tells House hearing she smeared herself with friend’s blood Miah Cerrillo recounts at gun violence hearing how she watched as her teacher and friends were shot and acted quickly to save herself01:59An 11-year-old survivor of the elementary school massacre in Uvalde, Texas testified before the House oversight committee on Wednesday, as lawmakers continued to try to reach a compromise on gun control legislation after a series of devastating mass shootings.‘It all happened too fast’: injured Uvalde teacher recounts school shootingRead moreThe House hearing came two weeks after an 18-year-old opened fire at Robb elementary school, killing 19 children and two teachers, and three weeks after 10 people were killed at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.Miah Cerrillo, a fourth-grader at the Uvalde school, recounted how she watched as her teacher and friends were shot and acted quickly to save herself. Miah covered herself in a friend’s blood and played dead until she was able to reach her teacher’s phone and call police.In her recorded testimony, Miah said she no longer felt safe at school.“Because I don’t want it to happen again,” she said.The slow police response to the Uvalde shooting has been the focus of intense scrutiny and criticism.Miah was joined by other families affected by gun violence, including Felix and Kimberly Rubio, whose daughter Lexi died in Uvalde, and Zeneta Everhart, whose son Zaire Goodman was injured in Buffalo. Ten people were killed there, in a supermarket by another gunman with an AR-15-style rifle.“We don’t want you to think of Lexi as just a number,” Rubio told the committee. “She was intelligent, compassionate and athletic. So today we stand for Lexi, and as her voice we demand action.”Gun control experts and New York mayor Eric Adams also testified at the hearing on the need to restrict access to firearms and, by extension, reduce violent crime.“It is high noon in America, time for every one of us to decide where we stand on the issue of gun violence,” Adams said. “I am here today to ask every one of you, and everyone in this Congress, to stand with me to end gun violence and protect the lives of all Americans.”But the emotional and searing testimony did not stop Republicans on the committee rehashing talking points about why they oppose gun restrictions.“Kneejerk reactions to impose gun control policies that seek to curtail our constitutional right to bear arms are not the answer,” said James Comer, the Republican ranking member.The Democratic chair of the committee, Carolyn Maloney, criticized Republican efforts to deflect attention from the need to reform gun laws.“They have blamed violent video games. They have blamed family values. They have even blamed open doors. They have blamed everything but guns,” Maloney said. “But we know the United States does not have a monopoly on mental illness, video games or any other excuse. What America does have is widespread access to guns.”The House was working on Wednesday to pass gun control proposals which would raise the age requirement to buy semi-automatic weapons from 18 to 21 and enact a federal extreme risk protection order for gun access, known as a “red-flag” law.The House has already passed bills to expand background checks for firearm purchases and increase the time gun sellers must wait for checks to be completed.But all those bills are unlikely to pass the 50-50 Senate, where 60 votes are needed to pass most legislation. A bipartisan group of senators has been negotiating over a potential compromise on gun control, but any legislation that can make it through the Senate will probably be far narrower than proposals approved by the House.Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, indicated on Tuesday that Democrats’ proposal to raise the age requirement for purchasing semi-automatic weapons was unlikely to be included in the Senate bill.“That can be in the discussion, but right now we’re trying to work on things where we have agreement,” Tillis told CNN. “We’ve got a lot of people in the discussion. We’ve got to get 60 votes.”Despite such disputes, senators have voiced confidence that they can craft a compromise bill. Members of the group met again Wednesday, and John Cornyn, a Republican of Texas, expressed hope that they would soon strike an agreement.“I think it’s reasonable to expect in the next couple weeks, maybe this work period, that that would be – I’m just speaking for myself – an aspirational goal,” Cornyn said. “But obviously, we have 100 senators who are free agents, and they can do anything they want on whatever timetable.”02:08The families whose lives have been forever altered by gun violence came to the House on Wednesday with specific demands.Everhart asked for more schools to teach Black history so children would understand the violent history of white supremacy, given that the Buffalo shooter voiced support for racist conspiracy theories.Rubio also called on lawmakers to ban assault rifles, raise the age requirement to purchase semi-automatic weapons and enact a national “red flag” law.“We understand that for some reason, to some people – to people with money, to people who fund political campaigns – that guns are more important than children. So at this moment, we ask for progress,” Rubio said.“Somewhere out there, there’s a mom listening to our testimony thinking, ‘I can’t even imagine their pain’ – not knowing that our reality will one day be hers unless we act now.”TopicsUS school shootingsTexas school shootingBuffalo shootingUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

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      I’m a Black gun owner. I have mixed feelings about gun control | Akin Olla

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      I’m a Black gun owner. I have mixed feelings about gun controlAkin OllaI don’t have much faith that the state will protect me from violence – and I know that gun control laws have historically been used to target Black people, socialists and people who challenge the status quo The mass murder of elementary school students in Uvalde, Texas, and a white supremacist attack on Black residents of Buffalo, New York, have reignited the American gun control debate. Both atrocities have left me feeling more broken than I thought possible. As a Black, leftwing gun owner, however, I’m also struck by a feeling of unease.I believe in many forms of gun control, but the conversation about guns on the left often lacks complexity as we scramble for a simple answer to an extremely complicated problem. I don’t have much faith that the government will protect me or other minority Americans from the kind of violence that the police ostensibly exist to combat, and I know that gun control laws have historically been used to target Black people, particularly Black socialists like myself.I’m also not convinced that most current gun control proposals will even solve the problem. Consider the country’s deadliest school shooting, the Virginia Tech murders of 2007. The perpetrator passed his background check and used weapons that most gun control bans wouldn’t affect. A waiting period might have delayed his attack but his level of premeditation implies it was nearly inevitable. I feel sorrow for what happened. Yet I feel that as a society we tend to fight over specific gun control policies – some effective, some not – while ignoring the violent nature of the country we live in and the culture that drives almost exclusively men to commit mass murder.I never thought I’d be a gun owner. I’m not particularly fond of guns. If anything, they terrify me. I’ve generally hoped my charming personality and acumen at fisticuffs would be enough to deter would-be aggressors; it wasn’t until the terror that I experienced during the George Floyd uprising that I, like many Black Americans, was moved to become a first-time gun owner.I’d participated in protests and witnessed the sheer brutality of the Philadelphia police as they attacked my partner, threatened an elderly woman, and enveloped the entirety of my neighborhood in teargas. I watched Black parents flee their homes, gagging, eyes red, small children in tow. When I and others working as medical volunteers tried to evacuate the injured and elderly, we were met with pepper spray, rubber bullets, and batons. On the other side of the city, police officers let white vigilantes with baseball bats patrol the streets. None of this buttressed my belief that the police existed to protect me from violence.Around this time I, like other socialist organizers, received written threats. After a series of them, as well as a direct, in-person threat to my life made in front of my home, I buckled and decided I needed a weapon, and soon. Even without the specific threats, I was wrestling with a sense that society was on the brink. It may sound paranoid now, but to be Black in the midst of the George Floyd uprising and the tail end of the Trump presidency was a time to be paranoid. Guns and ammunition were sold out across the country. More than 5 million new gun owners purchased weapons in 2020, a more than 100% increase from the previous year. After a background check and a few days for the order to be processed, I picked up a gun from a store located in a man’s home in a dreamlike suburban cul-de-sac.America is steeped in violence. And the roots of that violence go deep | Moustafa BayoumiRead moreDespite owning a gun, I do think gun control is overdue and necessary. But I also can’t ignore the history of American gun control. Much of the modern debate around gun control began in the 1960s, after the state of California – with support, ironically enough, from the NRA – pushed through legislation in response to the Black Panther party and other armed militant groups. We must ensure that any new gun control laws do not disproportionately limit minority communities’ ability to own arms for reasons of legitimate self-defense, which may be impossible given that most laws in a country as steeped in racism as ours will inevitably be exploited to oppress the already oppressed.There are moments in US history when the right to own weapons made the difference between life and death for communities of color, such as the armed resistance against the Ku Klux Klan by the Lumbee Tribe in 1958. And despite the common perception of the civil rights movement, many activists kept guns in their homes or were protected by those who did. There was a time when Dr Martin Luther King Jr was described as having an arsenal in his home.To honestly address mass shootings, we must be willing to have difficult conversations about the complexity of all of this, and also accept that some solutions will involve restructuring our society. We have to accept that gun control may mean some people that reasonably fear for their lives will be left at the whim of fascists and police. We have to accept that mass shootings will absolutely still occur. We have to accept and analyze the reality that one of the most common denominators among shooters is their hate for women – as the Texas shooter, who shot his grandmother before carrying out his school massacre, sadly reminded us.And we have to realize the racist nature of this country and its violent roots. The founder of Uvalde, Texas, was shot and killed in 1867, probably not too far from where the elementary school shooting occurred. His alleged offense was opposing southern secession and supporting the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. His blood stains that town just as the blood of millions of Indigenous people and enslaved Africans stains the entirety of the United States.Gun control may be a good start to saving lives, but this country must be made new, and the lives of women, little children, and Black families made valuable. Until then, I sit uneasy.
      Akin Olla is a contributing opinion writer at the Guardian
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      Only cultural change will free America from its gun problem | Andrew Gawthorpe

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      Only cultural change will free America from its gun problemAndrew GawthorpeThe movement to protect innocent lives from gun violence is a multi-generational struggle akin to that which won African Americans civil rights or gay Americans the right to marry Some days it feels like guns are such a foundational part of American identity that the country would have to cease to be itself before it would give them up. When a gunman murdered dozens of elementary-age schoolchildren, leaving their bodies in such a state that parents had to give up DNA samples for them to be identified, it was one such day. What cultural value, what material interest, could be worth this? It must be something that its defenders consider supremely important.Guns – that’s what. Critics of the sickness which is America’s obsession with guns often focus their fire on the second amendment, or the perverse political influence of the National Rifle Association. But neither of these things really get to the root of the pathology. It’s true that gun-rights advocates rely on a surely mistaken reading of the constitution to justify arming themselves to the teeth. And it’s also true that the NRA is a malign force in American politics. But the constitution can be changed or reinterpreted, and special interest groups can be vanquished. What is at issue here is something more foundational, and more difficult to change: American culture itself.The gun is the great symbol, and poisonous offshoot, of American individualism. The country has long valorized masculine heroes – the cowboy, the frontiersman, the patriotic soldier – who impose their will on the community’s enemies with violence. It’s no coincidence that whenever a horrific mass shooting occurs, those in favor of guns respond by claiming that the solution to the guns of the bad guys is more guns in the hands of the good guys. Such reasoning responds to a deep-seated American historical myth, and allows the speaker to imagine themselves as the hero.But they are not heroes – far from it. Mass shooters may be, as the writer John Ganz put it, the “nightmare obverse” of the ideal of the lone frontiersman. But everyone else who defends their own right to possess a gun, who lauds guns as the bringers of peace and order, is guilty too. Their choices make society less safe, not more. The pleasure derived from guns, the sense of participation in America’s deepest myths about itself which they might foster, come at the expense of tens of thousands of lives a year. Sometimes, they are the lives of small children, innocent to the ways of a world which has allowed them to die.Men own guns at nearly twice the rate of women, and within all of this there is something deeply pathetic about the state of American manhood. American gun culture treats ownership of weapons of war as a sign of masculinity and virility, something that makes you more of a man. Almost anywhere else in the western world, a man seeking to demonstrate his masculinity in this way would be treated as an absurd and tragic poser. No doubt many gun owners tell themselves that they are better equipped to protect the innocent. But they are wrong. Rather, gun culture reveals the centrality of violence to American conceptions of manhood – a violence which ultimately harms rather than protects.If the problem is cultural, then what is the solution? There is no easy one. By now, the grooves of the debate are well-worn, and even a shocking event like the Uvalde massacre will not shake us out of it for long. Proposals to change the law or the constitution will be bitterly criticized, and gun-rights proponents will present the shooter as an anomaly who holds no lessons for “responsible” gun-owners. The supreme court is expected soon to loosen rather than tighten the law around carrying guns in public. Republicans will angrily decry attempts to “politicize” the massacre, as if the fact that innocent children are being brutally murdered due to the policies those very same Republicans support was not already a political issue of the highest order.But cultural change is not impossible. It has happened in recent decades on very important issues. America also contains within itself the will to self-improvement, and citizens who will give their all to achieve it. Sometimes it comes before political or legal change, and sometimes it comes after it. The only way to avoid despair is to see the struggle to protect innocent lives against the ravages of gun violence as a multi-generational struggle akin to that which won African Americans the right to vote, or that which won the right to gay marriage. Each of these required Americans in the grip of myths and pathologies to relinquish them, and each at one time seemed impossible. But change did eventually come.The path ahead will not be easy – and, as the supreme court’s expected ruling on Roe v Wade has shown, there will be setbacks along the way. Those who embody a pathological understanding of what America should be are currently ascendant, and there will be no easy victory over them. But despair would be surrender. That’s why for now there is the need to mourn the tiny lives which were extinguished. Remember them, and in doing so remember something else: America’s genius is that it can be changed, never quickly enough, but always in the end. It’s a slim hope to grasp onto in this moment of rage and sorrow, but it may be all that we have left.
      Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States and the host of the podcast America Explained
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