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      The major tests US gun control activists face in 2024

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      The grim statistics around mass shootings underscore a haunting reality for the US: despite recent legislative efforts at the state and federal levels, gun violence remains alarmingly common across the country.But gun safety groups say they remain undaunted in 2024, when they plan to push for more change through state legislatures and executive actions. And as voters turn their attention to a crucial election year, gun safety groups are also prepared to press candidates on their plans to curb gun violence.The simple statistics demonstrate what a weighty task it is. In December, a gunman carried out a shooting spree across two communities in central Texas, killing six people. The attack was the 39th mass shooting in the US last year, marking a new single-year record for the country. The previous record of 36 mass shootings had been set just one year prior.Gun reform groups will still face steep hurdles as they attempt to reduce the carnage.Republicans, who now control the House of Representatives, have shown little appetite for passing another federal gun safety bill, following the enactment of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022. The supreme court’s conservative majority has similarly embraced a rather expansive definition of second amendment rights, jeopardizing gun safety laws passed at the state and federal level.For gun safety groups, the first significant test of 2024 will come in June, when the supreme court is expected to decide its next major second amendment case.United States v RahimiThe case centers on Zackey Rahimi, who was placed under a domestic violence restraining order after allegedly assaulting his then girlfriend and firing a gun in front of bystanders in 2019. Per federal law, those under such restraining orders are prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms, but Rahimi is now challenging that statute based on another supreme court decision.In 2022, the supreme court overturned New York’s century-old regulation requiring that anyone seeking to carry a handgun in public must show “proper cause” to do so. The case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen, established a new test to determine the constitutionality of gun regulations. The conservative justices ruled that any gun regulation must be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation”.The ruling has sparked a flurry of challenges to firearm regulations and forced gun safety advocates to search the historical record for analogous laws from the nation’s founding to defend their proposals. In the case of Rahimi, the conservative-leaning US court of appeals for the fifth circuit agreed with his argument that the law blocking those under domestic violence restraining orders from accessing firearms is inconsistent with historical gun laws and is thus unconstitutional.That ruling has now been appealed to the supreme court, which held oral arguments in the case in November. The justices’ decision could have far-reaching implications for the future of gun rights as well as the safety of survivors of domestic violence. According to a 2023 study, more than half of domestic violence homicides involve firearms.“The stakes are incredibly high in Rahimi because it would be the first time the supreme court strikes down a federal law on gun safety in decades. And of course, it’s a particularly important federal law,” said Nick Suplina, senior vice-president of law and policy for the gun safety group Everytown.The Rahimi ruling may also help clarify lower courts’ apparent confusion over applying the Bruen test. Thus far, courts have reached conflicting decisions over how to interpret the “historical tradition” of gun laws, said Jacob Charles, a professor at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law and a constitutional scholar focusing on the second amendment.“I certainly think that confusion is only growing,” Charles said. “We see circuit courts even disagree with one another and are kind of all over the place, the same way that the district courts have been. So I don’t think we’re having any more guidance until the [supreme] court weighs in more.”During the oral arguments, some of the court’s conservative justices appeared skeptical of the fifth circuit’s decision, seemingly hesitant to stretch gun rights to the point of protecting alleged domestic abusers. Even if the supreme court rules against Rahimi, the decision will probably not mark a sea change in conservative justices’ overall approach to the second amendment. Charles, who filed an amicus brief in the Rahimi case, suggested the justices may issue a narrow ruling that upholds the law regarding domestic violence protection orders but leaves the Bruen test intact.“That will still leave lots of other cases, like assault weapons bans, outside the scope of this new kind of revisionary guidance,” Charles said.That dynamic could complicate gun safety groups’ efforts to strengthen the nation’s gun laws, including their campaign to re-enact a federal assault weapons ban.‘A political issue that doesn’t need to be’The country’s worst mass shooting of 2023 unfolded in October in Lewiston, Maine, where a gunman killed 18 people at a bowling alley and a bar. The devastating attack prompted a change of heart for congressman Jared Golden, the conservative Democrat who represents Lewiston in the House of Representatives. Reversing his previous position, Golden announced he would now support reinstating the federal assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I have opposed efforts to ban deadly weapons of war,” Golden said. “The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure, which is why I now call on the United States Congress to ban assault rifles.”Gun safety groups praised Golden’s announcement, while noting that his new position brings him closer in line with voters’ stance on an assault weapons ban. According to a Fox News poll conducted in April, 61% of voters support banning assault weapons. Other proposed gun regulations, such as enacting universal background checks and mandating safe storage of firearms, enjoy even more widespread support among voters.“We’re hopeful that [Golden’s announcement] will spur others to be able to take some of that political courage and step out there,” said Vanessa Gonzalez, vice-president of government and political affairs for the gun safety group Giffords. “It’s a political issue that doesn’t need to be. We just need more folks to have the courage to say that and to step out on those issues.”The 2024 elections will provide gun safety groups with many opportunities to push sitting lawmakers and first-time candidates on enacting more firearm regulations.“We are continuing to look for younger elected officials or candidates who are not afraid to say gun violence in America has to stop and then actually see it through,” Gonzalez said. “And then on the flip side, what does it look like once [they are] elected to really hold them accountable for what they said they were going to do?”Suplina predicted that gun safety will play a prominent role in campaign ads and messaging in 2024, partly because the issue might help Democrats sway the independent voters who will be crucial in determining the outcomes of close races. An AP/Norc poll conducted over the summer found that 61% of independents believe gun laws should be made more strict.“If you want to win the middle of the American electorate, you have to be strong on gun safety,” Suplina said. “And being strong on gun safety means recognizing that assault weapons should not be in the hands of your average citizens.”So far, efforts to reinstate an assault weapons ban have met consistent resistance from Republicans in Congress. The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, most recently reintroduced the assault weapons ban bill in December, but Republicans blocked the legislation from advancing. Even if Senate Democrats could get the bill passed, it would almost certainly fail in the Republican-controlled House.Despite the obstacles presented by a divided Congress, gun safety groups have found recent success at the state level, and they hope to build upon those wins in 2024. According to Everytown, state legislatures passed a record-breaking 130 gun safety bills in 2023 while blocking 95% of the gun lobby’s agenda.Gun safety groups are also exploring options beyond Congress as it pushes for change at the federal level. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has proposed a new rule aimed at closing the so-called “gun show loophole”, which allows some private gun sellers to perform transactions without completing background checks on prospective buyers. Hundreds of thousands of gun safety proponents have already submitted comments in support of the proposed rule, according to Everytown.That campaign reflects gun safety groups’ overall goal to put more pressure on sellers and manufacturers of firearms in the year ahead. Such efforts may face resistance from conservative courts, but gun safety advocates fervently believe that the political momentum is on their side heading into 2024.“The state of the gun violence prevention movement in our country is strong and stronger than it’s ever been,” Suplina said. “Courts or no courts, Congress or no Congress, we’re going to really do a lot to animate the public to understand who it is that’s flooding the streets with guns and making money off of it while the rest of us suffer.” More

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      As the NRA fades, a more zealous US pro-gun group rises as a lobbying power

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      A zealous gun rights group, even more uncompromising than the once formidable National Rifle Association, is emerging as a force in US politics with a mission to oppose efforts at gun control and ease further America’s already lax regulations on firearms.Last year the Gun Owners of America (GOA) spent $3.3m on lobbying, a record sum for the hardline foe of gun control that now claims over 2 million members and activists, and has previously operated in the shadows of the larger NRA.The GOA’s record lobbying spending in 2022 was spurred in part by a rise in its annual revenues, which more than tripled from $2.3m in 2016 to $8.7m in 2021, according to tax records.The GOA is an adamant enemy of gun control measures of all stripes, and proudly calls itself the “no compromise” gun lobby. Its surge in lobbying spending reflects one way it has capitalized on the financial and legal problems of the once 5 million-member NRA in the hopes of expanding the GOA’s political clout, say gun experts.“The GOA was formed in the 1970s because they believed the NRA was too liberal,” said Robert Spitzer, the author of several books on guns and a professor emeritus at Suny Cortland in New York. “True to its creed, the GOA has opposed every manner of gun law and attacked the NRA at every turn.”The GOA’s anti-gun control posture was underscored by its opposition to a bipartisan compromise gun control bill in 2022 that closed some gun law loopholes, including for prospective buyers under 21, and implemented gun violence prevention policies, becoming the first gun control bill enacted since 1994.The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act garnered just 29 Republican votes in Congress, but the GOA this year in an alert to its members warning of pending legislative threats suggested those votes were “cowardly”.The GOA’s lobbying efforts in 2022 were notable in another way: it was the only gun rights group to increase its spending in 2022 according to OpenSecrets, and surpassed the NRA’s lobbying expenditures of $2.6m last year, a drop of over $2m from the NRA’s 2021 total.Through the first six months of 2023, the GOA spent $1.8m on lobbying, putting it on track to equal or surpass the $3.2m it spent last year.As it has ramped up its influence activity in Washington, the GOA also touts its member chapters and allies including the California Gun Rights Foundation and other ones in Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas.Nationally the GOA and its chapters have flexed their lobbying and legal muscles in some significant fights in several states. For instance, in New Mexico the GOA has claimed success in obtaining a temporary restraining order against new gun curbs in Albuquerque.On the legal front, the GOA has also filed amicus briefs – with help from the conservative lawyer William Olson, who put forward some aggressive schemes to Donald Trump in late 2020 as he sought to overturn his election defeat – in at least two major cases pending at the supreme court where the GOA is seeking to thwart existing and new gun regulations. This month the court heard arguments in US vs Rahimi that could overturn a 30-year-old ban on guns for individuals under domestic violence restraining orders.Gun experts say the GOA has long tried to outflank the NRA on the right as the most implacable opponent of gun control measures, and now sees an opening to expand its influence in federal and state battles over gun control.“With the mostly self-inflicted damage the NRA has suffered, the GOA very much wants to replace the NRA as the nation’s pre-eminent gun rights group,” said Spitzer. “To that end, it is raising and spending more money, filing more suits against gun laws, and has formed its own Super Pac and political victory fund. These and other tactics mimic the NRA’s traditional political playbook.”In Spitzer’s eyes, “the GOA’s prospects for success depend on the extent to which the NRA can recover from its reversals and retain the loyalty of gun owners”.The NRA has reportedly lost about 1 million members since 2019 after allegations of financial misconduct surfaced and the New York attorney general sued the CEO of the NRA, Wayne LaPierre, and other top executives for using the NRA as a “personal piggy bank”.Some ex-members of Congress say that historically the GOA has tried to exploit a perception that the NRA is too moderate.“For years, the NRA had concerns about losing members to the GOA and other extreme groups,” the former Republican congressman Charlie Dent said. “Any time the NRA tried to compromise on something, the GOA would accuse them of selling out.”Likewise, gun control advocates and ex-NRA officials say the GOA has been moving to fill the gap created by the NRA’s woes.“The NRA’s loss has been GOA’s gain,” Kristen Rand, a veteran lawyer with the Violence Policy Center, a gun control advocacy and research group, told the Guardian. “GOA makes the NRA look thoughtful and moderate. No matter how minor a change in rule or statute, GOA always portrays it as a sweeping gun ban.”Such hardball tactics have coincided with an uptick in the GOA’s federal campaign spending to expand its influence. The GOA donated $147,500 to Republican federal candidates last year, more than double what the group donated in 2018 to federal candidates, according to OpenSecrets.Further, the GOA last year established a Super Pac, the GOA Victory Fund, which spent $2.6m on federal races in last fall’s elections.The GOA did not respond to calls seeking comment.To keep the heat on Congress by mobilizing its members, the GOA regularly posts feverish alerts. Several alerts this year have bashed regulatory moves by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and other efforts to tighten gun curbs in response to rising deaths from gun violence, and mass shootings in Maine, New York, Texas and other states since Joe Biden became president.One GOA alert this year broadly condemned the ATF as a “rogue executive branch that flat out hates gun owners and the constitution”.Other GOA alerts warn darkly of threats of new gun control bills after last year’s bipartisan measure passed, including a possible assault weapons ban that Biden has called for, but which is deemed unlikely while Republicans control the House.One alert warned: “Now, Biden and the anti-gun lobby are dialing up the pressure on the same cowardly Republicans to find support for the next item on their endless wish list of gun control … a national ban on so-called ‘assault weapons’ and normal capacity magazines.”Gun control advocates say the GOA’s scare tactics are out of sync with reality.“Gun Owners of America peddles hyperbolic falsehoods about any and all attempts by Congress to slow the devastating toll of gun violence in our nation,” said Adzi Vokhiwa, the director of federal affairs for Giffords, a gun control advocacy group.“They even oppose every effort by the ATF to simply enforce gun laws.“Gun safety laws limiting the availability of firearms to people with a history of dangerous behavior can and do co-exist with the ability of law-abiding gun owners to freely exercise their second amendment rights, despite GOA’s false claims otherwise.”Other anti-gun control groups have also ramped up their lobbying and legal drives.The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), which represents the firearms industry, has outspent the NRA on lobbying in recent years. In 2020 and 2021, the NSSF reported spending $4.6m and $5m respectively on federal lobbying. By contrast, the NRA spent $2.2m and $4.9m.Some ex-NRA officials downplay the influence of the GOA and other pro-gun groups in the wake of the NRA’s problems.“The void created by the self-inflicted and fatal chaos that is the current NRA is being filled by numerous other pro-gun organizations,” a former NRA executive said, adding that this situation “is more of a reflection on the demise of the NRA, than the effectiveness of other organizations”.Another ex-NRA honcho quipped: “GOA’s rise corresponds to when the NRA started going down the crapper.”Assessing the GOA’s impact and expanded lobbying efforts, the Violence Policy Center’s Rand stressed: “As the NRA has lost its footing, its more extreme members have embraced GOA. The group’s expanding influence can only drive pro-gun positions on legislation even further to the right.” More

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      American Gun review: riveting and horrifying history of the AR-15

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      How long can we go between news cycles featuring assault rifles? According to the Gun Violence Archive, in 2023 the answer is barely more than 12 hours. This year there have been 565 mass shootings in the US, including the latest horror in Maine – an average of nearly two a day. Those statistics make American Gun, a brilliant new biography of the AR-15, a particularly powerful and important book.Written by two fine Wall Street Journal reporters, Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson, the book is packed with characters and plot turns, from Eugene Stoner, the publicity-shy inventor who designed the first AR-15 in the 1950s, to the embrace of the gun by Robert McNamara and John F Kennedy, which led to its disastrous adoption as the chief weapon for army infantrymen in Vietnam.The design was shaped by a simple military adage: “Whoever shoots the most lead wins.” Every detail of how the weapon went from a “counter-insurgency” tool in south-east Asia in the 1960s to the most popular way to kill American schoolchildren in the 21st century is included in this harrowing narrative.Stoner worked with aluminum in one of the booming aerospace factories in California and became obsessed with how he could use new materials like plastic to make a lighter, more effective rifle. He also achieved the “holy grail that gun designers had pursued for generations: how to use the energy released from the exploding gunpowder … to reload the weapon”. Soon he had a patent for a “gas operated bolt and carrier system” with fewer parts than a conventional rifle, that would make his “smoother to operate and last longer”.The first third of American Gun is devoted to how Stoner teamed up with an entrepreneur, George Sullivan, who brought his invention to the Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation, which set up a new division, ArmaLite, to produce the weapon. The main challenge they faced in selling the gun to the government was a centuries-old tradition of the army designing its own weapons. In 1957, the army announced it had chosen its own M-14 to replace the M-1, the workhorse of the second world war.But the inventors used the ancient rivalry between the services to get their foot in the door. They socialized with an air force general, Curtis LeMay, and got him to fire an AR-15 at a July 4 celebration in 1960. (Famously, LeMay was a model for the psychotic character played by George C Scott in Dr Strangelove.) LeMay was so impressed by the impact the gun had on watermelons 50 and 150 yards away, he decided the air force should buy 8,500 of them for its security teams.The new rifle took off inside the government with the arrival of John Kennedy in the White House and former Ford president Robert McNamara at the defense department, with a legion of whiz kids who wanted to invent new forms of warfare. McNamara was eager to prove he was smarter than the generals he inherited, so he overrode them and convinced Kennedy the army should adopt Stoner’s rifle instead of the M-14.One thing which especially impressed the earliest AR-15 users, including South Vietnamese troops, was the way its bullets became unstable inside a human body, tearing through “like a tornado, spiraling and tipping … obliterat[ing] organs, blood vessels and bones”. This of course was the same quality that would make the weapon the ultimate scourge of American schoolchildren five decades later.To mollify the generals, McNamara allowed the Pentagon’s technical coordinating committee to modify the gun before it went into mass production. Among other things, the committee changed the kind of ammunition used – with disastrous consequences. In Vietnam, the gun jammed repeatedly in combat. Vivid descriptions of how that jeopardized the lives of American soldiers are some of the most terrifying sections of American Gun.Dick Backus, a grunt who saw half of his 10-member squad mowed down, summarized the problem: “Our government sent young men to war with a rifle that didn’t shoot.” A Washington Post editorial reached a similar conclusion: “If the New Left were to set out to compose an insider’s indictment of the ‘military-industrial complex’, it could hardly match the report which a congressional committee has submitted” about the new rifle. Eventually, the army redesigned the weapon, and by 1975 it was working well again.The second half of American Gun highlights the role of Wall Street hedge fund owners in consolidating the gun industry and making the AR-15 the weapon of choice for insecure American males. Some of the most disgusting details are about an ad campaign proposed for readers of Maxim. The first ad was a picture of a gun pointed at the reader, with the caption “MINE IS SO DEFINITELY BIGGER THAN YOURS”. A website for the Bushmaster rifle read: “The Bushmaster Man Card declares and confirms that you are a Man’s Man, the last of a dying breed, with all the rights and privileges duly afforded.”Even more disgusting was the strategy of private equity owners who bought up large portions of the gun industry in the early 2000s. They made sure video games included their brand of rifle because it would “help create brand preference among the next generation who experiences these games, allowing [us] to win our fair share of these young customers”.There is so much more in this book, including the collapse of political will to reform gun laws. The authors also detail how fake the 10-year ban on assault rifles really was, because the bill authored by then California senator Dianne Feinstein contained so many loopholes, gun manufacturers just made tiny tweaks and kept producing weapons.And because Congress had made the AR-15 forbidden fruit, sales actually exploded. In 1995, Americans owned about 400,000 of them. “By the end of 2021,” McWhirter and Elinson write, “that number jumped to more than 20 million.”
      American Gun is published in the US by Farrar, Straus and Giroux More

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      Maine representative reverses opposition to assault rifle bans following shooting

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      US House representative Jared Golden, of Maine’s second district, has made a stunning reversal of his opposition to efforts to ban assault rifles in the wake of the mass shooting in a bowling alley and restaurant in Lewiston on Wednesday night, which killed 18.In 2022, Golden was among the few Democrats to vote against a bill in Congress that would have banned the sale of assault weapons to the American public for the first time since 2004. Joe Biden has repeatedly sought such a ban and, on Thursday, a day after the worst such massacre in his state’s history, Golden joined the US president’s call.The bill would have blocked the sale, manufacture, transfer, or possession of military-style semi-automatic assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition devices. Golden also voted against a bill that would have raised the age limit for purchasing a semi-automatic rifle and banned the sale of high-capacity magazines.Golden is now receiving praise from many of his constituents and colleagues for his change of position.Politicians further to the left of Golden have expressed approval of his remarks, which he made on Thursday.He said: “I have opposed efforts to ban deadly weapons of war like the assault rifle he [the gunman] used to carry out this crime. The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure. Which is why I now call on the United States Congress to ban assault rifles, like the one used by the sick perpetrator of this mass killing.“For the good of my community, I will work with any colleague to get this done in the time that I have left in Congress.”Golden, who is originally from Lewiston, ended his speech by asking for forgiveness and support from the people of his hometown, his “constituents throughout the second district, to the families who lost loved ones, and to those who have been harmed”.On X, formerly Twitter, fellow Democrats who have long stood in favor of stricter gun laws, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, applauded Golden.She said: “Powerful, brave, and moving. This is leadership. Thank you. Our community stands with yours throughout this tragedy and in the work ahead.”Representative Maxwell Frost, 26, the first member of gen Z elected to Congress and a survivor of gun violence, said: “It takes a lot of courage to go on national television and admit that you were wrong about something. Thank you @RepGolden. Time to #BanAssaultWeapons”.At least 566 mass shootings have taken place this year across the country, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Tens of thousands of people are killed in the US every year in gun violence, including mass shootings such as the ones at elementary schools in Uvalde, Texas, and Sandy Hook, Connecticut; a high school in Parkland, Florida; and entertainment spots and public events across the country.Golden changed tack after the shooting that affected his home town. Some X users criticized him for not changing his stance sooner.He was elected to national office in 2018. Before that he was a state representative in Maine and a member of the Marine Corps. More

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      ‘I ask for forgiveness’: Maine lawmaker who opposed gun ban – video

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      After a gunman killed 18 people in Maine this week, the Democratic representative, Jared Golden, said he was changing his stance on gun legislation and would now support banning assault weapons. At a news conference in Lewiston, where the mass shooting occurred, Golden said he had previously opposed a ban on what he described as ‘deadly weapons of war’ out of fear for the lives of his family members. Announcing his new position, Golden said he would work with any colleague to achieve gun legislation during his time left in Congress More

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      Dianne Feinstein obituary

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      The US senator Dianne Feinstein, who has died aged 90, was long cherished by the CIA and others in the defence and intelligence community as someone whose staunch support they could rely on. Until one day they could not: on 11 March 2009 she launched an investigation into the CIA’s torture of detainees post-9/11.That investigation by the Senate intelligence committee, which she chaired, turned into a bitter struggle with the agency and it tried to block it. She did not buckle and finally, in December 2014, she published her report, revealing the scale and brutality of what the CIA had done and its repeated attempts to mislead Congress and the White House. On top of all that, the report found the torture had proved counter-productive in obtaining valuable intelligence.On the day of publication, she told the Senate: “There are those who will seize upon the report and say ‘see what Americans did’, and they will try to use it to justify evil actions or to incite more violence. We cannot prevent that. But history will judge us by our commitment to a just society governed by law and the willingness to face an ugly truth and say ‘never again’.”Her fight was dramatic enough to interest Hollywood, and the film The Report was released in 2019, with Feinstein played by Annette Bening.What made her fight with the CIA so surprising was that it was out of kilter with her career before and after, as a Senate hawk. She voted for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – though she later expressed regret over the former – supported Republicans in defence procurement projects and defended the spy agencies in controversies such as illegal mass surveillance in 2013.Her reputation as a hawk frequently put her at odds with the Democratic left and this disillusionment with her grew rapidly in the latter part of her career.In February this year, facing calls to stand down as her physical and mental health declined, she said she would not seek re-election in 2024.There was much in her life she could look back on with pride: a trailblazer for women in politics; the calm leadership she displayed as mayor in San Francisco after the killings of her predecessor, George Moscone, and of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to an official position in the US; her success, albeit limited, in getting gun control through the US senate in 1994. But it was the torture report she cited as the achievement she was most proud.The first she heard of the torture was in September 2006, when Feinstein and other members of the intelligence committee were privately briefed by the then head of the CIA, Michael Hayden. Although Hayden played down what the CIA euphemistically described as “enhanced interrogation techniques”, Feinstein was troubled by what she heard.When she became chair of the intelligence committee in 2009 – its first female head – she launched the investigation. The final 6,700-page report remains classified, but she got around this by publishing a 500-page executive summary and that was damning enough.Between 2002 and 2008 the CIA had detained 119 men at “black sites” – secret locations around the world – and of these 39 had been subjected to waterboarding, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, stress positions and “rectal rehydration”.In 2015, Feinstein worked with the Republican senator John McCain in steering through the Senate an amendment that reinforced a ban on torture. The McCain-Feinstein amendment was the kind of bipartisan consensus that Feinstein, a centrist, valued. But, as US politics became more polarised, her attempts to work with Republicans increasingly grated with fellow Democrats.When Donald Trump, as president, began to pack the supreme court with rightwingers, Democrats complained that Feinstein, who was the senior Democrat on the judiciary committee, did not put up enough of a fight. After the 2020 confirmation hearings of a Trump appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, Feinstein left Democrats seething when she hugged the chair, Republican Lindsey Graham.Born in San Francisco, Dianne was the daughter of Betty (nee Rosenburg), a model, and Leon Goldman, a surgeon. Her family was affluent but she had a traumatic childhood: her mother was unstable and given to sudden rages due to an undiagnosed brain disorder. According to David Talbot, in his history of San Francisco in the 1960s through to the 80s, Season of the Witch (2012), Betty once chased her daughter with a knife around a dining table.Dianne attended a convent school before going to Stanford University, where she graduated in 1955 with a bachelor’s degree in political science and history. She went on to secure a job on the state parole board. Although politics was overwhelmingly male-dominated, she was elected in 1969 on to the 11-member San Francisco board of supervisors, basically the city and county council. Runs for mayor in 1971 and 1975 proved unsuccessful.In 1976, she was the target of a bomb attack on her home claimed by a California-based leftwing terrorist group, the New World Liberation Front. The bomb was planted in a window flower box but failed to go off. A few months later, another group, the Environmental Life Force, claimed responsibility for shooting out the windows of her holiday home with a BB gun.She began to carry a concealed handgun for protection. In 1978, dispirited by the combination of the mayoral defeats and being targeted, she told a reporter she was on the verge of quitting politics.Only hours after this exchange, the mayor of San Francisco, Moscone, and Milk, a fellow supervisor, were shot dead in City Hall by a former supervisor. Feinstein was the first into Milk’s office. She told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008: “It was one of the hardest moments, if not the hardest moment, of my life.” Checking Milk for a pulse, one of her fingers slipped into a bullet hole.As president of the board of supervisors at the time, she was well placed to take over as mayor, which she duly did, becoming the first female to occupy the post.She served until 1988. With Aids rampant, she supported many initiatives to help the gay community. She secured federal funding for an overhaul of the cable car network, which proved popular with residents and tourists.Influenced by seeing the damage to Milk’s body, she introduced in 1982 a local ordinance banning most residents from owning handguns. She had her own gun and 14 others that had been handed over in a buy-back scheme melted down and turned into a cross and given to Pope John Paul II on a visit to the Vatican.After an unsuccessful bid to become governor of California in 1990, she was elected as a US senator from California in 1992. She quickly made an impact, guiding through in 1994 the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, outlawing civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms, though with a proviso that it would expire in 2004 if not renewed, which it was not.She was ranked in 2018 as the second wealthiest senator, with her fortune estimated at about $88m (about £74m).Feinstein married three times: Jack Berman in 1956, with whom she had a daughter, Katherine, divorcing in 1959; Bertram Feinstein in 1962 until his death in 1978; and Richard Blum from 1980 to his death in 2022.She is survived by Katherine, three stepdaughters, and a granddaughter, Eileen. More

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      Biden and Harris unveil first federal gun violence prevention office, citing 100 people shot and killed daily – live

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      From 2h agoBiden urged that “it’s time to ban assault weapons, high capacity magazines”, and for Congress to do more.He said the new federal Office of Gun Violence will be overseen by Kamala Harris, who has been “on the frontlines” her entire career as a prosecutor and as a attorney general.Listing the four primarily responsibilities of the newly formed office, he said none of those steps would alone “solve the entirety of the gun violence epidemic”. “Together, they will save lives,” he said.
      I never thought even remotely say this in my whole career: guns are the number one killer of children in America. Guns are the number one killer of children in America.
      In 2023, more than 500 mass shootings have taken place and “well over 30,000” deaths as a result of gun violence, he said, describing it as “totally unacceptable”.Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
      The Republican-led House all but disappeared for the long weekend after abruptly wrapping up its work on Thursday when the embattled speaker, Kevin McCarthy, failed to advance a stopgap government spending bill.
      The White House planned to begin telling federal agencies to prepare for a shutdown. If Congress does not pass a spending bill before 1 October, the lapse in funding is expected to force hundreds of thousands of federal workers to go without pay and bring a halt to some crucial government services.
      The historic US autoworkers’ strike as the United Auto Workers president, Shawn Fain, called on 38 additional plants across 20 states to join the strike. During a livestream update, Fain announced the additional strikes at automaker plants as contract negotiations with the big three automakers remain far apart on economic issues. He invited Joe Biden to the picket line.
      Joe Biden pledged to fight for gun safety laws while unveiling a new White House office of gun violence prevention. Kamala Harris will oversee the office. “On this issue, we do not have a moment to spare nor a life to spare,” she said in remarks on Friday.
      Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, and his wife have been charged with bribery offenses in connection with accepting gold bars, cash and a Mercedes-Benz, among other gifts, in exchange for protecting three businessmen and influencing the government of Egypt.
      The conservative justice Clarence Thomas has attended at least two donor events organized by the Koch network, the ultra-right political organization founded by the libertarian billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, which has brought multiple cases before the supreme court, according to a new report.
      The third Republican presidential primary debate will be held on 8 November in Miami. Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner of the party’s race, skipped the first debate and recently announced he’ll also forego the second.
      Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson announced he is leaving the Democratic party and becoming a Republican.
      That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, and the US politics live blog today. Have a good weekend.The third Republican presidential primary debate will be held on 8 November in Miami.The date, first reported by CNN, is more than a month after the second debate which is scheduled to take place on 27 September at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. The first took place on 23 August in Milwaukee.Donald Trump, the clear frontrunner of the party’s race, skipped the first debate and recently announced he’ll also forego the second.Maxwell Frost, the 26-year-old congressman from Florida, described Joe Biden as “one of the fiercest champions of gun violence protection” as he stood beside the president and vice president at the Rose Garden.Frost said that as the first member of Gen Z to be voted into Congress last year, he is often asked what got him involved in politics and his answer is:
      I didn’t want to get shot in school. I was 15 years old when a shooter walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School and murdered 20 children and six teachers. Like millions of kids, I went to school the next day with anxiety and fear that my life would be taken, my friends’ lives would be taken, and my family’s lives would be taken by senseless gun violence.
      He said that he had served as the national organizing director for March for Our Lives before being elected to Congress, and that he learned the “brutal truth” that the time people pay the most attention is usually “coupled with carnage and death”.
      Not today. Today the country sees us here, at the White House, with a president who is taking action.
      Biden said that for every member of Congress who refuses to act on gun violence, we will “need to elect new members of Congress”.
      There comes a point where our voices are so loud, our determination is so clear, that we can longer be stopped. We’re reaching that point. We’ve reached that point today, in my view, where the safety of our kids from gun violence is on the ballot.
      He said the “deadly and traumatic price” of inaction on gun control “can no longer be the lives of our children and the people of our country”.Biden urged that “it’s time to ban assault weapons, high capacity magazines”, and for Congress to do more.He said the new federal Office of Gun Violence will be overseen by Kamala Harris, who has been “on the frontlines” her entire career as a prosecutor and as a attorney general.Listing the four primarily responsibilities of the newly formed office, he said none of those steps would alone “solve the entirety of the gun violence epidemic”. “Together, they will save lives,” he said.
      I never thought even remotely say this in my whole career: guns are the number one killer of children in America. Guns are the number one killer of children in America.
      In 2023, more than 500 mass shootings have taken place and “well over 30,000” deaths as a result of gun violence, he said, describing it as “totally unacceptable”.Joe Biden, who was introduced by Florida congressman Maxwell Frost, announced the creation of the first ever federal office of gun violence prevention and said he was “determined to send a clear message about how important this issue is to me and to the country”.He said that after every mass shooting, he has heard the same message all over the country: “Please do something. Do something to prevent a tragedy.” He said his administration has been working “relentlessly to do something”.He said that last year, he signed into law the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which he descried as “the most significant gun safety law” and an “important first step”.
      For the first time in three decades, we came together to overcome the relentless opposition from a gun lobby, gun manufacturers and so many politicians opposing common sense gun legislation.
      “We’re not stopping here,” Biden added.Harris said she “owed” it to the parents and children she has comforted who has been traumatized by losing a family member to gun violence.
      On this issue, we do not have a moment to spare nor a life to spare.
      The vice president said the administration will “use the full power of the federal government” to “strengthen the coalition of survivors, and advocates, and students, and teachers, and elected leaders, to save lives and fight for the rights of all people to be safe from fear”.Kamala Harris, speaking at the Rose Garden, said Americans “should be able to shop in a grocery store, walk down the street, or sit peacefully in a classroom” and be safe from gun violence.The US has been “torn apart by the fear and trauma that results from gun violence”, the vice president said, standing besides Joe Biden and Florida congressman Maxwell Frost.
      In our country today, one in five people has lost a family member to gun violence. Across our nation every day, about 120 Americans are killed by a gun.
      The impact of gun violence is not equal across all communities, she said.
      Black Americans are 10 times more likely to be victims of gun violence and homicide. Latino Americans twice as likely.
      Harris said that, as a former courtroom prosecutor, she had seen “with my own eyes what a bullet does to the human body”.
      We cannot normalise any of this. These are not simply statistics. These are our children.
      My colleague David Smith is at the Rose Garden event and has tweeted this picture of Biden and Harris emerging from the White House:Tennessee state representative Justin Jones has been spotted heading to the Rose Garden ahead of Joe Biden’s speech announcing the formation of the nation’s first federal Office of Gun Violence Prevention, according to a White House pool report.Jones is one of the “Tennessee Three”, along with Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson, who was expelled earlier this year for his role in a pro-gun control protest inside the Tennessee Capitol.Throughout his presidency, Joe Biden has used executive actions to regulate homemade firearms – known as ghost guns – in the same way as traditional firearms, and to clarify who counts as a gun seller and thus is required by law to conduct background checks.Last year he also signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, a sweeping piece of legislation that, among other things, tightens background checks and bolsters mental health programs.Biden has advocated for re-instating the national assault weapons ban and expanding background checks since he was vice-president. A historic increase in gun homicides in 2020 pushed community-based violence prevention further up the administration’s agenda.Joe Biden is expected to announce the nation’s first federal Office of Gun Violence Prevention during a Rose Garden event at 2.45pm Eastern time.The office will be overseen by the office of the vice president, Kamala Harris, who will also be speaking at the event.In a statement released on Thursday, Biden said:
      In the absence of that sorely-needed action, the Office of Gun Violence Prevention along with the rest of my Administration will continue to do everything it can to combat the epidemic of gun violence that is tearing our families, our communities, and our country apart.
      The White House just skirted around a question from the press about whether Joe Biden believes the New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez should resign.The senator, who has an influential position as chair of the US Senate committee on foreign relations, was indicted earlier today on bribery charges.“I’m going to be really careful here and not comment because it is an active matter,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.Jean-Pierre said the matter was the US Senate’s to deal with and that “discussions are happening” there about the “next steps.”Congresswoman Lucy McBath is addressing the press in the west wing at the daily briefing, which today is headlining on the new national gun violence prevention office. The new project will be officially launched just under an hour from now.Georgia representative McBath told how her young son was killed in a drive-by shooting in 2012 and she was “robbed of every dream that a mother holds,” she said, and noted that she would never see her son graduate high school, go to college or get married.“Every single day, over 100 people are shot and killed in the United States. Gun violence has no boundaries,” she said, whether people become victims in suburbs, cities or rural areas.McBath will join Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the rose garden shortly for the formal launch of the new office to prevent gun violence.Joe Biden and Kamala Harris plan to speak in the rose garden at the White House in about an hour on the creation of the nation’s first federal Office of Gun Violence Prevention, to be led by the US vice president.In a few moments, the White House press briefing will begin, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre accompanied at the podium by Georgia representative Lucy McBath, who campaigns on gun safety. She lost her son to gun violence.This is what she posted yesterday:Joe Biden has told Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the US will provide a small number of long-range missiles to help in Ukraine’s fight against Russia, three US officials and a congressional official told NBC News on Friday.The officials did not confirm when the missiles would be delivered and remain anonymous as they have not been authorised to speak on the subject publicly.A congressional official told NBC News that there was still a debate about the type of missile that would be sent and how many would be delivered to Ukraine.The news comes after the White House rejected Zelenskiy’s request for Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to be sent to Ukraine as part of a new military aid package to bolster the country’s counteroffensive.For all the developments in the Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion and related geopolitics, follow our Ukraine live blog here.Zelenskiy was given the red carpet treatment at the White House yesterday, after two days in New York at the United Nations General Assembly. Before visiting Biden he was on Capitol Hill meeting with US Senators. More

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      New Mexico judge blocks suspension of right to carry guns in public

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      A federal judge has blocked part of a public health order that suspended the right to carry guns in public across Albuquerque, New Mexico, the state’s largest metro area, as criticism mounted over the actions taken by the governor and political divides widened.The ruling Wednesday by US district judge David Urias marks a setback for Michelle Lujan Grisham, the Democratic governor, as she responds to several recent shootings that took the lives of children, including an 11-year-old boy as he left a minor league baseball game in Albuquerque.Lujan Grisham imposed an emergency public health order Friday that suspended the right to open or concealed carry of guns in public places based on a statistical threshold for violent crime that is only encountered in Albuquerque and its outskirts. The governor cited the recent shootings, saying something needed to be done. She acknowledged that some would ignore the order.Violators would have faced civil penalties and a fine of up to $5,000 by state police. The local sheriff and Albuquerque’s police chief had refused to enforce the order.Advocates for gun rights filed a barrage of legal challenges to the order in US district court in Albuquerque alleging infringement of civil rights under the second amendment. Republicans in the legislative majority have called for impeachment proceedings against the governor.Lujan Grisham has remained defiant despite protests that have drawn crowds to public squares in Albuquerque over recent days. The governor is testing the boundaries of her executive authority again after using public health orders for aggressive lockdowns during the outset of the coronavirus pandemic.Mothers and military veterans have been among those demonstrating, many with holstered handguns on their hips and rifles slung over their shoulders. They have voiced concerns about the ability to protect themselves from violent crime in a city that has been scarred by drive-by shootings and deadly road-rage incidents.Even top Democrats, including Raúl Torrez, the state attorney general,have suggested that the governor’s time would have been better spent developing comprehensive legislation to tackle the issue.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNew Mexico is an open-carry state, so the governor’s order suspending the open and concealed carry of firearms affects anyone in Bernalillo county who can legally own a gun, with some exceptions. Just more than 14,500 people in the county have an active concealed-carry license, according to an Associated Press analysis of data provided by the New Mexico department of public safety for the 2023 fiscal year. More