Good morning, Bulletin readers. The Chicago neighborhoods hardest hit by coronavirus are the same ones that have been disproportionately affected by gun violence, a collision that’s left residents reeling. That story and more in your Monday roundup.
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WHAT TO KNOW TODAY
The ATF OKs curbside gun sales. Guidance issued Friday allows federally licensed firearms dealers to offer drive-up or walk-up service “from a temporary table or booth located in… [an] exterior location on the licensee’s property.” The concession follows the Trump administration’s nonbinding declaration of the gun industry as among those providing “essential critical infrastructure.” Only a handful of governors have ordered gun stores in their states to close under their shelter-in-place policies, and the National Shooting Sports Foundation had asked the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to clarify whether parking lot sales were permissible.
Six people were wounded in a mass shooting in California. Four women, a man, and a teenage girl were shot during a house party in a Bakersfield apartment complex just after midnight on Saturday. Police found at least 94 bullet casings at the scene. No arrests were made. In another mass shooting over Easter weekend, four people were wounded during a domestic dispute in Muskegon, Michigan.
Underserved Chicago communities are subject to the “double whammy” of gun violence and coronavirus. The city has recorded more than 80 shootings, 12 of them fatal, since Illinois imposed a lockdown on March 21. At the same time, three of the four Chicago neighborhoods with the most confirmed coronavirus cases are majority black communities on the city’s South Side. “It’s like a double whammy… We have the virus and the violence to worry about. It’s just an uphill battle,” a violence prevention outreach worker told Time. Last week, several dozen youth leaders, social workers, and elected officials participated in a video conference to discuss the health and safety disparities facing Chicagoans of color. ICYMI: “People are still suffering,” one expert on Chicago gun violence told Lakeidra Chavis earlier this month. “The danger is to take your eye off the other things … the drivers for violence are still there.”
Meanwhile: Illinois gun owners get renewal deadline extension. Residents whose firearm owners identification cards and concealed carry permits are set to expire will have up to a year after the end of the coronavirus state of emergency to renew them, the Illinois State Police said. Licensed concealed carriers will also be able to postpone a required three-hour training.
An anti-violence activist in St. Louis died of coronavirus. The Reverend Carl Smith, the lead mediator with Better Family Life’s violence de-escalation program, passed away on Thursday. Smith, a former police officer, was 62.
DATA POINT
Between March 27 and April 2, there were at least 19 murder-suicides, including four attempted ones, according to an analysis of news coverage. That’s nearly double the average week and a possible indicator of the rise in domestic violence that experts have feared could accompany stay-at-home orders around the country. — HuffPost
