Good morning, Bulletin readers, and happy birthday to The Trace — We turn four today. Since our launch in 2015, we’ve published more than 1,500 articles and partnered with 103 other media outlets. We remain the only newsroom dedicated to covering the gun violence crisis full-time and in its entirety. With your support, our reporting is generating real impact.
Thank you for being such loyal subscribers, for sharing our nonprofit journalism with the people in your lives, and for sustaining our reporting with your donations. We could not do any of this work without you. —James Burnett, editorial director
Receive this daily news briefing by email every morning. Sign up here.
WHAT TO KNOW TODAY
Police stopped an active shooter in downtown Dallas before he could hurt anyone. Officers shot and killed a man after he opened fire outside a federal court building on Monday morning. A staff photographer from The Dallas Morning News managed to capture an image of the 22-year-old assailant, who wielded a semiautomatic rifle, carried several ammunition magazines on his belt, and wore a mask and combat gear. According to the man’s Facebook page, he owned two 40-round ammunition magazines in a collection he added to two days before his attempted attack. The Trace’s Alain Stephens reported last week on the gun industry’s promulgation of extra-large magazines and their use in a number of prominent mass shootings.
Police say they foiled an anti-Semitic mass shooting plot in California. Ross Anthony Farca, 23, was arrested last week for posting about his plan to kill Jews. Officers found a semiautomatic rifle and 13 magazines in his home northeast of San Francisco.
Lawyers representing Sandy Hook families reported Alex Jones for child pornography. A court previously ordered the conspiracy-mongering Infowars host to turn over files to the plaintiffs in their defamation suit against him. The families’ law firm said in court documents that they’d contacted the FBI after finding child pornography in emails sent to an Infowars address. Jones says he’s being framed. The parties will go before a judge on Tuesday.
At least two trans women have been fatally shot this Pride Month. Zoe Spears, 23, was shot and killed in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Fairmount Heights, Maryland, last Thursday. On June 6, Chanel Scurlock, 23, was fatally shot in Lumberton, North Carolina. So far this year, at least eight trans women have fatally shot in the United States. All of the victims were black.
The mayor of Phoenix apologized after officers held a black family at gunpoint. Mayor Kate Gallego said that she was “sick” over the May 29 incident, which was captured on video. Dravon Ames and his fiancée, Iesha Harper, said police pointed guns at their heads in front of their 1- and 4-year-old daughters after someone reported that one of their children had stolen a Barbie doll from a store. The family plans to sue.
An Indiana teen was killed while trying to sell his Xbox. Johnny Peluyera, 16, and his father met up with two men to sell the gaming system. One of the men brandished a gun, and Johnny was shot in the head while running toward his father’s car. His newly acquired driver’s license “was still coming in the mail,” his mother said. “He didn’t even get to hold it.”
A pro-gun rights Parkland survivor had his Harvard acceptance rescinded over past racist comments. Kyle Kashuv, 18, tweeted on Monday that the university rescinded his acceptance on June 3, shortly after racial slurs he’d made two years ago resurfaced. Harvard has retracted its offers to other applicants in the past after finding they had circulated racist memes or content.
ONE LAST THING
He was the last NRA-endorsed Democrat in the Virginia General Assembly. Then came the last straw. State Senator John Edwards, 75, worked to block universal background checks after the shooting at Virginia Tech, supported a repeal of the state’s handgun buying limit in 2012, and happily accepted the NRA’s endorsement during his last election in 2015, shortly after the on-air WDBJ-TV shooting. But this year, he backed the entire slate of gun reforms proposed by the Democratic governor. His evolution was a response to the gun group’s increasing resistance to any type of reform. “The NRA’s attitude was always the same,” Edwards, a former Marine, told Virginia Mercury. “You can’t do anything. Nothing can be done. But something has to be done.”
