Good morning, Bulletin readers. The FBI and New Jersey state officials have echoed Jersey City’s mayor in calling this week’s attack a case of terror, fueled by both anti-Semitic and anti-police views. More details on that, in your end-of-week roundup.
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WHAT TO KNOW TODAY
“A domestic terrorism incident with a hate crime bias.” That’s how the FBI is treating Tuesday’s shooting at a Jewish grocery store. The assailants were “fueled both by anti-Semitism and anti-law enforcement beliefs,” New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said Thursday. It appeared the perpetrators acted on their own, Gurbir added. The “attack on our Jewish community … is against all nine million of us who are proud to call ourselves New Jerseyans,” said Governor Phil Murphy, standing beside the attorney general.
One of the shooters had a previous domestic violence charge. The man in the pair of killers in Tuesday’s rampage accrued the charge in Ohio in 2009, but pleaded down to criminal mischief, the The New York Post reported, citing Ohio court records. His co-conspirator and longtime girlfriend, who had no criminal record, bought the pistol and the shotgun used in the rampage from a federally licensed dealer in Ohio last year, the New Jersey attorney general said. Three other guns, including an assault-style rifle, were recovered at the scene, as was a homemade silencer.
Washington’s governor unveiled a plan to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. The polices were part of several proposals to reduce gun violence announced Thursday by Democratic Governor Jay Inslee and the state’s attorney general. In addition to the ban on sales of semiautomatic rifles and ammunition magazines over 10 rounds, the plans would require background checks for ammunition sales. State lawmakers will introduce companion bills in the Democratic-led Legislature.
A federal judge blocked a Los Angeles law requiring businesses vying for city contracts to disclose ties to the National Rifle Association. The gun group sued the city over the policy, which the City Council unanimously passed in February in response to the Thousand Oaks shooting. On Thursday, the judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the measure while the case plays out.
A gun reform group has asked the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to fix regulatory shortcoming on “ghost guns.” The new legal petition from Everytown for Gun Safety argues the bureau should “correct its own failure to regulate untraceable ghost guns,” which are homemade and lack serial numbers. The ATF contends that receivers included in ghost gun assembly kits need serial numbers to be considered a gun. But a nearly finished receiver should be considered a firearm under the 1968 Gun Control Act, the claim states. (Everytown provides grants to The Trace through its nonpolitical arm. Here’s our list of major donors and our policy on editorial independence.)
A rabbi, a pastor, and a minister in Oregon are trying to get an assault weapons ban on the 2020 ballot. The three religious leaders in Portland filed petitions with the state’s elections board to ban the guns and high-capacity magazines, and raise the minimum gun-buying age to 21. “We’re united in the sense that what the biblical text teaches is that we can’t stand idly by while our neighbor bleeds,” said Rabbi Michael Cahana.
RETRACTION: “Police Violence and the Health of Black Infants” study. The December 6 edition of The Daily Bulletin included an item about a study concluding that police killings of unarmed blacks led to adverse health effects in black children. On December 11, the author said the study would be retracted because of classification errors in the data.
DATA POINT
A pair of fundraising campaigns for victims of the Jersey City rampage raised more than $315,000 in a single day. —Hoboken Patch
