Good morning, Bulletin readers. NRA members have been following the scandals spilling from the organization. Now a group of them is organizing to try to root out corruption at the organization from the inside. Our story leads your Monday roundup.
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WHAT TO KNOW TODAY
NEW from THE TRACE: New gun rights campaign seeks to reform the scandal-plagued NRA. For decades, the National Rifle Association has told members that the Second Amendment was imperiled by left-leaning politicians, the liberal media, and billionaire philanthropists. But amid ongoing turmoil and financial malfeasance at America’s most prominent gun advocacy organization, a group of members believes gun rights are increasingly threatened by a new nemesis: the NRA’s own leadership. Recently, a small faction of longtime NRA members launched the “Save the Second” campaign to attempt to force the NRA to clean house. What started as a Facebook discussion has morphed into a nonprofit organization seeking wholesale reforms. Alex Yablon has the story.
At least seven people were wounded in a shooting at a Louisiana nightclub. The gunfire at Stadium Ultralounge & Bar in Baton Rouge early Saturday reportedly stemmed from a fight in which one patron smashed a bottle over another patron’s head. The incident is one of 11 mass shootings (defined as four or more victims injured or killed by gunfire) since Friday, which wounded a total of 54 people.
Gun violence in Chicago left at least four people dead and 47 wounded over the weekend. That’s a 155 percent jump from last weekend, the first official weekend of summer. Overall, the Chicago Police Department says its data shows shootings during the first half of 2019 were at a four-year low.
More details have emerged about a massive international gun smuggling bust. Department of Homeland Security officials allege that at least 5,300 guns and firearm components — including more than 2,500 AR-15s — were purchased by straw buyers from federally licensed dealers and at gun shows in Florida and shipped to Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay via the U.S. Postal Service. Police say the straw buyers were a married couple in their 60s who lived in Broward County.
A quarter of sudden deaths of children in South Carolina involve unsecured firearms. According to a report from the State Child Fatality Advisory Committee, 66 of the sudden or unexplained deaths of children in the state between 2010 and 2017 were the result of unintentional shootings with unsecured guns.
ONE LAST THING
Alabama authorities are facing backlash for arresting a gun violence survivor in the death of her fetus. Marshae Jones, 27, who was shot during an fight in Pleasant Grove in December, was indicted for manslaughter last week. Police say she was culpable because she started the fight that led to the shooting; the woman who actually fired the gun has not been charged. Criticism has poured in from all corners of the country, but the local police chief is offering no apologies, saying, “If the laws are there, we are sworn to enforce them.” The New York Times had a different take: “Gun rights are popular here. Reproductive rights are not.” Alabama’s “personhood” law, which confers rights to unborn children, was a forerunner to the near-total abortion ban that its Legislature passed this spring. Jones’s lawyers are filing a motion to dismiss the charges.