What to Know Today
DHS blocks research on domestic terror threats, violent extremism. Homeland Security allocated millions for research on domestic terrorism in 2020— but the data collection hasn’t begun, and many projects have been stalled or scrapped, The Washington Post reports. The delay is due to internal disputes over privacy protocols that wouldn’t usually apply to work based on open-source records, roadblocks researchers described as “crazytown” and “beyond logic.” Related: A Senate report obtained by NBC News alleges that DHS, the FBI, and social media companies aren’t adequately addressing the threat of white supremacist and anti-government extremist violence.
At least 32 trans people have been killed in 2022. According to the Human Rights Campaign’s annual report on the subject, at least 302 transgender and gender nonconforming people have been killed in the U.S. since 2013, when the group began tracking the deaths. Two-thirds of recorded killings since 2013 have involved a gun. Fifty-nine trans people were killed in 2021, a record year.
UVA shooting suspect charged with murder. The student who allegedly opened fire on a University of Virginia bus, killing three, faces counts of second-degree murder, malicious wounding, and using a handgun in the commission of a felony. The suspected gunman had previously been prohibited from purchasing firearms, CNN reports, because of a pending criminal charge that was later reduced to a misdemeanor; he legally purchased firearms in February and July of this year. The suspect was also the subject of a gun-related probe by the university.
Prosecutors seek life without parole for Michigan school shooter. The 16-year-old gunman, who pleaded guilty to murder and terrorism for killing four students at Oxford High School last year, withdrew a possible insanity defense late last month. Sentencing is scheduled for February. His parents face rare charges of involuntary manslaughter for ignoring their son’s mental health issues, the Detroit Free Press reports, and helping him obtain the gun used in the shooting.
Little oversight for Texas teachers carrying guns. An in-depth documentary from CBS Reports, “Guns in the Classroom,” examines the state laws about arming school staff — finding that regulations are sparse, and individual school districts decide on a case-by-case basis the amount and type of training required for teachers to bring firearms on campus. Texans have a complicated relationship with guns, and conservative state officials have pushed arming teachers as a solution to school shootings. But the data on putting more guns in schools isn’t encouraging. ICYMI: In Uvalde, residents continue to pressure Texas lawmakers to address gun access. It may become a fight that spans generations.
In Baltimore hospitals, 1 in 8 victims of gun violence are children. A Baltimore Sun analysis of five years of data showed that kids, age 10 to 19, constitute more than one-eighth of gun violence victims taken to hospitals in Baltimore and surrounding counties. The violence is a major public health concern: Victims enter a short-staffed pediatric health system, and the economic burden of in-patient emergency visits for gunshot wounds is often paid by taxpayers through Medicaid.
Data Point
85 percent — the proportion of transgender and gender nonconforming victims of fatal violence since 2013 who were people of color. Transgender women represented the same percentage of victims of fatal violence. [Human Rights Campaign]
