Featured Story
James and Jennifer Crumbley were each sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison for their roles in the 2021 mass shooting at Michigan’s Oxford High School that was carried out by their then-teenage son. The parents — each convicted on four counts of involuntary manslaughter, for the four students their son killed — are the first to be held criminally responsible for a mass school shooting committed by their child, and were convicted by separate juries. [Detroit Free Press/CNN]
Missing Pieces
What happens to a gun after it goes missing?
According to a new analysis from the University of California, Davis, there’s a decent chance that it’ll end up at a crime scene. For the study, published last month in the journal Injury Epidemiology, researchers examined over 8 million gun sales records and tens of thousands of reports of crime guns recovered by law enforcement. In his latest story, The Trace’s Alain Stephens breaks down the findings — and their potential implications for public policy.
What to Know Today
Americans bought an estimated 1.24 million guns last month, according to an analysis of FBI data. That’s 5 percent less than in March 2023. [The Trace]
In 2023, Leah Moses’ ex-husband shot and killed their 16-year-old son Om in Salt Lake City. Om’s death came after more than a decade of Moses repeatedly warning authorities that her ex was abusive, and just months after Moses had called on the Utah Legislature to pass legislation requiring judges to consider evidence of family violence in custody decisions. This year, Moses returned to the Capitol — and saw her call for change turned into law. [ProPublica]
Haiti doesn’t manufacture firearms, and the United Nations prohibits importing them, yet the gangs that control an estimated 80 percent of the capital, Port-au Prince, seem to have no problem obtaining guns. Their main source? The United States. [The Washington Post]
When Kameenah Bronzell was 15, she started PhillyAngelsss, an Instagram page that memorializes Philadelphians who lost their lives to gun violence. The page quickly amassed followers and became known as a place grieving community members could see their loved one’s death acknowledged. Then, last summer, Bronzell’s brother was shot and killed. [The Philadelphia Inquirer]
Ohio appears to be the first state to purchase “shoot houses” — mobile homes designed for indoor firearms instruction — to train armed public school employees “to respond to an active shooter.” In 2022, state lawmakers relaxed restrictions on gun carrying at work for school personnel, decreasing the required training hours from 700 to 24. [The Guardian]
Data Point
85 percent — the proportion of guns found at crime scenes in Haiti and submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that were traced to the United States in 2021, the most recent year for which data was available. In the Bahamas in 2022, that figure was 98 percent. [The Washington Post]
