Top Story
Virginia launched a fund — the first of its kind, experts say — to provide long-term services to mass shooting victims and their families. The state approved a one-time, $10 million appropriation that organizers believe they can use to permanently sustain the fund through investment and interest. [The Washington Post]
From Our Team
Less than two weeks before Karina González and her teenage daughter were shot and killed in Illinois, allegedly by her husband, González submitted an order of protection against him that could have removed the weapon that police say ended their lives.
Domestic violence and gun violence prevention advocates say their deaths are a result of a flawed system for collecting firearms from people deemed dangerous. Though subjects of protective orders are expected to surrender their firearms to police or transfer them to someone with a valid firearms owners identification card, The Trace’s Rita Oceguera reports, there’s no timeline for how quickly that must be done — and local law enforcement officers don’t have the authority to search subjects’ property and seize their weapons. Now, Illinois legislators are working to fix the ambiguity in executing orders of protection — and González’s story is at the center of the effort. Read more →
What to Know Today
The cities with the highest firearm homicide rates are clustered in the South, according to a new analysis of Gun Violence Archive data by the Center for American Progress. The report, which examined the 300 most populous U.S. cities, found that the cities with the highest rates were generally in “red states” — defined as those that awarded all or the majority of their electoral votes to the GOP candidate in the 2020 presidential election — with less restrictive gun laws. [Axios/Center for American Progress]
New York City Councilmember Inna Vernikov, a Republican, was arrested Friday and charged for bringing a gun to a pro-Palestine protest on a college campus. According to some news reports, Vernikov has a concealed carry license, but it is against state law to possess a gun on college campuses. [Gothamist]
The ATF is aware that gun sellers at a notorious gun emporium in Littleton, Massachusetts, exploit a loophole in state law that lets dealers sell firearms restricted by the state, newly obtained records show. Known as the “frame game,” the tactic involves dealers conducting otherwise illegal sales by separating guns into parts and selling them in separate transactions; an ATF spokesperson said the agency is focused on enforcing federal laws and does not deny licenses for potential violations of state law. [The Boston Globe]
Many colleges and universities want to maintain open campuses, but after a series of shootings at Morgan State University in Baltimore, several campuses in the Baltimore-D.C. area are reevaluating their security measures. Students say they increasingly feel like they must always be on guard. [The Baltimore Banner]
In 2016, West Virginia legislators overrode a gubernatorial veto to pass a permitless concealed carry law, a measure supporters argued would make the state safer. But a recent study from researchers at West Virginia University shows that gun deaths were about 26 percent more frequent in the state after the law was enacted. [Mountain State Spotlight]
Young people in the U.S. grew up doing active-shooter drills and watching massacres carried out with firearms play out on TV. Experts say Gen Z’s frequent exposure to violence and collective trauma contribute to an interest in gun ownership — and geography plays a big part in how that interest manifests. [The Guardian]
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner blamed lawmakers beholden to the gun lobby for the absence of an arrest in a police officer’s shooting death, saying in a statement that some politicians “serve the NRA’s bloody agenda instead of serving and protecting the public.” [Insider]
Data Point
48 percent — the increase in gun homicides in West Virginia between the 17 years prior to the enactment of its permitless concealed carry law and five years after. The majority of the state’s gun deaths are suicides. [Mountain State Spotlight]
