Top Story
The Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association, which represents nearly 400 police chiefs, opposes a bill to overhaul the state’s firearms laws in its current form, the group’s executive director said at a public hearing on Tuesday. Members are concerned about a provision limiting where gun owners can bring their weapons that doesn’t include carve-outs for off-duty law enforcement officers. [The Boston Globe]
The Trajectory
For 12 days in September, New Orleans experienced an anomaly: The Police Department reported zero homicides and hardly any nonfatal shootings. The city hadn’t gone that long without a homicide since 2019, when it saw the fewest in nearly half a century. Overall, homicides there have dropped 24 percent so far this year.
Gun violence is falling nationwide, but the decline in New Orleans is even more pronounced. No one is exactly sure exactly why violent crime appears to be dropping this year, Chip Brownlee writes in the latest edition of The Trajectory, but community leaders and public health officials in New Orleans aren’t using it as a reason to sit back and relax. Instead, they’re upping their game — because if the decrease isn’t sustained, said the city’s health director, “then we really haven’t done anything.” Read more →
What to Know Today
A judge has given the New York Attorney General’s Office a second chance to depose former NRA executive Willes Lee. The office deposed Lee, then a steadfast defender of NRA brass, in June 2022. After being passed over for the role of NRA president in April, Lee reversed his stance and took to blasting the group’s leadership on social media. The AG will likely ask Lee about his claim that he was retaliated against for not complying when “told to do things and to keep the real reason secret.” — Will Van Sant
The Justice Department will not bring charges against Border Patrol agents who shot and killed a Native man, Raymond Mattia, outside his home in a remote Tohono O’odham village in southern Arizona earlier this year. Mattia’s family says prosecutors have not answered their questions about his death; relatives plan to file a civil rights lawsuit against the federal government for violating guidelines on victims’ rights. [The Intercept]
California’s voter-approved ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition can remain in effect while legal challenges play out, the 9th Circuit ruled in a 7-4 vote this week. The decision stays a September 22 ruling by gun-friendly U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez. [Reuters] Context: A chart by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry’s trade group, about the number of high-capacity magazines in the U.S. was featured as evidence in Benitez’s case. But the data is questionable — and another district judge, a Trump appointee, ruled in July that it was “entitled to little weight.”
The African American Clergy Collective of Tennessee worked with state lawmakers on legislation to treat gun violence as a public health issue, proposing to improve public health data collection and research, as well as access to trauma recovery services. The bill didn’t make it out of committee — so now, the collective is partnering with pediatricians to address the issue themselves. [Nashville Tennessean]
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson campaigned on a promise to address violent crime by investing in social services. Does his first city budget deliver? [Chicago Sun-Times]
Archive
Why Don’t Restrictions on Guns Cover the Police?: For as long as police in America have carried guns, they have been spared from many of the prohibitions that apply to the public. Experts address why law enforcement are often exempted from firearms restrictions. (November 2022)
