Featured Story
Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo said his veto of a bill banning ghost guns last year was justified by a federal judge’s decision to grant a preliminary injunction against a law in Delaware while a legal challenge against it played out. Nevada’s ghost gun legislation, however, was similar to bans in California and Oregon that have not been challenged. Lombardo has previously downplayed the number of ghost guns seized by Las Vegas law enforcement while he served as sheriff. [KUNR]
Chicago
After a shooting, many survivors of gun violence are unexpectedly thrown into a world of recovery, grief, and unanticipated expenses. In Illinois, a program for victims of violent crime uses state and federal funding to help cover some of the costs — and after a 2021 investigation by The Trace found that the program struggled to reach survivors, approve applicants, and reimburse them quickly, lawmakers passed reforms to make the program more accessible and increase the amount of money that victims can receive.
A Trace analysis found that the legislative changes have resulted in survivors receiving more money at a faster pace, but the program is still limited. In Chicago, for example, only about one in 16 eligible victims is applying for funding. The Trace’s Rita Oceguera has more on where the program is succeeding, and where it’s falling short.
What to Know Today
According to a staff email apparently sent by NRA executive Tyler Schropp and obtained by gun rights blogger John Richardson, Colleen Sterner has been promoted to the gun group’s Director of Events for Advancement. Sterner is the niece of former NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre, who first hired her at the organization in 2015 and who, at the time of her promotion, was sitting trial in a civil corruption case brought against the NRA and its top brass by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Former NRA colleagues told The Trace’s Mike Spies in 2021 that, though LaPierre called Sterner an integral employee, she did little work. In a subsequent post, Richardson shared that an NRA spokesperson told him via direct message on X (formerly Twitter) that his “report is 100 percent false.”
Former police officials say the National Guard members deployed to conduct bag searches in New York City’s transit hubs are ill-equipped to respond to crime. Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams initiated a massive law enforcement deployment to the subway system after a series of high-profile violent crimes, including shootings, in trains and stations. But while crime is up in the transit system this year, violence in the subway is still relatively rare, and new research shows that New York City’s overall decline in gun homicides far outperforms other cities. [Gothamist/Vox]
Active shooter drills in schools can be traumatic for the children involved. A California lawmaker wants to create standards for how these trainings are conducted, including requiring notifications about when drills take place and prohibiting the use of simulated gunfire. [Los Angeles Times]
Research has shown that domestic violence is linked to public acts of violence like mass shootings. One of the earliest examples went continuously unrecognized, because it took place before domestic violence was acknowledged as a problem: The perpetrator of the 1966 sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, considered by some experts to be the first public mass killing, had emotionally and physically abused his wife for years before the massacre. [TIME]
Data Point
About one per 1 million rides — the rate of violent crime in New York City’s subway system in mid-2022, roughly equal to the chance of getting injured in a crash if one drives a car two miles. Since then, the city’s overall crime rate has dropped, and subway ridership has increased. [The New York Times]
