What to Know Today
Chicagoans are worried about gun violence. How are mayoral candidates responding? With Chicago’s mayoral election less than two months away, advocates are worried that the slate of nine candidates, including incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot, don’t have a feasible plan to quell the violence in their city. The contenders all say they prioritize public safety, but many of their platforms rely primarily on bolstering the police department — which violence prevention organizers say is a mistake. In her first story for The Trace, Chicago reporter Rita Oceguera reached out to the top five candidates about what they’ve said, and done, on interrupting gun violence in Chicago.
Supreme Court leaves New York gun restrictions in effect — for now. The unsigned decision denied an emergency request by gun owners to block the state’s embattled firearms law while legal challenges play out. It’s still possible the high court could take up the case: In a joint statement, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas said the ruling was not based on “any view on the merits of the law,” and that the restrictions, enacted just after Bruen, raise “novel and serious questions” about the Second Amendment.
Get the Bulletin in your inbox. Sign up for our newsletters here.Illinois sheriffs won’t fully enforce assault weapons law. Part of the state’s new ban on assault weapons, passed and signed into law Tuesday, requires residents who already own assault weapons to register them with law enforcement. Several county sheriffs said their offices won’t check to see if residents comply with the registration requirement. The police officials argue that the ban violates the Second Amendment, the Journal Standard reports, joining critics who say the law is doomed in court.
“This kid’s a baby”: When a young child becomes a shooter, who’s responsible? The 6-year-old who allegedly shot a teacher in Newport News, Virginia, isn’t the first young child to fire a gun at school. In at least 11 school shootings since 1999, kids under the age of 10 have been behind the trigger — and The Washington Post found that, in these cases, prosecutors have mostly placed the blame on adults. The exception, not the rule: A kid can’t shoot anyone without getting a firearm that an adult is responsible for. But as Alex Yablon reported for The Trace in 2018, it’s not that common for gun buyers to end up in court for their complicity in shootings by children.
Revelations in Uvalde school police chief’s botched response to Robb Elementary School massacre. Pete Arredondo told investigators he was more concerned about saving other students than stopping the shooter, video obtained by CNN reveals, confirming that he did not follow active shooter protocols and admitting he effectively left the children and teachers trapped with the gunman for dead. Arredondo, who was fired in August, stuck with the decision to treat the shooter as a barricaded subject for more than an hour even as it was confirmed that children in the classrooms were alive and being shot at.
Federal public defenders ask appeals court to allow people on bail to possess guns. The group of attorneys filed a brief Tuesday arguing that barring pretrial criminal defendants from having firearms is inconsistent with Bruen. The authors said that pretrial bans do not fall under a “narrow, well-defined historical tradition,” and so do not pass the constitutionality test laid out in the landmark Supreme Court decision.
Philly DA Larry Krasner is no longer in the hot seat. The Pennsylvania Senate voted to delay Krasner’s impeachment trial indefinitely, City & State reports. A Commonwealth Court judge said last month that the articles of impeachment filed against the reform-minded district attorney don’t meet the standard for “misbehavior in office.” Republicans in the state Legislature have blamed Krasner for Philadelphia’s ongoing gun violence crisis.
Data Point
>331,000 — the number of children who have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine. [The Washington Post]
