Top Story
Republicans in the Ohio House are pushing a “Second Amendment Preservation Act” to prevent local police from enforcing federal gun restrictions. The bill resembles Missouri’s 2021 “Second Amendment Preservation Act,” which is currently blocked from taking effect, and in more than just the name: As in Missouri two years ago, Ohio law enforcement officials say the measure could thwart police efforts to solve gun crimes. [Cincinnati Enquirer]
Extremism
On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, three Palestinian college students in Burlington, Vermont, were out on a walk after a birthday party, speaking a mix of Arabic and English. Two of them donned a keffiyeh, a traditional scarf worn across the Middle East that’s become a symbol of Palestinian pride and political resistance. As they continued along their route, they later told police, a white man with a handgun approached, and then shot them without a word. Police arrested a suspect and charged him with attempted murder; while he isn’t yet accused of a hate crime, a state prosecutor said that the shooting was without question “a hateful act.”
The Vermont attack wasn’t an isolated event. Since the war erupted in October, according to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been four gun-related episodes of bias in the U.S. thought to be motivated by the Israel-Hamas war. Meanwhile, antisemitic and Islamaphobic occurences are more broadly surging nationwide. And these trends aren’t new: They follow a pattern similar to other historical moments when international conflicts washed up on America’s shores in the form of hate and violence. The Trace’s Jennifer Mascia has the story.
What to Know Today
Unhoused people appear to have been targeted in a series of shootings in two cities: Five homeless people were shot, one fatally, in Las Vegas on Friday, and Los Angeles Police arrested a suspect linked to three killings of homeless men over a four-day span last week. Unhoused people are more likely to become victims of homicide than people who are housed. [The Guardian/Los Angeles Times]
Chicago Police established their Community Safety Team to rebuild trust between officers and the communities they serve, following years of units making heavy use of stop-and-frisk encounters to search people for guns and drugs. But police accountability watchdogs say the Community Safety Team is still employing aggressive tactics — this time under the veneer of community policing. [Bolts]
FBI data shows that the number of hate crimes reported by police increased in 2022. But the offenses that count as hate crimes vary between jurisdictions, and they don’t always include violence: Wyoming, for instance, has no hate crime law on the books, while Washington, D.C., has robust protections. [The Marshall Project]
Two labor associations for New York City bodega workers say they’ve helped more than 200 members apply for gun licenses since the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision last year, citing an increasingly dangerous environment. According to the head of one of the organizations, the bodega workers have been training in de-escalation tactics. [New York Post/CBS New York]
Archive
A Hidden Ingredient in Chicago’s Gun Violence: The Lack of Housing Options for At-Risk Young Men: “We know that wherever there is homelessness and housing insecurity, there is violence. So I think anybody who is concerned about crime in a city like Chicago should look at homelessness as a contributing factor.” (November 2019)
