What To Know Today
NEW from THE TRACE: 2021 has been a banner year for proponents of permitless carry. Nineteen states now have no requirement for residents to obtain a license before they carry a gun in public. On April 8, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed House Bill 786, making his state the latest to scrap its permitting requirements. Three others — Iowa, Montana, and Utah — have also approved permitless carry laws this year. Twenty years ago, Vermont was the only state that didn’t require a permit, but since then, the laws have become more popular in Republican-led states. That’s despite frequent opposition from law enforcement groups, which say getting rid of permits makes it harder to know who’s legally carrying a gun. “You’re simply going to have more people on our streets and in our neighborhoods, carrying guns with no training and no background check,” said Bill Gibbons, a former public safety commissioner in Tennessee and president of the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission. You can read my piece here. — Chip Brownlee, investigative fellow
Philadelphia directs more resources to community programs in updated gun violence prevention plan. The city will invest an additional $18.7 million for anti-violence efforts under a long-awaited update to the 2019 Roadmap to Safe Communities that the mayor will unveil today. That brings the total budget for violence prevention to $35 million for fiscal year 2022. The money includes investments for violence interruption and intervention efforts, additional after-school and community programs, more behavior and mental health services, neighborhood beautification, and extra transitional jobs, including a pilot program of the promising Rapid Employment and Development Initiative, based in Chicago. The road map aims to cut shootings and homicides by 30 percent from 2020’s elevated numbers, returning gun violence roughly to the levels seen in 2019.
Ex-officer who fatally shot Daunte Wright charged with manslaughter. Kim Potter, who resigned on Tuesday, faces up to 10 years in jail if convicted, though an officer with no criminal record would be unlikely to get the maximum sentence. “While we appreciate that the district attorney is pursuing justice for Daunte, no conviction can give the Wright family their loved one back,” the family’s lawyers said. “Driving while Black continues to result in a death sentence. A 26-year veteran of the force knows the difference between a Taser and a firearm.”
Investigators: Bullet that injured officer in Tennessee school shooting didn’t come from gun of teen who was killed. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation identified the 17-year-old student whom police fatally shot at Austin-East Magnet High School in Knoxville on Monday while responding to a report of an armed student. While the TBI determined that the victim’s gun was fired during the ensuing confrontation, they said the bullet that struck an officer was not from the student’s weapon.
More than 100 gun reform and human rights groups urge Biden to end firearms exports to Mexico. Oversight of American firearm exports is poor, many Mexican public authorities are widely known to be corrupt, and American-made weapons continue to be implicated in cartel and police violence in the country, including a massacre in January that left 19 people dead. “It is in the interest of both the United States, Mexico, and our Central American neighbors that we suspend such exports until reliable and effective end use controls are established,” the new letter to President Biden reads.
Prosecutors decline to charge the Capitol Police officer who fatally shot insurrectionist. Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran from San Diego, was one of five people who died in or outside the Capitol building on January 6. An officer shot Babbitt as she attempted to climb into a broken door into the building. “Based on that investigation, officials determined that there is insufficient evidence to support a criminal prosecution,” the Justice Department said in a release.
Data Point
63 percent — the share of all voters who support President Joe Biden’s executive action to regulate ghost guns, according to fresh polling. A plurality (46 percent) also approves his efforts to restrict so-called stabilizing braces. [Morning Consult]
