What to Know Today
A majority of gun owners favor several gun reforms — but not a ban on assault weapons. That’s from a new NPR/Ipsos survey finding support for universal background checks (84 percent), raising the minimum age to buy an AR-15-style rifle from 18 to 21 (72 percent), raising the minimum to age buy any gun from 18 to 21 (67 percent), and red flag laws (65 percent). There was a predictable split between Democratic and Republican gun owners, but a majority of the latter nonetheless supported the policies. At the same time, just 42 percent of gun owners — fueled by 25 percent support among Republicans — supported a ban on assault-style weapons. “This NPR/Ipsos survey of American gun owners shows that the majority of gun owners are supportive of moderate gun control measures like background checks or increased age requirements, but harbor deep distrust of government suggesting the barriers that exist to more actions on guns,” said Ipsos senior vice president Chris Jackson.
The White House marked the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. President Biden gave a speech honoring the first federal gun law in nearly three decades in an event drawing many leaders in the gun reform and community-violence prevention space. “It matters,” Biden said of the law, while adding that he still wants more action on gun violence including new safe storage laws and a ban on assault-style weapons. “You have to do more than this”: Gun control activist Manuel Oliver, who lost a child at Parkland, momentarily interrupted Biden’s speech before being escorted out by security. “You have to open an office in the White House; name a director,” he said, referring to an office in the executive branch focused on gun violence that some advocates have called for.
Philly sees more female shooting victims amid pandemic shooting surge. The 659 women who were a shooting victim from 2020 through July 7 of this year compares to 560 such victims from 2015 through 2019. The share of female shooting victims has also gone up — from 8 percent of all shootings in 2015 to 13 percent so far this year. Moreover, about 90 percent of the female victims since 2020 were Black or Latino women between the ages of 12 and 55, and the Philadelphia Inquirer identified at least a dozen women who were pregnant at the time they were shot. See more from Up the Block, our Philadelphia community engagement project.
“It was supposed to be an easy day:” A fourth-grade teacher’s harrowing account of the Uvalde shooting. The New York Times spoke to Arnulfo Reyes, a teacher at Robb Elementary School, about the tragedy, the interminable time that he and students waited during the attacks, and his recovery from injury. “Act like you are asleep,” he recalls telling his students. “I kept waiting for someone to come.”
Gun control measures are likely to make it on the ballot in Oregon this fall. Initiative Petition 17 would ban magazines containing more than 10 rounds, mandate a permit for gun purchases, and collect some data on the permits that the Oregon State Police would publish in a yearly report. The ballot initiative will go to voters so long as the Secretary of State’s office verifies a minimum of necessary signatures that were submitted late last week.
Data Point
Almost a quarter — the share of 70,000 gunshot incidents reported in Minneapolis since 2008 that have occurred in the past 20 months. [The Star Tribune]
