Featured Story
Suicide is unusually common among farmers. Researchers attribute this in part to a reluctance to seek mental health care and easy access to guns, which are a deeply enmeshed, sometimes necessary, part of life in many rural areas. A new Agriculture Department program is working to counter the trend by training health care professionals to speak with farmers about their stress, and sponsoring hotlines and support groups. [KFF Health News]
Find Support
Help is Available 24 Hours a Day
Crisis Text Line
Text 741741
The Veterans Crisis Line
988, press 1, or text 838255
Help Someone Else
Understand warning signs.
“Stand Your Ground”
Until the evening of June 8, Maurice Byrd never had a reason to use his 9mm Smith & Wesson semiautomatic handgun.
Byrd, a Black Army veteran with a permit for his weapon, had called 911 to report that the man who lived in the apartment above his suburban Philadelphia barber shop was verbally assaulting him, calling him a racial epithet, according to witnesses and a recording of the 911 call. Stephen Strassburg, a 37-year-old white man who had reportedly used racist language in several previous incidents involving Byrd, grabbed him by the front of his shirt. Strassburg threw three punches before Byrd, still on the phone with emergency services, repeatedly fired his handgun, striking Strassburg twice.
Strassburg died, and Byrd was charged with first-degree murder in a state with a “stand your ground” law that doesn’t include the duty to retreat in most cases. His trial, reports The Trace’s Mensah M. Dean, will test the limits of “stand your ground” in Pennsylvania. The case also raises questions about the racial limits of these laws more broadly. Even as self-defense laws proliferate nationwide, few shootings are deemed justifiable — especially when the shooter is Black.
Elections
Vice President Kamala Harris has played a prominent role in the Biden administration’s gun policy work. Now, as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president, she’s in the process of choosing her own running mate, who may be entrusted to guide the gun reform agenda of her administration if she’s elected.
But where do the leading Democratic vice president contenders stand on guns? In their latest story, The Trace’s Chip Brownlee and Jennifer Mascia explore the records of seven potential VP picks.
What to Know Today
Almost all shootings in New York City are concentrated in 4 percent of the city’s 120,000 blocks, an analysis of four years of Police Department data shows. As gun violence declines citywide, what’s life like for residents of the blocks where it persists? [Gothamist]
Nearly two weeks after a shooter attempted to assassinate Donald Trump, the FBI confirmed that the former president’s ear was struck either by a bullet or fragments of a bullet. The statement followed comments from agency Director Christopher Wray that appeared to question whether the wound was caused by gunfire or shrapnel. Before the FBI’s confirmation, federal law enforcement agencies had not provided information about the injury, and Trump has not released his medical records or allowed the doctors who treated him to speak publicly. [Associated Press]
Citing the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn an effective federal ban on bump stocks, conservative U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor overturned a Biden administration prohibition on “forced reset triggers,” which can enable rifles to fire faster than military-grade M16 machine guns. O’Connor, who is based in Fort Worth, Texas, is a go-to judge for, among other right-wing litigants, pro-firearms entities. [Reuters]
Domestic violence deaths in Illinois rose by 110 percent last year, according to an annual report by the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which released its findings early this year due to the alarming figures. The coalition hopes its 2023 report will prompt action on Karina’s Bill, a stalled measure that would require law enforcement officers to quickly remove guns from people who have orders of protection against them. [WBEZ]
Violent crimes have largely returned to pre-pandemic levels in many U.S. cities, the Council on Criminal Justice found in its latest trend report. Among the cities that CCJ examined, there were 2 percent fewer homicides during the first half of 2024 than during the first half of 2019, and gun assaults were 1 percent higher in the first half of the year than in the first half of 2019. [Council on Criminal Justice]
Data Point
18 percent — the reduction in gun assaults in the first half of 2024 than during the same period in 2023, in more than two dozen U.S. cities with consistent violent crime data. [Council on Criminal Justice]
