What To Know Today
Police confirm use of fully automatic conversion device in Sacramento mass shooting, and make two more arrests. The Sacramento police said that the handgun recovered at the scene of Sunday’s mass shooting had “been converted to a weapon capable of automatic gunfire,” confirming our reporting. Police arrested Smiley Martin, 27, in connection with the shooting, and his older brother is also in police custody as a person of interest. Martin will be booked on charges including possession of a firearm by a prohibited person and possession of a machine gun. The Sacramento Bee detailed his lengthy court record and obtained a letter from the city DA arguing against his early release from prison last year for a domestic violence conviction. Later on Tuesday, a third man allegedly at the scene was arrested for being a prohibited gun possessor, but it was unclear if he was otherwise connected to the shooting.
The long-term effects of gun violence injuries on victims and their families. A team of medical researchers compared health care data between a control group and more than 6,000 gunshot injury survivors and their family members. They found that the gun violence survivors had significantly higher rates of pain diagnoses and psychiatric disorders, and an 85 percent increase in substance use disorders a year after injury. Mental health worsened among family members as well. The researchers also found that medical spending costs for survivors increased by 400 percent in the first year after injury, or nearly $2,500 per month. “Nonfatal firearm injuries are more than twice as frequent [as gun deaths] and have economic and clinical implications for survivors and their family members,” the authors wrote, “with direct costs largely borne by society through commercial insurers, self-insured employers, and public programs like Medicare.” The findings were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Bipartisan Senate bill would train officers in de-escalation when confronted with people in crisis. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and John Cornyn introduced the Law Enforcement De-Escalation Training Act, which seeks to provide alternatives to the use of force through training, especially in confronting mental and behavioral health, crises, and suicide. Specifically, the bill would require the Department of Justice to develop curricula for officer training on mental health, authorize $70 million in annual grant funding for training programs through 2026, and require impact evaluations of any new training, among other programs and partnerships. Six senators — three Republicans and three Democrats — joined in co-sponsoring.
Already home to the nation’s strongest gun restrictions, California considers more. Amid the Sacramento shooting, state legislators are considering 24 separate bills, per a tally from NPR, including a measure that would let gun violence victims and local governments sue the gun industry and another that would further restrict on ghost guns. California currently has more than 100 gun laws.
Data Point
$4.8 million — the settlement Georgia will pay to the widow of Julian E. Lewis, a 60-year-old Black man who was fatally shot in 2020 by a white state trooper who allegedly stopped him for a broken taillight. Lewis was one of more than 400 drivers or passengers killed after being pulled over for a nonviolent offense, according to a New York Times analysis of publicly reported cases over the last five years. [The Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
