Top Story
When West Virginia lawmakers passed a campus carry bill this year, they included a requirement for colleges to install pricey gun storage cabinets — and no funding to do it. The state’s universities, many in the throes of financial issues, are now tasked with implementing the law before it goes into effect next July. [West Virginia Watch]
The Gun Machine
From 1966 through the 1990s,, high-profile crimes committed with powerful weapons left American police officers feeling outgunned. That spurred a surge in militarization, often paid for with taxpayer dollars — and turned law enforcement into one of the gun industry’s largest customers.
The fifth episode of The Gun Machine (a podcast from WBUR and The Trace) explores how, and when, gun companies like Glock courted law enforcement departments across the country — and how, along the way, police became the industry’s “linchpin for success in building gun empires.”
What to Know Today
Washington state Senator Jeff Wilson, a Republican, was arrested at a Hong Kong airport on charges of possessing a locally unregistered firearm after baggage screeners in Portland, Oregon, failed to detect an unloaded pistol in his briefcase prior to his departure. Wilson’s office said he didn’t realize that he had a gun in his possession and cooperated with law enforcement. [The New York Times/OPB]
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser introduced a new public safety package that would backtrack many police reforms passed in the wake of George Floyd’s 2020 murder. The mayor’s “tough-on-crime” proposal, meant to counter a staggering rise in homicides in the city, includes a measure to ease restrictions on police use-of-force. [DCist]
U.S. Capitol Police are seeing an increase in reports of threats of violence against members of Congress and their families, and the department has expressed concern about a potential lone-wolf attack on a lawmaker. The wife of GOP Representative Don Bacon, of Nebraska, reportedly slept with a loaded gun as a safety precaution after receiving several chilling phone calls about her husband’s positions on the House speaker race. [Roll Call/The New Republic]
After losing the Democratic primary to a reform-minded public defender, incumbent Pittsburgh-area District Attorney Stephen Zappala switched parties — and ramped up his “law-and-order” rhetoric, most recently with a TV ad featuring shooters at a Philadelphia gas station. Meanwhile, his opponent, Matt Dugan, has argued that addressing a wide range of economic issues could help reduce gun violence. [Bolts]
Anonymous gun owners turned in almost 500 firearms — including ghost guns, sawed-off shotguns, assault rifles, and one Cold War-era submachine gun — to law enforcement officers at a gun buyback event in Honolulu. Officials said they will not check whether any of the weapons can be traced to a crime, to encourage more people to attend future “no questions asked” buyback events. [Honolulu Civil Beat]
America’s largest TV providers and social media companies have explicit bans on firearms sales and marketing on their platforms — policies that pushed gunmakers to advertise their wares via less conventional channels. A new report from Sandy Hook Promise makes the case that the gun industry has used its promotional tactics to cultivate a market among children. [Mother Jones]
Data Point
19.8 per day — the average number of firearms confiscated by Transportation Security Administration workers in 2023. The agency predicts that it will surpass last year’s record for firearm confiscations, which topped out at 6,542. [Transportation Security Administration]
