Featured Story
Nearly three months after the shooting at a Super Bowl parade in Kansas City, Missouri, at least three of the 24 people who were wounded are still living with bullets in their bodies. Their recovery highlights a surprising gray area in medicine: Even as gun violence is increasingly viewed as a public health crisis in the U.S., there are no clear medical protocols on bullet removals. [KCUR and KFF Health News]
Philadelphia
The first time a police officer in Philadelphia was convicted of killing someone while on duty was in 1870, when Ulysses S. Grant was president. The second happened more than a century later, during the Carter administration in 1978. Forty years later, District Attorney Larry Krasner took office — and, over seven years at his post, garnered as many convictions for on-duty killings, including the city’s first murder conviction for an officer at work.
But even as Krasner fulfills his campaign promise to arrest cops who break the law, his detractors say that he is so soft on crime that he’s actually contributing to the city’s gun violence crisis, and, at the same time, hampering the Police Department tasked with shooting investigations. Philly’s DA has been subject to a steady stream of criticism in recent years — he’s been accused of behaving more like a defense attorney than a prosecutor — that in 2023 escalated to an unsuccessful impeachment bid led by state GOP lawmakers. In his latest story, The Trace’s Mensah M. Dean examines Krasner’s record, the history of prosecuting police in Philadelphia, and what’s next for the embattled district attorney.
What to Know Today
Many gun safety measures, like safe firearm storage laws and requirements for guns to be removed from people subject to a domestic violence restraining order, are broadly popular among Americans. So why is it so difficult for policymakers to implement these regulations? Attorney and journalist Jill Filipovic argues that the rise of originalist constitutional theory is to blame. [Slate]
Law enforcement agencies and prosecutors across the country have used Cybercheck, an artificial intelligence tool, to help investigate, charge, and convict suspects accused of serious crimes. Now, Cybercheck is under scrutiny, as defense lawyers question its accuracy and reliability. And in Ohio last month, lawyers of defendants in a gun homicide case alleged that Cybercheck’s creator lied under oath about his expertise and made false claims about the tool’s usage. [NBC]
A bill to ban the sale and transfer of some semiautomatic firearms was shelved in the Colorado Legislature this week. The legislation was pulled at the request of its Democratic sponsor after facing opposition from Democrats in the state Senate, including from a lawmaker whose son was killed in the 2012 mass shooting at an Aurora movie theater. [Associated Press]
Misleading narratives about gun violence in the U.S. are permeating Chinese-language social media platforms, particularly WeChat, according to a new report from a civil rights nonprofit. The group identified five key disinformation narratives, some of which mirror American right-wing conspiracy theories. [NBC]
Archive
How to Have Better Conversations With Survivors of Gun Violence: The Trace spoke to nearly 20 survivors about how to engage with them. Mostly, they want to be seen and heard. (December 2023)
