About a year ago, a feud between Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the Biden administration over immigration enforcement prompted hundreds of Christian nationalists, conspiracy theorists, and supporters of President Donald Trump to converge on the southern border with Mexico. The “Take Our Border Back” rallies were one of the most intense eruptions of anti-immigrant sentiment in recent U.S. history until last week, when Trump, newly returned to the White House, issued a series of executive orders that turned nativism into White House policy.
Anti-immigrant politics is not isolated from mainstream gun rights culture. In a conversation about her research on a border militia group with The Trace’s Chip Brownlee last February, sociologist Emine Fidan Elcioglu explained that guns “can become a gateway for people to get involved in other forms — and much more extremist forms — of politics.” Shooting ranges and firearm shows became enlistment centers for far-right radicals; in the group she observed, which patrolled the Arizona desert, guns were more important than water.
American gun rights culture and anti-immigrant politics have a complex history of interconnectedness. The story is too long for one newsletter, but I’ll point to one more example, covered in an episode of “In Guns We Trust,” The Trace’s podcast with Long Lead. It’s a deep dive into the history of the National Rifle Association, and the personalities who transformed it into a right-wing political force. One of the primary stewards of this shift was Harlon Carter, who developed the NRA’s lobbying arm and believed that the solution to crime was more guns. Before that, he was the head of the Border Patrol, and during his tenure in the 1950s, he led the largest deportation campaign in American history. You can listen to the episode or read its transcript here.
— Sunny Sone, senior editor
From The Trace
How Chicago Drill Artists Hacked the Conversation about Gun Violence: In his new book, media scholar Jabari M. Evans explores how rappers use the subgenre to gain clout.
ATF Relaxes Zero-Tolerance Policy For Lawbreaking Gun Dealers: The change ends a federal court challenge and is expected to give inspectors more discretion in penalizing gun shops for violations.
What Happened When Trump Sent Scores of Federal Agents to Fight Crime in the Midwest in 2020?: Experts say deployments like Operation Legend often bring a rise in excessive enforcement.
What to Know Today
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a number of new gun and school safety measures into law last week. Among them: a mandate that guns turned over to state police be completely destroyed, new penalties for child access to insecurely stored firearms, and a requirement that school boards have a behavior threat assessment and management team in place. [Detroit Free Press]
Older adults appear to be making up an increasing share of murder-suicides, which often involve guns. According to the Violence Policy Center, in 2021, the number of murder-suicides that involved a perpetrator 65 or older increased nearly 9 percent from 2019. Those involving a perpetrator 80 or older nearly tripled. Experts point to the burden of physical illness and the increasing cost of caregiving as contributing factors of the rise. [The Wall Street Journal]
Mexican President Claudia Sheibaum launched a nationwide gun buyback campaign. The government is offering up to $430 for a revolver, $1,200 for an AK-47 rifle, and $1,300 for a machine gun to people who anonymously drop off the weapons at designated locations. ATF data indicates that most guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico, where firearms are tightly regulated, come from the United States. [CBS]
Washington, D.C.’s police department is seeking to fire two members of a specialized “crime suppression team” who seized illegal guns without making arrests, and could pursue sanctions against at least 15 others. The department alleges that officers in the unit, whose mandate is to curb violent crime in Southeast D.C., carried out an illegal conspiracy. [Washington City Paper]
The 2023 mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville ignited a new gun reform movement in Tennessee. Though the state’s Republican supermajority hasn’t moved on the measures they advocated for, like red flag laws and universal background checks, the post-Covenant coalition is prepared — and politically organized — for an extended effort. [Nashville Scene]
This section was written by Victoria Clark.
Data Point
More than 50,000 — the number of firearms smuggled over the U.S. border into Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador between 2015 and 2022, according to ATF data. [The Trace]
Non Sequitur
Hey, Maybe It’s Time to Delete Some Old Chat Histories
“Your messages going back years are likely still lurking online, potentially exposing sensitive information you forgot existed. But there’s no time like the present to do some digital decluttering.” [Wired]
