Good morning, Bulletin readers. More NRA members and donors tell us they are withholding their donations, despite the group’s reprisals against dissenters. That story and more in today’s roundup.
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WHAT TO KNOW TODAY
NEW from THE TRACE: Two NRA donors publicly join the financial revolt against Wayne LaPierre. Jeff Swinford, who has given thousands to the gun organization over the years, told Alex Yablon: “No one would defend the current business practices. I’m not happy money has been wasted.” And a former NRA board member, who asked that his name be withheld because he is active in state gun politics, said he’s in the process of eliminating a $1 million bequest to the National Rifle Association from his will. The two join a campaign launched by NRA donor David Dell’aquila to force reform at the scandal-rocked organization. Read the story here.
Universal gun background checks are associated with lower rates of youth gun deaths. That was the conclusion of a new study published in the journal Pediatrics, which found that states with mandatory checks on the books for at least five years had a 35 percent lower gun death rate among people under 21. The finding was consistent even in states with high rates of gun ownership. More than 21,000 people under 21 died of gun-related injuries during the five-year period studied.
A gunshot survivor in Philadelphia hopes his new youth center can help alleviate the city’s spiking gun violence. Tyrique Glasgow, 35, was shot 11 times when he was 19. On Monday, he launched the Young Chances Foundation Youth Engagement Center. The facility offers a computer lab, GED classes, and even a place to host baby showers. “I see these kids and I want to keep them from going through what I went through,” he told a local news outlet.
A Michigan prosecutor proposes a way for the courts to reduce intimate partner homicides. Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Getting is pitching a dedicated domestic violence court that would consider defendants’ trauma as it seeks to stop the cycle of abuse. Thirty percent of the domestic abusers the county sees are re-offenders.
A teen motorist fatally shot by police in California was holding a replica gun. Police footage reveals that Hannah Williams, 17, struck a police car and pointed a replica gun at an officer in Anaheim on July 5. The Trace’s Alain Stephens revealed in May how gun makers cut lucrative licensing deals that allow toy companies to make facsimiles of their products. According to one tally, police have killed more than 150 people who were holding look-alike weapons since 2015.
The majority of Chicago toddlers live in high-homicide neighborhoods. Sixty percent of children under 5 live in areas that account for 91 percent of the city’s homicides, according to an analysis of crime and census data by the Erikson Institute, a graduate school in early child development. “Exposure to trauma for kids who are younger can be more devastating,” an expert told The Chicago Tribune.
ONE LAST THING
A 19-year-old is helping to shape gun legislation on Capitol Hill. Charlie Mirsky, the political director of March for Our Lives, registered as a lobbyist a few months after the Parkland shooting, making him among the youngest lobbyists in D.C. Politico reports that Mirsky has leveraged his unique status to secure meetings with gun rights Republicans like Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Mike Crapo of Idaho, and he’s gained the ear of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who invited him to be her guest at this year’s State of the Union address. Mirsky and his fellow teen gun violence prevention advocates “get into rooms that I think not many of us can get into,” said a veteran staffer of the Brady Campaign.
