Good morning, Bulletin readers. The new month brings new gun violence prevention measures into force in a pair of Western states. Catch up on the details in your Tuesday roundup.
Receive this daily news briefing by email every morning. Sign up here.
WHAT TO KNOW TODAY
Several gun reforms took effect in Washington State on Monday. The laws passed by ballot referendum last November include enhanced background checks and a required safety course to own a semiautomatic rifle, criminal penalties if unsecured guns end up in the wrong hands, and civil penalties for gun dealers who don’t offer trigger locks to gun buyers. Despite the state’s overall bent toward gun reform, opposition has run high in rural areas, and sheriffs in more than half of the state’s 39 counties have said they won’t enforce the new laws.
California’s background checks for ammunition also kicked in yesterday. Here’s a deep dive on why the state took this next step. Meanwhile, several pro-gun groups launched a suit on Monday against a separate law that barred purchases of rifles and other long guns by people under 21.
New Mexico gets universal background checks. July 1 marked the start of a requirement that most private gun sales and transfers go through the same vetting as sales from licensed dealers. Other new gun laws in the state restrict guns on school grounds to trained security personnel and ban firearm possession by persons under permanent protective orders.
A grieving Parkland family is suing the FBI for not acting on a tip about the shooter. The parents of Carmen Schentrup filed the suit on Friday, citing the bureau’s failure to pass along a January 2018 tip about the teen gunman to its Miami field office. The Schentrups are the second family to sue the FBI after the parents of Jaime Guttenberg filed a similar suit last November.
All but one of the women shot to death in Colorado over the past 12 months was killed by a man. That’s according to an analysis of shootings data by the Denver-based magazine Westword. The vast majority were domestic shootings, including the fatal shooting in March of a domestic violence survivors’ advocate by her boyfriend.
The NRA is holding several town halls in Virginia ahead of the General Assembly’s special session on gun reform. One of them will be held in Virginia Beach, the site of the mass shooting in May that left 12 people dead and prompted the special session. “I’d almost call it a, ‘Get organized and get out the vote for Second Amendment proponents’ [meeting],” said Republican Delegate Rob Bloxom, who represents part of the city and will be a guest speaker at one of the events. Democratic state lawmakers called Bloxom’s attendance “shameful.”
A New Jersey woman who lost her son to gun violence nearly lost her daughter the same way. Gladys Reed said her daughter, 42, and grandson, 25, were wounded in a shooting Friday at an intersection in Paterson. In 2009, Reed’s 26-year-old son, Larry, was shot to death while celebrating his birthday at a bar in the city. “I went through this again,” she said. “I can’t believe it. Only thing is, they survived.”
ONE LAST THING
A gun-owning Arizona congresswoman on her evolution from NRA A-rated to gun lobby skeptic. In an op-ed on Monday, Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick said that when she returned to Congress in January after a two-year absence, she found Republican lawmakers “working to rake in more campaign donations from the gun lobby.” Kirkpatrick, a gun owner and lifelong hunter who received high marks from the National Rifle Association when she was first elected to Congress a decade ago, changed her views after her colleague Gabrielle Giffords was critically wounded in a 2011 mass shooting.
