Good morning, Bulletin readers. Two advertising executives are proposing graphic warning labels for ammunition that would advise consumers about the consequences of gun violence. President Trump said he’s weighing a ban on silencers. And an Illinois gun shop balks at new regulations.
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NEW from THE TRACE: The ad execs who want to put graphic warnings on ammunition. Oriel Davis-Lyons and Gustavo Dorietto are developing graphic warning labels for ammunition inspired by those that adorn cigarette packs in more than 100 countries. Ahead of National Gun Violence Awareness Day on June 7, they’ve released a one-minute ad and a website to promote their idea. Ultimately, the pair hope to convince at least one state to require the ammunition labels. Read our story here.
President Trump said he will “seriously look” at banning gun suppressors. The man who killed 12 people last week in Virginia Beach used the devices, known colloquially as silencers. “I mean nobody’s talking about silencers very much,” Trump said during a Wednesday interview with “Good Morning Britain.” “I’m going to seriously look at it. I don’t love the idea of it.” After Parkland, Trump briefly expressed support for extreme-risk protection orders and raising the minimum age for rifle purchases, but retreated to his dogmatic opposition to gun restrictions following a private meeting with leaders of the National Rifle Association.
Experts questioned the legal grounds of prosecuting the school resource officer who failed to intervene in the Parkland shooting. Several Florida attorneys told the AP that prosecutors may have overreached when they charged former Sheriff’s Deputy Scot Peterson with felonies. “Although as a father, legislator and human being, I believe that there is no societal defense to cowardice, the law has consistently and recently held that there is no constitutional duty for police to protect us from harm,” said Michael Grieco, a defense attorney and state representative.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that police officers can’t search people just because they’re carrying a gun. The state’s highest court said last week that the act of carrying a concealed weapon alone does not constitute grounds to detain someone and investigate whether that person has a gun permit. The ruling overturns longstanding legal doctrine in the state.
At least one Illinois gun shop is closing because of new dealer regulations. The Lost Creek Trading Post in Marshall said it’s decamping to neighboring Indiana because of the “unreasonable and cost prohibitive” Gun Dealer Licensing Act. The law, which was signed earlier this year, requires federally licensed gun sellers to install security measures and obtain a $1,500 permit from the State Police.
A Mississippi campground employee was arrested for pulling a gun on a black couple. Ruby Nell Howell, 70, has been charged with threatening exhibition of a weapon, a misdemeanor, for her role in last month’s confrontation, which was caught on video.
A former Arkansas state senator was fatally shot. Linda Collins-Smith, 57, was found dead of a gunshot wound in her home on Tuesday. Police are investigating the incident as a homicide. The Republican lawmaker served in the Arkansas House of Representatives from 2011 to 2013 and in the state Senate from 2015 to 2019.
A Virginia woman lost two sons to gun violence in less than a year. Malcolm Hoskins, 25, was fatally shot on the porch of his family’s home in Portsmouth on June 4, 2018. Last week, three days before the grim anniversary, his brother, Robert E. Artis Jr., 28, was killed at an apartment complex. “I’m heartbroken. I’m overwhelmed,” their mother, Miriam Artis, told The Virginian-Pilot. “I want justice for both of my kids.”
A Tennessee DA said he wouldn’t bring domestic assault charges in cases involving gay couples. In the 2018 speech at a pastors’ conference, which was unearthed this week by a local news outlet, Coffee County District Attorney Craig Northcott said he’d prosecute LGBTQ intimate partner abuse as simple assault — which, unlike domestic assault, does not carry a gun ban upon conviction. A coalition of attorneys has called for an ethics investigation.
