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WHAT TO KNOW TODAY
Sandy Hook families fear Remington bankruptcy will moot their lawsuit against the gunmaker. A federal bankruptcy judge is due to decide next week whether the 204-year-old gun company can be broken up and auctioned off. But the plan Remington submitted to the judge omits any mention of the lawsuit brought by nine families of victims of the 2012 elementary school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. They fear a judge’s sign-off would “prevent Remington from ever answering for its role in the wrongful marketing” of the murder weapon, according to a recent court filing. The families want the judge to let one of them join the group of unsecured creditors guiding the bankruptcy process. The Sandy Hook lawsuit is not the only liability case thrown into limbo by Remington’s bankruptcy: Still pending are dozens of wrongful death and personal injury cases stemming from a defect in its Model 700 rifle that causes it to spontaneously fire. In 2018, Trace contributor Casey Parks authored this award-winning profile of a Mississippi man whose family was destroyed by an accidental shooting he believes was caused by Remington’s long-neglected trigger defects.
Barr claims feds have made more than 1,000 arrests as part of Operation Legend. Attorney General William Barr said 217 people in eight cities have been charged with federal crimes since he deployed federal law enforcement personnel to select gun violence hotspots in early July, and more than 800 have been charged by state and local authorities. The majority of the charges involve firearms. Many state and local leaders resisted the influx of federal agents after Homeland Security officers in Portland fired less-lethal munitions at protesters and detained them in unmarked vans. In context: When Barr announced arrest totals for Operation Legend in July, he was slapped by fact-checkers for exaggerations and false claims.
Chicago tightens eligibility requirements for school resource officers — but activists say it isn’t enough. Under new rules announced by the Chicago Public Schools and Mayor Lori Lightfoot, officers won’t be eligible to work in the city’s public schools if they’ve had “sustained allegations of excessive force” within the last five years. They will also be prohibited from entering students’ names into a database of suspected gang members, and policing terminals that access that database will be removed from schools. The changes come amid calls to defund the police and expel officers from schools. The mayor has left it up to each individual school whether to continue to have resource officers on patrol; the majority of schools have so far decided to keep them. VOYCE, a student activist group advocating for the removal of cops from schools, said the new requirements don’t go far enough, and reiterated its call to reinvest policing funds in mental healthcare for students.
Far-right activist who called Parkland teens media puppets wins GOP primary in Florida. Laura Loomer, a “proud Islamophobe” vying for a House seat in a Democrat-leaning district, once said the Stoneman Douglas survivors who turned to gun reform following the 2018 shooting were “reading a screen or notes someone else wrote for them.” She also suggested the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting in Texas was staged. Loomer has also worked as a reporter for InfoWars, the website run by the mass shooting hoaxer Alex Jones.
New York man threatens to shoot young campers for not wearing masks. A licensed concealed carrier on Long Island called police and threatened to open fire at a Yeshiva children’s camp because attendees were not wearing masks. Police seized pistols, shotguns, and rifles from his home. ICYMI: We’ve spotted at least 13 shootings related to coronavirus restrictions since the first statewide lockdown went into effect in March, resulting in two deaths and nine injuries.
The Trace wins two New York Press Club awards. “Since Parkland,” which enlisted student journalists to profile child gunshot victims in the year after the Stoneman Douglas shooting in Parkland, Florida, won top honors for special event reporting in the online category. And “The Art of Surviving,” former Trace staff writer Elizabeth Van Brocklin’s profile of gunshot survivors who formed an artists’ collective in a New York City rehab facility, won the Reverend Mychal Judge Heart of New York award, named for the FDNY chaplain killed in the September 11 attacks.
DATA POINT
Three children were shot with unsecured guns in a five-day span last week in Charlotte, North Carolina, one of them fatally, police said. “It’s so preventable,” said a local gun shop owner who’s giving away free cable locks. [WCNC]
