Good morning, Bulletin readers. New details about Sunday night’s shooting at a California food festival lead your Tuesday round-up.
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THE LATEST ON THE GILROY SHOOTING
NEW from THE TRACE: California has strict gun laws. Some of its neighbors are another story. Police said the gun used in Sunday’s shooting was legally purchased in Nevada earlier this month by the 19-year-old gunman, who was not old enough to buy a firearm under California’s progressively stricter gun laws. It’s a familiar pattern: The comparatively lax gun laws in Nevada and Arizona have made the states hotspots for gun traffickers and criminals eager to circumvent the Golden State’s restrictions. Alain Stephens and Daniel Nass dig into the data.
Family members mourned the 6-year-old boy killed in the Gilroy attack. Stephen Romero attended the garlic festival with his mother and grandmother, who were injured in the shooting. His father said Stephen had just celebrated his birthday at Legoland. “My son had his whole life to live, and he was only 6,” he said. Also killed were Keyla Salazar, 13, from San Jose, and Trevor Irby, 25, from Romulus, New York.
The shooter was identified. Police say Santino William Legan, 19, entered the festival by cutting a hole in a fence. Police Chief Scot Smithee said officers engaged Legan within a minute after the first shots were fired, “We had thousands of people there in a very small area, and it could have gone so much worse so fast.” Police have not announced a motive.
WHAT ELSE TO KNOW TODAY
Eight new gun laws took effect in Washington State. The laws establish a process for issuing extreme risk protection orders against minors; allowing police officers to remove guns from the scene of a domestic violence incident; and temporarily restricting gun access for anyone involuntarily held for 72 hours because they present a risk to themselves or others.
New York is also getting two new gun safety measures. One closes the so-called Charleston loophole by allotting up to 30 calendar days to allow for the completion of a background check before a gun is sold. The other bans bump stocks that allow assault-style rifles to mimic the automatic fire of a machine gun.
A Congresswoman introduced bills named for school shooting victims. On Friday, Texas Representative Sheila Jackson Lee unveiled the Kimberly Vaughan Firearm Safe Storage Act, which requires gun owners to lock up their weapons in homes where children and other prohibited possessors reside. The Sabika Sheikh Firearm Licensing and Registration Act creates a process for the license and registration of firearms. Both Vaughan and Sheikh died in last year’s shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas.
At least 48 people were shot in Chicago over the weekend. Eight of them died, including a 3-year-old boy who may have been felled by unintentional gunfire. Two other victims, both women, were anti-violence activists who worked with Mothers Against Senseless Killings, or M.A.S.K., which The Trace wrote about in 2015 and 2017.
Four people are dead after a shooting spree in Wisconsin. A gunman on Sunday night killed three members of his family in a small town in Chippewa County, before going to a residence in a town nine miles away and killing another person, the local sheriff said. Two others were seriously injured at the second residence, and authorities said the suspected gunman was also found dead of a gunshot wound.
Man shot outside Miami synagogue. Yosef Lipshutz, 68, a devoted member of Young Israel of Greater Miami, was shot several times in the leg by someone who opened fire from a car on Sunday evening. Police are investigating the attack as a possible hate crime.
ONE LAST THING
Mass shootings you may have missed. Though many public shootings like the one in Gilroy often get extensive public attention, many others do not. This week, we plan to use this space to highlight some of the attacks on public spaces that have not drawn national media coverage. One occurred on July 13 in West Philadelphia, where seven people were wounded when two men fired into a crowd near an evening basketball game. The victims were six men and a woman ranging in age from 18 to 28. “It’s just a sad indication of where we are in society where people resort to this sort of behavior for God knows what,” the police commissioner said. Two weeks later, no arrests have been made.
