Mass Shootings

The Almost-Mass Shooter: Man Reflects On Stepping Away From The Edge

Aaron Stark discusses his emotions and circumstances that drove him to buy a gun and nearly go on a rampage at 16 years old.

Aaron Stark is a dad, husband, full-time worker and self-described nerd. But life wasn’t always so normal.

“I grew up in a really dark and violent and chaotic life,” Stark said.

Stark says from a young age, adults around him turned life into a Stephen King horror story.

“I never went to school more than six months,” Stark said. “I was constantly the new kid. I was dirty, fat and smelly. I adopted that early on as my persona. I was told I was worthless by everybody in my life, and when you’re told you’re worthless enough, you will believe it.”

He tried to get help but says the system repeatedly failed him. He came close to a point of no return: almost becoming a mass shooter.

NEWSY’S CLAYTON SANDELL: What was the tipping point that made you want to shoot up your school?

AARON STARK: I saw a therapist, and I don’t really remember much of that conversation because all I remember is the end of it. The young lady, early 20s or so, said, “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do. I can’t help you.” As I walked out of that door, my brain shattered.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all profile of a mass shooter, Stark ticked a few boxes. According to the Violence Project study of nearly 180 mass shootings, 98% were committed by men, about half are white and many are under 30 years old.

Of all the shootings in the database, only four were committed by women. Psychiatrists say young males are more prone violence.

“It’s not just about mass shootings,” said Jonathan Metzl, director of Vanderbilt University’s Department of Medicine, Health and Society. “Young men between 15 and 25 make up the vast majority of people who die in fights, in car accidents.”

Brain chemistry is part of the reason. Scientists say the prefrontal cortex that helps humans understand consequences of actions isn’t done growing.

“The male mind is not fully developed in terms of this kind of impulse control, probably until the mid-late 20s,” Metzl said.

For psychiatrists like Metzl, it’s one of the biggest arguments for limiting gun sales to people 21 and older.

“In the U.S., we’ve gone exactly the opposite direction we keep pushing,” Metzl said. “Even in spite of all this data, we push the age limit down to 18 pretty much everywhere.”

Only a few pictures of that period of Stark’s adolescence have made it to present day.

“I lived in a very dark and angry life,” Stark said. “I spent my whole life hating myself. In that time I also snuck into the family members’ photo albums and destroyed all the pictures of me before 15 years old. I was trying to annihilate my own existence.”

He was on the brink of not only annihilating himself, but as many others as he could take with him.

“Instead of talking about girls or sports or movies, we talked about killing people,” Stark said. “If you’re going to kill 10 people, what would you do? If you’re going to kill 20 people, what would you do?”

Stark says he was ready to die. Then, his life changed again. One of the few friends he had left reached out.

“He’s like, ‘Dude, you’re gonna be okay,'” Stark said. “He would always tell me, ‘You’re a good kid in the crap world.” He brought me in, sat me down, and we had a movie and had a meal and gave me a shower and treated me like I was a person when I didn’t feel human at all. I felt like I was a walking ball of destruction, like I was just death walking on the street, and he treated me like I was just a kid in pain. It was like a splash of water in my face.”

Stark now travels the country telling his story.

“If I can help some person, anybody else, out of their own depression by talking about it, I’m going to keep talking until I don’t have a voice,” Stark said.

Newsy caught up with him in San Antonio, Texas.

“Today I will be presenting my story to a whole convention of teachers and administrators,” Stark said. “It’s going to be a very intense day. These were the teachers that specifically were in the Uvalde school district.”

Stark said he deeply recognized some of the Uvalde’s shooter’s story.

“The biggest thing that made me see myself in his story was a couple weeks before it happened,” Stark said. “He showed up to school with his face covered in razor marks. To me, that’s the biggest sign of someone saying, ‘I’m hurting me. Help me.’ I don’t think anyone could have stopped his slide at that point, but maybe we can stop the next one.”

Stark says he never thought he’d live past 30 years old. Now at 43, he’s dedicating his life to helping stop a cycle of violence.

“Everybody’s pain is individual, and the key of it is to see the person as an individual to break through that barrier,” Stark said. “I somehow managed to now be able to use my darkest time to help someone else out of theirs. If anybody listening can get one message: Just give love to the people you think deserve it the least, because they need it the most.”

Newsy’s mental health initiative “America’s Breakdown: Confronting Our Mental Health Crisis” brings you deeply personal and thoughtfully told stories on the state of mental health care in the U.S. Click here to learn more.

: newsy.com

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Visa To Start Categorizing Gun Shop Sales Separately

Visa’s adoption is significant as the largest payment network, and will likely add pressure for Mastercard and American Express to adopt the code.

Payment processor Visa Inc. said late Saturday that it plans to start separately categorizing sales at gun shops.

It’s a major win for gun control advocates who say it will help better track suspicious surges of gun sales that could be a prelude to a mass shooting. But gun rights advocates have argued that step would unfairly segregate legal gun sales when most sales do not lead to mass shootings.

Visa said it would adopt the International Organization for Standardization’s new merchant code for gun sales, which was announced on Friday. Until Friday, gun store sales were considered “general merchandise.”

“Following ISO’s decision to establish a new merchant category code, Visa will proceed with next steps, while ensuring we protect all legal commerce on the Visa network in accordance with our long-standing rules,” the payment processor said in a statement.

Visa’s adoption is significant as the largest payment network, and will likely add pressure for Mastercard and American Express to adopt the code as well.

Gun control advocates had gotten significant wins on this front in recent weeks. New York City officials and pension funds had pressured the ISO and banks to adopt this code.

Two of the country’s largest public pension funds, in California and New York, are pressing the country’s largest credit card firms to establish sales codes specifically for firearm-related sales that could flag suspicious purchases or more easily trace how guns and ammo are sold.

Merchant Category Codes now exist for almost every kind of purchase, including those made at supermarkets, clothing stores, coffee shops and many other retailers.

“When you buy an airline ticket or pay for your groceries, your credit card company has a special code for those retailers. It’s just common sense that we have the same policies in place for gun and ammunition stores,” said New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain who blames the proliferation of guns for his city’s deadly violence.

The city’s comptroller, Brad Lander, said it made moral and financial sense as a tool to push back against gun violence.

“Unfortunately, the credit card companies have failed to support this simple, practical, potentially lifesaving tool. The time has come for them to do so,” Lander said recently, before Visa’s announcement.

Landers is a trustee of the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, Teachers’ Retirement System and Board of Education Retirement System — which together own 667,200 shares in American Express valued at approximately $92.49 million; 1.1 million shares in MasterCard valued at approximately $347.59 million; and 1.85 million shares in Visa valued at approximately $363.86 million.

In letters to the companies, the New York pensions funds, joined by the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, sought support for such a move, saying the companies have a responsibility to prohibit the use of their networks for what public officials deemed illegal activity.

“Failing to do so can result in regulatory, reputational, and litigation risks that may harm long-term shareholder value,” the letters asserted.

Over the years, public pension funds have used their extensive investment portfolios to influence public policy and the market place.

The California teacher’s fund, the second largest pension fund in the country, has long taken aim on the gun industry. It has divested its holdings from gun manufacturers and has sought to persuade some retailers from selling guns.

Four years ago, the teacher’s fund made guns a key initiative. It called for background checks and called on retailers “monitor irregularities at the point of sale, to record all firearm sales, to audit firearms inventory on a regular basis, and to proactively assist law enforcement.”

The pension funds argue that creating a merchant category code for standalone firearm and ammunition stores could aid in the battle against gun violence.

In letters to the credit card companies, a pattern of purchases could flag suspicious activity.

Officials said that a week before the mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where 49 people died after a shooter opened fire in 2016, the assailant used credit cards to purchase more than $26,000 worth of guns and ammunition, including purchases at a stand-alone gun retailer.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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AP-NORC Poll: 2 In 10 Report Experience With Gun Violence

CDC data shows a spike in gun violence since the pandemic, with gun-related homicides increasing across the country in metro and rural areas.

About 2 in 10 U.S. adults say they or someone close to them has had a personal experience with gun violence, according to a recent poll that shows Black and Hispanic adults are especially likely to have had their lives touched by it.

The poll by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 54% of Black Americans and 27% of Hispanic Americans reported that they or a close friend or family member experienced gun violence in the last five years, compared with of 13% of white Americans. Overall, 21% of U.S. adults reported a personal tie to gun violence, such as being threatened by a gun or being a victim of a shooting.

Ebony Brown, a 39-year-old accountant in Atlanta, is among those who has seen gun violence touch those close to her. Her brother was shot to death in 2002 in Jacksonville, Florida, while visiting from college.

“He was at the right place at the wrong time,” said Brown, who is Black.

An acquaintance of a friend pulled a gun during an attempted robbery at a home and shot several people, including Brown’s brother, who she said died instantly. Another person also was slain.

Brown said she doesn’t consider herself a gun lover, but she’s worried enough about becoming a victim of gun violence herself that she’s considering getting a handgun.

“I’m really getting ready to get one. I’ve been to the range,” Brown said. “My dad is a police officer and he wants me to have it.”

The survey was conducted after a stretch of mass shootings across the U.S., from a grocery store in New York, an elementary school in Texas and a Fourth of July parade in Illinois — along with a smattering of incidents of gun violence in cities across the U.S. that don’t always make national news but leave local communities on edge.

Professor Jens Ludwig, who is director of the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab, said the 1 in 5 people with a friend or family member who was a victim of violence was a “strikingly high number.”

It shows that those who experience gun violence “aren’t the only victims,” he said.

Ludwig compared the way gun violence affects entire communities to the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that the people who died or became very ill from COVID-19 weren’t the only ones affected; kids were kept home from school, businesses closed, and people couldn’t see loved ones.

The same is true with gun violence, Ludwig said. “People are changing the way they live,” he said.

For example, he said, when people who can afford to leave cities where gun violence is a big problem move out in droves, it hurts everyone still there.

He cited Detroit as one example. Gun-related homicides increased from 2016 to 2020, from a rate of 37.6 per 100,000 people to 45.4 per 100,000 people, according to FBI data collected by the pro-gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety. Black people were 2.1 times more likely to die by gun homicides than white people, according to the data.

Following a particularly violent summer weekend in Detroit that saw two dozen nonfatal shootings and seven homicides, Police Chief James White denounced the rising gun violence in the city and across the nation.

“We understand these numbers make media headlines, but to us they represent people,” White told reporters. “These represent families. This represents children. This represents husbands, wives, brothers and sisters. Our Detroit families are in pain. Neighbors near the gunfire are shaken and lives have been forever changed.”

While most Americans say they feel gun violence has increased nationwide and in their states, 59% of Black Americans and 45% of Hispanics said that gun violence is on the rise in their communities, compared with 34% of white Americans. Similarly, people living in urban areas are more likely to say gun violence is rising in their communities than those in suburban or rural areas, 51% to 39% to 27%.

That is in line with recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The data has shown a spike in gun violence since the pandemic, with gun-related homicides increasing across the country in large and small metro areas and in rural areas. The data found Black people are disproportionately impacted by gun violence and are more likely to be the victims of gun crimes or homicides.

Brittany Samuels, a 31-year-old in Detroit, says she still carries physical scars from being shot at age 14 by her uncle, who she said was bipolar and schizophrenic, and fatally shot her grandmother, one of his coworkers and himself.

She said it has also shaped the way she thinks about gun violence and gun ownership, and she feels it is too easy for guns to get into the wrong hands.

Samuels, who is Black, said gun violence in her community has made her rethink where and when to go places, like skipping Detroit’s downtown entertainment district or certain gas stations as certain times.

“You don’t know if someone is going to rob you at gunpoint or if they are going to have a shootout in the middle of the gas station,” she said. “I don’t go when it’s dark — even if it’s in the morning. And you really won’t catch me at a gas station that’s not lit up.”

Diego Saldana, 30, of Baldwin Park, California, in the Los Angeles metro area, said he found himself facing a 9mm handgun during an attempted robbery six months ago. He feels gun violence is on the rise and believes it’s likely he will be a victim of gun violence again in the next five years.

“I think it’s due to the (poor) economy — people are desperate for easy money,” said Saldana, who is Mexican. “People … are stressing about stuff and expressing it with violence. Everybody is on edge.”

The poll of 1,373 adults was conducted July 28-Aug. 1 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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2 New York Democrats Ousted From U.S. House In Primary Losses

In addition to the primary races, New Yorkers elected two new House members to fill vacancies for the rest of the year.

In a cluster of contentious Democratic primaries Tuesday, two New York incumbents were ousted from the U.S. House after redistricting shuffled congressional districts in one of the nation’s largest liberal states.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a 15-term incumbent who chairs a powerful House committee, lost to longtime colleague Rep. Jerry Nadler, while Rep. Mondaire Jones, a first-term progressive who was one of the first openly gay Black members of Congress, was defeated by Daniel Goldman, a former federal prosecutor who served as counsel to House Democrats in the first impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump.

In other races in the state, the chair of the House Democrats’ campaign arm, Sean Patrick Maloney, survived a primary challenge of his own from a progressive. Democrats held on to a swing district in a special election — at least for a few more months.

Some of the top elections:

END OF AN ERA

Nadler and Carolyn Maloney each chair powerful committees and had spent 30 years representing Manhattan’s Upper West Side and Upper East Side, respectively. But they ended up in the same race after new redistricting maps merged much of their longtime congressional districts.

The race for New York’s 12th District, between Maloney, 76, and Nadler, 75, became contentious. The two stopped speaking after deciding to run against each other, Nadler said, and the campaign became barbed, with Maloney questioning his mental acuity.

Nadler, who was endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, has talked up his role overseeing Trump’s impeachments while serving as chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Maloney has touted her own check on the former president while serving as chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee and positioned herself as a feminist champion.

Challenging them both was 38-year-old lawyer Suraj Patel, who argued it was time for a new face in Congress.

A CROWDED FIELD FOR AN OPEN SEAT

With Nadler and Maloney running in the district immediately north, a congressional seat covering southern Manhattan, including Wall Street, and Brooklyn, was a rare open contest in one of the most liberal and influential areas of the country.

Goldman, a Democratic attorney who built his reputation as a federal mob and securities fraud prosecutor but made a national name for himself as House Democrats’ lead counsel in Trump’s first impeachment hearing, won a crowded primary for New York’s 10th District, which attracted a bevy of progressive candidates. Among the contenders was Jones, a congressman from the New York City suburbs, who moved to the area to run and finished third in the primary.

HOUSE DEMOCRATS’ CAMPAIGN CHIEF WINS PRIMARY

Sean Patrick Maloney, who became New York’s first openly gay congressman when he was elected a decade ago, survived a primary challenge from state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi in New York’s new 17th District, home to idyllic towns along the historic Hudson River Valley.

Maloney, who had the backing of former President Bill Clinton, campaigned on Democrats’ recent legislative wins in Congress and warned that the congressional seat could fall to Republicans in November if the Democratic nominee is too liberal.

Biaggi, a 36-year-old progressive endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is a granddaughter of former Bronx congressman Mario Biaggi. She had sought to portray Maloney as out of touch and part of the establishment.

STATE GOP CHAIR DEFEATS CONTROVERSIAL CANDIDATE

New York’s Republican Party chair, Nick Langworthy, won a primary in western New York by defeating controversial Buffalo businessman Carl Paladino in New York’s redrawn 23rd District.

Paladino, who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2010, has a long history of inflammatory and offensive remarks, including recent comments that praised Adolf Hitler and circulated conspiracy theories around mass shootings.

The heated primary came as Langworthy and Paladino sought to replace GOP Rep. Chris Jacobs, who decided not to seek reelection after facing backlash from his own party for voicing support for an assault weapons ban following a racist mass shooting in his hometown of Buffalo in May.

A WIN FOR REPUBLICANS, A WIN FOR DEMOCRATS IN SPECIAL ELECTIONS

In addition to the primary races, New Yorkers elected two new House members to fill vacancies for the rest of the year.

Democrat Pat Ryan won one of the special elections, a battleground race in southern and central New York to replace Democrat Antonio Delgado, who became New York’s lieutenant governor. Ryan defeated Republican Marc Molinaro in what is currently New York’s 19th Congressional District.

In western New York, Republican Joe Sempolinski defeated Democrat Max Della Pia in a special general election to serve out the rest of the year in what is currently New York’s 23rd District. Sempolinski will replace Republican Rep. Tom Reed, who resigned in May after being accused of sexual misconduct.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Keisha Lance Bottoms Details President Biden’s ‘Safer America Plan’

Senior adviser to the president for public engagement and former mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, speaks with “Morning Rush” hosts Rob and Jay.

Recently, President Joe Biden announced details of a plan to create safer communities amid growing violence. It’s what the White House is calling the “Safer America Plan.” This proposal calls for $37 billion as part of the president’s 2023 budget and outlines where and how the funding would be spent. The plan, however, will need to be approved by Congress. Keisha Lance Bottoms, senior adviser to the president for public engagement and the former mayor of Atlanta, joined Newsy’s “Morning Rush” to talk more about the plan.

NEWSY’S ROB NELSON: Thanks so much for giving us some time. Good morning to you.

KEISHA LANCE BOTTOMS: Thank you for having me. Good morning.

NELSON: And for all the good folks in Atlanta who are watching and, of course, know very well who you are, give us a description of what exactly this new job is for you.

BOTTOMS: Well, it’s a very different job than serving as mayor of Atlanta. I am serving the president and I have agreed to stay through the midterms to head the Office of Public Engagement. The public may remember a form of this office under President Obama’s office that Valerie Jarrett led. It’s structured a bit differently under President Biden, but it’s the front door to the White House. It’s about bringing information in and sending information out and giving the public an opportunity to engage with the work that this White House is doing.

NELSON: Gotcha. Appreciate that and congrats on the job. So this “Safer America Plan” again, talking about almost $40 billion here. As I can tell, the main headlines: Hire and train 100,000 cops, clear out a backlog from our court system — which is largely obviously COVID — related to various intervention programs, anti-violent crime grants, that sort of thing. What for you, though, is the most likely to get through, and what difference does this White House think it would make?

BOTTOMS: Well, as a former mayor, it’s my hope that it all gets through. What’s so important is that it’s not just the hiring of police officers, but also the accountability piece. People in big cities may be used to officers wearing things like body cams when they have interactions with the community. But in many smaller communities across our country, the budgets just don’t allow for that type of equipment. Also, what we know is that law enforcement has taken a huge hit over the past several years. It’s been very difficult to attract and retain officers. But what we know is that we want officers who want to be engaged with our communities, who want to protect and serve our communities. But the other really important piece is the intervention, piece: Giving funding to cities and states that will allow was to put in place those things that we know work. For example, in Atlanta, there was a pilot program called Cure Violence that we did in a neighborhood in a community in Atlanta with great success rates. The ability to expand programs like that, to engage community partners to provide substance abuse counseling and funding, to help put people on our streets who can engage people when they are having mental health crisis, will be a game changer for cities across America.

NEWSY’S JAY STRUBBERG: President Biden has taken some actions on the issue of guns earlier this year. He released new regulations to crack down on so-called “ghost guns.” Those are those homemade guns, to our viewers, that don’t have any serial numbers so that they can’t track them. They’ve been linked to a rise in violence. Have you seen any success so far in this initiative to tackle them?

BOTTOMS: Well, we know that the president announced this initiative a few weeks ago and so, we are already seeing progress in that area. There was a story this morning on some arrests made, I believe in Georgia, related to ghost guns. And what’s so frightening about that, is that people are able to order these guns and assemble them as a kid. That’s very scary for many reasons. And so again, with the president being focused on what our needs and concerns are out of our cities and communities, and asking Congress to support that, will make a difference. What we’ve seen, especially since the Coronavirus kicked in in 2020, we have seen an uptick in crime across the country. It’s not just in big cities. It’s in smaller towns across America. And any and everything that this president can do to make sure that we have the resources we need on the ground. Whether it’s to combat gun violence, or to make sure that we are able to arrest and prosecute those people who are distributing ghost guns in our communities will certainly make a difference.

STRUBBERG: Does the president plan to go further beyond the bipartisan gun reform that was just passed in Congress? Does he have any plans to advance this issue, to go any stricter with gun laws before the midterm elections?

BOTTOMS: Well, we know that the president has asked Congress to ban assault weapons. President Biden was responsible for the assault weapons ban almost 30 years ago. And what we know from the data is that there was a downward trend in mass shootings when that ban was in place. So, he will continue to push Congress, to ask Congress to support him in that ban. And he has committed to using every single tool that he has in his tool box to make sure that our cities are safer.

NELSON: Also, it struck me in the plans that there’s a part here about the grant program for cities and states to help them ease violent crime. It says, “to help ease the burden on police officers by identifying nonviolent situations that may merit a public health response or other response.” And that seemed to be a little reminiscent of the conversation sparked by the “defund the police” movement, where it was the idea maybe not every situation warrants an armed officer arriving to the scene — maybe there are different personnel that can get there and make a positive difference. Elaborate on exactly what that part of this plan means.

BOTTOMS: Again, as mayor, I know that that is a huge challenge that we have had in our communities and especially, again, since 2020 where we’ve seen this uptick in people experiencing mental health crisis. So, having people who can respond appropriately. It’s always a good thing to call 911 when there’s an issue. But, if there are other places where you can call, whether it’s another 3-digit number — whether it’s arriving on the scene with the officer as someone who’s trained on mental health intervention — we know it will make a tremendous difference because unfortunately, we’ve seen outcomes across America where people are experiencing a mental health crisis and their encounter with police officers has not always been a positive encounter. But again, with my time as mayor, what we know with our pre-arrest detention program that we had in Atlanta: If we have encounter people who are experiencing a mental health crisis, if we are able to get them the appropriate help, have them assessed, not necessarily sent to jail, but it may be that they need to be referred for mental health counseling. Or, a lot of times, even as a judge, what I encounter is that sometimes people would be experiencing an issue because they didn’t have enough insulin. And it would play out in a way that looked as if they were engaging in criminal activity, but there were some other underlying things going on. So, this is going to be tremendously helpful. And I hope that it is also a signal to people on the left and to the right that the president is listening and he will take every opportunity to make sure that communities have the resources they need to address these issues.

STRUBBERG: It certainly seems to be a challenge, because there’s plenty of eroded trust between the law enforcement and communities in places like Minneapolis, Chicago, elsewhere in the country after some high-profile shootings. Midterm elections are near. Republicans are pointing to crime as an issue in targeting Democrats for well, some of them on the Progressive side, saying “defund the police.” With crime rates up, what can the White House do to help these candidates?

BOTTOMS: Well, I know when I was mayor in 2021, I sat in the White House along with Republican governors and mayors and Democrat governors and mayors, and we expressed concerns that we had coming out of our cities. The concern I expressed from Atlanta was that there was an uptick in crime and we needed resources to help combat this issue. So, the ownership of concern about crime does not belong just to the Republican party. Everyone wants to live in a safe community. Everyone wants a positive interaction with a positive outcome when they encounter law enforcement. So, Republicans don’t own that issue. But what I will say, is that the president — whether it’s the bipartisan bill that he signed a few weeks ago addressing gun violence or with a plan that he is now asking Congress to support— he’s been very clear that he wants to do and wants us to have resources, do everything possible that keep our communities safe, whether it’s a red state, blue state, blue city or red city.

NELSON: And I can’t let you go without asking someone who knows Georgia politics better than most: Any thoughts on Kemp vs. Abrams? The rematch? And what do you make of the Warnock vs. Herschel Walker matchup in this state, as well?

BOTTOMS: Well, in my new role with the White House — and I have to be very careful wading into the politics of it all — but what I will say is that, you know, from the last election cycle, when people paid attention, when they registered to vote, it made a difference in Georgia. And I hope that that momentum has not been lost.

NELSON: Delicately handled. Keisha Lance Bottoms, senior adviser to the president for public engagement and former mayor of Atlanta. Thanks so much for your time this morning. We sincerely appreciate it.

BOTTOMS: Thank you for having me.

: newsy.com

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Crime In America: Kansas City Mayor On Police Funding And Gun Control

Mayor Quinton Lucas made a campaign promise to reduce violent crime in Kansas City, but he explains why that’s proving to be more and more difficult.

Kansas City, Missouri, is the second-most-dangerous municipality in the Midwest and ranks in the top 10 in the U.S. for gun violence, according to the FBI.

The city’s Democratic Mayor Quinton Lucas made a campaign promise to reduce the number of homicides in Kansas City to under 100 per year, but that hasn’t happened and Mayor Lucas says easy access to guns is the core issue.

“For those who don’t know the Midwest, we are not unlike Texas,” he said. “We have no requirement for concealed carry permits. … Folks can access assault rifles very simply. There is little to no investigation into illegal gun traffickers and distributors. And our police are not only overworked, but they find themselves at risk of getting shot as well.”

Mayor Lucas’ comments come a day after funeral services were held for one Kansas City police officer, Daniel Vasquez, who was fatally shot during a traffic stop earlier this month.

“These are the sorts of challenges that are happening in major cities across the country,” Lucas said. “We need to have a serious chat about the flood of firearms — without restrictions or background checks — leading to more violent crime on our streets.”

Kansas City did recently receive a federal grant to help fund policing, and the state’s Republican Gov. Mike Parson signed a bill to increase Kansas City’s police department budget from 20% to 25% of revenue generated per year.

However, Lucas says he met with several other mayors in New York to discuss rising crime rates, but they’re being met with challenges from other corners of local and state government.

“We [mayors] are not the district attorneys that are making decisions on sentencing and bail. We’re certainly not the judges. And we’re not the police chiefs — although in many situations we get to influence them,” Lucas said. “Instead, we are trying to bring resources together because the oddest thing to happen since the 2020 protests is that I think in this country we lost sight of the fact that we’re all growing in the same direction.”

Missouri ranks in the bottom 10 of U.S. states for gun law strength and has the fourth-highest rate of gun-related deaths, according to analysts at the nonprofit organization Everytown for Gun Safety.

Mayor Lucas says one of the main issues driving these statistics is Missouri’s “totally backwards” gun laws.

“We have a Second Amendment preservation act, which makes it a crime with a fine if our police department works with federal agencies in anything that may relate to Second Amendment violation,” Lucas said.

“It is an abomination that the leading cause of death for children in America relates to guns, shootings, accidents, et cetera. That is problematic.”

Since the beginning of 2022, there have been 372 mass shootings and more than 11,600 gun-related deaths, according to The Gun Violence Archive.

Real-time American gun violence data in 2022, as of July 28th:

–11,629 deaths
–22,319 injuries
–372 mass shootings
–198 children killed | 438 children injured
–778 teenagers killed | 2,097 teenagers injured
–663 defensive use incidents
–883 unintentional shootings

— The Gun Violence Archive (@GunDeaths) July 28, 2022

: newsy.com

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Manufacturers Made Over $1B Selling AR-15-Style Guns Over Past Decade

A House panel says some sales tactics make guns look like a sign of manhood. Meanwhile, gun makers blame shooters rather than their weapons.

Gun makers have taken in more than $1 billion from selling AR-15-style guns over the past decade, at times marketing them as a way for young men to prove their masculinity, even as the number of mass shootings increases, according to a House investigation unveiled Wednesday.

The weapons have been used in massacres that have horrified the nation, including one that left 10 people dead at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, and another where 19 children and two teachers were shot to death in Uvalde, Texas.

The Committee on Oversight and Reform said some ads mimic popular first-person shooter video games or tout the weapons’ military pedigree while others claim the guns will put buyers “at the top of the testosterone food chain.”

Those sales tactics are “deeply disturbing, exploitative and reckless,” said Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York. “In short, the gun industry is profiting off the blood of innocent Americans.”

Gun makers, on the other hand, said AR-15-style rifles are responsible for a small portion of gun homicides and the blame must go to the shooters rather than their weapons.

“What we saw in Uvalde, Buffalo and Highland Park was pure evil,” said Marty Daniel, the CEO of Daniel Defense, the company that made the weapon used in Texas. “The cruelty of the murderers who committed these acts is unfathomable and deeply disturbs me, my family, my employees and millions of Americans across this country.”

However, he added later in testimony before the committee, “I believe that these murders are local problems that have to be solved locally.”

Gun violence overall spiked in 2020, but recent statistics indicate it is coming down this year in many cities.

The House panel’s investigation focused on five major gun makers, and found they took in a combined total of more than $1 billion in revenue over the past 10 years from the sale of AR-15-style firearms. The revenue numbers were released for the committee hearing focused on the marketing and sales of the firearms that have gained notoriety because of their use in the mass killings.

Two of the companies approximately tripled their revenue from the weapons over the past three years, the committee found. Daniel Defense, based near Savannah, Georgia, raised that revenue from $40 million in 2019 to more than $120 million last year. The company sells weapons like the one used in Uvalde on credit and advertises that financing can be approved “in seconds.”

The man accused in the Uvalde shootings began purchasing firearms and ammunition when he turned 18, eventually spending more than $5,000 on two AR-style rifles, ammunition and other gear in the days before the massacre, authorities have said.

Sturm, Ruger & Co.’s gross revenue, meanwhile, has nearly tripled from $39 million to $103 million since 2019, and Smith and Wesson reported that its revenues from all long guns doubled from 2019 to 2021. Gun manufacturers, the committee said, don’t gather or analyze safety data related to firearms.

The increases are against a backdrop of a record-setting overall increase in gun sales that began around the start of the coronavirus pandemic. About 8.5 million people bought guns for the first time in 2020, said Republican Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia. He added that “American people have a right to own guns.”

The hearing comes amid a push by House Democrats to get legislation passed that would ban certain semi-automatic weapons. It’s the lawmakers’ most far-reaching response yet to this summer’s mass shootings.

While AR-15-style firearms aren’t necessarily the main drivers of U.S. gun violence overall, their design allows shooters to harm more people from a greater distance, said Kelly Sampson, senior counsel and director of racial justice with Brady, a group pressing to end gun violence that generally supports restrictions.

“If we renew the assault weapons ban, that would take away a key piece of what allows mass shooters to kill more people in less time without having to stop to reload,” she said.

There have been 15 mass killings this year, according to the Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killing Database. According to that research, those incidents have left 86 dead and 63 injured. Guns were used in all of them, and in at least seven instances they were AR-15-style weapons. Mass killings are defined as incidents where at least four people are killed.

But the AR-15 and similar weapons are also popular with people who buy guns for self defense, said Antonia Okafor, the national director of outreach for the group Gun Owners of America. Such rifles allow people, including women, to shoot a larger gun without having to absorb as much recoil.

“The AR-15 makes it easier for those who have a physical disadvantage to the attacker to have an upper hand,” she said.

Wednesday’s hearing marked the first time in 20 years that CEOs of leading gun manufacturers testified about their businesses, Maloney said.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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July 4 Parade Attack Suspect Indicted For Murder, Attempted Murder

By Associated Press

and Newsy Staff
July 27, 2022

Attorneys for the 21-year-old suspect have not yet formally responded to any of the charges.

The man accused of opening fire on an Independence Day parade in suburban Chicago has been indicted by a grand jury on 21 first-degree murder counts, 48 counts of attempted murder and 48 counts of aggravated battery

Prosecutors previously filed seven murder charges against the suspect. They announced the grand jury’s decision to indict him on 117 felony charges on Wednesday.

Attorneys for the suspect have not made a formal response yet to any of the charges he faces in the July Fourth shooting that killed seven people, wounded more than 30, and sent spectators fleeing the parade route in downtown Highland Park, Illinois.

Prosecutors have said the suspect, 21, admitted to the shooting when police arrested him following an hourslong search on July 4.

Under Illinois law, prosecutors can ask a grand jury to determine whether there is probable cause to proceed to trial. Grand jury proceedings aren’t open to the public and defense attorneys cannot cross-examine witnesses.

Authorities have said the wounded range in age from 8 to their 80s, including an 8-year-old boy who was paralyzed from the waist down when the shooting severed his spine.

During a court hearing presenting the murder charges, Lake County prosecutors said police found more than 80 spent shell casings on the rooftop of a building along the parade route and the semi-automatic rifle used in the attack on the ground nearby.

Investigators believe the accused gunman blended in with the fleeing crowd to get away from the scene, then borrowed his mother’s car and briefly contemplated a second attack on a celebration in Madison, Wisconsin, before returning to Illinois where police arrested him.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Democrats Push For 1st Semi-Automatic Gun Ban In 20 Years

The bill has little chance of becoming law due to opposition in the Senate.

House Democrats began pushing ahead Wednesday with legislation that would ban certain semi-automatic weapons as they considered their most far-reaching response yet to this summer’s spate of mass shootings.

Democrats hope that the 100-page bill moving through the Judiciary Committee will pass the House before the August break. But that is far from assured, with moderates in the party, especially those hailing from politically divided swing districts, wary of a vote on sweeping gun controls ahead of the November midterm elections — especially when the bill has little chance of becoming law due to opposition in the Senate.

The renewed push for a ban on assault-type weapons comes nearly two decades after Congress allowed similar restrictions to lapse. The original ban passed in 1994, led by then-Sen. Joe Biden, and banned certain semi-automatic weapons and large-capacity magazines, though it exempted an estimated 1.5 million of those weapons and 25 million that were already owned by Americans.

In the nearly three decades since, mass shootings have become chillingly commonplace in the United States, with semi-automatic weapons often used in attacks on schools, workplaces, public spaces, stores, churches and other places where people gather.

“An assault weapon’s only purpose is to kill people efficiently,” Nadler said Wednesday as the committee took up the measures. “It is time to protect our communities and to ban them once more.”

Democrats on the committee played haunting audio of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., during which 17 people were killed and 17 more wounded. Dozens of rapid-fire shots could be heard in the course of just 1 minute and 18 seconds along with the distressed screams of those trying to escape.

“There are more guns than people in this country, more mass shootings than days in the year. This is a uniquely American problem, and assault weapons only magnify the epidemic,” the bill’s sponsor, Rep. David Cicilline said as the audio concluded.

The hearing Wednesday also comes in the wake of a July 4 mass shooting at a parade in Highland, Illinois and back-to-back mass shootings in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas.

The carnage in south Texas killed 19 school-age children, some of whose bodies were unidentifiable to their parents. Facing pressure to act, Congress last month passed the most significant gun violence measure in decades. It included background checks for gun buyers 18 to 21 years old as well as allocating state funding to enact local “red flag” laws.

But the bill fell far short of the steps President Biden and Democrats say are needed to curb the nation’s epidemic of gun violence. Many say the killing won’t stop until more stringent controls on guns are enacted.

“We’re paying for these weapons of war on our streets with the blood of our children sitting in our schools,” Rep. Lucy McBath whose 17-year-old son was shot and killed at a gas station in 2012, said during the hearing.

“We are reasonable people and this is a reasonable effort,” added Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee. “I look forward to pursuing the debate and saying enough is enough. We love our children. I demand relief.”

Republicans on the committee objected to the proposal, calling it an attack on Second Amendment rights.

“Democrats know this legislation will not reduce violent crime or reduce the likelihood of mass shootings, but they are obsessed with attacking law-abiding Americans’ Second Amendment liberties,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the committee. “For over 30 years, the Democrats have been running a propaganda campaign to make people believe that ‘assault weapons’ are a specific class of firearms that no one needs.”

Cicilline pushed back, saying the Second Amendment protection is not without limits. He said the Democratic proposal is focused on assault-style rifles, which are not what the majority of guns law-abiding Americans buy and own.

“Dangerous military weapons that were created to fight on the battlefield and slaughter enemies do not belong in the neighborhoods and schools and movie theaters where we live,” he added.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

: newsy.com

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Gun Violence Advocates Start Nationwide Bus Tour Against NRA

Advocates for gun law reform are staging a nationwide bus tour to highlight the cost of gun violence on young lives.

A convoy of buses made its way down the streets of Houston.

At first glance, you might even mistake the mile-long row of yellow school buses for those you see every day, picking up and dropping off kids at school.

But these buses serve a very different purpose.

They stand as a dark reminder of children who never made it on the bus back home.

It’s called the NRA children’s museum: a mobile museum of 52 empty school buses with 4,368 empty seats. Each seat represents a life lost to gun violence since 2020.

On some seats, you’ll find the picture and name of one of those kids, along with where they died.

Alongside them: small keepsakes and reminders of full lives senselessly cut short.

The artist behind the project, Manuel Oliver, knows the pain embodied in each empty seat. Each serves as a reminder of his son, Joaquin, who was killed in the Parkland shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in 2018.

“Joaquin was shot four times with an AR-15, almost five years ago,” Oliver said.

A striking reminder of that AR-15 could be seen from the sky.

Manuel and Patricia Oliver are the co-founders of “Change The Ref”, a gun-reform organization using art to showcase the impact of mass shootings and call for legislative change.

The Yellow Bus Project aims to call out the dozens of pro-gun lawmakers who receive support from the NRA.

Manuel, said, in part: “we are showing American voters the toll these politicians have taken on our children’s lives with this all-too-real archive.”

The convoy’s route included a drive by the office of one of those pro-NRA senators, Ted Cruz.

The convoy stopped to drop a letter about gun reform written by Joaquin. Manuel called on Senator Cruz to “start prioritizing kids over the NRA’s money.”

“There’s a business model in here. Our legislators are a part of it. There’s gun manufacturers, and the gun industry that has the blessing of these people that are supposed to put a stop of this,” Oliver said.

Some Democratic senators are of the same mind as Oliver.

“Please, please, please put yourselves in the shoes of these parents for once! Maybe that thought of putting yourselves in the shoes of these parents, instead of the arms of the NRA might let you wiggle free from the vice-like grip of the NRA,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

As for Manuel, he says he has no plans of resting until the gun lobby does.

“Every time you see a line of school buses, there’s a big chance it’s us with the children’s museum because this museum is going to travel all around the nation. We won’t stop here. This is just the first stage,” Oliver said.

: newsy.com

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