A lawsuit alleging illegal sales of accessory trigger systems in Uvalde, Texas, alleges Daniel Defense did not act on his marketing campaign to protect his son and his family
The parents brought the lawsuit, filed Wednesday, on behalf of themselves and their children, who include: Corina Camacho’s 10-year-old son, identified as “G.M.” in the court document, who was wounded in the attack; Tanisha Rodriguez’s 9-year-old daughter, “G.R.,” who ran from the playground to a classroom to hide when she heard gunshots; Selena Sanchez’s son, “D.J.,” who was headed to the nurse’s office when he saw the gunman shooting toward classrooms. The boy hid in a classroom with other students.
Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in a shooting at an elementary school on May 24.
Daniel Defense decided not to do any studies on the effects of their marketing strategies on the health and well-being of Americans and chose not to look at the cost to families and communities like Uvalde, Texas, said the complaint.
Days before the shooting, the complaint notes, the Georgia-based company tweeted an image of a toddler holding an assault-style weapon with the caption: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
The claim states that Firequest International, Inc., which makes accessorytrigger systems, similar to illegal bump stocks is selling its products to untrained civilians and young adults in Uvalde. These types of devices make it possible for rifles to fire more quickly.
According to the legal document, the Uvalde school shooter had a clean background check and Oasis Outback sold him the guns and ammunition despite being suspicious and likely dangerous. “The store owner and his staff did not act on their suspicions and block the purchases or notify law enforcement.”
The shooter legally bought two rifles at a federal firearms licensee on May 17 and May 20. Officials said he purchased hundreds of rounds of bullets on May 18.
Uvalde PD, Motorola Solutions, Inc., and Schneider Electric, the manufacturer of door locking mechanisms, have not responded to CNN’s request for comment
The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, including the police chief at the time and the school’s former principal, created a dangerous environment for the people that sued, according to the lawsuit. Gutierrez’s attorney told CNN his client will not be commenting on the pending litigation.
The UvaldePD retreated when they attempted to break into the classroom. The scene remained active and active shooter protocol needed Uvalde police to continue to chase the murderer no matter how long it takes.
The suit blames the city’s acting police chief on the day of the massacre as well as two other companies, claiming defects in their products were factors in the response to the shooting. Motorola Solutions, Inc.’s radio communications devices, which were used by some first responders, “were defective and unreasonably dangerous because they did not contain adequate warnings or instructions concerning failure during normal use,” said the claim.
Schneider Electric, the manufacturer of the door locking mechanisms used at the school, failed to lock as designed after being shut according to lawyers.
Schneider Electric is very sad about the tragedy that happened in Uvalde. We are reviewing the filing and can’t comment on pending litigation.
In response to CNN request for comment, Daniel Defense, Oasis Outback, Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District and FireQuest International didn’t reply.
When Do We Live in a World? An Empirical Analysis of a 16-Year-Old Teen Whose Sense of Self Was Revisited
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly included an extra plaintiff’s name. The name of that person was removed from the complaint.
A 14-year-old told me that attachment is confusing. I start crying and feel nothing, which is weird and then I am told to stop being attached to things because they are all going to change. I feel like I don’t know what I want until the changes arrive and I am exhausted. She is so articulate about herself, more than I could have been at her age, or even twice her age. It’s difficult to see the source of her confusion due to her youthful naveté.
Her identity was attacked by something outside of its scope. What if she was gay? What if she was more like her parents than she thought? Did she feel more like an American or did she feel closer to the country where her parents came from? She gave way to things she didn’t want to do so easily, why couldn’t she do the things she wanted to? She had sex, drugs and failed to do her work, but also as an attack on her own sense of self, asking “Where is your sense of self?”
Freud felt that adolescence was the decisive time for separation, establishing the differences between generations, as each adolescent confronts the realities of adult life for the first time. The danger for this age group is getting swallowed up by their families or by the flimsiness of group psychology before they’ve established a “trial” identity. Adolescent crisis, he wrote, “may also be looked upon as an attempt at cure” that “ends often enough in a complete devastation.” One is only properly psychiatrically ill on the other side of adolescence, which seems to shuffle us into various forms of neurosis and psychosis. Most psychotic breaks occur during or in the years following puberty.
A patient told me that he couldn’t recognize himself while in the emergency room after looking in the mirror. After this breakdown, something in her gave way to somatic issues — she was then diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome — and she suffered recurrent anxiety and panic attacks. I will call her A., because she gained some ground with her desires after a couple of years of therapy.
Is Gun Violence a Threat to Humans? A CNN Perspective on Teens’ Opinions about America’s Future Starts Now
“Five years ago, I almost lost my life in school. And yesterday more young people lost their lives to this issue of gun violence in college,” Aalayah Eastmond told CNN’s Victor Blackwell on Tuesday. I am sad that so many other communities deal with this issue every single day.
I find myself trying to allay teenagers’ inner voices, slow down their rush to action, give room to their anxiety, and buy time to explore what are invariably complicated feelings about themselves and their world, without believing I have any answers. We are a country full of aggressive speaking, blaming speech, a preference for quick solutions, and a reduction in real impasses to superficial actionable items.
The CNN opinion series “America’s Future Starts Now” allows people to tell their stories of how they have been affected by the biggest issues facing the nation and experts to offer solutions. The authors of these commentaries do not have to agree with the views they express. Read more opinion at CNN.
Polls show that concerns about violent crime and guns are still top of mind for American voters. These issues certainly stick with Kathy Pisabaj, of Chicago, who was 19 in 2018 when she was shot by a stranger and nearly died.
It’s important for us to inform the public about how we can prevent gun violence. It is preventable, and we should never ever allow that to be something we just should have to live with.”
The Violence Project: Mentoring, Leadership Development, and Social-Emotional Learning for a Violent, Drug-Alarmed Youth
West Palm Beach, where I grew up, is known for poverty, drug abuse and violent crime. It’s just a few miles from what was the “Winter White House,” or Mar-a-Lago.
Editor’s Note: Jillian Peterson, Ph.D. and James Densley, Ph.D., are co-founders and co-presidents of The Violence Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research center. They are the authors of the award-winning book, “The Violence Project: How to stop a mass shooting epidemic.” The authors of this commentary have their own views. There’s more opinion on CNN.
I worked at an emergency shelter when I was 26 years old. My cousin, then 28, was a maintenance worker at a local nonprofit. Together, we went on to create Inner City Innovators, a nonprofit with three initiatives.
One of them is our Hope Dealer mentoring program, which combines individual and peer-to-peer mentoring, leadership development, community service and social-emotional learning. We prioritize giving youth (13+) someone to talk to.
We also do court advocacy. A lot of young men are charged with gun crimes at a young age. When they get into trouble, no traditional mentoring program will accept them. These young men have a chance with the help of public defenders and judges.
Our goal is to keep all young men in our program alive through 25. The most offending is when the brain is finished developing, around 13 and 25. We want to capture and stabilize them when this demographic is known to struggle the most.
We don’t want to keep them in a physical state. We want to keep them alive in all of their various forms. They are introduced to yoga and out-of-the-hood experiences. You think that everywhere is like that when you are born and raised in a disadvantaged community. We want to inspire them to do more.
Lack of education, poverty of community and home are not sources of shame. Those are sources of power. I would like them to use these things to make better decisions.
We give them time to be involved and lead. If you challenge someone who has been through rough times, you want them to show you they can do it.
We can’t stop all shootings. But of the young men who’ve been involved in our Hope Dealer mentoring program and have firearm charges, most stay on the path we put them on and leave activities that require picking up firearms behind them.
Ricky Aiken is the founder and executive director of Inner City Innovators, a nonprofit based in West Palm Beach, Florida, that combats crime rates and gun violence by empowering and inspiring inner-city youth through mentoring programs, anti-violence workshops and community engagement. CNN’s Jessica Ravitz Cherof had an interview with this piece.
While these funding bills no doubt will be welcomed, they do not address the underlying issues driving up crime rates. It feels like police have been placed on the back foot. The era of proactive policing has come to an end. There is a new wave of district attorneys in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and Philadelphia who are bent on criminal justice reform but have run into angry residents demanding public safety.
A college classmate of my son’s was murdered during an attempted carjacking. My daughter, a doctor in residency, was attacked. In the eight months since I wrote that piece, circumstances haven’t changed.
My son’s friends, living in his former apartment, were robbed at gunpoint during a home invasion. My daughter scolded me recently for wearing an Apple Watch while I was walking two blocks to dinner because she thought I would be mugged.
The Bipartisan Gun Safety Law and its Implications for the American Police and Deputy Attorneys (and other) Embedded in the Crime Problem
The political implications at the federal level are visible when it comes to crime. Republican congressional candidates are using the crime issue against Democrats because it is popular among their base and swing voters. The package of four police funding bills that the House Democrats recently passed is meant to curry favor with voters who think they are soft on crime or in favor of defunding the police.
The most important thing that we can do to help address the crime problem is for the district attorneys, mayors and council members of the area to publicly show their support for law enforcement officers and let them do what needs to be done to restore order. Morale is low in too many police departments and district attorney offices throughout the country, leading to dangerously high turnover rates while leaving behind understaffed and less experienced police officers and prosecutors.
The bipartisan gun safety legislation gained the support of over a dozen Republicans in the House and 15 in the Senate. But it failed to ban any weapons and fell far short of what Biden and his party had advocated for – and what polls show Americans want to see.
It is time to address the lawlessness in communities across the country. There is no reason we can’t do it. It just depends on political will.
Charlie Dent is a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who served as chair of the House Ethics Committee and chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies. He is a CNN political commentator.
Lock it up: Towards a Safer World for Families, Children, and the Laws to Combat Gun Violence in South Carolina
This is the magic of local government. We can build momentum for change quickly and effectively. We can bring people together to have conversations about our communities. We can offer hope to our neighbors who seek a safer world, free of violence.
With our hands tied by preemption laws, which allow state laws to preempt what local governments can do, and the challenges of South Carolina’s deep red political climate, we’ve had to get creative and develop relationships across the spectrum of viewpoints around gun violence to be successful.
We started with Lock it up campaign to increase safe firearm storage. We set up a partnership with our police department and local groups to promote gun safety. Informational materials and gunlocks were given out to help address accidents caused by firearms. Kids play with loaded guns at an increased rate in the homes, according to the National Crime Prevention Council.
When the state refuses to act, we fight against gun violence through municipal legislation, which allows domestic violence offenders as well as children to carry firearms in their homes. Violence prevention outreach has been increased to include those who might be at risk for engaging in gun violence.
I was able to get the first law in South Carolina to require citizens in the city to report a lost or stolen gun within 24 hours, given that South Carolina is third in the country for guns stolen out of vehicles.
Do you care about your children? The case of the killing of a black boy in Kansas City by a gun manufacturer in the 1990s
Aditi Bussells, who holds a PhD in public health, is the city councilwoman at-large in Columbia, South Carolina. She’s the first South Asian woman to be elected to local government in South Carolina.
Two years ago, a young boy was shot and killed while sleeping in Kansas City after his father’s home was shot at. LeGend should still be alive, and so should the thousands of other children, particularly Black and brown youth, taken too soon by gun violence in our country.
In Kansas City, we continue to make historic progress in housing access. If the bond measure is approved by voters next month, there will be thousands of more affordable housing units because of the funding from the Kansas City Housing Trust Fund. ZeroKC is a plan to eliminate homelessness in our city in five years.
In 2020, my administration sued a gun manufacturer which gave guns to felons in order to allow illegal guns to flood our streets. But the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives conducted a deficient investigation before granting a new license to the operators of Jimenez Arms. Because of ATF’s refusal to act, we sued the agency, too, and eventually shut down Jimenez Arms, keeping their weapons of war off our streets.
In this fall’s midterm elections, vote for people who care about your kids’ lives. If your candidate cannot guarantee that your children will be safe at school, or that you will be safe shopping at the grocery store, you should question whether they’re the best candidate for your community.
Keeping people in our cities alive is more important than anything and is not about rhetoric. We are failing if people die preventable deaths.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/12/opinions/gun-violence-crime-solutions-roundup/index.html
The rest of the Iceberg begins in the aftermath of a gunshot wound: Loss of economic revenue due to criminal and social justice crimes on a citywide scale
Democratic Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, elected in 2019, is chairman of the US Conference of Mayors Criminal and Social Justice Committee and is co-chair of Everytown for Gun Safety’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns.
As members of the public, we tend to hear about gun violence through the tragedy of innocent lives lost. But those shot who survive are often quickly forgotten.
Mental health disorders and substance use disorders are both going up for survivors of gun violence. Depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and more are included in the former. The latter includes alcohol and drug misuse, sometimes addiction to the very opioids used to treat the pain of the gunshot wound.
These effects persist at least a year after injury. At times, the world has moved on but survivors are still learning to walk again, dealing with demons and suffering through their tragedies out of the public eye. This is where the rest of the Iceberg begins, not the tip that draws attention.
That severely undercounts the economic toll. The rate of employees and dependents being shot rose four-fold from 2007 to 2020 and the loss of revenue is $535 million a year. Gun violence costs the US $557 billion a year, or 2% of the nation’s economy, and affects victims and families as well as police and criminal justice.
How to Keep the Public Health Aware: The Case against the Ohio Senate Bill 215, the Law of Private Guns and the Protection of the Public Against Gun Violence
The business community has a big influence on public health. Indeed, the private sector has been a partner in public health before, from addressing the tobacco epidemic, to combating the opioid epidemic, to expanding health insurance.
Young people are increasingly devoting their time and money to businesses that reflect their values. As the sheer number of people affected by gun violence grows and their demand for change mounts, companies that do something about it may be better off than those that do not.
I have worked for Ohio’s Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office for 35 years. I started as a young officer and moved up the ranks. Over the years, I have worked as a self- defense instructor, trained law enforcement on firearm safety and ran a corrections training academy.
Law enforcement officers must complete countless hours of firearm training prior to being certified – and even we are less accurate in a crisis situation. On a good day, when I am stationary in front of the target, I am accurate 95% of the time. But introduce loud noises, sirens, the darkness of night, lots of people and someone running at me, my skill level – despite all my training – will go down. And the likelihood that I, or any trained officer, will hit something we don’t intend to hit goes up. Law enforcement has known about this for a long time.
That was part of the reason why I spoke out against Ohio Senate Bill 215, which went into effect in June. The bill removed the concealed carry license requirement which mandates eight hours of training and background checks. It eliminated the requirement for citizens to tell a deputy if they have a concealed weapon.
Ohioians should have the opportunity to vote on age limits and strict background checks for people who purchase a gun and people who conceal it.
We are concerned with how to keep ourselves safe and how to work around this flawed legislation. We’re going to keep an accounting of what goes wrong, point out what could have been prevented and pay attention. We will fight to repeal this law and continue to offer licenses and training.
There is a central plank to Democratic politics which is gun violence activism with President Biden frequently complaining that Congress cannot pass common senseMeasures after multiple mass shootings this year
Deputy Hamilton County Sheriff Charmaine McGuffey and the Creumbleys in Charge of Involuntary Manslaughter
Sheriff Charmaine McGuffey is a lifelong Cincinnatian, a 35-year veteran of the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office and the first woman elected to serve in her position.
A teenager accused of killing four students and wounding seven others at a Michigan high school last year is expected to plead guilty to murder charges Monday, prosecutors said.
The filings stem from the mass shooting at Oxford High School in which Ethan Crumbley, 15 at the time, killed four students and injured six students and a teacher at his high school. He faces the possibility of life in prison without parole after he pleaded guilty last month to terrorism and murder charges.
James and Jennifer Crumbley have pleaded not guilty to four counts of involuntary manslaughter and have argued that the charges have no legal justification and the couple should not be held responsible for their son’s killings.
The parents have pleaded not guilty, and their attorneys argued in court documents that they should be held responsible for any killings their son is accused of committing.
The attorneys for the couple left messages for the prosecutor about the Crumbleys. Ms. McDonald used the press conference to announce the charges. They were waiting for a call back from the prosecutor’s office as to instructions to turn themselves in, the motion says.
The killing of a 19-year-old gunman at a St. Louis high school as a student ran for her life after she was shot by the police
Students were shown fleeing for their lives. Tales emerged of individuals smashing windows to save classmates from a gunman. Students blockaded themselves in dorms, built barricades in the library, cowered in restrooms, or just ran for their lives after their cellphones buzzed with a “shots fired” warning from the university police force.
The mass shooting also left five other students in critical condition. According to a verified account, a student is one of the people wounded in the shooting, but authorities have not identified them.
When a 19-year-old gunman opened fire at a St. Louis school Monday, killing two and injuring several others, he was armed with a long gun and nearly a dozen high-capacity magazines – enough ammunition for a “much worse” situation, police said.
Police responded quickly and locked doors at the school to prevent more killings.
Police Commissioner Michael Sack said the situation could have been a lot worse. The individual had more than a dozen magazines on him. There are a lot of victims there.
Alexandria was looking forward to her Sweet 16, her father told CNN affiliate KSDK. Her daughter told CNN that her mother was looking forward to retiring in a few years.
Orlando Harris, 21, was shot and killed in St. Louis, Michigan, on Oct. 30, 2014 after a shooting incident with a friend of her high school student
The gunman died at a hospital after a gun battle with officers, Sack said. He was identified as Orlando Harris, who graduated from the school last year.
As the shooting unfolded in St. Louis, a Michigan prosecutor who just heard the guilty plea of a teen who killed four students last fall said she was no longer shocked to hear of another school shooting. “The fact that there is another school shooting does not surprise me – which is horrific,” Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said.
Alexandria loved dancing and was a member of the junior dance team at her high school, according to her father.
Her friend Dejah Robinson said the two were planning to celebrate Halloween together this weekend. Robinson was overcome with tears when he said that she had a laugh and kept the smile on her face.
Alumni fondly remembered the impact Jean Kuczka made on her students. “She was kindhearted. She was sweet. She made you laugh no matter what, Allen-Brown said.
Kuczka claimed in her biography that she had been at Central VPA High School since 2008. “I believe that every child is a unique human being and deserves a chance to learn,” she wrote.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/25/us/st-louis-school-shooting-tuesday/index.html
Collision Survivors in a High School Building: The Shooter and a Sweeping Officer at a KSDK School
Several teens were injured, some with gunshot or graze wounds. One had a fractured ankle. They were all in stable conditions, the police commissioner said.
The commissioner said there was no mystery about what would happen when he entered. “He had it out and entered in an aggressive, violent manner.”
Adrianne Bolden, a freshman at the school, told KSDK that students thought it was a drill until they heard the sirens and saw their teachers were scared.
Adrianne told KSDK that the students were forced to stay in the classroom until their assistant principal saw one of the locked windows. The teacher told us that all of us had to jump out the window.
Math teacher David Williams told CNN everyone went into “drill mode,” turning off lights, locking doors and huddling in corners so they couldn’t be seen.
Sack claims that responding officers rushed into the school and killed the shooter after hearing about the controversy over the delayed response.
As phone calls came in from people hiding in different locations, officers fanned out and searched for students and staff to escort them out of the building.
A SWAT team that was together for a training exercise was also able to quickly load up and get to the school to perform a secondary sweep of the building, Sack said.
School shootings warning signs red flags xpn: The key to managing grievances, anger and anger, according to a former FBI agent
The general public doesn’t know what to look for when there is a school shooting, according to a former FBI special agent.
According to school safety consultant and past president of the National Association of School Psychologists, the key is to pay attention to drastic changes in behavior.
It can be seen that it has increased outward behavior. We will see an increase in grievances. An escalation, potentially, in anger. We will see an escalation in difficulty managing their emotions,” Reeves said.
“We’re still seeing significant changes, but they may now be starting to withdraw,” Reeves said. “They’re no longer interacting with groups of friends. They’re starting to spend more time on the internet.”
To the point where the English teacher knows about it, their friends at the lunch table know about it is when leakage can involve a fixation on previous mass shootings.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/26/us/school-shootings-warning-signs-red-flags-xpn/index.html
Classroom Management of a Student Shooting for a Class of Explosive Crimes in Michigan, where the offender was arrested on a gun-related charge
“They’re typically done because the offender is really excited about what they’re going to do. Some people say that it is a cry for help, if they are found before then, they could be used for that purpose.
They plan it for people who want to be violent. They think about it. They can’t help thinking about it. They prepare for it. It’s pleasant for them to have that period in which that is done. They like it.
The police chief said that the student suspected in the shooting had a school safety plan in which he was patted down every day. During Wednesday’s search, a handgun was retrieved and several shots were fired in an office area in the front of the school, away from other students and staff, he said.
By itself, that post isn’t necessarily a cause for alarm, Reeves said. In Michigan, residents under age 18 can possess a gun under certain circumstances.
The morning of the shooting, a teacher found a drawing by the suspect depicting violence and phrases such as “the thoughts won’t stop help me,” “blood everywhere” and “my life is useless,” the prosecutor said.
While a troubling social media post or a disturbing comment in class might not indicate any threat, it’s still worth telling a teacher or school official because others might have additional concerns, O’Toole said.
“Educate the students and the faculty to what the red-flag behaviors are … and make it so that students can call in on a confidential line,” O’Toole said.
“We strive for prevention – based on knowing what warning behaviors are, how to spot them and how to use appropriate intervention in an objective and compassionate way,” she said.
The US Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center and the US Department of Education recommend that any student’s messages be monitored and that the information go to a school threat assessment team.
The core team “should include an administrator, at least one school mental health professional (school psychologist, school counselor, school social worker), and a school resource officer (SRO)/law enforcement,” Reeves and colleagues wrote about behavioral threat assessment and management in K-12 schools.
We find abuse happening in the home when we do the threat assessment. Or that one parent just got arrested for domestic violence and they’re sitting in jail. Or the one grandma that was their caretaker who they loved just died. Now they feel that they have nobody,” Reeves said.
If an individual makes a threat but it is not real, law enforcement won’t need to be involved. School personnel can work with the student and parents by implementing a problem solving and/or conflict resolution process,” Reeves and her colleagues wrote.
An officer of the law can become more involved in a consultative or direct role if the threat is legitimate. … Reports involving weapons, threats of violence, and physical violence should immediately be reported to local law enforcement.”
Parent Engagement at Home: Identifying Student Victims of a Cybercrime at School and the Role of Social Media in School Safety
The student was “immediately removed from the classroom” and taken to the guidance counselors’ office, where he told a counselor “the drawing was part of a video game he was designing,” the school district’s superintendent said.
“It’s a very low bar for a school to search a backpack or a locker,” CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig said. We know that from the Supreme Court and it is very low.
The least reliable information you can get is self- reported information. So you need to find other sources to corroborate what this person is telling you,” the former FBI special agent said.
“So you would certainly want to look for anything else that might suggest that this person is experiencing violent ideation of some kind,” she said. That means talking to the parents, teachers and even law enforcement to see if there have been any reports of incidents at the home.
Therefore, “these types of consequences should be implemented only after careful team consideration and should always be paired with supportive interventions,” the team of school psychologists wrote.
On the other hand, keeping the student of concern supervised at school “decreases the opportunity for them to be at home alone where they have more time to conduct research and plan how to carry out the act of violence.”
Parents need to be aware of the things happening in their child’s life and what may happen in their possession. While we need students and school staff to report, we also need more parent engagement at home and also need them to reach out when their child is struggling.”
Saint Louis Public Schools Suptuary Kelvin Adams wants students to read, write, and calculate in order to be safe.
“It’s the totality of all those behaviors. So one person may know about leakage. Someone might know that he has access to a gun. Another person may have a different concern for the same student.
Reeves said students are often in the best position to notice red flags – whether those clues are on social media, in the classroom or outside of school.
The Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting: When Media and Politics Greed about the News, Murders, and the Black-Hole Crisis
The online expressions of grief were picked apart by Jones for his audience of millions. Grieving parents, relatives, survivors, neighbors, religious leaders and others publicly connected to the shooting were falsely accused of being “crisis actors” in a deep-state plot to take away guns.
After his daughter’s death, the father of a girl died in public and Alex Jones mocked him, but he testified at Jones’ recent Connecticut trial that a man followed him through the city and yelled at his daughter.
Another Sandy Hook father, Lenny Pozner, whose civil case against Jones in Texas is still pending, is among the relatives who has faced death threats. In 2017, a Florida woman was sentenced to five months in federal prison after a series of threatening emails and phone calls to Pozner.
According to data from the Gun Violence Archive, the Nashville horror was among at least 130 mass shootings so far this year – more than this point in any previous year since at least 2013. (The GVA, like CNN, defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are shot, excluding the shooter.) Such events are now so frequent that there are some cases of people who survived one such event getting caught up in the aftermath of a subsequent one.
Conspiracy theories in the US were focused on shadowy forces within the government. The 9/11 truthers generally blamed the government but left the families of the victims alone.
Though the implications were horrendous, some of the videos were widely shared, including by establishment figures in media and politics – an indication of how politicians would increasingly boost misinformation in the years to come. By the one-month anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, one popular conspiracy video on YouTube had been viewed more than 10 million times.
The targeting of ordinary Americans has gone far beyond those associated with crimes and tragedies. Conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 pandemic and the safety of vaccines led to the harassment of nurses and other hospital workers. Mainstream politicians are pushing fraud claims against election workers in a bid to win the 2020 election.
Conspiracy theories and violence are related. The storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 was a result of the White House’s campaign of misinformation.
There are outrageous false beliefs that are not disqualifying for national politicians, and they are a litmus test in some Republican contests. One recently re-elected member of the US Congress, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), has caused doubt about many tragedies, including the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, by misrepresenting the survivor’s story.
The debate over guns is one of the many times that conspiracy theories and campaigns are used in political disputes. President Biden’s nomination to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives – an important Justice Department agency to keep Americans safe that has been without a permanent head since 2015 – was undone last year in part by a campaign of nasty memes and disinformation about the nominee and his family.
A Michigan Appellate Court Order Enforcing the Involuntary Manslaughter of a Detroit High School Shooter
According to a recent court filing in Michigan, the mother of the Oxford High school shooter knew about his mental state when the parents bought him a gun.
“You know my biggest fear was that he was gonna turn the gun on himself,” Jennifer Crumbley, his mother, said in the back of the police car after the shooting, according to one filing.
The quote was included in Karen McDonald’s submission to Oakland County prosecutors opposing the parents’ attempt to appeal their bond that has kept them behind bars for over a year.
In an unusual move, prosecutors arrested his parents and accused them of giving their son easy access to a firearm and disregarding signs he was a threat. The parents were arrested days after the shooting in a Detroit warehouse following a manhunt after they failed to come to court for their initial arraignment.
In the court filings, the prosecution says Jennifer Crumbley told law enforcement she hadn’t looked closely at her son’s disturbing drawings in school the day of the shooting.
She expressed her concern over the drawings to her husband in a series of Facebook messages included in the court documents. Emergency,” the court filing states.
Prosecutors presented some of the evidence in the case at a preliminary hearing in February, after which a judge ruled there was enough evidence to proceed to trial in January 2023.
However, the Michigan Supreme Court delayed the start of the trial and sent the cases to the Court of Appeals to determine “whether there was sufficient evidence of causation to bind the defendants over for trial on the charges of involuntary manslaughter.” The court’s order was unusual and suggests the judges have concerns about the case, CNN legal analyst Paul Callan said at the time.
The Case of James and the Crumbleys: A Motion Against the Bond or the Electronic Supervision of a Family Protected from a Collisional Shooting
James and the other person held on $500,000 in cash or surety filed a motion last week asking the court to either lower the bond or put them on electronic supervision.
“What the Crumbleys were attempting to avoid was being threatened and hurt by members of the public who were rightfully emotional and angry. Further, they also needed money from their various accounts to secure attorneys, to live on, and again, to avoid going into banks and showing identification as to who they were,” the motion says.
The couple wrote they never tried to flee in the days after the shooting but stayed in-state and retained counsel. Law enforcement advised them to leave their home due to dangerous threats against their lives after the shooting, and local family members wouldn’t take them in out of fear, so they stayed at a friend’s art studio in Detroit to try to be discreet, the motion states.
The motion says that the Crumbleys sold their home to pay legal fees and because they couldn’t stay there due to threats. If they are freed on bond, they will have a place to stay.
They argue that their son is in custody and that law enforcement seized all of the guns, including theBB guns, because they were considered a threat to the community.
The Oakland County Circuit judge ruled in an order Tuesday that she does not have the jurisdiction to rule on the bond issue because of the pending appeal. The parties in the case are under a gag order, unable to communicate with the press.
The Case of a Boy Shot in the Chest: The Newport News School District Reopened after a Classmate Was Shocked by a Student
The cases are concerning in that the boy shot his teacher in Virginia on January 6. The school reopened after the teacher was shot in the chest, and there are new security measures in place.
Novah Jones was located in a different classroom when the announcement said “lockdown” while they were doing math. I was scared and hid under my desk because I didn’t know what to do.
The teacher wounded in Friday’s shooting, whose injury was initially described as life-threatening, was listed in stable condition by Saturday, according to the Newport News Police Department.
Authorities and the Newport News public school district did not name the teacher, but her alma mater, James Madison University, identified her as Abby Zwerner.
The 6-year-old boy was taken into police custody, Police Chief Steve Drew said in a news conference, adding that “this was not an accidental shooting.”
The student had a gun and had an altercation with the teacher. He said no other students were involved in the shooting.
Following the shooting, all students at the school were evacuated from their classrooms with their teachers and taken to the gymnasium, where they were with counselors and officers, Drew told CNN affiliate WTKR.
Novah said she had trouble sleeping that night because she was worried that he still had the gun and he was going to come to her house.
Novah is a child that was at the school when there was a shooting. In comparison to other countries, shootings in US schools are still rare but they are more common. CNN analyzed the number of shooting at K-12 schools in the year 2022.
The school will remain closed Monday and Tuesday in order to give the community time to heal.
Two days before the shooting, the student allegedly “slammed” and broke Zwerner’s cell phone and cursed at guidance counselors, which led to him being suspended for one day, according to a legal notice sent to the Newport News School Board by Zwerner’s attorney that also informed officials about the teacher’s plan to sue school administrators.
Authorities are “working diligently to get an answer to the question we are all asking – how did this happen? We are also working to ensure the child receives the supports and services he needs as we continue to process what took place,” Jones said.
The Times of Dodge City (1994-2004): Why guns should never be allowed in the United States, nor should gun-toting motorists abhor a firearm
In 1995 The Times wrote a Page 1 article about Dodge City scenarios in which fender-bender accidents could escalate into bloody skirmishes among gun-toting motorists. False alarm, for the most part. The people who obtained concealed-carry permits were often middle-aged adults with good self-control and no criminal history. When the Supreme Court encourages gun proliferation and when states issue permits to nearly everyone, the court still gives some room for regulation.
In any case, even if it were possible to get a new assault weapon ban through the Senate, the ban wouldn’t affect the possibly 20 million or more such rifles already in circulation. The ban on assault weapons from 1994 to 2004 may have been counter productive because they might have been turned into icons of American manhood. Indeed, there are probably now more assault rifles in private hands in the United States than in the armories of the U.S. military. We liberals have become marketers for firearms manufacturers.
Arguments against gun control are as well rehearsed as those for it. Second amendment supporters say that more guns on the street should be used to allow people to defend themselves and that schools and universities should be strengthened. Many point out that often, shootings are perpetrated by gunmen with troubled mental histories or who become isolated or alienated from their society.
The day brought the familiar futile anger over the tortured politics of gun control and splits among Americans about firearms that mean that – even after more senseless deaths – nothing will be done.
Do We Want to Make Our Kids Safe at School? A Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin Explains the Cliche of Mass Shootings
Parents who send their kids to college worry about whether they will fit in, will struggle with academics, and could have a problem with alcohol or drugs. They should be worried about mass shootings. Can a nation that isn’t sure if its kids are safe at school now not keep them safe at college?
People are terrified, their parents are terrified, that’s what Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin said after talking to people from Michigan State. We either have to deal with something that is frightening our population, or we do not care about it.
When she left her children at Michigan State last year, Dana Nessel thought it would be a miracle if they did not experience any type of incident like this.
Monday’s killings led to a heartbreaking only-in-America moment, when a young Parkland survivor counseled stricken Michigan State Spartans on how to process their nightmare and what they would experience in the years ahead.
A previous generation of students was marked by the Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999 that killed 12 students and a teacher, and the Virginia Tech massacre in which 32 people died in 2007.
Jon Dean, the top cop in Grosse Pointe Public schools, asked what could have made this happen in the first place. It touched our community twice.
In the wake of a mass shooting in Washington, politicians did not respond with concrete measures to stop it from happening again, and this is what makes it so cliche.
Firearms reform activists will hope that the Democratic sweep of the governorship and both chambers of the state legislature in Michigan will open the possibility of significant changes to the law – but gun politics remain treacherous for lawmakers in swing states who want to cling onto power.
Biden, speaking at a conference of county executives in Washington, issued one of his increasingly frequent condemnations of mass shootings, bemoaning “a family’s worst nightmare that’s happening far too often in this country.”
Psychologist Michael McRae: A Thermonuclear Tempest for Mental Health Services in the House of Representatives
There is not much effort by Republicans in Washington to spend money to fix mental health services. Governors and legislatures in the states are relaxing gun regulations in a way that will likely lead to easier access to weapons.
Michael McRae said his son began to change after his wife’s death. He was getting bitter more and more. Angry and bitter. So angry. Evil angry … He began to really let himself go. His teeth were falling out. He had stopped cutting his hair. He looked like a wolf man.”
Active Shooting of a Michigan State Student, Anthony McRae, and the Students at Michigan State University on Monday, Oct. 14, 2011
Red flag laws that allow for the seizure of weapons from the mentally ill may be possible thanks to more pro- active action by loved ones and others. Katherine Schweit, a former FBI senior official and active shooter expert, said people who see relatives deteriorating mentally need to act.
“We have to follow through, we have to report stuff,” she told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “It’s the ‘see something, say something’ that has prevented us having the terrorist events in the United States. We need to do the same thing for these situations.
This could save lives in the future. But it’s too late for three Michigan State students who will never graduate, or their fellow Spartans whose college years are now stained by the plague of gun violence.
The community at Michigan State University has been grieving the students killed and still reeling from the events of earlier in the week, as investigators investigate why a man targeted the school.
Thousands of people came together with flowers around a landmark rock at Michigan State to honor the three students killed in a mass shooting on Monday night.
“We shouldn’t have to live like this,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told the crowd. We don’t have to subconsciously scans every room for an exit, we can figure out who our last call would be to.
“Our campuses, churches, classrooms and communities should not be battlefields,” the governor told the grieving crowd that included students who had also lived through another mass shooting at a Michigan high school just 15 months ago.
Tom Izzo told the students to show their emotions, at least for a while, at Wednesday’s memorial service.
Law enforcement officials who have access to the note told CNN that it began, “Hello, my name is Anthony McRae” and went on to say that he would be shooting up the school.
CNN reported that law enforcement officials who have access to the note said it included targets that included a warehouse, an employment agency, a discount store and a fast-food restaurant.
The businesses were warned on the letter that they had been named but that the person who killed the man was dead and there was no legitimacy to his claims of being a leader of any team.
FBI profilers are analyzing the letter that the shooter may have written, according to law enforcement officials. The note doesn’t say why the locations are targets or list grievances, officials said.
A Michigan State University Mass Shooting Resulting in the Death of a Missing Student and a Hermitian, Michelle McRae
McRae was previously charged with carrying a concealed weapon – a felony count that would have prevented him from being able to buy a gun if he were convicted.
A misdemeanor conviction does not prevent someone from buying a gun at the federal level. The state of Michigan has a felony or a high-class misdemeanor charge.
McRae then went on to purchase two guns in 2021 in Michigan, a law enforcement source said. The sources said that one of the guns was a Hi-Point 9mm pistol.
Dana Nessel, the Attorney General of Michigan, told CNN it wasn’t known if the gun used in the incident at the university was purchased legally or not.
Someone who has mental health issues and had been illegally possession a gun, and look how easy it was for him to obtain a weapon even after all that, something needs to change, Nessel said.
The three students who were killed in the shooting were remembered by the speakers at Wednesday’s vigil. They remembered their smiles, their kindness, and their sense of humor.
Anderson was studying to become a doctor, her aunt Chandra Davis posted on Instagram. “How is it that she was in class doing what she was supposed to be doing and yet and still her life was taken by a coward who clearly didn’t understand the devastation he was about to cause my entire family,” Davis wrote. No mother should have to bury her child.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/16/us/michigan-state-university-mass-shooting-thursday/index.html
Fraternity and Student Relations from a Spartan Student During a High-Prevalence Gun-Lifting Event on February 9
Fraser was president of the Michigan Beta Chapter of Phi Delta Theta, the fraternity said in a statement. He was a leader and a great friend to his brothers, the Greek community and the people he interacted with on campus, the fraternity said.
Billy Shellenbarger said that he was everything the school district would want a student to be.
“The time away from work for her family, the long recovery road ahead, and the subsequent medical expenses to care for Guadalupe, will place both an emotional and financial a burden on her family,” the organization said on Facebook.
“There will never be a return to normal. The event has changed what will feel like for us forever. But it is okay, said Kovach. I love the fact that the Spartans come together in times of need.
The Michigan State Police gave security at the candle-lit event in order to allow the university police to grieve.
A woman in Pennsylvania and a man in North Carolina were charged this week after a six-year-old in each case brought a gun to school, officials said, marking at least three times an elementary school student has brought a weapon to campus this year, including when a six-year-old allegedly shot his teacher in Newport News, Virginia, last month.
In Pennsylvania, a mother in Norristown was arrested after her 6-year-old son brought a gun to Joseph K. Gotwals Elementary School on February 9, prosecutors said.
The Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release that Jasmin Devlin was charged with endangering the welfare of a child and reckless endangering for failing to secure a firearm in her home. It is not clear if he has an attorney.
Diane Toscano stated that Zwerner’s attorneys have evidence that shows teachers and administrators were warned three times that the student had a gun and was threatening people. Toscano alleged the administrators “failed to act” despite having “knowledge of imminent danger.”
Marvin Ray Davis, aka Marvin D. Davis, faces a criminal charge of improper storage of a gun to protect a child
She has been ordered not to have contact with children under the age of 18 as a result of her bond conditions. A preliminary hearing in the case is set for February 24.
In North Carolina, Marvin Ray Davis was charged with a crime of improper storage of a gun to protect a child after an unloaded 9mm handgun was found in a 6-year-old’s backpack.
Davis is not related to the child but did live in the same home, a department spokesperson told CNN. His next court appearance is on March 1, when he was held on a $4,000 bond, the release said.
It’s unclear if Davis has an attorney and CNN has made several attempts to contact him. CNN has also reached out to Nash County Public Schools for comment.
“The situation … should be a reminder to all gun owners to secure their weapons in a safe manner so that minors cannot possess them,” Rocky Mount Police Chief Robert Hassell said. He claimed that the situation was preventable.
Last year the US hit 100 mass shootings on March 19 and this year’s date is almost two weeks later. There were late March dates in the previous year as well as in the year of 2020; there were not as many mass shootings.
The US has gun violence more than any other developed country – Why did President Donald J. Frost choose to run for the presidency in 2022?
“There are real solutions and tools – including bans on the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines – available now that can make a difference, but only if our elected officials act to implement them,” he added.
The US has a higher incidence of gun violence than any other developed country. The rate in the US is eight times greater than in Canada, which has the seventh highest rate of gun ownership in the world; 22 times higher than in the European Union and 23 times greater than in Australia, according to Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation data from 2019.
In order to get the support of young voters he calls the “mass shooting generation”, the first member of Generation Z to ever be elected to Congress concentrated his campaign on ending gun violence in the US.
“We’ve seen these things and been wondering our whole lives as young people, in high school, middle school and elementary school, why? Why is this happening? Why hasn’t we fixed this? Frost was the Democratic candidate and said that he was going to run.
A July 22nd, 2022, CNN Poll shows that most of the public favors stricter gun laws, however more than 4% think the recent legislation did not go far enough to change things.
The incidences of mental health challenges increased as well as violence, but an analysis found guns made those incidences even more deadly. All but one of the increase in suicides and most of the increase in homicides in the last few years were related to gun issues. The gun suicide rate increased 10% while the non-gun suicide rate decreased.
But until lawmakers on Capitol Hill reflect this majority, further gun safety legislation appears out of the question as the deadly cycle of violence continues.
The day of the January 6, 2012 shooting at Richneck Elementary School: A bigail teacher teaching newport-news-virginia, CBS reporter Savannah Guthrie
“I remember him pointing the gun at me, I remember the look on his face,” Abigail Zwerner told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie in an interview that aired Tuesday, more than two months after the January 6 shooting at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News left her hospitalized with gunshot wounds to the hand and chest. “I remember the gun going off.”
Zwerner knew, she said, she had been shot – the bullet went through her left hand before getting lodged in her chest, where fragments of it remain – but her first thought was of the safety of her other students.
She said she was terrified. “In that moment, my initial reaction was, ‘Your kids need to get out of here,’ you know? This classroom is no longer safe. … I just wanted to get my babies out of there.”
Zwerner was not able to get into details about what happened before the shooting due to the litigation, so he is dealing with emotional injuries as well.
There will be no criminal charges against the boy who shot Zwerner, according to the Newport News Commonwealth’s Attorney.
The family has said that the boy with a disability and care plan was left alone on the day of the shooting and was required a parent to attend with him. “We will regret our absence on this day for the rest of our lives,” the statement read.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/21/us/abigail-zwerner-teacher-shooting-newport-news-virginia-nbc/index.html
Abby Cannot Get Out of Bed During the Breakdown of the Newport News Principal’s Encounter with the Shooting Student George Parker III
She told NBC some days she can’t get out of bed. “Some days are better than others where I’m able to get out of bed and make it to my appointments. But from going through what I’ve gone through, I try to stay positive.”
The outpouring of support from her family and complete strangers is “hard to comprehend sometimes,” she said, but is deeply appreciated and “truly inspiring.”
The fallout from the incident was swift, drawing harsh criticism from parents and leading the school board to vote to oust Superintendent George Parker III. The assistant principal resigned and the principal was moved to another school even though the district did not say where.
“The fact of the matter is that those who were aware that the student may have had a gun on the premises that day did not report this to Mrs. Newton at all,” Branch said.
I am following the Newport News prosecutor very closely to see if they charge anyone in this case.
I will hold those accountable that I can hold accountable, and that is what my job is. Abby’s going to have to deal with this her entire life, both physically, emotionally.”
She said she had vivid memories of that day and that she wasn’t sure when the shock would go away. “I think about it daily. Sometimes I have nightmares.”
The Denver Police Department of Crimes responded to a Denver high school shooting and told the mayor that he had been shot in the stomach by an African American student
Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas said police and medical responders arrived quickly to find two men with gunshot wounds, after the shooting at East High School.
The mayor said they were looking for the suspect. “We will find that suspect, and we will hold that suspect accountable for his actions this morning in placing everyone in danger and certainly wounding the two staff members who were doing their job and trying to keep everyone safe at the time.”
The student described as an African American juvenile with afro and wearing a hoodie was requested to be looked out for by the mayor. The student should be considered “armed and dangerous and willing to use the weapon, as we learned this morning,” the mayor said.
In addition, another student was taken to a hospital because of an allergic reaction, the mayor said. Paramedics were already in the building for that incident when the shooting occurred and so were able to immediately treat those wounded, Hancock said.
East High School is the most performing comprehensive high school in the Denver Public School system, with 2,500 students in 9th through 12th grades.
The high school is located in the neighborhood of City Park and is considered a historic landmark because of its Jacobethan Revival style architecture. The clock tower on the school campus is similar in style to Philadelphia’s Independence Hall.
Once the police permit, school officials will be implementing a “controlled release” of students. Students who commuted themselves will be escorted to their cars, students who ride the bus will be held on campus until their bus arrives, and students who are dropped off by a parent can be picked up from a separate location, the tweet says.
Exceptional Case of James Crumbley: A High-Energy Parent, High-Case Family Shooting, and a Diversion from Parenting
The judges for the state appellate court acknowledged in a written opinion that there was a good chance this case could set precedent but didn’t think it was unusual.
The decision could be applied to parents in the future, who may have a different situation than the one in which the decision was made, since the warning signs and evidence were not as significant.
The opinion said that those concerns are “significantly diminished” by the fact that Crumbley’s actions “were reasonably foreseeable, and that is the ultimate test that must be applied.”
The judges cited text messages from the months before the massacre in which Crumbley told his parents that he was a demon and that he was throwing things around his house. When his mother didn’t reply, he sent her another message asking, “can you at least text back.” His mother did not text back that day and was riding horses with James at the time, according to the opinion.
Crumbley also told a friend that he believed he was having a mental breakdown and asked his parents for medical help but that his father told him to “suck it up” and his mother laughed, according to the opinion.
The case was exceptional, as Judge Michael Riordan noted, because it was obvious that Crumbley had a mental health issue, and his parents gave him a gun anyway.
“Our legal system does not, nor should it, criminally punish people for subpar, odd, or eccentric parenting, or require that children be deprived of any instrumentality that otherwise is legal to possess and use. Riordan wrote that he thought parents don’t assume that their children will commit violent crimes. It is an unusual case before us. EC was so troubled that defendants gave him a gun and did nothing when confronted with evidence that he contemplated harming others.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/23/us/crumbley-parents-oxford-school-shooting/index.html
A Family Lawsuit in Michigan for the Causation of the Manslaughtering 17-Year-Old Student Crumbley
There is enough evidence to move forward with a trial for the Crumbleys, which they can appeal to Michigan’s Supreme Court.
The parents of the teenager who killed four students at a Michigan high school can be tried for criminal responsibility for their child’s actions.
If the parents hadn’t bought the gun for their son or if they had taken him back to school after the fact, the murders would have been prevented, according to the appeals court.
“Whether a jury actually finds that causation has been proven after a full trial, where the record will almost surely be more expansive — including evidence produced by defendants — is an issue separate from what we decide today,” the court said in a 3-0 opinion.
The attorneys for the parents say that they weren’t sure what would happen that day. They acknowledge that some bad decisions were made and that they should not be charged with manslaughter.
A judge said parents shouldn’t be hauled to court for poor care of their kids. He said that the evidence is more serious against the Crumbleys.
The morning of the shooting, a picture of a body with bullet holes in the torso was drawn by EC, which was near a drawing of a gun that his parents had recently gifted him.
How Did Nashville Shooting in April 2017 Happen? A Democrat Reply to Beasley, Biden, and Theoretical Expectations
Lawyers for the parents cited a gag order in declining to comment. Because the appeals court had to hear arguments, they’ll likely ask the Michigan Supreme Court to review the case.
The human chain of children, shepherded by the police, fled the school after it was hit by a tragedy. On Monday, it was Nashville’s turn to join the roster of cities made notorious by a mass shooting epidemic much of the country seems prepared to tacitly accept as the price of the right to own high-powered firearms.
Police said two of the guns used in the killings were legally purchased, and that Evelyn Dieckhaus was one of the three people killed. Their names – known only to the rest of America in death – were released by police about the same time as they should have been going home from Covenant School for the day.
Firearms are the leading cause of death in American kids aged 1 to 19, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation based on 2020 data. Kids in violent neighborhoods not in the classroom are claimed by many guns.
“This is where we are at, we have children living through multiple mass shooting (incidents). What are we doing? Beasley told the interviewer what he had just said. Former President Barack Obama tweeted a video of Beasley’s original comments, writing, “We are failing our children.”
At the White House, President Joe Biden diverted from remarks at a previously scheduled event highlighting the role of women in small business to address yet another school shooting.
In one sense, Cornyn – who predicted no action on guns until at least the next election – was simply stating the facts. Biden supports an assault weapons ban after mass shootings. But to hear such a suggestion described as “tired talking points” is still jarring after Monday’s shooter was carrying two AR-style weapons and killed six people.
One of the top Senate Republicans, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, quickly tamped down any ideas that the deaths of three small kids and three adults who looked after them would make any political difference. “I would say we’ve gone about as far as we can go – unless somebody identifies some area that we didn’t address,” Cornyn told CNN.
Despite his previous role, Cornyn also expressed some frustration with Biden’s remarks. “The president just keeps coming back to the same old tired talking points. He doesn’t have anything new to offer. If he does, I think we should consider them, but so far, I haven’t heard anything.”
The senator from Texas put into words the reality, frustration and limitations of the guns debate. He said that the ban would affect law-abiding citizens and that he didn’t believe they were a threat to public safety.
Cornyn is correct that most Americans who own firearms never use them recklessly or launch mass shootings. Some of the weapons that are designed for use on the battlefield have the ability to cause a lot of carnage in a short time. Before their attacks, the attackers that open fire in schools, shopping malls, or bars have sometimes been law-abiding.
The political argument on guns is essentially about the rights of which Americans take priority. Is it those of citizens who own such weapons, even though a tiny minority of them use them to create mayhem and murder? Or should it be the victims of gun crime, like those kids and adults gunned down in Nashville, who had their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness eradicated in a few seconds of terror?
The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a hero of the conservative movement, wrote in the Heller opinion in 2008 that it was permissible for the government to regulate firearms while remaining faithful to the Second Amendment. He wrote that the right secured by the amendment was not “a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
That’s a position that has long been overtaken by the Republican Party’s march to the right – a fact that Cornyn implicitly underscored in his comments.
This lack of any common ground on an issue of deadly importance parallels the wider disconnect in a politically polarized society that increasingly lacks a common cultural understanding.
Some kids will stay at school on Tuesday morning, but one day they won’t come home after class because of politics.
The fact that yet another school shooting took place within days of this decision, as three children and three adults were killed Monday at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, only underscores the urgency of finding ways to prevent these tragedies.
School shooters tend to be White boys and young men who are current or former students of the schools they target. The Oxford shooter is the same as every other shooter. Many of the facts about this person are not new.
It’s important to note that not all parents of mass shooters fit neatly into these three categories, and not all mass shooters come from dysfunctional families. It is important for parents to understand the role that they can play in shaping their children’s behavior and mental health.
James bought the weapon with his son’s money four days before the shooting. Jennifer then took him to the range to practice with it. According to the perpetrator’s own court testimony, he later retrieved the gun from an unlocked container in his home and hid it in his school backpack.
A Mother’s Guide for Victims of a Mass Shooting: Charging the Parents Responsible for Crimes Like the Oxford Shooting
We can help families affected by trauma and mental illness, and provide better resources for parents who may be struggling to raise their children in a healthy environment. We can hold the parents responsible for crimes like the Oxford shooting.
The second type is parents who sense that something is wrong with their child but don’t know what to do or who to turn to for help. Many of the mothers of perpetrators we interviewed are in this category.
They may downplay problems or ignore warning signs because they fear that a police-led intervention will make things worse. This is why we are cautious of charging parents in these cases in the first place, so we can encourage parents who are concerned about their child to seek the help they need.
They did this even though they were aware of the history of their child’s behavior. After his son tried to kill himself with a machete, the father of the Highland Park mass shooter agreed to sponsor his son’s gun license, which resulted in felony charges being brought against him. The father is not guilty.