If you’ve ever been at a college football game and thought, “Man this football game is fun, but it would be even more fun if some people in this stadium were packing heat!” then you probably were not very happy with the Arkansas Senate yesterday.

After a good dose of public outrage and some lawmakers speaking out about its dangers, a new Arkansas concealed carry expansion measure has now been watered down by an exemption passed by a 22-10 vote in the Senate. The exemption removes college sports events from the expansion.

Signed into law by Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson on Wednesday, the new measure would have allowed anyone with a concealed handgun license and eight hours of active shooter training to conceal carry in a publicly-owned building like a state college campus or the state capitol. Private establishments like bars and places of worship would also be included, although those establishments still have the right to prohibit guns from their premises. News of this measure expanding gun rights to college sports venues angered and alarmed many, leading the Senate to pass the exemption for college sports venues less than a day after the law was passed.

Among those who were confused by the very logic of the law was University of Arkansas defensive back Kevin Richardson II:

I’m curious as to why… https://t.co/Ynpo3lGUeL

— Kevin Richardson II (@K_Rich30) March 23, 2017

Speaking to USA Today Sports, Democratic Rep. Greg Leading, who represents the district that includes one of the University of Arkansas campuses, said “Most concealed-carry permit holders are responsible people. That said, accidents happen. People like to have a good time before, during and after football games in the South. People drink. People get emotional. If you’re not allowed to bring an umbrella into a stadium, why should you be allowed to introduce guns into the equation?” To add to Rep. Leading’s point, outside food is prohibited from most stadiums, and, on the very same day the new measure was approved, the SEC implemented a league-wide “clear bag policy” that encourages fans to bring only clear and smaller bags to SEC football games.

As the AP points out, the state of Arkansas is no stranger to supporting and expanding gun rights. In 2013, the state passed a law that allowed faculty and staff to carry concealed weapons on college campuses, given that those schools agreed to allow guns on campus, which none of them ended up doing. Governor Hutchinson is also, as the AP points out, a former chair of a National Rifle Association task force whose mission was to push for armed faculty at Arkansas public schools in response to the Newtown shooting. That shooting happened, of course, in Connecticut–over a thousand miles away from Arkansas.

This exemption is expected to pass in the Arkansas House floor sometime within the next week.

This Arkansas law comes at a time where multiple states with Republican governors are moving to pass some version of concealed carry expansion. This week, North Dakota Republican Gov. Doug Burgum signed into law a bill that institutes Constitutional Carry throughout the state and Ohio’s new gun laws that allow for people to carry a concealed weapon into places like day care facilities and non-secure areas of airports went into effect.

Austin Elias-De Jesus

Austin is an editorial intern at Law Street Media. He is a junior at The George Washington University majoring in Political Communication. You can usually find him reading somewhere. If you can’t find him reading, he’s probably taking a walk. Contact Austin at Staff@Lawstreetmedia.com.

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Facebook is implementing new polices to prevent person-to-person gun sales via both the Facebook and Instagram sites. Traditionally, individuals making private gun sales have been able to arrange them using the social networks, but under Facebook’s new policies, that will no longer be allowed.

Firearms are joining the long list of things that people cannot use Facebook (or Instagram) to sell, including illegal drugs and pharmaceuticals. While Facebook’s old policies didn’t allow individuals to sell guns via Facebook ads, individuals could create posts for the private sale of firearms. However, Facebook did take actions in 2014 to restrict those kinds of sales to minors. According to NPR’s Laura Sydell: “Facebook has never been directly involved in gun selling, but it has been a place where buyers and sellers have negotiated sales.” However, these new policies won’t affect already-licensed sellers or stores from creating ads on the site.

Facebook’s head of Global Policy Management, Monika Bickert, stated:

Over the last two years, more and more people have been using Facebook to discover products and to buy and sell things to one another. We are continuing to develop, test, and launch new products to make this experience even better for people and are updating our regulated goods policies to reflect this evolution.

Under these new polices, Facebook will rely on users to report violations, and if certain individuals become repeat offenders, they may be banned from the social media sites. Facebook officials stated:

We will remove reported posts that explicitly indicate a specific attempt to evade or help others evade the law. For example, we will remove reported posts where the potential buyer or seller indicates they will not conduct a background check or are willing to sell across state lines without a licensed firearms dealer.

The move isn’t really much of a surprise–these changes to Facebook’s policies come roughly a month after President Barack Obama’s executive actions on guns were announced, which create stricter provisions for private, even individual, gun sales. The fact that Facebook is making an attempt to comply with its new provisions makes sense–hopefully it’ll help to cut down on unlicensed gun sales via two of the top social media sites in the U.S.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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I’ve often aimlessly walked through Walmart looking for something and found myself in an aisle surrounded by weapons. There was always something pretty eerie about the retailer selling firearms. Maybe it was the fact that you could run to the store and pick up doughnuts and guns in the same place, or maybe it was the fact that young children were trying out bicycles just two aisles down from my store’s gun depot. Either way, it was always unsettling.

New York’s Trinity Church. Courtesy of Mith Huang via Flickr

Now, it is these very guns that has Walmart heading to court in a battle with company shareholders. New York based Episcopal Trinity Church, which has about $300,000 worth of shares in Walmart as part of their diverse portfolio, is behind the lawsuit. While Trinity’s investment isn’t huge, its moral bargaining power is strong. Trinity’s main concern lies in Walmart selling high-capacity magazines like those used in mass killings. According to Forbes:

Trinity’s proposal would require Walmart’s board to oversee the sale of “products that especially endanger public safety and well-being, risk impairing the company’s reputation, or offend the family and community values integral to the company’s brand,” as the document first filed with the Security and Exchange Commission last year reads.

This lawsuit looks like an effort from the church to protect its investment in the company in light of recent mass shootings in places like Newtown, Connecticut, where 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Shootings like these have  many Americans supporting stricter background checks for those buying firearms. Customers who come into Walmart to buy guns often just have to undergo a quick background check using the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) and can walk out the same day with a firearm.

If one of Walmart’s guns was to be used in a mass shooting, the potential public blowback could negatively affect the company financially, and as result, Trinity Church. The church’s rector, Rev. Dr. James Cooper, told Forbes:

Somebody is making decisions about what they sell. Trinity doesn’t need to. We would just like them to tell us they have a system in place at the board level to protect the reputation of the company, its values, and protect the citizens who live in that community from extreme harm.

Rev. Cooper and Trinity’s legal counsel Evan Davis were shocked to learn that the company chooses not to sell CDs and games with Parental Advisory warning labels, but will instead sell assault rifles with the capacity for 30 rounds of ammunition. Davis told Forbes:

If it were a video with somebody shooting up a school, or a rap song with somebody talking about shooting up a school, they wouldn’t sell it. So why sell the gun? It doesn’t make sense.

This lawsuit is part of a long battle between the church and Walmart execs for board room oversight. In December 2013, Trinity submitted its shareholder proposal for inclusion in the company’s 2014 proxy materials, but the SEC sided with Walmart, issuing a no-action letter permitting the retailer to exclude the church’s submission from its 2014 annual filings. That’s when Trinity took its case to Delaware’s federal courts.

In November, after months of back-and-forth, U.S. District Judge Leonard Stark decided in Trinity’s favor, ordering Walmart to let its shareholders vote on the church’s proposal. In January, Walmart appealed.

The result of this case could end up affecting how other companies and their shareholders do business, but will more board room oversight be welcomed? In most cases probably not, if Walmart’s resistance is any indication. Regardless, the church still isn’t willing to back down from this gun fight.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Mark Sobie, 43, was a convicted felon. In 2010, he turned himself in after robbing a bank in Michigan; he had used a fake gun for this operation. He served 30 months in a federal prison and this charge prevented him from buying or possessing a firearm. However, when it came to renting a gun, Sobie was never subjected to a background check. So, when he visited Silver Bullet Firearms in 2012, he was able to rent a gun, no problem. Sobie then took his own life at the shooting range in Michigan, with a blow to the face from the rental gun.

This was not a unique phenomenon. This was actually the second suicide at that particular range. There’s an interesting loophole in acquiring firearms; no thorough background check is completed for customers who rent guns. Over 12 years, more than 64 people have committed suicide at gun ranges in just three California counties. Reports of other similar incidents occurred in Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Virginia, Utah, Texas, and Oklahoma. If this is something plaguing our nation, why isn’t anyone talking about it? And why is there no federal legislation in place that requires background checks for gun rentals?

Initiating Action

The numbers are admittedly small. But every life is valued, and the family members of those who have taken their lives are speaking up. Sobie’s sister said his life could have been saved if the shooting range had conducted a background check.

There’s also a case where a woman killed her son, then committed suicide in front of other customers. Her name was Marie Moore, she had a history of mental illness, and according to police reports she had already attempted to commit suicide. A background check would have prevented her from access to a rental gun. But for lack of legislation, she was unstoppable and she murdered her son before taking her own life. Some gun ranges are responding to these violent outbursts by no longer renting firearms to their customers. Purchasing a firearm is a much more extensive process than simply walking into a shooting range, flashing an I.D. and signing a sheet of paper.

According to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, “training and testing requirements in licensing laws are designed to ensure that gun owners understand relevant firearms laws, and know how to safely store and handle firearms.” Anyone who wants to buy a firearm must undergo a background check. Some states also require purchasers to receive a permit for owning a firearm. So why aren’t these same standards upheld for someone who wishes to rent a gun? It doesn’t matter where you are, if you have a gun in your hand, you should have to undergo some sort of screening to gain access to a lethal weapon.

Possible Solutions

This is no attack on the NRA or supporters of gun rights. It’s merely a call to action for some preventative action. The New Hampshire Firearms Safety Coalition has already started making some changes by focusing on suicide prevention rather than limiting gun rights. The first step NHFSC took was to unite people of all different interests including “gun store owners, shooting instructors, gun rights advocates and suicide prevention advocates to develop strategies to keep guns out of the hands of people who might use them to hurt themselves.”

They’ve used an informal and more personal process to take action. The NHFSC mailed suicide prevention posters to gun stores across New Hampshire. According to Politico Magazine, 48 percent of gun shops left the posters up for four to six months after they were mailed out. Some prevention groups in Las Vegas and Maryland have also adopted the practice of posting suicide prevention materials. So, could this informal process gain solid ground?

I have hope that it could. Gun control is a sore subject and many gun rights activists are hesitant to put further limitations on gun access. However, in this case, gun owners wouldn’t have to undergo further screening. People who are not knowledgable about gun control or familiar with responsible gun handling have easy access to guns through the gun rental loophole. Mandating a background check could take a step forward in suicide prevention and it wouldn’t encroach on gun owners’ rights. If more states adopted similar legislation, we could neutralize a bit of the debate surrounding guns.

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Natasha Paulmeno (@natashapaulmeno)

Featured image courtesy of [Kevin Buelher via Flickr] 

Natasha Paulmeno

Natasha Paulmeno is an aspiring PR professional studying at the University of Maryland. She is learning to speak Spanish fluently through travel, music, and school. In her spare time she enjoys Bachata music, playing with her dog, and exploring social media trends. Contact Natasha at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Gun-Rental Loophole: Dangerous and Deadly appeared first on Law Street.

Until last year, there was only one state without a conceal carry law, and that state was Illinois. A Federal Appeals Court stated last winter that the ban on carrying concealed weapons was unconstitutional. The court required the Illinois legislature to draft a conceal carry law by July 9th, 2013, for implementation by January of 2014.

The law has been written, and is ready to take effect, but it has led to a lot of confusion in Illinois. There are a lot of places where it is still forbidden to carry a concealed weapon, and there were many caveats inserted into the brand new law. For example, one of these complications is that it is illegal to take a concealed gun to a large fair or parade. But you can have a gun on the street normally. So, if you happened to be walking home with your legal concealed gun, and run into the parade, your gun suddenly becomes illegal. This makes things very complicated, because if someone was arrested for having a gun in a public gathering, they could just claim they were walking home.

You can have a concealed gun on a bike path that goes through a park, but not in the park itself. You can’t bring a concealed gun into a post office, alright, but you also can’t bring it into a post office parking lot.

Now I think the fact that restrictions are put on where concealed firearms can be taken is a good thing. I live in the one single, solitary place in the United States where it is still illegal to carry a concealed weapon–Washington DC–and I am completely okay with that. But I have to admit that these laws in Illinois do seem unnecessarily confusing.

Colleen Lawson, who owns a gun training facility stated, “it’s like a Byzantine maze. It’s possible to get through it without breaking any laws, but it’s tricky.”

The confusing law seems to be the result of the short period of time that the Illinois Legislature had to cobble it together, as well as the conflicting lobbies fighting for their say, leading to weird contradictions and Catch-22s.

Charles Lawson, Colleen’s husband, gave an interesting example. He described,

a scenario in which an armed person goes to a restaurant for a meal and decides to take a CTA train home. In that case, the permit holder would have to unload the gun and put it in a purse, backpack or other encasement. But the trick is removing it from the holster and unloading it. That can’t be done in public view. You can’t even go to a restroom inside the station and do it. To do it legally, the carrier would have to find a place nearby that allows firearms and go there to unload and put away the gun.

It seems clear that this juxtaposition arises out of the combination of pro-gun groups lobbying to allow that man to carry a gun into the restaurant, but anti-gun groups lobbying to disallow him from carrying it onto the train.

Like I said, it’s hard for me to say that conceal carry laws should be looser, because personally I’m not a fan of conceal carry on principle. But I really do believe that if you’re going to make a law, it shouldn’t be full of such gaping contradictions and complications the way this new Illinois conceal carry law is. It will make patsies out of innocent people who didn’t realize they were breaking the law, and that’s just not right.

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Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Brent Danley via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Conceal Carry Mess in Illinois appeared first on Law Street.

Three-dimensional printing has become a new hot tech trend in recent years. 3-D printers build things through an additive process—building layer after layer of an item to make it solid. While commercial use is becoming more of a possibility, for the most part, engineers and designers usually use 3-D printing to create prototypes for significantly larger designs.

You can make pretty much anything with 3-D printers, including gun parts. There are groups are quite active in their attempt to print guns. A company based out of Texas called Defense Distributed, makes AR-15 lower receivers, which house most of the mechanics. At its most basic, the receiver is what makes a gun operate, and it is the part that can be illegal to sell. Other gun parts, such as barrels or handles, are not controlled, and be can be easily bought online. A lesser focus of the group is printing magazines and magazine clips for their manufactured guns. Defense Distributed’s mission statement is:

To defend the civil liberty of popular access to arms as guaranteed by the United States Constitution and affirmed by the United States Supreme Court, through facilitating global access to, and the collaborative production of, information and knowledge related to the 3D printing of arms; and to publish and distribute, at no cost to the public, such information and knowledge in promotion of the public interest.

 3-D guns, or at least, gun parts, are most likely going to part of the future. Private citizens aren’t the only ones playing around with this kind of technology. The ATF has made and built a functioning 3-D gun nicknamed, “The Liberator.” This gun does not contain any metal parts or serial numbers.

In reality, the technology is still too new, and still too expensive for the everyday consumer. But last week, one city took action to try to limit potential future impact. Philadelphia’s city council passed a law last week banning anyone without a gun license from making or using a 3-D printed gun. The law passed unanimously, and has since been slammed as reactionary and preemptive. But one of the reasons for Philadelphia’s quick move is that a federal law that bans firearms that cannot be detected by a metal detector expires next month.

Technically this law will not be official until Philadelphia’s mayor, Mayor Michael Nutter, signs it. Other cities and states are considering similar legislation, such as New York, California, and Washington DC. The problem is that if these 3-D guns actually become popular and useful, this legislation will probably have fairly little effect. If 3-D printers become regular facets in consumer homes, which some advocates predict they will because of their ability to create many needed household items, producing your own gun could become incredibly easy. The plans for these guns or gun parts, once perfected, could be shared over the Internet as easily as pirating music.

This is another tricky intersection between law and technology. For once, it seems like the law may have overtaken the technology—critics are right in saying this law might be a bit preemptive. But this technology can still be incredibly dangerous once it is perfected, and a larger discussion on how to control the spread will be warranted.

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Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Keith Kissel via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Need a Gun? Just Print One Out appeared first on Law Street.

The popular picture-sharing social network Instagram has definitely cornered the market on sharing brunch memories and beach photos. But now there’s a new, surprising, industry developing from the network that originally made a name for itself with teenage and college-aged girls. Instagram has now become a forum to sell guns.

Gun regulations vary state by state, but many states do not have laws in place governing online sales. While companies and official sellers have laws that they must follow, individual private sellers are not necessarily held to the same constraints. For the most part, the ATF does not get involved in occasional private sales. They encourage sellers to go to a licensed dealer and get a background check for the people to whom they are selling; however, it’s not really enforced. This market, which is at least superficially anonymous, is almost completely unregulated. On Instagram, you can find everything from small handguns to assault rifles.

Sam Hoover from the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, in a statement to the Daily Beast stated, “private sales to in-state buyers are almost completely unregulated by federal law. No background check and no record of sale are required unless state law fills this gap.” That is the venue through which most of these sales are made. Essentially, private sellers are selling firearms almost completely anonymously to people within their state who have no need to pass a background check or anything of the sort.

Online sites that are created for the purpose of sales—for example Craigslist or Ebay—have rules that prohibit the casual selling of firearms. But a site like Instagram, which has no innate sales function, does not have any rules of those sorts.

The issue isn’t that these types of sales are by any means illegal—the issue is that the vast majority of them are. Technology allows a forum for sales that laws never thought to outlaw. Before the Internet, if someone wanted to buy a gun privately, they would have to hear about the sale from a friend, or possibly go to some sort of semi-black marketplace. Laws weren’t created to prevent these kinds of sales, because they were relatively sparse. Now, with the Internet, these sales are incredibly easy to complete. Just searching Instagram for the keywords, or tags, that indicate sales, yields the ability to purchase firearms.

The actual magnitude of this marketplace is unknown—the Daily Beast reported as though there were many sales happening each week, while a Slate article disagreed and estimated that only a few sales happened in a given week. Regardless of who’s right, these sales do appear to happen. And if they happen on Instagram, a site that is a social network and by no means created for sales, there’s every possibility that they could be happening on other forums.

There have been a few select cases of legal action being pursued against sellers on Instagram. A few months ago, a rapper and DJ in Brooklyn, NY, talked about selling guns on Instagram and Youtube. Authorities went forward with a gun bust that resulted in a net raid of 254 guns. Because these were not simply occasional sales made between individuals, charges could be pressed. Unfortunately, that will not be the case with most of these gun sales.

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Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Brent Danley via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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