Cedric Anderson’s fatal shooting of his estranged wife, Karen Smith, and one of her students in a San Bernardino elementary school on Monday sparked discussions about domestic violence. While assumptions were made about the shooting when it first broke–namely that it could have been a terror attack–it was quickly revealed to be an act of domestic violence. This raises the question: why isn’t domestic violence as heavily covered by the media as terrorism?

Why, exactly, doesn’t violence against women cause the same type of public outrage? There are plenty of theories–including traditional male dominance over women, and the historical viewpoint that a woman is a man’s possession–that could lead to the downplaying of domestic violence. But it’s incredibly dangerous–according to mental health experts, most murder-suicides are committed by men killing their female partner and then themselves. And in 90 percent of murder-suicides, guns are the preferred method.

Domestic violence has in some cases proven to be a warning sign and precursor for a mass shooting. That was the case with Omar Mateen and the nightclub shooting in Orlando last year, Robert Lewis Dear who was the alleged gunman at the Planned Parenthood shooting in 2015, John Houster who killed nine people at a Louisiana movie theater in 2014, and many others. According to an analysis by Everytown for Gun Safety, 54 percent of all mass-shootings involved a current or former partner or family member.

Her name was Karen Smith & she was shot by her estranged husband in front of her students. We need to talk about guns and domestic violence. pic.twitter.com/3uWiibMwBb

— UltraViolet (@UltraViolet) April 11, 2017

And Anderson was not a first-time offender. He had a history of domestic violence against previous girlfriends, stretching back three decades. He also had a history of threatening gun violence, and had been charged with assault, battery, disturbing the peace, and brandishing a firearm in Los Angeles in 2013. But he was still allowed to own a gun.

According to Susan Sorenson, who studies domestic violence and guns at the University of Pennsylvania, there isn’t any research available on whether some men use domestic violence against their partner as a preparation for a mass shooting, but she said it’s certainly an intriguing theory. “Men who are violent toward their female partners often are violent guys in general–that might be the issue,” she said.

According to data from the FBI, at least 6,875 people were fatally shot by their romantic partner from 2006 to 2014. Eighty percent of those victims were women. That means that every 16 hours, an American woman is fatally shot by a partner or a former partner. There is a law called the Lautenberg Amendment that prohibits people convicted of domestic violence from owning a gun–but that only applies if the couple is married, has been married, or if they have a child together. Anderson was in no way prohibited from owning guns, as Smith was the only woman he ever married and she never reported him to the authorities.

“an estimated 50 women a month are shot to death in the US by former or current partners” https://t.co/ZPSXDjoCAu

— Mona Eltahawy (@monaeltahawy) April 12, 2017

This creates what is sometimes called the “boyfriend loophole,” where partners who have never been married to their victims are free to own firearms even after being convicted of domestic violence. It doesn’t stop anyone from illegally obtaining a weapon, or from buying one privately or over the internet. Domestic violence happens every single day, but it seems like it’s often taken for granted as something that “just happens.”

The U.S. has a rate of gun violence that is nowhere close to the rates of other developed countries. According to data from the United Nations, the U.S. has almost six times the gun murder rate of Canada, seven times Sweden’s, and a whopping 16 times Germany’s.

It’s hard to say whether change is forthcoming. But Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, said that advocates for stricter gun control are working to tighten domestic violence gun laws on the state level throughout the country. And since 2013, 22 states have passed bills restricting access to guns for perpetrators of domestic violence.

“This is an issue that red and blue lawmakers can agree on: domestic abusers shouldn’t have guns,” she said. “All countries have domestic violence. The difference is that we arm our abusers.” All available research agrees with this–more gun ownership leads to more gun violence. If a domestic abuser has access to a gun, violence is more than three times more likely to turn deadly. And until lawmakers realize this and significantly tighten gun laws, more shootings will happen and people will keep becoming desensitized.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post San Bernardino Shooting Puts Domestic Violence in the Spotlight appeared first on Law Street.

When NFL player Joe McKnight was shot to death in an apparent case of road rage last Thursday, the suspect was not charged immediately, despite reportedly telling the police officers that he was the shooter. The incident caused an uproar; many drew parallels between McKnight’s shooter–a white man–and the numerous instances of white police officers or individuals killing black people. On Tuesday, almost a week later, Sheriff Newell Normand announced that he had charged Ronald Gasser with with manslaughter. He also defended the delayed arrest, explaining that the police wanted to wait until they found reliable witnesses before moving forward.

Sheriff Normand held a news conference on Tuesday in Louisiana to explain the circumstances of Gasser’s arrest. Gasser is a 54-year-old white man who had an altercation with McKnight on a bridge while they were both driving. The two men kept racing each other and shouting, driving into a New Orleans suburb, until they both came to a stop. McKnight allegedly exited his car and walked up to Gasser, who took out his gun and shot the 28-year-old football player three times. He confessed immediately when police arrived at the scene, but initially told officers that he feared for his life and that the shooting was an act of self defense. Gasser was taken into custody but released after hours of questioning.

the craziest thing about the mcknight case is it’s being treated as if the outcome should be in any sort of doubt.

— El Flaco (@bomani_jones) December 6, 2016

When he announced the arrest at the news conference on Tuesday, Sheriff Normand seemed agitated and defensive, slamming his fists on the podium repeatedly and emphasizing that the department had done nothing wrong. “This isn’t about race. Not a single witness has said… a single racial slur was uttered,” he said. Despite the lack of racial slurs, the incident could have easily been about race. But at this point, the evidence does point to a case of plain road rage.

Says they didn’t charge Gasser Thursday night bc not enough evidence & he was cooperating without atty. Got consent to search Gasser’s home.

— T.J. Quinn (@TJQuinnESPN) December 6, 2016

The sheriff read aloud some of the racist and foul-mouthed verbal attacks that he, other officers, and lawmakers have received on social media and via email for not dealing with the case fast enough. He read a few out loud that were offensive enough that MSNBC cut away from the live broadcast and apologized for the language. The sheriff said that had they made an arrest right away, witnesses might have been hesitant to come forward. They’ve now found 250 possible witnesses based on license plates placed in the surrounding area.

Gasser’s temperament is certainly at issue–he had a similar fight with another man ten years ago at the exact same intersection. In 2006, he was driving a truck, when a fellow motorist called a number printed on the side of the truck to say that the driver was driving erratically. The number actually went to Gasser’s phone. The two men got into a fight over the phone and Gasser followed the man to a gas station where he confronted him and beat him up. The only consequence for Gasser was a misdemeanor summons that was later dismissed.

McKnight played three seasons for the New York Jets and one for the Kansas City Chiefs. The Jets held a moment of silence in his honor on Monday night before playing a game in New York.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Man Who Allegedly Killed NFL Player Joe McKnight Charged with Manslaughter appeared first on Law Street.

Over the weekend two police officers were shot and killed in Palm Springs, California. The suspect is 26-year-old John Felix who was taken into custody early Sunday morning after a standoff with police that lasted for several hours. The officers were responding to a disturbance call when the suspect allegedly started firing at the officers.

One of the officers killed was 63-year-old Jose Vega who had been in the force for 35 years and was two months away from retirement. The other was 27-year-old Lesley Zerebny who had just come back from maternity leave after giving birth to a daughter four months earlier. A third officer was injured but released from the hospital the same day.

According to a neighbor who spoke with the Associated Press, Felix’s father told her, “My son is inside and we’re scared, he’s acting crazy.” He added that they had called the police and that the son said he was going to shoot them. According to Police Chief Bryan Reyes, Felix refused to open the door for the officers and threatened to shoot through it. As they tried to speak to him he opened fire. More officers in tactical gear and an armored vehicle arrived and Felix barricaded himself inside the house. After a failed attempt to try to locate his exact position using robots, officers sent in a chemical agent that finally made him surrender. When he came out, he was wearing light body armor and carrying ammunition.

John Felix was a gang member who lived with his parents. He previously spent four years in prison for a gang-related murder attempt in 2009, for which he took a plea deal and admitted to assault with a firearm and connections to a gang. Felix was arrested three years ago at the same house as the one where the incident on Saturday occurred. He will be charged with two counts of first-degree murder as well as several additional felony counts.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a statement on Sunday:

Our nation’s heart is broken yet again by the appalling act of violence that claimed two brave law enforcement officers on Saturday. Officers Jose Gilbert Vega and Lesley Zerebny were at opposite ends of their careers, but they shared a steadfast devotion to the people they had sworn to serve.

According to AP, it had been 54 years since the last uniformed police officer killing in Palm Springs. Officer Vega was supposed to have the Saturday off but worked anyway. Officer Zerebny had returned early from maternity leave. It was just a matter of bad timing and bad luck that made the difference between life and death.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Father of Suspect in California Police Killings: He Wanted to Shoot the Police appeared first on Law Street.

On Sunday night Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint in her hotel room in Paris; she was there to attend Fashion Week. The robbers, who were wearing masks and were dressed as police officers, stole jewelry totaling $10 million.

Kardashian was staying at a nine-apartment mansion that is often frequented by celebrities like Madonna and Leonardo DiCaprio. Around 2:30 AM on Sunday, the concierge let a couple of men in. They then threatened him with a gun, handcuffed him, and made him take them to Kardashian’s apartment, where they tied her up in the bathroom while holding a gun to her head. After going through her jewelry, they left. Allegedly her stylist managed to alert the real police, who later found the night guard in a staircase with hands and feet bound.

Kim was shaken but physically okay, according to a statement from her spokeswoman. Her children were not in the apartment. She later left Paris on her private jet and flew home to New York.

On Sunday night, her husband Kanye West cut his show at Meadows Music and Arts Festival in New York short with the words “I’m sorry, family emergency, I have to stop the show.” Fans initially reacted with confusion and anger.

Here’s a photo of Kanye West’s show right before it ended. Like everyone was shock it just ended. No reason given, just “family emergency.” pic.twitter.com/y4Rfk5n3h9

— Frank Pallotta (@frankpallotta) October 3, 2016

Last week was not an easy one for Kim Kardashian West. She was the recipient of a prank by internet celebrity prankster Vitalii Sediuk, who tried to kiss her butt when she exited her car. Her bodyguard quickly wrestled him to the ground, but she said she wants to file a report and get a restraining order. Apparently Sediuk was protesting plastic surgery and wanted the Kardashians to promote a more natural look for the millions of young girls who look up to them.

As news of the robbery broke on Monday morning, the internet started reacting not with compassion, but with mockery.

Kim Kardashian gets robbed and the whole world is in an uproar.

Harambe was brutally murdered and the world was silent.

— ædonis | hotep (@lordaedonis) October 3, 2016

Luckily, tweets defending Kim later surfaced on social media, pointing out how bizarre it is to make fun of someone being robbed just because she’s a celebrity.

People making jokes about @KimKardashian tonight would do well to remember that she’s a mother,a daughter,a wife,a friend.Be nice or shut up

— James Corden (@JKCorden) October 3, 2016

Kinda loving @kanyewest for jumping off that stage for his wife… yes sir… love that. Family first.

— Jaime Primak (@JaimePrimak) October 3, 2016

Don’t make memes out of Kim Kardashian being robbed at gunpoint it really isn’t funny. One click and 2 kids could’ve been motherless

— Girls be like… (@girlhoodposts) October 3, 2016

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Kim Kardashian Robbed at Gunpoint in Paris appeared first on Law Street.

Footage from a dashboard camera and a body camera on one of the police officers involved in the shooting of Keith Scott in Charlotte last week have finally been released. It turns out the one officer who wore a camera didn’t turn it on until after Scott was already on the ground.

Two videos were released late Saturday after mounting pressure and some violent protests that left people wounded and one dead. The footage from the dashboard camera shows a plainclothes officer aiming his gun at a car. The officer in the car with the dash cam gets out and joins him. Then Scott is seen exiting his car and backing away, and the officer without a uniform fires four shots. Since the video is from inside the police car, there is no audio to prove what was said. But it’s clear that Scott did not aim any gun at the officers at that point.

The body camera footage is grainy and jumpy and shows an officer standing behind Scott’s car, as the officer wearing the camera comes up and knocks on the window with his baton. Scott is then seen getting out from the car but disappears from the video. Next time he’s in the picture, he’s on the ground. The sound on the camera is not turned on until this point, which is why it’s unclear what happened and who said what. It’s also impossible to see from that footage whether Scott had a gun or not. When the sound is turned on, the officers are heard yelling “handcuffs, handcuffs” and asking each other whether they are okay, while Scott is moaning and lying on the ground dying.

Body camera footage shows Keith Scott shooting https://t.co/W0NhU5sBn8 pic.twitter.com/t44YKbjFlK

— Ruptly (@Ruptly) September 25, 2016

Charlotte was the first major city in North Carolina to start using body cams for officers in 2015. The cameras are always on, but they don’t save the footage until the officer presses a button to activate it. That’s when the audio sets in, and it also automatically saves the last 30 seconds of video from before that.

According to protocol, all patrol officers should wear a camera and must activate it as soon as they anticipate any interactions with civilians. But the officers who first approached Scott were wearing plain clothes and therefore did not have any cameras. They claim they realized Scott had a gun, so they retreated to put on police vests and wait for a uniformed officer. That officer was wearing his camera, but he waited to activate it until after Scott was shot.

This news upset many.

Yet another example of why body cameras are not the way to end police shootings. Sometimes, cops don’t turn them on. https://t.co/Q1jNRKYYkU

— Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) September 26, 2016

But this might be the last footage you see from a police shooting in North Carolina. A new law goes into effect on October 1 that will prevent the public from obtaining footage from body or dashboard cameras. According to Governor Pat McCrory it’s about: “respecting the public, respecting the family, and also respecting the constitutional rights of the officer.”

Under the new law, police videos like the ones in Scott’s case would no longer be considered public record.

The day before the footage was released, Scott’s wife published her own video of what happened, in which the officers are heard yelling “drop the gun” to Scott inside his car. She repeatedly says, “he doesn’t have a gun,” and also points out that he has a traumatic brain injury and just took his medicine. In the video she begs the officers not to shoot her husband, right up until they shoot him.

Wife of #Charlotte police shooting victim #KeithScott films encounter https://t.co/kL9M8WjC4P

— YouTube Newswire (@ytnewswire) September 23, 2016

The attorney for the Scott family, Justin Bamberg, argued that the officer not activating his camera is both a violation of department policy and also meant there was little evidence to show what had actually happened. He said:

Information that we could have had is forever gone because of this officer’s failure to follow department policy and procedures. Those policies exist for a reason, and there is a reason the CMPD equips its officers with body cameras–because body cameras provide visual evidence so that when tragic things do happen we don’t have to question exactly what happened.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Officer Did Not Turn on Body Camera Until After Keith Scott Was Shot appeared first on Law Street.

Another mall shooting took place on Monday morning, this time in Houston, Texas. Nine people were wounded before police took the suspect down. Police officers initially responded to a 911 call at 6:30 a.m. after reports of a shooting victim close to a strip mall, but realized that the shooter was still active when they got there.

Officers soon tracked down and killed the gunman, who was firing shots at moving traffic from the parking lot of the mall. The nine wounded people, one in critical condition, initially believed to be six, were inside their own vehicles when they were injured. Police did not release the suspect’s identity, but did say that he is a lawyer, and “there were issues concerning his law firm.”

Active shooter at Weslayan & Bissonnet has been shot by our officers; no reports of other suspects at this time #hounews

— Houston Police (@houstonpolice) September 26, 2016

One witness, Eduardo Andrade, said he heard an explosion when he was driving by the scene of the attack:

As I was driving by Law Street I suddenly heard a big explosion. I covered myself, accelerated and tried to get out of there. I did not know if someone was following me or trying to shoot me.

It is unclear whether this had anything to do with terrorism. According to authorities, they were investigating the suspect’s car for possible bombs.

Houston gunman injures six at US mall before being shot https://t.co/aubyR3pVbM

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) September 26, 2016

The shooting in Houston comes only three days after a shooting at a mall in Burlington, Washington, which left five people dead. Police arrested that shooter, Arcan Cetin, who was reportedly found unarmed in a zombie-like state after a daylong search on Saturday evening. Cetin had a history of domestic abuse against his stepfather. His ex-girlfriend used to work at the store in which he opened fire. A judge had previously ordered him to not possess a firearm.

Cetin is expected to appear in court on Monday to be formally charged with five counts of first-degree murder. Authorities first described Cetin as being Hispanic, but later changed that to Turkish. No details have been released about the Houston shooter’s ethnicity.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Lawyer Wounds 9 in Houston Parking Lot Before Being Killed by Police appeared first on Law Street.

One of the deadliest cities in America, Chicago, recorded its 500th homicide over Labor Day weekend, making 2016–with four months yet to pass–the deadliest year in a decade in a city where gang-related violence has ruptured in recent years. By the close of the weekend, according to Chicago Tribune data, 512 people in Chicago had been killed this year. Most of the violence occurred from Monday morning into dawn on Tuesday, as all 13 victims died from gunshot wounds. Last weekend, 65 people were shot in total.

According to the Tribune, police attributed the late surge in shootings to retaliatory acts by gang members at holiday gatherings. Many of the homicides took place in the city’s South Side neighborhoods, the nucleus of violence during a historically bloody summer. In August alone, 90 people were killed, the highest single month tally since June 1996.

As the final days of summer tick away, 2016 is projected to be Chicago’s deadliest year in at least a decade. The deadliest city with two million citizens or more (a handful of other cities–St. Louis, Detroit, Baltimore–see more murders on a per capita basis), Chicago is on track to record its highest murder rate since the early 2000s. The projected homicide rate for the city for 2016 is 24.1 deaths per 100,000 people. New York, where murder rates have been steadily declining, is on pace for a substantially lower homicide rate, at 3.8 per 100,000 people.

Violence over the Labor Day holiday brought Chicago’s gun-related homicide total to 512 in 2016#LostStreetsChicago https://t.co/p3TuhFbg4r

— BBC News US (@BBCNewsUS) September 6, 2016

A majority of Chicago’s victims die as the result of gun violence. Proponents of gun-control argue the city needs stricter gun ordinances. But Illinois has some of the toughest gun laws in the country. The reality is that 60 percent of the city’s guns were purchased out of state–many from Indiana–and driven back into the city.  The state government is taking political steps to address the city’s exorbitant violence.

A few weeks ago, Governor Bruce Rauner (R-IL), passed a law to address people without gun-owner IDs  bringing firearms into Illinois. The law reclassifies the act from a crime to a felony, which would carry a penalty of four to 20 years in prison, and up to 30 years for repeat offenders.

Labor Day weekend was the deadliest of the three holiday weekends thus far in Chicago. Six fatalities were recorded over Memorial Day weekend, and five during the July 4th weekend. Among those killed over the weekend was a retired pastor, but most of the victims were 20-something year old males.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Donald Trump’s reaction to the fatal shooting of NBA player Dwyane Wade’s cousin on Friday sparked heated condemnation from actor Don Cheadle and others on Twitter. Nykea Aldridge, 32, was shot and killed in Chicago while pushing her toddler in a stroller on her way to register her kids for school on Friday.

Two men fired shots at another man but accidentally hit Aldridge in the arm and the head. She was later pronounced dead at a hospital. Aldrige was a full-time mother of four: 12-year old Summer, 10-year-old Sincere, 8-year-old Shavae, and Da’Kota, the infant who was with her at the time of the shooting but was not injured.

Dwyane Wade announced his cousin’s death on Twitter, expressing grief and anger over the senseless gun violence that is plaguing Chicago:

My cousin was killed today in Chicago. Another act of senseless gun violence. 4 kids lost their mom for NO REASON. Unreal. #EnoughIsEnough

— DWade (@DwyaneWade) August 27, 2016

On Saturday, Donald Trump tweeted three separate times about the incident. His first tweet misspelled Dwyane Wade’s name and was deleted. He later sent out the same tweet but corrected the spelling:

Dwyane Wade’s cousin was just shot and killed walking her baby in Chicago. Just what I have been saying. African-Americans will VOTE TRUMP!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 27, 2016

Trump sought to use Aldridge’s death to underscore his recent claims about safety in black communities. But many were quick to denounce Trump’s response as inappropriate. Actor Don Cheadle responded forcefully:

You are truly a POS https://t.co/cyTwxgxwDh

— Don Cheadle (@DonCheadle) August 27, 2016

Cheadle quickly tweeted again, this time referencing Trump’s initial misspelling of Wade’s name.

Sorry. I misspelled “die in a grease fire.” https://t.co/16K2iq1pF4

— Don Cheadle (@DonCheadle) August 27, 2016

Hours later, Trump sent his condolences:

My condolences to Dwyane Wade and his family, on the loss of Nykea Aldridge. They are in my thoughts and prayers.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 27, 2016

Two brothers in their twenties were arrested for the fatal shooting and appeared in court on Monday. Both Darwin Sorrells Jr. and Derren Sorrells are convicted felons who were on parole at the time of the shooting. They are also both documented gang members.

The Sorrells were quickly arrested thanks to surveillance footage and help from the public, according to Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson. At a news conference on Sunday he said:

This tragedy isn’t just noteworthy because Ms. Aldridge has a famous family member. Rather, it shows that the cycle of arrests, convictions and parole isn’t changing the behavior of those who repeatedly commit crimes.

He finished by saying, “They’re going to keep doing it until we show them we’re serious.”

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Trump’s Response to Nykea Aldridge’s Death Sparks Fury from Don Cheadle appeared first on Law Street.

Apple may have just picked a side in the country’s gun debate with the help of a new emoji roll out that includes a playful alternative for one “loaded” character. The tech company announced Monday that it will be replacing its popular pistol emoji with a squirt gun in its upcoming iOS 10 update.

The new green water gun, which comes equipped with the real toy’s signature orange cap and plastic trigger, will be introduced along with more than 100 new and revamped emojis that aim to make the company more diverse and inclusionary. Other emojis include more family options, a rainbow flag, more icons depicting people of color, as well as new female athletes and professionals in stereotypically male roles.

Apple’s new emojis show women working and men getting pampered https://t.co/cy7jb7l2S4 pic.twitter.com/gxI8mIBnwM

— Fortune (@FortuneMagazine) August 2, 2016

The decision comes after the advocacy group New Yorkers Against Gun Violence started a campaign last year called #DisarmTheiPhone, in which it asks Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, to remove the gun emoji from all Apple products.

In an open letter to Apple Inc., the group writes:

We realized that many Americans unknowingly carry a gun with them every day. The one that was given to them without a background check: the gun emoji.

We ask that you stand with the American people and remove the gun emoji from all your products as a symbolic gesture to limit gun accessibility. We understand taking the emoji out will not end gun violence, but this act will show Congress that gun-owning and non-owning Americans have come together to demand required background checks for ALL gun sales.

According to CNN, Microsoft has already replaced their pistol emoji with a toy gun, but Google, Samsung, Facebook, and Twitter all still have gun emojis.

In June, Unicode–the governing body in charge of selecting and overseeing emojis–nixed plans to incorporate a rifle emoji with a set of Olympic-themed characters, after Apple spoke out against the proposal.

While Apple did not directly address the squirt gun emoji or the pistol replacement in its press release Monday, it did write that it is “working closely with the Unicode Consortium to ensure that popular emoji characters reflect the diversity of people everywhere.”

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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Major organizations, public figures, and social media users called on everyone to #WearOrange on Thursday, as part of a campaign to create awareness about gun violence. The campaign was created by the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, which declared on the campaign’s official site that the color orange was chosen because it “symbolizes the value of human life” and “hunters wear orange in the woods to protect themselves and others.”

June 2 is official National Gun Violence Awareness Day. This year, it immediately followed Wednesday’s murder-suicide incident at UCLA, which led to the death of a professor and forced the campus on lockdown during one of its busiest times of the year.

Here’s a sampling of some of the responses on social media:

We cannot accept our level of gun violence as the new normal. We must take action to prevent this from happening again & again. #WearOrange

— President Obama (@POTUS) June 2, 2016

These gals are down for the cause #WearOrange @Everytown pic.twitter.com/osycQmyAUo

— Amy Schumer (@amyschumer) June 2, 2016

Trying to force a smile as I do this today. We are all Bruins! https://t.co/cmWiGKg9BT #WearOrange pic.twitter.com/ei2Q70JR6S

— Perez (@ThePerezHilton) June 2, 2016

The noise around gun violence is loud. Orange is louder. Join me today and #WearOrange. pic.twitter.com/DRuiikzrgm

— Mike Bloomberg (@MikeBloomberg) June 2, 2016

It’s gun violence awareness day #wearorange pic.twitter.com/FpK8Ninueb

— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) June 2, 2016

Comedy Central posted a clip from “Inside Amy Schumer” that provided a humorous look at the absurdities surrounding U.S. gun laws:

Spreading awareness the only way we know how. #WearOrange https://t.co/Gi2DvzGwpXhttps://t.co/BiAF42yn2x

— Comedy Central (@ComedyCentral) June 2, 2016

But this campaign expanded well beyond simple wardrobe choice: #WearOrange events were held around the country to bring people together in solidarity for the cause.

With 372 mass shootings in 2015, this campaign has never felt more timely and necessary.

Mariam Jaffery

Mariam was an Executive Assistant at Law Street Media and a native of Northern Virginia. She has a B.A. in International Affairs with a minor in Business Administration from George Washington University. Contact Mariam at mjaffery@lawstreetmedia.com.

The post #WearOrange Brings Attention to Gun Violence in America appeared first on Law Street.

A well-known cliché when talking about gun control in the United States is the saying, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” It would be more accurate to say that guns don’t commit murder since a gun can accidentally kill you. But for a murder to have been committed there needs to be some level of intent on the part of a human being. Depending on the degree and the state, those levels of intent are different, but when we think of a killing as a murder we typically think of something that the person did “on purpose.” Back in the day criminal law referred to this mindset as “malice aforethought,” a phrase still sometimes used when discussing murder. It isn’t very illuminating since “aforethought” can mean in the blink of an eye and you don’t really need “malice,” or motive, to be found guilty of murder. But it does show that in criminal law, usually what we are looking to determine is whether that individual meant to kill someone.

Tort law is different. Most tort law is all about negligence. Were you acting as a reasonable person would act in that situation? If not, we may feel the need to punish you. This mythical reasonable person is the standard for how we should behave in society and people who are injured by someone not acting up to that standard should be compensated. The word “reasonable” appears so many times in a torts casebook that a law school drinking game involving it would be “outrageous.” That is also what you need to prove for some intentional torts–any conduct that would cause a reasonable person to shout “Outrageous!”

Tort law is all about economics. We do so much commerce and interact so often with each other that people are bound to get hurt. We use products every day that are dangerous, in some cases extremely dangerous, without thinking much about it.

Take ovens, for example. The convenience of using them far outweighs the potentially catastrophic costs if yours happens to explode. Modern ovens are pretty safe, I’m guessing. I didn’t research how often they explode so as not to freak myself out. But even if they were not, we have decided as a society to have them anyway and if a few of us lose our eyebrows it is just the cost of doing business. Rather than have everyone give up ovens, we have come up with a system where the injured party can be compensated by the person who made the oven. If they deviated below the standard of care that a reasonable person, in this case, a reasonable oven maker perhaps, would give to its construction.

Are guns any different? The issue of manufacturer liability for the makers of guns has become a hot topic in the presidential primary, particularly on the Democratic side. The argument centers around a 2005 law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), and whether it should protect companies that manufacture guns from civil liability for injuries or deaths caused by the guns they make. Not if the gun explodes because it was improperly made, but if someone purchases it and then shoots a victim. Given the extent of gun violence, should we have a different standard for a product that is designed to kill?

Are Guns Special?

Before we delve right in, take a look at this clip from one of the Democratic debates where Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders tackle the issue of gun manufacturer liability. It provides a good overview of some of the main points and emotional influences on the debate.

When Can You Sue?

The great myth surrounding this question is that somehow the gun manufacturing industry has somehow finagled a way to be completely immune from all liability for any defect in their products. That isn’t the case. If you’re out hunting and you fire your weapon and the bullet flies out of the wrong end of the gun and kills you, your estate will be able to sue the manufacturer of that weapon under a few different theories. Either because that gun (the individual gun involved or all the ones like it) was improperly made, or it was made according to a faulty design. Either way, if you really were using the gun as a reasonable person would you’d likely have a winning case. Even a jury that didn’t know a whole heck of a lot about guns would probably think you were right to assume the bullet would shoot away from you when you pointed it at your target.

What the PLCAA essentially does is it declares that we are not going to allow courts to hear a lawsuit from a victim or a victim’s family against a gun manufacturer when a third party used that gun in a criminal act. If this law did not exist, these cases could be brought to trial but that doesn’t necessarily mean the gun manufacturers would or could be held liable for what happened. It would just mean that instead of having a blanket rule about this kind of case, we are going to force judges to dismiss the same thing over and over. PLCAA is really just a law saying “don’t even bother” to people seeking to bring this type of suit.

It gets into the weeds a bit when you start looking at sellers of guns who may target individuals who aren’t legally allowed to buy a gun, or who sell to a “strawman,” or a buyer who buys in bulk just to sell to others in order to avoid a background check. But are those sales where the seller, and or, gun manufacturer themselves doing something illegal or helping others to subvert the law? That’s a very different scenario from a legally purchased product, which meets safety standards for that industry, then being used to commit a crime.

You can once again see Senator Sanders trying to make that distinction here. It’s also one of the few times you’ll hear someone bragging about getting a “D-.”

Standards for Guns

The statutory shield for gun manufacturers that the PLCAA puts in place does not necessarily grant greater immunity to gun manufacturers relative to the immunity that other industries enjoy.

It is just one that we have put in place for a product that, by its very design, is meant to injure and kill. Other products that can injure and kill are not regulated to the same extent but they do not enjoy this statutory immunity. Not because they have a powerful lobby but because there aren’t enough cases to warrant passing a law that tells people to not waste court time bringing a suit that is likely to be dismissed.

Take knives as an example. I have a set of knives; I bought them on Craigslist. Not from a manufacturer but from someone who had some knives to sell. There was no regulation telling her she should assess my mental state and Henkel (the original manufacturer) had absolutely no idea that I was buying knives they made. They’re well-balanced and sharp. Equally adept at slicing chicken or people (I presume). If I used those knives to cut up my mother into tiny pieces instead of a chicken (just an example!) my father would be laughed out of court if he sued Henkel. Why? Because they had nothing to do with it. Their knife did the job it was intended to do and with remarkable German efficiency sliced what I wanted to slice. We don’t bother to have a law that says you can’t sue the manufacturer of a knife for this because so few people try doing it. That isn’t the case with guns.

The argument could be made that knives have a dual functionality, a legitimate one to make food, and an illegitimate one to commit harm. Guns only have one purpose, which is to cause injury, and on that basis, the regulation should be different. Manufacturers are on notice that their product is likely to be used to commit a crime and they have decided to make them anyway. Therefore, it is justifiable to hold them partially responsible when someone commits a crime with their gun. That argument may not hold water. In fact, it may lean even more heavily toward not holding manufacturers liable because the one thing that makes a properly functioning gun part of a crime is the person using it. Their behavior is the difference between a tool that stops your home from being burglarized or a tool that kills innocent children. It has nothing to do with the product. You could make the same argument about a sex toy used in a rape or sexual assault. What makes it part of a crime is the intent of the criminal actor, not the company that made it.

That isn’t to say that a manufacturer should never be held liable for a product that isn’t defective but is improperly sold or marketed. Using sex toys again as an example, if the manufacturer advertised the product as ideal for raping someone or targeted their advertising to a sex offenders registry, they could potentially be held liable civilly for their actions, maybe even criminally. But as with gun manufacturer liability, they would be being held liable on the theory that they did something illegal or helped others to do so. Not for anything to do with the functionality of their product.

We don’t currently have a separate rule for guns. What we have done is codified the idea that criminals are the ones responsible for the crimes that are committed with guns specifically. The way we have already acknowledged in our legal structure that criminals are responsible for the crimes that they commit with any product.

Conclusion

Guns are the weapon of choice for criminals for several reasons, one of which is that they are relatively easy to get–just check online. And while a criminal armed with a semi-automatic or an automatic weapon is more dangerous to more people than one armed with a knife, the mass shootings still make up a relatively small percentage of crimes. A gun policy based on that fails to deal with the many types of crime where other weapons, such as a knife, would be as effective.

If you think back to the Democratic debate in the first clip you’ll notice Secretary Clinton make the argument that increased liability is an attempt to deal with the epidemic of gun violence. There is a very real problem in the United States with people who get access to guns, sometimes through illegal means and sometimes through perfectly legal channels, who go on to commit violence. Perhaps the situation has changed since 2005 when the PCLAA was enacted and we need to reassess the balance that was struck with allowing these kinds of lawsuits to go forward. The law puts a standard in place for the manufacturer to have “knowingly” sold a weapon to someone who fails to pass a background check, but shields them in cases where they didn’t “know.”

There are more options than having the manufacturer need to actually know they are selling it to someone who failed the background check and a blanket liability whenever someone commits a crime. The mens rea (guilty mind) for murder comes in a variety of flavors, from intent to depraved indifference. Even extreme negligence can get you jail time in some cases. If we wanted to increase the number of people who could potentially sue a gun manufacturer but still keep it somewhat limited we currently have the legal tools to do so.

The question is–should we do so? Does the nature of a gun as a weapon, and the modern day weapon of choice for criminals, make it somehow unique among the various dangerous products we use? We know that we have a problem with gun violence and increased liability for gun manufacturers would probably put a lot of them out of business–depending on how easy you made it for them to be sued and the kind of judgments that were awarded. It might decrease the amount of guns available, which might reduce gun violence.

Or do we have standards for liability for guns the way we do for other products that could be used as weapons, holding them responsible if their product is defective or their sale is criminal but not holding them responsible for criminal acts from third parties. That would mean we treat guns like any other product that we sell instead of a special category of goods that need different rules.

Resources

New York Times: Congress Passes New Legal Shield For Gun Industry

PolitiFact: Clinton: Gun Industry is ‘Wholly Protected’ From All Lawsuits

NPR: Are Gun-Makers ‘Totally Free’ Of Liability For Their Behavior

Cornell University Law Schoo: PCLAA

New York Times: Justices Reject Suit Faulting a Vaccine

CNN: Why Sandy Hook Parents are Suing a Gunmaker

Mary Kate Leahy

Mary Kate Leahy (@marykate_leahy) has a J.D. from William and Mary and a Bachelor’s in Political Science from Manhattanville College. She is also a proud graduate of Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart. She enjoys spending her time with her kuvasz, Finn, and tackling a never-ending list of projects. Contact Mary Kate at staff@LawStreetMedia.com

The post Should Gun Manufacturers Be Held Accountable By Victims of Gun Violence? appeared first on Law Street.

“It is always encouraging to see American citizens focusing on the really important parts of big political events,” she says with heavy sarcasm. During his speech yesterday morning announcing new executive actions on gun control, President Obama outlined several facets of his new initiative to make guns safer and harder to obtain. He also teared up when referencing the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Guess which part conservatives are choosing to focus on.

In case you’ve forgotten, the Sandy Hook shooting, which took place in 2012, ended with 20 elementary students and six staff members dead. Today, President Obama was introduced at the podium by Mark Barden, the father of one of those victims.

But apparently, crying while remembering the elementary school students who were slaughtered at Sandy Hook is a sign of weakness, psychopathy, and fake sadness.

He never once cried over death of vets, babies murdered abortion Obama cries announcing gun control | Daily Mail https://t.co/8mwsmrkWaj

— dawn goodfallow (@dawngpsalm63) January 6, 2016

When Obama cries, he can’t even do that right. pic.twitter.com/6GzZv62ezs — Bart Bartlett (@BartBuzz) January 6, 2016

BREAKING: Obama talks about gun control. pic.twitter.com/UTey5uiRgo

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) January 5, 2016

Near Obama right now… pic.twitter.com/AUKrSx7S7d — jimgeraghty (@jimgeraghty) January 5, 2016

There is just one word to describe this reaction from gun enthusiasts: childish. The speech Obama gave was over 30 minutes long, and trolls like those above and even people in the public eye like Fox News host Andrea Tantaros are focusing on about five seconds, using those seconds to call into question the President’s sincerity and his ability to “contain his emotions.”

Why is showing emotion on the same plane as showing weakness? And why wouldn’t he get choked up at the thought of those children? Would these people complaining about his tears rather have a callous, robotic president who showed no care for anyone? Apparently.

The problem here is that there is nothing in his initiative that violates the Second Amendment. There is nothing that says he’s taking guns away from everyone, and that’s what right wing gun enthusiasts expected. Without that fodder for their Twitter feeds and Facebook timelines, what are they left to complain about? What could they possibly find wrong with the steps outlined in these executive orders? Nothing.

“I believe in the Second Amendment… it guarantees a right to bear arms,” Obama said in his speech. “No matter how many times people try to twist my words around, I taught constitutional law… I get it. But I also believe we can find ways to reduce gun violence consistent with the Second Amendment.”

So, naturally, in the absence of solid, substantial complaints, Obama haters have reverted to childish bullying. Unfortunately, as all bullies must learn, making fun of people does not get you what you want.

Morgan McMurray

Morgan McMurray is an editor and gender equality blogger based in Seattle, Washington. A 2013 graduate of Iowa State University, she has a Bachelor of Arts in English, Journalism, and International Studies. She spends her free time writing, reading, teaching dance classes, and binge-watching Netflix. Contact Morgan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Conservatives Don’t Like Gun Control, So They Mock Obama’s Tears appeared first on Law Street.

As mass shootings become the focus of public attention after two high-profile incidents in the span of  a couple of days, more and more people are demanding a response from Congress. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan recently faced a question about how to address mass shootings to which he responded saying that the focus needs to be on mental illness. Ryan then pointed to a bill from Representative Tim Murphy, a Republican from Pennsylvania, which seeks to overhaul the American mental health system. While nearly everyone agrees that the United States needs a better approach to mental health, the connection between mental illness and mass shootings is much more complicated than it may seem.

Before we get into the validity behind associating mental health with mass shootings, it is important to acknowledge the fact that most Americans see it as an important underlying problem. According to an ABC/Washington Post poll from October, Americans are nearly split on whether the government should prioritize passing new gun laws or protecting gun rights, but nearly two-thirds believe that improving mental health treatment is necessary to address mass shootings. When asked whether mass shootings are a reflection of problems with identifying and treating people with mental health issues or inadequate gun control laws, 63 percent believe mental health is the issue. There is a partisan difference in opinions–Republicans overwhelmingly focus on mental health while only 46 percent of Democrats focus on mental health alone. But despite those differences, only 23 percent of respondents said inadequate gun control laws were more concerning than mental health issues.

While Democrats often criticize Republicans’ reluctance to talk about gun control after mass shootings, it’s fair to say that addressing mental health problems is a greater concern for their constituents than stronger gun laws are. So in the wake of the tragic Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, the Republican Party looked to Rep. Tim Murphy, the only psychiatrist in Congress, to come up with a response. Murphy traveled across the country to speak with communities and mental health experts to determine the best way to fix the current system. While Murphy’s bill, the Helping Families in Mental Health Crises Act, marks the most comprehensive approach to overhauling the U.S. mental health system, it’s important to ask how doing so will affect mass gun violence.

In a review of research on mental health and gun violence, Vanderbilt University professors Jonathan M. Metzl and Kenneth T. MacLeish find that there is little evidence to suggest that mental illness causes gun violence. While it is true that in the aftermath of mass shootings reports often indicate that the perpetrator experienced some sort of paranoia, delusion, or depression prior to the attack, suggesting that mental illness caused the shooting is another matter. Metzl and MacLeish cite the finding that less than 3 to 5 percent of crimes in the United States are committed by people with mental illness, and that proportion may be lower in terms of gun crime.

In fact, people with mental illness are far more likely to be the victim of a crime than the perpetrator. For example, one study found that people diagnosed with schizophrenia are victimized at rates 65 to 130 percent higher than the general public. The authors concluded, “In general, the risk associated with being in the community was higher than the risk these individuals posed to the community.” Saying that all people diagnosed with mental illnesses are likely to commit mass shootings is about as useful as saying we should take away the gun rights of white men because most mass shooters also fit that demographic. In reality, the vast majority of white men and people diagnosed with mental illness will not commit mass violence.

Metzl and MacLeish also question the claim that mental health professionals can predict and prevent gun crime. While efforts to prevent the next mass shooting are well intentioned, basing that off of psychiatric diagnosis is remarkably difficult. The authors argue that psychiatric diagnosis is primarily a matter of observation, and they note that for that reason “research dating back to the 1970s suggests that psychiatrists using clinical judgment are not much better than laypersons at predicting which individual patients will commit violent crimes and which will not.”

In some ways, the difficulty in using psychiatric diagnosis to predict mass violence is a matter of math. Public health research can be used to determine a person’s risk of heart attack based on large-scale studies and randomized trials, but when it comes to mass shootings and mental health, the data is limited. As Jeffery Swanson, a professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, notes in his research on predicting rare acts of violence:

In a U.S. city the size of San Jose, California, (population about 1,000,000), about 4,000 people every year will have a heart attack; perhaps one or two will be killed by someone with mental illness wielding a gun. Treatment evidence for preventing death from myocardial infarction has piled up from hundreds of clinical investigations over several decades, involving more than 50,000 patients in randomized trials by the early 1980s . When it comes to persons with mental disorders who kill strangers, there is nothing remotely resembling such an empirical evidence base.

The Republican mental health bill marks an ambitious effort to address a growing problem in the United States, but saying that it is a plan to prevent future mass shootings is misleading. According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, there are 350,000 Americans in state jails and prisons who have been diagnosed with a severe mental illness–that, among other things, is what Rep. Murphy’s bill seeks to address. The bill would restructure the funding for mental health care and change health privacy rules to allow family members to get information about a loved one’s treatment. On the other hand, the bill does not address whether or not someone with a mental illness should have access to guns.

Instead of advertising Murphy’s bill as a means to solve mass shootings, Congress should focus on the need for mental health reform by itself. The Helping Families in Mental Health Crises Act does have controversial provisions, notably whether states should be encouraged to develop Assisted Outpatient Treatment programs, which allows courts to compel treatment for individuals before he or she has a mental health crisis. And whether Murphy’s plan to move funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration–which he views as wasteful and ineffective–to a create an Assistant Secretary for Mental Health is the best way to spend money on mental health treatment.

Murphy’s bill is certainly ambitious and he already has some bipartisan support and backing from important mental health groups, but it also has some controversial provisions. For this reason, the debate on its passage should focus on whether or not it will improve and expand treatment for the 10 million Americans who experience severe mental illness in a given year–not whether it will prevent mass shootings.

Read More: Police Brutality and the Mentally Ill in America

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Fixing Mental Health Care Will Not Stop Mass Shootings, But That’s Okay appeared first on Law Street.

Just two days after the horrific mass shooting at Umpqua Community College, where nine people were killed and nine were injured, four California high school students were arrested after their detailed plan to shoot students and faculty members at Summerville High School in Tuolumne, California was uncovered.

Officials say the plot was revealed on Wednesday when a group of students alerted a teacher that they overheard several students discussing a plan to open fire on the school at an upcoming event. The sheriff’s department was contacted by Summerville High School administrators regarding the students who were making threats. The high school officials reported to authorities that three students were planning to carry out an attack on them. During their investigation, detectives discovered that a fourth student was involved in the plot as well.

Authorities found a list of names that the students had of who they planned to kill. Tuolumne County Sheriff Jim Mele said the students confessed “that they were going to come on campus and shoot and kill as many people as possible.” The students were taken into custody on Saturday. Police officials say that the students’ plan was in its beginning stages and they were in the process of obtaining the weapons that they wanted to use. The sheriff’s department said in a Facebook post:

The suspects plan was very detailed in nature and included names of would be victims, locations and the methods in which the plan was to be carried out.

Because the students are juveniles, their names will not be released, but they were identified as all male. The four students have been arrested for conspiracy to commit an assault with deadly weapons. This is a very terrifying time for the students and faculty at Summerville. Parents are terrified as well for the safety of their children. Kristin Wilson, who has a daughter attending Summerville High, stated,  “I can’t imagine getting a phone call that something like that had happened at that school.” Luckily the plot was caught in its beginning phase and no one was harmed.

Summerville High parents, however, are still unhappy about the situation because they were not notified of the incident until the following day. Shannon Duckworth has two children who attend Summerville High and only knew about the incident because her son told her through a text message. Duckworth stated, “I got a text from my son who lives in Washington asking me what’s going on about this shooting plot. What shooting plot?…We should’ve had full disclosure.” Other parents expressed similar concerns.

A motive for the shooting at Summerville has not yet been determined. Authorities plan to talk more with the teens who created the plot to get further information. Eric Hovatter, an assistant district attorney, stated,

It is clear from past history such as Columbine and Sandy Hook, as well as other recent events in Oregon, that children are willing and capable of planning and carrying out acts of violence against students and teachers on school grounds. While it is easy to say that could never happen in Tuolomne County, the public and local law enforcement must remain vigilant, as they did here. That the suspects are young does not minimize the gravity of the conduct nor the potential for great harm to many innocent people.

There have been 45 school shootings in 2015 alone, many of which didn’t make the news. Gun violence is affecting students everywhere–thankfully this story didn’t end in tragedy.

Taelor Bentley

Taelor is a member of the Hampton University Class of 2017 and was a Law Street Media Fellow for the Summer of 2015. Contact Taelor at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post School Shooting Plot Discovered: Four California High School Students Arrested appeared first on Law Street.

In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.

— Dan Hodges (@DPJHodges) June 19, 2015

Every single time I see news of another mass shooting, an experience that has come pretty damn close to being an everyday occurrence, I think of the people who pointed out that if America’s gun control laws don’t change after Sandy Hook, they never will. Twenty children and six teachers were slaughtered, and nothing has changed. Since Sandy Hook, there has been roughly one school shooting per week. Since November 2012, this is the 994th mass shooting–by the time we hit the three year anniversary of Sandy Hook, we’ll probably be at 1000. Yesterday, 10 people were killed and seven more were wounded at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. This is an epidemic, and it shows no signs of stopping.

Mass shootings are no longer shocking–instead they’ve become routine occurrences. The cycle we’ll go through after this shooting: anger, arguments about the applicability of mental illness vs. gun laws, an analysis of the murderer’s background, then an unsteady return to normalcy, has become mundane. This weariness was echoed by President Obama at a press conference last night, where the president sounded embattled and exhausted. He talked about how the United States stands alone with this problem; how other developed countries don’t have to mourn their young people to a school shooter on an alarmingly regular basis, stating:

We know that other countries, in response to one mass shooting, have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings. Friends of ours, allies of ours — Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours. So we know there are ways to prevent it.

He also pointed out the cyclical nature of our response as well, stating:

And what’s become routine, of course, is the response of those who oppose any kind of common-sense gun legislation. Right now, I can imagine the press releases being cranked out: We need more guns, they’ll argue. Fewer gun safety laws.

Does anybody really believe that? There are scores of responsible gun owners in this country –they know that’s not true. We know because of the polling that says the majority of Americans understand we should be changing these laws — including the majority of responsible, law-abiding gun owners.

So will anything change? I doubt it. To harken back to the quote I opened this article with, it does truly feel like the gun debate in the United States is over.

As a writer tasked with covering the law and policy news of the day, our response to mass shootings has started to feel overwhelming formulaic. At the risk of being crass, the hundreds and thousands of think pieces and op-eds that have been written and will be written about the tragedy in Oregon will follow the same rubric, and they’ll be no different than those that are written after the next shooting. Here’s the formula:

On ______ there was a mass shooting in _____. __ were killed, and the shooter was eventually killed by police. Victims include (insert here the names of the often young people whose lives were taken by senseless gun violence). President Obama and (politicians from the state that was affected) held press conferences to address the tragedy.

Insert impassioned anger, rhetoric, and arguments about why the gun laws should be changed or stay the same. Mention mental illness, maybe. Include a call to action.

The end.

There’s nothing new to say anymore and nothing new to write anymore, because no one is listening. Because there’s nothing new about these mass shootings. I mourn the victims in Oregon, but I truly have no idea what to say at this point. Because is there really anything else left to say?

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 The Depressing Routine of Mass Shootings in the United States appeared first on Law Street.

Last week’s top posts at Law Street included a comedian getting down to business to prevent gun violence, a discussion on the sensationalization of gun self defense, and supermodel Naomi Campbell’s Italian legal troubles. ICYMI, check out the best stories of last week.

#1 The Schumers Are On It: Gun Violence Prevention Has a Few New Faces

You’ve probably heard the name Schumer before–but the question is whether politics and taxes on private equity managers or jokes about women’s sexuality and vaginas come to mind. Now, the two Schumers will be increasingly associated. Comedian, writer, and actress Amy Schumer and her cousin, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, publicly announced on Monday that they are teaming up to fight gun violence. Read full article here.

#2 We Need to Stop Sensationalizing Gun Self Defense

Last Sunday, an armed citizen named Patrick Ewing shot and injured a man who had drawn his weapon and fired at civilians. The story did not get a lot of media attention, but the coverage it did receive sensationalized the event, focusing on Ewing’s concealed carry permit. Some gun rights activists and conservative news sourcesdramatized and championed the what happened as proof of the benefit of concealed carry permits. Unfortunately, this event, like certain other gun-related incidents, was given disproportionate attention and used to defend simplistic approaches to gun laws. Read full article here.

#3 Will Naomi Campbell Be Walking the Runway in Italian Prison?

Celebrities are constantly in the spotlight, with cameras watching their every move. Magazines speculate over the details of celebrities’ lives like vultures, working to photograph every moment that they can. For those who enjoy following the lives of their favorite celebrities, the paparazzi can be seen as a good thing because they provide an inside look at our favorite stars. But the celebrities being followed often don’t agree. Over the years, celebrities have gotten very creative in the ways that they have tried to get rid of the paparazzi. Naomi Campbell definitely falls into that category, and she recently got into a lot of trouble in Italy for that creativity. Read full article here.

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 ICYMI: Best of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

You’ve probably heard the name Schumer before–but the question is whether politics and taxes on private equity managers or jokes about women’s sexuality and vaginas come to mind. Now, the two Schumers will be increasingly associated. Comedian, writer, and actress Amy Schumer and her cousin, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, publicly announced on Monday that they are teaming up to fight gun violence. The announcement comes just two weeks after a fatal shooting in Lafayette, Louisiana, when a gunman opened fire at a screening of Amy Schumer’s new movie “Trainwreck,” killing two women and injuring nine others before committing suicide.

My heart is broken and all my thoughts and prayers are with everyone in Louisiana.

— Amy Schumer (@amyschumer) July 24, 2015

The comedian has called this shooting “extremely personal” and stated that she thinks of the two women who were killed during the showing of her movie every day. “This should not have happened,” she said at a news conference alongside her Senator cousin on Monday. “It’s a tragic, senseless and horrifying action from this man who should not have been able to put his hands on a gun in the first place.” The Lafayette shooter bought his gun in Alabama last year after a background check failed to reveal his history of psychiatric problems and that he had been the subject of domestic violence complaints. Senator Schumer, sponsor of the “Brady Act” that was passed 20 years ago and requires background checks for gun buyers, stated, “We should do everything possible to tighten up loop holes,” and that “we can’t sit back and let mass shooting become commonplace.”

Senator Schumer proposed new gun control measures that are meant to prevent violent criminals, abusers, and those with mental illnesses from obtaining guns. The legislation would improve the currently flawed background check system by creating monetary incentives for states that submit thorough reports to the federal database used to block gun sales to people with criminal records or a history of serious mental illness. The bill would also create penalties for states that fail to submit these records to the database. The Senator emphasized that this new plan is about improving the present background check system, not putting new restrictions on buyers.

74% of Americans want stronger background checks. Joining @amyschumer to call on my colleagues in Congress to finally listen. More at 11.

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) August 3, 2015

On Saturday, Amy Schumer tweeted in response to an open letter addressed to her from a Georgetown University student who called on Schumer to speak out against gun violence and advocate for stricter gun laws. “Your movie — which was so well-received, so brilliant, so you — will now forever have this shooting attached to it,” the letter begins. The letter, which went viral on social media, raised many points about women’s victimization from gun violence, stating that every day in the United States, five women are murdered with a gun, making American women 11 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than women in other high-income countries. The letter continues with more chilling statistics about gun violence against women, stating:

And from 2001 through 2012, 6,410 women were murdered in the United States by an intimate partner using a gun — more than the total number of U.S. troops killed in action during the entirety of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.

The author of the letter, Sarah Clements, says that she knows the “guilt, the sadness, the hole in your heart” that Schumer must have experienced upon hearing the news of the shooting. Clements writes that her mother was a survivor of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, and she has since dedicated her life’s work to gun violence prevention. After Schumer read the letter, she tweeted in response, saying not to worry because she is “on it.”

@cdickason11 @sfclem Her name was Mayci, not Marci and I think about her and Jillian everyday. Don't worry I'm on it. You'll see.

— Amy Schumer (@amyschumer) August 1, 2015

And she was on it. Just two days after the tweet, Schumer followed her cousin’s presentation on his plans for gun violence prevention with an emotional speech at the New York press conference. “Unless something is done and done soon, dangerous people will continue to get their hands on guns,” she said. “We never know why people choose to do these things,” Amy Schumer stated, “but sadly we always find out how, how the shooter got their gun.” She said that her cousin’s three-step plan “deserves unanimous support” because it seeks to address the flaws in the “how.”

Amy Schumer fights gun violence: 'Shootings have got to stop' http://t.co/t29GcKiWY3 pic.twitter.com/MH2Uj68iIt

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) August 4, 2015

Mass killings in the United States have occurred with increasing frequency in recent years. From 2000 to 2007, an average of 6.4 active shootings occurred per year; from 2007 to 2013, that number jumped to 16.4 incidents per year. These mass killings will continue to gain momentum unless we pass legislation that creates serious incentives for states to obey the gun restriction laws that are already in place. Not only do we need to buckle down on the current system of gun control that is not being followed, but we also need to eventually introduce new restrictions. In a majority of mass shootings, killers obtained their weapons legally. This fact warrants significant pause; our laws are not protecting us from danger and are allowing individuals to commit mass murders. All in all, serious improvements to America’s gun laws are needed.

Senator Chuck Schumer and Amy Schumer are using their public platforms to advocate for necessary change that will hopefully spark a more robust conversation on gun control that has been fleeting and unfinished in the past. Amy Schumer’s last line during Monday’s press conference has left everyone wondering what is next for the Schumer pair when she stated: “These are my first public comments on the issue of gun violence, but I can promise you they will not be my last.”

Emily Dalgo

Emily Dalgo is a member of the American University Class of 2017 and a Law Street Media Fellow during the Summer of 2015. Contact Emily at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Schumers are On It: Gun Violence Prevention Has a Few New Faces appeared first on Law Street.

This year, Chicago’s celebration of the Fourth of July quickly turned into a bloody massacre. Reports vary on the exact amount of fatalities and people injured, although it appears that at least ten people were killed, and over fifty others were harmed due to gunfire in multiple different incidents throughout the city. This bloodshed was horrifying, although it’s only one of many instances of gun violence in the Windy City in recent years that have left countless people dead and put residents on high alert.

Among the victims was a seven-year-old boy, Amari Brown, who was fatally shot while watching the fireworks with his father, Antonio. Investigators believe that the intended target of the gunfire was his father, who is a known gang member with forty-five past arrests and who refused to cooperate with detectives during the investigation into his son’s death. Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy made an emotional plea to the public, urging people to put an end to this senseless brutality that has swept the city in not only the past few months but throughout recent years.

Chicago has a notorious gang population and the usage of guns is staggering. The problem is not too little of a police presence on the streets, given that it was actually increased by thirty percent over the holiday weekend, nor was it a lack of gun confiscations and arrests since these numbers were also higher than usual. Instead, McCarthy believes that there is a “broken system,” since criminals never really have to deal with the repercussions of their actions. He claims that gun control laws are too lenient in the city, despite Chicago having some of the strictest gun laws in the country.

Shooting during July 4th celebration leaves 7-year-old dead; police say bullet meant for dad http://t.co/GmReoTORHe pic.twitter.com/KLyrggsJ3U

— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 6, 2015

Sadly, these vicious shootings aren’t anything new for Chicago–the city has a long history of gun violence. Police have amped up their seizure of illegal weapons, which has proven to be effective since shooting incident rates are actually down compared to this same short period of time last year, but it’s not quite enough. Chicago has been plagued with crime for many years, garnering attention from news sources nationwide. It is the third largest populated city in the country, and yet its homicide rate is drastically higher than New York or Los Angeles. Evidently, changes must be made in order to put an end to this constant carnage. The cops are working feverishly to deter and terminate gun usage, although this is impossible to do without the full support and cooperation of the public.

One of the victims last weekend was seventeen-year-old Vonzell Banks, who was gunned down in a park that was named after Hadiya Pendleton, an honors student who was murdered in cold blood there in 2013. Pendleton’s death became a symbol of national gun violence, as she was killed while walking with friends through the park only a mile away from President Obama’s Chicago home, not long after she attended his inauguration. Unfortunately, the amount of shootings in this city has hardly decreased since her passing.

Amidst tragedy, authorities are hoping that they can turn these deaths into something positive. In memory of the many victims, they are encouraging the public to band together and not only be vigilant for other possible acts, but also work toward discouraging future gang activity within the community. One tactic that officials have used is creating mentoring programs and day camps for local children as a way to discourage them from becoming involved in gang activity. They are trying to reach kids at a young age so that they always have somewhere to turn to where they can grow and prosper rather than resorting to violence or crime.

In recent years, Chicago has become what can only be compared to a battlefield in certain parts of the city, with some residents even giving it the nickname of “Chiraq.” It has been known for a long time that Chicago is experiencing a surge of unnecessary violence, although the death of the seven-year-old sparked citywide cries for justice and peace. Hopefully those cries will finally start to make a difference.

Toni Keddell

Toni Keddell is a member of the University of Maryland Class of 2017 and a Law Street Media Fellow for the Summer of 2015. Contact Toni at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Endless Bloodshed on the Streets of Chicago Mars Holiday Weekend appeared first on Law Street.

America has a race problem. America has a gun problem. America has a violence problem. America has a problem with racially motivated gun violence.

A massacre occurred Wednesday at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina when nine black people were fatally shot during their weekly bible study. Twenty-one-year-old Dylann Roof confessed to shooting and killing these nine people. The massacre is being reviewed as a hate crime and was almost certainly racially motivated.

Dylann Roof has been charged with 9 counts of murder and one weapon possession charge in the #CharlestonShooting: http://t.co/l3EcsDWT1I

— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) June 19, 2015

Several interviews with former friends of Roof have raised a concern that I simply can’t disregard. One of Roof’s friends said in an interview in response to the massacre on Wednesday:

It was a race thing because he had told me that black people was taking over the country…that he wanted it to be segregation[…]white with the white, black with the black[…]I mean he was drunk one night and he was just talking about him wanting to hurt a whole bunch of people. And whenever he was saying he was wanting to do something crazy, I just blew it off and didn’t really pay attention to him because he was intoxicated.

The fact that one of Roof’s friends didn’t think anything of his seemingly constant racial slurs, threats of violence against black people, or the plans he revealed to him about the massacre is horribly disconcerting. What Roof did is obviously not this friend’s fault. But the reality is that in 2015, a young man can get drunk and spout off plans to murder people because of their race and his friends can brush it off. They’re desensitized to racist banter, to threats of violence, to prejudice, and to xenophobia. The American society that Dylann Roof lives in brushed off and “didn’t really pay attention” to his grossly discriminatory views because, unfortunately, they aren’t uncommon.

From politicians to a young man from South Carolina, animosity toward minorities in America is a systemic, institutionalized, and far-too-accepted issue that is somehow only discussed in depth when we encounter a tragedy. I couldn’t help but notice the us-versus-them narrative present in both Roof’s remarks to the people in the church at the time of the shooting and in Donald Trump’s presidential announcement from earlier this week. It has been reported that Roof said to the victims, “I have to do it… You rape our women and you’re taking over our country, and you have to go.” Just a few days ago, Trump made similarly racist remarks against Mexicans as he announced his candidacy:

When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you… They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.

Both Roof and Trump use “you” collectively, grouping an entire race in Roof’s case and an entire country in Trump’s, in an attempt to justify their disgusting prejudices. Both men use rape as a tool–a justification for their hatred–even though these beliefs are completely unfounded. Roof alleged that black people are taking over the country, and Trump declared that Mexico is “killing us economically.”

Summary of #DonaldTrump's speech: "I'm white & rich and I only like other white rich people… & all Mexicans are drug dealers & thugs, bye"

— Neighborhood Queer (@MartyredWisdom) June 16, 2015

While I seriously doubt that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign speech was anywhere on Dylann Roof’s radar, the point I’m trying to make is that the roots of racism run deep in this country’s core and we overlook them far too often. Whether this problem arises out of ignorance or out of naivety I’m not quite certain, but either way, it needs to stop.

Emily Dalgo

Emily Dalgo is a member of the American University Class of 2017 and a Law Street Media Fellow during the Summer of 2015. Contact Emily at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post America Has a Huge Racism Problem appeared first on Law Street.

The rate of “active shooter” incidents has been increasing since 2000, according to a new study from the FBI in conjunction with researchers at Texas State University’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center. The study identified 160 incidents occurring between 2000 and 2013, and concluded that there were over twice as many of these shootings in the second half of that period as there were in the first.

In total, these incidents caused over 1,000 casualties — which the FBI classifies as both injury and death — leaving 557 injured and 486 dead, not including the shooters themselves. Among the study’s many important conclusions is the finding that police officers are often not able to respond in time, making civilian response extremely important.

Researchers found an average of six active shooter situations per year between 2000 and 2006. That rate increased to over 16 in the second half of the years studied. The number of casualties – including both injuries and deaths– increased from an average of 35 per year in the first half of the study to 113 in the second.

It is important to note that active shooter situations are not the same as mass shootings. The agreed upon definition of an active shooter is “an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area,” though the FBI expanded it slightly for its research. In contrast to this definition, a mass shooting is an incident where a shooter kills three or more people.

Of the 160 total cases identified by researchers, 64 incidents or 40 percent would be classified as mass shootings. The distinction between “mass” and “active” shooter situations is small, but very important, as a person can be an active shooter without directly causing injury. Even the Wall Street Journal conflated the two, as the title of its coverage is “Mass Shootings on the Rise, FBI Says.”

James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University, cautioned against the conclusion that mass shootings are increasing. In an interview with Time he said, “A majority of active shooters are not mass shooters… A majority kill fewer than three.” Fox went on to say that, if the study focused specifically on mass shootings it might not reveal an increase. Instead, he contends that the number of mass shootings have remained relatively steady since the 1970s.

Implications for Law Enforcement

While the findings about the rate of active shooter situations are important, the report’s primary purpose was to take a closer look at these incidents and their trends to see how law enforcement can better respond. The focus on active, rather than mass shooters is based on the underlying implication that the situation is in progress, meaning that law enforcement and bystanders may be able to influence the outcome.

One major finding about these situations is that they often end very quickly. In the 64 incidents where a duration could be determined, 44 ended in five minutes or less and 23 of those finished in just two minutes or less.

Equally important is the specific ways in which these incidents end:

 “At least 107 (66.9%) ended before police arrived and could engage the shooter, either because a citizen intervened, the shooter fled, or the shooter committed suicide or was killed by someone at the scene.”

-FBI’s Active Shooter Study

Additionally, over half of the situations (56%) ended on the shooter’s accord; the shooter either committed suicide, stopped shooting, or ran away. Also important is the fact that 21 incidents (13.1%) ended when unarmed citizens intervened, only two of which involved off duty law enforcement. Armed citizens were only involved in five incidents, four of which ended after armed security guards intervened, and only one ended after an armed civilian bystander engaged the shooter.

Also important is the location of these shootings. The three places with the highest rate of active shooter incidents are commercial areas (45.6%), educational environments (24.4%), and government properties (10%).

The study’s findings indicate that law enforcement may have a limited ability to respond to active shooters, as they typically end very quickly and before officers can arrive. However, they may also emphasize the importance of prevention and response training for citizens. Prevention remains the most important strategy for dealing with this problem, but the FBI’s recent emphasis on training may also help reduce the danger posed by shooters.

Featured image courtesy of [North Carolina National Guard via Flickr]

—-

Kevin Rizzo (@kevinrizzo10)

Featured image courtesy of [North Carolina National Guard/TSgt Richard Kerner, NCNG Public Affairs, 145th Airlift Wing via Flickr]

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post New FBI Report: Active Shooter Incidents on the Rise appeared first on Law Street.

The strange, long, and twisted tale that was the death of Reeva Steenkamp, girlfriend of Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius, has started to reach its close. Pistorius was found guilty of culpable homicide in the Steenkamp case.

Oscar Pistorius is a South American athlete who made history by being the first double amputee in the Olympic Games, and has an incredibly impressive Paralympics resume.

But on the morning of February 14, 2013, that all changed. Pistorius shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp through the locked bathroom door. She was a South African model, and the pair had been dating for three months. Pistorius admitted from the beginning that he had shot her, but claimed that he had thought that she was an intruder.

The facts that came out during the subsequent trial were dark. In addition to the being put on trial for killing Steenkamp, Pistorius also faced two charges for illegal handling of his firearms, and a fourth charge for illegal possession of some of the ammunition that was found in his home after Steenkamp was killed.

During the trial, a break was taken so that Pistorius could be evaluated by doctors and receive a psychiatric evaluation. He has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, which was used by the defense to explain his concern about an intruder in his home on the morning of February 14. Merryll Vorster, a forensic psychiatrist who testified during the trial, explained that Pistorious’ anxiety disorder was most likely why he always slept with a firearm under his pillow. Vorster also explained that Pistorius did not have his prosthetics on when he shot at the door, indicating that a fight mechanism may have been ignited in Pistorious — he literally could not flee.

Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa stated on Thursday that Pistorius was not going to be found guilty of murder, but left the other charges for Friday.

The culpable homicide verdict, announced Friday, translated into American justice system terms, essentially means that he was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. He acted negligently when he shot four shots through his closed door without knowing who or what was on the other side. He won’t actually be sentenced until next month, and what his sentence will actually end up being has a huge range. He could serve up to fifteen years in prison, or a sentence that is significantly shorter. Judge Masipa has received significant criticism for her ruling.

Given that no one will really ever know what happened in Pistorius’ house that fated Valentine’s Day morning, the verdict is understandable. Yet there is still a lot of backlash from those who believe it’s not quite enough. And Pistorious’ actions after receiving the verdict don’t do too much to help him. He has said that he’s going to write a book to tell his side of the story, and the South African Olympic Committee has said he is free to run again once he finishes his sentence.

However, the good thing about these much-watched celebrity trials is that occasionally they are high-profile enough to create a national conversation. As Steenkamp’s father put it:

This case in a very strange way has opened a window into people’s lives in South Africa, the way they feel they need to defend themselves with extreme force. People need to think about this.

The story was disturbing, the trial concerning, and the death of Steenkamp incredibly tragic. Yet trials like this do have the opportunity to say something for a nation; hopefully South Africa is listening.

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 Pistorius Verdict Opens Dialogue About Defense, But is South Africa Listening? appeared first on Law Street.

In an era when it seems like there’s constantly a story about a shooting on school grounds, we’re always looking for solutions to our school shooting epidemic. One long-discussed argument has been to arm teachers, and people across the country are taking action to do just that.

In many conservative-leaning states, the push to arm teachers is getting pretty serious. As of this year, in 28 different states, adults who own guns will be allowed to carry them into school buildings under certain parameters. Recently, legislation was passed in Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas related to arming teachers and staff members in public schools.

There’s also been some expansion of the way in which those who are armed in schools are trained. In some places, free classes are offered for staff members who want to carry guns into schools in an attempt to protect students. The Centennial Gun Club in Colorado is offering free classes to teachers who want to learn how to carry and operate guns. A former Colorado teacher named Tara who is thinking of returning to the classroom named explained her interest in the class, saying:

While I am a teacher, those kids, those students in my class are my kids, and my first responsibility is to protect them at all costs. When all the school shootings happened I realized that I wanted it more for my own personal protection and I thought that that idea of being prepared to protect translates very well to the classroom for teachers.

That’s all well and good, but what they don’t seem to be offering is classes that particularly relate to stopping armed intruders or using a gun under high-pressure circumstances.

In other places, the emphasis is on cutting the response time in case of an armed intruder by training designated staff members who have access to weapons. In some cases, teachers need to disclose information to superiors that they’re bringing a gun into the classroom, in other states the legislation doesn’t require that kind of step. While the laws are varied, one thing is pretty clear — bringing more guns into schools in an attempt to stop horrific tragedies like the Sandy Hook shooting has become a fairly popular mindset, without any whiff of consistency from state to state or even school district to school district.

Now, I’m very split here. On one hand I’m frustrated. Part me of thinks that we literally are so bad at finding solutions to our mass shooting problem that we’re just bringing more guns into schools as an answer. That is where we are. We so fundamentally can’t agree on how to deal with gun violence that we can’t even make the laws or required training consistent. Never mind the fact that arming people more to prevent shootings is a kind of miniature mutually assured destruction. Never mind that while shootings are occasionally stopped by bystanders, it’s relatively rare. Never mind that the ability to stop a shooting takes a blend of training, instinct, and temperament that requires way more than one class to learn. Never mind that in the last year, 100 children died in accidental shooting deaths in the United States. Never mind that by bringing guns into our classrooms, we are teaching our children that school is not a safe place, and that gun violence is a reasonable answer. That’s the obnoxious liberal in me talking.

But on the other hand, I have a side that I like to think is rational, and that side is also kind of frustrated. Now, I want to be clear, because I’ve learned from experience that this kind of disclaimer is needed: this is not an attack on the Second Amendment. This is an attack on the complete lack of common sense that we are now employing. If we sat down, as a nation, and truly determined that the best way to protect children is to arm their teachers, fine. We can do that, if we really think that will work. It’s a plan, at least, and as much as I don’t think it’s a good plan, I would be ecstatic to be proven wrong.

But what we have right now is such a fundamental disagreement on literally everything to do with this debate that we’re half-assing it. We’re passing laws that allow certain people to bring guns into schools under the guise of protection without necessarily creating corresponding legislation to make sure that the plan has the chance to be effective. We’re ignoring the possibly negative ramifications of these laws because it’s just easier that way. We are so far from being able to have a rational debate on this topic that any ability to be able to work together has been thrown out the window.

Every gun death is a tragedy, and the only way we’re going to be able to prevent situations like Sandy Hook, or Columbine, or UC-Santa Barbara from happening again is if we all grow up and talk about this in a rational way.

—

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 [Wendy House 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 Risky Idea Alert: Arming Teachers in School appeared first on Law Street.

On Tuesday, June 10, President Obama took to Tumblr to answer questions on everything and anything from education, college affordability, and student loan debts in an open forum moderated by Tumblr founder and CEO, David Karp, live from the White House. In light of the tragic string of school shootings that have been plaguing the nation as of late, it was only a matter of time until the subject was brought up.

The President expressed his extreme frustration at the fact that “society has not been willing to take some basic steps to keep guns out of the hands of people who can do just unbelievable damage.”

His frustration is well justified – Sandy Hook, the Naval Yard, Santa Barbara, and most recently Oregon – have all proved that mass shootings are a very real problem in America. While most Americans readily agreed with President Obama when he continued by saying “Our levels of gun violence are off the charts,” the truth of the matter is that gun related homicides have actually been decreasing over the past 20 years.

President Obama is not the only one who mistakenly thinks that gun violence has been increasing;  in fact 56 percent of Americans believe that the number of crimes involving a gun is higher than it was 20 years ago. However, according to the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank, national rates of gun homicide and other violent gun crimes are “strikingly lower” than they were 20 years ago, mirroring a general decrease in crime.

The gun homicide rate was 49 percent lower in 2010 than in 1993, with fewer deaths despite population growth. Another important fact to note is that while there were 31,672 gun-related deaths in 2010, most of those deaths (19,392) were actually suicides. Surprisingly, the rate of gun suicides has consistently been higher than the gun homicide rate since at least 1981, and that gap is wider now than it has ever been.

However, when President Obama said, “we’re the only developed country on Earth where this happens,” he was not wrong. America leads the world in gun homicides and has more guns per citizen than any other country in the world, but while the president laments the fact that these mass shootings seem to be a once-a-week occurrence, mass shootings make up less than 1 percent of all homicides according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) review.

Less than 1 percent?

That is a shockingly low percentage for nearly 30 years’ worth of statistical data. Even the Congressional Research Service states that “while tragic and shocking, public mass shootings account for few of the murders or non-negligent homicides related to firearms that occur annually in the United States.”

If the numbers show that both crime and gun violence are declining, why do most Americans feel that things are getting worse rather than better?

One explanation may lie with the media, as 17 percent of all news on local television broadcasts is centered on crime stories. Only traffic and weather top crime as the most common type of story played on newscasts, and it is no secret that violent crimes are frequently the bread and butter of breaking news.

It may come as no surprise that in 2012, the Pew Research Center found that news stories about fatal shootings were more closely followed by the public than any other type of story. The tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut ranked second in public attention, with only the presidential election garnering more publicity that year.

Though the number of deaths resulting from mass shootings has not significantly increased over the past two decades, the frequency that Americans hear about those incidents certainly has. It may seem unfathomable now, but just a few decades ago a shooting could happen in California and people in New York would not find out until days after the fact.

With technology evolving and more information available than ever before, it may seems that the world has not only become smaller, but also more dangerous. It is no wonder that the majority of Americans believe that crime and gun violence have gotten worse rather than better over the past twenty years – it is all they ever hear about and see on the news.

—

Nicole Roberts (@NicoleR5901) a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Auraelius via Flickr]

Nicole Roberts

Nicole Roberts a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Gun Violence Isn’t Off the Charts – It’s Actually Going Down appeared first on Law Street.

A man armed with a shotgun opened fire in an academic building at Seattle Pacific University on June 6, 2014. He walked up to three students and fired. One died; two were wounded. The following Friday, a man launched an assault against a courthouse in Forsyth County, Georgia. Only one person was wounded, but given the assailant’s stockpile of ammunition and bombs, it’s safe to assume he had much bigger plans. While the nation had a day off from similar violence that Saturday, Sunday was met with another shooting in Las Vegas. A couple killed two cops and a civilian before turning their guns on themselves. Last Tuesday, June 10, there was a school shooting in Oregon. Two are confirmed dead from that incident. That’s four shootings in six days with seven people dead.

Gun Rights and the Constitution 

Americans have long viewed the freedom to own a gun as a point of pride, one that is staunchly protected by the National Rifle Association, possibly the most successful lobbying group in modern American history. The NRA has shaped the way Americans currently view the Second Amendment.

But let’s look at what the Second Amendment really says. It reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

To be fair, the comma placement makes this a difficult sentence to interpret. But the historical purpose of this amendment came from states’ concerns that there would be a federal militia but no state militias. This amendment was created to protect a state’s right to form its own militia. But in recent years, the NRA has expertly convoluted the Second Amendment into the meaning it holds today — the absolute right to own a gun. It claims any gun control endeavor is a staunch violation of individual freedoms.

Now, I am not going to suggest banning individual ownership of guns in America. Not only is that a probable constitutional violation, the public would never allow that to happen. But I do not see any reason why restrictions cannot be placed on gun ownership. The constitution is not absolute. For example, the First Amendment says Congress can make no law abridging a person’s freedom of speech. Reading this as an absolutist, the amendment can be interpreted as allowing any person to say anything he wants. But both individual states and Congress have passed laws limiting speech, such as a law declaring it unlawful to use free speech to incite violence or intimidate. According to that law, the Ku Klux Klan cannot burn a cross to intimidate an individual. If the First Amendment was interpreted as absolute, this law would not have been possible.

There is no reason the Second Amendment should be treated as an absolute when the First is not. The government can restrict speech to protect its citizens, so it should also be able to restrict gun sales to do the same.  But when it comes to the Second Amendment, the NRA and the most vocal gun advocates deal in absolutes. David Metcalf, an avid gun user, former editor of Guns & Ammo and member of the NRA, recently made a similar argument to the one I just made. He was called a traitor and threatened just because he argued that regulating guns isn’t an automatic infringement on gun owners’ rights.

Gun Rights and Crime 

Now, regardless of the constitutionality argument, the NRA claims that regulation of guns will do nothing to stop crime. It argues that people need guns to protect themselves and that anyone can get a gun on the black market, so new restrictions will do nothing. But let’s look at some data. In 2012, Britain, a nation with strict gun laws, had a murder rate of 1.2 per 100,000, while America had a rate of 4.8 per 100,000. The gun murder rate for England and Wales is 0.1 per 100,000, while it is 3.2 per 100,000 in the United States. This isn’t an isolated example — the US has by far the highest per capita gun deaths among developed nations.

Several things could be done about this crisis. We could implement much stricter background checks and require gun licenses be subject to regular renewals. These changes need to be paired with better treatment and recognition of those who are mentally ill. We need to identify those who are at risk, and then prevent their access to guns. Furthermore, assault rifles, such as the AR-15, should not be legal. A variant of this weapon was used in the Sandy Hook shooting. The shooter stole the gun from his mother’s collection. If the gun was banned, even if it was still available on the black market, the Lanzas probably would not have purchased it illegally. Finally, there is a large black market for guns, so any legal restriction of gun use must be paired with money for the FBI and ATF to shut down it down.

I began this article by highlighting four shootings that took place in the span of six days. Many Americans have reacted by saying, “well, it could have been worse.”  This is an attitude of acceptance, because those deaths simply didn’t have to happen. Gun regulation is constitutional and it has worked elsewhere. We owe it to the past and future victims of gun violence to give it a try.

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Matt DeWilde (@matt_dewilde25) is a member of the American University class of 2016 majoring in politics and considering going to law school. He loves writing about politics, reading, watching Netflix, and long walks on the beach. Contact Matt at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Sean Savage via Flickr]

Matt DeWilde

Matt DeWilde is a member of the American University class of 2016 majoring in politics and considering going to law school. He loves writing about politics, reading, watching Netflix, and long walks on the beach. Contact Matt at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post We Need to Stop Accepting Gun Violence appeared first on Law Street.

Seattle Pacific University lost one student and three others were wounded last Thursday in a shooting on campus. The university has suffered a tragedy, and while I do not disapprove of the time that the media has invested in covering it, I would like to call another, more prevalent, issue to mind. Shootings occur more frequently and affect an even greater number of people in our cities than on college campuses, yet have largely been disregarded or overlooked as news.

Forgotten and Forlorn

Inner-cities in America suffer greatly and receive little national coverage. On Friday, June 6, a man named Andew Perez was shot to death in his car in Camden, NJ. On the same day in Newark, NJ, two men were shot and killed and one woman was wounded. Between Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, three people were killed and at least 19 others were wounded in Chicago shootings. On Saturday, a 15-year-old girl was shot and killed in Oakland, Calif. Mostly untouched by the news, there were at least seven gun-related deaths and even more injuries in American cities last weekend.

Events like the one at Seattle Pacific University and the recent mass shooting at UC Santa Barbara have revived fears about mass shootings in schools and colleges. The prevalence of these incidents is, while not inconsequential, a small part in the larger picture of American gun violence. Media attention for school shootings is always high. We become upset when a place that is created for improvement and learning face something as destructive as gun violence. Neglected, however, are the places that we do not assign such positive values.

As the FBI’s crime reports show, metropolitan areas are afflicted with high rates of violence. Violent crimes (robbery, rape, aggravated assault, and murder) have particularly high rates in cities. In 2012, each category of metropolitan counties had a higher violent crime rate than their non-metropolitan parallels.

Crimes occur much more frequently in metropolitan areas than they do in their non metropolitan counterparts.

Compared to urban areas, campuses are relatively safe, but the difference in the American mentality that surrounds college campuses and urban environments is significant. The poorest, most dilapidated parts of cities are forgotten and forlorn by the media. Shootings there are frequent, while shootings at schools are few and far between. This is not to say that people should care less about violence at schools like Seattle Pacific University, in fact, they should care more. People should care enough to advocate for and vote in favor of gun restrictions. Instead, people are shocked when shootings happen at schools but hear nothing about, or completely ignore, the recurring murders in America’s cities. While shootings and schools do not make sense together, we all-too-readily understand that gun violence and cities go hand-in-hand.

“Nearly Half of All Homicides”

A special report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), “Black Victims of Violent Crime,” shows how this violence is particularly prevalent among blacks.The report states that, “While blacks accounted for 13% of the U.S. population in 2005, they were victims in 15% of all nonfatal violent crimes and nearly half of all homicides”. The BJS used statistics from 1993 through 2005. The data comes from its National Crime Victimization Survey, which collects first-hand victim testimonies about incidents that have gone unreported to police, as well as the Supplementary Homicide Reports from the FBI. While staggering, this information is nothing new, nor are the 2005 numbers out of date. According to the FBI’s 2012 Uniform Crime Report, there were 3,128 white and 2,648 black victims of murder. These numbers, relative to the population proportions of whites and blacks, reveal an epidemic in the black community, and only reflect offenses reported to police. When taking into account crimes that go unreported and the instances of blacks being wrongfully shot by police officers, that murder rate would be even higher.

Uniquely, the disparity here is so great that the numbers are difficult to observe in a single graph. The difference is astounding. Although both have been decreasing recently, the homicide rate for blacks is dramatically larger than it has been for whites for over a decade.

In a Washington Post article last year, Dan Keating notes the difference between firearm deaths of whites and blacks,

“A white person is five times as likely to commit suicide with a gun as to be shot with a gun; for each African American who uses a gun to commit suicide, five are killed by other people with guns… Gun deaths in urban areas are much more likely to be homicides, while suicide is far and away the dominant form of gun death in rural areas”.

That’s one more statistic in a set of disturbing facts.

The Wall Street Journal compiled data sets from 2000 to 2010 in an article about blacks killing other blacks. Their charts show how no other group of people in the United States has been killed as frequently by firearms than blacks, not even when taking population proportions into account. Between 2000 and 2010 there were at least 60,028 black Americans were killed by firearms. A Slate.com article tracks the number of deaths as a result of school shootings from 1980 to 2012: the total is 297. Any shooting on a college campus deserves attention and a swift, appropriate reaction. But that number, 60,028, is the mass shooting we should be paying attention to.

Jake Ephros

Jake Ephros is a native of Montclair, New Jersey where he volunteered for political campaigns from a young age. He studies Political Science, Economics, and Philosophy at American University and looks forward to a career built around political activism, through journalism, organizing, or the government. Contact Jake at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post A Mass Shooting, Ignored appeared first on Law Street.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014 saw yet another shooting unfold on a college campus. Andrew Boldt, a senior at Purdue University, was shot and killed inside the university’s electrical engineering building. The police responded quickly to the scene and arrested the suspect, Cody Collins, shortly after the shots were fired.  Purdue University responded to the incident by sending text message alerts to students telling them to take shelter in their present locations.  Later, the university cancelled classes for the rest of Tuesday as well as Wednesday and held a candlelight vigil to pay respects to Boldt.

Unfortunately, Tuesday’s shooting is only one of a number of recent events involving gun violence on college campuses and schools.  On the evening of Monday January 20th, a student was shot and injured near the athletic center of Widener University in Eastern Pennsylvania.  On Janurary 9th, a seventeen year old student was shot outside the main office of Liberty Tech High School in Jackson, Tennessee.  On January 14th, a twelve year old boy brought a loaded gun into the gym of Berrendo Middle School in New Mexico, shooting and wounding two students. On January 19th, another shooting occurred inside Delaware Valley Charter High School, where two students were shot and wounded.  And the list continues.

With so many shootings at schools and universities in January alone, the issue of gun control in school again resurfaces.  These recent events and past tragedies such as Sandy Hook Elementary and Virginia Tech begs the question: has there been any progress in preventing gun violence in schools?

The Youth Risk Behavior Survey‘s most recent findings in fact show that only 5.4 percent of high school students brought guns onto school property.  This percentage is half of that in 1993.  However, the recent violence in the news has not gone unnoticed: around 540 bills on school security were introduced in state legislatures in 2013, and 106 were passed into law.  The measures include gun-safety education, emergency drills, and security officers on school grounds.

Some local school boards have also gone as far as providing guns to teachers and other staff in the school to try to provide safety for students. Bills that allow school officials to possess guns passed into law in eight states. This policy corresponds with the National Rifle Association’s claim after Newtown that the way to prevent gun violence is with the use of guns, not without them.  Perhaps, as the NRA argues, armed officers or teachers in schools can deter shooters from committing further violence. After Sandy Hook, Wayne LaPierre, President of the NRA, stated, “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Proponents of this view point to the case of the shooting in Prince Middle School in Georgia: after a student shot another student, an armed officer was able to disarm him and end his streak of violence.

However, there are several problems with this solution. First, even if arming teachers and officers in schools can potentially limit violence, how can it prevent the initial action before it occurs?  Second, who is to say the “good guy with a gun” won’t make a mistake and target an innocent person?  And additionally, seeing teachers and officers respond to emergencies with guns can encourage children to desire to emulate their superiors by acquiring a weapon of their own. Responding to violence with violence is not the answer.  Instead, the focus must be on preventative measures such as education on weapons and counseling.  Schools need to get to the root of the problem and determine why children and young adults resort to using weapons to solve their issues.  The focus of schools must turn to learning about behavioral issues in adolescents and how schools can implement strategies to teach children to turn away from violence.

In the mean time, efforts are still needed to ensure the wrong people can’t acquire a gun.  The issue of gun control is still very much on the President‘s mind.  Earlier in January, President Obama announced two executive actions that will increase the ease for states to provide records of citizens with mental illness to the background check system of the federal government.  After failing to get enough votes in Congress for legislation to make it harder to purchase guns last year, the President announced he would use the power of executive orders to do what he could on his own to create progress on gun control.  While these actions are encouraging, this month shows that children and young adults are still able to get their hands on guns and endanger the lives of their classmates.  Therefore, much that can be done to prevent gun violence in schools and universities depends upon the institutions themselves.

[CNN] [NY Daily News] [NBC] [WBBJTV] [Philly.com] [NY Times] [The Daily Beast] [NPR]

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Sarah Helden (@shelden430)

Featured image courtesy of [CT Senate Democrats via Flickr]

Sarah Helden

Sarah Helden is a graduate of The George Washington University and a student at the London School of Economics. She was formerly an intern at Law Street Media. Contact Sarah at staff@LawStreetmedia.com.

The post Gun Violence in Schools and Universities Continues appeared first on Law Street.

Buying a $299 whiteboard that can stop bullets is a startling reality for educational professionals across the country. The LA Times estimates that Hardwire LLC sold around 100 such boards to schools in 5 different states. According to the website “the high-tech tablet — which hangs on a hook, measures 18-by-20 inches and comes in pink, blue, and green — can be used as a personal shield for professors under attack and as a portable writing pad in quieter times”.

Being an alternative to arming teachers, the invention of this multifunctional tablet draws attention to the fears in the American education system.

But does this mean that people are simply waiting for more mass shootings to happen? Does it mean that it’s no longer safe to send your kids to school, or pursue a career in education?

I decided to look at the statistics to find the definitive answer, specifically a Small Arms Survey New Armed Actors Research Note, provides a reliable data on gun ownership in participating countries. According to their report, the United States has 270,000,000 firearms in the possession of its civilian population alone, making the U.S. the world’s leader in civilian gun ownership. Although almost every American agrees that mass shootings, particularly those at schools, are a very important issue, there remains a great deal of disagreement on how to solve the problem. Anti-gun folks will argue that all mass shootings happened just for one reason: the availability of guns. The solution they offer is to prohibit guns, and voilà, the problem is solved! But the reality is – the prohibition of guns will not happened because American society is not ready for that. The latest poll by Gallup showed that 74 percent of Americans are against banning guns for civilians! Thus, it will take many more significant events like school shootings for Americans to change their perceptions on firearms and reform gun laws in the United States. Furthermore, the government can’t even tighten existing gun laws due to the political rivalry, and strong lobbying of pro-gun organizations. In contrast, pro-gun politicians suggest that we arm teachers, and again, voilà, the problem will be solved. The irony of this proposition is all too clear to me, so I have to ask: is it really going to help? Mother Jones analyzed 62 mass shootings in America, finding that not even one of these events was prevented by an armed bystander.  In fact, some of these heroes were actually injured or killed as a result of their attempts to stop the attack.

Live Science indicates that although mass shootings are not a common phenomena, when compared to other violent crimes in America, the amount has been steadily increasing. The same source suggests that most of the shooters had difficulty to connect with other people and wanted to be seen as notorious as possible. The interesting characteristic of almost all mass shooters is their ability to plan and execute their projected shootings despite their mental instability. This reminds me of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart” where murder was meticulously planned and executed by the unknown narrator who is suffering from a mental disease. The Huffington Post suggests that “a history of abuse or ineffective parenting, a tendency to set fires or hurt animals, a sadistic streak, and self-centeredness and a lack of compassion” all can characterize mass shooters. So will arming teachers prevent these people from shooting until their last breath? Probably not.

The problem of mass shootings, especially on campuses, is not only due to the availability of guns, but also to the lack of proper treatment for the mentally-ill. Real Clear Politics encourages us to address the widespread problems of young unstable adolescents and to stop meaningless fight about gun control. The violence exposure through TV and video games combined with alienation, individualistic culture, pressure to succeed, and mental disturbance, can create a lonely mass shooter who might come to your college, school, movie theatre, or grocery store tomorrow.

I decided to look at the statistics again, but now within the American mental health care system. Washington Post provides seven facts about mental health system in the United States, among those are high price tags on mental health services, bias in mental health treatments, and restricted access to mental medical care. Fox News also breaks down for us what is wrong with mental health care in America, and the picture is not all bright. Inadequate training of professionals in the industry and sky-high costs of treatment itself are only two perplexing realities of mental health care system today.

So how do we cure campuses form mass shootings? Changes can happen, but people should not only be aware of the issue realities, they should fiercely advocate for changing the ineffective policies that currently exist. Tightening gun laws to prevent mentally-ill people from accessing firearms, and providing more mobility and resources to mentally-ill people alone can decrease mass shooting incidents. The problem itself should be viewed as multidimensional issue that involves government, local communities, educational system, and healthcare.

There is no time for meaningless fights about gun control and dubious ideas to transform schools and colleges to citadels with armed teachers. A $299 pink board also won’t help tackle the problem.

But what should teachers and students do in the meantime?

Teachers will buy those colorful boards hoping they will never use them as “protection shields”, put guns in their classroom drawers, and start to teach hoping that history will never repeat itself.

In memory of Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting.

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Valeriya Metla is a young professional, passionate about international relations, immigration issues, and social and criminal justice. She holds two Bachelor Degrees in regional studies and international criminal justice. Contact Valeriya at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [woodleywonderworks via Flickr]

Valeriya Metla

Valeriya Metla is a young professional, passionate about international relations, immigration issues, and social and criminal justice. She holds two Bachelor Degrees in regional studies and international criminal justice. Contact Valeriya at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Guns, Whiteboards, and the Mentally Ill: How to Cure Campuses From Mass Shootings appeared first on Law Street.