Tag Archives: Guns

Biden administration moving to expand background checks for gun purchases outside of brick-and-mortar stores

Kamala

Important Takeaways:

  • The Biden administration is moving to expand background checks for gun purchases, fulfilling a key demand of advocates following the deadly shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas.
  • The final rule, expected to be submitted Thursday to the Federal Register by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, would eliminate a loophole that has allowed sales of guns without background checks of guns outside of brick-and-mortar stores.
  • It requires that anyone who sells guns for profit to have a license and that buyers be subject to a background check, including at firearms shows and flea markets.
  • The administration had been working on the rule since last spring. Once publicized, it will take effect in 30 days.
  • The new rule, the most sweeping expansion of firearms background checks in decades, will apply to more than 20,000 individuals engaged in unlicensed gun dealing and affect “tens and tens of thousands of gun sales” each year

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Democrats move to block Veterans from purchasing guns

Veteran-with-Gun-GettyImages-1841168229-640x480

Important Takeaways:

  • Over 140 House Democrats Demand Ability to Block Veterans from Purchasing Guns
  • More than 140 House Democrats are demanding that the ability to bar veterans from gun purchases/ownership under certain circumstances be added back to the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act.
  • For decades, the VA has been reporting veterans to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) for mental issues, and such issues include using a fiduciary to manage one’s VA benefits. But this year, the Clinton-era gun ban was rolled back in the Senate by an amendment put forward by Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA).
  • Following the adoption of his amendment, Kennedy said, “Unelected bureaucrats shouldn’t be able to strip veterans of their Second Amendment rights unilaterally. The Senate did the right thing for veterans and all freedom-loving Americans by passing my amendment today.”
  • Democrats in the House are crying foul and demanding the gun ban be added back into the appropriations bill.

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Prepping has become a mainstream idea: Whichever side of the fence you stand on the consensus is something’s coming and you better be ready

Stockpiling-Guns

Important Takeaways:

  • Why younger Americans are stockpiling supplies ahead of 2024 election: ‘Society unraveling’
  • Doomsday “prepping” is seeping into the mainstream as Americans of all ages and political persuasions are becoming increasingly worried ahead of the 2024 presidential election about the prospect of a civil war.
  • “On the left, you have people afraid (Trump’s) going to declare himself dictator of the United States and people on the left are going to end up as targets in some sort of authoritarian system,” author Brad Garrett told the paper.
  • “On the right, it’s general malaise and a fear of society unraveling. They point to these smash-and-grab robberies, riots and protests.”
  • “An electromagnetic pulse that takes out the electrical grid could happen. A nuclear war might happen. A civil war might happen. But a storm will happen.”
  • Wagoner has a 90-day supply of food stocked up for her six-person family in the event of a similar emergency.
  • “If you can be prepared, you won’t be a drain on the resources needed to help the people who didn’t prepare,” she told the paper.
  • “In the face of an apocalypse, I want to come out and calmly help people,” she said. “I want to be able to create a society that instead of wanting to shoot every stranger, understands our interdependence and creates a better society.”
  • The recent statistics could be explained by growing societal unease. A USA Today/Suffolk University Poll recently found that more than two-thirds of Americans believe the world is facing either bigger problems than usual or is in the most troubled state they’ve ever seen.
  • Chad Huddleston, an anthropologist at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, said the surge in prepping is the result of an increased loss of trust in government among younger and more liberal people.

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Some churches have started protecting themselves with guns

Ecclesiastes 5:8 If you see the poor oppressed in a district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things; for one official is eyed by a higher one, and over them both are others higher still

Important Takeaways:

  • More than half of Protestant churches rely on armed members as part of their security plans, a survey of pastors shows.
  • While recent mass shootings occurred at a retail store in El Paso, Texas, and a downtown entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio, they were still felt in houses of worship, which haven’t been immune to such attacks. And some churches have started protecting themselves with guns.
  • About 81% of churches have at least one security measure in place and 54% rely on armed congregants as part of their security, according to a survey of 1,000 pastors conducted by the evangelical research group Lifeway Research.
  • “While loving one another is a core Christian teaching, churchgoers still sin, and non-churchgoers are invited and welcomed. So real security risks exist whether a congregation wants to acknowledge them or not.”

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After Philadelphia shooting Mayor says Nobody should have guns except the police

2Timothy 3:1-8 “Know this: In the last days perilous times will come. 2 Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 without natural affection, trucebreakers, slanderers, unrestrained, fierce, despisers of those who are good, 4 traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godliness, but denying its power. Turn away from such people.”

Important Takeaways:

  • Philadelphia shooting: Dem mayor rips Second Amendment, says only the police should have guns
  • Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said the US should be more like Canada
  • Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney suggested the Second Amendment and the United States Supreme Court were too lenient when it came to gun rights, following a shooting that injured two police officers near a Fourth of July event
  • Kenney told a group of reporters that only police officers should be allowed to own guns and that he is looking forward to retiring, so he no longer has to deal with gun violence.
  • “If I had the ability to take care of guns, I would,” he said. “But the legislature won’t let us. Congress won’t let us. The governor does the best he can [and] the attorney general does the best he can, but this is a gun country.”

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U.S. cities sue ATF over untraceable ‘ghost guns’

By Brad Brooks

(Reuters) – Chicago and three other cities on Wednesday sued the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), demanding it correct how it interprets what is a firearm and halt the sale of untraceable “ghost gun” kits increasingly used in crimes.

The lawsuit is the first of its kind filed against the ATF, according to lawyers for the cities of Chicago, San Jose, Columbia, South Carolina, and Syracuse, New York. It was filed in the Southern District of New York state.

So-called “ghost gun” or “80% gun” kits are self-assembled from parts purchased online or at gun shows. The parts that are assembled are not classified as a firearm by the ATF. For that reason they can be legally sold with no background checks and without serial numbers to identify the finished product.

The lawsuit argues the ATF and the Department of Justice “refuse to apply the clear terms of the Gun Control Act” which the suit says defines regulated firearms as not only working weapons “but also their core building blocks – frames for pistols, and receivers for long guns.”

The ATF says on its website that receivers in which the fire-control cavities are solid “have not reached the ‘stage of manufacture’ which would result in the classification of a firearm.”

The ATF said in an emailed statement that its “regulatory and enforcement functions are focused and clearly defined by laws.” The bureau emphasized that it investigates criminal possession and other criminal use of privately made firearms.

Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy group that is a plaintiff in the lawsuit along with the cities, argues that until about 2006, the ATF did require unfinished components that clearly were going to be used to make guns to carry a serial number and anyone buying them undergo a background check.

“The ATF used to interpret the Gun Control Act the right way – they would look at how quickly a frame or receiver could be converted into an operable weapon,” said Eric Tirschwell, managing director for the litigation arm of Everytown. “If it was pretty quickly, they would say ‘yeah, that’s a firearm.'”

TECHNOLOGY TROUBLES

It’s unknown how many ghost guns are in circulation, but law enforcement agencies are unanimous in saying numbers are undeniably growing. Police in Washington D.C. last year recovered over 100 ghost guns – a 342% increase over 2018. They are already on pace this year to double the number found.

The ATF has said upward of 30% of the illegal weapons it has confiscated in some areas of California are ghost guns.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, whose city has been beset by gun violence, demanded the ATF close the ghost gun loophole and regulate the sale of gun parts that are marketed to easily be used to build guns.

“Individuals with dangerous histories shouldn’t be able to order lethal weapons on the internet with a few quick clicks,” Lightfoot said.

But Rick Vasquez, a Virginia-based firearms consultant and former ATF technical expert who evaluated guns and gun products to help the bureau determine if they were legal, said anyone wanting to address the proliferation of kit guns should pass new laws in Congress.

The continued rapid advancement of tools and technology widely available to the public meant it was getting to the point where even rudimentary “chunks of metal” can be turned into firearms, Vasquez said.

“How do you regulate that? The ATF can’t do it. This situation is uncontrollable because of technology, and I’m not sure what anyone can do about it.”

(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, Texas; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

U.S. Air Force missed four chances to stop Texas shooter buying guns

People gather to enter a memorial in the Sutherland Springs First Baptist Church where a memorial has been set up to remember those killed there, in a mass shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, U.S. November 15, 2017. REUTERS/Jon Herskovitz

By Jonathan Allen

(Reuters) – The U.S. Air Force missed four chances to block the shooter in 2017’s deadly church attack in Texas from buying guns after he was accused of violent crimes while in the military, a report by the Department of Defense’s inspector general said on Friday.

Because the Air Force failed to submit Devin Kelley’s fingerprints to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the former airman was able to clear background checks to buy the guns he used to kill 26 people at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs.

A Reuters investigation last year found that the Air Force missed multiple chances to submit Kelly’s fingerprints into the FBI’s criminal databases after the November 2017 attack.

Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, of Braunfels, Texas, U.S., involved in the First Baptist Church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, is shown in this undated Texas Department of Safety driver license photo, provided November 6, 2017. Texas Department of Safety/Handout via REUTERS

Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, of Braunfels, Texas, U.S., involved in the First Baptist Church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, is shown in this undated Texas Department of Safety driver license photo, provided November 6, 2017. Texas Department of Safety/Handout via REUTERS

Kelley, who was 26, was shot by a bystander as he fled and was found dead soon after, having shot himself in the head.

According to the inspector general’s report, the first missed chance came in June 2011, after the Air Force Office of Special Investigations began investigating a report of Kelley beating his stepson while Kelley served at a base in New Mexico.

The second chance came in February 2012, after the Air Force learned of allegations that Kelley was also beating his wife, the report said.

The third was in June 2012, when Kelley confessed on video to injuring his stepson, the report said.

The fourth was after Kelley’s court-martial conviction for the assaults in November 2013.

“If Kelley’s fingerprints were submitted to the FBI, he would have been prohibited from purchasing a firearm from a licensed firearms dealer,” the inspector general’s report said.

Each missed instance was a breach of Department of Defense policy, the report said. Multiple Air Force officials involved in Kelley’s case did not understand these policies or were unable to explain why they were not followed in interviews with the inspector general’s office.

The inspector general recommended that the Air Force improve its training of staff on how to submit fingerprints and to examine whether officials involved in Kelley’s case should face discipline for the lapses.

The Air Force did not respond to a request for comment on Friday morning but confirmed last year it had failed to share Kelley’s information with the FBI.

The inspector general found four occasions after Kelly’s conviction and a subsequent bad-conduct discharge from the military where Kelley bought guns from licensed dealers required to use the background check system.

At least some of those guns were the ones he took to the First Baptist Church, the report said.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by David Gregorio)

Fighting fire with fire: Jewish people train to stop repeat of Pittsburgh shooting

Trainees practice an Israeli shooting method as they take part in the Cherev Gidon Firearms Training Academy in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, U.S. August 5, 2018. REUTERS/Noam Moskowitz

By Gabriella Borter

HONESDALE, Pa. (Reuters) – David Ortner adjusted his yarmulke, cocked his pistol and took aim – something he wishes a civilian had done to defend Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue three days ago when Robert Bowers walked in and shot 11 people dead.

“When this happens, you get a wake-up call,” said Ortner, a 28-year-old owner of an optician shop in Monsey, New York.

Ortner was one of nine Jewish men who attended a one-day course on Tuesday at the privately owned Cherev Gidon Israeli Tactical Defense Academy near Scranton, Pennsylvania, a class that was scheduled on Sunday in response to the Pittsburgh synagogue attack.

He was there to learn how to use a gun to protect himself and his community and prevent a repeat of Saturday’s massacre, the deadliest targeting Jewish people in U.S. history.

“The fact is, we’re at war,” said Yonatan Stern, a veteran officer of the Israel Defense Forces and director of the academy, told his class. “We want every Jew in America armed.”

In the six years since Stern started the academy, demand for firearms training had never been higher than after Saturday’s attack. Hundreds of interested students contacted Stern in the last 72 hours. All but three or four were Jewish.

The spike in demand follows President Donald Trump’s statement that the shooting might have been prevented if the synagogue had employed an armed guard.

But many Jews have resisted the idea that having guns in synagogues is the best way to prevent such attacks.

Rabbi Moti Rieber, executive director of the Kansas Interfaith Action, an advocacy organization, said on Tuesday that he did not believe Trump’s call for more armed guards could prevent attacks on places of worship.

“What kind of country we’re going to be if every house of worship has to have an armed guard?” Rieber said. “I think having less access to that kind of weaponry is going to be much more effective in the long run than having a single armed guard.”

According to Stern, an armed guard at a synagogue is a useful deterrent but not a replacement for armed civilians, since a shooter could kill the armed guard before entering and killing congregants.

“To wait for law enforcement to arrive simply is not the answer,” Stern said.

Some of the students attending the course were card-carrying National Rifle Association members. Some had never fired a gun before. Two worked in schools and wanted to defend Jewish children. Many of them intended to bring guns to their synagogues on the next Sabbath for protection.

“Everybody has to find a way to react; this is my way,” said Zev Guttman, who said he was scared of guns until Saturday’s shooting convinced him he had to be armed.

Tuesday’s course, held in a log cabin on an outdoor shooting range in rural Honesdale, about 300 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, consisted of active-shooter response drills using handguns and rifles. Students practiced drawing concealed weapons, loading and firing AR-15 rifles at bulls-eye targets.

Stern said that it “touches my heart” to see his students in training because he knows they will return to their synagogues as a first line of defense.

(The story corrects the name of Israel’s military in 5th paragraph to “Israel Defense Forces” instead of “Israeli Defense Force”.)

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter; Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing by Frank McGurty and Cynthia Osterman)

U.S.-bound migrants enter Guatemala, others clash at border

Men, part of a caravan of thousands of migrants from Central America en route to the U.S., push the border gate as they try to cross into Mexico and carry on their journey, in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, October 28, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

By Nelson Renteria and Delphine Schrank

SONSONATE, El Salvador/TAPANATEPEC, Mexico (Reuters) – A new group of migrants bound for the United States set off from El Salvador and crossed into Guatemala on Sunday, following thousands of other Central Americans fleeing poverty and violence who have taken similar journeys in recent weeks.

The group of more than 300 Salvadorans left the capital San Salvador on Sunday. A larger group of mostly Hondurans, estimated to number between 3,500 and 7,000, who left their country in mid-October and are now in southern Mexico, has become a key issue in U.S. congressional elections.

A third group broke through a gate at the Guatemala border with Mexico in Tecun Uman on Sunday, and clashed with police. Local first responders said that security forces used rubber bullets against the migrants, and that one person, Honduran Henry Adalid, 26, was killed.

People walk in a caravan of migrants departing from El Salvador en route to the United States, in San Salvador, El Salvador, October 28, 2018. REUTERS/Jose Cabezas

People walk in a caravan of migrants departing from El Salvador en route to the United States, in San Salvador, El Salvador, October 28, 2018. REUTERS/Jose Cabezas

Six police officers were injured, said Beatriz Marroquin, the director of health for the Retalhuleu region.

Mexico’s Interior Minister Alfonso Navarrete told reporters on Sunday evening that federal police did not have any weapons, even to fire plastic bullets.

He said that some of the migrants had guns while others had Molotov cocktails, and this information had been passed on to other Central American governments.

Guatemala’s government said in a statement that it regrets that the migrants didn’t take the opportunity of dialogue and instead threw stones and glass bottles at police.

U.S. President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans have sought to make immigration a major issue ahead of Nov. 6 elections, in which the party is battling to keep control of Congress.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on “Fox News Sunday” said Trump was determined to use every authority he had to stop immigrants from crossing the border illegally.

“We have a crisis at the border right now … This caravan is one iteration of that but frankly we essentially see caravans every day with these numbers,” she said.

“I think what the president is making clear is every possible action, authority, executive program, is on the table to consider, to ensure that it is clear that there is a right and legal way to come to this country and no other ways will be tolerated,” Nielsen added.

Trump has threatened to shut down the border with Mexico and last week said he would send troops. On Friday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis authorized the use of troops and other military resources at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Mexican marines patrol the Suchiate river to stop the caravan of thousands of migrants from Central America en route to the U.S., to cross the river illegally from Tecun Uman, Guatemala, October 28, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

Mexican marines patrol the Suchiate river to stop the caravan of thousands of migrants from Central America en route to the U.S., to cross the river illegally from Tecun Uman, Guatemala, October 28, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

BLISTERING HEAT

By Sunday evening, hundreds of the Salvadorans had crossed the border into Guatemala, having walked and hitched rides in pickups and on buses from the capital.

They organized using social networks like Facebook and WhatsApp over the last couple of weeks, inspired by the larger group in Mexico.

Salvadoran police traveled with the group, who carried backpacks and water bottles and protected themselves from the hot sun with hats.

Several migrants, gathered by the capital’s ‘Savior of the World’ statue before leaving, said they were headed to the United States.

El Salvador’s left-wing government said it had solidarity with the migrants and respected their right to mobilize, but urged them not to risk their lives on the way.

In Mexico, the original group of Hondurans, exhausted by constant travel in blistering heat, spent Sunday resting up in the town of Tapanatepec, Oaxaca, planning to head north at 3 am on Monday.

“It’s far … the farthest yet,” said Honduran Bayron Baca, 26, pulling open a map that Red Cross volunteers had given him in a medical tent.

Dozens took dips in a nearby river to refresh themselves from the trek, which has covered an average 30 miles (48 km) a day.

An estimated 2,300 children were traveling with the migrant caravan, UNICEF said in a statement, adding that they needed protection and access to essential services like healthcare, clean water and sanitation.

Eduardo Grajales, a Red Cross volunteer in Arriaga, Mexico, attending to migrants on Friday night, said the worst case his colleagues had seen that day was of a baby so badly sunburned from the tropical heat, he had to be hospitalized.

(Reporting by Nelson Renteria and Delphine Schrank, additional reporting by Carlos Rawlins, Sofia Menchu and Doina Chiacu; Writing by Christine Murray; Editing by Andrea Ricci, Rosalba O’Brien and Darren Schuettler)

U.S. will prosecute makers of ‘undetectable’ plastic guns: Sessions

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions listens as President Donald Trump addresses members of his cabinet during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, U.S., August 16, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions warned on Thursday that anyone who uses a 3-D printer to make an “undetectable” gun will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, a day after his department asked a court not to block the public from downloading blueprints for the guns.

“We will not stand for the evasion … of current law and will take action to ensure that individuals who violate the law by making plastic firearms and rendering them undetectable, will be prosecuted to the fullest extent,” Sessions said in his Thursday statement.

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert)