Good morning, Bulletin readers. Here are some of the stories you’ll find in your mid-week news wrap-up: What the data shows about the weapons most commonly used by active shooters, and why it may surprise you. How the anti-gun-control anarchist behind 3-D printed firearms says he found a way around a court order blocking distribution of the schematics. And the schools where a federal report says a shooting happened, but journalists found it hadn’t.
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WHAT TO KNOW TODAY
NEW from THE TRACE: The Jacksonville gunman used a handgun. So do most active shooters. The suspect in Sunday’s gaming tournament shooting used a pistol to carry out his attack. That seems to make America’s most recent high-profile gun rampage an outlier among other mass shootings, which are often associated with assault-style rifles. But reports on active shootings prepared for the FBI show that pistols were used by 56 percent of active shooters between 2000 and 2015, while rifles were used half as often. Alex Yablon has more here.
The maker of the Madden football video game canceled three upcoming tournaments in the wake of Sunday’s shooting. Electronic Arts, which sponsored last weekend’s competition in Jacksonville, canceled the remaining qualifying events for the Madden NFL 19 Classic so it can “run a comprehensive review of safety protocols for competitors and spectators,” its CEO said on Tuesday.
House Democrats asked Betsy DeVos to clarify that federal education grants cannot be used to buy guns. In a letter issued Tuesday, 173 House Democrats asked the education secretary to issue formal guidance declaring that grants earmarked for low-income school districts cannot be tapped to pay for guns and firearms training for K-12 staffers. They gave DeVos three days to respond.
NPR found that the federal government’s school shooting statistics are wildly inaccurate. Earlier this year, the Education Department reported that nearly 240 schools recorded a shooting in the 2015-2016 academic year. But NPR reporters called each school and were only able to confirm 11 incidents. The investigation’s authors say the discrepancy demonstrates “how researchers, educators, and policymakers are hindered by a lack of data on gun violence.”
A Texas company barred from distributing free blueprints for 3D-printed guns is now selling them, court order be damned. A day after a federal judge blocked Defense Distributed from circulating schematics for untraceable 3D-printed guns online, the company’s founder, Cody Wilson, announced that he’s selling the files instead. Suggested price: $10. By selling them and distributing them via flash drive, instead of offering them as a free download, Wilson said he does not believe that he’s violating the judge’s order.
Meanwhile, a Utah man allegedly threatened to commit a school shooting with a 3D-printed gun. Austin James David West, 23, was charged with a misdemeanor earlier this month after reportedly telling students at Broadview Entertainment Arts University in Salt Lake City that he wanted to perpetrate a shooting that “people would be talking about” with a gun that could not be traced back to him. Police seized a 3D printer from the home he shares with his parents.
California lawmakers passed a bill requiring range training for concealed gun permits. A new measure headed to the governor’s desk mandates eight hours of training in order to get a concealed carry permit. Governor Jerry Brown has a month to sign it, and its sponsor is optimistic that he will. From The Trace archives: As of 2016, in half the country, applicants were not required to demonstrate their shooting ability before obtaining a concealed carry permit. Also headed to the governor’s desk: lifetime bans on gun ownership for convicted domestic abusers and people placed on involuntary psychiatric holds twice in one year.
Another gun group is suing to overturn Vermont’s newly enacted gun laws. Gun Owners of Vermont is asking a civil court judge to declare the state’s four-month-old law requiring background checks on all gun purchases unconstitutional. The group is also challenging the state’s bump stock ban and minimum gun-buying age requirement. In April, a local gun rights group filed a legal challenge to Vermont’s new ban on high-capacity magazines.
A white police officer in Texas was convicted of murder for killing a black teen. Roy Oliver was found guilty on Tuesday for firing into a car full of teenagers last April, killing 15-year-old Jordan Edwards. “This case is not just about Jordan,” an attorney for Edwards’s family said, “it’s about Tamir Rice, it’s about Walter Scott, it’s about Alton Sterling, it’s about every African American who has been killed and has not gotten justice.”
ONE LAST THING
A Chicago high school has lost 12 current or former students to gun violence in the last 12 years. Montavious Dixon was a 19-year-old graduate of Urban Prep Academies in Chicago. Over the weekend, he was killed during a shootout on the city’s South Side, according to an email from the school’s founder, Tim King. Dixon is the 12th current student or alumnus to die of gunshot wounds since the all-boys charter school opened in 2006. An additional 14 have been wounded by bullets in that time, King says. In 2016, King told Elizabeth Van Brocklin how he handles the grim task of informing students and parents that guns have taken another member of the Urban Prep family. “The difficult part is telling people to continue to believe, to continue to hope,” he said. “I feel, when these things happen, hopeless. I’ve got to get over that.”
