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WHAT TO KNOW TODAY
With shootings up, marchers demand an end to the violence. In New York City, demonstrators and local leaders rallied in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood, where a 1-year-old boy was among the victims of recent shootings. Over the weekend, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s new gun violence reduction strategy went into effect. It mixes heightened police presence with more street outreach workers in areas with elevated violence. Elsewhere: In Denver, where shootings are up 50 percent, dozens of youth activists marched through the majority-minority Montbello neighborhood; in Philadelphia, where there has been 55 percent rise in shootings this year, organizers held a march and an anti-violence arts event.
Mass shooting on an Illinois riverfront leaves 13 injured. The incident was the result of a dispute between two groups of people among some 200 gathered early Sunday morning, police said. None of the injuries was life threatening. It was one of nine mass shootings across the country between Friday night and Monday morning, according to Gun Violence Archive.
Backlash grows to federal presence at Portland demonstrations. Late Friday, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum sued the federal government, saying detentions of protesters by personnel from the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security lack probable cause. She also opened a criminal investigation into the case of a demonstrator who reportedly suffered a skull fracture after being hit in the head by a “less-lethal” munition. Meanwhile, congressional Democrats are demanding a probe. “The legal basis for this use of force has never been explained,” wrote three House Democratic committee chairs to the inspectors generals of the DOJ and DHS. A top DHS official rebuffed calls to remove federal agents from the city — and threatened to send them to other cities to break up protests. But in Portland, the aggressive federal tactics have only deepened the resolve of many protesters, who were joined this weekend by helmet-clad moms.
NRA to reschedule its annual convention again. Citing COVID-19, the gun group first postponed the event in March and moved it to a smaller venue in Springfield, Missouri, in September. The National Rifle Association will meet this afternoon to announce further changes to the convention and tweaks to the format for the fall board meeting. (H/T to Asher Stockler for flagging the news).
Missouri governor floats pardon for gun-pointing St. Louis couple. Governor Mike Parson told a local radio station that St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner was “making the situation worse” by weighing charges against Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who have become a cause célèbre on the right since they brandished guns at Black Lives Matter protesters filing past their mansion in June. The couple joined a virtual Trump campaign event over the weekend. Any charges against the McCloskeys would have to surmount a high bar given Missouri’s expansive self-defense laws.
Breonna Taylor received no medical treatment after being shot by police in Louisville, Kentucky. Mining dispatch logs, the Courier Journal reports that no one was sent to treat Taylor after she was struck during a no-knock raid in March, even as officers administered aid to a colleague wounded when Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker returned fire. Walker, who has been cleared of any wrongdoing, told investigators that Taylor was alive for several minutes after being wounded; the local coroner contends it was likely for less time and that her injuries were not survivable.
John Lewis, the “conscience of Congress,” dies at 80. The Georgia Democrat and civil rights icon was an outspoken and unwavering advocate for equal justice. After the 2016 shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, Lewis led an unprecedented sit-in on the House floor to protest inaction on gun legislation. “We have been too quiet for too long,” Lewis said then. “There comes a time when you have to say something, when you have to make a little noise, when you have to move your feet. This is the time.”
DATA POINT
According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, over 1,000 firearms were stolen from gun shops in 22 states in the last four days of May — nearly a quarter as many as were stolen nationwide in all of 2019. [Guns and America]
