Good morning, Bulletin readers. Milwaukee is still reeling from the attack at an iconic city institution. Here’s the latest on the Molson Coors shooting, plus other developments of note.
Receive this daily news briefing by email every morning. Sign up here.
THE LATEST ON THE MILWAUKEE SHOOTING
The victims were identified. The five people killed were electricians and machinists at the brewery, Milwaukee Police Chief Alfonso Morales said. They were identified as:
- Jesus Valle Jr., 33, a powerhouse operator with the company since 2014
- Trevor Wetselaar, 33, a powerhouse operator with the company since 2018
- Dale Hudson, 60, a electrician with the company since 2008
- Dana Walk, 57, a machinist with the company since 2014
- Gennady Levshetz, 61, a powerhouse operator with the company since 2008.
More details emerged about the gunman. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that the 51-year-old perpetrator of the shooting was a Coast Guard veteran who had worked as an electrician at the brewery for the past 17 years. The paper cited an unidentified co-worker who said he clashed repeatedly with at least one of the victims.
A former resident asks: “Do we even care anymore?” Writing for The Los Angeles Times opinion pages, where he recently interned, a young journalist who studied at Milwaukee’s Marquette University lamented the scant national attention the shooting drew. “What’s really messed up, what really scares me, is that this tragedy barely pierced the mass consciousness… What does it say that a directionless argument in the most recent Democratic debate over who has and who hasn’t sufficiently supported gun control made more of an impression on the media than an actual real-world instance of gun violence?”
WHAT ELSE TO KNOW TODAY
The mass shootings that might have been stopped by stronger federal laws. The Los Angeles Times looked at more than 160 incidents in which four or more people were killed and cross-referenced them with five possible national gun reforms: a ban on straw purchases; a safe storage requirement; an assault weapons ban; universal background checks, and red flag laws. The article posits that if the policies had been in place on the federal level, almost 90 percent of the shootings might have been prevented — and more than 1,000 lives potentially saved.
Putting numbers to the danger of extremists with guns. The Anti-Defamation League’s annual “Murder and Extremism” is out. Three key takeaways:
- Domestic extremists for the eighth straight year largely used firearms to commit mass killings (defined as four or more fatalities)
- Extremists killed 435 people in the last decade. Almost three in four of the victims were shot
- Seventeen of the 18 mass murders committed by extremists in that period involved guns
Another white supremacist was busted with ghost guns. A member of the white nationalist group Patriot Front pleaded guilty earlier this month to federal gun charges after agents who searched his Texas home found a cache of homemade guns that allowed him to acquire firearms despite being banned from possessing them. A trend worth watching? Last month, Alain Stephens reported on a cell of white supremacists who turned to DIY gun kits to build homemade arsenals while planning attacks.
Senators asked Facebook to curb gun sales in its private groups. In a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the 13 Democrats urged better monitoring after an investigation by Protocol found that many users are still evading the platform’s firearms ban. More from The Trace: Last month, Champe Barton found that Facebook Marketplace was also struggling to enforce its ban on gun sales.
The Virginia General Assembly sent five gun safety bills to the governor. Ralph Northam is expected to sign the measures, which establish extreme risk protection orders; require gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms; let local governments enact their own gun laws; give people served with protection orders 24 hours to turn over their guns, and expand the state’s child access prevention law. The two other surviving bills in his package — to limit handgun purchases to one per month and expand background checks — await final legislative votes.
DATA POINT
2,825 people were killed in gun-related workplace homicides in the United States from 2011 through 2018, according to the most recent government figures. — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics via USA Today
