In June 2022, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, marking a fundamental shift in the landscape of American gun rights. While the decision struck down a portion of New York’s concealed carry law, its consequences stretched far beyond the Empire State — and the issue of concealed carry.

The Bruen decision set off a wave of legal challenges to gun restrictions across the country. It has placed dozens of gun laws under threat, flooded federal courts with lawsuits, and transformed firearm regulation across the nation as lower court judges disagree on how to apply the ruling. “The Bruen Era,” a new series of stories from The Trace, covers these far-reaching implications.

In his introduction to “The Bruen Era,” reporter Chip Brownlee breaks down the ruling, covering the gun cases that came to the Supreme Court before it and explaining why Bruen is considered such a dramatic departure from precedent. And for the first installment, Brownlee reviewed more than 2,000 federal court decisions that cited Bruen over the past two years to analyze the legal outcomes of the ruling. He found that the decision spurred more than 1,000 people with felony convictions to challenge their gun bans — making it the single most frequently contested statute by far.

With Bruen, the Supreme Court sparked a “legal onslaught,” Brownlee writes — one that’s “pushing the boundaries of the new test and raising questions about the future of gun regulation in the United States.”

From The Trace

What to Know This Week

In the wake of the mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia last week, questions about who bears responsibility for preventing a shooting have resurfaced. The father of the accused teenage shooter has been charged on counts of second-degree murder, manslaughter, and cruelty to children, part of a dramatic shift to hold the parents of school shooters criminally liable. The attack — which was preceded by a law enforcement visit last year to the suspect’s home, investigating a tip that he’d threatened a shooting — has also brought attention to an effort to rethink how police treat threats of mass violence. [Mother Jones/The New York Times] 

America’s gun issue didn’t get much airtime during the presidential debate on Tuesday, with a notable exception: Vice President Kamala Harris surprised many when she cited the fact that she’s a gun owner. Harris disclosed during her first run for president in 2019 that she owns “a gun for probably the reason a lot of people do — for personal safety. I was a career prosecutor.” A campaign aide later clarified that the gun in question is a handgun. [NPR] 

Many schools have responded to mass shootings by “hardening” campuses — for example, installing physical security measures, putting police on school grounds, or holding intense lockdown drills. But researchers say these moves, focused on the inside of buildings, don’t address a more frequent problem: As The Trace reported in June, shootings in the immediate vicinity of a school are alarmingly common. [CBS] 

As police searched for the shooter who wounded five people during a rampage on a Kentucky highway last weekend, residents of the surrounding rural region took precautions they never thought they’d need: Families have gone to bed and turned the lights off early; schools remained closed; and parents wouldn’t allow their children outside. “I’m just afraid to even go to the door if somebody knocks,” said one resident. [Associated Press]

Americans bought an estimated 1.36 million guns in August 2024, according to an analysis of FBI data. That’s up 9 percent from the previous August. [The Trace]

In Memoriam

Redd, 25, lived a life that was “basically like Nicki Minaj,” a friend told the Chicago Sun-Times — she wasn’t a mean girl, and she wanted others to treat her as she’d treat them. Redd, a Black trans woman, was shot and killed on Chicago’s West Side last weekend, in an attack that her family characterized as a hate crime. She was the 26th known trans or gender-nonconforming person to die by violence in 2024, according to The Advocate. Redd, whose friends also called her Barbie, grew up in the city’s Humboldt Park neighborhood. She remained close with her relatives after transitioning at 16, and created another tight-knit community of chosen family members. “She wanted to be loved and respected,” another friend said. “That’s how she was. That’s one thing she didn’t play about. She loved and respected people.”

We Recommend

Silence in Sikeston: “The 1942 lynching of Cleo Wright. The 2020 police shooting of Denzel Taylor. Two Black men killed nearly 80 years apart by a public health threat of their time. A reporting project told through a podcast, documentary film, and stories.” [KFF Health News, Retro Report, and WORLD]

Pull Quote

“We are Arkansas, and we are in a unique situation. … Things look different here. A third of our state’s gunshot wounds are coming from rural communities that are low-resourced.”

— Nakita Lovelady, a public health researcher and leader of Arkansas’s first hospital violence intervention program, on Arkansas’s high rates of gun violence, sparse treatment options for victims, and her plans to spread her program’s resources farther, to The Trace

Sunny Sone
Sunny is in charge of our newsletters, leading the growth of existing products and dreaming up new ones. They previously worked as a copy editor at The Intercept and as digital editor for the Texas Observer, and co-published a web-only magazine under the Brick House media cooperative. Sunny has covered topics ranging from the Texas funeral industry to the life of visionary composer Pauline Oliveros. They hold a degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin.