Featured Story
The Maine commission formed to investigate the mass shooting in Lewiston last October released its final report yesterday. The panel concluded that both the Army Reserve and local police missed opportunities to intervene before the massacre, emphasizing that a sheriff’s deputy had cause to seize the shooter’s firearms and that members of the shooter’s military unit failed to help or disarm him. [Portland Press Herald/Associated Press]
From The Trace
On the morning of August 17, Donald Trump appeared on a large screen in the Knoxville Convention Center’s Grand Ballroom as the first-ever Gun Owners Advocacy and Leadership Summit got underway, promising electoral victory to those in attendance so long as they vote. His appearance and the convention itself underscore the increasing clout of Gun Owners of America, the group behind the event, which bills itself as a more extreme, no-compromise alternative to the National Rifle Association.
The summit, reports The Trace’s Will Van Sant, was an amalgam of pro-gun absolutism, religiosity, and commerce. It included a “Spicy Friday” event hosted by a gun influencer; jokes about the spending habits of former NRA leaders; an exhibition floor where a 1969 Ford Mustang driven by John Wick, a fictional hitman, was on display; and much more. Van Sant’s latest story is a dispatch from the inaugural gathering of gun hard-liners.
What to Know Today
The shooting at the Pennsylvania campaign rally for Donald Trump, during which the former president was struck in the ear by a bullet, has been called one of the largest security failures in decades and spawned conspiracy theories across the political spectrum. A new investigation reveals that the breakdown that led to the attempted assassination of Trump was not unique, but rather the result of a system that was already susceptible to attack. [Spotlight PA, ProPublica, and The Butler Eagle]
How does a city respond to a mass shooting? After one person, 36-year-old Anthony Martin, was killed and seven others were injured in a shooting in East Baltimore, city officials — including one who lives down the street from where the shooting took place — and nonprofit partners blanketed the neighborhood, asking residents about their needs and offering on-site therapy. For the next month and a half, they’ll continue canvassing to tailor a response that fits the community’s needs. [The Baltimore Banner/WYPR]
A Texas jury found that the parents of the accused shooter in the 2018 attack on Santa Fe High School, in which 10 people were killed, were not legally liable for the massacre, instead placing responsibility entirely on their son and Lucky Gunner, an ammunition retailer. Jurors returned a $330 million verdict for the victims’ families who filed the suit, but it is unclear how they’ll get the money: Lucky Gunner claims it is not responsible for paying the damages because it settled with the families in a separate suit last year, and the alleged shooter is being held in a state mental health facility until he’s deemed competent to stand trial. [Houston Public Media/Reuters]
New York has a relatively expansive extreme risk protection order law, allowing police, prosecutors, family members, and medical providers to petition a judge for an order temporarily barring people who may pose a danger from having firearms. But despite having about 40 percent of the state’s population, New York City courts have issued less than 1 percent of the state’s orders since 2019. Why doesn’t the city make more use of the law? [Gothamist]
Data Point
35 — the number of extreme risk protection orders issued in New York state since 2019 that were filed by the New York Police Department. [Gothamist]
