A Nashville judge issued a long-awaited opinion in the case over whether records related to the shooting at the Covenant School last year, in which six people were killed, should be released to the public. After more than 14 months of presiding over the unusual legal battle, The Tennessean reported, Chancellor I’Ashea Myles ordered police not to release any writings or other documents created by the shooter. At least one media outlet that sued for the records is planning to appeal.
The Covenant School families hold the copyrights to works by the shooter, whose parents transferred the rights to the victims after the attack. Myles appeared won over by the families’ novel legal argument that the shooter’s works were private under state law; the ruling has alarmed some government transparency advocates, the Associated Press reported.
Read more about the case, and what could come next, from The Tennessean.
What to Know Today
It’s been a year since five people were killed by a man armed with a homemade assault-style weapon in Philadelphia’s Kingsessing neighborhood, one of the deadliest mass shootings in the city’s history. For community members, victims’ families, and the first responders at the scene, the tragedy still feels fresh. [The Philadelphia Inquirer]
Children in the U.S. unintentionally shoot themselves or other children with an unsecured gun at an alarming frequency. American adults seem to broadly agree that young kids shouldn’t be able to access firearms. Why isn’t the country able to stem one of the most apparently preventable forms of gun violence? [NBC]
Jacksonville has been trying to overcome its reputation as “the murder capital of Florida” — a localized version of the same epithet Gary, Indiana, has begun to shake in recent years — for two decades. This year might be the changemaker: The city is experiencing a dramatic decline in homicides, and is on track to experience fewer than 100 homicides for the first time since 2011. [Jacksonville Florida Times-Union]
In an 8-1 decision last month, the Supreme Court found that barring dangerous people from having guns is constitutional. It was the first major Second Amendment ruling since justices established a “history-and-tradition” test for gun laws that threw lower courts into chaos. Observers had noted that the recent case, U.S. v. Rahimi, had the potential to create a more structured approach to firearm restrictions — but legal experts say the ruling will do little to ease the confusion. [The Washington Post]
Archive
In America, Accidental Shootings Among Children Occur Nearly Every Other Day: Over the past year, 162 children under 13 shot themselves or another child with an unsecured gun. (June 2023)
