What To Know Today
NEW from THE TRACE: Tracking the effects of the SCOTUS gun ruling. The court’s first major Second Amendment ruling in a decade invalidated New York’s 91-year-old law requiring applicants for a concealed carry permit to demonstrate a special need. Already, that decision is playing a decisive role in reshaping the legal landscape for gun laws — from changes to state concealed carry policies and their enforcement in more than a half dozen states with laws similar to New York, to new litigation and arguments in courts on other policies like state bans on assault weapons. Jennifer Mascia has the details here. Bookmark it: We’ll continue to update the post as the effects of Bruen continue to reverberate.
There were at least 12 mass shootings over the weekend. From Friday evening through Sunday, the incidents left at least 52 people injured and six dead, according to Gun Violence Archive. In Detroit, police said a dispute over a residential parking space early Sunday escalated into gunfire that left eight people shot, one fatally; in Orlando, a large bar fight in the city’s downtown allegedly precipitated a gun battle that led to seven injuries.
ICYMI: The House passed a ban on assault-style weapons. In a close 217-213 tally, the lower chamber voted for a bill that restricts a subset of semiautomatic guns it defines as assault weapons. A previous assault weapons ban was enacted in a large crime bill signed by then-President Bill Clinton in 1994, but it expired in 2004. The latest vote was largely along party lines, with five Democrats voting against the measure and two Republicans for it. But the result will largely serve as a messaging bill, as it stands virtually no chance of passing the evenly divided Senate. What is an AR-15? Jennifer Mascia offers a detailed look at the popular rifles that are covered by the House ban, including how we define them, how many are in circulation, how often they are used in crimes, and more.
Putting New York City’s pandemic shooting surge in context. Violent crime and shootings saw a major spike in 2020 that figured heavily into the election of current Mayor Eric Adams on a public safety platform. But violence, although still elevated above pre-pandemic levels, is still far closer to historic lows than the highs seen in the early 1990s. Bloomberg digs into the context, including when local news media mentions of shootings have outpaced underlying incidents, an especially notable trend since the beginning of Adams’ mayoralty this year. From The Trace: Chip Brownlee reported on gun violence prevention in New York City and took a hard look at city leaders’ efforts in a recent three-part series with The Guardian — part one, two, and three.
Man with loaded AK-47 arrested outside Brooklyn home of Iranian-American journalist. On Friday, police detained the man after prosecutors said he had been behaving suspiciously near the house of Masih Alinejad, a vocal critic of the Iranian government who was the alleged target of an international kidnapping plot last year. Police searched the man’s car and found a gun with its serial number removed, two magazines, and 66 rounds of ammunition. He was charged with a count of possessing a gun with removed serial number.
Alex Jones’s company files for bankruptcy amid defamation trial. Free Speech Systems, the far-right conspiracy theorist’s primary company, filed for bankruptcy on Friday in the middle of the first of three defamation trials that will determine how much Jones owes to families of Sandy Hook victims. Lawyers for the families dismissed the bankruptcy attempt — something Jones has tried through some of his other business during legal proceedings — as a ploy to avoid oversight.
Data Point
773 percent — the year-over-year increase in applications for concealed carry permits in Maryland between June 23 and July 11, according to State Police. The large increase happened after the Bruen case invalidated New York’s discretionary licensing scheme and Maryland’s similar “may-issue” rules. [The Baltimore Banner]
