Good morning, Bulletin readers. The group of activist shareholder nuns who compelled a publicly traded gun company to report on the risks of gun violence in May ran their playbook again, and succeeded. The 3D-printed-gun company behind a multistate lawsuit has a new leader. And the three people killed in last week’s Rite Aid shooting in Maryland all came to America in search of a better life. Those stories and more, in your midweek roundup.
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WHAT TO KNOW TODAY
Shareholders passed a resolution requiring Smith & Wesson to produce a report on the role of its products in gun violence. The measure prevailed Tuesday over the objections of management and the board of American Outdoor Brands, the gunmaker’s parent company. The activist shareholders behind the campaign, many of them nuns, passed a nearly identical resolution with Sturm Ruger in May.
Cody Wilson resigned from his 3D-printed-gun company amid sexual assault charges. The company’s new director, former spoken-word poet Paloma Heindorff, announced the transition during a press conference. Wilson, the company’s founder, was arrested last week on charges of sex with a minor. Representatives for the company vowed to continue its legal fight with state and local officials over their attempts to prevent the online sharing of its 3D-gun blueprints.
The Republican governor of Ohio signed executive orders to improve background checks. The first of the two orders issued by John Kasich on Monday creates stricter requirements for police to report people with warrants and protection orders to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The second establishes a permanent working group to study how information is sent to NICS in order to better identify gaps in the system. Context: The gun background check system is only as strong as the records it contains. But it’s up to states to supply records, and some do a better job than others.
States with a higher density of gun-selling pawn shops have higher rates of firearm suicide, according to a new study in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery. Researchers at Stanford University calculated the density of six types of federal firearms licenses by state population in 2014 and compared those numbers to data on gun deaths by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They found that states with a higher density of gun-selling pawnbrokers also had more gun suicides. They did not find a similar correlation with homicide rates. Researchers say the link may be due to the fact that pawn shops are more likely to be found in lower socioeconomic communities, which tend to have higher rates of suicide, or that pawn shops offer a more discreet way to purchase guns for self-harm.
The Los Angeles DA wants to get more guns out of the hands of domestic abusers. District Attorney Jackie Lacey said in a televised news segment on Monday that she wants to expand a pilot program that allows law enforcement to petition a judge for the removal of guns from people arrested for domestic violence. From The Trace archives: Federal law bars convicted domestic abusers from gun ownership, but without matching state laws, local authorities often have no effective way of disarming those found or alleged to have done harm to a partner.
A Florida woman was killed by her husband after texting a friend about his disturbing behavior. “Kirk has lost his mind,” 33-year-old Samantha Keithley said in a message to her friend late Sunday. “He’s been harassing me for the last 6 hours and I’ve asked him repeatedly to just leave me alone.” Around midnight on Monday, Keithley was fatally shot by her husband, a sheriff’s deputy who then killed himself. The couple had been married for six years and were raising four children in a suburb of Tampa.
A 9-year-old boy shot his 10-year-old sister in Kansas. Police say the boy shot the girl in the leg on Sunday evening with a loaded gun that had been left unattended. A 5-year-old Arkansas boy may have unintentionally killed himself with a gun. Police say the boy was dead when they arrived on the scene. Reminder: Roughly 4.6 million American kids live in homes with unlocked, loaded firearms.
ONE LAST THING
Remembering the victims of last week’s shooting at a Rite Aid warehouse. Three people were killed and three others were wounded during a shooting Thursday at a Rite Aid distribution center in Aberdeen, Maryland.
All three of the people killed had emigrated to the United States in search of a better life. Here’s what we know about them:
- Brindra Giri, 41: Giri and her two children had moved to the United States from Nepal in May, joining Giri’s husband, who had been living in the country for six years. Giri had started her job at Rite Aid just three weeks before she was killed. Her funeral drew hundreds, including many Nepalese immigrants who each left a flower in her open casket.
- Sunday Aguda, 45: Aguda was recently married and called his four children, who still lived in his native Nigeria, every day. “I want the world to know Sunday was a special person. He was a great husband and father who will be greatly missed,” his wife said in a statement. Family and friends gathered to celebrate Aguda’s life on Monday, which would have been his 45th birthday.
- Hayleen Reyes, 21: Reyes arrived in the United States from the Dominican Republic five months ago. Like Giri, she had started working at Rite Aid only recently. Family members described Reyes as bright and outgoing and said that she would sing daily to her father, who she lived with along with her 1-year-old daughter.
