A couple years ago, The Trace’s Jennifer Mascia and I worked on a piece about how mass shootings overlap. It was just after the shooting at Michigan State University, and it was prompted by the startling fact that alumni of Oxford High School — where a mass shooting had taken place just 15 months earlier — were on campus, amid gunfire once again. A Sandy Hook survivor was there, too.
They are not the only survivors to have found themselves at the scene of another tragedy. And last week in Florida, it happened again. Some students who were at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during the 2018 mass shooting, and family members who lost loved ones that day, now attend Florida State University, where a shooter killed two people and injured seven others on Thursday. It’s perhaps no coincidence that many of these overlapping survivors are members of Gen Z, which bears a disproportionate share of the country’s gun violence.
After Parkland, Florida lawmakers took historic steps to restrict gun access, marking a turning point in the state’s history. But since then, Mascia reports in a new story, legislators have gone the opposite direction, working to unwind the reforms and loosen firearm laws. This session, GOP lawmakers in the state House pitched a bill to allow students to carry guns on college campuses.
From The Trace
Florida’s Retreat From Stricter Gun Laws: The April 17 mass shooting at Florida State University has refocused attention on state lawmakers’ efforts to roll back gun reforms passed after the 2018 Parkland massacre.
Major Gun Violence Research Center Threatened by Proposed Cuts: Governor Phil Murphy’s move to slash a New Jersey research hub comes as the state braces for leaner budgets under the Trump administration.
Trump’s War on Law Firms May Imperil Gun Suits: After the president sought to punish Paul Weiss, references to its pioneering work on firearms disappeared from the law firm’s website. Gun safety advocates fear a retreat.
New Research Links Gun Violence Exposure to Higher Rates of Depression and Suicidal Ideation: A nationally representative study deepens what we know about the intersection of mental health, gun violence, and support services.
What to Know Today
Republican state lawmakers in Maine are pushing legislation to roll back some of the gun safety measures passed in the wake of the 2023 mass shooting in Lewiston. The measures facing repeal include mandatory background checks for private gun sales and a 72-hour waiting period for firearm purchases, the latter of which is being challenged in federal court. [Portland Press Herald]
President Donald Trump will not attend the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Atlanta this month, the gun group confirmed last week, marking the first time since 2015 that Trump won’t speak at the event. The snub comes after Trump canceled a rally with the group in October. At the same time, during his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump espoused gun policies in line with the NRA’s long-term goals. [The Reload]
A teenager accused of killing his parents and plotting to assassinate President Donald Trump was inspired by Terrorgram, the Telegram community that’s been linked to at least three mass shootings and criminal cases across the globe, according to federal court records. The filings also displayed a new category of domestic terrorism from the Justice Department: “nihilist violent extremists,” defined as “individuals who engage in criminal conduct within the United States and abroad, in furtherance of political, social, or religious goals that derive primarily from a hatred of society at large.” [ProPublica and FRONTLINE/Court Watch/Ken Klippenstein]
A bill in California seeks to prevent people subject to restraining orders from buying guns by speeding up the process for entering the orders into state law enforcement databases. The legislation, Wyland’s Law, is named after a 10-year-old who was shot and killed by his father in 2020. The man had passed a background check, gone through a 10-day waiting period, and purchased a gun despite being subject to a domestic violence restraining order, apparently because his information had not been reported to the system. [Los Angeles Times]
Homicides have declined in Milwaukee — down from a record high in 2022 — but have not yet returned to the levels the city saw before the coronavirus-era spike in gun violence. City leaders are encouraged by the progress, with some crediting violence prevention programming, but they say there’s more work ahead to sustain the drop. [WPR]
A Michigan appeals court decided an unusual Second Amendment case concerning a state law banning “metallic knuckles.” A unanimous panel ruled that brass knuckles count as protected arms, but that Michigan’s prohibition is supported by history and tradition, passing the constitutional test for gun restrictions laid out in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision. [Duke Center for Firearms Law]
In less than a month, Pennsylvanians will vote in a primary election to fill a seat on the Commonwealth Court, a state judicial body that presides over civil actions involving the Pennsylvania government and hears appeals in cases involving state departments and local governments. The winner of the race could play a pivotal role in deciding state gun cases — and one of the GOP candidates, Joshua Prince, runs a law firm that specializes in pro-gun litigation. [Spotlight PA]
Data Point
More than 64,000 — the number of Gen Zers, people who were born between 1997 and 2012, have been killed by firearms since 2013, the year the last zoomers turned 1. [The Trace]
Non Sequitur
Scientists Find Promising Indication of Extraterrestrial Life—124 Light-Years Away
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope confirmed that the planet K2-18b has traces of dimethyl sulfide, a potential biosignature of marine microorganisms. [Wired]
