What to Know Today
NEW from THE TRACE: In Uvalde, a community struggles for reform amid grief. Uvalde families are determined to see reform in gun-loving Texas, but they know there are challenges ahead. Through sweltering summer protests and the subdued first days of the new school year, residents told reporter Bekah McNeel about the various ways the community was coming together and falling apart. The overarching conclusion: In Uvalde, no middle ground remains. A campaign to raise the age to buy assault rifles has clarified the two sides of the fight: those who demand change and those who oppose it. Read McNeel’s full story, published in partnership with The Guardian.
U.S. Supreme Court again declines to take up challenge to bump stock ban. The justices turned away an appeal by a group of firearm dealers and individuals, Reuters reports, rejecting a challenge to the Trump-era prohibition for the second time this session. The ban was enacted after the 2017 Route 91 Harvest mass shooting in Las Vegas; as The Trace’s Miles Kohrman reported, police recovered from the shooter’s hotel room 13 rifles outfitted with bump stocks, which allow semiautomatic weapons to mimic the rate of fire of an automatic rifle.
UVA mass shooting suspect in custody. On Sunday night, a gunman fatally shot three football players and injured two other students on the University of Virginia campus, prompting an intense manhunt and a shelter-in-place order that lasted well into Monday morning. Police announced that they had captured the suspect, a former UVA football player, at 11 a.m. Monday. The UVA shooting was one of 10 mass shootings over the weekend, according to the Gun Violence Archive. There have been 599 mass shootings so far this year, compared to 690 in all of 2021 and 610 in 2020.
Why is this Philadelphia gun violence prevention program struggling? Disorganization has plagued the Community Crisis Intervention Program, according to new reports by the city’s Office of Violence Prevention. CCIP has failed to properly train staffers, who are often demoralized or at odds with one another; has completed few hospital interventions or street mediations; and has not yet established connections with important community stakeholders, even as utilizing “credible messengers” is key to the initiative. The program received $5.3 million in city funds last year, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Elsewhere in Philly: WHYY’s new podcast “Stop and Frisk: Revisit or Resist” examines the city’s gun violence crisis through the lens of the controversial police tactic.
Black Baltimoreans have questions about recent police killing of anti-violence activist. A BPD officer shot Tyree Moorehead 14 times earlier this month. Moorehead, a rapper known for spray-painting the phrase “No Shoot Zone” at the scenes of shootings, had been experiencing escalating mental health challenges in recent months and appeared increasingly paranoid in the days leading up to his death, according to loved ones. Moorehead had been brandishing a knife at a woman when the officer approached the scene; body camera footage shows that the officer shot Moorehead while he was on the ground, at close range. Community members told The Baltimore Sun that the shooting demonstrates issues with police crisis response training, questioning why the officer fired so many shots and if race played a factor. The Baltimore branch of the NAACP is investigating whether the officer used excessive force.
Data Point
1,034 — the number of people shot and killed by U.S. police in 2022, as of November 11. Since 2015, police have shot and killed around 1,000 people each year, disproportionately Black Americans. [The Washington Post]
