Good morning, Bulletin readers. In what by one count was the 262nd mass shooting of 2018, a woman killed multiple people and injured several more at a drug store distribution center in Maryland. We have the latest on the deadly incident, plus more news on gun violence in America, below.
Receive this daily news briefing by email every morning. Sign up here.
WHAT TO KNOW TODAY
At least three people were killed in a workplace shooting in Maryland when a woman opened fire at a Rite Aid distribution center on Thursday. Several others were wounded. Here’s what we know about the shooting so far:
- Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler said in a news conference that his department received 911 calls around 9:06 a.m. local time. Police arrived on the scene minutes later. No shots were fired by officers.
- Gahler said the killer, who acted alone and used a legally obtained handgun, shot herself in the head and died in the hospital.
- The trauma director at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore says the hospital received three other patients with gunshot wounds.
- Female shooters are rare. A 2014 FBI analysis of 160 active shootings found that just 6 active shootings — or less than 4 percent — involved a female shooter.
- This is the 262nd mass shooting so far this year, according to Gun Violence Archive, which defines mass shootings as incidents involving four or more fatalities or injuries. It is the seventh in Maryland in 2018, happening less than three months after the Capital Gazette shooting in Annapolis.
Students are more worried about school shootings than about peer pressure or fitting in. That’s one of the findings of a new study conducted by the Children’s Defense Fund and YouGov. Other takeaways: Only a third of children polled said that they believe arming teachers would make their schools safer. Among black students, that number dropped to 25 percent. Related: A separate study found that 65 percent of teachers are against carrying firearms to protect students from active shooters.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions called for a tough-on-crime approach in Chicago. In a meeting with law enforcement officials this week, Sessions blamed political leaders in cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and St. Louis, for high rates of crime. “If you want more shootings, more death, listen to the ACLU, Antifa, Black Lives Matter and groups who don’t know the realities of policing,” he said, arguing for a crime crackdown in Chicago. Related: Researchers have been critical of Sessions’s approach to policing, based on research suggesting that the long prison sentences and elevated incarceration rates he touts have little impact on violent crime rates.
Overall, crime rates are declining in major cities. A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University predicts that murder rates in America’s 30 largest cities, including Chicago and Baltimore, will decline for the second straight year in 2018. In cities where crime spiked during 2015 and 2016, the decline was especially noticeable.
A federal judge dismissed a case against the bump stock company SlideFire. U.S. District Court Judge Gloria M. Navarro of Nevada issued an order on Monday in which she sided with the bump stock manufacturing company’s argument that the devices, which allow semiautomatic weapons to fire full-auto, qualify as “component parts.” Under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, “component parts” are protected from liability for “the harm caused by those who criminally or unlawfully misuse [them].”
Hundreds marched against gun violence in New Orleans. The gathering at City Hall on Thursday drew students, parents, and school officials who called for action on the city’s gun violence crisis. Students carried signs that read “no more silence,” “come together in peace,” and “I want to live.”
A man killed his parents at a Pennsylvania nursing home. The 59-year-old gunman began his rampage by firing at his ex-wife in the driveway of the home they shared. According to a local news station, he was upset over a divorce settlement that awarded her the home.
ONE LAST THING
Yesterday’s shooting in Maryland was the third active shooting at a workplace in 24 hours. On Wednesday, seven people were shot in separate rampages at a Wisconsin office building and a Pennsylvania courthouse. It was also the second mass shooting at a workplace in Harford County, Maryland, in less than a year: Last October, an ex-employee of a granite business in Edgewood shot five former co-workers, three of them fatally.
Workplace shootings are the most common type of active shootings. According to a 2014 FBI analysis of 160 active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2013, shooters targeted business more than 40 percent of the time. Workplace shootings that don’t meet the FBI’s definition of a mass killing — three or more dead — happen several times a month.
