Want to see the continued proliferation and easy access to guns? Vote Republican!
Top headline: Philadelphia Inquirer
Bottom headline: New York Times
The 300th killing of the year in Philadelphia took the life of Lameer Boyd, an 18-year-old father-to-be who was gunned down one July night on a sidewalk. Over the weeks that followed, a grandmother was shot in the neck, a popular singer was killed in front of his house and a woman was killed at a front-porch cookout.
With her death, the 322nd of the year, the number of homicides in Philadelphia was on track toward becoming the highest in police records, passing the bleak milestone set just last year. So far this year, more than 1,400 people in the city have been shot, hundreds of them fatally, a higher toll than in the much larger cities of New York or Los Angeles. Alarms have sounded about gun violence across the country over the past two years, but Philadelphia is one of the few major American cities where it truly is as bad as it has ever been.
7/14/2022 update starts here
Top headline: CBS Minnesota
Bottom headline: Star Tribune Morning Update email
6/30/2022 update starts here
6/28/2022 update starts here
Top headline: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Bottom headline: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
There are ongoing efforts in Congress to require that those who sell kits for homemade guns must include serial numbers on the parts just as they would to sell finished guns, and that those who buy them must register them. With Republican opposition so fervent in Congress, the Biden administration is also looking at creating such regulations by regulatory rule through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Arms and Explosives.
The fact that this is such a hot debate only spotlights how irrational the gun lobby and its Republican water-carriers have become on this issue. [emphasis added]
6/19/2022 update starts here
Top headline: Fox 6 Milwaukee
Bottom headline: Wisconsin State Journal
The State Journal piece is a mere 94-word, "just-the-facts-ma'am" blurb. A scoreboard, in other word. No context.
6/3/2022 update starts here
Top headline: Scientific American
Bottom headline: Common Dreams
We are researchers and pediatric emergency medicine physicians who study firearm injuries. After many hard, politically fraught years of investigating this subject, we believe that it is our collective responsibility to address, head on, the interlinked issues of gun availability, gun safety, gun regulations and gun violence prevention research—and, dare we say it, the politicization of guns taking priority over public health. With thousands of children killed each year in the U.S. by firearms, we must, as a country, ultimately reckon with the essential question of what is most important: Is it the narrow focus on individuals’ rights or the broader vision of societal responsibility?
5/31/2022 update starts here
Top headline: WebMD
Bottom headline: San Jose Mercury News
Mercury News excerpt:
“It was clear to me that it was just a matter of time,” said Dr. Lois Lee, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Boston Children’s Hospital and an associate professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School who has been studying the trend. “I just didn’t think it would occur so quickly.”
What’s spurred the violence? Experts point to many causes — the frustrations of entrenched poverty and discrimination, glorification of gun violence in popular culture and entertainment, and too-easy youth access to guns in many states like Texas — all kicked into overdrive by the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We live in a society right now where gun violence is becoming increasingly tolerated,” said Rutgers University-Newark psychology professor Paul Boxer. “What I’ve seen locally, personally, it’s a lot of anxiety and depression.” [emphasis added]
5/25/2022 update starts here
Excerpt from 8/17/2021 article:
A new state law will soon let most Texans carry handguns in public without going through training or having to get permits. Gov. Greg Abbott lauded the so-called “constitutional carry” legislation and other firearms bills when he signed them into law.
“You could say that I signed into law today some laws that protect gun rights,” Abbott said at the bill signing in June. “But today, I signed documents that instilled freedom in the Lone Star State.”
5/25/2022 update starts here
Headline: Wisconsin State Journal, 5/25/2022
5/18/2022 update starts here
Top headline: Los Angeles Times
Bottom headline: New York Times
NYT excerpt:
The data documented a drastic shift in consumer demand among gun owners that has had profound commercial, cultural and political implications: Starting in 2009, Glock-type semiautomatic handguns, purchased for personal protection, began to outsell rifles, which have been typically used in hunting.
Embedded in the 306-page document was another statistic that law enforcement officials find especially troubling. The police recovered 19,344 privately manufactured firearms, untraceable homemade weapons known as “ghost guns,” in 2021, a tenfold increase since 2016. Law enforcement officials say that has contributed to the surge in gun-related killings, especially in California, where ghost guns make up as many as half of weapons recovered at crime scenes.
The numbers released Tuesday revealed an industry on the rise, with annual domestic gun production increasing from 3.9 million in 2000 to 11.3 million in 2020.
5/16/2022 update starts here
5/14/2022 update starts here
Top headline: Wisconsin Public Radio via Urban Milwaukee
Bottom headline: Wisconsin State Journal
5/11/21022 update start's here
Top headline: CBS News
Bottom headline: New York Times
Gun deaths reached the highest number ever recorded in the United States in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, as gun-related homicides surged by 35 percent, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Tuesday.
“This is a historic increase, with the rate having reached the highest level in over 25 years,” Dr. Debra E. Houry, acting principal deputy director of the C.D.C. and the director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, said at a news briefing.
More than 45,000 Americans died in gun-related incidents as the pandemic spread in the United States, the highest number on record, federal data show. The gun homicide rate was the highest reported since 1994.
5/2/2022 update, "Kansas City metro claims 7 of 127 U.S. gun deaths that occurred during the past 72 hours", starts here.
4/25/2022 update, "Milwaukee claims 2 of 114 U.S. gun deaths that occurred this weekend:, starts here.
Partial list of gun deaths: Gun Violence Archives
Headline: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 4/24/2022
4/12/2022 update starts here
You reap what you sow.
Top headline: CBS Austin
Bottom headline: New York Times
3/23/2022 update, "Violent Weekend" episode, starts here.
Top headline: The Guardian, 6/1/2021
The lede in the "Good Morning" article tells us that a 'violent weekend' involved the use of guns.
Many crime experts define a mass shooting as an event in which four or more people are shot. Last weekend, there were a shocking number of them — at least nine — across the U.S.
2/25/2022 update starts here
Top headline: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 2/23/2022
Bottom headline: Mel Magazine, 2/24/2022
The gun crazy GOP Testosterone Crew invites some of the ladies in the chamber to join the festivities.
12/16/2021 update starts here
CNN headilnes: 6/4/2021 (top), 12/12/2021 (bottom)
12/15/2021 update starts here
Top headline: Newsbreak, 3/22/20210
Botton headline: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 12/14/2021
12/10/2021 update starts here
Top headline: Watertown Daily Times, 3/22/2021
Bottom headline: Green Bay Press Gazette, 12/10/2021
11/27/2021 update starts here
Top headline: WXPR, 5/28/2021
Bottom headline: Wisconcsin Public Radio, 11/26/2021
11/15/2021 update starts here
Top headline: New York Times, 11/14/2021
Bottom headline: New York Times, 11/15/2021
Original 10/31/2021 post starts here
Bottom headline: USA Today, 2/10/2021
Related posts:
Sunday doubleheader: (Gun Nonsense League) (6/6/2021)
Sunday doubleheader: (Gun Nonsense League) (6/6/2021)
USA!!! USA!!! USA!!! We're boogying our way to doomsday. (5/30/2021
