The Trace | Gun Owners Largely Support Reforms — Depending on the Details
BY SUNNY SONE, THE TRACE
10/20/22 9:00 AM EDT
What to Know Today
Report shows gun owners are largely concerned about firearm violence, but support for reform depends on the details. 97Percent, a firearm safety organization composed of both gun owners and non-gun owners, found that 70 percent of gun owners want to help reduce firearm violence in the U.S., Politico reports. But 60 percent of those surveyed said their support for gun policies depends on the components of the laws. According to the study, nearly 8 in 10 Republican gun owners, as well as all gun owners surveyed, support prohibiting firearm possession for people convicted of domestic violence. Only about one-third of gun owners support assault weapons bans, the survey found, but they broadly support background checks and red flag laws.
LA parents want more school policing and security. Students disagree. Last month, a coalition of student activists and labor, legal, and community organizations sent a letter to the Los Angeles school board and superintendent citing concerns about increasing campus police presence. The superintendent is preparing to debut a new school safety plan, and in the runup to its release, parents and students are debating the role of law enforcement in schools, the Los Angeles Times reports. After the 2020 racial justice protests, school districts nationwide — including Los Angeles — stopped using in-house law enforcement. But the mass shooting in Uvalde, as well as other violent incidents, is driving demands for increased school security.
More “weird” court rulings on gun regulations ahead. A New York law prohibiting the carrying of guns in some public places has been the subject of a dramatic back-and-forth in the courts — serving as a prescient example of the challenges states that wish to pass new firearm restrictions could face in the wake of Bruen. Joseph Blocher, co-director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law, told Morning Edition that uncertainty about the constitutionality of new gun regulations is likely to continue. Because Bruen requires lawmakers to find a “historical analogue” for proposed gun restrictions at the same time that gun violence is soaring, state and local governments have been cornered into squeezing firearm laws into the ruling’s “sensitive places” exception, Blocher said. “Comparing those two things, I think [it’s] going to continue to give weird answers.” The aftermath: Bruen is reshaping gun laws across the U.S. We’re tracking the effects of the decision here.
Marco Rubio reverses position on gun restriction in debate. At a debate with Democratic challenger Val Demings, The Washington Post reported, the incumbent Florida senator called a red flag provision in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the federal gun reform law passed this summer, “crazy.” He suggested that the law would allow too many gun seizures, and questioned the efficacy of gun restrictions he had previously supported — like age limits to purchase rifles and expanded background checks — after the mass shooting in Parkland. Demings said Rubio made promises to the families of Parkland victims that he “had no intentions to keep.”
Survivor of the Umpqua Community College shooting shares story of healing in new graphic novel. In her debut graphic novel, “Numb to This,” Kindra Neely documents the 2015 mass shooting in Roseburg, Oregon — and her process of healing from trauma amid an era of mass shootings. Neely writes about being inundated with news alerts about massacres, her personal experience with the media, and attending the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C. “I think there’s a tendency for people to say, you can’t really care much outside of your own community. … But I don’t think that that’s true,” Neely told NPR. “I think that people are capable of a great amount of love and that we can work together to improve the situation for everybody in this country.”
Data Point
32 percent — the number of K-12 parents who say they are “very or extremely worried” about a shooting happening at their child’s school. [Pew Research Center]