CHICAGO (AP) — More than a year after 11-year-old Mayah Zamora was airlifted out of Uvalde, Texas, where she was critically injured in the Robb Elementary school shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers, the family is still reeling.

Knocks on the door startle Mayah into a panic. The family is skipping Fourth of July celebrations to avoid booming fireworks. An outing to the Little Mermaid movie requires noise-canceling headphones.

Since 2016, thousands of Americans have been wounded in mass shootings, and tens of thousands by gun violence, with that number continuing to grow, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Beyond the colossal medical bills and the weight of trauma and grief, mass shooting survivors and family members contend with scores of other changes that upend their lives.

Survivors talked to The Associated Press about the mental and physical wounds that endure in the aftermath of shootings in Uvalde; Las Vegas; Colorado Springs, Colorado; and the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois, during a Fourth of July parade last year.

They describe staggering medical bills that in Mayah’s case top $1 million, abandoning a dream career after 20 years, uprooting families and struggling to hold down a job, walk pets or even leave the house.

UVALDE

Mayah suffered wounds to her chest, back, both hands, face and ear, and needed so many surgeries her parents said they stopped counting. The family relocated to San Antonio, where Mayah spent 66 days in the hospital and still needs care.

“Her hospital bill is insane,” said Mayah’s mother, Christina Zamora. “It reaches close to $1,000,000, maybe over,” not including rehabilitation, follow-up visits and counseling.

A year later, Christina and Mayah’s father, Ruben, said they don’t know what bills will be covered by insurance and how much they will need to pay. When Mayah was discharged, they realized one parent needed to stay home to care for her.

Christina quit her job. Facing daunting bills with one income instead of two is scary, she said. The relocation also has separated the family: Ruben works seven days on, seven off in Uvalde. The couple’s oldest son, Ruben Jr., stayed in Uvalde to attend college and work. Zach, 12, “misses him. He misses our old normal life.”

Mayah is terrified to return to Uvalde.

“It’s heartbreaking when your little one can’t enjoy the things that she did before, and all these other kids are able to do,” the elder Ruben said. “It tears you up.”

COLORADO SPRINGS

Ashtin Gamblin was working the front door at Club Q in Colorado Springs on Nov. 19 when a person armed with a semiautomatic rifle shot and killed five people and injured 17 more, including Gamblin.

“I was shot nine times. Five to my left arm. Twice to my right arm. Twice to my left breast. Both of my humerus were shattered. So two broken arms,” the 30-year-old said. Six months later, “my right arm is still fractured. My left hand, we’re still working on function.”

Tasks that were once simple, such as walking her dogs, are now challenging and the loss of autonomy has been difficult, Gamblin said.

She has battled with health insurance, the hospital and worker’s compensation officials to figure out who would foot the $300,000 medical bill.

Gamblin also no longer felt safe in her apartment, where she could sometimes hear gunshots outside. She bought a house in a quieter neighborhood: “a house I wasn’t prepared to buy,” she said. “I bought a $380,000 safe space.”

She lists other unexpected post-shooting costs: a flooded basement, a service animal, a new car to get to doctor’s appointments.

Half a year later she is not mentally recovered enough to return to work.

“I just can’t be there… I don’t feel safe going to the grocery store. I don’t feel safe being in public,” she said. “I have no idea what I’m doing with my life currently.”

So far in 2023, nearly 400 people in the U.S. have been wounded in mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive. And 140 people have died in mass killings this year, which is on track to surpass 2019, the deadliest year on record for mass killings since 2006, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in a partnership with Northeastern University.

“There is a lot of focus on the people that are killed. And I’m grateful for that. Those are my friends and they deserved all of the attention and more,” Gamblin said. “The downfall is the rest of us are still suffering.”

LAS VEGAS

Tia Christiansen had worked in the music industry for more than 20 years when a gunman unleashed the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history at a Las Vegas music festival she helped organize in October 2017.

The shooter rained gunfire from the windows of a high-rise casino hotel into an outdoor concert crowd, killing 58 people and injuring more than 850.

Christiansen was scheduled to be at the festival that day. But she felt ill and stayed in her room, two doors down from where the gunman fired.

“The room was shaking. It was incredibly loud. There was actually a moment when the gunfire was so loud that I literally instinctively ducked and put my hands over my head because I thought that the walls or the ceiling would come crumbling down,” Christiansen said. “I completely reconciled my life and thought, ‘Am I ready to die?’”

She was physically unscathed. But her life turned upside down. After the shooting, she worked a few more festivals, until she “had a complete, total breakdown on site crying.”

“What I came to understand about myself in that moment was, I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” she said.

At concerts, Christiansen no longer focused on fans’ joy, instead fixating on emergency exits and whether people could get to safety. She has since given up her career in the music industry, letting go of her dreams.

Her lingering PTSD and need to control her environment also has affected Christiansen’s relationships with her friends and family.

“My personality changes. I get very short tempered, and I get very judgmental. I’m quick to be snippy,” she said. “That is heavy energy to be around.”

Christiansen, who is based in South Deerfield, Massachusetts, turned to spending. She bought a new bed to try to find more comfort and relied on delivered meals to avoid leaving her home.

“The financial aspect of it is crushing, absolutely crushing,” she said. “I don’t know how many years it’s gonna take to pay that off.”

Now Christiansen is part of a mentorship program for the Everytown Survivors Network, which connects thousands of gun violence survivors to resources and aims to end gun violence.

“The trauma doesn’t go away,” she said. “Even if you’re not wounded in the moment, there is injury.”

HIGHLAND PARK

Leah Sundheim, 29, was a night manager at a hotel in Las Vegas when she got “the worst phone call you can ever receive.”

Her mother, Jacquelyn Sundheim, had been killed at a shooting during Highland Park’s 2022 Fourth of July parade, along with six other people.

“That flight home broke me,” Sundheim said.

She then moved back to Highland Park to be close to her father.

“I couldn’t be away from my family,” Sundheim said. “I can’t do another flight like that ever.”

Mass shootings cause a variety of trauma, she said. Her experience is different from that of her aunt and cousins, who were sitting next to Jacquelyn Sundheim when she died.

“They have the visual and sound… of watching her be murdered, and my dad has the trauma of receiving the phone call and then subsequent hours trying to get to her body. My trauma is waking up to my phone ringing and hearing that my mom was killed,” she said.

Whichever type of trauma survivors experience, she said, “it shatters the sense of security that you have in the world.”

___

Savage is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post The aftermath of mass shootings infiltrates every corner of survivors’ lives appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

CHICAGO (AP) — Mass shootings and violence killed and wounded people across the United States this weekend, including at least 60 shot in the Chicago area alone. Four people were found shot to death in a small Idaho town, a Pennsylvania state trooper was killed in an ambush, and bullets struck 11 teenagers, killing one, at a party in Missouri.

The shootings happened in cities and rural areas alike, following a surge in homicides and other violence over the past several years that accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. Officers responded to mass shootings in Washington state, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Southern California, Milwaukee and Baltimore.

“There’s no question there’s been a spike in violence,” said Daniel Nagin, a professor of public policy and statistics at Carnegie Mellon University. “Some of these cases seem to be just disputes, often among adolescents, and those disputes are played out with firearms, not with fists.”

Researchers disagree over the cause. Theories include the possibility that violence is driven by the prevalence of guns in America, or by less aggressive police tactics or a decline in prosecutions for misdemeanor weapon offenses, Nagin said.

Only the Idaho killings fit the definition of a mass killing in which four or more people die, not including the shooter. However, the number of injured in most of the weekend cases matches the widely accepted definition for mass shootings.

Here’s a look at some of the shootings this weekend:

CHICAGO

Five people were shot, two fatally on the city’s South Side on Sunday evening when someone opened fire from a car that pulled up to a gathering, according to police.

Another four men were shot, one fatally, during an altercation in a garage in the West Side neighborhood of Austin around 3 a.m. Sunday, police said. Five others including a teenage girl were shot early Saturday near Lincoln Park Zoo, and two dozen more were shot in other incidents since Friday evening, city data shows.

Meanwhile in the suburbs, at least 23 people were shot, one fatally, early Sunday in a parking lot where hundreds of people had gathered to celebrate Juneteenth, authorities said.

The White House issued a statement calling the violence a tragedy and saying the president was thinking of those killed and injured. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said in a statement that he was monitoring the investigation.

KELLOGG, IDAHO

Police in Idaho arrested a suspect in a shooting that killed four people on Sunday at an apartment complex behind a church.

Responding officers found four people, all dead from gunshot wounds, at a residence in Kellogg that’s behind the Mountain View Congregational Church, according to the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office and news reports. Idaho State Police said a 31-year-old man was detained, KXLY-TV reported.

ST. LOUIS

An early Sunday shooting in a downtown St. Louis office building killed a 17-year-old and wounded 11 other teenagers, the city’s police commissioner said.

St. Louis Metropolitan Police Commissioner Robert Tracy identified the victim who was killed as 17-year-old Makao Moore. A spokesman said a minor who had a handgun was in police custody as a person of interest.

Teenagers were having a party in an office space when the shooting broke out around 1 a.m. Sunday.

The victims ranged from 15 to 19 years old. A 17-year-old girl was trampled as she fled, seriously injuring her spine, Tracy said.

WASHINGTON STATE

Two people were killed and two others were injured when a shooter began firing “randomly” into a crowd at a Washington state campground where many people were staying to attend a nearby music festival on Saturday night, police said.

The suspect was shot in a confrontation with law enforcement officers and taken into custody, several hundred yards from the Beyond Wonderland electronic dance music festival.

CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA

One state trooper was killed and a second critically wounded just hours apart in central Pennsylvania on Saturday after a gunman attacked a state police barracks.

The suspect drove his truck into the parking lot of the Lewistown barracks about 11 a.m. Saturday and opened fire with a large-caliber rifle on marked patrol cars before fleeing, authorities said Sunday.

Lt. James Wagner, 45, was critically wounded when he was shot after encountering the suspect several miles away in Mifflintown. Later, Trooper Jacques Rougeau Jr., 29, was ambushed and killed by a gunshot through the windshield of his patrol car as he drove down a road in nearby Walker Township, authorities said.

The suspect was shot and killed after a fierce gunbattle, said Lt. Col. George Bivens.

“What I witnessed … was one of the most intense, unbelievable gunfights I have ever witnessed,” Bivens said, lauding troopers for launching an aggressive search despite facing a weapon that “would defeat any of the body armor that they had available to them.”

A motive was not immediately known.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

A shooting at a pool party at a Southern California home left eight people wounded, authorities said Saturday.

Authorities were dispatched shortly after midnight in Carson, California, south of Los Angeles, KABC-TV reported.

The victims range in age from 16 to 24, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said.

BALTIMORE

Six people were injured in a Friday night shooting in Baltimore. All were expected to survive.

Officers heard gunshots in the north of the city just before 9 p.m. and found three men with numerous gunshot wounds. Medics took them to area hospitals for treatment.

Police later learned of three additional victims who walked into area hospitals with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds. The wounded ranged in age from 17 to 26.

SAN FRANCISCO

Six people were injured after a “car-to-car” shooting in the streets of San Francisco on Sunday evening, police said.

Two victims sustained gunshot wounds, one with life-threatening injuries, in the moving shootout beginning shortly before 7 p.m., San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said at a news conference Sunday.

Suspects in two cars, a black SUV and a white sedan, “drove very recklessly and chased each other while engaged in gunfire” near the northern waterfront, Scott said. The area includes Fisherman’s Wharf, one of the city’s busiest tourist areas.

Three victims were injured by glass shards caused by “errant gunfire,” Scott said, with none of the injuries considered to be life-threatening.

Two girls, ages 10 and 16, were struck by one of the two vehicles while walking their bicycles across the street. The younger girl was injured and transported to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries while the older girl was not injured.

PHILADELPHIA

A 4-year-old boy was among five victims of a shooting in south Philadelphia Saturday night.

Police responded to the block shortly before 8 p.m. Saturday and found a 58-year-old woman with gunshot wounds to the legs, a 54-year-old woman with gunshot wounds to her wrist and leg, and the boy, who was brought to Presbyterian Hospital with a gunshot wound to the abdomen.

A 30-year-old man also arrived at the hospital with a gunshot wound to the wrist and a 40-year-old man was brought in with a gunshot wound to the abdomen. The last victim was listed in critical condition; all others were said to be in stable condition.

MILWAUKEE

At least six teenagers were shot Monday afternoon around where Milwaukee’s Juneteenth celebration had just wrapped up.

Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman said among the wounded was a 17-year-old who may have been a gunman himself and is in custody. Police were still seeking additional suspects who hadn’t yet been identified.

Police said the victims, four girls and two boys, ranged in age from 14-19.

Norman said the shooting may have stemmed from a fight among a number of girls and young women, but he didn’t know what sparked the dispute. The injuries of those wounded varied but did not appear life-threatening, the chief said.

—

Brown contributed from Billings, Mont. Savage is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Mass shootings and violence leave dead and injured across the US this weekend appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Facing new pressure over gun violence in Texas after two more mass shootings, Republicans on Monday unexpectedly allowed a bill that would raise the purchase age for semiautomatic rifles from 18 to 21 to advance out of a House committee — even though the proposal has almost no chance of becoming law.

The surprise move revealed faint momentum for gun control advocates after a weekend mass shooting at an outdoor mall near Dallas, but at the same time underscored how Texas Republicans are so resistant to gun restrictions that even clearing a small legislative hurdle caused supporters to celebrate.

Two Republicans joined Democrats in an 8-5 vote on the House Select Committee on Community Safety to advance the bill, which Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has previously spoken against. It is unclear when or if the proposal would get a full vote in the Texas House with just a few weeks left to pass any new laws.

“It doesn’t have the support of the Legislature,” said Republican state Rep. Ryan Guillen, who chairs the committee and voted against the measure.

Abbott has shown no appetite for revisiting gun restrictions after two mass shootings in the span of a week. The first took place in Cleveland, northeast of Houston, where a man killed five of his neighbors with an AR-style rifle after they confronted him about shooting rounds in his yard.

The bill that advanced Monday had languished for weeks prior to Saturday’s shooting that left eight people dead at Allen Premium Outlets, a sprawling outdoor shopping center.

Before the vote, protesters’ chants of “Do Something!” echoed through the hallways of the Capitol in the country’s largest red state. Protesters eventually camped outside the House chamber and chanted at lawmakers as they entered.

They included several relatives of victims of a mass shooting a year ago at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. Some of them stood holding photos of their slain children, and some wept following the vote.

One of the Republicans who voted in favor of the bill was state Rep. Sam Harless, who through his office declined to be interviewed. “It is not his intention to capitalize with media coverage on the misery and suffering of those who have lost loved ones in these tragedies for simply voting his heart, his conscience, and his district,” Ron Hickman, Harless’ chief of staff, said in an email.

The push to raise the purchasing age has been led for months in the Capitol by relatives of the 19 children and two teachers who were killed in Uvalde when an 18-year-old gunman with an AR-style rifle opened fire in a fourth-grade classroom.

Mack Segovia, whose stepdaughter, Eliahna, was killed at Robb Elementary, attended Monday’s rally wearing a shirt with a photo of the girl in her softball uniform.

“It happened again. And it’s going to happen again and again and again,” Segovia said. “It happened this weekend in a mall. You’re not safe anywhere. … It’s going to strike again, we just don’t know where.”

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Stalled gun bill advances in Texas after new mass shootings appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Several new bills aimed at cracking down on crime in California were announced Monday.

The new bills will target suspects involved in crimes across the state including thefts and violent shootings. Videos of people committing crimes have been released on social media a number of times this year and politicians said those videos are proof that crime is on the rise.

“It cannot be denied that crime is out of control in California,” said James Gallagher, who represents the 3rd Assembly District in northern Sacramento Valley. “We are seeing an increase in petty thefts and retail thefts, but also in violent assaults.”

At a news conference in Sacramento on Monday, a group of Republicans as well as law enforcement officials, including several from Southern California, announced the bills.

One would increase the penalties for serial thieves and another would reinstate a mandatory 20-year minimum sentence for anyone convicted of using a firearm during a violent crime.

“Elected leaders care more about releasing criminals than protecting victims,” said Assemblyman Bill Essayli. “This is wrong, it’s unethical, and frankly, immoral.”

Elected leaders pointed to the recent mass shootings across the state, also referencing the recent killings of two Riverside County sheriff’s deputies.

“Our Riverside County sheriff’s office had not suffered a line of duty death in two decades, and then we lost two deputies within two weeks. That is not acceptable,” Essayli said.

Eyewitness News used our ABC7 neighborhood safety tracker to take a closer look at the state’s Department of Justice data for the five counties in our viewing area.

Overall, violent crime rose just about 2% between 2017 and 2021. The homicide rate soared, jumping about 40% in the same period.

“Crime is out of control in California and we are here with representatives from our law enforcement community to send one simple message that everyone, no matter where they live or who they are, deserve to feel safe in their community,” Gallagher said.

The future of this Republican-sponsored legislation is unclear as Democrats hold the supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature.

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post CA legislators propose new bills cracking down on crime amid recent mass shootings, deputy deaths appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans are processing the nightmare of the slaughter of children in Texas, the racist murders in Buffalo, New York, and the other numbingly repeated scenes of carnage in the United States.

They’re contending with what feels like highway robbery at the gas pump, they’re nagged by a virus that the world can’t shake, and they’re split into two hostile camps over politics and culture — the twin pillars of the nation’s foundation.

They’ve already been through two set-piece dramas of presidential impeachment — indeed, through the wringer on all things Donald Trump.

Now, beginning in prime time on Thursday, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol is setting out to establish the historical record of an event damaging not only to a community or individual families but to the collective idea of democracy itself.

After more than 100 subpoenas, 1,000 interviews and 100,000 documents, the committee has a story to tell in hearings that open this week. A story for the ages, it’s been said.

The open question: How much will the country care?

The committee’s examination of the actions of Trump and all the president’s men and women, more aggressive than any inquiry before it, has produced a multitude of plot lines that together will tell the tale of a violent uprising fueled by the venom and lies of a defeated president.

Many Republicans, even those who condemned Trump and the violence in the moment, have adopted a “nothing more to see here” posture since, even rejecting calls for an independent Sept. 11-style commission to investigate.

An entire disinformation ecosystem sprung up with utterly false claims about the nature and character of the attack. Rather than condemn the attack, Trump continues to insist his defeat by 7 million votes should be overturned, in effect validating the rioters’ cause.

Dozens of the insurrectionists have been brought to justice, many of them being convicted or pleading guilty to serious crimes. But the committee’s goal is larger: Who in a position of power should also be held to account?

There are endless ribbons of inquiry.

Did Vice President Mike Pence refuse to leave the besieged Capitol because he suspected the Secret Service, at the behest of Trump, was trying to take him away to stop him from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory? Did Trump flush incriminating papers down the White House toilet?

How to explain the gap of more than seven hours in White House telephone logs of Trump’s calls during the insurrection? Will it stand in history alongside the infamous 18 1/2-minute hole in President Richard Nixon’s secret White House recording system in 1972?

The Watergate affair, which exposed Nixon’s cover-up of politically motivated criminal acts and destroyed his presidency, centered on a question posed by a Republican senator, Howard Baker, in a Tennessee drawl: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”

For the Jan. 6 committee, the key question about Trump’s involvement in the insurrection is: What did the president do, and when did he do it?

One aim is to establish whether Trump’s acts are criminal, as one judge has mused they may be, and whether that would prompt a politically fraught Justice Department prosecution of an ex-president.

More broadly, the effort addresses who might be punished in the large circle of Trump enablers. Some of them are members of Congress who helped him plot how to try to overturn an honest election only to huddle in fear with everyone else in a Capitol hideout when the rioters — in service of that plot — swarmed the marbled corridors of power Jan. 6, 2021.

The prime-time setting for the committee hearing is a rarity and something of a throwback to an era when people gathered en masse at their televisions in the evening before video streaming atomized viewership.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat on the committee, set expectations that may be hard to live up to as the committee tries to renew the interest of this short-attention-span country in machinations that are nearly 18 months in the rearview mirror.

The hazards in that mirror are closer than they appear, as committee members see it.

“The hearings will tell a story that will really blow the roof off the House,” Raskin said in April. “Because it is a story of the most heinous and dastardly political offense ever organized by a president and his followers and his entourage in the history of the United States.”

That offense? In short, he told a Washington forum, “an inside coup” coupled with a violent attack by “neo-fascists.”

Trump is not expected at any of the hearings, but his words and actions will hang heavy over the proceedings as lawmakers look to place him at the center of the chaos. It seems highly plausible that he will find a way to rail against them that does not involve being under oath.

The committee almost certainly will look to draw a tight connection between Trump’s vociferous rejections of the election results and his Jan. 6 rally outside the White House sending the angry crowd off to Capitol Hill.

Free from the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, committee members are likely to try to show that the riot that ravaged the Capitol was not a spontaneous gathering but part of a broader conspiracy and a natural outgrowth of weeks of denunciations of democratic processes.

Biden framed Jan. 6 and its aftermath in existential terms about the threat posed to democracy. It’s a “battle for the soul of America,” he said. But a president can only have one No. 1 priority at a time, and this isn’t his. Time and again, he’s said it’s inflation.

Whatever revelations the hearings may produce, much is already known because the attack played out on screens large and small in real time, and Trump exhorted supporters to “fight like hell” in shouts for the world to hear.

“In quieter times, the hearings would have a stronger hold on public attention,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and an authority on political communications. “But, as is, they will be competing for attention with topics with greater immediate relevance in our lives.”

Hungry babies lacking formula. Soaring prices for gas and groceries. Rising COVID-19 hospitalization among the vaccinated. The scenes of destruction in Ukraine and the threat that the Russian invasion will escalate to include use of nuclear weapons. And there’s monkeypox.

“To say nothing of summer vacation,” Jamieson added.

“If the hearings are to do anything other than reinforce our existing political biases,” she said, “they will have to reveal previously covered-up goings-on that threatened something that Democrats, independents and most Republicans can agree should be sacrosanct.”

Some of the inquiry’s juicy bits are out already. Text messages and emails, thought to be private when sent, have become public, including from chief of staff Mark Meadows.

But the committee has been sitting on much more information and will have tens of thousands of exhibits and hundreds of witnesses, said Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the committee chairman.

Seven Democrats and two Republicans — both shunned by their party — make up the committee. Among them the stakes are surely highest for Rep. Liz Cheney, the deeply conservative but fiercely independent Wyoming lawmaker who is practically alone in the GOP in assailing Trump while also seeking reelection to Congress.

Daughter of a vice president and once an embodiment of the Republican establishment, she is now a renegade in a new order dominated by Trump, who wants her unseated in her primary in August.

That new order became ever clearer in February, when the Republican Party censured Cheney and the committee’s other Republican, Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who’s not seeking reelection, for taking part in the inquiry. The party adopted a resolution saying the witnesses summoned by the committee for their actions on and around Jan. 6 had only been engaging in “legitimate political discourse.”

Matthew Delmont, a Dartmouth College history professor specializing in Black history, said Jan. 6 cast such an ominous shadow that he expects people in the United States, for all of their other pressing preoccupations, to be drawn to the inquiry.

“I think people will watch the Jan. 6 hearings because they want to understand how our democracy reached this precipice,” he said. “I don’t know how many people will be willing to hear the evidence that will be presented, but I think it is important for the findings to be shared openly so people today and in the future can appreciate what happened.”

Jan. 6 shares certain distinctions with other past agonies. As with 9/11, you can shorthand the date, Jan. 6, and people know. Like Watergate, it speaks to corrupt acts in the highest office. As with the Challenger space shuttle explosion and 9/11 and more, the scene brought so much visceral shock that many people remember where they were and what they were doing when they saw it.

As far as the far right is concerned, the historical analogy is the Boston Tea Party, with liberals, Democrats and the Washington establishment as the redcoats.

Trump-friendly Republicans sanitized what happened that day, once the shock that nearly all felt on Jan. 6 subsided. In measurements of public opinion, Republican voters in the main said they believe the 2020 election was rigged, when by absolutely all measures — the courts, nonpartisan and even Republican state officials, and the Trump administration’s own election monitors, including his attorney general — the election was purely fair.

A year later, the patently violent uprising was remembered as very or extremely violent by fewer than 4 in 10 Republicans polled, compared with almost 9 in 10 Democrats.

Even so, there were signs in the latest Republican primaries for the 2022 midterms that Trump’s obsession about getting fired by the voters all those months ago is wearing thin even with them.

Trump won the 2016 election with a minority of voters, lost the House to the Democrats in 2018 and lost in 2020 by a decisive margin — not a glowing electoral record.

Still he holds sway over his party, thanks to supporters whose loyalty seems immovable. Unswayed by facts throughout the fight to discredit and upend Biden’s election, they won’t be easily dislodged by a congressional committee’s revelations.

Through Trump’s presidency, audacious falsehoods and elaborate exaggerations were the order of the day. But Trump, at times, had a knack for speaking a larger truth that penetrated his fog of hyperbole and misinformation.

So it was with his comment in Iowa in January 2016, en route to the Republican nomination. The comment foretells that even if the Jan. 6 committee manages to “blow the roof off the House,” Trump may remain golden with millions who love him.

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” Trump said then. “It’s, like, incredible.”

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post An infamous day. A search for answers. Will America tune in? appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Gun violence prevention experts from Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and Teachers College respond to the recent mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York. All are members of Columbia SURGE (Scientific Union for the Reduction of Gun Violence).

For more reaction, read a May 25 op-ed by Charles Branas, chair of epidemiology at Columbia Mailman, and Teachers College professors Louis Klerevas and Sonali Rajan published in the Los Angeles Times. The op-ed is titled “Why Our Response to School Shootings Is All Wrong.”

Louis Klarevas, Research Professor, Teachers College:

One of the biggest problems with how we deal with active shooter threats in the United States is that many of our solutions are reactive—hardened targets, lockdown protocols, police officers on site, armed teachers and staff. But the key to reducing mass shootings is to promote prevention over interruption. Think of it this way: if there’s one thing better for public safety than a good guy with a gun, it’s a bad guy without a gun. We need to focus our efforts on preventing dangerous individuals from acquiring firearms in the first place. That’s the way forward.

Christopher Morrison, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, Columbia Mailman:

This tragic event highlights the horrific cost of gun violence in America. Last year alone, 20,726 people were killed in gun homicides or accidental shootings. That’s one person killed every 25 minutes. And 693 times a mass shooting occurred where 4 or more people were killed or injured with a gun. Most of this burden is borne by communities of color.

Research tells us there are policy levers we can use to reduce these enormous impacts. These policies are already in place in many U.S. states. First, we need to keep guns out of the hands of people who are at risk of committing acts of violence. Mandatory waiting periods and universal background checks—including for private sales and gun shows—reduce access to guns and reduce the overall incidence of gun violence. Second, we need to keep the 300 million+ guns that are already in circulation from being used in a crime. Evidence indicates that having stronger laws limiting children’s access to guns and repealing stand-your-ground laws leads to fewer gun injuries and deaths.

Sonali Rajan, Associate Professor of Health Education, Teachers College; Adjunct Associate Professor of Epidemiology, Columbia Mailman:

The mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX is an unspeakable tragedy. My heart breaks for the children and teachers who were killed in their classrooms, for their families, and for all of the surviving members of this school community. Tragically, the data illustrate that there is a pattern of increasing school gun violence in the United States, with the number of shootings in schools increasing precipitously since 2017. Recent data approximate that hundreds of thousands of children have been exposed to gun violence in K-12 schools since the Columbine High School shooting in 1999. And gun violence is now the leading cause of death among children in the U.S.  

Like other public health crises, we cannot rely on a single solution to prevent this kind of violence, rather, we need a multifaceted strategy that draws on the existing science, emphasizes meaningful preventive efforts (and not simply reactive strategies), and centers the well-being of children in the process. Effective school gun violence prevention requires investments in specific policies that are known to effectively reduce access to firearms (such as bans on assault weapons and use of extreme risk protection orders). It also involves the implementation of universal school–based violence prevention programming focused on prosocial skill development, restorative justice–oriented conflict resolution practices, the removal of punitive disciplinary policies in schools, and expanding the capacity of child mental health services. And all of this should also occur alongside enhancing basic neighborhood structures (such as investments in green space, affordable housing, and public libraries). Gun violence is a solvable problem, whose solutions should be grounded in rigorous evidence; we have the capacity to address this.

Paul Reeping, Graduate Research Assistant, Columbia Mailman:

School shootings are preventable. Research shows that mass shootings and school shootings are associated with more permissive gun laws in the United States. Specifically, licensing of firearms and large-capacity magazine bans have been shown to be associated with fewer mass shootings. However, no studies have examined what specific laws could prevent school shootings.  

Nevertheless, we do know that the average age of an active school shooter is 16; the youngest active school shooter was only 12 years old. This means that many of these children and adolescents are not outright buying a gun and are instead obtaining them through friends or family. Therefore, common sense gun laws, like safe storage or CAP (children access prevention) laws, if strictly enforced, could keep guns out of the hands of the perpetrators and prevent school shootings in the future. This can be strengthened further by increasing the minimum age that someone is able to buy rifles, shotguns, and handguns, to 21 (the shooter in Uvalde, Texas was only 18). These laws would also help to decrease firearm suicide among children and adolescents, which has been tragically increasing at a rapid rate in recent years.

Kara Rudolph, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, Columbia Mailman:

What happened in Texas is heartbreaking. I’m a parent of small children myself, but cannot begin to know the nightmare those families are going through. I’m also a violence researcher. However, I don’t think more research is needed to prevent school shootings. We already know what to do, we just don’t do it. 

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

The post Gun Violence Prevention Experts Respond to Mass Shootings appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The HSJ Chronicle welcomes opinions from its readers.  We like difference of opinion based on facts, beliefs and reality.  We promise to edit your opinion pieces based solely on spacial constraints. While we have allowed the following piece of polemic, we ask that, in the future, your contributions steer clear of any attacks on persons or organizations, and that any facts and figures be backed by citations whenever possible.

Since its founding in 1871, the National Rifle Association, who in December 2018, claimed a membership of 5 million, has lobbied against gun legislation.

The NRA has suggested, most recently after the Stoneman Douglas High School and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, that armed security guards be added to schools.

Some observers and lawmakers see the NRA as one of the most influential lobbying groups in Washington. Over its history the organization has influenced legislation, participated in or initiated lawsuits, and endorsed or opposed various candidates at local, state and federal levels.

Prior to the l970s, the NRA was nonpartisan. During the l970s, it became increasingly aligned with the Republican Party. After 1977, the organization expanded its membership heavily on political issues and forming coalitions with conservative politicians. Most of these are Republicans.

In 1994, the NRA unsuccessfully opposed the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB), but successfully lobbied for the ban’s 2004 expiration.

The NRA has been described as influential in shaping American gun control policy by influencing legislators’ voting behavior through its financial resources and ability to mobilize its large membership. The organization has not lost a major battle over gun control legislation since the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban. At the federal level, the NRA successfully lobbied Congress in the mid-1990s to effectively halt governments-sponsored research into the public health effects of firearms, and to ensure the passage of legislation in 2005 largely immunizing gun manufacturers and dealers from lawsuits. At the same time, the NRA stopped efforts at the federal level to increase regulation of firearms. At the state and local level, the NRA successfully campaigned to deregulate guns, for example by pushing state governments to eliminate the ability of local governments to regulate guns and removing restrictions on guns in public places (such as bars and campuses).

By 1976, as the NRA became more politically-oriented, the Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF), was established as a subsidiary to the NRA, to support NRA-friendly politicians. Through the NRA-PVF, the NRA began to rate political candidates on their positions on gun rights. An NRA “A+” candidate is one who has “not only an excellent voting record on all critical NRA issues, but who has also made a vigorous effort to promote and defend the Second Amendment”, whereas an NRA “F” candidate is deemed a “true enemy of gun owners’ rights”.

A 2017 poll conducted by the political action committee Americans for Responsible Solutions, which supports gun control, exclusively questioned 661 gun owners. 26% of the respondents stated they were a member of the NRA. The ARS reported that less than 50% of gun owners polled believed that NRA represented their interests, while 68% of them somewhat or strongly agreed with the statement that it had been “overtaken by lobbyists and the interests of gun manufacturers and lost its original purpose and mission.” Recent polling trends show a significant decline in NRA favorability.  (Editor’s note: Per many sites, among them https://www.ammoland.com/2018/07/dont-believe-fake-polls-about-the-gun-control-views-of-nra-members/#axzz65n55xJ9i, the NRA membership list is a closed list, so pollsters never really know if they are even actually talking to NRA members or not).

The NRA has been criticized by newspaper editorial boards, gun control and gun rights advocacy groups, political commentators, and politicians. Democrats and liberals frequently criticize the organization. The NRA’s oldest organized critics include the gun control advocacy groups the Brady Campaign, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and the Violence Policy Center. Twenty-first century groups include Every-town for Gun Safety (formerly Mayors against Illegal Guns), Moms Demand Action, and Americans for Responsible Solutions. 

After the October 2017 Las Vegas shooting that left 58 people dead and 851 injured, the NRA was initially criticized for their silence. After four days they issued a statement opposing additional gun control laws, which they said would not stop further attacks, and calling for a federal law allowing people who have a concealed carry permit in one state to carry concealed weapons in all other states. The organization also suggested additional regulations on so-called “bump stocks,” which allow a semi-automatic weapon to function like a machine gun; the Las Vegas shooter had used such a device.

Such influence in the political process of this country, supported by unlimited financial resources, has converted the NRA into a nefarious organization working only to protect gun manufacturers and their own political interests.

Editor’s Note:

1. A 2018 poll showed that a majority of the population of New York (not exactly a bastion of conservative thought) supported the use of armed guards in public schools.  https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2018/03/29/most-new-yorkers-want-armed-guards-in-public-schools-according-to-a-new-poll/
2. In civilian training, the NRA continues to be the leader in firearms education. Over 125,000 certified instructors now train about 1,000,000 gun owners a year. Courses are available in basic rifle, pistol, shotgun, muzzleloading firearms, personal protection, and even ammunition reloading. Additionally, nearly 7,000 certified coaches are specially trained to work with young competitive shooters. Since the establishment of the lifesaving Eddie Eagle GunSafe® Program in 1988, more than 28 million pre-kindergarten to fourth grade children have learned that if they see a firearm in an unsupervised situation, they should “STOP. DON’T TOUCH. RUN AWAY. TELL A GROWNUP.” While widely recognized today as a major political force and as America’s foremost defender of Second Amendment rights, the NRA has, since its inception, been the premier firearms education organization in the world. But the NRA successes would not be possible without the tireless efforts and countless hours of service that nearly five million members have given to champion Second Amendment rights and support NRA programs. As former Clinton spokesman George Stephanopoulos said, “Let me make one small vote for the NRA. They’re good citizens. They call their congressmen. They write. They vote. They contribute. And they get what they want over time.”

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

Search: Multiple Mass Shootings

The post Multiple Mass Shootings – Multiple Deaths appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The Second Amendment guarantees citizens the right to bear arms.

There is no definitive resolution by the courts of exactly how the Second Amendment should be interpreted. Historically, U.S. courts have held various interpretations of the Second Amendment, ranging from the perspective that this right lies only within government officials, to the viewpoint that this right also lies within individual citizens.

However, in a landmark case known as District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), the U.S. Supreme Court explained that all citizens are the militia; the Second Amendment is an individual right, just like every other right protected in the Bill of Rights, and is independent of membership in any organized group or military unit.

It was the first Supreme Court case to decide whether the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms for self-defense.

Nevertheless, even with all the restrictions to buy a firearm already on the books in most states, such as purchases and transfers including private party transactions and sales at gun shows, that must be made through a licensed dealer; $250,000 fines and five years in prison if you transfer a firearm on behalf of anyone who may not legally possess one; proof of good cause be demonstrated before you can lawfully carry a concealed weapon, frequent mass shootings continue to take place nationwide. 

The problem resides when not in a lack of controls by the government of who may purchase a firearm but of not knowing with any degree of certainty what is in the mind of the individuals acquiring these weapons.

As written in the first part of this article, buying a firearm should not be made easy, nor should it cost only the price of the gun.  Barring convicted felons, and other criminals forbidden from possessing firearms, extensive research into the buyer’s background is needed.  Nowhere in the second amendment does it say that knowing precisely the nature of the purchaser’s character is prohibited.

Authorization for an individual to purchase a firearm should come as a result of a thorough background check; the buyer should bear the cost of which.  A background check should go as far back as is determined by professionals in the field, to determine the individual’s history and predispositions and should be approved or denied based on the findings. 

Safety of our family, friends, and neighbors should be first and foremost in all our minds, and as voting citizens, we are obliged to influence our representatives in government to find a definitive solution to the mass killings that have become altogether commonplace in the United States.

A ten-day waiting period in most cases, as is presently required to possess a firearm is insufficient time to perform a comprehensive background check on gun buyers.  A whole new procedure is needed to weed out the deranged and potentially dangerous persons with a firearm in hand that requires only a slight push to put then over the ledge and start shooting innocent people. 

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

Search: Mass Shootings – Part 2

The post Mass Shootings – Part 2 appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

Is the United States of America the only country where mass indiscriminate shootings of human beings take place without apparent rhyme or reason?  Are we to be branded worldwide as a gun toting people willing to shoot our fellow citizens just because we can? Did the framers of the constitution imagen when they decreed that we have a right to bear arms that such mayhem would be wrought upon the citizenry.

Certainly, other countries that we read about experience mass killings of innocent people, such as suicide bombings in middle-eastern countries and multiple murders of bystanders in public places such as in a bar in Mexico recently.  The difference between these heinous and unjustifiable acts and the American experience is that they are carried out by fanatics in the name of what they rationalize as a superior cause or as an act of revenge or power maneuver on rival criminal groups.  In both cases, the perpetrators live by a misguided and twisted doctrine.

For the most part, mass killings in the United States are not the result of fanatics looking to carry out acts of violence as vindication of what may be perceived by them as a just cause, but rather by demented individuals who have been corrupted willingly or not by the American circumstance.  The ability to acquire a weapon of whatever caliber by most individuals, is not the only effect of this bloody phenomenon but rather and probably most importantly the cause is the environment in which the shooters have developed – a climate of violence in the home, in schools, the work place, the movies, and everywhere we look and go.  The killers at home don’t care who they shoot.

Taking corrective action of the scenario described above would require generations, and since waiting for the next mass shooting is not an option, in this day and age of information technology where every resident has a record somewhere, it seems reasonable that for the greater good, background checks should be performed on all persons manifesting their intention to buy a gun.

Doing background investigations would weed out not only people with criminal records but also all those individuals with a propensity for violence.  Additionally, approval from family members, neighbors and friends should be required for any individual acquiring a gun, they should know if a person is mentally stable or not. 

Buying a firearm should not be easy, in lieu of outright prohibition like is the case in many countries, buying a weapon in the United States should require that the purchaser provides all pertinent information mandated by appropriate authorities and be investigated to the fullest.  Anything less, judging from past events, means that we will continue to stack up the bodies. 

Find your latest news here at the Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle

Search: Mass Shootings

The post Mass Shootings appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.