Jan 18 (Reuters) – Citigroup Inc (C.N) has discriminated against the firearms sector, the office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said, making a decision that “has the effect” of Texas halting Citi’s ability to underwrite most municipal bond offerings in the state.
Republicans have been ramping up pressure on the finance industry over environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment practices. Texas enacted a law in 2021 prohibiting government contracts with entities that discriminated against the firearms industry.
“It has been determined that Citigroup has a policy that discriminates against a firearm entity or firearm trade association”, the assistant attorney general chief of the public finance division of Texas AG wrote on Wednesday in the letter seen by Reuters.
“Citi’s designation as an SB-19 discriminator has the effect of halting its ability to underwrite most municipal bond offerings in Texas,” Paxton’s office told Reuters, referring to the law.
Until further notice, The Texas AG will not approve any public security issued on or after Wednesday in which Citigroup purchases or underwrites the public security, she added in the letter.
“Citi does not discriminate against the firearms sector and believe we are in compliance with Texas law”, a Citigroup spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Reuters, adding that the company would remain engaged with the Texas AG office to review options.
In 2018, Citigroup put restrictions on new retail business clients that sell guns, requiring that they pass background checks. That followed a high school shooting in Florida in February of that year in which 17 people died.
Bloomberg News first reported the news on Thursday.
Reporting by Lavanya Ahire and Akanksha Khushi in Bengaluru,Additional reporting by Urvi Dugar and Mrinmay Dey; Editing by Bradley Perrett, Bernadette Baum and David Gregorio
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CHESAPEAKE, Va., Nov 23 (Reuters) – A manager at a Walmart Inc. (WMT.N) store in Virginia entered a break room and opened fire on fellow employees before turning the gun on himself, an eyewitness said on Wednesday, leaving a total of seven dead in the latest mass shooting in the United States.
The gunman, identified as Andre Bing, 31, of Chesapeake, Virginia, said nothing as he began firing on the workers gathered ahead of their shift late Tuesday, Walmart employee Briana Tyler told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
“I looked up and my manager just opened the door and he just opened fire,” Tyler said. “He didn’t say a word. He didn’t say anything at all.”
At least four people were injured in the shooting, Chesapeake Police Chief Mark Solesky told a news conference. He did not disclose a possible motive for the shooting, but said the suspect died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Bing was armed with a single handgun and carried multiple magazines of ammunition, according to a tweet from Chesapeake, a city of about 250,000 people south of Norfolk.
Coming on the heels of the killing of five people at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub on Saturday, the latest massacre prompted a fresh round of condemnations by public officials and calls by activists for tighter gun control.
U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday called the shooting “yet another horrific and senseless act of violence,” vowing any federal resources needed to aid in the investigation.
“There are now even more tables across the country that will have empty seats this Thanksgiving,” he said in a statement, noting a shooting earlier this month that left three University of Virginia students dead. “We must take greater action.”
Bing worked at the company since 2010, most recently as an overnight team leader at the cavernous Walmart Supercenter just off Battlefield Boulevard in Chesapeake.
“The Battlefield Walmart just got shot up by one of my managers. He killed a couple of people. By the grace of God I made it out,” another employee, Kevin Harper, told CBS.
[1/6] FBI agents stand in the parking lot after a mass shooting at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, U.S. November 23, 2022. REUTERS/Jay Paul
Jessie Wilczewski told WAVY-TV that she hid under a table and the shooter pointed the gun at her and told her to go home.
“It didn’t even look real until you could feel the pow-pow-pow. You can feel it,” the store employee said. “I couldn’t hear it at first because I guess it was so loud. I could feel it.”
Tuesday’s bloodshed marked the latest spasm of gun violence in the United States, where an average of two mass shootings — defined as an incident killing or injuring four or more people — occur every day, according to GunViolenceArchive.org.
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who was already facing stepped-up calls for policies to address gun violence in the wake of the University of Virginia killings, ordered flags at local, state and federal buildings to be flown at half-staff.
Kimberly Shupe told WAVY-TV that her son Jalon Jones, 24, was stable after being shot in his ear and back. He told her that he arrived for his overnight shift around 10 p.m., and that in their nightly meeting his manager was acting “strange” and “then started shooting,” she told the news station
Dr. Jessica Burgess, a surgeon who treated victims at a Norfolk hospital where two people died, two were in critical condition and one was recovering, said she contacted a colleague in Colorado Springs just two days prior to offer support.
“So it’s very disheartening that I’m now in the same position with my colleagues from across the country checking in on me and my team,” Burgess said. “Sometimes there is only so much we can do when the injuries have already been done.”
It is not the first mass shooting at a Walmart, which has thousands of stores across the country.
At a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019, 23 people were killed in a mass shooting near the U.S.-Mexico border in an act described as domestic terrorism by law enforcement. It was also the deadliest attack on the Hispanic community in modern times. Patrick Wood Crusius, then 21, from Allen, Texas, was arrested in the shooting and he left behind a manifesto with white nationalist and anti-immigrant themes.
“The devastating news of last night’s shooting at our Chesapeake, VA store at the hands of one of our associates has hit our Walmart family hard,” Walmart Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon wrote in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday.
Reporting by Rich McKay, Susan Heavey, Bharat Govind Gautam, Abinaya Vijayaraghavan and Shubham Kalia; Additional reporting by Juby Babu; Editing by Gerry Doyle, Nick Macfie, Gareth Jones and Mark Porter
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ROCKVILLE, Md., Aug 25 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden had harsh words to describe Trump-allied Republicans on Thursday, as he held his first political rally in the run-up to November elections, accusing the group of embracing violence and hatred, and saying they edged toward “semi-fascism” at an earlier fund-raising stop.
Biden, kicking off a coast-to-coast tour, is looking to lend his support to Democratic candidates and prevent those Republicans from taking control of Congress by touting the sharp differences between the two major U.S. parties, and calling on independent and Republican voters for help.
“It’s not hyperbole now you need to vote to literally save democracy again,” Biden told an above-capacity crowd of several thousand at a Democratic National Committee event at Richard Montgomery High School in a Maryland suburb of Washington.
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“America must choose. You must choose. Whether our country will move forward or backward,” he said.
“Trump and the extreme MAGA Republicans have made their choice – to go backwards full of anger, violence, hate and division,” he said, warning they “refuse to accept the will of the people.”
Since the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol, some Donald Trump supporters have repeated his lie that the 2020 election was stolen and threatened election workers.
In Maryland’s Montgomery County, where more than 78% of voters chose Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in 2020, Biden the stage to ask “Democrats, independents and mainstream Republicans” to join together to commit to the future.
Before the rally, Biden met Democratic donors for a $1 million party fundraiser in a backyard in a leafy neighborhood north of Washington.
Strolling with a handheld mic, Biden detailed the tumult facing the United States and the world from climate change. He spoke about economic upheaval and the future of China and was strongly critical of the direction of the Republican Party.
“We’re seeing now either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA agenda,” Biden said, referring to former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. “It’s not just Trump. … It’s almost semi-fascism,” he said.
BIDEN AGENDA ON THE LINE
Republicans are hoping to ride voter discontent with inflation, questions about Biden’s policies and cultural resentment from its majority-white base to victory in November, and they have history on their side. The party that controls the White House usually loses seats in Congress in a new president’s first midterm elections, and political analysts predict Republicans have a solid chance of taking control of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate.
Democrats hold only a thin majority in the House, while the Senate is evenly divided, with the vice president’s tie-breaking power giving Democrats control.
Republican control of one or both chambers could thwart Biden’s legislative agenda for the second half of his four-year term. Heavy losses could also intensify questions about whether Biden should run for re-election in 2024 or hand over to a younger generation.
But Biden and his team are increasingly hopeful that a string of recent legislative successes, and voters’ outrage at the Supreme Court’s overturning of the 1973 ruling that recognized women’s constitutional right to abortion, will generate strong turnout among Democrats.
The announcement this week that Biden would use an executive order to alleviate student loan debt led to GOP legislators and activists to criticize it as a handout. But on Thursday, the White House noted on Twitter that each had benefited from much larger debt cancellations under the coronavirus pandemic “PPP” loan program.
The rally in Maryland was promoted by groups including women’s health provider Planned Parenthood and anti-gun violence activists Moms Demand, as Democrats lean on a new gun safety law and Republican-backed abortion bans to improve their midterm prospects.
Democrats want Biden’s trip to boost the president’s poor poll numbers and draw attention to his achievements. But some candidates for Congress worry that campaigning with Biden will hurt them in the Nov. 8 election. read more
Biden, whose latest approval rating is 41%, is polling lower than most, if not all, Democratic candidates in competitive races, often by double digits, Democratic pollsters said. read more
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Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Leslie Adler, Rosalba O’Brien and Gerry Doyle
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Ruling coalition increases majority in upper house vote
Hundreds pay respects to slain ex-premier at temple
Abe shot Friday in crime that stunned nation
Controversial church says suspect’s mother is a follower
TOKYO/NARA, July 11 (Reuters) – Mourners streamed into a temple in Tokyo to pay their respects to Japan’s slain former premier Shinzo Abe on Monday, as his assassination overshadowed an election win for the ruling party he had dominated.
Current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who has the chance to cement his own power following Sunday’s election gains, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen were among the hundreds at Abe’s wake, three days after he was shot at an election rally.
A private funeral for Abe, who resigned in 2020 and was Japan’s longest-serving premier, is scheduled for Tuesday.
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“There is a profound sense of sorrow at his loss,” Yellen told reporters outside the temple, where she placed incense in Abe’s honour and greeted his family.
“Prime Minister Abe was a visionary leader and he strengthened Japan…I know that his legacy will live on,” she added.
Abe’s shooting shocked a nation where political violence and gun crime is rare.
The suspected killer, arrested at the scene and identified by police as 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami, believed Abe had promoted a religious group to which his mother made a “huge donation”, Kyodo news agency has said, citing investigators.
The Unification Church, a controversial group known for its mass weddings and devoted following, said on Monday the suspect’s mother was one of its members. read more
Neither Abe nor Yamagami were members of the church, said Tomihiro Tanaka, president of its Japan branch, adding that it would cooperate with police if asked to do so. read more
Reuters was not immediately able to contact Yamagami’s mother and could not determine whether she belonged to any other religious organisations.
SOMBRE VICTORY
In elections held on Sunday, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its ruling coalition partner extended their majority in the upper house of parliament. With a majority already in place in the lower house, what would have been a celebratory mood at LDP headquarters in usual circumstances turned sombre. read more
A moment of silence for Abe was offered in his memory, and Kishida’s face remained grim as he pinned rosettes next to winning candidates’ names on a board in a symbol of their victory.
Officials and mourners attend the vigil for late former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was shot while campaigning for a parliamentary election, at Zojoji Temple, in Tokyo, Japan July 11, 2022. REUTERS/Issei Kato
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Abe’s death has drawn condolences from leaders around the world, from Britain’s Queen Elizabeth to Chinese Premier Xi Jinping.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Kishida during a brief stopover on Monday to offer messages of support on behalf of President Joe Biden.
Vice President William Lai became Taiwan’s most senior official to visit Japan in five decades as he made a private trip to Tokyo to pay his respects. read more
At the wake, a line of black sedan cars, including several with diplomatic plates, dropped off dignitaries and family at Tokyo’s Zojoji temple, where the ex-premier’s body lay.
Dressed in black, some of those gathered mopped their brows as they queued beneath the steps leading to the temple in the sultry evening air.
A part of the temple was also open to members of the public who crowded in to lay flowers. “I feel so sad that a prime minister who dedicated himself for Japan died this way,” said Naoya Okamoto, a 28-year old who works in construction.
“He was the prime minister who demonstrated to the world a strong Japan once again.”
PARTY INFLUENCE
Abe remained influential in the LDP party even after he stepped down in 2020 citing ill health.
The LDP and its junior partner Komeito won 76 of the 125 seats contested in the chamber, up from 69 previously. The LDP alone won 63 seats, up from 55, to win a majority of the contested seats, though it fell short of a simple majority on its own.
With no elections set for another three years, Kishida, an Abe protege, now has an unusually long breathing space to attempt to implement his own agenda. That includes expanding defence spending and revising Japan’s pacifist constitution – a long-held dream of Abe’s. read more
Abe led the largest faction within the LDP, and analysts said his death could lead to potential turmoil within the party that might challenge Kishida’s control.
Kishida told a news conference that he would take up the difficult problems that Abe was not able to resolve, such as revising the constitution, adding that he hoped there could be discussions on the topic during the next session of parliament.
“We gained strength from voters for stable government of this nation,” Kishida told a news conference.
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Reporting by Satoshi Sugiyama in Nara, and Chang-ran Kim, Mariko Katsumura, Kiyoshi Takenaka and Andrea Shalal in Tokyo; Writing by Elaine Lies, Simon Cameron-Moore and John Geddie; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Hugh Lawson
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NEW YORK, July 1 (Reuters) – New York state passed a law on Friday banning guns from many public places, including Times Square, and requiring gun-license applicants to prove their shooting proficiency and submit their social media accounts for review by government officials.
The law, passed in an emergency legislative session, was forced by a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week that struck down New York’s restrictive gun-license laws. The court’s conservative majority ruled for the first time that the U.S. Constitution grants an individual the right to carry weapons in public for self-defense. read more
New York’s Democratic leaders have decried the ruling and the court, saying there will be more gun violence if there are more people carrying guns.
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They conceded they must loosen the state’s century-old permit scheme to comply with the ruling, but sought to keep as many restrictions as they could in the name of public safety. Some will likely be targets for further legal challenges.
The court ruled that New York’s former license regime, which dates from 1911, gave too much discretion to officials to deny a permit.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who ordered the extraordinary session in the legislature, said the state’s gun-licensing regulations had resulted in New York having the fifth-lowest rate of gun deaths of the 50 U.S. states.
“Our state will continue to keep New Yorkers safe from harm, even despite this setback from the Supreme Court,” she told a news conference in the state capital, Albany, while lawmakers were debating the bill. “They may think they can change our lives with the stroke of a pen, but we have pens, too.”
The court’s ruling allowed that people could be banned from carrying weapons in certain “sensitive places” but warned lawmakers against applying the label too broadly.
The court also made it easier for pro-gun groups to have a regulation overturned. It ruled that a weapons regulation was likely unconstitutional if it was not similar to the sort of regulations around in the 18th century, when the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment was ratified, letting states maintain militias and defining a right to “keep and bear Arms.”
The law passed on Friday makes it a felony crime to carry a gun into a new list of sensitive places, including: government buildings, medical facilities, places of worship, libraries, playgrounds, parks, zoos, schools, colleges, summer camps, addiction-support centers, homeless shelters, nursing homes, public transit including the New York City subway, places where alcohol or marijuana is consumed, museums, theaters, stadiums and other venues, polling places and Times Square.
Confiscated illegal guns are displayed during a news conference at New York City Police (NYPD) Headquarters in New York, October 27, 2015. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
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Law enforcement officials and registered security guards are among those exempt from the sensitive-place restrictions.
Republican lawmakers voted against the law, set to take effect on Sept. 1, complaining that it makes the right to carry weapons lesser than other constitutional rights, such as freedom of speech and of religion.
“Now, it’s going to be easier to get a concealed-carry” license, said Mike Lawler, a Republican member of the Assembly, during the debate. “But you’re not going to be able to carry it anywhere.”
‘FLAGRANT VIOLATION’
The National Rifle Association, the powerful gun-owners’ rights group whose local affiliate was the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court case, called New York’s law a “flagrant violation” of the ruling by creating more barriers to New Yorkers’ self-defense rights, indicating it may soon face legal challenges.
“Gov. Hochul and her anti-Second Amendment allies in Albany have defied the United States Supreme Court with an intentionally malicious rewriting of New York’s concealed carry law,” Darin Hoens, the New York NRA state director, said in a statement.
The court ruled in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen that New York licensing officials had too much subjective discretion over who could enjoy what it said was a constitutional right. Applicants were denied a concealed-carry permit if they could not convince an official they had “proper cause,” or some kind of special reason, for carrying a handgun for self-defense. read more
Reluctantly and not without protest, Hochul agreed the state must remove the “proper cause” requirements, though the law still requires licensing officers find the applicant is of “good moral character.” read more
The new licensing rules require applicants to meet with the licensing officer, usually a judge or a police official, for an in-person interview, and provide the contact details of some immediate family members and any adults they live with.
The law makes it a felony to carry a gun into private business premises unless the business affirmatively gives notice that concealed weapons are welcome.
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Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Chris Reese, Daniel Wallis and William Mallard
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Conservative justices power ruling; liberals dissent
Biden condemns ruling as a ‘sad day’ for America
Justice Alito calls Roe v. Wade ‘egregiously wrong’
WASHINGTON, June 24 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that recognized women’s constitutional right to abortion, a decision condemned by President Joe Biden that will dramatically change life for millions of women in America and exacerbate growing tensions in a deeply polarized country.
The court, in a 6-3 ruling powered by its conservative majority, upheld a Republican-backed Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The vote was 5-4 to overturn Roe, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts writing separately to say he would have upheld the Mississippi law without taking the additional step of erasing the Roe precedent altogether.
The reverberations of the ruling will be felt far beyond the court’s high-security confines – potentially reshaping the battlefield in November’s elections to determine whether Biden’s fellow Democrats retain control of Congress and signaling a new openness by the justices to change other long-recognized rights.
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The decision will also intensify debate over the legitimacy of the court, once an unassailable cornerstone of the American democratic system but increasingly under scrutiny for its more aggressively conservative decisions on a range of issues.
The ruling restored the ability of states to ban abortion. Twenty-six states are either certain or considered likely to ban abortion. Mississippi is among 13 states with so-called trigger laws to ban abortion with Roe overturned. (For related graphic click https://tmsnrt.rs/3Njv3Cw)
In a concurring opinion that raised concerns the justices might roll back other rights, conservative Justice Clarence Thomas urged the court to reconsider past rulings protecting the right to contraception, legalizing gay marriage nationwide, and invalidating state laws banning gay sex.
The justices, in the ruling written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, held that the Roe decision that allowed abortions performed before a fetus would be viable outside the womb – which occurs between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy – was wrongly decided because the U.S. Constitution makes no specific mention of abortion rights.
Women with unwanted pregnancies in large swathes of America now may face the choice of traveling to another state where the procedure remains legal and available, buying abortion pills online, or having a potentially dangerous illegal abortion.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in a concurring opinion, appeared to nix an idea advocated by some anti-abortion advocates that the next step is for the court to declare that the Constitution outlaws abortion. “The Constitution neither outlaws abortion nor legalizes abortion,” Kavanaugh wrote.
Kavanaugh also said that the ruling does not let states bar residents from traveling to another state to obtain an abortion, or retroactively punish people for prior abortions.
‘SAD DAY’
Biden condemned the ruling as taking an “extreme and dangerous path.”
“It’s a sad day for the court and for the country,” Biden said at the White House. “The court has done what it has never done before: expressly take away a constitutional right that is so fundamental to so many Americans.”
Empowering states to ban abortion makes the United States an outlier among developed nations on protecting reproductive rights, the Democratic president added.
Biden urged Congress to pass a law protecting abortion rights, an unlikely proposition given its partisan divisions. Biden said his administration will protect women’s access to medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration including pills for contraception and medication abortion, while also combating efforts to restrict women from traveling to other states to obtain abortions.
Britain, France and some other nations called the ruling a step backward, although the Vatican praised it, saying it challenged the world to reflect on life issues. read more
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the decision was “a loss for women everywhere”. “Watching the removal of a woman’s fundamental right to make decisions over their own body is incredibly upsetting,” she said in a statement.
Anti-abortion demonstrators celebrate outside the United States Supreme Court as the court rules in the Dobbs v Women’s Health Organization abortion case, overturning the landmark Roe v Wade abortion decision in Washington, U.S., June 24, 2022. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
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U.S. companies including Walt Disney Co (DIS.N), AT&T and Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) said they will cover employees’ expenses if they now have to travel for abortion services. read more
‘DAMAGING CONSEQUENCES’
A draft version of Alito’s ruling indicating the court was ready to overturn Roe was leaked in May, igniting a political firestorm. Friday’s ruling largely tracked this leaked draft.
“The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision,” Alito wrote in the ruling.
Roe v. Wade recognized that the right to personal privacy under the Constitution protects a woman’s ability to terminate her pregnancy. The Supreme Court in a 1992 ruling called Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey reaffirmed abortion rights and prohibited laws imposing an “undue burden” on abortion access. Friday’s ruling overturned the Casey decision as well.
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division,” Alito added.
The court’s three liberal justices – Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – issued a jointly authored dissent.
“Whatever the exact scope of the coming laws, one result of today’s decision is certain: the curtailment of women’s rights, and of their status as free and equal citizens,” they wrote.
As a result of Friday’s ruling, “from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A state can force her to bring a pregnancy to term, even at the steepest personal and familial costs,” the liberal justices added.
The ruling empowered states to ban abortion just a day after the court’s conservative majority issued another decision limiting the ability of states to enact gun restrictions. read more
The abortion and gun rulings illustrated the polarization in America on a range of issues, also including race and voting rights.
Overturning Roe was long a goal of Christian conservatives and many Republican officeholders, including former President Donald Trump, who as a candidate in 2016 promised to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would reverse Roe. During his term he named three to the bench, all of whom joined the majority in the ruling.
Asked in a Fox News interview whether he deserved some credit for the ruling, Trump said: “God made the decision.”
Crowds gathered outside the courthouse, surrounded by a tall security fence. Anti-abortion activists erupted in cheers after the ruling, while some abortion rights supporters were in tears.
“I’m ecstatic,” said Emma Craig, 36, of Pro Life San Francisco. “Abortion is the biggest tragedy of our generation and in 50 years we’ll look back at the 50 years we’ve been under Roe v. Wade with shame.”
Hours later, protesters angered by the decision still gathered outside the court, as did crowds in cities from coast to coast including New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and Seattle.
House of Representatives Speaker Democrat Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, denounced the decision, saying that a “Republican-controlled Supreme Court” has achieved that party’s “dark and extreme goal of ripping away women’s right to make their own reproductive health decisions.”
The number of U.S. abortions increased by 8% during the three years ending in 2020, reversing a 30-year trend of declining numbers, according to data released on June 15 by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. read more
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Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by Katanga Johnson and Rose Horowitch; Writing by Lawrence Hurley and Ross Colvin; Editing by Will Dunham, Scott Malone, Daniel Wallis and Michael Perry
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WASHINGTON, June 11 (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of demonstrators descended on Washington and at hundreds of rallies across the United States on Saturday to demand that lawmakers pass legislation aimed at curbing gun violence following last month’s massacre at a Texas elementary school.
In the nation’s capital, organizers with March for Our Lives (MFOL) estimated that 40,000 people assembled at the National Mall near the Washington Monument under occasional light rain. The gun safety group was founded by student survivors of the 2018 massacre at a Parkland, Florida, high school.
Courtney Haggerty, a 41-year-old research librarian from Lawrenceville, New Jersey, traveled to Washington with her 10-year-old daughter, Cate, and 7-year-old son, Graeme.
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Haggerty said the December 2012 school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, when a gunman killed 26 people, mostly six- and seven-year-olds, came one day after her daughter’s first birthday.
“It left me raw,” she said. “I can’t believe she’s going to be 11, and we’re still doing this.”
Kay Klein, a 65-year-old teacher trainer from Fairfax, Virginia, who retired earlier this month, said Americans should vote out politicians who refuse to take action in November’s midterm elections, when control of Congress will be at stake.
“If we truly care about children and about families, we need to vote,” she said.
‘ABSOLUTELY ABSURD’
A gunman in Uvalde, Texas, killed 19 children and two teachers on May 24, 10 days after another gunman murdered 10 Black people in a Buffalo, New York, grocery store in a racist attack.
The shootings have added new urgency to the country’s ongoing debate over gun violence, though the prospects for federal legislation remain uncertain given staunch Republican opposition to any limits on firearms.
A woman shouts as she holds a placard during a “March for our lives” rally for gun control in Parkland, Florida, U.S. June 11, 2022. REUTERS/Marco Bello
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In recent weeks, a bipartisan group of Senate negotiators have vowed to hammer out a deal, though they have yet to reach an agreement. Their effort is focused on relatively modest changes, such as incentivizing states to pass “red flag” laws that allow authorities to keep guns from individuals deemed dangerous.
U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat who earlier this month urged Congress to ban assault weapons, expand background checks and implement other measures, said he supported Saturday’s protests. read more
“We are being murdered,” said X Gonzalez, a Parkland survivor and co-founder of MFOL, in an emotional speech alongside survivors of other mass shootings. “You, Congress, have done nothing to prevent it.”
Among other policies, MFOL has called for an assault weapons ban, universal background checks for those trying to purchase guns and a national licensing system, which would register gun owners.
Biden told reporters in Los Angeles that he had spoken several times with Senator Chris Murphy, who is leading the Senate talks, and that negotiators remained “mildly optimistic.”
The Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a sweeping set of gun safety measures, but the legislation has no chance of advancing in the Senate, where Republicans view gun limits as infringing upon the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to bear arms.
Speakers at the Washington rally included David Hogg, a Parkland survivor and co-founder of MFOL; Becky Pringle and Randi Weingarten, the presidents of the two largest U.S. teachers unions; and Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, D.C.
Two high school students from the Washington suburb of Silver Spring, Maryland – Zena Phillip, 16, and Blain Sirak, 15 – said they had never joined a protest before but felt motivated after the shooting in Texas.
“Just knowing that there’s a possibility that can happen in my own school terrifies me,” Phillip said. “A lot of kids are getting numb to this to the point they feel hopeless.”
Sirak said she backed more gun restrictions and that the issue extended beyond mass shootings to the daily toll of gun violence.
“People are able to get military-grade guns in America,” she said. “It’s absolutely absurd.”
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Reporting by Ted Hesson; Additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in Los Angeles and Makini Brice in Washington; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Aurora Ellis and Daniel Wallis
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The headquarters for Axon Enterprise Inc, formerly Taser International, is seen in Scottsdale, Aizona, U.S., May 17, 2017. Picture taken May 17, 2017. To match Special Report USA-TASER/EXPERTS REUTERS/Ricardo Arduengo
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June 5 (Reuters) – Taser-maker Axon Enterprise Inc (AXON.O) said on Sunday it was halting work on a project to equip drones with stun guns to combat mass shootings, a prospect that a member of its AI ethics board told Reuters was prompting an exodus from the panel.
The May 24 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which killed 19 children and two teachers, prompted an announcement by Axon last week that it was working on a drone that could be operated remotely by first-responders to fire a Taser at a target about 40 feet (12 m) away.
“In light of feedback, we are pausing work on this project and refocusing to further engage with key constituencies to fully explore the best path forward,” Chief Executive Rick Smith said in a statement on Sunday.
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Earlier, ethics board member Wael Abd-Almageed told Reuters he and eight colleagues were resigning from the 12-member panel, in a rare public rebuke by one of the watchdog groups that some companies have set up in recent years.
The aim behind such groups is to gather feedback on emerging technologies, such as drones and artificial intelligence (AI) software.
Smith said it was unfortunate that some members “have chosen to withdraw from directly engaging on these issues before we heard or had a chance to address their technical questions.”
He said Axon “will continue to seek diverse perspectives to challenge our thinking and help guide other technology options that we should be considering.”
Axon, which also sells body-worn cameras and policing software, said in February that its clients include about 17,000 out of the roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States.
It has explored the idea of a Taser-equipped drone for police since at least 2016, and Smith depicted how one could stop an active shooter in a graphic novel he wrote.
The company first approached its ethics board more than a year ago about running a limited police pilot with Taser-equipped drones, which members voted eight to four against, said Abd-Almageed, an engineering research associate professor at University of Southern California.
Axon last Thursday announced it was working on the technology anyway, hoping to spur discussion after the Uvalde shooting. read more Its shares rose nearly 6% on the announcement.
“In the aftermath of these events, we get stuck in fruitless debates” about guns, Smith said. “We need new and better solutions.”
Ethics board members had concerns that the system could be used in circumstances beyond shootings and exacerbate racial injustice, undermine privacy through surveillance and become more lethal if other weapons were added, Abd-Almageed said.
“What we have right now is just dangerous and irresponsible, and it’s not very well thought of and it will have negative societal consequences,” he said.
Fellow member Mecole Jordan-McBride, advocacy director at New York University law school’s Policing Project, last week said that the board needed more time to weigh the idea. The board had not evaluated non-police use of the drones, it said.
Formed in 2018, the panel has guided Axon productively on sensitive technologies such as facial recognition. But the company’s drone announcement prior to a formal report by the board broke with practice, according to Jordan-McBride and fellow member Ryan Calo, a University of Washington law professor.
Chair Barry Friedman was resigning as well, said Abd-Almageed. Friedman, reached by telephone, said he would be available to comment on Monday.
CEO Smith acknowledged limitations and uncertainties around the project, noting a drone without a Taser may be enough on its own to distract a shooter.
In response to questions on the social media service Reddit on Friday, Smith wrote that drones could be stationed in hallways and move into rooms through special vents. A drone system would cost a school about $1,000 annually, he said.
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Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in Palo Alto, Calif., and Paresh Dave in Oakland, Calif.; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Robert Birsel
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
OTTAWA, May 30 (Reuters) – Canada’s government introduced legislation Monday to implement a “national freeze” on the sale and purchase of handguns as part of a gun control package that would also limit magazine capacities and ban some toys that look like guns.
The new legislation, which resurrects some measures that were shelved last year amid a national election, comes just a week after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in their classroom in Uvalde, Texas.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters the new measures were needed as gun violence was increasing.
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“We need only look south of the border to know that if we do not take action firmly and rapidly it gets worse and worse and gets more difficult to counter,” he said.
The handgun freeze would contain exceptions, including for elite sport shooters, Olympic athletes and security guards. Canadians who already own handguns would be allowed to keep them.
Authorities do not expect a run on handguns in anticipation of the freeze, in part because they are so heavily regulated already, an official said in a briefing.
Canada has stronger gun legislation than the United States but while its gun homicide rate is less than one-fifth the U.S. rate it is higher than that of other rich countries and has been rising. In 2020 it was five times Australia’s rate.
The rate in each of 2020 and 2017 was the country’s highest since at least 1997, according to Statistics Canada.
Canada banned the sale and use of some 1,500 models of assault weapons, like the AR-15 rifle, two years ago in the wake of a mass shooting in Portapique, Nova Scotia – a move some firearms owners say they are contesting in court. Speaking alongside Trudeau, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino confirmed the “imminent launch of the initial phase” of a program to buy back and compensate owners of such weapons.
While the Liberals have a minority of seats in Parliament, the legislation could pass with the support of the left-leaning New Democratic Party.
The planned legislation would prevent anyone subject to a protection order or who has engaged in domestic violence or stalking from obtaining or keeping a firearms license.
It will also require long-gun magazines to be permanently altered so they can never hold more than five rounds and will ban the sale and transfer of large-capacity magazines.
The new laws would also ban some toys that look like real guns, such as airsoft rifles. Last week Toronto police shot and killed a man carrying a pellet gun. read more
“Because they look the same as real firearms, police need to treat them as if they are real. This has led to tragic consequences,” Justice Minister David Lametti told reporters.
Tom Stamatakis, president of the Canadian Police Association, welcomed some of the moves, such as the “red flag” provisions in the case of domestic violence, and said he would like more information on enforcement and resources for measures such as the handgun freeze.
He completely supported a crackdown on fake guns, which he said were a “big challenge.”
“You cannot distinguish between what’s a replica firearm and what’s a real firearm, particularly when these incidences involving replica firearms occur often in very dynamic, quickly evolving circumstances.”
Rod Giltaca, the head of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights, said the handgun freeze was “absurd.”
He said authorities were not using the tools they already had to tackle gun violence, such as calling people listed as references on gun license applications.
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Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Ottawa and Anna Mehler Paperny in Toronto, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and Richard Pullin
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
UVALDE, Texas, May 29 (Reuters) – President Joe Biden flew to the Texas town of Uvalde on Sunday to comfort families ripped apart by the worst U.S. school shooting in a decade as the public demands answers about why local police failed to act swiftly.
There was mounting anger over the decision by local law enforcement agencies in Uvalde to allow the shooter to remain in a classroom for nearly an hour while officers waited in the hallway and children inside the room made panicked 911 calls for help. read more
Biden will meet with victims’ families, survivors and first responders, attend a church service and visit a memorial erected at the Robb Elementary School where the gunman killed 19 students and two teachers.
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“Too much violence, too much fear, too much grief,” Biden told graduates in a commencement speech on Saturday at the University of Delaware. “We cannot outlaw tragedy, I know, but we can make America safer. We can finally do what we have to do to protect the lives of the people and of our children.”
Biden, a Democrat, has repeatedly called for major changes to America’s gun laws but has been powerless to stop mass shootings or convince Republicans that stricter controls could stem the carnage.
The Texas visit will be his third presidential trip to a mass shooting site, including earlier this month when he visited Buffalo, New York, after a gunman killed 10 Black people in a Saturday afternoon attack at a grocery store.
The Uvalde shooting has once again put gun control at the top of the nation’s agenda, months ahead of the November midterm elections, with supporters of stronger gun laws arguing that the latest bloodshed represents a tipping point.
“The president has a real opportunity. The country is desperately asking for a leader to stop the slaughter from gun violence,” said Igor Volsky, executive director of Guns Down America.
Volsky urged Biden to enlist a senior official to tackle the country’s gun problem and pressure Congress to pass meaningful gun reform, saying Biden had promised to be a deal maker and to tackle gun violence.
‘WEAPON OF WAR’
Vice President Kamala Harris called for a ban on assault-style weapons during a trip to Buffalo on Saturday, saying that in the wake of the two back-to-back mass shootings such arms are “a weapon of war” with “no place in a civil society.”
White House aides and close allies say Biden is unlikely to wade into specific policy proposals to avoid disrupting delicate gun control negotiations in the divided Senate.
He is also unlikely to take executive action to crack down on firearms because that could send Republican lawmakers otherwise open to negotiations back to their corners.
Senate Democrats have also dialed down the rhetoric as negotiations continued during the chamber’s Memorial Day holiday recess this week.
“We’ve got to be realistic about what we can achieve,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin told CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday. Durbin’s fellow Democrats narrowly control the 50-50 split Senate but need 60 votes to pass most legislation.
Leading Republicans like U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and former President Donald Trump have rejected calls for new gun control measures and instead suggested investing in mental health care or tightening security at the nation’s schools.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, denied that newly enacted Texas gun laws, including a controversial measure removing licensing requirements for carrying a concealed weapon, had “any relevancy” to Tuesday’s bloodshed.
He suggested state lawmakers focus renewed attention on addressing mental illness.
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Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw aboard Air Force One; Gabriella and Brad Brooks in Uvalde, Texas; additional reporting by Heather Timmons in Washington; Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Kieran Murray and Lisa Shumaker
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.