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The JR-15, a ‘scaled down AR-15,’ should trouble parents, experts say
On Thursday, a group of Democratic senators pushed for more scrutiny, asking the Federal Trade Commission to launch an investigation into the company’s marketing practices.
“The law says you shouldn’t be marketing guns to kids,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said.
The FTC declined to comment.
The development and marketing of rifles like the JR-15 comes amid a decline in hunting as a hobby, which is how most gun owners were traditionally gifted their first weapon, experts told The Washington Post. These firearms, they say, open up a dangerous pathway for gun companies to place tactical and far more lethal weapons in the hands of children who are still psychologically and physiologically maturing at that age — all in the hopes of cultivating the next generation of American gun owners who will continue to fund the industry.
“This is a dramatic step forward in that not only have [Schmid Tool and WEE1 Tactical] manufactured an assault rifle for children, but they designed the advertising to appeal directly to kids,” Josh Sugarmann, the executive director of the Violence Policy Center, told The Post.
The companies described the JR-15 as “designed with the safety and functionality to assist adults wishing to supervise the introduction of hunting and shooting sports to the next generation of responsible owners,” and said retailers enthusiastically responded to the product after its launch.
It’s unclear how many of these rifles, if any, the companies have sold since its release. Regulations set by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives shield gun manufacturers from having to disclose the number of guns produced and sold across the country. Heidi Schaefer, a spokeswoman for the companies, did not respond to an emailed question about the number of JR-15s sold since its launch or to a question about a potential FTC probe.
The JR-15 made its first public appearance last January at the SHOT show in Las Vegas, what some would call the auto show of guns.
Attendees gathered around a corner booth with “JR-15” in big bold letters on a green banner to view the .22 caliber rifle displayed on its walls. Eric Schmid, the owner of Schmid Tool, described the rifle as a “scaled down AR-15” made out of polymer and weighing 2.2 pounds.
“It’s about a 20 percent reduction in size, so it fits the kids really well and that will give them the confidence to hold this thing the way they should have confidence holding this thing,” Schmid told an attendee. Schmid did not respond to a message from The Post.
The backlash after its launch was swift. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) called the JR-15 “vile” in a tweet.
Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the gun’s advertising was “sickening” while holding a poster of it for lawmakers on the House floor. “Here is an advertisement for a JR-15, designed to be a so-called ‘smaller, safer, lighter version’ of the horrific AR-15, which has been used to murder so many of their playmates and friends,” Pelosi said. “Look at these little skulls with ponytails.”
The company took down the JR-15’s website, deleted its initial news release and went into virtual hibernation. Not much was said about the rifle until it re-emerged at this year’s SHOT show in Las Vegas with a muted website, marketing campaign and booth, just days after police say a 6-year-old student pulled out his mother’s pistol and shot his teacher at a Virginia elementary school. A gun that was once among the most scanned products of the 2022 SHOT show was not mentioned in this year’s conference website.
The rebranding of its marketing campaign was a product of customer feedback, Schaefer, the companies’ spokeswoman, told The Post in an email.
“We listened to their input and over the last year have made it clearer in our marketing materials that our product is a training rifle, which have been available for decades,” she said.
With less hunting, the gun industry now markets sports rifles to American families interested in bonding while shooting at ranges and competitions, said Daniel Webster, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where he leads the Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy.
Even if the companies have toned down their advertising of the weapon, Webster worries about the long-term effects of giving children a rifle like the JR-15.
“What [these guns] mean quite honestly is far more than here’s some family hobby kind of thing,” Webster said. “What they mean is power — the power to kill. You give out a highly lethal weapon that is very easy for them to shoot … It could set the stage for bad outcomes.”
Gun violence is the leading cause of death for young children and teenagers in the United States. In 2020, firearms killed more children and teens than car accidents for the first time, a Post analysis revealed.
As the companies attempt to sell the JR-15, gun-control groups are pursuing legal action against major gun manufacturers.
Nick Suplina, senior vice president of law and policy for Everytown for Gun Safety, called the JR-15 a “disgusting” example of how the gun industry continues to market to kids instead of making weapons safer.
Others like Ryan Busse, a former firearms executive and now a senior adviser to the gun-control group founded by former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, doesn’t see an issue with children and teens owning rifles for sporting events. Busse said his dad had a rifle when he was a kid, he had one as a kid too and now his children shoot with him.
The issue, Busse told The Post, has to do with what type of rifle children are taught to shoot.
“One should be very worried that they are taught to do this with a tactical, offensive weapon of war [that is] scaled down,” Busse said. “Lots of other rifles can be purchased and be effective training tools for kids. Why this one? Because it has the dangerous right-wing politics wrapped around it.”
He would not buy a JR-15 for his kids, Busse said. “I don’t need a high-capacity weapon of war to shoot targets and hunt with my boys.”
John Woodrow Cox contributed to this report.
Tiny robots made of “galinstan” can run faster than a (scaled down) cheetah
Mao et. al.
Scientists at Johannes Kepler University (JKU) have created steerable soft robots that are capable of running, swimming, and jumping at high speeds. During testing, the robots achieved a speed of 70 BL/s (body lengths per second). These results are striking because even a cheetah (the fastest land animal on Earth) can only run up to 23 BL/s. But don’t expect absolute speed records, as the robots have millimeter-scale bodies—although these tiny machines are probably the fastest soft robots on the planet.
Soft robots are different from the conventional robots you see in factories, restaurants, and science exhibitions. They are constructed using flexible materials like polymers and shape-memory alloys (these alloys change their form with a change in temperature). Soft materials allow the robots to function in a similar way to that of a living organism (or a living tissue). By contrast, conventional robots are made from rigid materials like plastic, aluminum, and metal.
For a long time, scientists have been trying to create soft robots fast enough to work in extreme environments where no other machines would function. Such robots could play an important role in the medical field. For instance, ultrafast robots might replace invasive methods like a colonoscopy. Doctors could use fast soft robots to check for any anomalies in body organs (like the stomach) that are difficult to examine with conventional diagnostic robots.
Building ultrafast robots
The ultrafast robots are made using a liquid metal alloy called galinstan. It is composed of tin (Sn), gallium (Ga), and indium (In). Galinstan is not commonly used to create soft robots; they are mostly made from silicone-based elastomers. When asked about the reason behind this, the first author of the study and soft matter physicist at JKU, Dr. Guoyong Mao, told Ars Technica, “The most important property of this material is that it is liquid-like at room temperature, whilst also having high conductivity, making it useful for building soft and deformable coils.”
The researchers employed liquid metal 3D-printing technology to form the galinstan coils. These 3D-printed coils were then embedded in elastomeric shells that hold them together with an actuator that controls their state. This produces a coil-shaped soft electromagnetic robot (SEMR) capable of delivering fast actuation and propulsion. The researchers further equip the robots with L-shaped or sawtooth-shaped feet based on the substrates they’ll be moving across.
The SEMRs are powered using lithium-polymer batteries, and their ultrafast motion is driven by electromagnetic actuators (components that turn electrical energy into mechanical energy). The actuators are magnetically responsive components and therefore, the fast-moving robots can be easily controlled using a static magnetic field. During the tests, the tethered robots could move at 35 BL/s on a plane and 70 BL/s on a folded 3D surface. Moreover, they swam at 4.8 BL/s when tested in water. “We think this is a new and promising technology in the field of robotics that has great potential in the future. We weren’t able to find any similar technology, utilizing a soft functional material, that can do so many tasks at such a high speed,” said Mao.
Future of ultrafast soft robots
The researchers also conducted speed tests with prototype untethered soft robots and achieved a swimming speed of 1.8 body lengths per second (BL/s) and a maximum running speed of 2.1 BL/s. The researchers are now planning to improve the efficiency and performance of the untethered robots.
Mao and his team also say that developing more millimeter-scale SERMs using liquid 3D printing could pave the way for bigger, ultrafast robots in the future.
There exist various kinds of soft robots; some could help us remove plastic waste from the oceans, and others could allow us to study the hot lunar and Martian deserts. Speed is a big limiting factor for all such soft machines. The technology behind the ultrafast SEMRs has the potential to tackle that limit.
Nature Communications, 2022. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-32123-4 (About DOIs)
Rupendra Brahambhatt is an experienced journalist and filmmaker. He covers science and culture news, and for the last five years, he has been actively working with some of the most innovative news agencies, magazines, and media brands operating in different parts of the globe.
Opinion | Monkeypox testing and vaccines need to be scaled up
The monkeypox outbreak is spreading with alarming speed. Ideally, it should have been nipped in the bud when the first cases appeared in May and June outside West and Central Africa, where monkeypox has been endemic for decades. Now the caseload has expanded to more than 11,000, including 1,470 in the United States, and is expected to increase in the weeks ahead. The lessons of the coronavirus pandemic should be taken to heart and should result in a more rapid response.
While monkeypox has sometimes caused serious illness in humans, the virus is not as transmissible or deadly as the coronavirus. Monkeypox generally transmits through close contact with lesions and skin, or with objects that have been in contact with an infected person, such as sheets or towels. Most reported cases so far have involved men who have reported recent sex with one or multiple male partners, although not exclusively, according to the World Health Organization. This suggests “no signal of sustained transmission beyond these networks for now,” the agency says. But that must not lead to complacency. There is a danger the disease could become entrenched in this community, or that it could expand into other populations.
All efforts must be made to fight the virus where it is. This is not a gay disease but a disease circulating in the gay community, a vital but difficult distinction confronting public health officials. The HIV/AIDS pandemic showed the disastrous impact of stigmatization, which dissuaded people from obtaining services. Public health officials must be careful to avoid discrimination and stigma while aggressively monitoring for the disease. Waiting for patients to come into health clinics is not sufficient. Public health agencies should partner with LGBTQ and AIDS organizations to bring testing and tracing into the community. A recent account in The Post found that early U.S. testing efforts seriously lagged, although the number of tests now appears to be ramping up. A limitation is that current tests don’t catch initial symptoms, but only check lesions, which appear after an incubation period of roughly one to two weeks.
Another concerning problem is a shortage of vaccine. Two are licensed by the Food and Drug Administration. Both were created to fight smallpox but protect against monkeypox as well. One of them, the two-dose Jynneos, developed by Bavarian Nordic, a small Danish firm, produces fewer side effects, is easier to administer and can be given to more people. But the factory to produce it has been shut down since last year, and may only resume operations this summer. A limited supply of the vaccine exists in the U.S. national stockpile and in Europe. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Friday that priority U.S. distribution at this time will be aimed at areas with the most high-risk patients. Still, existing supplies are not sufficient to keep up with demand; a further scaling up will be needed as soon as possible. The second vaccine, ACAM2000, carries a greater risk of serious side effects.
Monkeypox does not threaten everyone as covid-19 did. That is not much comfort. We are witnessing a serious outbreak that demands an emergency response before it does still more damage.
The Post’s View | About the Editorial Board
Editorials represent the views of The Washington Post as an institution, as determined through debate among members of the Editorial Board, based in the Opinions section and separate from the newsroom.
Members of the Editorial Board and areas of focus: Deputy Editorial Page Editor Karen Tumulty; Deputy Editorial Page Editor Ruth Marcus; Associate Editorial Page Editor Jo-Ann Armao (education, D.C. affairs); Jonathan Capehart (national politics); Lee Hockstader (immigration; issues affecting Virginia and Maryland); David E. Hoffman (global public health); Charles Lane (foreign affairs, national security, international economics); Heather Long (economics); Molly Roberts (technology and society); and Stephen Stromberg (elections, the White House, Congress, legal affairs, energy, the environment, health care).
Person shot outside rapper DaBaby’s Troutman home scaled fence to get on property, police say – WSOC TV
TROUTMAN, N.C. — A person was shot on a football field outside rapper DaBaby’s Troutman home Wednesday night, according to police.
The Charlotte rapper, whose real name is Jonathan Kirk, was home at the time of the shooting, Troutman police said. A second person was also at the house.
[ READ MORE: Charges dropped against man connected to deadly shooting inside Huntersville Walmart ]
According to authorities, a third person on the property was shot on the football field outside DaBaby’s mansion. The victim’s identity has not been released, but they are being treated at a Charlotte hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Channel 9′s Dave Faherty learned the person shot was not a guest or a resident of the area. Police believe the person scaled a fence to get on the property.
Officers have not said who shot the person or if any charges will be filed. Police said they did seize a gun from the home.
Breaking Troutman- channel 9 has confirmed rapper DaBaby was at home last night when someone was shot on his property. Today we could see extra security and no trespassing signs. The latest on the investigation and the gun that was seized today on channel 9 eyewitness news. pic.twitter.com/Z3pckHPCvq
— Dave Faherty (@FahertyWSOC9) April 14, 2022
There are several no trespassing signs around the property, according to investigators.
“There’s a significantly tall concrete wall surrounded by, on the other side, a high chain link fence,” Chief Josh Watson said. “No, it’s like any other property owner, he’s entitled to his rights to secure their property and make sure nobody comes in.”
Channel 9 Skyzoom flew over the mansion Thursday morning, and security could be seen around the home, including a security car parked in the driveway for hours.
The home is located on more than 8.5 acres of land, and the property is valued at nearly $2.3 million.
“That much property being in Troutman, you just got to be a fool to touch DaBaby. You just got to be,” Troutman resident Anthony McCullah said.
>> Faherty is following the latest developments and will have updates on Eyewitness News at 5 p.m.
This is an ongoing investigation. Return to this story for updates.
(WATCH BELOW: Police: DaniLeigh, mother of DaBaby’s child, facing assault charges)
©2022 Cox Media Group
U.S. rings in New Year with Covid surge, scaled back celebrations and travel woes
As the United States prepared to ring in 2022, the nation has set yet another record for daily coronavirus cases, New Year’s Eve celebrations were scaled back and travel plans were disrupted because of the pandemic.
The U.S. marked a record 584,545 new coronavirus cases Thursday in a week when the country broke new case records for three days straight, according to an NBC News data analysis. On Thursday, the 7-day rolling average of new daily coronavirus cases was a record 342,768, the third day in a row of a record seven-day average.
Before this week, the highest 7-day average was Jan. 11, 2021 at 257,583.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the omicron variant accounted for 58.6 percent of all Covid cases in the country in the week ending Dec. 25, while the delta variant accounted for 41.1 percent of cases.
By Friday afternoon, there were more than 1,400 flight cancellations within, into or out of the United States with more than 2,880 cancellations worldwide, according to the tracking website FlightAware. That compared with about 1,400 U.S. cancellations for all of Thursday, The Associated Press reported, adding total U.S. cancellations since Christmas Eve have totaled above 9,000.
Thousands of flights have been canceled amid ongoing holiday travel chaos, with airlines blaming the spread of the omicron variant and adverse weather conditions for the disruptions.
New York City, where there are a record number of Covid cases amid the nationwide surge, will welcome 2022 with a scaled-back celebration in Times Square after revelers were banned last year.
“We want to show that we’re moving forward, and we want to show the world that New York City is fighting our way through this,” Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose last day in office is Friday, said Thursday on the “TODAY” Show. The mayor cited the city’s high vaccination rate as a reason a restricted number of revelers in masks could witness the celebration this year.
The city has capped attendance at 15,000, a far cry from the tens of thousands in the years before the pandemic that would mark the New Year in Times Square to watch the ball drop.
Meanwhile, officials in Atlanta canceled the New Year’s Eve Peach Drop for a third year in a row.
“In consultation with public health officials, we have made the very difficult decision to cancel the Peach Drop,” Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said in a statement this week. “As positive Covid-19 cases rise, I encourage everyone to be safe, get vaccinated and follow CDC guidelines.”
And San Francisco canceled this year’s New Year’s Eve fireworks show because of the wave of cases.
“While we are all understandably eager to ring in a new year with San Francisco’s customary New Year’s Eve fireworks show, we must remain vigilant in doing all we can to stop the spread of the COVID-19 Omicron variant,” Mayor London Breed said in a statement this week. “By canceling the New Year’s Eve fireworks show we are reducing everyone’s exposure to Covid-19, while ensuring continuity of citywide public safety operations.
Kardashian Jenner Christmas Eve Party Scaled Back Because of COVID
The annual Kardashian/Jenner Christmas Eve party will be scaled way back for the second year in a row thanks to COVID-19 … but that doesn’t mean the fam won’t be able to do a little celebrating themselves.
Sources with direct knowledge tell us … Kris and the family made the decision to hold off on the elaborate bash the family has become known for over the years due to the alarming rise of COVID cases in the area, and all over the country for that matter.
Our sources say Kris will still get her daughters and grandkids together on Christmas Eve, but that’s it … nothing over the top.
2018
Parties in the past have seen huge celeb guests, like J Lo, Paris Hilton, Dave Chappelle, Chrissy Teigen, Toni Braxton, Babyface, Kanye (of course) and even performances by John Legend and Sia.
The big question, of course, is if Kim‘s new dude, Pete Davidson, will spend part of the Christmas holiday with her. We’re told Pete’s headed back to NYC to spend time with immediate family. But he’s been bouncing back and forth between coasts, so ya never know.
TMZ broke the story, Kim and Pete were spotted grabbing breakfast at the Bev Hills Hotel earlier in the week before Pete cruised around the city in Kim’s tricked-out Rolls.
Kanye’s still got a Christmas stocking at the home he and Kim once shared — where she lives with the kids and without him — but it’s a safe bet they’ll all spend Christmas Day together as a family.
Christmas Eve Flights Canceled and Times Square Celebration Scaled Back Amid Omicron
New York City will scale back the Times Square New Year’s Eve celebration as the Omicron variant spreads, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Thursday, the same day New York state reported its highest recorded daily coronavirus case total ever.
The mayor added that officials were still monitoring the situation and could take additional precautions in the coming days, if needed.
As of now, attendees will be required to show proof of full vaccination and wear masks. Fewer people — 15,000, instead of the usual 58,000 — will be allowed in designated viewing areas, to make social distancing more possible. Visitors will not be allowed in until about 3 p.m., later than past years.
The number of cases in the city reported over the past week is the highest since the start of the pandemic, though testing was severely limited in its early days.
Nearly 39,000 new cases were reported statewide on Thursday, about 10,000 more than on Wednesday, with nearly 23,000 of them in New York City. More than 60 percent of cases reported by New York State to the genetic tracking database GISAID in the last two weeks were of the Omicron variant, according to the governor’s office.
The city’s seven-day average test positivity rate was 11 percent as of Tuesday, and there were hourslong waits for tests at many sites around the city.
Also, Thursday the band Phish, which regularly plays New Year’s Eve concerts at Madison Square Garden, postponed its upcoming run of shows, including a three-set performance originally planned for New Year’s Eve.
A short while before making the Times Square announcement, at an unrelated event in Park Slope, Mr. de Blasio insisted that the rise in virus cases would subside soon and that shutdowns were not necessary. He said the city’s strategy of incentivizing vaccines and boosters and implementing strict vaccine mandates would suffice.
“It’s going to be a tough few weeks, but it will only be a few weeks,” he said, adding, “We are not falling back. We’re going to fight our way through this.”
Health experts were divided about the New Year’s Eve decision. Denis Nash, a professor of epidemiology at the CUNY School of Public Health, said that he did not think it was a good idea to hold the event.
“We’re in the middle of a pandemic with a big surge of a new variant whose risk we’re still really understanding, and I don’t think we want to let it amplify,” he said.
He added that he was concerned that people visiting New York from other states and countries could pick up the variant and bring it home with them.
“Since New York is a global city and connected to everywhere, we have to be thinking about those places too,” Dr. Nash said.
But Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, said that he was “really pleased” that the mayor chose not to cancel, noting the vaccine mandate and adding that the virus generally does not transmit efficiently outdoors.
“The whole country watches this, so I think psychologically it’s very important for the country to have a sense that we can do these things again and that we can do them safely,” Dr. Jha said.
The city said Thursday that spectators over 5 years old must have received both doses, if applicable, of an F.D.A. or World Health Organization-approved vaccine at least 14 days before Dec. 31.
The ball drop will take place on Mr. de Blasio’s last day in office, marking the end of his eight-year tenure. Mayor-elect Eric Adams said in a statement on Thursday that Mr. de Blasio “made the right move to take precautionary measures as we learn to live with Covid and fight the Omicron variant.”
Tom Harris, president of the Times Square Alliance, said the 15,000 number referred specifically to people who would be allowed into viewing pens. The pens will be reduced in number and will only be filled to about 25 percent capacity, he said.
A greater number of people generally watch the ball drop from the surrounding area, including from hotels, restaurants and office buildings.
“We’re really excited about welcoming revelers back,” he said. “Safety is our priority and we feel an outdoor event with fully vaccinated, masked people in a less dense environment is about as safe as we could get.”
Grace Ashford contributed reporting.
‘Clear skies’ for Bitcoin price discovery if giant $70K BTC sell-wall is scaled
Bitcoin (BTC) is clinging to $68,000 on Nov. 9 after traders declared it “clear for take-off” and ready to begin further price discovery.
Bitcoin approaches “Great Wall of Finex”
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView has tracked a second night of impressive gains in a row for BTC/USD.
The pair spent most of Sunday at near $62,000, but is now up a total of 11.4% in just over two days — including a new all-time high of $68,564 on Bitstamp.
“BTC highest weekly close ever after consolidation. We are clear for take-off,” popular trader Pentoshi forecast as the week began.
Filbfilb, co-founder and analyst at trading platform Decentrader, also built on existing bullish convictions, noting that Bitcoin was now tackling what he called the “Great Wall of Finex” — a large sell wall on exchange Bitfinex around $70,000 contrasting recent heavy whale accumulation.
Break this, and further upside potential increases considerably. End-of-month predictions of up to $98,000, just days ago pronounced all but impossible to achieve, are at the same time coming back to the table.
The #bitcoin price has consecutively set:
– All-time high monthly close ✅
– All-time high weekly close ✅
– All-time high daily close ✅Skies are clear for a new round of price discovery pic.twitter.com/5lqywzbnwi
— Dilution-proof (@dilutionproof) November 9, 2021
2021, while closely tracking behavior seen in both the 2013 and 2017 bull markets, remains comparatively modest when compared to the velocity of gains that followed Bitcoin’s two previous block subsidy halvings.
Investors “trying to get orders in” for more BTC
Institutional demand for Bitcoin, even at all-time highs, shows no signs of abating ahead of a possible spot price exchange-traded fund (ETF) launching in the United States.
Related: Ethereum back in price discovery as ETH approaches $5K
“$70k on Bitcoin coming up,” SkyBridge Capital CEO Anthony Scaramucci added Tuesday, hinting that he was still a buyer in the market.
“Large institutional demand has finally arrived. Trying to get in orders before 2022.”
Amid an inflationary environment, Bitcoin’s appeal over gold as hedge received a boost overnight, its market cap hitting 10.7% of gold’s.
On the sustainability of the current uptick, funding rates across exchanges are high but not unsustainable at the time of writing, with those on Binance actually lower than Monday.
