Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked efforts by Senate Democrats to pass an assault weapons ban and universal background checks legislation after the United States over the weekend broke the record for most mass shootings in a single year. Republican Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) objected to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) request for unanimous consent to…
A federal appeals court on Friday upheld Illinois' prohibition on high-power semiautomatic weapons, refusing to put a hold on the law adopted in response to the mass killing of seven people at a 2022 parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park. The majority recognized a difference between firearms for personal use and those the state law reserves for “trained professionals,” semiautomatic weapons, including the popular AR-15. “There is a long tradition, unchanged from the time when the Second Amendment was added to the Constitution, supporting a distinction between weapons and accessories designed for military or law-enforcement use and weapons designed for personal use,” Judge Diane Wood said in the opinion.
The last time I went to Las Vegas, the LED billboards on the strip had stopped advertising Cirque du Soleil and showgirls, and instead were displaying the phone numbers for trauma and suicide helplines. It was Thursday, October 5, 2017, four days after a man with an arsenal had opened fire from his hotel room window in the Mandalay Bay resort and casino onto the Route 91 Harvest Festival down below, while Jason Aldean was performing. From my room in the adjacent Delano, I could still see the cri