Today’s comic by Ruben Bolling is Mass shooting? It's Congress-Man to the rescue!
• AR-15 inventor’s adult children speak out:
"Our father, Eugene Stoner, designed the AR-15 and subsequent M-16 as a military weapon to give our soldiers an advantage over the AK-47," the Stoner family told NBC News late Wednesday. "He died long before any mass shootings occurred. But, we do think he would have been horrified and sickened as anyone, if not more by these events." [...]
...their comments add unprecedented context to their father's creation, shedding new light on his intentions and adding firepower to the effort to ban weapons like the AR-15. The comments could also bolster a groundbreaking new lawsuit, which argues that the weapon is a tool of war — never intended for civilians.
• Alabamans fight chicken-processing plant that dumps slaughter waste in open pit:
As you might imagine, it's a rather fragrant setup. [Weld reporter Cody] Owens describes the odor as a "bitter taste of rot," and reports it made him vomit. His long tale of nearby residents' five-year-long, so-far futile effort to halt the practice is well worth the read.
• Labor Department reports 67th consecutive week of initial unemployment claims below 300,000: That’s the longest such stretch since 1973.
• House Democrats target trophy hunting nearly a year after Cecil, the lion in Zimbabwe:
In a new report, Missing the Mark, the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Natural Resources charges that Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Namibia and South Africa are providing U.S. officials with little evidence that taxes and fees raised from trophy hunts targeting lions, leopards, elephants and rhinoceroses provide conservation benefits and have an overall net-positive impact on imperiled species.
“You can’t make the assumption that these countries are using the funds for conservation. You have to have the proof,” said Matt Strickland, a member of the committee’s Democratic staff. “U.S. hunters are responsible for taking a lot of animal trophies from Africa and we want to make sure the Fish and Wildlife Service is doing its job in permitting trophy imports and Americans aren’t contributing to the decline of certain species.”
American hunters wishing to import the heads, horns, pelts or any other parts of animals they have killed overseas must request a permit from the Fish and Wildlife Service.
• Australia, which banned semi-automatics in 1996, looks at background checks differently than U.S.:
“In America, the background check consists of, usually, looking at a computer to see if someone has a criminal conviction. That’s not a background check,” Rebecca Peters of the International Action Network on Small Arms told us on the “Democracy Now!” news hour. “In New York City, if you want to apply to rent an apartment, if you want to apply to go to university, there’s a background check. The authorities talk to people who know you. They ask their opinion of you. And similarly, in Australia and most other developed countries, a background check consists of asking for references—your family doctor, talking to your spouse or your previous spouse, asking, ‘Is there any concern?’”
• Check out the new leader of Chicago’s school principals: He’s no friend of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his education policies.