We begin today’s roundup with analysis on America’s gun violence by John Cassidy at The New Yorker:
Another day, another deadly shooting in the United States—this one in Des Moines, Iowa. On Monday afternoon, as the cable-news networks were busy reporting from Monterey Park, a majority-Asian city east of Los Angeles, where eleven people were shot and killed on Saturday night, they had to cut away for news of an attack at a charter school in downtown Des Moines, which left two students dead and another person seriously injured. Later in the day came news of a shooting in Half Moon Bay, a city in Northern California, which left seven dead. “Tragedy upon tragedy,” California Governor Gavin Newsom commented on Twitter.
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An important lesson of American mass shootings, including the most recent, is that each one is an individual incident, involving different circumstances, different motivations, different victims. We should always be careful to recognize this specificity, as well as the unimaginable losses suffered by the victims and their families. But we must never lose sight of the fact that all these tragedies take place in a culture that has facilitated the sale for profit of deadly weapons, making it relatively easy for people with deadly intentions to acquire one. Unless and until this environment changes, the carnage will continue.
Paul LeBlanc at CNN:
It’s bad however you look at it.
Firearm injuries are now the leading cause of death among people younger than 24 in the United States, according to a study published in the December 2022 edition of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
From 2015 through 2020, there were at least 2,070 unintentional shootings by children under 18 in the US, according to a report from Everytown. Those shootings resulted in 765 deaths and 1,366 injuries.
Regarding policy preferences, 68% of all 2022 voters support banning AR-15 style rifles. Similar to issue salience, there are significant differences based on race on this item. As reflected in the figure below, support for banning assault rifles is much higher among Black, Asian-American, and Latino voters. At 64% respectively, support for banning AR-15 style rifles nationwide is supported by a strong majority of both white and Native American voters as well.
Support for banning AR-15 style rifles varies by where voters live. Support is significantly higher in large urban areas, with 82% of voters who live in large cities expressing support for banning AR-15 rifles, compared to 70% of suburban residents and 59% of residents of small towns. Voters who live in rural areas are less likely to support banning AR-15 style rifles nationwide at 47% support.
Here’s Eugene Robinson’s take over at The Washington Post:
The gun, the gun, the gun, the gun. The common factor, always, is the gun.
There is one way the mass shooting Saturday in Monterey Park, Calif., could have been prevented — one way that all mass shootings and individual shootings and gun suicides can be prevented: Keep deadly firearms out of the hands of those who would use them to kill. [...] Mass killers have different profiles and different motives. Most are male. Many are young, few are old. By definition, virtually all are struggling with mental health issues of some kind; happy, well-adjusted people do not kill innocents at random.
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In all cases, though, the assailants have been able to obtain guns and ammunition — usually legally and with ease. According to the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey, there are 393 million firearms in the United States, which has a population of roughly 334 million. We are outnumbered by our instruments of death.
Switching topics in the roundup, in case you missed it:
Four members of the far-right Oath Keepers group were convicted of seditious conspiracy on Monday, for their role in trying to keep former President Donald Trump in power after his 2020 election loss.
The defendants — 52-year-old Joseph Hackett of Florida, 38-year-old Roberto Minuta of Texas, 45-year-old David Moershel of Florida, and 64-year-old Edward Vallejo of Arizona — were also convicted on two additional conspiracy charges and obstruction of an official proceeding. Minuta, Hackett, and Moerschel were found not guilty of lesser charges, including destruction of government property.
And, on a final note, some other news about a non-news station:
According to a letter sent by House Republicans last week, cable television carrier DirecTV is on the verge of dropping conservative network Newsmax this week—essentially repeating the platform’s decision last year to boot pro-Trump channel One America News from its lineup.
While one GOP congressman told a right-wing news outlet that Newsmax would be removed from DirecTV by Tuesday night, several network insiders told The Daily Beast that they were unaware of any imminent departure from the service.
A DirecTV representative, meanwhile, told The Daily Beast that the network is currently seeking to charge way more money than the provider thinks is in the best interests of its customers.
The congressional letter could be a way to apply political pressure on Newsmax’s behalf.