Marisa Taylor:
While authorities search for details in the shooting deaths of two Brooklyn police officers at the hands of Ismaaiyl Brinsley, just hours after he shot his ex-girlfriend in the stomach, they know that he did not initially purchase the murder weapon.
Police say Brinsley used a semiautomatic Taurus handgun, bought in 1996 at a pawn shop in Atlanta by someone else, to kill the two officers before turning the gun on himself.
Authorities don’t yet know how the gun got into Brinsley’s hands. But federal law prohibits gun sales to felons. He would have been barred from legally purchasing a firearm, since he was convicted of felonies related to shoplifting in Ohio and firing a stolen gun in Georgia; he was also arrested more than a dozen times, though mostly for petty crimes, according to The New York Times.
But that Brinsley did not buy the murder weapon directly from a shop is not surprising, say criminologists.
Through something known as the private sale loophole, he could have purchased the firearm in the private market at a gun show or out of someone’s trunk. Private dealers don’t have to conduct background checks on prospective buyers, as licensed firearms dealers are required by federal law. Additionally, guns get stolen, are passed from person to person or are bought by straw purchasers, those who buy on behalf of others.
Veronique Greenwood:
My Great-Great-Aunt Discovered Francium. And It Killed Her.
Frank Schaeffer:
My horrible right-wing past: Confessions of a one-time religious right icon
I was a religious fanatic appealing to political leaders. Today, the fanatics are the political leaders
More politics and policy below the fold.
Dave Weigel:
Recall why The Interview was pulled in the first place. Guardians of Peace, the hackers taking credit for an ongoing data theft against Sony, promised a "bitter fate" for anyone who saw the movie in theaters. "Remember the 11th of September 2001," they wrote. "We recommend you to keep yourself distant from the places at that time." You can debate how much of the cancellation was intended to stop further leaks and how much was really a reaction to "terror threats," but at the time, theater chains cited the fear of lawsuits if anything happened during the screenings.
The incident-free Interview screenings should be remembered alongside two other overhyped 2014 fears: the Ebola panic and the reaction to ISIS. The latter stories were handled even worse, because they happened during an election, and because some candidates created a feedback loop of childish speculation that Ebola could spread by sneezes, or that virus-laden ISIS terrorists could stalk across the Mexican border. All of these people were wrong, and thanks to the amnesiac nature of the news cycle, they might never have to answer for that. (Being wildly wrong on live TV during crises is a good way to secure a return invitation.)
Will Leitch:
In 2012, actor Rob Schneider, famous for something or other, spoke to a California television station about AB 2109, a California bill that required parents to get a physician's approval to opt out of vaccinating their children (something no sentient physician would ever approve). I only came across this interview recently. It is amazing.
You can almost follow along with Schneider's browser history as he continues to ramble on; there's the mom message board, there's the InfoWars THINGS THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW thread, there's the blog of the doctor with the degree-by-mail who is the only one willing to tell parents the truth. You can tell Schneider spent all night preparing for this interview, jotting down the words he wanted to emphasize, "efficacy," "toxicity," "Nuremberg laws," "forced sterilization." He even ends with "people have to stand up and get educated. Know all the facts."
In this four-minute clip, I think you can encapsulate the last two years of American culture...
So here's my question: If 20 percent of the country can be so wrong on something so clearly incorrect (and harmful) as child vaccination, primarily because they can choose their evidence over your evidence ... what hope do any of us have? Because the rest of the world is helluva lot more complicated and confusing than whether or not to vaccinate your damn kid.
WaPo:
The Islamic State’s vaunted exercise in state-building appears to be crumbling as living conditions deteriorate across the territories under its control, exposing the shortcomings of a group that devotes most of its energies to fighting battles and enforcing strict rules.
Services are collapsing, prices are soaring, and medicines are scarce in towns and cities across the “caliphate” proclaimed in Iraq and Syria by the Islamic State, residents say, belying the group’s boasts that it is delivering a model form of governance for Muslims.
Slick Islamic State videos depicting functioning government offices and the distribution of aid do not match the reality of growing deprivation and disorganized, erratic leadership, the residents say. A trumpeted Islamic State currency has not materialized, nor have the passports the group promised. Schools barely function, doctors are few, and disease is on the rise.
In the Iraqi city of Mosul, the water has become undrinkable because supplies of chlorine have dried up, said a journalist living there, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his safety. Hepatitis is spreading, and flour is becoming scarce, he said. “Life in the city is nearly dead, and it is as though we are living in a giant prison,” he said.
Because ISIS is awesome and the US is losing and Kobane is going to fall and any minute... oh, wait. That's not how it's happening at all.
NY Times:
States dependent on oil and gas revenue are bracing for layoffs, slashing agency budgets and growing increasingly anxious about the ripple effect that falling oil prices may have on their local economies.
The concerns are cutting across traditional oil states like Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Alaska as well as those like North Dakota that are benefiting from the nation’s latest energy boom.
Red states. You know, the ones that need Medicaid expansion the most? Well, they're going to need it even more.