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China: Top court backs bullied boy's right to self-defense
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China's Supreme People's Court has highlighted its strong stance on protecting children, including a landmark ruling recognizing a bullied student's knife attack as justifiable defense.
The court released details on Thursday of five influential cases involving minors, including an incident in Hunan province in May 2019 in which a 14-year-old student surnamed Jiang injured three classmates with a knife.
After an investigation, a court in Jishou, Hunan, found that 15 students had bullied Jiang by beating him, and he carried the knife to the washroom because he had been attacked earlier that day. |
OH: 'Textbook self defense': Thomas Brown acquitted by jurors in 20 minutes on day 8 of trial
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Jurors needed only 20 minutes Thursday morning to clear Thomas Brown's name.
A jury of 12 Crawford County residents unanimously found Brown not guilty on all charges he had faced, which included felony murder and reckless homicide in the death of Sean Cassaro.
The verdict proved that Brown had acted in self defense after being attacked by Cassaro in the early morning of Jan. 22, 2023.
"This is textbook self defense," James Mayer III, defense attorney, said after his client's acquittal. "The state didn't even prove that Tom Brown killed him. Let me be clear: Tom Brown should never have been charged." |
TX: The death toll from mass shootings grows while pleas for gun reforms in Texas are not heard
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Parents of the Uvalde school shooting victims and gun reform advocates tried and failed to get the Legislature to raise the age to buy assault weapons. They say the fight isn’t over yet — but they acknowledge that getting any gun reform legislation passed is an uphill battle.
Since Uvalde, Texas has had several more mass shootings. There were 65 mass shootings in Texas in 2023 according to the Gun Violence Archive, which considers any single incident where four or more people were shot or killed, not including the shooter, a mass shooting. |
NY: Supreme Court revives NRA’s lawsuit alleging that New York violated its First Amendment rights
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The National Rifle Association scored a major victory at the Supreme Court Thursday, as the justices unanimously ruled that appeals judges were too quick to dismiss the NRA’s claims that New York officials violated its First Amendment rights by targeting its insurance business.
The decision reinstated a lawsuit the NRA filed in 2018 against New York state’s top financial services regulator, Maria Vullo, after she announced a plan to pressure banks and insurance companies to stop doing business with the gun-rights organization. |
Introducing "Sufficiently Analogous": A New Podcast Analyzing Second Amendment Court Cases
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In recent years, the Second Amendment has been the subject of intense debate and interpretation. Legal battles, court cases, and policy changes are reshaping the landscape of gun rights and regulations in the United States that affect our every-day lives. To dissect these complex issues, the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions is proud to announce its new podcast, "Sufficiently Analogous," co-hosted by the Center's law and policy director, Kelly Roskam, JD, alongside law and policy advisors Tim Carey, JD and Kari Still, JD. |
TX: Houston Woman Shoots Ex-Husband in Self-Defense During Parking Garage Confrontation
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A domestic dispute escalated into a shooting at a Houston apartment complex, resulting in the arrest and charging of 39-year-old Ryan Ameer Shah. The incident occurred in the garage parking lot of the complex located at 2525 South Voss Road around 8:45 a.m. on Thursday.
Shah, who is currently hospitalized with a gunshot wound, faces charges of assault on a family member with a prior conviction, filed in the 262nd State District Court. Details regarding his booking photo are unavailable as he remains under medical care. |
TN: Tennessee governor signs bill blocking local enforcement of red flag laws
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Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed legislation Tuesday that blocks cities from enforcing red flag laws.
Representative Jody Barrett, R-Dickson, introduced House Bill 2035 during this year's legislative session. The state lawmaker says the legislation is in response to the federal government’s efforts to 'impose gun control through local governments.'
The new law also prohibits any county or municipal government from accepting a grant for the purpose of implementing a red flag ordinance.
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Trump Loses Gun Rights as Jury Finds Him Guilty of 34 Felonies
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A jury convicted former president and current Republican nominee Donald J. Trump of 34 felonies on Thursday, which will bar him from possessing firearms.
While the convictions are for felonies under New York law, they trigger the federal ban on convicts owning guns. That means authorities will likely require Trump to turn over any firearms in his possession.
“What is commonly referred to as the felon-in-possession ban will apply to Trump because these New York crimes are punishable by more than one year in prison,” Gabriel Malor, a federal appellate lawyer and legal commentator, told The Reload. |
Mexico’s Presidential Election Void Of Policy Change, Lawsuits Infringe on 2nd Amendment
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Mexico’s voters will head to the polls on June 2nd, 2024, to choose who will succeed Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
He’s the controversial figure who adopted a “hugs, not bullets” approach to handling narco-terrorist cartels that have ravaged his country. He’s also the one who signed off on the controversial $10 billion lawsuit against firearm manufacturers that’s being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, after being revived by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, as well as a similar lawsuit against several retailers in federal court in Arizona. |
Hope For Gun Owners? Majority Of Dems Want Biden Off The Ticket
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Rasmussen recently asked 1,113 likely voters the question: “Would you approve or disapprove of Democrats finding another candidate to replace Joe Biden before the election in November?” More than half—54% to be exact—of Democrats responding answered yes.
The high positive response likely reflects not only Democrats’ dissatisfaction with the president’s policies, but also their opinion that Biden is largely unelectable in this fall’s presidential election against former President Donald Trump. |
PA: York City's prohibition on 'ghost guns' will go into effect in June
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It soon will be illegal — unless a person has a federal firearms license — to have a "ghost gun" in the City of York.
Ghost guns are made with three-dimensional printers or from kits, and they do not have serial numbers, making them untraceable, according to gun prevention group Brady.
York City Council unanimously approved legislation on May 21 that places restrictions on the possession, use, transfer or manufacture of ghost guns. Individuals must have a federal firearms license.
Mayor Michael Helfrich signed it the same day.
The law will take effect on June 10. |
NC: Guns, social media are fueling teen crime in Charlotte. Could more adult mentors help?
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How can Charlotte reduce youth crime? That's the question the Charlotte leaders are wrestling with amid a spike in teenagers getting into fights, stealing cars and using guns to settle social media beefs.
To find out, WFAE took a trip to parking lot behind a Concord strip mall on a recent Saturday morning, where about two dozen kids were locked in a fierce game of dodgeball.
They raced toward each other and hurled rubber balls, ducking, weaving and sometimes catching their opponents' lobs. |
IL: Gen Z is spreading the word on guns: 'They're the problem, not the solution'
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After my experience, I understood why many young people consider gun ownership. Many people, including the majority of teens, believe owning a gun will protect them. But the evidence from over half of the city’s mass shootings is clear: More guns lead to more gun violence. In Illinois, soaring firearm sales during the pandemic coincided with twice as many children killed or injured by guns and a spike in citywide domestic homicides.
These tragedies aren’t limited to Chicago. Nationwide, suicide rates are four times higher for kids living in gun-owning homes, and children are statistically more likely to die from a gun than from a car crash. |
VT: Vermont Bans Guns At Polling Places
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Vermont Gov. Phil Scott (R) allowed a bill banning people from bringing guns into or near polling places to become law on Tuesday.
The bill was passed by the state’s Democratic-controlled House and Senate and sent to the governor on May 22, and he had five days to either sign or veto the law and since he did neither, the bill was enacted without his signature. |
WI: Guns allowed while hard water bottles, tennis balls banned in RNC security footprint
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Those looking to cross into the area immediately outside the Republican National Convention perimeter will likely have to leave behind non-plastic containers, tennis balls and other typically innocuous items.
What won't be prohibited: Guns.
"I find that totally absurd," said Ald. Robert Bauman, whose district includes downtown, where the convention will take place. "Literally, you can't have tennis balls, but you can have an AR-15 assault rifle."
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NY: Sotomayor hands NRA victory in Supreme Court free speech case
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The Supreme Court unanimously handed the National Rifle Association a win Thursday in the gun rights group’s effort to revive a 2018 First Amendment lawsuit accusing a New York official of causing damage to the NRA’s relationships with banks and insurers.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a unanimous opinion that found the NRA “plausibly alleged” that Maria Vullo, a former superintendent of New York‘s Department of Financial Services, illegally retaliated against the pro-Second Amendment group after the Parkland, Florida, high school mass shooting that left 17 people dead. |
The NRA's Unanimous Supreme Court Victory Is Good for Free Speech—No Matter How You Feel About Guns
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What do the National Rifle Association (NRA), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and nine U.S. Supreme Court justices from five presidential administrations all have in common? That list is likely relatively small. But at least one area of overlap was made evident Thursday when the Court published a unanimous ruling that a New York government official allegedly violated the First Amendment by pressuring insurers and banks to sever business ties with the NRA, which the ACLU is representing.
The decision resuscitates the gun advocacy group's lawsuit against Maria Vullo, the former head of New York's Department of Financial Services (DFS). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit had previously ruled in her favor. |
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| "Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy ... censorship. When any government, or any church, for that matter, undertakes to say to it's subjects, 'This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,' the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him." --Robert A. Heinlein, "Revolt in 2100" (Pg. 68-69, Baen Books paperback edition, 1999 printing) |
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