Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/gun-policy/)
Parents whose children were killed in the Robb Elementary School massacre made sobbing pleads for stricter gun laws before legislators early Wednesday on languishing proposals that appeared headed to stall in the face of a Republican majority.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A first-grade Virginia teacher who was shot and seriously wounded by her 6-year-old student filed a lawsuit Monday seeking $40 million in damages from school officials, accusing them of gross negligence for allegedly ignoring multiple warnings on the day of the shooting that the boy had a gun and was in a "violent mood."
The backstories of Sakran and Pep couldn’t be more different. But their survivor stories drive their activism about the public health threat that gun violence poses and prove what some of the most alarming news headlines increasingly suggest: Almost anybody, almost anywhere, is a potential victim of gun violence.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell last year launched the Office of Gun Violence Prevention. That office funds and evaluates efforts to especially reduce gun violence among youth — 15- through 24-year-olds nationwide accounted for most of a prior decades’ surge in firearm-driven homicides — and has partnered in an effort largely lead by public health professionals who are tackling the problem as more than merely an issue of crime and punishment.
Ghost guns — so-called because they are nearly impossible to trace — are sold in parts and assembled by the buyer. Until recently, they were not classified as firearms, meaning there were no background checks and dealers didn’t have to be federally-licensed.
That has opened the door for traffickers, teens and people with felony records to get ghost guns.