Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
A federal appeals court has upheld the “core provisions” of New York’s SAFE Act and a Connecticut gun control law, both passed following the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut and challenged in court by gun-rights activists on constitutional grounds. A three-judge panel from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on…
In February, the Guardian reported stories about the Holman Square, the Chicago Police Department’s off-the-books black-site, where (mostly black and brown) suspects are denied counsel while being brutalized into forced confessions. Now, Spencer Ackerman is back with news of the Guardian’s spectacular lawsuit against the Chicago PD, in which they are seeking transparency about Holman…
During the summer of 2014, as the Black Lives Matter movement flared amid a spate of questionable police killings, the little known hashtag #every28hours began appearing with increasing frequency on social media. The hashtag is shorthand for the statistic, drawn from a 2013 report by the black activist group Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, that an…
This week a 2-year-old in South Carolina found a gun in the back seat of the car he was riding in and accidentally shot his grandmother, who was sitting in the passenger seat. This type of thing happens from time to time: A little kid finds a gun, fires it, and hurts or kills himself…
The mass murder of nine people on a community college campus in Roseburg, Oregon last week was the 45th school shooting in 2015. And to illustrate how often stories of gun violence cycle through news broadcasts, Daily Show correspondent Jessica Williams revealed to new host Trevor Noah that she “pre-tapes” discussion of “these terrible, unending stories.” “I’m sick…
Police received a report of that a man with a gun had threatened another student, Officer Leeloni Palmiero said. No shots or injuries were immediately reported. The school, in a tweet posted shortly before 11 a.m. ET, said the college’s main campus was on lockdown because of “police activity.” “Police activity on campus. Main campus…
Stephen Colbert is exasperated with America’s unwillingness to do anything about itsvery unique gun problem. Breaking the comedic tone on his show on Friday, Colbert echoed what’s now a common theme in the discussion about guns: Why doesn’t anything change? Commenting specifically on the Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon, Colbert said: In the face of the…
In the hours between the shooting spree at Umpqua Community College and the moment news networks were able to name Chris Harper Mercer as the alleged gunman, crowds on social media clamored for a name to fill the informational void. 4chan gave them two, both of whom turned out to be alive, and neither of…
Over the course of the day we’ve had a handful of readers write in to ask or demand that we not report the name of the shooter, Chris Harper Mercer, in the Oregon school massacre. As the massacres continue, an increasing number of people think that we should expunge the names of the offenders both…
In his impassioned address in the wake of Thursday’s horrible shooting at an Oregon community college, President Obama issued a challenge to the media. “Have news organizations tally up the number of Americans who’ve been killed through terrorist attacks in the last decade and the number of Americans who’ve been killed by gun violence, and post those side by…