#Assault Weapon Ban

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NEW YORK (AP) — The National Rifle Association and its former longtime leader were found liable Friday in a lawsuit centered on the organization’s lavish spending.

The New York jury found that Wayne LaPierre, who was the NRA’s CEO for three decades, misspent millions of dollars of the group’s money on pricey perks, and it ordered him to repay the group $4,351,231. Jurors also found that the NRA omitted or misrepresented information in its tax filings and violated New York law by failing to adopt a whistleblower policy.

LaPierre, 74, sat stone-faced in the front row of the courtroom as the verdict was read aloud. The jury actually found him liable for $5.4 million, but it determined he’d already paid back a little over a million.

The verdict is a win for New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat who campaigned on investigating the NRA’s not-for-profit status. It is the latest blow to the powerful group, which in recent years has been beset by financial troubles and dwindling membership. LaPierre, its longtime face, announced his resignation on the eve of the trial.

NRA general counsel John Frazer and retired finance chief Wilson Phillips were also defendants in the case. Phillips was ordered to pay $2 million in damages to the NRA. Frazer, meanwhile, was found to have violated his duties, but was not ordered to pay any money.

The penalties paid by LaPierre and Phillips will go back to the NRA, which was portrayed in the case both as a defendant that lacked internal controls to prevent misspending and as a victim of that same misconduct.

James also wants the three men to be banned from serving in leadership positions at any charitable organizations that conduct business in New York. A judge will decide that question during the next phase of the state Supreme Court trial.

Another former NRA executive turned whistleblower, Joshua Powell, settled with the state last month, agreeing to testify at the trial, pay the NRA $100,000 and forgo further involvement with nonprofits.

James sued the NRA and its executives in 2020 under her authority to investigate not-for-profits registered in the state.

She originally sought to have the entire organization dissolved, but Manhattan Judge Joel M. Cohen ruled in 2022 that the allegations did not warrant a “corporate death penalty.”

The trial, which began last month, cast a spotlight on the leadership, organizational culture and finances of the powerful lobbying group, which was founded more than 150 years ago in New York City to promote rifle skills and grew into a political juggernaut that influenced federal law and presidential elections.

Before he stepped down, LaPierre, had led the NRA’s day-to-day operations since 1991, acting as its face and becoming one of the country’s most influential figures in shaping gun policy.

During the trial, state lawyers argued that he dodged financial disclosure requirements while treating the NRA as his personal piggy bank, liberally dipping into its coffers for African safaris and other questionable expenditures.

His lawyer cast the trial as a political witch hunt by James.

LaPierre billed the NRA more than $11 million for private jet flights and spent more than $500,000 on eight trips to the Bahamas over a three-year span, state lawyers said.

He also authorized $135 million in NRA contracts for a vendor whose owners showered him with free trips to the Bahamas, Greece, Dubai and India, as well as access to a 108-foot (33-meter) yacht.

LaPierre claimed he hadn’t realized the travel tickets, hotel stays, meals, yacht access and other luxury perks counted as gifts, and that the private jet flights were necessary for his safety.

But he conceded that he had wrongly expensed private flights for his family and accepted vacations from vendors doing business with the NRA without disclosing them.

Among those who testified at the trial was Oliver North, a one-time NRA president and former National Security Council military aide best known for his central role in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s. North, who resigned from the NRA in 2019, said he was pushed out after raising allegations of financial irregularities.

After reporting a $36 million deficit in 2018 fueled largely by misspending, the NRA cut back on longstanding programs that had been core to its mission, including training and education, recreational shooting and law enforcement initiatives. In 2021, it filed for bankruptcy and sought to incorporate in Texas instead of New York, but a judge rejected the move, saying it was an attempt to duck James’ lawsuit.

Despite its recent woes, the NRA remains a political force. Republican presidential hopefuls flocked to its annual convention last year and former President Donald Trump spoke at an NRA event earlier this month — his eighth speech to the association, it said.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Despite the lack of sufficient support in Congress to pass a new assault weapons ban, President Joe Biden on Friday said the US has “reached a tipping point” in the fight to strengthen America’s gun laws, due to the activism of the gun violence prevention movement that has gathered increasing strength in recent years.

Mr. Biden, who was delivering remarks at the National Safer Communities Summit in Hartford, Connecticut, at the invitation of Senator Chris Murphy and a coalition of gun safety groups including Everytown, Moms Demand Action and Giffords, recounted some of the more than 20 executive actions his administration has taken to stem the tide of mass shootings since he took office. He said those politicians who claim to be concerned about crime should realise that crime can’t be tackled without dealing with gun violence.

“It’s a simple proposition,” he said.

The President also lamented how since 2020, firearms have been the leading cause of death for children in the United States — more than automobile accidents or cancer.

He recalled how the assault weapons ban he wrote into the 1994 crime bill enacted under then-President Bill Clinton cut mass shootings “significantly” only to see their number triple when Mr. Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, allowed the ban to expire with the aid of a Republican Congress, allowing military-style rifles and high-capacity magazines to “come back into vogue.”

Mr. Biden also called for a repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which immunises gun manufacturers from lawsuits filed by gun violence victims, and for the enactment of universal background checks before anyone can purchase high-powered rifles, many of which are modelled off of those issued to American soldiers, as well as safe storage requirements for such weapons.

“The United States of America has the finest fighting force in the history of the world [and] provides … service members with the most lethal weapons on Earth. We also require them to receive significant training before they’re allowed to use them. We require extensive background checks and mental health assessment that before they can … use them [and] require them to lock them up or store the weapon responsibly,” he said.

“Every gun owner should be required to have the same requirements held to him or her,” he added.

The President also hailed Governors who have taken action to strengthen state gun laws, including Connecticut’s Ned Lamont, who recently signed more than 12 separate bills to strengthen his state’s firearm regulations, and praised state governments in Illinois and Washington for passing assault weapon and ghost gun bans, as well as the 21 states that have enacted so-called “red flag” laws to allow courts to temporarily disarm people who are determined to pose a risk to the community by a judge.

Though chances of a federal assault weapons ban making it to his desk are slim to none given the composition of Congress, Mr. Biden promised the gun safety advocates that he will “never stop fighting.”

“We will ban assault weapons in this country … we will hold gun makers liable, we will beat the gun industry,” he said.

[circleandsquarecomic]

Circle Stops Mass Murder

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Ban Assault Weapons NOW!!! NO COMPROMISE!!!

Yesterday, Jim Jordan canceled a hearing to de-regulate “pistol straps,” devices that enhance the killing efficiency of pistols.  His reason for cancelling wasn’t respect or compassion for the six people, three of them children, who died in the Nashville school shooting earlier in the day, but rather fear that the shooting would trigger negativity by people with a conscience (Democrats).  Jordan…

[socialjusticeinamerica]

[soberscientistlife]

We all have the right to not be shot

[porterdavis]

Note this is a FOX poll

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Opinion | No one needs an AR-15 or any gun tailor-made for mass shootings

By the Editorial Board

The Post’s investigative series on the AR-15’s dominant place in the United States’ marketplace and psyche sat atop the Post website on Monday, the day of its release — until, hours later, breaking news replaced it. Three adults and three children had been killed in a Nashville school shooting by a 28-year-old assailant with three guns, including at least one AR-15-style rifle.

These attacks are always heart-wrenching. But they’re not surprising anymore — neither the massacres themselves nor the weapons used to carry them out. 10 of the 17 deadliest mass killings in the United States since 2012 involved AR-15s. The names of the towns and cities where these tragedies took place have become familiar: Newtown, San Bernardino, Las Vegas, Parkland, Uvalde and beyond. The Post chronicles the journey this now-iconic rifle took from military-issued firearm to off-the-shelf bestseller, and underscores the danger in the public’s embrace of a weapon the Defense Department once lauded for its “phenomenal lethality.”

“I don’t know why anyone needs an AR-15,” President Donald Trump reportedly told aides in August 2019 after back-to-back mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso. There’s no good answer. The AR-15 was designed for soldiers, yet its associations with warfare eventually became a selling point for everyday buyers. “Use what they use,” exhorted one ad displaying professionals wielding tactical rifles. Now, about 1 in 20 U.S. adults own at least one AR-15. That’s roughly 16 million people, storing roughly 20 million guns designed to mow down enemies on the battlefield with brutal efficiency. Two-thirds of these were crafted in the past decade — and when more people die, popularity doesn’t fall. Instead, it rises.

The AR-15, The Post explains, is materially different from traditional handguns. The rifle fires very small bullets at very fast speeds. The projectiles don’t move straight and smooth through human targets like those from a traditional handgun. Their velocity turns them unstable upon penetration, so that they tumble through flesh and vital organs. This so-called blast effect literally tears people apart. A trauma surgeon notes, “you don’t see the muscle … just bone and skin and missing parts.” Another mentions tissue that “crumbled into your hands.”

A Texas Ranger speaks of bullets that “disintegrated” a toddler’s skull.

This explains the lead poisoning that plagues survivors of the shooting in Sutherland Springs, Tex.; David Colbath, 61, can scarcely stand or use his hands without pain, and 25-year-old Morgan Workman probably can’t have a baby. It explains the evisceration of small bodies such as that of Noah Pozner, 6, murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary, and Peter Wang, 15, killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High. The Post examined the way bullets broke inside of them — obliterating Noah’s jaw and Peter’s skull, filling their chests with blood and leaving behind gaping exit wounds.

Even thinking about these injuries is horrifying, so much so that crime scene photos are often kept confidential. But the gruesome reality of what an AR-15 can wreak poses an argument in itself: There is no excuse for the widespread availability of these weapons of war.

No single action will stop mass shootings, much less gun violence more generally. The Post’s reporting is only more evidence of the need for a ban on assault rifles. It’s evidence, too, of the need for a ban on high-capacity magazines. Rules restricting how many rounds a gun can fire before a shooter has to reload are more difficult to skirt than flat-out assault rifle bans, which sometimes prompt manufacturers to make cosmetic changes that will reclassify their products. A number is a number. These prohibitions might face legal challenges, but lawmakers in four states have recently added caps. More should follow.

Think of Sutherland Springs, where the shooter, armed with a Ruger AR-556, got off 450 military-grade bullets within minutes, killing 25 people including a pregnant woman. Think of Dayton, where the gunman needed only 32 seconds to hit more than two dozen people with 41 bullets. That’s because he was equipped with a 100-round drum magazine. Even a 30-round magazine — the industry standard these days — would have forced him to reload at least once. A 15-round magazine would have forced him to reload twice. The Post’s analysis of the time this would have taken reveals the lives it could have saved: potentially six of the nine who were killed, in the case of a 15-round magazine.

Think, in contrast, of Poway, Calif., where a gunman killed one person at a synagogue and injured three others with a 10-round magazine before running out of bullets. Members of the congregation moved to confront him as he fumbled with another magazine, and he fled. Children who survived Sandy Hook told their parents they ran away while the assailant was “playing with his gun.” What they’d seen was plain enough. The shooter had stopped to reload.

The AR-15 has become a cultural symbol. But what kind of culture tolerates death after death after 10 murders — or after 27, or 49, or 60? Respect for the Second Amendment doesn’t require standing by while 6-year-olds are torn to shreds. The nation needs to act on guns. The AR-15 and weapons like it are a good place to start.

[contemplatingoutlander]

Great point, Mrs. Betty Bowers. Unfortunately, logic seems to elude Second Amendment fanatics.🔫🤦🏻‍♀️

Mrs. Betty Bowers@BettyBowers When was the last time you heard a Republican say, "Fentanyl doesn't kill, people who take it do"?| Or "Anthrax doesn't kill, people who mail it do"? #BanAssaultWeaponsNow

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It's Time To Say 'Goodbye', Senator Feinstein

We’ve heard a lot of opinions about Senator Dianne Feinstein lately – her health is an ongoing concern, even more so now that we know her health issues are even more serious than we were first told.  For the record, while it is heartbreaking to see her struggling just to get around, I do think the time has come for her to step down. But before I say more about that, I’d like to tell you a few…

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Militia groups from several states were plotting to send snipers to the border to shoot border patrol agents. The shootings would be then blamed on immigrants and Mexico with the hopes of starting a foreign war, civil war, or both.

So far the only reason we haven’t devolved into civil war is because MAGAts are dumb as a bag of rocks. We can’t count on it being that way forever. Sooner or later these deranged Trump supporters will assassinate a political rival, knock out a major power station, or cause a mass causality event.

We need federal anti-militia laws now. We can’t have oligarch warlords running around with right-wing agendas and private armies equipped with military hardware. This is a disaster waiting to happen and one that China, Russia, and bad actors in the Middle East are attempting to organize and fund.

[socialjusticeinamerica]