Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Saturday released an ambitious plan to combat gun violence that combines executive orders and congressional action with the aim of to reducing gun deaths by 80%. The plan comes amid renewed calls for gun control one week after mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, that left more than 30 dead.
Warren released the plan shortly before joining the majority of other Democratic candidates at the Iowa Gun Sense forum in Des Moines. Although Warren’s Medium page lists dozens of posts about policy proposes, the plan proposed Saturday is her first full plan to tackle gun violence.
Warren joined other candidates earlier this week in blaming President Trump’s divisive rhetoric for inspiring the El Paso shooting suspect, and on Friday, she called on Walmart to stop selling guns. But until Saturday, gun control and health care stood as the largest issues Warren hadn’t addressed with a detailed plan.
“I come to you I know with these latest shootings in El Paso and Dayton, at a time of sorrow in our country, but at a time of real determination,” Warren said at the gun safety forum.
Warren said that as president, she would first take executive action for immediate measures like background checks. Then, she’d push forward her anti-corruption plans to push the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) influence out of Washington. Finally, Warren has about two dozen measures that she’d propose to Congress.
“It’s the most comprehensive of any plan that I’ve seen from the candidates … It’s not one thing that needs to be done to stop gun violence in America. It’s a multi-pronged approach,” said Kris Brown, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) (C) speaks on stage during a forum on gun safety at the Iowa Events Center on August 10, 2019 in Des Moines, Iowa.
Stephen Maturen / Getty Images
Warren admitted the plan might not be enough to hit the 80% goal, which she said is meant to mirror the 80% reduction in per-mile driving deaths over the past 50 years.
“We might not know how to get all the way there yet. But we’ll start by implementing solutions that we believe will work,” Warren wrote in a Medium post.
Like Sens. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Warren wants a federal requirement that every gun owner undergo training and get a license.
Warren also proposed preventing people from buying more than one firearm a month and to increase the waiting period for purchases to one week. She also said she would push Congress to allow gun violence survivors to seek compensation from manufactures and deals who act negligently. The plan also calls for an assault weapons ban.
Warren is one of the leading progressives on most issues in the 2020 race. But when it comes to getting AR-15s and other AK-style rifles out of people’s hands, she didn’t go as far as former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas, who said this week that he was open to instituting a mandatory gun buyback plan, or former candidate Rep. Eric Swalwell, who promised to deliver it.
Instead, Warren said she would ask Congress to essentially tax the ownership of assault rifles out of existence using the National Firearms Act the way the Roosevelt administration did with machine guns.
While other candidates have fallen and leapt forward in polls over the past few months, Warren has had a slow and steady climb in the polls toward frontrunner and former Vice President Joe Biden.
Voters increasingly support gun reform legislation. A Politico/Morning Consult poll found Wednesday that most Republicans and Democrats support one.
But Congress hasn’t passed meaningful gun legislation in a quarter century. Her campaign said the strength of her plan is that it fits into her larger plan of taking on corporate influence in Washington.
“She’ll pass her anti-corruption legislation and eliminate the filibuster in order to break the hold of the NRA and pass gun legislation in her first 100 days,” said campaign spokesperson Saloni Sharma.
For months, the media have bent over backwards to convince us that 2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, who plans on paying for a $32 trillion “Medicare For all” bill and $1.25 trillion college plan with an unconstitutional wealth tax accruing just $2.75 trillion, is a serious policy wonk.
In that same time, front-runner Joe Biden has wisely stuck to the sidelines as the crowded left-wing lane of the field careened further towards socialism. And now with the September debates threatening to winnow the field to fewer than ten candidates, and Biden’s polling proving resilient despite racially charged attacks on his career, the media has finally noticed what the rest of us have known for half a century: the former vice president is a gaffe machine.
As a senator and to little media notice, Biden joked that “you cannot go to a 7-11” in Delaware “unless you have a slight Indian accent,” and that then presidential hopeful Barack Obama was a “clean” and “mainstream African American.” In 2010, Biden derided a Milwaukee custard shop manager as a “smartass” for teasing that he’d offer him a free dessert if the Obama administration cut taxes. Two years years later, Biden warned us racist-loving Romney supporters that limited government policies sought to put black Americans “back in chains.”
Forced to face the campaign trail at the Iowa State Fair, the now septuagenarian is still churning out the gaffes, but shockingly, the media is finally pouncing. Or seizing. Or whatever word they usually reserve for conservatives when they call out bad behavior.
Because Biden still has a D next to his name, he’s still being chided with delicacy, but even the Today Show dedicated coverage to the sort of blusters ignored for the bulk of his career.
That’s right, old man. Your media betters and Beltway elite are ready for you to bow down and let a younger and more intersectional candidate to take the lead. But there are two problems that the Warren loving media ignore at their own peril.
For one thing, Biden’s blunders are baked into the cake. Sure, confusing the only two female prime ministers of the United Kingdom may be a senior moment. But more than a decade ago Biden was still calling Obama “Barack America” and deeming “jobs” a “three letter word.” The “very online” left will take any fodder for their axe to grind with Biden, but will Iowans and South Carolinians care that Uncle Joe put his foot in his mouth once more?
But more important is that Biden himself, for all his flaws, is continually proving that he’s the only major candidate running a campaign for president of the United States and not comrade commander of the Revolutionary Socialist Committee to reelect Donald Trump.
With Warren and “Beta” O’Rourke declaring the president a white supremacist, reporters put Biden on blast in Iowa, demanding to know if the candidate who began by denouncing Trump’s equivocation after the neo-Nazi Charlottesville march and deeming him an “aberration” would do the same.
‘Why are you so hooked on that?,’ he responded to DailyMail.com during his visit to the Iowa State Fair.
‘You just want me to say the words so I sound like everybody else. I’m not everybody else. I’m Joe Biden. I’ve always been who I am. I’m staying that way,’ he added.
…
‘He is encouraging white supremacy. You can determine what that means,’ he said. ‘I know it’s like everybody wants everybody to call somebody a liar. I don’t call people liars. I said they don’t tell the truth. Okay? You want to hear me say liars so you can put out that Biden called someone a liar. That’s not who I am. You got the wrong guy.’
While plenty have pointed out that on policy and technique, Biden’s campaign largely resembles that of 2016 loser Hillary Clinton, Biden has made a pivotal and promising determination not to open the Pandora’s Box of branding all of Trump’s supporters as deplorables or impugning Trump’s innermost motivations. He’s not running to win the plaudits of Bushwick baristas or Santa Monica stylists. He’s running to win back voters from Ohio Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin who gave Trump the White House in 2016, and the moderate suburban moms who gave Nancy Pelosi the House speakership in 2018.
As I have long maintained, Biden’s simple case for his candidacy rests on his ability to prove he can beat Trump. Or, as Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight notes:
It’s not that complicated, folks. Biden’s gonna lose the nomination if and when Democrats become convinced that he can’t beat Trump, or become convinced that someone else can. Otherwise he’s likely to be pretty resilient.
Maybe the sort of gaffes that have cluttered Biden’s entire political career may spell the death knell of his final act. But I’m willing to bet that half a century of his public presence has inoculated voters to rhetorical slip-ups. His wise refusal to alienate half the country says something meaningful about his chances of victory.
Many questions remain in the motivations of the man who allegedly committed a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, last weekend, leaving nine dead before responding officers shot him to death.
But officials briefed on the investigation told ABC News the suspected shooter demonstrated a misogyny that was far more extreme than any of his political leanings.
In that, he follows a bleak pattern among mass shooters.
“There are red flags,” Jacquelyn Campbell of the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and one of the leading domestic violence researchers in the nation told ABC News. “There are things about these shooters’ behavior before these things happen that I think we as a country need to think hard about in terms of trying to make these things less frequently happen.”
After many mass shootings, information comes out that links the shooter to gender-based and domestic violence — and many massacres, like this one, include female family members, partners and ex-partners among the victims.
Ten of 2018’s 20 mass shootings, as defined by ABC News, were instances of domestic violence, including against intimate partners or family members, a January ABC analysis showed. One of the victims of the Dayton shooting was Megan Betts, the alleged shooter’s 22-year-old sister.
A Mother Jones analysis released this spring found that in at least 22 mass shootings since 2011, which accounts for over a third of public attacks, the shooters “had a history of domestic violence, specifically targeted women, or had stalked and harassed women.”
It’s difficult to define a profile of mass shooters, as those incidents are relatively rare, Sierra Smucker, an associate policy researcher at the nonprofit RAND Corporation think tank, told ABC.
But “domestic violence, unlike mass shootings, is incredible common,” she added.
The domestic violence homicide rate increased from 2015 to 2017 — the latest available years for data — after a long decline, a Northeastern University study published this spring found.
“A larger atmosphere in which domestic violence is accepted and happens often is going to definitely increase the likelihood that misogyny and hatred of women and violence towards women can become a mass shooting,” Smucker said.
Campbell noted that domestic and intimate partner violence is committed even by young people — mostly boys and teens — in middle and high school, often due to an accumulation of trauma experienced in childhood. But, she said, “we don’t have any really good interventions for them.”
High school classmates of Connor Betts, 24, the suspected Dayton shooter, for example, said he was suspended for making a “rape list” of female classmates he wanted to sexually assault, The Associated Press reported. They said he was later suspended over a “hit list” found in a school bathroom.
A former camp-mate of Betts told The Cincinnati Enquirer he saw Betts choke a girl he was dating as a teen.
ABC News could not independently confirm that report.
Beyond misogyny and domestic violence, much of the conversation around shootings lately has been about white nationalism and racism, as highlighted by the El Paso shooting, in which the alleged shooter targeted Hispanics, authorities said.
But Gina Longo, an assistant sociology professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, said racist motivations and misogynistic ones are not independent of each other.
“These are all intersectional and they all influence and inform one another,” she said.
That violence often bubbles up, Longo added, from men seeing “different minority groups, including women,” claiming rights and privileges historically awarded to white men in America.
“You hear a lot of men talking not necessarily about women in their own family, but ‘feminism,'” Longo told ABC News. “It’s ‘out there’ and there are certain groups of women who are trying to ‘poison the well,’ if we want to look at it like that, with these different ideas — and that is what they’re seeing as the threat, as this faceless feminism that’s coming after them.”
This can be exacerbated, she said, by online chatter. Just as social media can be used to influence elections, Longo said, “I think it’s the same thing with promoting violence or misogyny or letting it fester in certain places.”
While law enforcement and social scientists are still playing catch-up to understand how people’s actions online translate into real life threats, those close to an individual in real life have a role to play, the experts say, with policies like extreme risk protection orders, known as “red flag” laws.
In the case of the Dayton shooting, as far as public evidence has shown, Betts had not been charged with any sort of domestic violence, which could have prevented him from obtaining a gun. But his ex-girlfriend said he allegedly had a fascination with violence.
“She may not have wanted to break up with him (she might think there are possibilities there), she may not want him to go to jail, she may not want to press charges on domestic violence even if there was something there, but she might say, ‘This guy does not need to have this huge arsenal of guns, this is concerning to me,'” Campbell said, arguing that there should be an easy and encouraged way of doing so as part of laws and policies.
There are laws in many states that prevent a person from having access to a gun if they are charged or convicted of domestic violence or if a restraining order is in place, and states with those more restrictive laws tend to have lower rates of domestic violence homicides.
“Extreme risk protection orders are really drawing on the success, in some ways, of these domestic violence-related gun laws to expand that policy mechanism to people who may not be in situations that are specifically domestic or intimate partner-based but may suggest they are a threat to people around them if they have access to firearms,” Smucker said.
“[Those] laws recognize that the people who are most likely to know when someone may be dangerous are people who are very close to that person,” she added.
The pair of retweets come on a day when Mr. Trump expressed outrage on Twitter over what he called “dishonest” and “inaccurate” coverage of his presidency by the news media, including The New York Times. Mr. Trump insisted that reports that several survivors of the mass shooting in El Paso last weekend had refused to see him when he visited their hospital on Wednesday were false, but provided no evidence.
Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Clinton had been friendly with Mr. Epstein but broke ties with him many years ago. In a July statement, Mr. Ureña, Mr. Clinton’s spokesman, said that the former president had taken several trips with Mr. Epstein on his private plane in 2002 and 2003 but that the men had not spoken in more than a decade. Mr. Clinton “knows nothing about the terrible crimes” of which Mr. Epstein has been accused and, in one case, had been sentenced, the statement said.
Even before Mr. Trump weighed in on the subject, Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said on Twitter that while scrutiny of Mr. Epstein’s death was warranted, “the immediate rush to spread conspiracy theories about someone on the ‘other side’ of partisan divide having him killed illustrates why our society is so vulnerable to foreign disinformation & influence efforts.”
Earlier Saturday, one of the president’s senior appointees at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Lynne Patton, posted a headline about Mr. Epstein’s death on Instagram, perpetuating a debunked right-wing narrative. Including the comment, “Hillary’d!!” she also referred to Vincent Foster, the Clinton White House counsel who died by suicide in 1994 — a crucial episode in the unfounded theory tying the Clintons to allegedly suspicious deaths.
Adding to the extraordinary nature of Mr. Trump’s retweets was the fact that Mr. Clinton is a former president. American presidents have traditionally treated their predecessors and successors with pronounced respect, even when they are from different parties or ran bitter campaigns against one another. But after defeating Mrs. Clinton in a 2016 campaign during which he suggested he might imprison her, Mr. Trump has repeatedly ridiculed and taunted both Clintons.
Tweeting on another subject earlier in the day, Mr. Trump seemed to criticize joint United States military exercises with South Korea that have enraged North Korea, calling them “ridiculous and expensive.” The president said that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, had offered him “a small apology” for that country’s recent short-range missile tests, which violate United Nations resolutions but which Mr. Trump has brushed off. “I look forward to seeing Kim Jong Un in the not too distant future!” he wrote.
A Honda that police say belongs to Patrick Crusius, 21, the suspect in the El Paso mass shooting, is shown at an intersection near where the shooting occurred on Saturday, Aug. 3. Crusius told police he drove 10 hours from a suburb of Dallas to target “Mexicans.” Police say he exited the vehicle and immediately surrendered, telling them “I’m the shooter,” according to an arrest warrant affidavit obtained Friday. (Robert Moore/For The Washington Post)
EL PASO — The suspect accused of killing 22 people at an El Paso Walmart told authorities that he was targeting “Mexicans” and confessed to carrying out the shooting rampage when he surrendered to authorities, according to police.
Law enforcement officials responding to the scene on Saturday spotted a car stopped at an intersection not far from the Walmart, an El Paso police detective wrote in an arrest warrant affidavit obtained by The Washington Post. They then saw a man — identified as Patrick Crusius, the 21-year-old charged with capital murder in the case — get out of the car with his hands in the air, the affidavit said.
He told them, “I’m the shooter,” Detective Adrian Garcia said in the affidavit, which was filed to a judge on Sunday, the day after the shooting.
Authorities believe Crusius was the author of a statement posted online shortly before the attack that decried what it called a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” Federal officials have called the attack — which also injured dozens of people — domestic terrorism and said they are weighing federal hate crimes charges in the case.
The El Paso rampage was one of two mass shootings to occur within a day. Just hours later, a gunman in Dayton, Ohio, killed nine people before police officers shot and killed him.
Crusius has been in jail since surrendering. Authorities say he has been cooperative and has answered their questions. Greg Allen, the El Paso police chief, said the suspected attacker seemed to be “in a state of shock and confusion” and has not shown any remorse to the investigators.
According to Garcia’s affidavit, Crusius waived his right to an attorney and agreed to speak, telling police he traveled from Allen, Tex., a suburb of Dallas, with an assault rifle and multiple magazines.
“The defendant stated once inside the store he opened fire using his AK-47 shooting multiple innocent victims,” Garcia wrote. The detective added that Crusius said his targets were “Mexicans.”
People attend a candlelight vigil on Wednesday at a makeshift memorial honoring victims of a mass shooting that left 22 people dead in El Paso four days earlier. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
The car he emerged from on Saturday was about a half mile from the Walmart, stopped on a street that essentially divides shopping areas from residential areas.
Garcia wrote that Texas Rangers heading to the shooting saw the vehicle stopped in a left-turn lane. It was unclear where Crusius was heading, though Allen has suggested that he did not know the area well and got lost in a neighborhood upon arriving.
An attorney for Crusius did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the affidavit.
Crusius’s relatives have decried “the destruction Patrick did” and condemned the ideas described in the online statement.
“Patrick’s actions were apparently influenced and informed by people we do not know, and from ideas and beliefs that we do not accept or condone, in any way,” his family said in a statement released through an attorney. “He was raised in a family that taught love, kindness, respect, and tolerance — rejecting all forms of racism, prejudice, hatred, and violence.”
The FBI has dispatched officials from a domestic terrorism-hate crimes fusion cell to investigate the El Paso shooting. The bureau also said this week it is investigating the Dayton shooter after learning he was interested in “violent ideologies” and, separately, announced that it had opened a domestic terrorism investigation into a July 28 mass shooting at a food festival in Gilroy, Calif.
During the Gilroy shooting, six days before the El Paso attack, a gunman killed three people before fatally shooting himself. The FBI said it opened the domestic terrorism probe in that case after learning the gunman had also explored “violent ideologies” and assembled a list of possible targets across the country.
The Iowa State Fair is the place where corndogs, funnel cakes and presidential candidates converge. Many of the 2020 contenders are in Des Moines this weekend. CBSN political reporter Caitlin Huey-Burns and CBS News political correspondent Ed O’Keefe join CBSN from the fair with a closer look at what’s on the menu this year.
Hong Kong’s flag carrier and largest airline, Cathay Pacific Airways, is in an awkward position. It must triangulate between Chinese authorities, passengers, and its employees, some of whom have been fired over ongoing local protests.
Demonstrators in Hong Kong initially began to gather en masse about 10 weeks ago to express their opposition to a bill allowing authorities to extradite locals to mainland China. The weekly rallies have since evolved to call for, among other things, free elections and the resignation of Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive. This weekend they include a three-day sit-in at the Hong Kong airport.
Meanwhile, the Hong Kong protests have sparked anger in China, and Cathay is now being boycotted by travelers on the mainland. The company announced in an earnings report (pdf) this week that the unrest is eating into profits, writing, “The protests in Hong Kong reduced inbound passenger traffic in July and are adversely impacting forward bookings.”
The company has also said that it fired two members of its ground staff after they leaked information about when members of the Hong Kong police would be flying. In July, it suspended a pilot from flying after he was arrested at a protest. And local reports suggest a Cathay Pacific cabin crew member was arrested Saturday, as well.
Cathay Pacific issued a memo to staff warning them not to post non-work content at work and to avoid unauthorized public announcements, an apparent reference to a Cathay pilot who on July 26 told passengers about the extradition bill protests. In an Aug. 10 letter to employees, Cathay Pacific CEO Rupert Hogg explained that the Civil Aviation Administration of China just issued new requirements of the company, including suspending employees who “support or take part in illegal protests, violent actions, or overtly radical behavior” from participating in flights involving mainland China. Cathay Pacific must also submit information about crew members who do participate in such flights and will have to report back to the Chinese authority about what steps it has taken internally to “improve flight safety and security.”
Earlier this week, airline employees called in sick en masse and Cathay Pacific said it was forced to cancel flights due to the absences.
On Aug. 7, airline chairman John Slosar said the company could not dictate the political activities of its employees, explaining, “We employ 27,000 staff in Hong Kong doing all sorts of different jobs…we certainly wouldn’t dream of telling them what they have to think.” The South China Morning Post contends that this statement “backfired,” suggesting Slosar’s protestations may have prompted the Chinese aviation authority to clamp down on the airline with the newly issued sanctions.
Media captionPresident Trump: “We need meaningful background checks.”
For the first time in nearly two decades, Democratic presidential candidates are talking seriously about new federal gun control regulations. But is it a passing moment spurred by recent tragedy or the sign of shifting political ground?
This weekend, the Democratic presidential hopefuls who have been criss-crossing Iowa were supposed to be celebrating the state’s, well, Iowa-ness. Nearly every candidate in the 24-person field had scheduled an appearance at the state fair – an event that draws millions to capital city Des Moines – to sample pork on a stick, view the life-sized cow sculpture made of butter and stand on hay bales to give their stump speech to sometimes curious and often bemused onlookers.
Also on the schedule was the annual “Wing Ding Dinner” in the northern town of Clear Lake – another of the state’s quirky must-attend functions, where hundreds of party faithful pack a steamy old ballroom to listen to presidential hopefuls make their five-minute pitches to voters.
Then the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton happened, claiming the lives of 31 Americans – and adding to the list of roughly 40,000 in the nation killed annually by gun violence.
In a flash, the aperture of the Democratic race narrowed, and instead of a generic weekend of campaigning, the focus over the past few days here in Iowa has been on gun violence and what these two dozen presidential aspirants think they can do about it.
Media captionRoman’s friend died in the attack: ‘I wish the killer had known the real El Paso’
Before the Wing Ding dinner, eight candidates and their supporters joined a crowd outside for a moment of silence in remembrance of the victims of El Paso and Dayton.
The gathering was organised by campaign staff of former El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke, who cancelled his Iowa visit to help his home town mourn.
In Clear Lake, Cory Booker praised O’Rourke’s decision and said he scrapped his planned speech that night to talk about gun violence and American values.
“This is one of those moral moments in our nation that’s going to define the character of our country,” he said. “And this is a week where I will not let the slaughter of our fellow citizens just disappear within the next media cycle.”
Dustin Menke, who lives in nearby Manly, said he was impressed by Booker’s speech. He used to oppose gun bans, he said, but now he’s torn on the issue.
“We’ve got to do something about the gun violence in this country,” he said. “That’s just the bottom line. Not taking any action? There are consequences.”
A day spent calling for action
The day after the Wing Ding Dinner, 16 candidates shoehorned into their schedules an appearance at a hastily put-together “Presidential Gun Sense Forum,” held in downtown Des Moines by Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund – a group founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
A few shared stories about how their lives had been touched by gun violence. Montana Governor Steve Bullock’s voice cracked has he recounted how an 11-year-old nephew had been killed at school by a 10-year-old with a gun in 1994.
“At the time that was the youngest school shooting,” he said. “Now it wouldn’t even make national news.”
Image copyright AFP
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Elizabeth Warren at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines
Candidate after candidate spoke about the need for urgent action. They mentioned red-flag laws to prevent those who could be harmful to themselves or others from accessing firearms and universal background checks for gun purchases – even private transactions. Many supported reinstating the federal ban on assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines that was in force from 1994 to 2004.
New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and former Vice President Joe Biden urged the repeal of the federal law granting gun manufacturers immunity from liability lawsuits over the criminal use of their products.
Image copyright Getty Images
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Bernie Sanders: “The world has changed”
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who voted for the liability protections in 2005, said he now views it as a situation similar to the responsibilities of drug manufacturers for the opioid addiction crisis.
“The world has changed,” Sanders said, “and responsibilities have changed.”
Several candidates, including former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, called for a federal gun-licensing law. Former Housing Secretary Julian Castro spoke about a seven-day gun purchase waiting period and a 20% tax on all firearm and ammunition purchases.
All of these proposals received an enthusiastic reception from the crowd of activists, many of whom shared stories of how gun violence had affected their lives or the lives of loved ones.
Every proposal put forward, however, could hit up against the hard reality of opposition in Congress. While Democrats control the House of Representatives, which passed a universal background check bill earlier this year, the Senate is still in Republican hands – and Republicans, many backed by the National Rifle Association, have been an intractable obstacle to new federal gun regulation.
Even if one of these Democratic presidential candidates wins next November and has enough coattails to tip the balance in the Senate to Democrats as well, it is all but certain that they won’t pick up the 13 seats necessary to prevent a Republican minority from blocking significant gun-control legislation using a parliamentary maneuvre know as the filibuster.
Media captionOne US sheriff campaigned for so-called red flags laws – the other refuses to enforce them.
At a time when all the Democrats are voicing similar opinions on gun control, what to do about the filibuster has become a visible dividing line.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee was the first candidate to call for the end to the legislative filibuster, back in March. Elizabeth Warren – who received an enthusiastic welcome in Des Moines – is among the handful who have now joined him.
“The Republicans are not going to allow progressive measures through the US Senate as long as the filibuster exists,” Inslee said.
Others, like Biden and Sanders, have been more reluctant.
“Ending the filibuster is a very dangerous move,” the former vice-president told reporters in Iowa last week.
After his remarks in Des Moines on Saturday, Biden told the BBC that gun control laws were approved in the past despite the filibuster – and there were legislative ways get measures passed by a simple majority.
“There are a lot of things you can do without giving away what, ultimately, is a protection for the minorities,” he said.
Aside from the filibuster, however, Democrats have shown rare agreement on gun-control issues – coming just a week after the party’s sometimes sharp divides on health-care and immigration were on display at the second round of nationally televised candidate debates in Detroit.
A change of course
The fact that the gun issue is coming up much at all is a real departure from past presidential campaigns – and even this one.
Gun control wasn’t mentioned in the most recent Democratic presidential debate. The one candidate who made gun control the central focus of his campaign, California Congressman Eric Swalwell, was the first to drop out.
Conventional wisdom was that gun control was a harmful issue for Democrats. Many analysts and party insiders viewed it as the reason Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years in the 1994 mid-term elections and why Al Gore lost the presidency in 2000. It was something that motivated conservative gun rights activists much more than it did gun-control advocates on the left.
Media captionMarkel Scott was about to graduate – then he became another Baltimore crime statistic
Governor Inslee, who was a member of the US House of Representatives in 1994, voted for the first assault weapon ban – and lost his seat in that mid-term wave. He says he knew the vote was politically risky, but that it was the right vote to make.
“I represented an area that was a very rural area; it was a Republican area,” he told the BBC. “I knew it was a very contentious issue.”
By the time Democrats regained control of Congress in 2006, gun-control legislation was practically a non-existent priority.
“I think there’s a number of areas where Democrats … got weak-kneed, got scared of their shadow, didn’t act in accordance with their values, and they’ve been paying for it over and over again,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said after his appearance in Des Moines. “I think we lost the faith of people.”
In 2013, after the Newtown school shooting, an assault weapons ban similar to the one passed in 1994 received only 40 votes out of 100 in the US Senate.
Image copyright Reuters
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Democratic candidate Andrew Yang breaks down in Des Moines after hearing about a mother tell how her four-year-old was killed by a stray bullet
In his Des Moines speech, Governor Hickenlooper recounted the battle he faced in Colorado as he tried to pass universal background checks, magazine capacity limits and a red-flag law in his state after the 2012 mass shooting at a theatre in Aurora.
The NRA, he said, would not budge or negotiate. What’s more, the group told Republican legislators that if they voted for any of the measures, they would face an NRA-funded opponent in their next primary.
“It was so frustrating,” he said.
‘Toxic brew’
In 2018, however, things seemed change. Gun control candidates like Lucy McBath of Georgia won in contested House races, despite vigorous opposition by the NRA. That group’s once prodigious fund-raising operation was struggling, and the organisation itself was beset by scandal.
The Parkland school shooting, and the grass-roots youth movement that arose from it, are part of the reason why.
According to South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, the rise of white nationalism – emboldened, he says, by Donald Trump – has become another clarifying moment.
“We are living with a toxic brew of two different things, each of which is claiming lives and each of which represents a national security emergency in this country” he said. “One of them is the ready availability of guns and the way they can fall into the wrong hands. The other is the rise of hate. And when they come into contact with each other, it is deadly.”
Image copyright Getty Images
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Kamala Harris poses for selfies after speaking at a forum on gun safety in Des Moines
Senator Kamala Harris of California was, if anything, even more blunt about the president’s rhetoric.
“He didn’t pull the trigger,” she said, “but he’s certainly been tweeting out the ammunition.”
Shifting ground
Whether or not Trump bears some culpability, his reaction to these most recent shootings are further evidence of shifting ground on the gun debate.
Back in 2016, then-candidate Trump campaigned by fully embracing the NRA and its aggressive gun-rights agenda. He said he was a firm believer in a broad interpretation of the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms and joked that gun owners might take matters into their own hands if Democrats like Hillary Clinton tried to infringe on their rights.
Now the president has explicitly endorsed state-level red-flag laws. He’s also expressed interest in expanding background checks of firearm purchasers – something Republicans in Congress have previously fought against.
Massachusetts Senator Warren told reporters on Saturday that she wasn’t convinced, however.
“Did he say that just before or just after he then bowed to the NRA and said but of course he would do what the NRA wanted?” Warren asked. “As long as the NRA is calling the shots, there’s not going to be meaningful change in this country.”
She added that meaningful change only comes with fundamental democratic reform.
If Trump does follow through and fully support background checks, Democrats here will welcome the development – but what was once all but the best that a Democratic presidential candidate could ask, or hope, for is now just the starting point.
One week is a blink of an eye in US politics, of course. By February, when Democratic voters head to the polls in Iowa and start the nominee selection process, the gun issue could once again be on the back burner. Candidates could again spend most of their time talking about healthcare or income inequality or education.
That is without a doubt what the NRA and gun-rights advocates are counting on.
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“People have had enough” – insurance worker Jerry Jones
This weekend in Iowa, however, Democrat after Democrat insisted that, at last, things are changing.
“People are tired of the BS,” said Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar.
Klobuchar told the crowd that “the heat is on like never before”.
Time will tell if that’s the case. But at least in Des Moines, the gun safety forum attendees believed that real change is finally in reach.
“People have had enough,” said Jerry Jones, an insurance worker who drove to Iowa from Kansas City for the event. “We’re not giving up anymore. We’re not going away to our own little corners. We’re beginning to organize, and we’re coming together.”
Typhoon Lekima triggered widespread blackouts, flight cancellations, and evacuations across major cities, but by far the most devastating effect was a landslide that killed at least 18 people and left 14 missing.
The storm is now approaching Shanghai, the nation’s financial capital, which is home to more than 20 million people.
Separatists in southern Yemen have seized all government military camps and a presidential palace in the port city of Aden, according to security sources and witnesses, amid heavy fighting that has killed and wounded scores of people.
A spokesman for the Security Belt, a militia aligned with the United Arab Emirates-backed Southern Transitional Council, told AFP news agency on Saturday that fighters from the group met no resistance when they seized the all-but empty presidential palace from forces loyal to President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government.
The announcement came hours after a government official and local sources said the separatists had also wrested control of all government military camps in Aden, the city temporarily hosting Hadi’s government, after clashes that killed dozens.
“We took the Maashiq palace from presidential [guard] forces without a fight,” a spokesman from the separatist-dominated Security Belt force told AFP.
Witnesses confirmed the move to AFP and Reuters.
The moves put the separatists in effective control of Aden, and Hadi’s government accused the STC of staging a coup.
“What is happening in the temporary [government] capital of Aden by the Southern Transitional Council is a coup against institutions of the internationally recognised government,” the foreign ministry said in a Twitter post.
Hadi, who was swept from power in 2014 when Houthi rebels overran Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, is currently based in Saudi Arabia‘s capital, Riyadh.
The combatants in Aden are nominal allies in the Saudi-led coalition that has been battling the Houthis in northern and western Yemen since March 2015, but they have rival agendas for the country’s future.
There was no comment from the coalition.
‘Every inch of Aden’
Nasser Arrabyee, a Yemeni journalist based in Sanaa, told Al Jazeera the separatists have declared they were now in control of “every inch of Aden”.
“This is unprecedented – it was not expected to happen this quickly,” he said, adding the move could see the south secede from the north.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF), in a statement on Saturday, said the city was “in a state of war” and has ground to a halt because of the fighting.
The humanitarian group said it has treated 119 people in less than 24 hours.
“Most of the wounded are civilians trapped by the fighting and probably victims of mortar fire or stray bullets. Yesterday we treated a woman who had a bullet wound and she was eight months pregnant. At least five people were dead on arrival at the hospital, one of them a child,” said Caroline Seguin, MSF’s head of programmes in Yemen.
“The city’s a battlefield. We can hear the sound of heavy weapon fire and tanks are moving around the streets,” she added.
The Associated Press news agency, citing government officials, said at least 45 people were killed on Saturday when the separatists and loyalists fought over the main Fourth Brigade camp. The DPA news agency, citing a local medical official, said 30 people were killed.
In addition to Fourth Brigade, the separatists also seized the Tarek military camp.
“It is all over, the [Southern Transitional Council] forces are in control of all the military camps,” an official in Hadi’s government told Reuters.
The fighters also took over the house of Interior Minister Ahmed al-Mayssari after he was evacuated with the help of coalition forces, government officials told Reuters.
The violence in Aden highlights a rift within the alliance and threatens to open a new front in Yemen’s five year-war, which has killed tens of thousands of people and pushed the impoverished country to the brink of famine.
The clashes between the two groups began on Wednesday when forces loyal to the STC attempted to break into the presidential palace in Aden after a call from ex-cabinet minister Hani Bin Braik, who serves as the council’s deputy head, to “topple” Hadi’s government.
‘Inclusive dialogue’
It was the recent withdrawal of UAE forces from Aden that “encouraged [separatists] to take over the city”, Al Jazeera’s Mohammed al-Attab said, referring to Abu Dhabi’s decision in July to pull out thousands of troops from Yemen.
Reporting from Sanaa, al-Attab said a Houthi-claimed attack on a military parade that killed 36 people, including a senior Security Belt commander, earlier this month had also inflamed tensions between the separatists and the government forces.
The separatists had accused an Islamist party allied to Hadi of complicity in the attack.
“The Security Belt viewed the attack on the military parade with suspicion as they feel there are many parties involved seeking to destroy and weaken their forces,” our correspondent said.
“Today, they have achieved many of their goals by taking over all of the camps,” he added. “This is another failure for the Saudi-led coalition.”
Earlier on Saturday, both the United Nations and the UAE called for calm in the port city.
Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary-general, called for an end to hostilities in Aden and urged all sides to “engage in an inclusive dialogue to resolve their differences”.
Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, UAE’s foreign minister, said Abu Dhabi was “exerting all efforts to calm and de-escalate the situation in Aden”, saying the two camps should focus their efforts on fighting the Houthis not each other.
The Houthis control Sanaa, Hodeidah and other major urban centres while Hadi’s government holds Aden and a string of western coastal towns.
Sheikh Abdulla also called on the UNs envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, “to make all possible efforts to end the escalation in Aden”, the official Emirati news agency WAM reported.
Lee Plourde told the Post that Epstein, 66, was not “currently” on suicide watch, but declined to give further details. The Associated Press reported that Epstein had been taken off suicide watch at the end of July, adding that he had been placed on watch and given daily psychiatric evaluations following an incident in which he was found with bruising on his neck. It remains unclear whether those injuries were the result of an assault or a suicide attempt.
The wealthy financier was found unresponsive in his cell Saturday morning at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, officials said. Epstein was taken to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Epstein had been denied bail and faced up to 45 years in prison on federal sex trafficking and conspiracy charges. He was accused of trafficking underage girls for sex and had pleaded not guilty.
The Bureau of Prisons confirmed that he had been housed in the jail’s Special Housing Unit, a heavily secured part of the facility that separates high-profile inmates from the general population. Until recently, the same unit had been home to the Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is now serving a life sentence at the so-called Supermax prison in Colorado.
The disclosure that Epstein was not on suicide watch is likely to further infuriate his alleged victims as well as public officials who have demanded a full investigation into his death. It is also expected to increase questions about how how the Bureau of Prisons ensures the welfare of such high-profile inmates. In October, Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger was killed in a federal prison in West Virginia where had just been transferred.
“Unequivocally, he should have been on active suicide watch and therefore under direct and constant supervision,” former federal prison warden Cameron Lindsay told the AP, adding that if Epstein’s suicide is confirmed, it would represent “an unfortunate and shocking failure.”
This July 1, 2019 photo shows the Metropolitan Correctional Center, in New York. Financier Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in New York, a former law enforcement official said Saturday. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked Attorney General William Barr in a letter Saturday to investigate the death.
“Every single person in the Justice Department — from your Main Justice headquarters staff all the way to the night-shift jailer — knew that this man was a suicide risk, and that his dark secrets couldn’t be allowed to die with him,” Sasse wrote.
On Friday, more than 2,000 pages of documents were released related to a since-settled lawsuit against Epstein’s ex-girlfriend by Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s accusers. The records contain graphic allegations against Epstein, as well as the transcript of a 2016 deposition of Epstein in which he repeatedly refused to answer questions to avoid incriminating himself.
Sigrid McCawley, Giuffre’s attorney, said Epstein’s suicide less than 24 hours after the documents were unsealed “is no coincidence.” McCawley urged authorities to continue their investigation, focusing on Epstein associates who she said “participated and facilitated Epstein’s horrifying sex trafficking scheme.”
Other accusers and their lawyers reacted to the news with frustration that the financier won’t have to face them in court.
“We have to live with the scars of his actions for the rest of our lives, while he will never face the consequences of the crimes he committed the pain and trauma he caused so many people,” accuser Jennifer Araoz said in a statement.
Brad Edwards, a Florida lawyer for nearly two dozen other accusers, said that “this is not the ending anyone was looking for.”
“The victims deserved to see Epstein held accountable, and he owed it to everyone he hurt to accept responsibility for all of the pain he caused,” Edwards said in a statement.
Epstein was arrested July 6 over allegations that he abused young girls from 2002 to 2005 in his Upper East Side townhouse and his Palm Beach, Florida mansion.
Prosecutors said that victims would be escorted to a room with a massage table where they would perform massages on Epstein. Investigators also found a trove of photos depicting nude and seminude young women and girls.
WCPO and its parent company Scripps have joined a media lawsuit seeking to compel the Bellbrook-Sugarcreek School District to release the records of Connor Betts, the mass shooter who killed nine people in Dayton last Sunday morning.
Scripps joined the lawsuit because it believes in fighting for open records, especially when it involves cases in which the public has a strong need to access key information.
Scripps believes the public is entitled to the records by law, but the school district has refused several public records requests.
As WCPO has reported, four former classmates of Betts, a 2013 Bellbrook High School graduate, have come forward saying they were on the gunman’s “hit list” in high school.
In the lawsuit, the media outlets claim the school district had knowledge of that hit list and other threats of violence Betts made while a student.
Scripps and other media outlets believe that information may shed light on the reasons for Betts’s attack in the Oregon entertainment district. Police say Betts gunned down nine people, wounded 14 and injured more than a dozen before police shot and killed him.
“In the days following that senseless attack, the public has learned that Betts displayed troubling warning signs (or “red flags”) that, perhaps if acted upon sooner, may have avoided this tragedy,” says the complaint for writ of mandamus.
“Relators seek records about those events, as well as any other incident reports, disciplinary actions and other related records.
“The community and the country at large deserve to know why this tragedy happened, what might have led to it and what may be done to prevent future tragedies.”
The school district claims student records are protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and the Ohio Student Privacy Act and has told media outlets it won’t release them except under a court order.
The lawsuit, however, states that neither act applies because Betts is deceased.
The lawsuit was filed Friday in the Second Appellate District Court of Appeals in Greene County. Relators also asked the court to expedite the case.
Others in the lawsuit include CNN, Cox Media Group, WDTN-TV2, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the New York Times Co., ABC and Associated Press.
Benny McGuire jostled his 10-year-old daughter Madison out of bed. She was in no mood to stand in 100-degree weather selling snacks for her soccer team. But dad persisted.
Robert Evans headed to the place where he’d been a manager for seven years: the Walmart near Cielo Vista Mall.
Dr. Stephen Flaherty, trauma surgeon, clocked in a little early for his shift at Del Sol Medical Center. He had a staff meeting in a bit.
Just another Saturday. Just another hot summer day. Just another American tragedy, waiting to burst open and rain misery over so many people who had no cause to suffer.
Within hours, McGuire would be shouting to his daughter, “Run! … Keep running!” Evans would announce “Shooter, shooter!” over a two-way radio to warn his employees. Flaherty and his team would receive patient after patient from one of the country’s busiest Walmarts, now running red with blood.
By the time it was over, 22 people would die, 25 would be wounded, and a white man with an AK-47-style weapon and a hateful heart would surrender to authorities without a fight.
The impact will be measured for years, and some of the events of that day are still unfolding. There are many unanswered questions.
Today, though, before all the answers are known, here are the stories of some who were caught up in the madness.
A looming threat on an ordinary day
“Hey,” Benny McGuire said to his sleepy daughter. “It’s go-time. Let’s raise some money for your team.”
Reluctantly, Madison crawled out of bed, put on her summer league soccer jersey and headed to the car for the 25-minute drive to the Walmart, where she and her dad would meet her teammates for a day of fundraising.
The EP Fusion all-girls soccer team had planned to sell fresh-squeezed juices for $2.50 and chicharrones (pork rinds) for a buck apiece outside the store. They were raising money for new jerseys and a fall tournament in Arizona.
By 9 a.m., they were at the Walmart. McGuire unloaded ice bags from his car; the other parents brought tables. For the next 90 minutes, the girls, their coaches and parents smiled, laughed and even danced as they sold snacks to customers outside the massive store’s two entrances.
—-
Inside, the store was filling up. The Walmart is close to the border of Mexico, and residents of neighboring Juárez cross over regularly to shop alongside El Pasoans. The store attracts thousands of customers daily. On this day, summer break was almost over for many kids, and Evans, the 44-year-old store manager, noticed a lot of shoppers and employees milling around the back-to-school section near the general merchandise entrance.
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Three miles away, Dr. Flaherty already had emerged from his staff meeting at Del Sol, and started to work on patients in operating rooms, the kind of work he expected on a usual day. As the hospital’s trauma medical director, Flaherty is trained in handling some of the worst things that come in through emergency room doors — the injuries that threaten limbs and lives. He’d seen it plenty in his deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan while serving in the U.S. Army.
—-
Meanwhile, somewhere out there, while customers filed in to Walmart past little girls dancing and selling snacks for their soccer team, and while a doctor was going about his daily rounds at a nearby hospital, a man was coming with a gun.
The man, as the authorities have it, had been on the road for 10 to 11 hours.
The route from the city of Allen to El Paso encompasses some 580 miles of lonely Texas roadway over stretches of desert and the occasional small town. Police said the man at some point had legally purchased an AK-47-style weapon near his home.
Many details of his actions that day have not been made public. El Paso police and fire officials — citing the ongoing city and federal investigations in a case that could bring the death penalty — have declined to release much about the gunman’s actions, including specific timelines.
At 10:15 a.m. Saturday, a four-page “manifesto” filled with anti-immigrant rhetoric was posted to an anonymous message board.
The document, which police believe is connected to the suspect, warned of an impending attack, claiming it was “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
‘Felt like time stopped’ as violence erupts
Around 10:30 a.m., Evans was taking a break outside the store, checking emails on his cellphone. He was walking back in when he heard what sounded like a loud backfire from a car. He stepped back outside to investigate — and saw a man in the middle of the parking lot.
The gunman was already firing, moving among parked cars, blasting toward the front of the store, wearing earmuffs and a blue shirt.
The man shot someone in the lot and then continued to shoot toward the middle front of the store where the girls soccer club was fundraising. Evans saw several people shot there.
“Once I saw more rounds coming out, and these people dropping, I proceeded back into the store,” Evans said. He used his two-way store radio to issue an alert to other employees, using company code language.
Translation: Act of violence. Happening now.
—-
McGuire, the soccer dad, was walking away from the group’s tent area, toward the east entrance where his daughter was when he heard the first gunshot. He looked back to the tent area and saw a puff of smoke.
Then came a second gunshot.
“I looked at my daughter and said, ‘Run!’ “ McGuire said. “It just felt like time stopped.”
More gunshots. By the fifth, McGuire bolted toward his daughter, two other girls and a parent — all of whom were fleeing into the store. They zig-zagged through aisles, seeking to minimize themselves as targets. McGuire remembers running through the home décor section and seeing towels and kitchen items, and then veering into another section.
“Shooter, shooter!” Evans said into his radio.
The gunman entered through the door near where the groceries and produce are kept, farther away from the busy back-to-school section.
People screamed as they heard a steady stream of gunshots, Evans said, but he never saw the gunman again.
“I was grabbing (customers) by the shirt, by the arm,” and getting them to run to the emergency exits at the back of the store and the Garden Center exit on the side of the store facing Cielo Vista Mall, Evans said.
“’Come on, come on, you got to go out the exits,’” he remembered yelling to the customers in English and Spanish. “’This isn’t a test, we need to get out of the building right now.’”
—-
Octavio Ramiro Lizarde, a 23-year-old construction worker from El Paso, was in line with his nephew at a bank inside the store when the gunman stormed in.
Lizarde wanted to cash his most recent work check so he could spend the rest of the day helping his nephew get ready for school.
Javier Amir Rodriguez, 15, was about to start his sophomore year at a new high school in El Paso.
Lizarde wanted to pay for Javier’s haircut, school clothes and back-to-school supplies. But before he could see a teller, Lizarde heard the gunshots.
People were running in every direction. He called out for Javier and tried to pull him toward the manager’s office at the bank.
“I said, ‘Come here, hurry up.’ He’s like, ‘Where?’ ‘Over here, vente,’ so I try to pull him and I looked up and (the shooter) was there. (Javier) looked at (the shooter) as well and he turned to look at me and that’s when …,” Lizarde said, his voice trailing off.
Lizarde caught a brief glimpse of the shooter, only enough to see that the man wore glasses.
They were then both shot.
As shoppers flee, they are met with carnage
“I just kept reassuring the girls, ‘Keep running! Keep running!’ ” said McGuire, who recalled running for about a minute and a half before finding an exit door. “My main focus was just to run … and we just hauled out a back door.”
Once outside, the group ran to a street, then up a hill and crossed over a barrier that led to a movie theater parking lot. McGuire told his daughter and the others to wait there while he went back to get the car.
But when he returned to the front parking lot, he found carnage.
He saw a woman lying on the pavement in a handicapped parking space. He ran to help, but she was already dead. Her truck door was open. She had been loading groceries.
Then he spotted his daughter’s coach, Memo Garcia, who was shot in the leg and stomach. While trying to help Garcia, McGuire saw another coach down.
“I’m looking for anybody. I’m yelling for police. ‘I have two down, and one’s dead. The lady in the street is dead,’ ” recalled McGuire, who caught the attention of a police officer.
“The officer tells me, ‘You need to get out of here now. We’re trying to find this guy. He’s still on the premises. We’ll take care of your guys. Just get out of here.’ “
And so McGuire went back to the spot where he had left his daughter and the others and yelled at everyone to immediately leave the area, that the gunman was still on the loose and that it still wasn’t safe.
—-
Guillermo Glenn was near the automotive section.
The 78-year-old Texan, born and raised in a small oilfield town near Odessa, is a well-known activist around El Paso, the one often at the front of protests and marches, most recently fighting for environmental justice for immigrants. But today he was just a guy shopping for dog food.
“At first, bang bang — really loud,” he said. “I thought something fell over and crashed.”
People started running toward the back of the building in a panic — a lot of people.
“And then I saw some women that were dripping blood,” he said. “I knew then that it was a shooter.”
After a time, Glenn saw emergency workers and shouted for a med tech. A woman was bleeding and needed help.
“They were waving at me, ‘No, you have to take her out,’ ” he recalled.
So Glenn and an older woman lifted the victim onto a stock cart and wheeled her out.
“When we got to the front is when it really hit us,” he said. “That’s where all the massacre was.”
He saw bodies. And blood.
“We have been made a target,” Glenn said later. “It’s very emotional. … I had the blood of the wounded people on my hands.”
Back at the hospital, Dr. Flaherty got an alert from the hospital’s messaging system. There was an active shooter in El Paso, it said, but he didn’t know where, how many shooters there were or how many people were injured.
“Usually, that message doesn’t … turn into actionable information,” he said. “I texted my CEO, David, and said, ‘David, something’s going on.’ ”
Tracing the suspect’s path prior to the shooting
There’s no making sense of the madness.
It is impossible at this point to explain why a man with a gun apparently chooses to mow down people he does not know, targeting people who do not look like him, in such an abhorrent outburst of hate. His actions in the store can be recounted only through people who were there. No security videos, if they exist, have been released.
The suspect, 21, had lived in Allen with his grandparents in a two-story house in a park-side neighborhood of homes with manicured lawns called Star Creek. They’ve said he moved out six weeks ago, but spent a few nights there more recently when they were out of town.
Weeks before the rampage, his mother contacted the Allen Police Department out of concern that her son had an AK-type rifle, the family’s lawyers said.
Dallas attorney Chris Ayres confirmed a CNN report that said the mother only sought information and wasn’t motivated by a concern that her son was a threat.
The family’s lawyers claimed the mother was concerned about her son’s age, maturity level and lack of experience but was told that he was legally allowed to possess the weapon.
CLOSE
The shooting that killed 20 people at a crowded El Paso shopping area will be handled as a domestic terrorism case, and could carry the death penalty. AP
The lawyers said the mother didn’t identify herself or her son in the call.
Authorities have not disclosed specifics of the man’s travel to El Paso. But when he arrived, police said, he got lost in a neighborhood, then found his way to the Walmart. He was hungry and stopped to eat.
At 10:39 a.m., someone dialed 911 about a shooting.
—-
The gunman entered through the front.
Evans, the manager, said he was running and trying to call 911 on his cell while moving customers toward a rear exit.
They headed out an emergency door. Now outside, Evans went around to the Automotive Department door, where he saw a customer who had been shot in the back being treated with compression by another employee to slow the bleeding.
He then moved to the Garden Center side of the store and customers waved him down because there was a vehicle with a man and woman inside. The woman had been shot in the face and was unresponsive, Evans said. The man, who had been driving, was “kind of slouched over and he was bleeding heavily from his back,” and in the front, he said.
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El Paso Mayor Dee Margo was in Austin, 576 miles away, attending a Saturday morning meeting in the state capital when he started getting alarming emails.
“It was pretty stressful,” Margo said. “I was trying to get good data and we didn’t have good data. The first one, the first data we got was there was a shooting, there were no fatalities. Then it was three.”
Margo realized he had to get back home, but there were no commercial flights that could get him to El Paso before 7 p.m. “So, I called a friend who had access to a plane and he gave me a ride.”
On that flight, the mayor had no Wi-Fi, no updates.
“For an hour and a half, hour and 15 minutes, I was totally out of contact,” Margo said. “All I could do was pray. That was frankly all I could do. I thought about it and prayed.”
—-
Evans eventually made it back to the front entrance where he had been taking his break, and police were there.
“The officers taped off the store and wouldn’t let me back in,” Evans said.
One of his assistant managers had helped employees hide in the store’s money center and then started helping the wounded.
A customer said the shooting was over.
“I don’t have a time. It seemed like forever. It seemed like it’d never stop,” Evans said.
“I was shaking and breathing heavily and adrenaline, running to get everyone out of the building. … There are no words.”
—-
Lizarde, shot in a foot, stayed on the floor beside his wounded nephew, Javier, for what seemed like 15 to 20 minutes until police told Lizarde he had to leave. They helped evacuate him from the store, which he remembers being covered in blood.
Those minutes felt like eternity and all he could think about was whether Javier, who had so much ahead of him, would make it out alive.
The teen was more like a son to Lizarde, he said. He taught the boy how to play video games and dribbled soccer balls with him in the park. Javier played for his high school team and a local club team and dreamed of meeting Brazilian star Neymar.
The boy also was good with Lizarde’s two young children. Javier knew how to calm Lizarde’s daughter when she would cry.
—-
At the hospital, minutes after texting his CEO that “something’s going on,” Dr. Flaherty sent a more alarming message from the hospital:
“David, this is real. We got five on the way.”
Five patients quickly turned to 11, and the hospital staff swung into action. More patients went to another hospital.
Flaherty said he doesn’t remember what time the first patients arrived, or when the last one did.
The day was a blur until about 8 p.m.
“It’s hard to put this whole thing into context in the first three days … it’s not lost on anybody in the first hours that 20 people are dead,” Flaherty said. “That’s something you carry with you.”
—-
Lizarde was taken to Flaherty’s hospital.
His foot was in such bad shape doctors gave him the option of amputation. Instead, he opted for orthopedic surgery, the first of many expected procedures in an effort to save it.
He said he’s an optimist who wants to walk again, to return to work and support his fiancé, 2-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter.
His nephew, Javier, died. He was the youngest victim of the 22 who perished.
“I did lose my nephew right in front of me,” Lizarde said. “It was a horrible image and I hope nobody ever goes through it. It’s very painful.”
Lizarde said his own physical pain will eventually end.
“The only pain that won’t end is the emotional,” he said later from the hospital.
“He was really fun to be around,” Lizarde said. “He was my ride or die.”
He’s still struggling to understand why his nephew’s life was cut short by a gunman accused of hatred for people who look like himself and Javier. But he said his faith will give him the strength to one day forgive.
“I really hope that if he doesn’t get the death penalty, I hope he gets better mentally and realizes what he did and betters his life,” he said.
When he’s released from the hospital, Lizarde wants to tattoo Javier’s face on his body. He wants to always keep him close.
—-
Shortly after the shootings, police say, Patrick Crusius, 21, of Allen surrendered to an El Paso police motorcycle officer at Sunmount Drive and Viscount Boulevard, about a block behind the Walmart. A cellphone video posted online purportedly of the arrest shows an officer leading a man slowly away from a car, the man’s hands behind his back. They say he surrendered without a fight.
The suspect did not have a rifle on him, a police spokesman said, declining to say where the rifle was found and other details, citing the ongoing investigation.
Crusius showed no remorse to investigators and appeared to be in “a state of shock and confusion,” police Chief Greg Allen said.
The mass shooting is being considered a hate crime and federal prosecutors are looking at domestic terrorism charges.
Crusius was charged with capital murder and was being held in isolation in the El Paso County Jail. El Paso County District Attorney Jaime Esparza has said that prosecutors will seek the death penalty.
—-
McGuire got his daughter and her soccer friends away from the store about 11:15 a.m.
They drove to his girlfriend’s house, where they drank water, cried and consoled one another. McGuire got on social media to warn soccer parents not to head to the Walmart for the fundraiser.
He spent the next several hours on his phone, answering calls and texts from worried friends and family. At one point he turned off the phone.
“I grabbed my daughter and I held her,” he said. “And me and her just cried.”
None of the soccer players was hurt in the attack. Two parent volunteers were shot and released from a hospital. Two coaches remained hospitalized.
“It was so unreal,” he said, noting his biggest fear was losing his daughter and the other girls. “Saturday could have been the last day that I saw her.”
One community spanning two countries
Mayor Margo made it back to El Paso about 1:30 p.m., and went immediately to where authorities had gathered, then on to a staging area at nearby MacArthur Intermediate School, and a news conference with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
“We just made the rounds,” Margo said. “I was kind of numb.”
Days later, he was still that way.
“We were a community 100 years before the United States was formed, and that’s what people don’t understand,” he said. “We’re totally different. We’re the largest binational, bilingual, bicultural area in the world. … We are one region. You cannot tell the difference between where El Paso ends and Juárez, Mexico, begins.”
Around 8 p.m., staff at Del Sol had all patients “tucked in and safe,” Flaherty said. He worked overnight, planning for the next day. And the next day. And the next day.
He went into a hospital call room around 3 a.m. Sunday and took a nap. He didn’t go home until 10 p.m. that next night.
Preserving the memory of those lost in the shooting
A makeshift memorial to the victims grows daily, stretching a block or more and sandwiched between the Walmart and a nearby Hooter’s. There are handmade crosses, balloons, posters, drawings and written appeals for change. It’s been the scene of prayer circles, musical performances, hugging and sobbing. Flags also fly there, representing the United States, Mexico and the state of Texas. Eight of the dead are from Mexico.
Funerals and memorial services already have begun.
One of them was a rosary service for Leonardo Campos.
It was midday Saturday when David Campos started texting his big brother, Leonardo, in El Paso. David had just seen the news.
“He was always the type to call back,” Campos, 26, said of his 41-year-old brother, who grew up in the Rio Grande Valley and had moved to El Paso about six years ago. He lived with his wife, Maribel Hernandez, and her four children.
Hours passed. Nighttime fell. Fears escalated.
By Sunday morning, David Campos would learn that his brother, who coached him in baseball, pushed him to excel and dreamed of being a physical education coach, was among those killed.
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The memorial outside Walmart in El Paso, Texas continues to grow, as does the crowd. Hundreds prayed, sang and comforted one another Monday, August, 5, 2019. Saturday, 22 people were shot and killed and 24 others were wounded. A tragedy like the August, 3, mass murder brought togther an otherwise peaceful community of 700,000; 2 million when you count Juarez. Mark Lambie / El Paso Times
This was the man the Campos family and friends honored at the memorial service, where David Campos came to say goodbye to his Dallas Cowboys-loving brother and mentor who years ago jumped at the chance to coach his little brother’s baseball team. Leonardo was remembered as a man with a big personality who excelled at baseball, football, soccer and dancing. He even joked sometimes about becoming an exotic dancer; he could do the splits between two chairs.
“He was super tough on us but it was worth it,” David Campos recalled with a slight smile. “He made me a better player, and a better man.”
He added: “He would also tell us to never give up, no matter what life throws at you.”
Maribel Hernandez also died.
The couple, relatives said, had just dropped off their dog at a pet groomer before stopping at the Walmart just five minutes from their home.
David Campos of San Juan, Texas, had never visited his big brother in El Paso, a place that Leonardo had grown to love for its scenic views and culture.
On Thursday, David finally made it, only to mourn his brother in a casket.
Jim Schaefer, Tresa Baldas, Vic Kolenc, Molly Smith, Daniel Borunda, Lauren Villagran, Joshua Bowling, María Cortés González and USA TODAY staff writer Trevor Hughes produced this report. The story was written by Schaefer and Baldas.
Protesters say that President Vladimir V. Putin’s government was simply intent on nipping any opposition in the bud, even at a local level, and that the signatures were genuine.
During ensuing demonstrations, riot police officers with nightsticks beat hundreds of protesters and arrested more than 2,500 people, most of whom were quickly released. Some face lengthy prison sentences, and dozens of opposition leaders are now in jail.
A survey released last week by Levada Center, an independent polling group, showed that a third of Muscovites are opposed to the current mayor, Sergei S. Sobyanin, while another third support him and the rest have no opinion.
The Moscow city government has for years been pouring money into urban renewal projects such as sprucing up parks and resurfacing sidewalks. Some political analysts see the work as a Putin strategy to use oil revenues to appease the capital’s politically important middle class.
In addition to mass arrests, the authorities have turned to subtler tactics to curtail street protests.
The police have checked the draft status of young men attending protests, and reportedly detained more than a hundred for army service. Court bailiffs, who are responsible for collecting some debts in Russia, have checked detainees for overdue loans.
The city government has been sponsoring alternative street activities, including a barbecue festival on Saturday called Meat & Beat. Sakharov Avenue, the site of the protests, was packed, while the festival was deserted.
The protests in Hong Kong began in response to a proposed extradition law. Demonstrations have expanded to include other demands.
Vincent Thian/AP
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Vincent Thian/AP
The protests in Hong Kong began in response to a proposed extradition law. Demonstrations have expanded to include other demands.
Vincent Thian/AP
Protests continued in Hong Kong for a 10th straight weekend on Saturday as demonstrators organized across the city, blocking multiple roads and a key tunnel under Victoria Harbor.
The protests checkered much of Hong Kong. At the airport, demonstrators dressed in black filled the arrivals hall with a massive sit-in, cheering in Cantonese, “Go, Hong Kong people!” and calling for the resignation of Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam. It was the second day of what protesters said would be a three-day occupation at the airport.
Protesters also demonstrated outside China’s military garrison in Hong Kong and marched through the city’s Central District, parts of the Kowloon Peninsula and a neighborhood in the New Territories, where police officers in riot gear cleared the demonstration with tear gas.
In Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui district, protesters set fires outside a police station, prompting the police to release a statement that the fires posed “a serious threat” to public safety.
Some protestors have started fires outside Tsim Sha Tsui Police Station, posing a serious threat to the safety of everyone on site.
The protests were originally sparked by a bill that would have allowed China to extradite people from Hong Kong. That bill has since been shelved, but not formally withdrawn, by Hong Kong’s government. Demonstrators are demanding that the bill be permanently withdrawn. They are also calling for the direct election of the city’s leaders, seats on the Hong Kong legislature and an investigation into police conduct during the demonstrations.
China has recently indicated it will not allow the protests to go on indefinitely and has called demonstrators “violent radicals” who are under foreign influence.
When Britain returned Hong Kong to China 22 years ago, China employed a “one country, two systems” principle, allowing Hong Kong to retain its own legal system, currency and civil service. Since then, fears have grown that Beijing is attempting to subvert that autonomy and erode democratic freedoms and the rule of law in the city.
NPR’s Anthony Kuhn reports that some visitors to Hong Kong from China’s mainland do not support the demonstrations. Lei Yong, a visitor to Hong Kong from China’s central Henan province, was yelling at the protesters, reports Kuhn. Lei said of the extradition bill: “This bill must be implemented. How can you not punish the bad guys?”
“It just shows this huge disparity, this gap, in the thinking and the culture of people in mainland China and Hong Kong,” Kuhn reports.
In an interview last month, leading pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong told NPR, “We are not afraid of the Communist regime.”
“Now is the summer of discontent, and as a Hong Konger, I am born, I live, and I love my hometown,” Wong told NPR. “We should determine our own destiny instead of the Hong Kong people’s future being dominated by Beijing.”
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That protest march in Central District, billed by organizers as a “family friendly” event, featured parents, baby strollers and children with balloons, and avoided incendiary slogans about “retaking Hong Kong” that have angered China’s governing Communist Party.
“Xi Jinping should come and take a look at us here, now, and then say whether we are hooligans,” said Ina Wong, a 34-year-old designer, referring to China’s hard-line leader. Ms. Wong took part in the rally along with her husband, a civil servant, and their 2-year-old son.
But the mood turned grimmer as darkness fell and the Kowloon Peninsula, across Victoria Harbor, became the focus for a new round of protests, which, unlike the morning rally in Central, had not been authorized by the police.
‘The Hunt’ depicts wealthy people hunting people that are less well off.
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Two average debate performances and several rhetorical blunders later, Joe Biden is still on top. But this race is just getting started, and the former vice president’s lead might not be as untouchable as it seems.
A new Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll has Biden leading the pack, 5 points ahead of Bernie Sanders, 7 points ahead of Elizabeth Warren, and 13 points ahead of Kamala Harris. At 21%, Biden’s familiarity has given him an advantage few candidates enjoy.
But Biden’s front-runner status might not last. A large number of Democratic voters remain undecided. According to the poll, 20.8% of voters said they haven’t made up their mind and 58% said their vote could change in the next six months before the primary. This is bad news for Biden: There are just as many undecided voters as there are Biden supporters, which means the former vice president has his work cut out for him if he hopes to maintain his wide margin over the next six months.
Biden must prove to primary voters that his moderate platform can beat President Trump’s in 2020. To do so, he must ward off attacks from the progressive, left-leaning candidates who offer the more radical policies the party’s base wants.
Biden’s support is steady. Before and after each primary debate, he’s polled at at least 30%. But Tuesday’s poll is evidence that it’s still possible to shake things up in this race. And that’s exactly what Democratic voters want. The base wants a fighter and an innovator. If Biden wants to win, he’ll have to prove he’s all that and more.
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