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The Independent
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
From eight-year-old ‘influencers' to trans anarchists, today's gun owners aren't who you think
In a video posted to the Survival Sisters Facebook page, a little elementary school-age girl with immaculate braids and a blue T-shirt grips a machine gun, squinting into the sight. The automatic weapon is huge in her tiny hands, but she holds it expertly, even if she has to balance it on a block of wood. As the video continues, she pulls back her finger and fires a practice shot. Music taken from the movie 300 swells in the background. Cut to a higher-definition clip, taken years later. That little girl is now a young teen, with her hair pulled back into a ponytail. She stands confidently with her weapon, her yellow ear defenders and safety glasses matching a yellow shirt with flowers on it, and pumps round after round of ammo into an open field. The huge bullets fly past the camera, one after the other. At one point, her father steps in behind her to gently steady her with a hand on her back. Once she's finished with the round, she reloads and immediately starts again. The video is titled, 'The evolution of Naomi,' and it features one of the four Thrasher daughters — Naomi, Kennedy, Brooke and Charli — all of whom have spent their lives around guns. Now in their late teens and early 20s, the Thrashers started learning about firearms before they hit kindergarten. At 4 years old, they accompanied their father, Fred, to the local range, and he explained gun safety to them while shooting. Once they showed that they understood the basics, he tried them out with 'little bitty guns,' he tells me — 22. caliber handguns — and then they moved on to semi-automatics, AR-15s, military-grade weaponry; they've even driven tanks. And they did it in front of a camera, with their father posting regular updates to their Facebook and Instagram pages, where they have a combined follower count of just under half a million. Not everyone was happy to see four young Black girls on a shooting range when they first started out, Fred Thrasher tells me. There were a 'bunch of older white men' who took offense to seeing his kindergarten-age kids learning about gun safety while their father demonstrated with real firearms. Some of those white men approached him and said: 'I'm going to call the NRA on you, because you shouldn't be teaching that.' Some of them made aggressive comments directly to his daughters, telling them they were going to 'make them eat dirt'. Thrasher took a sanguine approach. 'You should call the NRA,' he says he responded. 'I don't have to have a certification to teach my children a fact. Call whoever you want to call, because the NRA don't regulate me… But it's not even that you want it to be regulated. You just don't want me doing it with my children, because they mess with your reality.' He has a point. Despite the way they're often portrayed in mainstream media, American gun owners aren't who you think anymore. While familiar narratives in both Hollywood and Washington, D.C., still focus on the white, rural man, gun ownership has become increasingly diverse. In recent years, Black gun ownership in particular has spiked, with a 58-percent increase in 2020 alone, according to the firearm industry trade association NSSF. That trend has continued upwards over the five years that followed, with Black women in particular showing an interest in buying a firearm for the first time. Hispanic Americans, too, have become first-time gun owners at record rates. Polls show that interest in gun ownership from Jewish Americans has also been rising since 2023; national gun clubs have been reporting an influx of female and LGBTQ members. These numbers have been attributed to a number of factors: a rise in racism following the Black Lives Matter protests, a rise in antisemitism since the beginning of the war in Gaza, a rise in misogyny and transphobia after the re-election of Donald Trump. But they also correlate with a push by gun manufacturers to advertise to diverse groups, according to the nonprofit Violence Policy Center. Advertising since 2020 has spotlighted racially diverse gun owners and women, with dark warnings about the importance of protecting oneself from a radicalized populace. And all the while, marketing presentations at industry-only events have presented 'diversity' as 'the next big opportunity' for gun manufacturers, with the hope of creating 'new Second Amendment advocates' out of groups who historically might have been pro- gun rights and anti-guns in general. True figures on how many gun owners there are in the U.S. are surprisingly hard to come by. This is partly because the people who do the estimating — whether it's gun lobbyists like the National Rifle Association (NRA) or groups advocating for stricter gun control — are usually biased one way or another. There are just under 6.1 million registered guns in the country, although it's impossible to know how many unregistered firearms there are — and there are a number of people who own multiple guns, as well as a large number who own none. Best estimates suggest that around 83 million people own at least one firearm. About 40 percent of American adults say they live in a household with a gun, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. But concerningly, the reason why gun owners say they have firearms has changed dramatically over the past 25 years. In 2000, over half of gun owners said that they have a firearm for hunting or sport, with just 26 percent reporting they owned one for 'protection'. By 2013, that number had swung the other way, with just under half of people reporting that personal protection was their main reason for owning a gun. Ten years later, in 2023, the number of people who said they have a gun for protection had jumped again to 72 percent. These statistics correlate with a culture in which politics has become increasingly divisive, and suspicion and fear has become an increasingly common marketing tactic among firearms manufacturers. Like with any other social media partnership, gun influencers are often offered exclusive access to free and updated wares by gun manufacturers. When Fred Thrasher started the Survival Sisters pages seven years ago, it seemed like Black families wouldn't get the same treatment. But as time went on, he says, things changed. 'Manufacturers, they send us equipment now. They send us stuff to test,' he says. But it has to be 'cool stuff,' he adds, because his daughters are seasoned pros now. They want specially modified equipment and interesting tools. They aren't going to be tempted by just another, standard automatic weapon. 'My one daughter, Kennedy, if it's not a custom rifle — I don't mean custom like people put some paint on it; I'm talking about it's a precision rifle — she doesn't care to shoot it. Because it's like: It don't meet my standard.' The first machine gun shoot that Thrasher took his children to was an invite-only event run by the influencer Iraqveteran8888, otherwise known as Eric Blandford, a wildly successful YouTuber in the firearms space with over 2.8 million followers. Blandford — who fits the standard gun owner profile in people's minds, as a middle-aged white man and a veteran who poses in camo-patterned tactical gear and lives in the country — 'believes that all gun laws are infringements,' according to his own website. At the machine gun event he ran, the Thrasher family made a big splash. 'You have these little girls — at the time, they were probably, what, eight or nine? They were little bitty girls,' says Fred Thrasher. 'But they were handling these things, and they were not gangsters. They were not thugs. These were girls with big ponytails, handling these weapons in a safe fashion that impressed people. Because we have friends that have been in the military special forces, and their sons don't do it, but these little girls are doing this.' It wasn't just their fellow enthusiasts who were interested. While they were there, Fred and his daughters were also approached by firearms manufacturer Daniel Defense, and featured in some of their marketing copy. 'After they kind of spotlighted for Daniel Defense, people were like: The doors are open, you go ahead and do it,' Thrasher says. 'And ever since then, it's just been one of those things where we have traveled around this great southeastern part of this country, just letting them shoot machine guns and dealing with other influencers.' In the video of Naomi that shows her evolution from youngster balancing a gun on a tripod to confident teen, she's shown shooting the Daniel Defense MK18 AR-15. It is a powerful and confronting image. For some, Daniel Defense is a manufacturer that pushes boundaries in a tongue-in-cheek way and markets innovative new inventory, all while empowering gun owners by pushing against punitive laws. For others — like Nicole Hockley, co-founder and CEO of Sandy Hook Promise, an initiative founded by families affected by the 2012 school shooting — it is 'one of the worst manufacturers' out there, at least in terms of advertisements. One recent ad featured a rooftop sniper in an urban environment. Another, released in the immediate aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting, depicted a toddler holding an AR-15 assault weapon, alongside the words: 'Train up a child in the way he should go'. Despite the fact that Sandy Hook Promise advocates for gun control, it is a nonpartisan organization. And Hockley says that a lot of the conversations they have with politicians — both Republican and Democrat — behind the scenes are positive. This isn't just a job for her; it's a personal mission. In 2012, her six-year-old son Dylan was shot and killed in his first-grade classroom by a 20-year-old wielding a semi-automatic, AR-15 style firearm. The gun had been legally purchased by his mother. Gun violence is now the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in the United States. Sandy Hook Promise's 'UnTargeting' campaign calls out the firearms industry for deliberately marketing guns to children — usually young men — through video game-style ads that sell an image of power, control, and identity. It's part of a broader gun control movement in the U.S. that seeks reforms like universal background checks, red flag laws, assault weapons bans, and restrictions on firearm advertising. Advocates argue that America's gun violence crisis — including frequent school shootings, with 23 having occurred so far in this year alone — stems not only from easy access to weapons but also from a culture that glamorizes them. In countries like the UK, Japan, and Australia, where gun ownership is far more restricted, mass shootings are vanishingly rare, and rates of gun deaths are a fraction of what they are in the U.S. The American gun homicide rate is more than 26 times higher than that of other high-income nations. It's important to bear in mind, too, that while the U.S. does have an extremely high rate of civilian gun ownership relative to other countries, what sets it apart isn't just the number of guns — it's the frequency of gun violence, especially when it comes to mass shootings. Countries like Switzerland and Canada also have significant levels of gun ownership per capita, but they don't experience mass shootings at anywhere near the same scale. Research shows that the 'good guy with a gun' narrative — often used to justify widespread firearm access — rarely plays out in real-life active shooter events, and that countries with tighter laws and different gun cultures simply don't need armed civilians to stay safe. And even though the Second Amendment creates a lot of partisan conversations in politics, the data shows the vast majority of Americans — including most gun owners — support better background checks when people buy firearms. In the U.S., it seems, loose laws, aggressive advertising, and political inaction have created a uniquely deadly environment. And most Americans don't like that. Kids with pink guns Fred Thrasher doesn't see his children as social media content creators, even if they run in those circles. 'They're not influencers,' he says, firmly. 'We're a foundation.' The Survival Sisters Foundation is a nonprofit organization that takes families out in rural Georgia and allows them to learn about firearms while using expensive gear they wouldn't otherwise be able to access. It's targeted in particular toward girls and women, and runs a campaign called 'Don't Be A Victim' that focuses on preventing domestic violence, child abuse, human trafficking and — perhaps counterintuitively — school shootings. Still, child gun influencers have been becoming more common over the past five years. Pink-haired 12-year-old Autumn Fry is one such example: in 2022, aged eight, she posed in RECOIL magazine, clutching a customized assault rifle painted in pink tiger-print, and detailed how she'd first put her finger on the trigger of an automatic weapon with her father on the gun range when she was two years old. Cheyenne Dalton is now 24 years old but has been a content creator in the firearms space since she was 14; at 17, she was already the subject of media profiles. She now promotes apple cider vinegar capsules on social media alongside semi-automatic weapons and her own branded merchandise. The 2A Boys are young brothers whose father uploads content of them clutching very large guns, sometimes military-grade. A recent video features their youngest sister, who looks to be three or four years old, being given a handgun by her father and talked through how to handle it as she sports pink ear defenders and points out her pink camo gun range bag, which she was given for Easter. The comments are universally approving: 'Six feet, 230lbs and I'm holding back tears, man,' writes one. 'She's so cute, small and precious, makes me wish I had children. This is what life in our country should be.' All of the above-mentioned influencers are white (The Independent reached out to each one for comment, but none replied.) Thrasher says that he has to take a more careful approach, balancing his enthusiasm for the space with how he knows American society views Black people. He takes care to make sure that the content the family puts out on social media is positive, that it could never be mistaken for gang content. That's one of the reasons, he says, why the logo of the Survival Sisters is still a little girl with a ponytail and a flower, even though his girls are teens and young adults now, with the oldest two heading off to college and the youngest in high school. 'Countering the narrative' is always top of mind. Thrasher didn't start shooting with his daughters to get clicks, anyway, he adds. He did it because, after he and his wife divorced, he realized he needed a way to bond with his children, and he was raised as a 'country boy,' hunting, shooting, fishing and simulating river rescues. Traditionally, he'd been told that that was the purview of little boys. But why shouldn't it be a way for a father to bond with his four little girls? An AR-15 in your book bag Despite the fact that the gun ownership demographic is changing and manufacturers are proactively reaching out to Black communities, Thrasher remains grimly realistic. He has counseled his daughters not to carry firearms on their person, even though they will soon be old enough to apply for a license to do so. Firearms should be used for self-protection in one's own home, locked in a safe, he says. He doesn't want to imagine what might happen if one of his girls was driving home, got pulled over by a cop, and then the cop found a legally owned gun in her car. But gun laws are lax where the family lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and some parents take their responsibility a lot less seriously than he does. An experience that Thrasher's 18-year-old daughter had at a party underlines that. 'She said: Dad, I went to a party with one of my friends. And she said every little boy in there had an AR-15 pistol in his book bag,' he tells me. 'She said: I had to leave. And so I said, well, why did you have to leave? She said: I know that they don't know anything about firearms, because who keeps firearms like that? Because in her mind, most firearms are kept in cases.' When they're on the range or at private shooting events, the Thrasher girls still experience prejudice that their father says is rooted in both racism and sexism. At one machine gun event, 'there were some white people that didn't want my children to touch their guns,' says Fred Thrasher. 'And whatever, that's cool. Because we've got all those.' Even among people who regularly shoot, his daughters have incredible access, he adds: 'Most people would never shoot some of the stuff that my kids have shot unless they were in the military.' As Thrasher sees it, this is social progress. He draws an analogy with swimming pools, which once banned Black people entirely. As a result, many Black Americans were unable to learn how to swim — and they continue to be less likely to learn to swim to this day, despite the fact that pools have been desegregated for decades. Thrasher wants his daughters to be highly skilled and to force their way — gently, kindly but assertively and unapologetically — into the spaces where they are least expected. Otherwise, he says, what's to stop people from coming along one day and taking their rights away again? The man who changed his mind Jonathan Metzl is an author and psychiatrist who grew up in Missouri and spent the past 15 years of his career as a staunch gun control advocate. Every time a mentally ill person with a gun committed a mass shooting, he was called by the media and asked to deliver statements or write articles about why the country needs a public health-focused approach to guns, ideally with stricter gun laws. Then, after another such incident — when a naked, mentally ill white man shot and killed four people of color at a Waffle House — he decided to do a deep-dive into why so many people were ignoring his recommendations. And his mind began to change. In his 2024 book What We've Become, Metzl says, he questions his own position, 'because I went around Red State America talking to people about what guns meant in their context. And I realized that all the things that made sense to me as a liberal non-gun owner were largely non-starters for a lot of gun owners.' He always knew guns were cultural, he says, but he'd gotten so used to being asked if they were, for example, phallic symbols for insecure men that he'd lost all sense of nuance. Having spent a large chunk of his adult life in New York, he now lives in Tennessee, and has completely altered how he approaches conversations about firearms. 'Liberals like me, we spend a lot of time leading with government interventions, background checks and red flag laws, but there are a lot of people out there who own guns because they fear the government,' he says. 'And so it's not common sense for them to put their name in a government database, for example. And if those are the people you want to be speaking to, you have to at least understand why they're resistant to your whole paradigm.' Metzl isn't surprised that gun manufacturers are reaching out to more diverse communities: after all, he says, their aim is simply to sell as many guns as possible. But it's also important to bear in mind that half of America wouldn't look at an image of a child shooting a gun and find it confronting or negative, he adds: 'Half the people in this country would think that it's a great thing that people should be armed at any age,' especially when those children are learning about gun safety. This explains the popularity of media like Toys, Tools, Guns and Rules, a children's book about gun safety written by prominent shooting enthusiast Julie Golob. With its bright colors and cover depicting a playground — as well as its coloring-in book accompaniment — it's a book that might shock people who have never been around guns, but speak to parents who know their kids will probably come across a firearm in everyday life and worry about how they might deal with that eventuality. The price of freedom and when freedom has a price Tacticool Girlfriend is the alias of a gun influencer who doesn't like to share too much about her identity. Her videos on YouTube (over 65,000 followers) and Instagram (just over 17,000 followers) feature her signature look: heavily made-up eyes just visible above a face mask and long, black hair, usually pictured standing against an patterned background, overlaid with pink lighting. What we do know: she is a transgender woman of Asian descent and a millennial, who often shares left-wing memes. She lives in an urban environment somewhere in the US, although she doesn't want to say exactly where. Her parents are liberals. She tells me she identifies as an anarchist, adding, 'I could give you a bunch of hyphens and words and a million different ways to describe all the things I believe in, but I think it's much bigger than that. And ultimately, I just am a pretty anti-authoritarian person.' TGF, as she also sometimes calls herself, says she 'actually grew up in a very anti-gun household.' Her father is a war refugee, who hates guns partly because of his own experiences and partly because 'he also sees what gun owners in this country typically are and what they stand for, and he does not like that.' TG's initial interest in firearms was because of her fascination with antiques and collectibles, 'and then it wasn't until 2016-ish that I started to kind of look at firearms from less of an interest [perspective] and more as an application for defense. I started to more seriously consider my own self-defense, and just was worrying about defending myself, especially as the political climate started to really polarize and become a lot more intense.' TGF's videos are diverse, featuring tips on how and where to conceal-carry your gun (ranging from how to store them in shorts to how to carry them subtly on the inner thigh in specially made underwear) right up to how best to fire automatic weapons. But she never wanted to be a well-known personality — hence the masks. She describes herself as a private person who found it hard to break into the gun community, and felt a responsibility to share tips with other people who might need them, especially trans people. She says she's heard from a lot of people — mainly minorities — who had never considered owning a gun until Trump won the 2024 election. Now, they want to get up to speed on how to handle a handgun, a rifle, an AR-15. TGF has been overwhelmed by the popularity of her channel, so much so that she stopped uploading content onto YouTube a year ago and retreated to the relative privacy of her less popular Instagram account. However, she has made some friends through the firearms influencer community, one of whom invited her to a shooting competition. There, she found that people took a 'refreshing' approach to her, embracing her with open arms. It's beyond what she was expecting, as someone who doesn't fit the traditional gun owner profile. She now goes regularly. 'I don't moralize the existence of guns,' she says. 'They are a tool… If I could snap my fingers and make all the guns in the world disappear, I probably would.' However, we have to be realistic about where we are as a society, she notes, saying: 'If we enact gun control, are we going to dismantle the military and police? Because if not, that's not really gun control, that's monopolization of violence. And so as long as there are guns, I would prefer that people be empowered and prioritize people who are the least empowered, the most disenfranchised parts of society. Those should be the last people to ever be disarmed, in my opinion.' When the NRA is silent 'The appeal to Black Lives Matter, the appeal after the Pulse nightclub shooting that LGBTQ communities really need to arm themselves, is really interesting,' says legal scholar and Second Amendment expert Prof. Mary Anne Franks. 'And the idea that women need to arm themselves is really interesting. Having done a lot of work on domestic violence and women who fight back and what it means for the law, this is something that I keep wanting to scream about every time we come across it: that when women actually do use guns to protect themselves, no one comes to their defense. Not the NRA, not anybody... It is such a bait-and-switch.' Consider the case of Philando Castile, Franks adds. 'Law-abiding gun owner, right? Goes to show his concealed-carry gun. He's literally the ideal gun owner. Shot dead by a cop because it's a Black man who's reaching for something. And the NRA said nothing.' Franks, who is white, grew up in Arkansas, and was raised in an evangelical southern Baptist church. She says some facets of gun culture remind her of fundamentalist religion. She especially has little time for 'Constitutional fundamentalists,' i.e. people who use the Constitution as a reason to say that there should be no gun control. That argument simply uses the Constitution as a foil, she believes. 'It gives you an excuse to say: 'Well, I'm not just being selfish and wanting to have things my way. I have a document that is revered and has a long history,' says Franks. 'And so it's not me who wants to be able to bring AK-47's into kindergartens. It's the Founding Fathers who want to do that'.' It's important to underline, however, that there is such a thing as good gun culture, Franks adds. For instance, in Montana, 'you put on the outside of your house where your weapons are located, you tell them how much ammunition you have,' she says, 'because if there's ever a fire, that's something that the firefighters need to know about, like, where it's stored. It's a totally different culture, and it's an actually incredibly responsible culture. But that gets completely conflated with someone who's in the middle of New York City who says: Well, I have to be able to clean my gun in my second-floor apartment, even if that runs the risk of shooting through to someone.' The problem, as Franks sees it, is that 'Americans are so fearful of everything. And the irony is that the people with the most power, the most privileges, the most security, they're the most scared. They keep needing more and more security.' A Daniel Defense commercial that was banned from running during the 2014 Super Bowl because of NBA rules is now viewable on the manufacturer's website, and displays how gun marketers have long promoted the idea that American society has an inherent undercurrent of threat. In the video, a white suburban man pulls into a driveway in a quiet neighborhood, picks up the newspaper from his front yard and walks into his house. Inside, his immaculately made-up wife turns to greet him with a smile. As they embrace, a baby monitor goes off, and the couple set off up the stairs to the nursery. There, Dad picks up their months-old baby, who is dressed head-to-toe in pink and laid out on a sweet purple blanket. She smiles as she sees her father, and the whole family embraces, each parent delicately holding a chubby infant arm. Immediately, an image of an assault rifle appears onscreen and the commercial comes to an abrupt end with the tagline 'Defending your nation, defending your home.' It is a gut-punch of a tonal shift, clearly designed to suggest that even during the most innocent and wholesome family moments, terrible possibilities lie in wait. Preparing for a civil war Mary Anne Franks considers that people who think there is a genuine need for guns have given up on the idea of society as a concept — and maybe there's something in that. 'It really took quite a lot to get me to the point of saying: Do I think that civil war is actually imminent and likely in this country? The last month has made me think that the answer to that is yes,' she says. Franks has been particularly alarmed by reports of ICE agents in plainclothes taking people off the streets or turning up at people's homes in the middle of the night and bundling them into vans without showing any kind of official ID. 'A woman has already [allegedly] been sexually assaulted by a man presenting, but pretending to be an ICE agent,' she says. 'He told her: 'If you don't comply with me, I will have you deported.' And no, he wasn't in any way affiliated with ICE, but now you've created a completely lawless world in which she thought he could have been.' The case that Franks is referring to happened in Brooklyn, but reports suggest that ICE impersonations during crimes are going up. 'This is the chaos that I'm really afraid of,' she adds. 'And everybody's got guns. So I'm very, very worried.' Having never wanted to personally own a firearm, and having dedicated much of her career to publicly advocating for gun control, Franks has come to realize that she herself has been changed by the past few weeks. 'I will say candidly — and it makes me feel very awful — that for the first time in my life, I have considered getting a gun,' she says, 'because I've been threatened enough in the last month and a half, including by people who are within the government, to think: OK, actually, I don't know how I would defend myself if the government tries to illegally break down my door and tries to haul me away to a deportation camp.' Fred Thrasher recently had a group of women from Scandinavia come out to visit him and his family. None of them had ever shot a gun before. Before they set out on a day of activities, he says, one of the women asked him and his daughter: 'Would you say that Scandinavians are free?' Thrasher thinks that question is best answered through actions, not words. 'I said: Come down and shoot with us,' he says. 'And after you come down and shoot with us, you let me know what you think.' He thinks that every woman deserves to feel she's in charge of her own space, invulnerable to violent advances. Nicole Hockley, from Sandy Hook Promise, says she's all for people owning guns legally and using them for sport, but that manufacturers stepping up their efforts to sell to children — such as through the development of the 'JR-15,' a child-sized AR-15 assault rifle made by a company that markets itself with skull-and-cross-bone images with pacifiers and pigtails —have disturbed her. In general, she's also noticed that gun manufacturers have recently been taking a more 'fear and anger' based approach to marketing in recent years, even as they also focus on patriotism. Sandy Hook Promise's research also shows that firearms for adults are advertised to children in the U.S. on social media 'every day'. 'My background's in marketing, and I would love to speak to some of these brand marketers or social media influencers [for whom] this is how they make their money and just say: Are you morally and ethically OK with this?' she says. For all their patriotic rhetoric, she doesn't recognize the America portrayed by so many of these firearm manufacturers. After all, she asks, 'how can we be the land of the free and the home of the brave if the only way we feel free is by having a gun?'
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
NJ Senate advances laws to curb 'ghost' guns, expand gun crimes
The state senate's Law and Public Safety Committee cleared nine bills related to gun safety and regulation at its June 19 meeting at the Statehouse in Trenton. The bills range from upgrading crimes for manufacturing guns to allowing for the court system to have more time considering pretrial release or pretrial detention when a gun crime is involved. Eight of the nine bills were introduced in the upper chamber last year. Five of them have already passed the full Assembly. State Sen. Linda Greenstein, the Democrat who chairs the committe and sponsored one of the bills, said the package 'will keep us safe from emerging threats.' Groups like Moms Demand Action and the National Council of Jewish Women testified in favor of the bills. Not everyone was in support of the legislation, though. Darin Goens, a state director for the National Rifle Association, and Joseph LoPorto of the New Jersey Gun Owner Syndicate, opposed the bills because there are already laws on the books that address gun related issues. They both also noted that New Jersey is in the minority of states when it comes to taking some of these measures, including the severity of the penalties. State Sen. Paul Moriarty, also a Democrat, said 'we're not that interested in what other states are doing.' 'There are a lot of states that seem to no longer want women to have reproductive rights. We've chosen a different path,' he said. 'We will continue to choose the path that we think is right for New Jersey at this time.' Trenton: Phil Murphy, Matt Platkin vow increased security for NJ officials after Minnesota shooting These nine bills would: Increase the penalties for the manufacturing and distributing so-called 'ghost guns' and 3D-printed firearms from second-degree to first-degree crimes, specifically buying parts to make a gun without a serial number, making a gun with a 3D printer, making a covert or undetectable firearm and transporting a manufactured gun without a serial number. Require businesses that sell guns and ammunition to use the merchant category codes established by the International Organization for Standardization for processing credit, debit, or prepaid transactions. Establish criminal penalties for selling or possessing devices designed to convert a weapon into a semiautomatic firearm. Make it a crime to possess digital instructions to use a 3D printer to make a gun, firearm receiver, magazine or firearm component. Make firing a gun within a hundred yards of certain structures like homes or schools a crime of the fourth degree and any other reckless discharge of a firearm a disorderly persons offense. Require the public safety risk assessment used by the Pretrial Services Program to consider a charge, if the act was an unlawful act and not a crime or offense, as risk factors relevant to the risk of failure to appear in court when required and the danger to the community while on pretrial release. Require county prosecutors to provide the state's attorney general with data on crimes involving the use of a gun that did not result in any bodily injury. Permit the court system to take additional time to consider pretrial release or pretrial detention when firearm offense is involved. Require state's attorney general to create a ballistics analysis device pilot program and for the chief law enforcement officer of each participating municipality to submit a report to the state's attorney general within 30 days with a detailed summary of each incident in which the agency used the device and recommends whether the agency should continue to use the device. Katie Sobko covers the New Jersey Statehouse. Email: sobko@ This article originally appeared on NJ laws target ghost guns, expand gun crimes
Yahoo
19-06-2025
- Yahoo
Instructor held after woman shot in firearm training course, police say
A woman participating in a firearm training course was shot when a gun went off as an instructor was demonstrating weapon safety, Baltimore Police said Wednesday. Officers in the Southwest District were called to the 4500 block of Edmondson Avenue for a report of a shooting around 6:12 p.m. Police found a 23-year-old adult female with a gunshot wound to the leg, according to a release from the Baltimore Police Department. After a preliminary investigation, officers determined the woman was taking a firearm training course and had been shot accidentally when the gun went off as the instructor 'was demonstrating how to render a firearm safely,' police said in the release. The instructor was taken into custody, police said, but is not currently facing charges. The woman was listed in stable condition at an area hospital, according to police. Southwest District Shooting detectives are investigating. Anyone with information can reach detectives at 410-396-2488. Information can be submitted anonymously to the Metro Crime Stoppers tip line at 1-866-7LOCKUP or by online text by visiting the MCS website. Have a news tip? Send it to nzimmerman@
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Strong gun laws in California yield lowest gun deaths rates, Newsom says
( — Gov. Gavin Newsom released a statement stating that California leads the nation in strong gun safety laws, correlating with many lives that were saved. Newsom stated that year after year, California has been ranked as the number one state in the country for its strong gun safety laws, along with some of the lowest rates of gun deaths, according to information from Giffords Law Center and Everytown for Gun Safety. In other states, where officials have passed gun safety laws, fewer people have died from gun violence, Newsom said. Texas and Florida, which have been ranked 32nd and 21st, respectively, in gun law strength, had firearm mortality rates more than 50% higher than California. Newsom said that according to the California Department of Justice Office of Gun Violence Prevention, if the gun death rate in the rest of the U.S. matched the state's over the past decade, there would have been almost 140,000 lives saved, and potentially hundreds of thousands of people would sustain gunshot injuries. California gun control bill that could ban popular Glock pistol sales moves forward 'Strong gun laws save lives,' said Newsom. 'California has reduced its gun violence rate because of its leading gun safety laws.' California was the first state in the nation to have a 'Red Flag Law' in 2016, according to Newsom. The law builds on a bedrock of available protection orders – nine in total – that would prohibit firearm possession for people subject to orders ranging from domestic violence and workplace harassment. In the first three years of the law, the protection order was used to prevent 58 cases of threatened mass shooting, according to Newsom. Newsom said, 'There have been significant increases in utilization of GVROs – increasing by 118% – from 2020 to 2023.' Newsom stated that he signed a bipartisan legislative package to further reinforce California's nation-leading gun laws and prevent incidents of mass violence. 'California won't wait until the next school shooting or mass shooting to act. In the absence of congressional action, our state is once again leading the way by strengthening our nation-leading gun laws. Data shows that California's gun safety laws are effective in preventing gun-related deaths, which makes the ongoing inaction and obstruction by politicians in the pocket of the gun lobby even more reprehensible.' Gov. Gavin Newsom Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Fox News
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
Former Disney star Christy Carlson Romano reveals shocking details about nearly losing her eye
Christy Carlson Romano is speaking out about nearly losing an eye after she was shot in the face four months ago. During an appearance on the upcoming June 10 episode of the "Not a Damn Chance!" podcast, via a sneak peek by People magazine, the 41-year-old former Disney star recalled the terrifying incident while she was shooting clay pigeons with her husband, Brendan Rooney, for his birthday. Asked how it happened, Romano explained she was not "at liberty to say specifics," according to People. The actress previously revealed on Instagram that she was "hit in five places," including below her eye. Romano shared details for the first time about what transpired. "It's a birdshot that got sprayed in my direction by another party, and essentially it was within 200 feet, which means really fast and hot," she told hosts Neen Williams and Frankland Lee. "They weren't malicious," Romano clarified. "It wasn't aggravated assault. It's what happened." The "Even Stevens" star then emphasized the importance of gun safety and described her initial response. "I feel very out of body about it. … It's pretty wild," she said. "I'm shocked, and what goes through my head immediately is, 'Oh that's dope, I just got shot.' And then I go, 'Oh now I'm gonna die,'" she said. "I take a knee. My husband witnessed it and was like, 'Hey are you hit?' because I didn't scream. I didn't do anything. I was just out of body." Romano recalled she had a knee-jerk reaction upon being shot that stemmed from her time on the third season of the FOX reality TV series "Special Forces: World's Toughest Test." In the show, celebrity contestants take on grueling military exercises and challenges under the direction of ex-Special Forces operatives. Romano explained that the contestants were trained to give a thumbs-up to let their fellow cast members know that they were OK during the series' perilous challenges. The "Kim Possible" alum recalled that, out of habit, she gave Rooney a thumbs-up immediately after she was shot. "He was like, 'Oh, you're good.' And I was like, 'No I'm hit.' He goes, 'Oh s---,'" Romano recalled of her husband's reaction. She remembered that Rooney rushed to her aid and had to restrain himself from retaliating against the other party. "So, he's running to me and making sure I'm OK, and he's fighting the urge to hurt the person … but he's been practicing stoicism recently, and there was something in him," Romano recalled. "He was immediately into action mode, evaluating me and ran to get the car. "I felt this huge rush that I'd never felt before where I was starting to get really woozy. I think it was shock." Romano told the hosts she didn't experience any pain initially and described the thoughts that were running through her head, including her fears her children might be affected. The actress shares daughters Isabella, 7, and Sofia, 5, with Rooney. "I was covered in blood from my forehead … and I said three things. I was like, 'Am I gonna die? Who's gonna take care of the girls? Is my career over?'" she recalled. Romano explained that she came close to being blinded or killed. "If my head would've been tilted in any other direction, I would have been blind in my right eye. Or if I had turned my head, I could have gotten hit in a softer side of my skull, and I would have potentially been dead," Romano said. "It's still in my eye," she said of the pellets from the shotgun. "I have a fragment still in my forehead, and I have a fragment still behind my eye, which is 1 millimeter away from blinding me." Romano previously explained on Instagram that the lead fragment behind her eye had to remain in her face because removing it could leave her blind. The shot fragment lodged in her skull will also remain in place because doctors said it will expedite her healing process. During her podcast interview, Romano told hosts she put on a brave face at first and was making jokes about her medical crisis after she arrived at the hospital. "In retrospect, I was trying to be funny and not cry because I wanted the people around me to feel more calm so that they could take better care of me," Romano said. The former Broadway star admitted that it has been difficult to accept she is a "gunshot survivor." Clay pigeon shooting is an outdoor sport in which upside-down circular disks made of limestone and pitch used as targets are propelled into the air by machines called traps. Shooters use shotguns, with each shot projecting hundreds of small lead balls to hit the clay pigeons. The sport is typically not considered dangerous as long as safety measures are followed.
