Latest news with #gunlaws
Washington Post
6 hours ago
- Automotive
- Washington Post
This popular gunmaker persuaded N.H. lawmakers to protect it from lawsuits
A new law will shield the gunmaker Sig Sauer from being sued in its home state of New Hampshire by people who allege its pistol design is defective and has caused them injury — a victory that demonstrates the power of the firearms lobby in the face of high-profile lawsuits and calls for greater accountability. The firearms manufacturer, which is based in Newington, faces dozens of lawsuits from gun owners across the country who say their Sig Sauer P320 pistols fired without anyone pulling the trigger. The manufacturer has been sued at least 77 times in New Hampshire, according to the company, as well as in other states. A Sig Sauer lobbyist, at a New Hampshire legislature hearing in April, asked lawmakers for help to stem the lawsuits. The company has argued that the complaints were without merit and that fighting them was draining money from one of the state's largest manufacturers — which could, by extension, hurt local jobs. Weeks later, New Hampshire lawmakers granted firearms manufacturers protections in 'any product liability action' in the state from specific defect and negligence claims rising from a gun's lack of an external mechanical safety — in an amendment to a broader firearms bill that was swiftly passed and then signed by Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) on May 23. The governor, who did not publicly comment upon the bill signing, did not respond to a request from The Washington Post. Many lawsuits against gun manufacturers are brought in federal, rather than state, courts, and one state lawmaker who is critical of the bill said he doubts the New Hampshire legislature has the power to limit federal lawsuits. But Republican state Rep. John Sellers, a co-sponsor of the bill, said it was necessary because the number of lawsuits against Sig Sauer was becoming unreasonable. 'We're trying to protect them because they're a major employer — not just Sig Sauer, but Ruger, too,' Sellers told The Washington Post, noting that Connecticut-based firearms manufacturer Ruger also operates a large facility in New Hampshire. 'We don't want to have so many lawsuits that it kills the corporation and makes it go bankrupt.' Sig Sauer did not respond to requests for comment. In 2023, The Washington Post and The Trace found that at least 80 people, including police officers, had alleged that they had been shot by their Sig Sauer P320 pistols. Many who filed lawsuits against Sig Sauer said the guns fired without having their triggers pulled, often while holstered, sending bullets into their legs, hips or groins without warning. Last year, Sig Sauer was found liable in two cases, in Pennsylvania and Georgia, in which juries awarded the plaintiffs millions. The New Hampshire provision doesn't affect the P320 cases underway in courts there, but it will limit future cases in New Hampshire against Sig Sauer by state residents — and others trying to sue there. Out-of-state residents have filed suit against Sig Sauer in New Hampshire because it is more efficient; existing rulings in the state on the P320 issue mean a plaintiff could get their case before a jury faster, according to Bob Zimmerman, a lawyer who has represented more than 70 plaintiffs in lawsuits over the issue. New Hampshire Democrats, who are the minority in both chambers, roundly decried the provision as an example of Republican lawmakers putting corporate interests over residents. New Hampshire Senate Minority Leader Rebecca Perkins Kwoka said in a statement that shielding Sig Sauer from certain lawsuits in the P320 mechanical safety issue 'could, and should, be seen as legislative malpractice.' 'No company should be immune from liability when their product is defective — especially when it comes to the issue of gun safety,' she said. 'It is our job as legislators to put forth legislation that serves to protect our citizens and support our public safety workers — rather than shield billion-dollar corporations.' During the May 22 House vote on the bill, Democratic state Rep. David Meuse said, 'I'm not here today to try to litigate whether this particular weapon is safe. What I am here to try to do is stop us from passing a bill that will prevent gun owners who believe they have been harmed by a defective, unmodified product from having their day in court — which is exactly what this bill will do.' The provision's success is striking because it disadvantages New Hampshire residents for the benefit of a local company, said David Pucino, the legal director and deputy chief counsel for gun safety research and advocacy group Giffords. '[The law] doesn't protect Sig Sauer around the country in the dozens and dozens of cases where owners have been injured,' Pucino said. 'It just injures the people in New Hampshire.' Bobby Cox, vice president of government affairs at Sig Sauer and a Republican member of the South Carolina legislature, told New Hampshire lawmakers at the April Senate Judiciary hearing that the pistol's design is not defective. 'All these cases that we've seen with these guns, the gun has never been defective,' Cox alleged. 'It's been user error; it's been equipment associated with the gun.' Cox added that the lawsuits were 'becoming detrimental' to the company and portrayed them as 'out-of-state plaintiffs' attorneys … attacking in-state business.' Plaintiffs in cases against Sig Sauer have argued that the lack of a mechanical safety on the P320 is a manufacturing defect that has caused a known issue of unintentional discharges. The company has argued in court that the unintentional discharges were user error — and said the absence of a mechanical safety is a design choice that consumers can avoid by buying a firearm design with the features they want. Not everyone has a choice to carry a different weapon if they don't trust the design of the P320, said Zimmerman, the attorney. 'The majority of our clients are law enforcement. They are not, generally speaking, permitted to choose their service weapon; it's issued by the department.' 'It can be argued that other claimants can go to their home states and argue there, but residents in New Hampshire — law enforcement officers in New Hampshire — they don't have another option,' Zimmerman said. Firearm manufacturers have lobbied for protections from liability for years, and 32 states offer some form of immunity, according to Giffords. More recently, efforts led by Democrats in several states have sought to counter such efforts with legislation clearing the way for plaintiffs to bring civil lawsuits against gun industry entities. Since 2022, nine states have enacted such laws, according to Giffords. Rep. Albert 'Buzz' Scherr, a retired law professor and Democrat in the New Hampshire State House who opposed the bill, said he expects debates over the law's scope if a plaintiff tries to file a related case in New Hampshire federal court. The bill's language was 'abundantly unclear,' he said, and 'needs to be tested out and determined how broad the ban is, in case law,' he said. 'Can [the state legislature] limit anyone to accessing federal court? I don't think the state legislature has that power,' Scherr said. At the same time, he said, the Republican majority in both chambers likely feels emboldened to try to 'control anything having to do with guns, be it state or federal law.'
New York Times
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A Punk-Rock Past Comes With Unwanted Baggage for a N.Y. Politician
He's a former punk rocker who still looks the part. Bald, burly, with his rolled-up sleeves revealing elaborate tattoos, Justin Brannan hardly seems the prototype for public office. His hardcore-punk background has been a useful origin story in his political career, as he rose in the City Council to lead its powerful finance committee, and is now running for New York City comptroller. But it also left a public trail of interviews, offhand comments and online messages containing crass, insensitive and homophobic language that Mr. Brannan has, in recent years, apologized for using. Now, ahead of next month's Democratic primary for comptroller, a new trove of online messages has emerged from his past. The messages, most more than 20 years old, include a thread that cast the Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colo., on April 20, 1999 — which resulted in the deaths of 13 students and a teacher — as an opportunity to promote Indecision, his band at the time. On a Dejanews Usenet online forum in 1999, an account under Mr. Brannan's name posted that one of the high school students tied to the Columbine shooting had worn an Indecision T-shirt. The post cited a call with an unnamed news reporter. 'Yes!!! We're famous!' the account wrote, declaring that the shooting could help the band sell records, according to a publicly accessible version of the message board, now archived on Google Groups. Mr. Brannan, who has since pushed for tougher New York State gun laws, was in his early 20s at the time of the thread. Three days after the shooting, the account under Mr. Brannan's name directed others on the thread to circulate the rumor, which was later shown to be inaccurate. The account urged people to call WINS-AM radio in New York and NBC. 'Let them know you saw the Indecision T-shirt,' it said. Someone responded, 'Are you really this desperate to sell records?' 'Industry baby,' the account replied, indicating that the band had already seen a small boost in sales. The message was signed 'Justin Brannan.' Mr. Brannan, 46, said the messages did not reflect his 'record as a public servant.' 'I've fought hard and always led with love, empathy and respect,' said Mr. Brannan, who represents the Bay Ridge and Coney Island sections of Brooklyn. 'I said and did plenty of stupid stuff as a teenager that I regret now decades later as a man approaching 50,' Mr. Brannan said in a statement. 'I believe if we want real representation in government, we need to be willing to accept real people — not those who claim pristine pasts, but those who learn from their mistakes, grow and try to do better.' On the same day that the Brannan account asked followers to spread the T-shirt rumor, Mr. Brannan apparently had misgivings, according to contemporaneous emails that he provided through a campaign spokeswoman. In one email sent to a bandmate, Rachel Rosen, Mr. Brannan wrote that he felt 'horrible' that 'we were making jokes like idiots.' In another email from the same day, Mr. Brannan said the rumor about the T-shirt was 'sick,' adding, 'I don't think any of us realized how bad this shooting was,' according to a copy provided by the campaign. In an official statement, dated April 23, 1999, his band said that it was 'horrified to be briefly associated' with the shooting, and that it had 'always stood up against violence and hate.' The statement included contact information for Mr. Brannan, the band's spokesman at the time. Ms. Rosen, the Indecision bandmate who received Mr. Brannan's emails, said he had crafted the band's statement after returning from a tour, during which access to news had been limited, and realizing that the false rumor was taking off. In other unrelated threads now on Google Groups, the account under Mr. Brannan's name posted various messages that included insensitive or offensive language. In one instance, the account said 'Chinese people cannot drive.' Mr. Brannan's campaign noted that he had since spoken out against anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic, and that he sponsored a Council resolution last year calling on Congress to condemn anti-Asian sentiment. In past campaigns, voters have been willing to overlook Mr. Brannan's decades-old indiscretions. His interpersonal skills and unfussy persona have helped him on the trail and with Council colleagues. The bounds of acceptable discourse for politicians have also appeared to shift, especially since Donald J. Trump won his first presidential election despite a history of making embarrassing and vulgar comments. Mr. Brannan has some experience confronting his past use of insensitive language. During his failed bid to become City Council speaker four years ago, Mr. Brannan was questioned about a homophobic slur he had used in a 2006 interview, while he was a member of the hardcore punk band Most Precious Blood. He was also confronted with a 1999 letter to the editor he had written to a music magazine in which he defended a writer's use of a homophobic slur, arguing then that the word was a 'regular, accepted, tolerated slang word — for better or for worse,' The Daily News reported. Mr. Brannan apologized. 'It doesn't matter as the context or the intent, whether you are gay or straight, it is an offensive, indefensible and hurtful term,' he said at the time. 'I apologize for any harm I may have caused decades ago. I have always been an ally to the L.G.B.T.Q. community and I always will be.' The Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, an influential progressive group in New York that advocates L.G.B.T.Q. rights, endorsed Mr. Brannan in a Council race after that apology. But in the Democratic primary for comptroller, it has endorsed Mark Levine, the Manhattan borough president. State Senator Kevin Parker, a moderate Brooklyn Democrat, is also running for comptroller. Kristen Pettit, a founding member of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, defended Mr. Brannan, whom she knows personally and praised for his work on gun safety. 'I think Justin's actions communicate loud and clear who he is in his adult life,' she said. 'He's focused on helping the people of the city, no matter who they are or when they got here. He is a man for others.'
WIRED
22-05-2025
- WIRED
Why 3D-Printing an Untraceable Ghost Gun Is Easier Than Ever
May 22, 2025 3:28 PM On today's episode of Uncanny Valley , we discuss how WIRED was able to legally 3D-print the same gun allegedly used by Luigi Mangione, and where US law stands on the technology. Luigi Mangione attends a pretrial hearing at New York State Supreme Court in New York in February 2025. Photo-Illustration: WIRED Staff; Photograph:WIRED's Senior Writer, Andy Greenberg, has been reporting on ghost guns for more than a decade. He first used a 3D printer to assemble a gun in 2015, and says that today's process is not only faster, but cheaper. We talk to Andy about how he legally printed the same gun Luigi Mangione allegedly used in the alleged killing of the United Healthcare CEO last year, and whether US law is keeping up with the technology of 3D printed guns. You can follow Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer and Andy Greenberg on Bluesky at @agreenberg. Write to us at uncannyvalley@ Articles mentioned in this episode: How to Listen You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for 'uncanny valley.' We're on Spotify too. Transcript Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors. Zoë Schiffer: This is Zoë. Before we start, I want to take a chance to remind you that we really want to hear from you. If you have a tech related question that's been on your mind or a topic that you wish we'd covered in the show, write to us at uncannyvalley@ If you listen and enjoy the episodes, please, please rate it and leave a review on your podcast app of choice. It honestly does help other people find us. Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley . I'm WIRED Director of Business and Industry Zoë Schiffer. Today on the show, WIRED built and tested a 3D-printed pistol, the exact same model of the gun that Luigi Mangione allegedly used in the brutal killing of a health care CEO last year. Untraceable and often built entirely in private, those guns remain legal in some parts of the country due in part to a loophole in the US federal gun control laws. Today we hear about the process of creating a ghost gun, how those laws have evolved over time, and what future regulations may come. I'm joined today by Andy Greenberg, senior writer at WIRED. Andy, welcome to the show. Andy Greenberg: Glad to be here. Thanks. Zoë Schiffer: Andy, you've been reporting on ghost guns for a really long time, and you started out this story with a question. Has the law in the United States actually caught up with the technology? I guess I wanted to start by asking you that same question. Has it? Andy Greenberg: Well, the short answer is no. Even as the technology to make these so-called ghost guns and in particular 3D-printed guns has gotten more powerful, more practical, far, far, cheaper, the law has really lagged behind. It's opened up this space between the technology and the law that has allowed people to make their own guns at home in total privacy and anonymity more easily than ever. Zoë Schiffer: I remember you saying that the first guns just took hours, and hours, and hours. Now they still take half-a-day, but it's a lot less time. Andy Greenberg: It's definitely faster. I printed two gun frames in 13 hours for this experiment. Zoë Schiffer: Wow. Andy Greenberg: That's probably just a little bit faster than it was 10 years ago, when I first ... I should say 10 years ago, I made an AR-15 ghost gun in WIRED's San Francisco office. Zoë Schiffer: Oh my gosh. Andy Greenberg: Three different ways. One of those ways was trying to 3D print the body of the gun known as the lower receiver of an AR-15. For the Glock-style pistol that Luigi Mangione allegedly used, it's called the frame. I was able to compare how this technology has changed and how well it works to make a gun back then in 2015 and then now. Yes, it's faster, but it's also just much better. And 3D printers are much, much cheaper. That's perhaps the biggest thing of all. The 3D printer that I used back in 2015 to make the body of an AR-15 cost almost $3000 alone. The entire ingredient list for my experiments in making allegedly Luigi Mangione's ghost gun was $1144 or so, plus shipping. Zoë Schiffer: Wow. Andy Greenberg: That includes the cost of the printer, which was about $650. That's an enormous drop in price that has made this much more accessible to people, and just a much more practical way to try to obtain one of these guns in a fashion that completely circumvents all US gun control. Zoë Schiffer: Right, completely. Before we go further on, I think it would be helpful if you just explain for the audience what exactly is a ghost gun. What is the loophole that allows these guns to be made? Andy Greenberg: Well, a ghost gun is this term that was originally used by gun control advocates, but now has actually been picked up by a lot of gun proponents as well. That basically means a gun that is homemade that has no serial number, and therefore is not registered with any government agency. You don't have to get a background check or show anyone ID. No gun control of any kind to obtain it. In that sense, it's a ghost. The notion really is that you make just the parts of the gun that are regulated under US law, and then you can buy the rest of it off the internet or from stores, or whatever. And assemble it at home. Zoë Schiffer: Right, yeah. Now we see why it's called a loophole. That's a pretty serious one. I want to actually go off script, because I'm curious how you approached the story. But honestly, when I was reading it I was like, "How the hell did Andy convince our lawyers to let him build not one, but multiple guns in the WIRED office?" I want to know how those initial conversations actually went. Andy Greenberg: Well, the trick was in 2015 that I didn't ask anybody. Zoë Schiffer: Oh, right. Andy Greenberg: I just did it. Zoë Schiffer: Right, right, right. Andy Greenberg: In 2025, that turns out to be a lot harder and we had to ask a lot of lawyers. We had to have an armorer on set, and a medic, and a special firearms specialist lawyer vet this. Then of course, I spoke to lawyers for the piece as well to make sure that what we were doing was legal. And also, to sketch out US gun control in 2025 and this gaping hole in it for homemade guns. Zoë Schiffer: One of the things we're talking about is what you just mentioned, what has changed since you first started covering the space. You mentioned that the first time you built a 3D-printed gun, you did it in the WIRED office in San Francisco. This time, you actually went to Louisiana. Can you tell me about why that was important? What has changed on the regulatory side? Andy Greenberg: Well, on some level, US law is trying to catch up with this problem, really at the state level mostly. 3D printing a gun in New York is illegal unless you obtain a serial number for it. That's the same now in California, too. My experiment in San Francisco would now be totally illegal. That's the case in 15 US states, that there are some laws around ghost guns. In fact, there was a ban under Biden from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms on ghost gun kits. These pre-made kits that allow anybody to finish a Glock-style frame or an AR-15 lower receiver from a plastic, or polymer, or even metal part with just a few tools in a matter of minutes. Those kits are not illegal according to the ATF. There was a Supreme Court ruling just in March upholding that ban. Part of what I was trying to find out here is despite a Supreme Court ruling, what's seen as a big crackdown on ghost guns, is this still possible to do legally with a 3D printer? And it is. The Supreme Court ruling basically said you can't sell parts that are readily convertible into a ghost gun, but it didn't say anything about creating one out of thin air and some plastic filaments out of empty space, which is really what a 3D printer does. What we did in Louisiana, where there is no state law around this, remains a wide open loophole in the law, if you can call it that. If you 3D print a frame of a Glock-style pistol, then you can buy the rest of the parts off the internet and assemble it, and you have a gun that is a ghost gun. An anonymous, fully private, lethal weapon. Zoë Schiffer: When we get back, we'll get into the details of how Andy actually made and assembled the ghost gun. But for now, we have to go to break. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley . Okay, Andy, I want to get into the gun assembly process. Talk to me about the point from printing, to ordering the parts, to actually putting it together. Andy Greenberg: The printing is definitely the easiest part in 2025. You really can download these files, these CAD files for gun frames from a bunch of different open source websites run by basically opponents of gun control. Then put them into some software and click print, and 13 hours later, in this case I had two perfect Glock-style frames. It was really remarkable how powerful the 3D printer, and cheap it was, that I was using. The assembly is a lot trickier. That is as hard as ever. It's like assembling a very small piece of Ikea furniture. There's a lot of hammering little pins into place, and assembling the trigger mechanism, and it all has to fit into this small cavity inside of the frame. It took me more than an hour to do, and I was being guided in this process by a 3D-printed gun aficionado. He calls himself Print, Shoot, Repeat, who was really helpful and patient about it. But I think that for people who know what they're doing, this takes 15 or 20 minutes— Zoë Schiffer: Wow. Andy Greenberg: —to assemble, once you have some practice at it. Zoë Schiffer: Okay. Then you shot the gun. What happened? How were you feeling at that moment at the gun range? Andy Greenberg: Well, before I even shot it, there is this incredible moment when you're building a gun. It feels like this interesting, a little technical process, like making a model airplane or something. Then all of a sudden, I'm getting this slide onto the frame and then it clicks into place. Then you see for the first time that you actually have a gun in your hands, that it's a lethal weapon. The way that you have to treat a gun in your hands is so different from a collection of gun parts. Suddenly, it's this lethal weapon, you have to be careful where you point it. It's a really dramatic moment. It was for me, anyway. Zoë Schiffer: There was that final part in the assembly where you put on a silencer, like allegedly Luigi Mangione had on his gun, right? Andy Greenberg: Right. Luigi Mangione, in his backpack allegedly had a 3D-printed silencer too, which is a very new phenomenon, even in the 3D-printed gun world. We built that, too. We 3D-printed a silencer. That actually is one part that's different. It's a felony for me to 3D-print a suppressor, a silencer as it's known. We did have an actual licensed gunsmith, the owner of the range that we were about to test that, who pushed print in that case and helped us to build that silencer. When Luigi Mangione allegedly did that, he would have been breaking the law. I would have been too, if not for having a gunsmith on-hand to help us out. Zoë Schiffer: Then it started to jam a little bit. Or I don't know the correct term, but it did malfunction, right? Andy Greenberg: Yeah, it did jam and it misfired several times. We reloaded it and I fired it a bunch more times. It would fire, and then misfire, and fire, and misfire. We did a bunch of troubleshooting, but ultimately we did get it working as a full semi-automatic handgun that could really empty a whole magazine worth of rounds. Zoë Schiffer: You also pointed out that Brian Thompson's alleged killer—their gun also malfunctioned. It looked like, from the videos, that they had practiced a fair amount because they were totally unperturbed by the experience that you had, where the gun jammed, and then you had to troubleshoot, and then keep going. Andy Greenberg: Right. Once we had gotten the gun working as a real semi-automatic, then we put the silencer on, our 3D-printed silencer. The silencer, based on the way that it attaches to the muzzle, it does actually prevent the slide from getting its full range of motion. It no longer actually worked as a true semi-automatic weapon. I had to, every time I pulled the trigger, pull back the slide, rack the gun as they say, which ejects a casing and pushes a new round into the chamber, ready to be fired. You have to manually rack it each time. But when I looked at the surveillance video of allegedly Luigi Mangione killing Brian Thompson, or whoever that was in that video, you can see that they do exactly that. They pull back the slide with every shot. In fact, they seem to be fully prepared to do that. They don't hesitate at all. It was this eerie feeling of realizing that we had arrived at exactly the place where Brian Thompson's killer did. It was this very unnerving feeling of realizing that I was carrying out exactly the same process, I was going through exactly the same sensations of recoil, and racking, and firing again that I was seeing in this actual murder video. Zoë Schiffer: Talk to me about what proponents of ghost guns say. Why are they for this untraceable and potentially really dangerous technology? Andy Greenberg: I think there's a whole range of people who are interested in ghost guns and 3D-printed guns. Cody Wilson, the creator of the first fully 3D-printed gun, I was there in 2013 when he fired for the first time the Liberator, this fully plastic, fully 3D-printed one-shot pistol. He wants to destroy the state. He's a full-on radical Libertarian who believes that actually making gun control impossible, but demonstrating that it is fundamentally impossible. He can use that as a lever to show that "all government is impossible." But then you talk to somebody like Print, Shoot, Repeat, who was the one who helped us out in this experiment. He's also a real advocate for 3D-printed guns. But he told me, "I like this because I like the idea of being able to make my own guns at home. You can experiment with the process, and build guns that are not commercially available, and do it with full anonymity and privacy." I did ask him, "Doesn't that also pose a real risk? Doesn't the ability for anybody essentially to make a gun at home with anonymity and privacy mean that they can use it to commit a crime?" He, like a lot of gun advocates I think in general, his answer was, "Well, freedom is dangerous," and that's the American way, essentially. Zoë Schiffer: I was really struck by that in your work. That it really felt like their POV was the occasional outburst of violence is the cost of freedom in this country, which is a very different way of seeing the world. My last question is just where do you think this is all heading? What does 3D printing and the way the technology has developed since you first started covering this space tell us about our ability to regulate guns in the United States? Andy Greenberg: Well, it's just definitely clear that law in this country is not keeping up with technology on this issue. That's a running theme probably of this podcast and everything we do at WIRED. But it's very visible. I feel like this is almost a parable about the ways that technology runs ahead of the law, especially in this country. And especially in a country where people love to defy the law and break the law. This is one example where Americans, it's the American way to try to have more guns than even our very meager gun control laws would allow us. For me, as someone who's covered 3D-printed guns since 2012, it just strikes me that this topic caught up and even run ahead of me in my reporting. I used to think of this as some future threat that I was describing in this science fictional way. Now it's definitely a present threat. In fact, it took me by surprise in December 2024, when a 3D-printed gun was used allegedly in this massively high profile murder. I don't know. It's a future shock, as Alvin Toffler would call it. Where it's like, "Wow, we are in that future now." This is a particularly scary one. Zoë Schiffer: We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll share our recommendations for what to read on this week. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley . I'm Zoë Schiffer, WIRED's director of business and industry. I'm joined today by WIRED's Senior Writer Andy Greenberg. Before we take off, Andy, tell our listeners what they need to read on today. Andy Greenberg: Well, this ghost gun story is part of the Rogue's package as we're calling it, all about people on the edge of the law and breaking the law in interesting ways. There's another story in that package that I thought was incredible, written by my colleague Evan Ratliff. It's about the Zizians, this group that went in an extremely irrational direction—became actually this violent militant group. It's a remarkable piece about their evolution and how they came to do truly horrifying criminal things. There's also this idea in the piece that has just haunted me in the weeks since I read it. It's called Roko's basilisk. It's something that rationalists and AI people talk about. Which is this notion that, if there is going to be a super intelligent AI in the future, it might punish people who were aware that it could be created and didn't work to create it. Zoë Schiffer: That's just so weird and scary. Andy Greenberg: It just really bothers me that there's this idea that's so dangerous you can't even think about it. But I would also say that I have a piece in this Rogue's package also coming out tomorrow that I've been working on for about a year-and-a-half, about at one point the dark web's biggest dealer in DMT, this incredibly potent psychedelic that he made in secret labs across the west half of the US. I hope you'll check that out, too. Zoë Schiffer: I am very excited for that one. DMT is a big topic of discussion in California these days. I have another recommendation. I feel like the topic of this podcast has been very, at least to me, and I understand I have my own biases here, a bleak vision of the future. But we also have this interview that our fantastic reporter Kate Knibbs did with Jay Graber, the head of Bluesky. She lays out a vision of the future of the social web that I actually found extremely uplifting. I thought it was interesting, because Jay uses a lot of the language that you hear from the cutting-edge tech VCs and executives, but she does it in a way that feels completely different from the future that these other people and a lot of the men lay out. I really found her words compelling and I think everyone should read it. That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show notes. Make sure to check out Thursday's episode of Uncanny Valley , which is about AI in schools and a big question we're having. Is using this technology cheating? Kyana Moghadam and Adriana Tapia produced this episode. Greg Obis mixed this episode. Pran Bandi was our New York studio engineer. Jordan Bell is our executive producer. Conde Nast's Head of Global Audio is Chris Bannon. Katie Drummond is WIRED's global editorial director.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Should election judges be allowed to carry guns at voting sites? Texas House says yes.
Election judges and voting clerks who have a license to carry a handgun would be allowed to perform their election day duties while being armed under legislation the Texas House passed Thursday on a party-line vote. Republican state Rep. Carrie Isaac's House Bill 1128 — which would exempt election judges and early voting clerks serving as election judges during early voting from a firearm ban at polling places — touched off a debate between the bill's author and Democratic Rep. Vikki Goodwin of Austin when the legislation first came to the floor Wednesday over whether the presence of guns at voting sites would make elections safer. "Why do you want guns at polling places?" Goodwin asked. Isaac responded that threats and violence directed toward election workers have increased in recent years, which puts the security of elections at risk. "It's becoming harder and harder to recruit and retain workers because of rising threats," she said. "These are not isolated incidents." More: Memes, meanness, lies: How rhetorical flourish can still impact the Texas Legislature Isaac mentioned threats against former Tarrant County Elections Administrator Heider Garcia after the 2020 election to bolster her contention that poll workers can become targets of violent individuals. In written testimony to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 2022, Garcia said the threats came after election deniers began casting doubts on the legitimacy of the outcome of the presidential race in which Democrat Joe Biden ousted Republican Donald Trump from the White House. Tarrant County became a lightning rod, he said, because it had long been a GOP stronghold but Biden narrowly outpolled Trump in the final vote count. Garcia told the committee that threats directed at him included disturbing social media posts, such as calls to "hunt him down" and "let his lifeless body hang in public until maggots drip out his mouth." But Goodwin questioned how allowing poll workers to carry handguns during elections would address or eliminate such threats. "Do you think it's possible that voters will be more intimidated by gun-toting poll workers?" she asked. More: 'School choice becomes the law of the land,' says a triumphant Gov. Abbott in signing SB 2 Isaac brushed aside the question, saying that only election judges who are licensed to carry handguns would be allowed to bring firearms to the polls. And the guns would likely be concealed and unnoticeable to voters, she added. "We are more safe when people are carrying firearms," Isaac said. According to the Texas Penal Code, only on- or off-duty law enforcement officers may bring firearms to a polling place. Texas is one of only 12 states and Washington, D.C., that prohibit firearms at polling sites, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. HB 1128, which the House passed on an 85-57 vote, now goes to the Senate, which will have less than a month to decide whether to bring up the bill for a vote before the 2025 legislative session ends June 2. This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas House OKs bill allowing election judges to carry guns at polls
CBC
08-05-2025
- CBC
Fear turned to shock when murder accused realized he'd shot an officer, court hears
When two Ontario Provincial Police officers walked into Alain Bellefeuille's house, one calling his name and announcing they were police, Bellefeuille never heard it, he testified at his murder trial Thursday. "If I knew they were police, I would've been relieved," he said in French of the events that took place May 11, 2023 in Bourget, Ont. "I would've been confused, but I wouldn't have taken them to be a threat." Instead he was panicked, he said, and his heartbeat was ringing in his ears. Someone was in his house at 2:30 a.m., he saw they were holding something metallic that looked like a handgun, and he thought he might die. His response, he said, was to start firing the high-calibre, semi-automatic sport shooting rifle he kept at the foot of his bed in violation of gun safety regulations. It was a legal firearm he had a valid licence for, but it was equipped with an illegal magazine he'd modified so that it could hold more than 20 rounds instead of the permitted five. There was nothing he had to do to get the gun ready to fire, Bellefeuille said. The safety was off, and a round was already in the chamber. He told court he thinks he fired 10 times through his bedroom wall, based on video footage from Sgt. Eric Mueller's body-worn camera. Emotional day in court Bellefeuille pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder at the outset of his bilingual trial in Superior Court in L'Orignal, Ont., east of Ottawa, in March. All his testimony is being given in French under questioning by co-defence counsel Biagio Del Greco, also in French. It's an admitted fact that Bellefeuille killed Mueller, critically wounded Const. Marc Lauzon and wounded Const. François Gamache-Asselin when he shot at them. In question is what he was thinking and when, as well as what his intentions were. It was an emotional day in the courtroom, and Bellefeuille appeared to cry at times. On both sides of the nearly full public gallery, some of his relatives and supporters — as well as those of the OPP officers and their colleagues — were also sometimes in tears. 'I saw the person on the ground was a police officer' After Bellefeuille's first volley of shots, about half a minute passed with no gunfire. Bellefeuille told court he was hoping the threat was over, but then two shots were fired in his direction. He felt like a sitting duck, he said, and when he saw a light move in the living room, he fired toward it twice. He saw someone on the floor of the mudroom and moved toward them. Then he saw a light outside, and he thought it was someone armed so he fired at them, he testified. Then Bellefeuille looked at the person on the ground and realized it was an officer. "Immediately I'm in shock. I don't understand what's happening, the how, the why," he said in French. "I was in a nightmare. I thought I was in a home invasion and then I realized I shot a police officer." 'I don't have control over my emotions' When he crouched over Mueller and said, "You f--ked with the wrong motherf--ker, man ... Shoulda never broke into my house. Sorry about that," Bellefeuille told court he was talking to himself, and that he wasn't thinking. Asked what he was sorry about, Bellefeuille said it was "for what happened," adding that he was in shock. He said he wanted to disarm Mueller, but when he saw that the officer's handgun was still in its holster, he left it there. Bellefeuille took off the body-worn camera because he didn't want to be recorded. Asked why, he said, "I don't know. I'm not sure why." "What were you feeling?" Del Greco asked in French. "I'm still in shock and panic. I don't have control of my emotions at this point," Bellefuille testified. He fired more shots outside, he said, because he thought police might keep firing at him and he wanted to buy himself some time to think. He said he fired below a light that appeared to be attached to a vehicle, and that he couldn't see police insignia on the car because the light was blinding him. Del Greco asked who Bellefeuille thought was outside, after he'd seen the police insignia on Mueller's vest. "It had to be police," Bellefeuille told court. He called 911, and he appeared to cry on the stand when audio of paramedics arriving was played. He told the paramedics the officer was still breathing and to hurry up, and he testified that he remembered saying, "Hang in there, buddy," and "Don't die, buddy." After audio of his dramatic arrest by Const. Ionut Mihuta was played, Bellefeuille testified that he understood the officer's emotional reaction, adding that he wasn't in his right mind either. He said he never wanted to kill anyone, especially a police officer, and that they could have had a family. Bellefeuille also testified he has nothing against police and was adamant he didn't know he was shooting at them. Being responsible for Mueller's death and Lauzon's serious injuries is a major weight on his heart, he testified, and he would always be affected by it, regardless of the trial's outcome. Cross examination by assistant Crown attorney Francois Dulude begins Friday. Nervous and anxious Bellefeuille began his testimony Thursday morning, saying he was nervous and anxious to be speaking in front of so many people after his time in custody. He said his father and uncle were hunters, and that his father and friends had taught him to shoot. He bought the SKS rifle for sports shooting at targets on gun ranges and in the woods, and said the weapon wasn't allowed for hunting. By 2023 he'd stopped sports shooting but kept the rifle strictly to protect himself and the house he was renting, he said. He was due to move out of at the end of May that year. It was a big gun capable of doing a lot of damage and scaring people by making a "big enough bang." He bought a linear compensator to help the rifle shoot more accurately at long range. He added after-market rails and a scope with magnification and illuminated cross hairs with adjustable brightness. The scope had no night vision capability. Made magazines illegal in case of emergency He had last loaded the gun more than a year earlier, keeping it at the foot of his bed for quick access. Asked by Del Greco if he knew that was against safe storage rules, Bellefeuille said he took the risk because he lived alone, had few visitors and "the danger was very small that anything would happen." A friend and his partner had been held at gunpoint, tied to chairs and beaten during a home invasion in Kemptville, Ont., in 2007 or 2008, and it made Bellefeuille think it could happen to him, especially in his rural home. His home and vehicle had been robbed in Gatineau, Que., and in North Gower in rural Ottawa, he said. He said he modified the magazines for ease of access, if necessary. "In an emergency situation I wouldn't have time to reload the gun, so that is why I modified the magazine, to have more capacity. I had more than $10,000 in cash in my house on May 10, 2023." He also testified that he bought a motion-activated light for his porch about two or three years before the shooting. In court, he read a Home Depot product listing for a porch light he said looked exactly the same, which could detect motion across 150 degrees and up to nine metres away. The day before the shooting After finishing work at a residence in Orléans on May 10, 2023, Bellefeuille cashed a cheque, went to a hardware store, then went to get gas and 10 to 12 cans of Jack Daniel's whiskey mixed with soda. Court was shown a photo of his kitchen showing two flat boxes of empty cans of the drink. After running errands and talking to people at his new residence about his pending move, Bellefeuille drank with a friend and then at home. He consumed about 10 drinks between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. — a normal amount for him, he testified. He went to bed in his work clothes at about 2 a.m. and fell asleep immediately — also a normal occurrence for him when he drinks and is exhausted, Bellefeuille said. Next came the fatal encounter. Video from Mueller's body-worn camera played in court showed Lauzon repeatedly knocking on the back door and window of the house. Bellefeuille testified that the first thing he heard was his dog barking, followed by what he described as more of a "banging" sound than a knocking. He didn't hear voices, but saw what looked like a flashlight. "Immediately I thought it was an intruder who was trying to knock down my back door. It was 2:30 in the morning, nobody announced themselves, nobody warned me or called me," he said in French.
