Gavin Aronsen

Reporter

Gavin is a Mother Jones reporter in the DC bureau.

Full Bio | Get my RSS | Follow @garonsen

Gavin is an Iowa native, and covered the 2008 first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses for the Ames Tribune. He has also contributed to the Agence France-Presse, Daily Beast, Iowa Independent, Manhattan Media, and Village Voice.

Study: 1 in 5 Youth at Risk for Suicide Have a Gun at Home

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Mon May. 6, 2013 12:06 PM PDT

A new study by leading pediatricians has found that nearly 20 percent of young people between the ages of 10 and 21 who are considered to be at risk for suicide have guns in their homes. The study is being presented Monday at the annual Pediatric Academic Societies meeting in Washington, following a symposium held Saturday that also addressed youth gun suicides, media violence, and gun violence prevention.

For the study, 524 patients were surveyed using a standard suicide assessment screening: 17 percent of the 151 patients determined to be suicide risks said they lived in a home with guns; 31 percent said they knew how to access the guns, and the same number said they knew how to access ammunition; 15 percent said they could get their hands on both.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is the third leading cause of death of people between the ages of 10 and 24. Among that age group, guns are the top method of suicide. Research elsewhere suggests that having access to guns increases the likelihood that suicidal people will actually kill themselves.

In 1996, the National Rifle Association successfully lobbied for an amendment to an appropriations bill that gutted the CDC's gun violence research budget. "None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control...may be used to advocate or promote gun control," the amendment read. Since its passage, the agency has been almost entirely absent from gun research, leaving such studies up to others. This January, President Obama announced plans to direct the CDC to resume studying the causes and prevention of gun violence.

Gun rights advocates and groups like the NRA have continued to argue that gun violence studies are politically motivated, and might build a case for greater gun control. After the Tucson shooting in 2011, for instance, NRA chief lobbyist Chris Cox told the New York Times, "Our concern is not with legitimate medical science. Our concern is they were promoting the idea that gun ownership was a disease that needed to be eradicated." Some have even argued that Obama's move to restart the research is illegal.

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Friend Who Had "Fling" With Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the 3 Additional Suspects: "They All Idolized Jahar"

In an interview with Mother Jones, a woman who says she hooked up with Tsarnaev sheds light on him and his friends now in custody.

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Wed May. 1, 2013 6:12 PM PDT

Azamat Tazhayakov, Dias Kadyrbayev, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Kadyrbayev's Vkontakte page

With the news of three additional suspects in federal custody, questions remain about the motive for the Boston Marathon bombing and whether the attack involved conspirators beyond the Tsarnaev brothers. But an account from an acquaintance of the suspects—a student at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth who was once romantically involved with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev himself—helps shed light on the individuals now at the center of the investigation.

More MoJo coverage of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings

How the FBI in Boston May Have Pursued the Wrong "Terrorist"

READ: Here Are the Federal Charges Against Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

The 11 Most Mystifying Things the Tsarnaev Brothers Did

What We Know About the Tsarnaev Brothers' Guns

What These Tweets Tell Us About Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Stunned Reactions From Former Classmates of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Did Boston Bombing Suspect Post Al Qaeda Prophecy on YouTube?

Boston Marathon Bombing Suspect Charged With Using WMD

The woman, who lived in the same dorm at UMass–Dartmouth as Tsarnaev during the 2011-12 academic year, told Mother Jones that she first met and had a "fleeting fling" with the bombing suspect during the fall of 2011. Around the same time, she says, she met Tsarnaev's college buddies Dias Kadyrbayev, Azamat Tazhayakov, and Robel Phillipos, the men now accused of helping Tsarnaev dispose of evidence and lying to investigators after the bombing.

Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov, the woman said, were part of a group of about five Russian-speaking friends at the university whom Tsarnaev was never without. "They all sort of idolized Jahar," she said, using the name she and others knew Tsarnaev by. "Dias was probably the one closest to him." She said that of the friends, Tsarnaev was the most popular and in touch with campus social life. "I cannot speak to the nature of their relationship because of the language barrier, however I did observe that Jahar was always the leader in his group."

That may help explain why the two would've helped Tsarnaev dispose of evidence after the marathon bombing, as authorities now allege. Whether they did so, and what knowledge they may have had about the bombing, remains unclear.

The woman, who was contacted by Mother Jones, asked to remain anonymous, fearing for the loss of her privacy. Her account of the Boston bombing suspect and his friends was corroborated by another former resident of the UMass-Dartmouth dorm where she met and became involved with Tsarnaev.

[Read the full article]

This Website Will Help You Outsmart the Supreme Court's Anti-Transparency Ruling

The high court unanimously decided that states can block citizens of other states from accessing public information. MuckRock has a way around that.

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Wed May. 1, 2013 3:05 AM PDT

On Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that states have no constitutional obligation to honor public records requests from non-residents. Journalists, who frequently rely on freedom of information laws to expose corruption and break open stories, fear that the decision may make it harder for them to access public records.

MuckRock, a website that files public records requests on behalf of activists, journalists, and private citizens for a small fee and posts the resulting records online, has a solution. The website has been helping out-of-staters seeking public records in Virginia and seven other states with similar laws—Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Tennessee—by pairing them with locals willing to co-file the requests. After Monday's decision, MuckRock began offering free website subscriptions to citizens of those states to help keep that information flowing.

MuckRock cofounder Michael Morisy, who also works for the Boston Globe, says he "fully expect[s] more states to at least look into adding these laws as they look for ways to cut down on costs for complying with public records requests and generally decrease the amount of people accessing this tool."

That more states might move to block out-of-staters from filing open-records requests was apparent long before the Supreme Court's decision, Morisy says. In the decades since federal and state Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, laws were first passed in the 1960s, states have added numerous exemptions limiting who can request information and narrowing the types of information that can be disclosed. But the court's decision, he adds, is a "major step back."

[Read the full article]

Senators Take Another Swing at Dark Money Disclosure

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Mon Apr. 29, 2013 2:52 PM PDT

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)

Late last year, Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) penned a Washington Post op-ed taking aim at Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that helped open the floodgates for political nonprofits spending cash in the dark to influence elections. "At minimum, the American people deserve to know before they cast their ballots who is behind massive spending, who is funding people and organizations, and what their agendas are," the senators wrote.

Now Murkowski and Wyden have followed up by introducing a bill that would require any group that spends at least $10,000 on an election to disclose all of its donors who donated $1,000 or more. Currently, tax-exempt 501(c) groups that engage in political spending have no legal obligation to reveal their donors. (That's not the case with super-PACs, as the AP erroneously reported, although many super-PACs skirt disclosure by accepting donations funneled through affiliated nonprofits.) Super-PACs and dark-money groups spent more than $1 billion during the 2012 election.

Murkowski first hinted she supported shining more sunlight on dark-money groups last summer when the Senate was debating the DISCLOSE Act, which is similar to her new bill. (She voted against DISCLOSE for not being strong or bipartisan enough.) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) filibustered DISCLOSE twice, deriding it as "nothing more than member and donor harassment and intimidation." His continued opposition to campaign finance reform means that the Wyden-Murkowski bill will also face a GOP filibuster.

If it managed to defy McConnell's opposition and pass the Republican-led House, the Wyden-Murkowski bill would also enact some smaller campaign finance reforms: It would require Senate candidates to file disclosure reports directly with the Federal Election Commission so they can be posted online more quickly and replace the FEC's quarterly reports with a real-time reporting system. And while it would require greater transparency for big donors, it would ease requirements for small donors by lifting the disclosure threshold for gifts to candidates from $200 to $1,000.

Carolyn McCarthy Says Congress Will Act Again on Guns Before 2014 Elections

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Mon Apr. 29, 2013 1:29 PM PDT

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), one of the House's leading advocates of gun control, said Friday that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has assured her that gun reform legislation will be reintroduced before the 2014 midterm elections. But for a bill to pass, it would almost certainly have to offer more concessions to the gun lobby than Sens. Joe Manchin's (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey's (R-Pa.) failed compromise on background checks that already ceded a lot of ground.

As Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) told the Hill, that could include a measure similar to the rejected amendment introduced by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to force states to allow concealed carry permit holders from other states to carry there. Speier said she would consider that a deal-breaker. But according to the New York Times, current talks among senators are focused on finding broader bipartisan ground on proposals like Manchin-Toomey (which only four Republicans voted for) and a less contentious measure to crack down on gun trafficking.

Before the Senate rejected the Manchin-Toomey compromise, McCarthy told Mother Jones that the gun violence task force she co-chairs had been in touch with Republicans receptive to gun reform but declined to name names or say how many were involved in the talks. Reps. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) have introduced a Manchin-Toomey companion bill in the House that a spokesman for Thompson said last week that the congressman was "pushing forward with." But the House's Republican leadership doesn't plan to act on any proposals unless the Senate manages to pass one first.

Meanwhile, groups like Occupy the NRA and Mayors Against Illegal Guns are focused on a longer game. The former has targeted gun lobbyists and corporations that have retained them; the latter is taking aim at senators up for reelection in 2014 who voted against background checks. Already, those votes appear to have affected some senators' approval ratings.

Democratic leaders are looking to have it both ways. On one hand, they're discussing how to reintroduce gun legislation in the Senate. On the other, they're reaching out to potential pro-gun Senate candidates in red states to see if they'll run in 2014.

One of the potential candidates is Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who would run to replace retiring Sen. Max Baucus. Baucus was one of four Democrats to vote against the Manchin-Toomey compromise. Schweitzer has expressed support for expanded background checks in the past but also has an 'A' rating from the National Rifle Association and recently told the National Journal that he had "more [guns] than I need and less than I want."