Gavin Aronsen

Reporter

Gavin is a Mother Jones reporter in the DC bureau.

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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.

Blam! These Tykes Got Busted for "Guns" Made of Legos, Pop-Tarts, and Paper

After Newtown, school officials are cracking down on kids even just for talking about firearms.

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Fri Mar. 8, 2013 9:54 AM PST

In the wake of the Newtown massacre and the NRA's call for putting armed guards in America's schools, some school officials have reacted severely to young kids' play around the subject of guns. Recent cases have included the suspension of students as young as five years old simply for talking about playing with toy weapons. The offenders' arsenal has included breakfast pastries, Legos, and Hello Kitty.

"Parents have to be aware that talking about guns or using your fingers to point like a gun is no longer tolerable or prudent," American Association of School Administrators executive director Don Domenech told USA Today this week. "Everybody has to adjust. Children are being brutalized and murdered in their classrooms. It's a new world." But child psychologists have pushed back, explaining that such attitudes fail to consider the developmental stages of young students and their lack of intent to do harm; the American Academy of Pediatrics recently called zero-tolerance suspension policies "drastic."

We've seen this picture before. In the wake of the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, young students were suspended for such trivial offenses as using their hands as imaginary guns, carrying a toenail clipper, and threatening to launch a wad of paper at a classmate with a rubber band. The policies were an outgrowth of the Safe and Drug-Free School Act of 1994, which denied schools federal aid if they failed to expel students who brought guns to campus. Still in effect at elementary and secondary schools today, the policies have set off a new round of harsh responses. Here are six of them:

[Read the full article]

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The Showdown Over Gun Laws From Coast to Coast

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Fri Mar. 1, 2013 3:29 PM PST

Inside America's Epidemic of Mass Shootings

Want to Buy a Gun Without a Background Check? Armslist Can Help

More Than Half of Mass Shooters Used Assault Weapons and High-Capacity Magazines

The NRA Surge: 99 Laws Rolling Back Gun Restrictions

Do Armed Civilians Stop Mass Shooters? Actually, No.

How the NRA and Its Allies Helped Spread a Radical Gun Law Nationwide

Flashback: How Republicans and the NRA Kneecapped the ATF

Unmasking the NRA's Inner Circle

See our full special report on gun laws and the rise of mass shootings in America.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein's new proposal to ban assault weapons may not have much forward momentum in Congress, but in the wake of the Newtown massacre state lawmakers around the country have been moving quickly to impose new gun laws—on both sides of the issue.

On Thursday, the Maryland Senate passed what would be one of the nation's strictest gun control laws, banning magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition, a range of guns classified as assault weapons, and gun sales to anyone who has spent a month or more in a state mental hospital. If the Maryland House and governor's office, both controlled by Democrats, sign off on the Senate's bill, the state would join California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and New York in outlawing magazines holding more than 10 rounds. (New York's new law limits gun magazines to seven rounds.) That restriction is the same as the one in Feinstein's proposal to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, which are popular among mass murderers and street kids alike. Seven states including Maryland already have assault weapons bans on the books.

In the other direction, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam is poised to sign a "gun-in-trunks" bill, which his state's House passed Thursday after a four-year battle, allowing permit holders to bring their firearms to work if they keep them locked in their vehicles.

The two bills are the latest in a slew of gun legislation introduced or revived in more than 40 statehouses since the violence at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December shocked the nation. The first gun control bill to pass since the shooting was the strengthened assault weapons ban signed into law by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in late January, the nation's toughest. Meanwhile, states including Idaho and Mississippi are pushing bills to expand concealed carry laws, which would add to a wave of such laws put in place from Maine to Arizona since 2009.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Newtown "Changed America," But Will Congress Change Gun Laws?

"The way the laws are now, it will happen again," a grieving Newtown father says at a Senate hearing on assault weapons.

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Wed Feb. 27, 2013 3:56 PM PST

Neil Heslin, father of Sandy Hook victim Jesse Lewis, testifies at a Senate hearing on assault weapons. Jay Mallin/ZUMAPress

"Newtown changed America," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal during Wednesday's Judiciary Committee hearing on the proposed Assault Weapons Ban of 2013. Few would dispute Blumenthal's sentiment about the recent gun massacre in his home state of Connecticut, but the pressing question now is: What is Congress prepared to do about it?

Neil Heslin, whose six-year-old son, Jesse Lewis, was among the 20 first-graders murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December, gave further heartbreaking testimony. Lawmakers from both parties repeated assurances that they were united in the goal of reducing gun violence. But familiar, entrenched arguments again ruled the day, and there was little expectation that the bill authored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)—whose ban would include scores of specific weapons and ammunition magazines exceeding 10 rounds—has a chance of passing, lacking support as it does even from top members of her own party.

"I want to stop 76,000 people from getting guns illegally," said Milwaukee's police chief. "That's what a background check does."

Feinstein opened the hearing by tracing a grim history of mass gun violence, from a clock tower in Austin in 1966 to the grade school in Newtown. She pointed out that there have been at least 62 mass shootings over the last 30 years in the United States and that they've been on the rise in recent years, as our investigation at Mother Jones showed. She cited Supreme Court rulings that affirmed the constitutionality of restricting some guns, including District of Columbia v. Heller, which overturned DC's ban on handguns but found "support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons."

Senate Republicans on the committee were unmoved. Any laws should target criminals, not "law-abiding gun owners," argued Ted Cruz, the freshman from Texas. Chuck Grassley went with his usual refrain blaming the problem on violent video games (for which there is no persuasive evidence of a link) and made an odd reference to federal enforcement of marijuana laws. Lindsey Graham got into a heated debate with Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn, arguing against expanding federal background checks, despite that polls show strong support for the idea among the American public.

"When almost 80,000 people fail a background check and 44 people are prosecuted, what kind of deterrent is that?" Graham asked. To which Flynn replied, "It doesn't matter, it's a paper thing. I want to stop 76,000 people from getting guns illegally. That's what a background check does," eliciting applause from the audience. (Republicans in the House on Wednesday shared Graham's disdain for universal background checks.)

Republicans also pointed to Justice Department reviews of Feinstein's previous Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, claiming that DOJ found it ineffective. One of those studies (PDF)—published seven years before the ban expired in 2004—acknowledges that it could not "detect any reduction to date in two types of gun murders that are thought to be closely associated with assault weapons, those with multiple victims in a single incident and those producing multiple bullet wounds per victim." But it went on to say that "the available data are partial and preliminary, and the trends may have been influenced by law enforcement agency policies regarding bullet-proof vests." A follow-up study (PDF) published by the same researchers three months before the ban expired concluded that its results had been mixed, and that it would be hard to predict how its absence might affect future gun crimes.

[Read the full article]

More Than Half of Mass Shooters Used Assault Weapons and High-Capacity Magazines

Congress considers banning weapons that have caused carnage in shopping malls, schools, and city streets.

—By Mark Follman, Gavin Aronsen, and Jaeah Lee

| Wed Feb. 27, 2013 4:01 AM PST

The political fortunes of the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 have looked dim from the start. But as Congress considers the new legislation put forth by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), one thing is clear: If it were to pass, the bill would outlaw highly lethal firearms that dozens of mass shooters in the United States have used to unleash carnage.

More than half of the killers we studied in our investigation of 62 mass shootings over the last three decades possessed weapons that would be banned by Feinstein's bill, including various semiautomatic rifles, guns with military features, and handguns using magazines with more than 10 rounds. The damage these weapons can cause has been on grim display since last summer, from Aurora to Milwaukee to Minneapolis to Newtown, where attacks carried out with them left a total of 118 people injured and dead.

"They got the most shots," said a Chicago teenager who prefers high-capacity magazines. "You can shoot forever."

Ultimately, "assault weapon" and "high-capacity magazine" are political terms—there is no official or widely accepted definition for either, and different legislation has treated them differently. Feinstein's new bill seeks to improve upon the 1994 ban she authored, which expired in 2004; gun manufacturers easily sidestepped that law by making superficial modifications to their weapons.

The new legislation aims to outlaw weapons that let a shooter fire a large number of bullets quickly without having to reload. Law enforcement officials we consulted generally considered that to be a reasonable approach for distinguishing between firearms used for sport or self-defense and military-style weapons designed to maximize body counts.

Using the parameters of the new bill, we dove deeper into the data on mass shootings that we first began gathering in July after the slaughter at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. We dug up additional specific details on the perpetrators' guns and ammunition devices (often elusive, particularly with older cases). In our initial analysis we had used broader criteria for "assault weapons," including some modified shotguns and bolt-action rifles; now, our more detailed chart and data set use four categories of firearms: semiautomatic handguns, rifles, revolvers, and shotguns. Across those four categories, we account for assault weapons and guns using high-capacity magazines that would be specifically outlawed by the new legislation. The data includes all guns recovered at the scene in each case, though not all of them were used in the crimes. Using this criteria we found:

42 guns with high-capacity magazines, across 31 mass-shooting cases
20 assault weapons, across 14 mass-shooting cases
33 cases involving assault weapons or high-capacity magazines (or both)

A total of 48 of these weapons (accounting for the overlap between the two categories) would be illegal under the new legislation.*

Feinstein's Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 isn't just about mass shootings, of course. By far the most common weapons used in these cases are semiautomatic handguns—the type of weapon also at the heart of the daily gun violence plaguing American communities. Banning high-capacity magazines may be especially key with regard to these guns, not only because they're popular among mass shooters, but also because they tend to increase casualties in street violence, as a veteran ATF agent explained to us in a recent interview.

The devices have appeal on the streets. A Chicago high school student recently described his preference for 30-round magazines to a reporter for This American Life: "They got the most shots. You can shoot forever. Let out 15. Run back to where you going. Somebody else come out and let out five more. There you go."

Don't miss our yearlong investigation into gun laws and mass shootings. And click here for the full view of the below data set.

Correction: Due to a labeling mistake, the chart at the top originally showed a total of 62 weapons rather than 48.

SCOTUS to Consider Challenge to Campaign Donation Limits

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Tue Feb. 19, 2013 1:15 PM PST

This morning, the Supreme Court agreed to hear McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission (PDF), a case challenging the nearly 40-year-old cap on aggregate contributions to federal candidates, parties, and political action committees (PACs) as a violation of donors' right to free speech.

Thanks to the court's Citizens United decision in January 2010, donors can already give unlimited funds to super-PACs and 501(c)(4) groups, which are ostensibly prohibited from coordinating directly with the candidates they support. However, under federal law, donors are limited to giving no more than a total of $46,200 to federal candidates and $70,800 to parties and PACs during any two-year election cycle. Overturning those limits would not affect how much a donor could give an individual candidate (currently $2,600 per year), but a donor would potentially be able to cut a single multimillion-dollar check to a joint fundraising committee set up to distribute funds to multiple House and Senate candidates and state party committees. That committee could technically funnel the entire donation to a single candidate through a series of transfers.

When the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United that restricting outside spending violated the First Amendment, it overturned 100 years of legal precedents. If it takes a similar track in McCutcheon, laws limiting campaign contributions that date back to 1974—and affirmed by the court in 1976 in Buckley v. Valeo—would be overturned.

"If the Supreme Court reverses its past ruling in Buckley, the Court would do extraordinary damage to the nation's ability to prevent the corruption of federal officeholders and government decisions," Fred Wertheimer, president of the reform group Democracy 21, said in a statement. "It would also represent the first time in history that the Court declared a federal contribution limit unconstitutional." Democracy 21 has been involved in the McCutcheon case since it was dismissed by a DC district court and subsequently appealed; the group is preparing an amicus brief defending the constitutionality of the current donation limits.

Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California-Irvine, told Politico that the outside spending groups that arose from Citizens United made aggregate limits less important but wrote that the "broader significance" of the McCutcheon case is that it could make future constitutional challenges against contribution limits much harder to defeat.

Yet the current justices have shown that they are sympathetic to some limits on campaign fundraising. Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote in Citizens United, argued in 2003 that donor caps on loosely regulated "soft money" were constitutional "under Buckley's anticorruption rationale."