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.

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]

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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 semi-automatic 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: semi-automatic 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 semi-automatic 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."

Under Obama, Feds Holster Gun Cases

—By Gavin Aronsen

| Fri Feb. 15, 2013 4:01 AM PST

Despite the amped-up claims that President Obama is just waiting to crack down on gun owners, a new report reveals that his administration has been pursuing significantly fewer gun crimes than the predeceeding one. Under Obama, federal weapons prosecutions have declined to their lowest levels nearly a decade, according to a new report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research group associated with Syracuse University.

After 9/11, the Bush administration's firearms prosecutions shot up, peaking at about 11,000 cases in 2004. In 2012, the feds prosecuted fewer than 8,000 gun cases:

TRAC

The prosecutions' most common target are felons who illegally possess or sell weapons—not legal owners or sellers who run afoul of the law. And, TRAC notes, counting on federal prosecutions misses the majority of gun cases: "Because of the very different number of the enforcers and prosecutors working at the two levels, state and local gun prosecutions almost certainly dwarf anything that is done by the federal government."

It's not entirely clear how the gun lobby's efforts to hamstring the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives's ability to enforce weapons laws has influenced the decline in gun cases. But of the 3,741 weapons cases referred to federal attorneys in 2012 that weren't investigated, about 40 percent were determined to lack sufficient evidence to pursue. And since 2005, the number of cases referred by the ATF has exceeded the number of weapons crimes prosecuted by federal authorities.

TRAC

"A Killing Machine": Half of All Mass Shooters Used High-Capacity Magazines

Magazines holding more than 10 rounds were used in 31 of the 62 mass shootings we investigated.

—By Mark Follman and Gavin Aronsen

| Wed Jan. 30, 2013 4:01 AM PST

As lawmakers across the country and in the nation's capital debate possible restrictions on high-capacity magazines, one question emerges: Are these ammunition-feeding devices, which allow a shooter to fire many times without reloading, in fact commonly used by mass killers? We examined the data from Mother Jones' continuing investigation into mass shootings and found that high-capacity magazines have been used in at least 31 of the 62 cases we analyzed. A half-dozen of these crimes occurred in the last two years alone. (With some of the cases we studied, it remains unclear whether high-capacity magazines were used. We included all those involving magazines with more than 10 rounds; in many of the cases their capacities were far greater. For more details, jump to our data set below.)

Tragedy in Newtown

The NRA Myth of Arming the Good Guys

A Guide to Mass Shootings in America

More Guns, More Mass Shootings—Coincidence?

151 Victims of Mass Shootings in 2012: Here Are Their Stories

Do Armed Civilians Stop Mass Shooters? Actually, No.

"A Killing Machine": Half of All Mass Shooters Used High-Capacity Magazines

Mass Shootings: Maybe We Need a Better Mental-Health Policy

Why Mass Shootings Deserve Deeper Investigation

DATA: Explore our mass shootings research

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

In the shooting that injured Rep. Gabby Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, Jared Loughner emptied a 33-round magazine in 30 seconds, killing 6 and injuring 13. Inside a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, James Holmes used 40- and 100-round magazines to injure and kill an unprecedented 70 victims. At Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Adam Lanza used high-capacity magazines to fire upwards of 150 bullets as he slaughtered 20 kids and 6 adults.

"It turns a killer into a killing machine," says David Chipman, who served for 25 years as a special agent in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Outlawing high-capacity magazines won't prevent gun crimes from happening, Chipman notes, but might well reduce the carnage: "Maybe 3 kids get killed instead of 20."

With Congress undertaking a highly charged debate over firearms restrictions, many observers are skeptical that Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein's proposal to ban assault weapons will garner enough votes on Capitol Hill. But there may be momentum for mandating universal background checks on gun purchasers, and for outlawing the sale of magazines containing more than 10 rounds. A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that a majority of Americans support stricter regulation of firearms sales, and 59 percent believe that high-capacity magazines were significantly to blame in the recent spate of mass shootings.

The problem dates back to long before Newtown. In 1984, the assailant who massacred 21 at a McDonald's in San Ysidro, California, unleashed more than 200 rounds. School and workplace shootings in Stockton, California, and San Francisco in the late '80s and early '90s also involved large magazines, with an estimated 100 shots fired in each case. In 1997, a gunman in Orange, California, fired nearly 150 shots, wielding an AK-47 with a 30-round magazine three years after a federal law banned such assault weapons.

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