Good morning, Bulletin readers. Last year, The Trace and FiveThirtyEight reported that the CDC’s data on gunshot injuries is out of step with other estimates. The agency came out with new numbers earlier this year. They’re even shakier! That story and more, below.
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WHAT TO KNOW TODAY
NEW from THE TRACE: The CDC’s gun injury data is becoming even less reliable. Researchers and journalists frequently lean on injury estimates from the nation’s premier public health agency, which are updated annually. But its data for gunshot patients is “unstable and potentially unreliable,” by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s own standards. Since we first flagged the problem, the CDC has put out new figures. They’re even less reliable than its prior estimates. “You just can’t use those numbers,” a leading gun violence researcher told us. Sean Campbell and Daniel Nass have the update. Related: Read the original story, published in partnership with FiveThirtyEight.
NRA board members vs. NRATV. The New York Times reports that two of the gun group’s board members have expressed concerns about the incendiary rhetoric pushed by its streaming service. “Since the founding of NRATV, some, including myself and other board members, have questioned the value of it,” said top lobbyist Marion Hammer in a statement echoed by Willes K. Lee, leader of the National Rifle Association’s Outreach Committee. Lee added that CEO Wayne LaPierre appeared “livid and embarrassed” after watching an NRATV segment that showed Thomas the Tank Engine characters wearing digitally added Ku Klux Klan hoods to mock racial diversity. Their statements follow a round of cutbacks at the media operation, including the firing of one of its well-known hosts.
Mass shootings are a top voting issue for Gen Z and millennials. According to a new Harris poll commissioned by Axios, mass shootings are among the top political priorities for people in their 30s and younger, along with racial equity, immigrant rights, climate change, and health care. Separate research by Pew estimates that those two groups will make up 37 percent of the electorate in 2020.
The number of gun owners in California has more than doubled since 2008. As of January 2019, the state was home to more than 2.5 million known gun owners, according to California Department of Justice data. A decade ago, there were fewer than one million. From The Trace archives: Why estimates of American gun ownership vary so widely.
Florida lawmakers want to make it illegal for children to post photos of guns online. The proposal is intended to stop shootings that stem from social media threats, the proposal’s backers say. And they want to hold parents accountable if their children are caught posting photos online with a gun that wasn’t properly stored.
A man killed his wife and two of her friends after she tried to stop him from driving drunk. Police say Marlee Jones Barnhill of Mississippi was pleading with her husband to not drive away from her 27th birthday party drunk on Friday night when he became angry and pulled a gun out of his car. After fatally shooting her in the chest, police say he went back inside and killed two others. Hours before the incident, Barnhill posted a video blog telling her followers: “Have a great night, be safe whatever you’re doing, we’re gonna be safe, and I will talk to y’all later!”
ONE LAST THING
T-shirt printers offer artful mementos for grieving loved ones. In many American cities, airbrushed R.I.P. T-shirts are a common way to memorialize those left behind by gun violence. In a photo essay, Topic documents the tradition in Miami, home to dozens of these printing shops. “We wear them on the regular,” says one woman of the T-shirts designed for her 31-year-old sister, who was killed by a stray bullet while sitting on her porch last year. “I never thought that I would see my sister on a shirt this soon.”
