Month: June 2022

President Joe Biden delivered a prime-time nationwide address from the White House on Thursday evening, calling for Congress to ban assault weapons and implement stricter gun laws in the wake of several mass shootings in the United States.  Biden said in part: “We need to ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines. And if we can’t ban assault weapons, then we should raise the age to purchase them from 18 to 21, strengthen background checks, enact safe storage laws and red flag laws. Repeal the immunity that protects gun manufacturers from liability, address the mental health crisis.”

Biden added: “This is not about taking away anyone’s guns. It’s not about vilifying gun owners. The Second Amendment, like all other rights, is not absolute. There have always been limitations on the type of weapons you can own in America. Machine guns have been federally regulated for nearly 90 years and this is still a free country. This isn’t about taking away anyone’s rights, it’s about protecting children, it’s about protecting families.”

Referencing his trip to Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, after the shooting at that killed 19 students and two teachers May 24, Biden said: “Standing there, in that small town, like so many communities across America, I couldn’t help but think, there are too many other schools, too many other everyday places that have become killing fields.” The latest mass shooting occurred on Wednesday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, leaving four dead, following the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, as well as an apparently racially-motivated attack at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, leaving 10 Black people dead.

Biden called for Republican support for legislation that would ban high-capacity magazines for assault rifles. He also called for an outright ban on the weapons themselves, but added, “If we can’t ban assault weapons like we should, then we should at least raise the age to 21.”  Biden also called on lawmakers to take a stand against the gun lobby and gun manufacturers, whom he blamed for marketing assault weapons. The President said: “Guns are the number one killer of children in the United States of America. The number one killer. More than car accidents, more than cancer. Over the last two decades, more school-aged children have died from guns than on-duty police officers and active duty military combined.”

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Tulsa, Oklahoma police say that the motive of the alleged hospital shooter was to kill the doctor who performed back surgery on him “and anyone else who got in his way.”  Tulsa police Chief Wendell Franklin said during a live-streamed press conference Thursday that the gunman, Michael Lewis, blamed Dr. Preston Phillips for continuing pain after back surgery May 19.

Tulsa police said the first 911 call came at 4:52 p.m. Wednesday. Chief Franklin said Tulsa police first arrived at the scene at 4:56 p.m., and as police made their way to the second floor of the Natalie building on the campus of Saint Francis Hospital, they heard a final gunshot at 4:58 p.m.

Police said Lewis bought an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle Wednesday, hours before the killings, from a local Tulsa gun store. He bought a .40 caliber semi-automatic handgun from a local pawn shop. Police said 30 .223-caliber bullet casings and seven .40-caliber casings were recovered at the scene. A letter that made it clear he came to kill Phillips was found on Lewis’ body told the story of what he planned to do, according to police.

The deceased shooting victims were Drs. Preston Phillips and Stephanie Housen, as well as Amanda Green and William Love. Green was a receptionist and Love was a patient. Phillips’ body was found in an exam room. Police believe that was the gunman taking his own life. A half-hour after the shootings, Lewis’ wife called law enforcement to say her husband had killed several people, and added that she did not know in advance that her husband planned to do the shootings.

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On Wednesday, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ordered that John Hinckley Jr. — the attempted assassin of former President Ronald Reagan in 1981 — will be released from psychiatric supervision later this month. Hinckley completed a nine-month observation period ordered in September, and at that time U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said the 67-year-old Hinckley would be free of all remaining restrictions if he maintains mental stability.

Hinckley spent more than three decades in a mental hospital as part of his insanity defense for shooting Reagan and three others outside the Washington, D.C., Hilton Hotel on March 30, 1981. Hinckley had acute psychosis at the time of the shooting and said he carried out the attack to impress actor Jodie Foster.

A judge granted his release in 2016 with a number of restrictions, including living with his mother in Virginia, to ensure Hinckley wouldn’t veer into violence again.  Hinckley’s defense team, prosecutors and mental health experts all agreed that they had no concerns about his mental state. Judge Friedman said:  “John Hinckley tried to kill the president of the United States. He came very close to doing so. Without losing sight of what he did 40 years ago, he has been the most scrutinized person … living under a microscope as none of us have. I am confident Mr. Hinckley will do well in the years remaining to him.”

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On Wednesday, a Fairfax County, Va., jury reached its verdict in the ‘Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard’ defamation trial, ruling unanimously in favor of Depp.  After six weeks of testimony and deliberating for nearly 13 hours, the jury found that Heard intentionally and maliciously defamed Depp when she wrote her 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post about her experiences as a domestic abuse survivor. Heard filed her own $100 million countersuit, claiming Depp and his legal team defamed her by calling her allegations a hoax.

The jury unanimously found “clear and convincing evidence” that Heard defamed Depp when she wrote the op-ed, and acted with actual malice, and awarded $10 million in damages to Depp in terms of compensatory damages, relating to jobs and opportunities lost, and $5 million in punitive damages. There were three statements at issue in Heard’s counterclaim, and the jury found one statement defamatory, awarding Heard $2 million in damages.

Depp was not present in the courtroom to hear the verdict saying ‘previously scheduled work commitments had him watching from the United Kingdom.”   Depp released the following statement after the verdict, saying in part: “Six years ago, my life, the life of my children, the lives of those closest to me, and also, the lives of the people who for many, many years have supported and believed in me were forever changed….And six years later, the jury gave me my life back. I am truly humbled.”

Heard released a statement as well, saying in part: “The disappointment I feel today is beyond words. I’m heartbroken that the mountain of evidence still was not enough to stand up to the disproportionate power, influence, and sway of my ex-husband. I’m even more disappointed with what this verdict means for other women. It is a setback. It sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated.”

https://people.com/movies/johnny-depp-v-amber-heard-verdict-jury-makes-decision-in-defamation-trial/?utm_medium=browser&utm_source=people.com&utm_content=20220601&utm_campaign=2169966

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According to the New Orleans Police Department (“NOPD”), one person was killed and another two were injured outside of Xavier University’s convocation center Tuesday, following a New Orleans high school graduation ceremony.  Shots were fired shortly before noon, when the parking lot was full graduating students from Morris Jeff Community School, and their families. The victim of the shooting died at a hospital, and was a grandmother of one of the graduates.

NOPD deputy superintendent Christopher Goodly said during a press conference that the two injured, both men, were taken to the hospital by New Orleans EMS with non life-threatening injuries. A fight between two women broke out in the parking lot shortly after the ceremony ended, but police did not say whether either of the women involved in the altercation was the shooter. Three people were taken in for questioning, but no arrests have been made, Goodly said. Investigators also confiscated more than one weapon.

Xavier University’s convocation center hosts multiple high school graduation ceremonies each spring. This is not the first graduation ceremony to turn violent this season. A large fight broke out inside Xavier University’s convocation center on May 20 shortly after students from G.W. Carver High School graduated.  Governor John Bel Edwards addressed both high school graduation shootings in a statement Tuesday:  “We must do more to ensure that those who pose an unacceptable risk of harm to others aren’t able to acquire or keep firearms.” Edwards said, adding in light of recent gun violence in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas, “gun safety discussions and action involving expanded background checks and red flag laws are very much in order.”

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