Chip Brownlee

@bychipbrownlee.com

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Staff writer @thetrace.org Protonmail: chip.c.brownlee@protonmail.com Signal: byChipBrownlee.01

SCOTUS granted cert to two assault weapons ban cases, Viramontes v. Cook County, Illinois, and Grant v. Higgins.
Over the last two years, a murder-suicide or family annihilation has occurred 1.8 times per day on average.
ICE agents in Minneapolis shot and killed a motorist, claiming she rammed her car into them. Video showed her backing up and driving away from the agents before they fired. Local officials rejected Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s assertion that the agents fired in self-defense. “The presence of federal immigration enforcement agents is causing chaos in our city,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey subsequently posted on X.
Chip Brownlee: You’ve written about the “gamification” of mass violence. Can you explain what that means and how these inscriptions may fit into that framework? Adam Lankford: Gamification is taking a task and giving it game-like features, largely to encourage participation. If you want your kids to clean their bedroom, you make it a game — it’s fun and less like work. With the gamification of violence, it’s the same premise: Attackers suggest that extreme violence is fun, encouraging others to participate. We see this clearly in the Charlie Kirk case, where the alleged shooter acknowledged there wasn’t a lot of meaning to his inscriptions. Some perpetrators have studied previous attackers and may attempt to inspire copycats by portraying violence as fun and cool.
“You have to open up your imagination about what a second Trump presidency is going to look like,” Murphy said. “This isn’t going to be normal. You may see him outright refuse to implement laws he doesn’t like, like the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, and potentially short circuit Congress and try to impose certain gun industry priorities on the country without going through the legislative process.”