Push for ‘No Fly List’ Gun Sales Ban in California; Chicago Awash in Police Misconduct Stories
AR-15s were used in the San Bernardino, California, mass shooting. Eugene Berman / Shutterstock
Connecting state and local government leaders
Also: Twin Cities Star Tribune takes on the rural-urban political divide and helping out drought-plagued New Mexican farmers by making hemp legal.
Here’s some of what we’ve been reading today…
SACRAMENTO, California: As pundits have been saying for a while now, the real site of legislative action has moved from gridlocked Washington to the state capitals. As the Los Angeles Times reports, in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting attacks and the failure on Capitol Hill to pass a law banning gun sales, even to would-be customers whose names appear on the federal “no fly” list, Assemblyman Mike Gatto said he planned to introduce a no-fly-list ban in the Golden State. “I just don’t think someone on a terrorist watch-list should be allowed to purchase any firearms,” he said. [Los Angeles Times]
Related: The U.S. Supreme Court apparently agrees that local lawmakers can restrict firearm sales. The justices voted 7 to 2 against hearing a 2nd Amendment challenge to a Chicago-area local ordinance that banned the sale or possession of semiautomatic guns that carry more than 10 rounds of ammunition. [Los Angeles Times]
CHICAGO, Illinois: The website homepage of the Chicago Tribune is awash in stories about police brutality. Jail cell video shows police using a taser repeatedly on an inmate and dragging him out of his cell in handcuffs. Mayor Emanuel is appalled, again. There is dashcam video of resident Ronald Johnson running, his back to police, one of whom unloads five shots into Johnson’s back. The officer was not charged with a crime. The city’s police commander goes on trial today for assaulting a suspect. The chief of detectives has retired amid the fallout from the rash of misconduct allegations. Further down the page are stories tied to the Thanksgiving week release of dashcam video of Laquan McDonald, shot by the police as he walked away from them holding a knife and then shot several more times as he lay on the ground bleeding. The U.S. Department of Justice is opening a wide-ranging civil rights investigation into the city’s police department. [Chicago Tribune]
ST. PAUL, Minnesota: The rural-urban political divide is a national-level and state-level plague. On one side, dwindling, graying, less-educated and less-ethnically-diverse country populations vote Republican. On the other side, growing, young, more-educated and more-ethnically-diverse urban populations vote Democratic. This reality translates into legislative gridlock and partisan rancor. The Twin Cities Star Tribune on Monday launched a three-part series on the problem titled “Better Together.” Each installment includes three pieces, a mix of reporting and opinion. The editorial for the first installment ends with a paragraph that lays out the motivation for the series as well as its mission: “Can a people this divided still come to agreement via their elected representatives about how best to provide a foundation for border-to-border prosperity and a decent life for all? They must, or the Minnesota success story will be a closed book. In coming weeks, we’ll describe how Gov. Mark Dayton and the Legislature might forge an agenda that strengthens the ties that bind Minnesota as one state.” [Star Tribune]
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico: State Sen. Cisco McSorley is pushing the New Mexico Department of Agriculture to write rules that would allow farmers in the often rain-starved state to grow industrial hemp, reports The Associated Press. Hemp, the non-psychoactive cousin to cannabis, is drought resistant. State farming groups are bullish on the idea, and similar proposals have won mostly bipartisan support in more than two dozen states in recent years. But Republican Gov. Susana Martinez vetoed an earlier version of the McSorley proposal, pointing out that growing hemp on a large scale is against federal law. McSorley says he has written his latest proposal taking the governor’s concerns into account. The AP reports that some law enforcement agencies say illegal pot farmers could hide their illegal crops among hemp plants. [The AP via The Albuquerque Journal]
NASHVILLE, Tennessee: Music City’s public school system has been slapped with a class action lawsuit by a student who claims she was forced to take a practice algebra exam and, when she did poorly, was removed from the class just to guard the school against having to report low test scores, according to The Tennessean. The student was then placed in a remedial class without direct instruction, she fell behind and didn’t graduate on time. Gary Blackburn, the attorney who filed the suit, said the district had put institutional ambition over the success of students like his client. "The students were all removed to try to enhance the scores for school authority, so they could brag over accomplishments they had not achieved," he said. "The lives of the children and their economic progress has been impacted." [The Tennessean]
John Tomasic is a journalist who lives in Boulder, Colorado.
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