Another proud moment for the USA, "War" Secretary Hegseth wants to bring back public executions

The last public execution in the U.S. was a hanging in Owensboro, KY in 1936.  20,000 people showed up. The U.S. was ridiculed internationally—and public executions stopped for 90 years.  I wrote in my book The Executioner's Toll, about the execution of Rainey Bethea, a black man, who was hanged for the rape of a white woman. Now the U.S. military wants to bring public executions back.

The New York Times reported that the Army officer convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting would be executed in public, a practice that ended in the United States nearly a century ago and is most commonly carried out in a handful of countries, including Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan.

The Pentagon said in a statement that the military execution, scheduled for Dec. 3, would also be broadcast via livestream. Such a broadcast has little precedent, and releasing video of executions is most often associated with extremist militant groups like the Islamic State.

The announcement adds to the growing spectacle around the planned execution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people and wounded 32 others when he brought a personal handgun onto the grounds of Fort Hood, Texas. The rampage was the deadliest shooting at an American military base and sent shock waves through the U.S. military.

There are few countries that hold public executions. The human rights group Amnesty International has highlighted some cases in which public executions in Iran and Saudi Arabia have been filmed by bystanders.

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U.S. Military schedules December execution for Fort Hood massacre

 Nidal Malik Hasan, a former Army officer and psychiatrist who killed 13 people and injured 32 others during a mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, will be executed by a U.S. Army firing squad, the Pentagon announced, reported Military Times.

“Secretary of War (Defense) Pete Hegseth has recommended — and President Donald J. Trump has approved — death by U.S. Army firing squad for convicted terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan, the jihadist who opened fire on unarmed American soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell announced. “He killed 13 people and wounded 32 others while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ during the attack.

“The Secretary of the Army will set the time and place of the execution,” he continued. “Judgement day for Hasan has finally come.”

If Hasan’s execution is indeed carried out by a firing squad, it would mark the first such case for the service since Jan. 31, 1945, when Pvt. Eddie D. Slovik was executed by a U.S. Army firing squad in France for desertion during World War II.

The last death sentence carried out by the U.S. military was in 1961, when Army Pvt. John Bennett was executed by hanging at the gallows in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, after he was convicted of raping and attempting to kill a young girl.

Hasan, who was born in northern Virginia, walked into a Fort Hood readiness processing center on Nov. 5, 2009, and opened fire using a semi-automatic handgun.

Thirteen people were killed, including a pregnant soldier.

Former Army Staff Sgt. Patrick Zeigler, a two-time combat veteran, was shot four times in the attack and spent nearly a year recovering in various hospitals.

“He looked me straight in the eyes as he pointed the gun at me, and a split second later, I’m on the floor with a hole in my head,” he told the Killeen Daily Herald in 2023.

At his court-martial, Hasan, now 56, admitted to the shooting, and in 2013 said he carried out the attack in support of the Taliban.

At the time, Hasan requested a delay in court proceedings so he could ready a new legal strategy that would show he acted “in defense of others.”

Asked by presiding Judge Col. Tara Osborn who he was defending, Hasan replied, “The leadership of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban.”

Hasan was convicted by a military jury in August 2013, which recommended he be sentenced to death.

He was subsequently transferred to Fort Leavenworth, where he has been incarcerated on death row.

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CREATORS: The Killings Continue

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
October 28, 2025

President Donald Trump is at it again. The president and his administration are carrying out indiscriminate executions. Since early September, the United States has carried out strikes against 10 boats off the coast of South America for alleged drug trafficking.

The intermittent strikes on sea-going vessels in international waters have killed at least 43 people, and in one instance, two men survived, were captured and repatriated to Colombia and Ecuador.

Trump and "War" Secretary Pete Hegseth have said the boats were known to be involved in drug smuggling, insisting they have the authority to carry out the strikes without authorization from Congress. The men on those boats have not been indicted; they had no right to legal counsel; no right to face their accuser; they have not been convicted of a crime in an American court — yet they have been "executed" for the crime of drug smuggling.

During the second half of 2020, in the midst of a pandemic and a re-election campaign, the Trump administration decided to indiscriminately start executing federal prisoners. After 17 years without carrying out an execution, the federal government carried out 10 in less than six months.

By the end of 2020, the federal government had conducted more executions in five months than any other presidency since the turn of the 20th century and carried out three more executions during a presidential transition more than any other administration in the history of the United States.

Maybe it was a ploy to bolster his tough guy bona fides or a lowbrow pitch to his "law and order" constituency, but Trump's bloodlust saw no boundary. Even after the election was decided, he kept on killing,

The unprecedented executions of 2020 included the first federal execution in 68 years of an offender who was a teenager at the time the crime was committed.

The 2020 executions included the first federal execution in 57 years for a crime committed in a state that had abolished the death penalty, as well as executions carried out against the wishes of the victims' families and the first lame-duck executions in more than a century.

The executions carried out during a pandemic contributed to a COVID-19 outbreak in the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Ind. The outbreak infected at least nine members of federal execution teams, several lawyers and at least one religious advisor.

The first Trump administration engineered a reckless flurry of state-sponsored killing — mocking societal norms and devoid of any act of mercy or decency.

At the White House last week, Trump said he thinks lawmakers will support his administration's efforts in the Caribbean. He was asked why then not ask Congress for a declaration of war, his response: "I don't think we're going necessarily to ask for a declaration of war. I think we're just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. OK. We're going to kill them. They're going to be, like, dead."

Can presidents indiscriminately kill? For those on death row, it may not be the norm to carry out a flurry of executions, but those individuals were convicted of first-degree murder, and their cases had been reviewed by various appellate courts.

The drug strikes are different. Brian Finucane, a former legal adviser for the State Department, told NPR, "What this boils down to is the president of the United States asserting a prerogative to kill people based solely on his own say-so." No arrest, no trial and no conviction.

"Outside of armed conflict, there is a word for the premeditated killing of people, and that word is 'murder,'" he said. "And just because the administration puts together this fig leaf of a legal justification does not legitimize these premeditated killings in the Caribbean."

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010, was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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Arizona executes man convicted of murdering four members of a family

 The 39th Execution of 2025

Richard Kenneth Djerf convicted of killing four members of a Phoenix family over 30 years ago in an act of revenge over stolen goods was put to death October 17, 2025 in Arizona’s second execution of the year, reported The Associated Press.

Djerf, 55, died by lethal injection for the killings of Albert Luna Sr. and Patricia Luna; their daughter Rochelle Luna, 18; and son Damien Luna, 5, at their home on Sept. 14, 1993. Djerf, who was in prison for over 29 years, chose not to seek clemency.

His execution was the fourth in the country this week and the 39th of the year.

“Those four innocent victims deserve justice, and their loved ones deserve closure,” said Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, whose office sought the execution.

Prosecutors said Djerf blamed another family member, Albert Luna Jr., who did not witness the killings, for an earlier theft of electronics and a gun from his apartment. Djerf became obsessed with exacting revenge and went to the home months later claiming to be delivering flowers, prosecutors said.

Authorities say Djerf sexually assaulted Rochelle Luna and slashed her throat; beat Albert Luna Sr. with an aluminum baseball bat then stabbed and shot him; and tied Patricia and Damien Luna to kitchen chairs before fatally shooting them.

Djerf declined to make any last statement. He did not put up any resistance but took a few heavy breaths and emitted a brief snoring sound after the lethal drugs were administered, John Barcello, deputy director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry, said during a news conference Friday.

No representatives of the victims were present, Barcello said.

It took about 10 minutes for the execution team to insert the IV lines into his veins so the drugs could be administered. After the first of two pentobarbital shots were given, he made several sounds, including a grunt and puffing sound. About 15 minutes elapsed between the first pentobarbital shot and the declaration that he was dead.

Barcello said Djerf’s veins “were not optimal” and it required a few attempts to successfully place the IV.

“By all accounts the process went according to plan and without any incident,” Barcello said. A month ago, Djerf released a statement in which he acknowledged carrying out the killings and apologized for the pain he caused.

Arizona has been criticized in the past for taking too long to insert IVs during lethal injection executions. Experts say it should take seven to 10 minutes from the beginning of insertion until a proclamation of death.

The state has paused executions twice since 2014 amid concerns over its use of the death penalty.

There was a nearly eight-year hiatus brought on by difficulties in obtaining the needed drugs and criticism that a 2014 execution was botched: Joseph Wood was injected with 15 doses of a two-drug combination over two hours, leading him to snort repeatedly and gasp hundreds of times before he died.

Executions resumed in 2022, and three prisoners were put to death that year. They were paused again in 2023 after Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs ordered a review of the capital punishment protocol and Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes agreed not to pursue any executions.

The review ended in November 2024, when Hobbs fired a retired federal magistrate she had appointed to examine execution procedures, and the state corrections department announced changes in the lethal injection team.

Arizona last carried out a death sentence in mid-March, executing Aaron Brian Gunches for the 2002 killing of Ted Price.

With Djerf’s execution, there are now 107 prisoners on Arizona’s death row.

Five more executions are scheduled in the U.S. this year — two in Florida and one each in Alabama, Oklahoma and Tennessee, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

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Why did Bryan Kohberger Kill?

Bryan Kohberger's past tells us a lot about his motivations, experts say. During his childhood, he was isolated and bullied and eventually became addicted to heroin and struggled with his weight, reported the USA TODAY.

Experts interviewed by USA TODAY agree that we can conclude a lot about Kohberger's motives based on the evidence and his history: He was bullied, he felt rage toward women, he fantasized about violence and ultimately, wanted power more than anything, they say.

"A lot of killers feel powerless their whole lives and that’s why killers become serial killers. Because for the first time they feel like an all-powerful god," said Rachel Toles, a clinical psychologist and criminal expert based in Greenville, South Carolina. "He wanted to feel powerful for once in his life."

At some point Kohberger was able to kick the heroin habit, lose weight and get lean, according to the 2025 book, "The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy." 

"He grew up kind of bullied, kind of ostracized and he decided to change his life ... and I think he started viewing himself as a possessor of power. Before he was someone without power and now he possesses it," said John Delatorre, a psychologist based in San Antonio, Texas, who works on criminal cases.

Ultimately, "he viewed himself as someone who could take what he wanted whenever he wanted," Delatorre said. "I think what interested him was the idea that you could legitimately hold someone's life in your hands and take it away whenever you choose to do so."

Bryan Kohberger, who is accused of killing four University of Idaho students, is escorted to an extradition hearing at the Monroe County Courthouse in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, U.S., January 3, 2023. Matt Rourke/Pool via REUTERS

Toles added: "He probably also wanted revenge on a world that made him feel unwanted."

Kohberger's past addiction, weight gain and loss, Toles said, also show that he "clearly felt empty his whole life" and may have been attracted to studying criminology at the University of Washington because it "gave him a language for his alienation."

Kohberger seemed particularly interested in three killers: Ted Bundy, the BTK Killer and Elliot Rodger. Through them, he identified with a narrative arc that "rejection moves to resentment moves to obsession moves to control moves to violence moves to infamy," Toles said.

"It’s a storyline he could place himself in and one that made him feel more powerful instead of invisible," she said, adding that Kohberger may have thought: "Maybe I'm not a problem. Maybe I'm like them. Maybe I'm a predator."

Kohberger likely felt the urge to kill for years, Delatorre said, relying on fantasies and stalking before he ultimately acted on it.

"The idea of taking someone's life with a knife was probably something he was think about for quite some time, it just required a target," he said. "People don’t snap. People brew, they fester. The negative emotionality is over a long period of time to get them to a breaking point to act out."

What is happening with the case?

Kohberger, 30, pleaded guilty to the killings earlier this month after accepting a plea agreement that allowed him to avoid the death penalty and instead face four consecutive life sentences.

The agreement also means he'll avoid a lengthy and highly publicized trial.

He's scheduled to be officially sentenced on Wednesday, July 23. The families of the victims will be allowed to address the court at that time to talk about the impact of the crime and who their loved ones were.

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Kohberger's zealous defense fizzles agrees to plea deal

Bryan Kohberger, the man charged in the brutal stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students, has reached a plea deal to avoid the death penalty, according to a letter that prosecutors sent to relatives of the victims, reported The New York Times.

Mr. Kohberger had been set to go on trial on murder charges in August, nearly three years after the killings, which occurred at a residence near the university in Moscow, Idaho. A plea hearing is set for Wednesday.

In a letter to the victims’ families on Monday, prosecutors said that Mr. Kohberger’s defense team asked for a plea offer last week. Under the proposed agreement, which must be approved by the judge in the case, Mr. Kohberger would plead guilty to all charges, face four consecutive life sentences and waive all rights to appeal.

The family of Kaylee Goncalves, one of the victims, criticized the prosecution team for failing to consult with the families. Some of them had worked to change Idaho law to allow the firing squad as a form of capital punishment.

“After more than two years, this is how it concludes, with a secretive deal and a hurried effort to close the case without any input from the victims’ families on the plea’s details,” the Goncalves family said in a statement.

In their letter to the families, prosecutors wrote that the plea deal was “our sincere attempt to seek justice.”

“This agreement ensures that the defendant will be convicted, will spend the rest of his life in prison, and will not be able to put you and other families through the uncertainty of decades of post-conviction appeals,” they wrote. “Your viewpoints weighed heavily in our decision-making process, and we hope that you may come to appreciate why we believe this resolution is in the best interests of justice.”

Prosecutors did not respond to messages seeking comment, nor did lawyers for Mr. Kohberger. The families of the other victims did not comment immediately on the proposed agreement.

Mr. Kohberger, now 30, was a criminology Ph.D. student at Washington State University, about a 20-minute drive from the crime scene. He grew up in Pennsylvania and studied psychology in college. He was arrested in December 2022 at his parents’ home in the Pocono Mountains area of Pennsylvania about six weeks after the killings.

Mr. Kohberger’s defense team tried unsuccessfully for months to undermine key pieces of evidence that investigators collected against him. Prosecutors have said that his DNA was found on a knife sheath recovered at the crime scene, and that records showed he had purchased a knife of a kind matching the sheath in the months before the killings. Video footage showed a car similar to his circling the neighborhood around the time of the deaths.

But investigators have yet to suggest a motive or offer any details on how the victims were chosen.

Mr. Kohberger’s lawyers filed a flurry of motions in recent months, including one trying to bar prosecutors from seeking the death penalty — in part, they said, because Mr. Kohberger had been diagnosed with autism. They unsuccessfully sought a delay in the trial, arguing that their team had not had enough time to comb through the vast amount of evidence in the case. But the judge ordered jury selection to commence on Aug. 4.

Just hours before news of the plea deal on Monday, one of Mr. Kohberger’s lawyers was in court in Pennsylvania, where she successfully argued that two witnesses who knew Mr. Kohberger as a teenager should be forced to testify at trial even though they did not want to.

Mr. Kohberger has been in jail since his arrest. His lawyers have given few hints about what defense they planned to offer, but have said that he was “out driving” on the night of the murders.

In the years before the killings, Mr. Kohberger indicated that he was interested in studying criminals. In a message to a friend in 2018, he wrote that he would like a job “dealing with high-profile offenders.” A few months before the murders, he posted on Reddit asking people who had spent time in prison to describe their “thoughts, emotions and actions from the beginning to end of the crime commission process.”

Investigators have said that the murders happened sometime around 4 a.m. on Nov. 13, 2022. The victims — Ms. Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20 — had spent a typical Saturday night out near the university campus and returned to the house in the early hours of Sunday.

A roommate who survived the attack said she had heard what sounded like crying coming from the room of one of the women. She later told the police that she had opened her door and seen a man with bushy eyebrows in black clothes and a mask. The man left the house and the roommate began texting with another surviving roommate downstairs before taking refuge in her room.

But neither she nor anyone else called the police until more than seven hours later, when a friend came to the house and discovered the body of one of the victims.

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Florida executes man who slaughtered a mother and her three young children

 The 15th Execution of 2025

Jeffrey Hutchinson an Army combat veteran whose Gulf War experience triggered severe mental problems was executed May 1, 2025 in Florida for the 1998 shotgun slayings of his girlfriend and her three young children, reported The Associated Press.

Hutchinson, 62, was pronounced dead at 8:15 p.m. following a lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was the fourth person executed this year in the state under death warrants signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, with a fifth execution set for May 15.

Hutchinson had no last statement but appeared to be mumbling to himself as the procedure started just before 8 p.m. His legs shook sporadically, and he seemed to have body spasms for several minutes and then was still. The process took a little more than 15 minutes.

The execution was carried out soon after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a final appeal without comment.

Hutchinson had long claimed that he was innocent and that two unknown assailants perpetrated the killings under a U.S. government conspiracy aimed at silencing his activism on claims including Gulf War illnesses involving veterans. Hutchinson served eight years in the Army, part of it as an elite Ranger.

Court records, however, showed that on the night of the killings in Crestview, Hutchinson argued with his girlfriend, 32-year-old Renee Flaherty, then packed his clothes and guns into a truck. Hutchinson went to a bar and drank some beer, telling staff there that Flaherty was angry with him before leaving abruptly.

A short time later, a male caller told a 911 operator, “I just shot my family” from the house Hutchinson and Flaherty shared with the three children: 9-year-old Geoffrey, 7-year-old Amanda, and 4-year-old Logan. All were killed with a 12-gauge shotgun that was found on a kitchen counter. Hutchinson was located by police in the garage with a phone still connected to the 911 center and gunshot residue on his hands.

Darran Johnson, the brother of Renee Flaherty, said after the execution that justice was done but the family’s pain will never end.

“Not a day goes by that we don’t think about the loved ones that were taken from us,” Johnson said.

At his 2001 trial, Hutchinson’s defense was based on his claim that two unknown men came to the house and killed Flaherty and the children after he struggled with them. A jury found him guilty of four counts of first-degree murder, and he received life in prison for Flaherty’s killing and three death sentences for the children.

Hutchinson filed numerous unsuccessful appeals, many focused on mental health problems linked to his Army service. In late April his lawyers sought to delay his execution by claiming he was insane and therefore could not be put to death.

Bradford County Circuit Judge James Colaw rejected that argument in an April 27 order.

“This Court finds that Mr. Hutchinson’s purported delusion is demonstrably false. Jeffrey Hutchinson does not lack the mental capacity to understand the reason for the pending execution,” the judge wrote.

In their court filings, Hutchinson’s lawyers said he suffered from Gulf War Illness — a series of health problems stemming from the 1990-1991 war in Iraq — as well as post-traumatic stress disorder and paranoia related to his claim that he was targeted by government surveillance.

Florida’s lethal injection protocol uses a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the state Department of Corrections.

So far this year, 15 people have been put to death in the U.S. including Hutchinson.

A fifth Florida execution is scheduled May 15 for Glen Rogers, who was convicted of killing a woman at a motel in 1997. Rogers also was convicted of another woman’s murder in California and is believed by investigators to have killed others around the country.

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Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh's radicalism is mainstream today

April 20th marked the 30th anniversary of the young military veteran and far-right radical, Timothy McVeigh’s attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City . The bombing was met with near-universal revulsion at the carnage he created and at the ideology that inspired it, reported The Guardian.

A crowd yelled “baby killer” – and worse – as 26-year-old Timothy McVeigh was led away in chains from a courthouse in rural Oklahoma where the FBI caught up with him two days after the bombing. He had the same crew cut he’d sported in his army days and stone cold eyes.

An hour and a half’s drive to the south, 168 people lay dead, most of them office workers who had been providing government services, along with 19 young children in a day care centre directly above the spot where McVeigh parked his moving truck packed with ammonium nitrate and other explosives.

The children were, most likely, his prime target.

Bill Clinton, then president, rallied the country by vowing justice that would be “swift, certain and severe”. His attorney general wasted no time announcing she would seek the death penalty. Whatever flirtation the country had been entertaining with rightwing militia movements in the wake of a national assault weapons ban that enraged gun rights activists, and controversies over the heavy-handedness of federal law enforcement, came screeching to a halt.

Even elements of the radical right, McVeigh’s fellow travellers, were stunned by the sight of firefighters pulling dead babies out of the wreckage. Before the bombing, they had been full of heady talk of war against the government, but many of them imagined this would involve an attack on federal judges who had displeased the movement, or blowing up a building at night.

“Didn’t he case the place?” one acquaintance of McVeigh’s asked incredulously. “The bastard has put the Patriot movement back 30 years,” lamented an erstwhile mentor of McVeigh’s from Arizona.

Fast-forward those 30 years, and the movement is not only very much revived but has moved from the outer fringes of American politics to the very centre.

McVeigh wanted to strike at what he saw as a corrupt, secretive cabal running the US government – what Donald Trump and his acolytes refer to as the Deep State and are now busy dismantling.

McVeigh believed the US had no business extending its influence around the world or becoming entangled in foreign wars when white working-class Americans from industrial cities such as Buffalo, his home town, were suffering – an early expression of Trump’s America First ideology, which won him tens of millions of blue-collar votes last November.

McVeigh’s favourite book, a white supremacist power fantasy called The Turner Diaries, blamed a cabal of Jews, black people and internationalists for perverting America’s true destiny – a sentiment now finding coded expression in Trump’s twin wars on immigration and on diversity, equity and inclusion.

McVeigh believed it was up to ordinary citizens like him to take up arms and fight against a tyrannical ruling order, no matter the cost in innocent lives, because that was what the country’s founders had done during the American war of independence. The T-shirt he wore when he was arrested carried a quote from Thomas Jefferson: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

During the Capitol riot on 6 January 2021, the QAnon-friendly Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert expressed much the same sentiment as she cheered on the rioters smashing and bloodying their way past uniformed police officers into the halls of Congress. “Today is 1776,” she tweeted.

The parallels have not been lost on political veterans of the 1990s. Clinton himself observed in a recent HBO documentary: “The words [McVeigh] used, the arguments he made, literally sound like the mainstream today. Like he won!”

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Tulsa Race Massacre not a mob but 'coordinated, military-style attack'

The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, in which a prosperous Black neighborhood in Oklahoma was destroyed and up to 300 people were killed, was not committed by an uncontrolled mob but was the result of “a coordinated, military-style attack” by white citizens, the Justice Department said in a report, according to The New York Times.

The report, stemming from an investigation announced in September, is the first time that the federal government has given an official, comprehensive account of the events of May 31 and June 1, 1921, in the Tulsa neighborhood of Greenwood. Although it formally concluded that, more than a century later, no person alive could be prosecuted, it underscored the brutality of the atrocities committed.

“The Tulsa Race Massacre stands out as a civil rights crime unique in its magnitude, barbarity, racist hostility and its utter annihilation of a thriving Black community,” Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for civil rights, said in a statement. “In 1921, white Tulsans murdered hundreds of residents of Greenwood, burned their homes and churches, looted their belongings and locked the survivors in internment camps.”

No one today could be held criminally responsible, she said, “but the historical reckoning for the massacre continues.”

The report’s legal findings noted that if contemporary civil rights laws were in effect in 1921, federal prosecutors could have pursued hate crime charges against both public officials and private citizens.

Though considered one of the worst episodes of racial terror in U.S. history, the massacre was relatively unknown for decades: City officials buried the story, and few survivors talked about the massacre.

The Justice Department began its investigation under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which allows the agency to examine such crimes resulting in death that occurred before 1980. Investigators spoke with survivors and their descendants, looked at firsthand accounts and examined an informal review by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation, the precursor to the F.B.I. In that 1921 report, the agency asserted that the riot was not the result of “racial feeling,” and suggested that Black men were responsible for the massacre.

The new 123-page report corrects the record, while detailing the scale of destruction and its aftermath. The massacre began with an unfounded accusation. A young Black man, Dick Rowland, was being held in custody by local authorities after being accused of assaulting a young white woman.

According to the report, after a local newspaper sensationalized the story, an angry crowd gathered at the courthouse demanding that Mr. Rowland be lynched. The local sheriff asked Black men from Greenwood, including some who had recently returned from military service, to come to the courthouse to try to prevent the lynching. Other reports suggest the Black neighbors offered to help but were turned away by the sheriff.

The white mob viewed attempts to protect Mr. Rowland as “an unacceptable challenge to the social order,” the report said. The crowd grew and soon there was a confrontation. Hundreds of residents (some of whom had been drinking) were deputized by the Tulsa Police. Law enforcement officers helped organize these special deputies who, along with other residents, eventually descended on Greenwood, a neighborhood whose success inspired the name Black Wall Street.

The report described the initial attack as “opportunistic,” but by daybreak on June 1, “a whistle blew, and the violence and arsons that had been chaotic became systematic.” According to the report, up to 10,000 white Tulsans participated in the attack, burning or looting 35 city blocks. It was so “systematic and coordinated that it transcended mere mob violence,” the report said.

In the aftermath, the survivors were left to rebuild their lives with little or no help from the city. The massacre’s impact, historians say, is still felt generations later.

In the years since the attack, survivors and their descendants and community activists have fought for justice. Most recently, a lawsuit seeking reparations filed on behalf of the last two known centenarian survivors was dismissed by Oklahoma justices in June. In recent years, Tulsa has excavated sections of a city cemetery in search of the graves of massacre victims. And in 2024, the city created a commission to study the harms of the atrocity and recommend solutions. The results are expected in the coming weeks.

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After terrorist attack in New Orleans President-elect wrong on the undocumented, again

Hours after a man drove a pickup truck into New Year’s Eve revelers in New Orleans, killing 15 people, President-elect Donald J. Trump falsely suggested on social media that his condemnations of undocumented immigrants had been validated, reported The New York Times.

“When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country, that statement was constantly refuted by Democrats and the Fake News Media, but it turned out to be true,” Mr. Trump said on his website, Truth Social. “The crime rate in our country is at a level that nobody has ever seen before,” he added falsely. “Our hearts are with all of the innocent victims and their loved ones, including the brave officers of the New Orleans Police Department.”

Mr. Trump, who will be sworn in on Jan. 20, added in his post, “The Trump Administration will fully support the City of New Orleans as they investigate and recover from this act of pure evil!”

Some early reports about the attack said the truck was driven across the border from Mexico into the United States. Officials have since identified the suspect as a U.S.-born citizen and Army veteran who lived in Texas, Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar.

He drove what appeared to be a rented truck that carried an Islamic State flag, officials said. He died after exchanging gunfire with authorities.

Mr. Trump made concerns about undocumented immigrants crossing the border central to his 2024 campaign, and has promised the largest mass deportation effort in U.S. history once he takes office.

A Trump transition spokesman did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment after the suspect’s history was made public.

Federal officials said they were investigating whether anyone else was connected to the attack and were running down leads about the suspect’s associates.

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Creators: Biden's Death Row Clemency Proves Need for Death Penalty

Matthew T. Mangino
Creators
December 23, 2024

Why did President Joe Biden commute the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates?

To start with, the president campaigned in 2020 on ending the federal death penalty. Although he directed the Justice Department to issue a moratorium on federal executions, legislation proposing to end state-sponsored death failed to gain any traction in Congress during his administration.

Additionally, President-elect Donald Trump vowed to carry out executions once in office. His track record reveals he isn't kidding. During the last six months of his prior term, the federal government carried out 13 executions. Contrast that with state executions in 2020, Trump's last year in office. There were seven executions in five states. In 2021, there were eight executions in the same number of states — all below the Mason-Dixon line.

The Trump administration conducted more executions in five months than any other presidency since the turn of the 20th century and carried out six executions during a presidential transition period, more than any other administration in the history of the United States. Prior to 2020, the federal government carried out only three executions in the modern era of the death penalty, most notably Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.

Whether it was a ploy to bolster his tough-guy bona fides or a lowbrow pitch to his "law and order" constituency, then-President Trump's bloodlust saw no boundary.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, those executed by the federal government included the first Native American ever executed by the federal government for the murder of a member of his own tribe on tribal lands.

The Trump administration oversaw the first federal execution in 68 years of an offender who was a teenager at the time the crime was committed.

The federal executions of 2020 included: the first federal execution in 57 years for a crime committed in a state that had abolished the death penalty; executions carried out against the wishes of the victims' families; and the first lame-duck executions in more than a century.

As of December 2024, here were 40 men on federal death row. Biden commuted the sentences of 37. All of the offenders were convicted of murder. They will now serve life in prison without the possibility of parole.

According to The New York Times, of the 37 men whose sentences were commuted, 15 are white, 15 are Black, six are Latino and one is Asian. They were sentenced in 16 states, including three that had abolished the death penalty. Nine are on death row because they were convicted of killing fellow federal prisoners.

The three men who did not receive commutations are notorious mass killers. According to Newsweek, they include Dylann Roof, who carried out the racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted of carrying out the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three and injured more than 260 in 2013; and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 congregants after storming the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.

Prior to these commutations, Biden had already begun to deploy his clemency power aggressively — commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 people earlier this month, as well as his controversial pardon of his son Hunter Biden.

In a strange sort of way, President Biden's bold use of his clemency power to prevent the systematic execution of federal death row inmates strengthens the argument in support of the death penalty. He left three men on death row to most assuredly face death. While generally, Biden revealed his disdain for the death penalty, he does believe — and his actions prove it — that there needs to be a death penalty for some.

You are either for the death penalty or you're against it. Like the old saying goes, you can't be a little bit pregnant. One can't be an opponent of the death penalty only until something really bad happens.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on X @MatthewTMangino.

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Indiana carries out first execution in 15 years

The 24th Execution of 2024

An Indiana man, Joseph Corcoran, convicted in the 1997 killings of his brother and three other men received a lethal injection on December 18, 2024 in the state’s first execution in 15 years, without any independent witness present under the state’s laws shielding information about the death penalty.

Corcoran, 49, was pronounced dead at 12:44 a.m. CST at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Indiana, the Indiana Department of Correction said in a statement. Corcoran was scheduled to be executed with the powerful sedative pentobarbital, but the state agency’s statement did not mention that drug. Corcoran’s execution was the 24th in the U.S. this year.

Last summer the governor announced the resumption of state executions after a yearslong hiatus marked by a scarcity of lethal injection drugs nationwide.

Indiana and Wyoming are the only two states that do not allow members of the media to witness state executions, according to a recent report by the Death Penalty Information Center.

Indiana has provided few details about the process. Prison officials only provided photos of the execution chamber, which resembles a sparse operating room with a gurney, bright fluorescent lighting and an adjacent viewing room.

Corcoran’s attorneys have fought the death penalty sentence for years, arguing he is severely mentally ill, which affects his ability to understand and make decisions. Corcoran exhausted his federal appeals in 2016, and this month his attorneys asked the Indiana Supreme Court to stop his execution but the request was denied.

Corcoran’s attorneys asked the U.S. District Court of Northern Indiana last week to stop his execution and hold a hearing to decide if it would be unconstitutional because Corcoran has a serious mental illness. The court declined to intervene Friday, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit did the same Tuesday.

Corcoran’s attorneys then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case and issue an emergency order halting his execution, but the high court denied their request for a stay.

According to court records, before Corcoran shot the men in July 1997, he was stressed because his sister’s forthcoming marriage to Turner would necessitate moving out of the Fort Wayne home he shared with her and his brother.

Corcoran awoke to hear his brother and others downstairs talking about him, loaded his rifle and then shot all four, records show. While jailed, Corcoran reportedly bragged about fatally shooting his parents in 1992 in northern Indiana’s Steuben County. He was charged in their killings but acquitted.

Indiana’s last state execution was in 2009, when Matthew Wrinkles was put to death for killing his wife, her brother and sister-in-law in 1994.

Since that time 13 executions have been carried out in Indiana, but they were initiated and performed by federal officials in 2020 and 2021 at a federal prison in Terre Haute.

State officials have said they could not continue executions because a combination of drugs used in lethal injections had become unavailable.

For years there has been a shortage nationwide because pharmaceutical companies have refused to sell their products for that purpose. That has pushed states, including Indiana, to turn to compounding pharmacies, which manufacture drugs specifically for a client. Some use more accessible drugs such as the sedatives pentobarbital or midazolam — both of which, critics say, can cause intense pain.

Indiana planned to use pentobarbital to execute Corcoran and, like many states, is refusing to divulge the source of the drugs. When asked for details, the Indiana Department of Correction directed The Associated Press to a state law labeling the source of lethal injection drugs as confidential.

Religious groups, disability rights advocates and others have opposed his execution. About a dozen people, some holding candles, held a vigil late Tuesday to pray outside the prison, which is surrounded by barbed wire fences in a residential area about 60 miles (90 kilometers) east of Chicago.

“We can build a society without giving governmental authorities the right to execute their own citizens,” said Bishop Robert McClory of the Diocese of Gary, who led the prayers.

Other death penalty opponents also demonstrated outside the prison Tuesday night, some holding signs that read “Execution Is Not The Solution” and “Remember The Victims But Not With More Killing.”

“There is no need and no benefit from this execution. It’s all show,” said Abraham Borowitz, director of Death Penalty Action, his organization that protests every execution in the U.S.

Prison officials said in a brief statement Tuesday evening that Corcoran “requested Ben & Jerry’s ice cream for his last meal.”

Corcoran said farewell late Tuesday to relatives, including his wife, Tahina Corcoran, who told reporters outside the prison that they discussed their faith and their memories, including attending high school together. She reiterated her request for Indiana’s governor to commute her husband’s death sentence.

Tahina Corcoran said her husband is “very mentally ill” and she doesn’t think he fully grasps what is happening to him.

“He is in shock. He doesn’t understand,” she said.

One of Corcoran’s sisters, Kelly Ernst, who lost both a brother and her fiancé in the 1997 shootings, said she believes the death penalty should be abolished and executing her brother will not solve anything.

“I’m at a loss for words. I’m just really upset that they’re doing it close to Christmas,” she said. “My sister and I, our birthdays are in December. I mean, it just feels like it’s going to ruin Christmas for the rest of our lives.”

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Biden issues executive order targeting 'emerging firearms threats'

President Joe Biden is creating a federal task force to target “emerging firearms threats,” including cheap devices that can convert commonly owned semiautomatic pistols into fully automatic machine guns, reported The Trace. 

The executive order, signed by Biden during an event on September 26, also seeks to crack down on 3D-printed guns and improve school active shooter drills. It likely marks one of the last gun violence initiatives of his presidency, with a little more than a month to go before the 2024 election and four months before the inauguration of his successor.

“The streets are flooded with machine gun conversion devices because the parts are small, cheap, and easy to make. The impact of these devices is devastating,” Biden said. “It’s about sending a clear message to local law enforcement, and cities across the country, that we’re here to help, and together we can save lives.”

The new Emerging Firearms Threats Task Force — composed of leaders from several federal departments and agencies — will be responsible for developing a plan to combat machine gun conversion devices. The devices, also known as Glock switches, auto sears, or trigger activators, have been showing up at crime scenes in increasing numbers.  

One recent example was in Birmingham, Alabama, where four people were killed and 17 injured in a mass shooting on September 21. Law enforcement recovered more than 100 shell casings and believe machine gun conversion devices were used. While the devices are illegal on the federal level, Alabama and some other states do not have state-level bans, leaving local law enforcement with few tools to arrest and prosecute people caught with the devices.

Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin was among dozens of gun violence prevention advocates, law enforcement officials, and others who attended the September 26 signing ceremony. 

 “We’ve been working with our U.S. attorney, with the Justice Department, to get machine gun conversions like Glock switches off our city streets,” Woodfin said. “But still, my community, and I imagine other communities, are still finding the use of these devices at crime scene after crime scene.”

The ceremony marked the first time that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic nominee for president, have appeared together at a gun violence-focused event since Biden placed Harris in charge of the new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention one year ago.

“For as much as we have accomplished, more must be done,” Harris said. “We need more leaders like the leaders in this room, in Congress, who have the courage to take action, to stand up to the gun lobby, and to put the lives of our children first.”

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Three mass killings of four or more in Alabama this year

A late night shooting in Birmingham’s Five Points South neighborhood left four dead and 17 injured is one of three quadruple homicides in the city thus far in 2024, according to AL.com.

On July 13, a drive-by shooting at an adult birthday party left four people dead and nine others injured. The victims were Angela Weatherspoon, 56, of Center Point, Markeisha Gettings, 42, of Birmingham, Stevie McGhee, 39, of Birmingham, and Lerandus Anderson, 24, of Center Point.

On Feb. 16, four men were killed in a drive-by shooting in the Smithfield neighborhood. Talton “TJ” Tait, 36, Cortez Ray, 32, Terrell Edwards, 38, and Kevin McGhee, 38, were killed in that shooting.

It also the most recent mass homicide in the state.

The FBI defines mass killings as incidents in which four or more people die within a 24-hour period, not including the killer, according to The Associated Press.

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Creators: We Need to Squeeze Some Intelligence Into the Discussion About School Shootings

Matthew T. Mangino
Creators Syndicate
September 10, 2024

In the aftermath of another school shooting, this time in Georgia, parents will be clamoring to keep guns out of the hands of would-be mass killers, school boards will be looking for money to bring more armed security into school buildings, and politicians will be telling every interest group exactly what they want to hear.

Schools don't need more school resource officers, armed guards or, for that matter, armed teachers. Schools need to become adept at gathering information, sharing intelligence and, most importantly, making sense of what they learn.

The mother of the suspected Apalachee High School gunman told family members that she called the school on the morning of the shooting and warned a counselor about an "extreme emergency" involving her 14-year-old son, "according to text messages obtained by The Washington Post and an interview with a family member."

That account is supported by a call log from the family's shared phone plan, which shows a 10-minute call from the mother's phone to the school starting at 9:50 a.m. — about a half-hour before witnesses said the gunman opened fire.

In Uvalde, Texas, we learned far too well that good guys, many good guys, with guns can't always stop a bad guy with a gun. In Florida, Nikolas Cruz was sentenced to life in prison after killing 17 people at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018. The school's resource officer was criminally charged for failing to enter the school and confront Cruz. He was ultimately tried and acquitted.

Nearly every school in America has prepared for a shooting, more than 96% of public schools hold active-shooter drills, reports The Washington Post. Active shooter training, although needed, is a reaction to a shooting — not an effort to prevent one. According to the Post, "A pricey, multilayered security plan can be undone by something as small as an open door and a school police force can fail to prevent a worst-case scenario."

Target hardening and emergency response strategies are important components to minimize, or even deter, an attack. Intelligence is essential to preventing one.

School attacks are often the result of meticulous planning. With planning comes the potential for leaving clues. Jeff Kaas, author of "Columbine: A True Crime Story," wrote in the Post that 81% of school shooters tell someone about their plans. In addition, most attackers engaged in some behavior before the attack that caused others concern or indicated a need for help.

Suspicious conduct, indirect threats, even alarming expressions in school assignments need to be documented. Information must be shared so that a coherent snapshot can be created of a potentially volatile situation.

School districts need to collect, document and share intelligence. To that end, schools should establish fusion coordinators, "intel officers," who can synthesize documented activity occurring in school, outside of school and on social media networks. Teachers, administrators and staff should have regular roundtable discussions about unusual behavior, threats, bullying and social isolation of students.

Would a school district be better off with another armed resource officer or intelligence officer armed with a laptop, cellphone, intelligence software and an email serving as a central point of contact trying to make sense of information from teachers, staff, students and outside public sources?

Intelligence has been cultivated and used effectively in this country's antiterrorism efforts. An intelligence model might not only help prevent a violent rampage but may assist school districts to more effectively reach out to students who need support, counseling or more specific interventions.

One thing is for certain: What America is doing to address mass school shootings is not working. The time is right to look at other options, and just maybe the next officer a school district should hire is an intelligence officer, not a police officer.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on X @MatthewTMangino.

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Maine enacts three-day waiting period to by a gun

With eleventh hour guidance from the state, Maine gun retailers began requiring a three-day wait period for gun purchases under one of the new safety laws adopted following the state’s deadliest mass shooting, reported The Associated Press.

Maine joined a dozen other states with similar laws, requiring that buyers wait 72 hours to complete a purchase and retrieve a weapon. The law is among several gun-related bills adopted after an Army reservist killed 18 people and injured 13 others on Oct. 25, 2023, in Lewiston.

The new law wouldn’t have prevented the tragedy — the gunman bought the rifle legally months earlier — but this milestone was celebrated by gun safety advocates who believe it will prevent gun deaths by providing a cooling-off period for people intent on buying a gun to do harm to others or themselves.

“These new laws will certainly save lives, both here in Maine and throughout the nation,” said Nacole Palmer, executive director of the Maine Gun Safety Coalition.

Gun store owners complained about the guidance, released just Tuesday, and the loss of sales to out-of-state visitors during Maine’s busy summer tourism season. They also said the waiting period will take a toll on gun shows.

In Kittery, Dave Labbe from the Kittery Trading Post said there would be close to zero completed rifle sales at its main store beginning Friday as customers subject to the waiting period will have to return to pick up their firearms. He is worried shoppers won’t buy guns because the waiting period requires them to make an extra trip to the store.

“You can imagine how I feel,” he said.

Unlike other Maine dealers, Kittery Trading Post’s out-of-state buyers of rifles and shotguns have the option to move those sales to its New Hampshire facility to complete a same-day purchase. But that increases business costs and inconveniences customers. In some cases, the customer may prefer to ship the firearm to a dealer in their home state, Labbe said.

At the store on Friday, shoppers poured inside on a rainy day to make purchases of clothing and outdoor gear, but foot traffic in the gun department appeared to be slower than usual. A sign overhead alerted buyers to the new law.

Some retailers claimed the guidance was late and vague.

“It’s as clear as mud,” said Laura Whitcomb from Gun Owners of Maine. She noted that gray areas include the legal definition for the “agreement” that must be reached to trigger the waiting period.

Critics of the law have vowed to sue. They contend it harms only law-abiding citizens while doing nothing to stop criminals from accessing weapons illegally. They also contend people who intend to harm themselves will find another way to do so if they are unable to purchase a gun on the spot. Violating the law is a civil infraction with a fine of $200 to $500 for a first offense and $500 to $1,000 for subsequent violations.

The waiting period law went into effect without the signature of Democratic Gov. Janet Mills. It was one of a series of bills adopted after the mass killings at a bowling alley and a bar and grill in Lewiston.

Mills told lawmakers during her State of the State address that doing nothing was not an option after the tragedy.

The laws bolstered the state’s “yellow flag” law allowing weapons to be taken from someone in a psychiatric crisis, criminalized the transfer of guns to prohibited people and required background checks for people who advertise a gun for sale on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace or elsewhere.

Maine is a state with a long hunting tradition and the bills drew opposition from Republicans who accused Democrats, who control both legislative chambers, of using the tragedy to advance proposals, some of which had previously been defeated.

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Texas judge strikes down Biden restriction on modified semiautomatic guns

A federal judge recently struck down a Biden administration ban on forced reset triggers, devices that allow semiautomatic guns to fire at faster rates, citing the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a ban on bump stocks last month, reported the Washington Post.

Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas ruled in favor of guns-rights groups that had sued the U.S. Justice Department and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2023 challenging the ban.

O’Connor’s ruling took the same approach that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority did in overturning the Trump administration’s ban on bump-stock devices in June by focusing on ATF’s interpretation of laws restricting the possession of machine guns. It stated that although forced reset triggers enable a user to fire weapons at a faster rate than normal triggers, they do not meet the statutory definition of a machine gun because they do not enable guns to fire multiple rounds with a “single function of the trigger.”

Dudley Brown, president of the National Association for Gun Rights, one of the groups that challenged the ban, wrote in a statement that Tuesday’s decision — along with the Supreme Court’s ruling on bump stocks — forces ATF “to return to their Constitutional boundaries.”

Attorneys for the Justice Department and ATF did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday evening.

Forced reset triggers are devices that forcibly return the trigger of a firearm to its reset or ready-to-fire position after a bullet is fired, which allows a user to more quickly fire successive shots.

In a 2022 letter to federal firearms licensees, ATF said that certain forced reset triggers, which were being marketed as replacement triggers for AR-style rifles, allowed shooters to “automatically expel more than one shot with a single, continuous pull of the trigger” and were subject to a ban.

The National Association for Gun Rights and Texas Gun Rights, another advocacy group, sued the Justice Department and ATF in August 2023, arguing that the agencies had wrongly characterized forced reset triggers to ban them.

In court filings, ATF said that its testing found that a semiautomatic rifle equipped with a forced reset trigger could fire at an average rate of 840 rounds per minute, and that guns with forced reset triggers can be fired with a “single, constant pull of the trigger.”

In his ruling, O’Connor sided with the National Association for Gun Rights and Texas Gun Rights in arguing that forced reset triggers still only fire a single round with “a single function of the trigger.” He likened the characterization to the Supreme Court’s decision on bump stocks. The Supreme Court in June similarly ruled against banning those devices on the argument that they did not alter the semiautomatic action of firearms despite facilitating a much faster rate of fire.

O’Connor’s ruling referenced the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that spurred the Trump administration’s ban on bump stocks and a polarizing debate on the legality of devices that increase the rate of fire of semiautomatic weapons.

O’Connor acknowledged the “tragic nature” of the shooting but said that “no matter how terrible the circumstances, there is never a situation that justifies a court altering statutory text that was democratically enacted by those who are politically accountable.”

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PA House Judiciary Committee moves forward with gun measures

Democrats in majority control of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives advanced several gun measures, including one that would ban sales of automatic and semi-automatic guns, after years of standstill in the politically divided state government, reported The Associated Press.

The bills were passed by the Judiciary Committee on party lines and await the full House’s consideration.

Even if the bills clear the House floor, however, they will likely face a cold reception in the state Senate; other gun control measures passed by the House last year did not even get called up in committee. Instead, senators have prioritized working with Democrats to boost funding for anti-violence and mental health programs.

Still, it’s the second time since Democrats regained majority status in the chamber that they’ve used their heft to push gun control measures. They kicked off the current two-year session last March with a hearing on gun violence. Under Republican majorities in both chambers until last year, the Legislature has not seriously considered broadening gun-control measures since 2018.

The slate of bills that passed Judiciary on Wednesday would balance gun ownership with protecting average citizens, Democrats argued.

“These are issues that we were clear at the beginning of the session we wanted to tackle,” said the committee’s chairman, Democratic Rep. Tim Briggs of Montgomery County. “The first thing we did was have a hearing on gun violence prevention measures.”

Republicans raised concerns about infringing upon constitutional rights.

“If the government can infringe on our Second Amendment rights, no rights can be enjoyed by citizens of this nation,” said Rep. Joe Hamm, a Republican from Lycoming County.

One bill the committee approved would ban future sales of “assault weapons,” defined as automatic and semi-automatic firearms. Sponsors cited the use of high-capacity semi-automatic rifles in a number of mass shootings, including in Pittsburgh, where a gunman carried out the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history in 2018 armed with an AR-15 rifle and other weapons.

Previously, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro has said he’d support legislation that limits the availability of such firearms. At least 10 states have enacted laws banning them, sometimes spurring litigation.

Among the other legislation that passed the committee, one bill would prohibit accelerated trigger activators, which increase the rate of gunfire. Another bill would prohibit the purchase, sale and production of untraceable gun parts. A fourth would subject 3D-printed firearms to the same regulations as standard firearms.

Another bill would shorten the time a judge has to notify the Pennsylvania State Police about a person with mental health from about a week to four days.

Adam Garber, executive director of CeaseFirePA, a gun violence prevention group, said the advancing of the bills showed a “commitment to survivors.” He called the automatic weapons ban proposal the first such effort in “modern times.”

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