With today’s launch of Hired Guns by reporter Shoshana Walter, The Center for Investigative Reporting embarks on an exploration of guns in America that will continue in 2015. The Second Amendment is much debated in the news, and we don’t intend to dedicate our resources to the controversy. But we are interested in figuring out what is broken and helping fix it.
We hope you will come along on our journey by signing up to receive regular updates and helping us decide which directions to head. A team of journalists already is mulling a few ideas and we’re interested in hearing what you think about them – now or whenever something occurs to you.
For instance, Hired Guns has raised serious questions about the rigor of oversight of prohibited possessors – people not allowed to own guns for mental health, violence or other reasons:
Anyone who purchases a gun from a licensed firearms dealer is required to go through a background check to determine whether he or she has lost the right to bear arms. But 27 states do not check whether armed-guard applicants are in this federal database and prohibited from carrying a gun. The database of prohibited possessors includes categories such as restraining orders or mental health commitments that do not usually appear in a routine FBI background check.
If Arizona had required regulators to check the prohibited possessors database, Joshua Kosatschenko might not have received his license. And he might not have begun work as an armed guard at a Tucson Circle K convenience store where, six weeks later, he shot and paralyzed an unarmed teenager.
We’re going to look into the breakdown of what seems on its face a reasonable law.
After the recent shooting in Florida State University’s library by a former student, reporter Matt Drange wrote a short piece about guns of choice in school shootings since Adam Lanza carried out his 2012 massacre of grade-school children in Newtown, Connecticut. He discovered something that intrigued us:
The make and model of guns used in shootings is not consistently reported by law enforcement, and there is no central federal repository for the information. Even the FBI has trouble getting the information.
Pete Blair, a lead author of the FBI study and an associate professor of criminal justice at Texas State University, said some police departments declined to turn over detailed gun information, citing exemptions from state public records laws. Of the 160 cases included in the study, Blair obtained police reports for roughly 100 and turned to FBI field office and media reports for the rest.
Today’s package of stories is just a start, and we want to hear what you’re curious about as well. Please take a minute to tell us on this form.
Readers: Help CIR explore the role of guns in America
By Amy PyleReveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting December 9, 2014
Thanks for your interest in republishing this story. As a nonprofit newsroom, we want to share our work freely with as many people as possible. We only ask that you follow a few guidelines.
You may embed our audio and video content and republish any written story for free under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license and will indemnify our content as long as you strictly follow these guidelines:
TEXT
Credit and tag Reveal when sharing the story on social. We’re @reveal on Twitter and you can find us on at facebook/ThisIsReveal.
Include this language at the beginning of the story: “This story was produced by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting (link organization name to revealnews.org), a nonprofit news organization. Get their investigations emailed to you directly by signing up at revealnews.org/newsletter.
Our reporter(s) must be bylined. We prefer the following format: By Emmanuel Martinez, Reveal.
Do not change or edit our material, except only to reflect changes in time and location. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)
Include all links from the story.
PHOTOS
You can republish Reveal photos only if you run them in or alongside the stories with which they originally appeared, include the original caption, and do not change them.
If you want to run a photo apart from that story, please request specific permission to license by contacting our web team, webteam@revealnews.org. Reveal often uses photos we purchase from The Associated Press; those are not available for republication.
DATA
If you want to republish Reveal graphics or data, please contact Director of Audience Hannah Young, hyoung@revealnews.org.
IN GENERAL
We do not compensate anyone who republishes our work. You also cannot sell our material separately or syndicate it.
You can’t republish all of our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, please contact our web team, webteam@revealnews.org
If we send you a request to remove our content from your website, you must agree to do so immediately.
FYI, you can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the “Republish this content” link at the bottom of every story. Please do not alter this code.
DO NOT APPLY IF
If you wish to only use portions of the work or create a derivative, you need separate permission and the license and indemnification do not apply. This license only applies to republication of full works.
Additionally, we will not provide indemnification if you are located or publishing outside the United States, but you may contact us to obtain a license and indemnification on a case-by-case basis.
