Guns

The Uvalde school board agreed Wednesday to fire Pete Arredondo, the school district’s police chief broadly criticized for his response to the deadliest school shooting in Texas history, in a unanimous vote that came shortly after he asked to be taken off of suspension and receive backpay.

Arredondo, widely blamed for law enforcement’s delayed response in confronting the gunman who killed 21 people at Robb Elementary, made the request for reinstatement through his attorney, George E. Hyde. The meeting came exactly three months after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary. Arredondo didn’t attend the meeting.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) revealed on Wednesday that she immediately grabbed her gun when a SWAT team visited her home earlier that morning.

According to police reports, someone called 911 dispatchers with a report that a shooting had taken place at Greene's home early Wednesday morning. The tactic is known as "swatting."

The Catholic News Agency reported that rosary sales are up after The Atlantic posted a piece saying that Christian nationalists and gun extremists are adopting the practice of praying the rosary. Many Catholics already have a rosary, but obviously buy new ones whenever they see fit.

“The rosary has acquired a militaristic meaning for radical-traditional (or “rad trad”) Catholics," wrote Daniel Panneton for The Atlantic. “Militia culture, a fetishism of Western civilization, and masculinist anxieties have become mainstays of the far right in the U.S.—and rad-trad Catholics have now taken up residence in this company."

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) hasn't announced whether or not he'll run for president in 2024, but as he tries to promote himself and other GOP candidates, he's traveling the country with a gun-free zone for events, despite the fact that he's decried such zones as being ripe targets for mass shooters.

"The Buffalo guy said he wanted to go where he knew there wouldn't be blowback from people being armed, and so he tried to find a gun-free zone," DeSantis said about the mass shooter that opened fire at a grocery store in New York state.

According to a comprehensive report for Politico, as the Donald Trump administration with the help of Senate Republicans was ramrodding the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh through his Supreme Court hearings, the top leadership of the National Rifle Association (NRA) were holding meetings at a Westin Hotel where they agreed to allocate funds to back a series of lawsuits they hoped would make it to the court as well as lining up and paying attorneys who would submit friend of the court briefs to boost their chances.

As reporter Will Van Sant wrote, the NRA for decades has been spending millions of dollars in fees and grants to lawyers who would make their case for them without the attorneys divulging who was paying them for their time and efforts.

The Mall of America in Bloomington went into lockdown on Thursday afternoon after reports of shots fired outside the Nike store, Fox 9 reported.

"We are currently working an active incident inside Mall of America on the northwest side. Numerous officers are on scene," Bloomington Police announced.

The man who represented Newtown as a congressman and represents it as a Connecticut U.S. Senator explained to Raw Story on Thursday how justice for InfoWars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones could send a message to others spreading dangerous lies.

Alex Jones was found guilty of defaming the parents of one of the victims by falsely claiming that the mass shooting did not happen and was a hoax that was staged. As the jury was presented evidence while deciding on the extent of monetary damages to award the parents, Alex Jones was caught lying after his attorney turned over the entire contents of his cell phone, which directly contradict sworn testimony Jones gave in a deposition and repeated in court.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) used her congressional Twitter account to claim that Democrats engaged in a conspiracy to claim terrorist mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed to boost their midterm fortunes.

In a series of tweets on Tuesday, Greene suggested that Democrats were taking action because President Joe Biden had not gotten a boost from Russia's war on Ukraine.

The parents of elementary school children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting testified at Alex Jones' defamation trial on Tuesday to explain the horrors they've dealt with after being smeared by the conspiracy theorist.

Jones has been sued for defamation and libel after claiming that the Sandy Hook massacre never happened. On his show, spread across multiple social media platforms and streaming services, Jones claimed that the young children that were shot and killed in 2012 never existed.

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones skipped his defamation trial on Monday and instead hosted a segment downplaying the Sandy Hook massacre deaths as mere "collateral damages to the freedom."

Jones peppered his show with complaints about his two Sandy Hook-related defamation trials.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) said that a lack of firearms is to blame for the practice of eating dogs in Venezuela.

During an interview on Newsmax with host Sebastian Gorka, Boebert recalled how she had confronted Democratic politician Beto O'Rourke after he suggested that assault-style weapons should be banned.