A bill prohibiting domestic abusers and people under restraining orders from owning firearms became the US’ first new gun control law since the Feb. 14 Florida high-school massacre.
“Well done Oregon,” Democratic Governor Kate Brown said on Monday after signing the law on the steps of the state Capitol as about 200 people, including high-school students and victims of domestic abuse, applauded and cheered.
State Senator Floyd Prozanski, whose sister was fatally shot by her boyfriend, and Representative Janeen Sollman, who fled her home as a child when her father was in a violent rage, hugged as they stood behind the governor.
The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people has created a wave of young anti-gun activists that has now reached cross-country into Oregon.
Students from a high school in the Portland suburb of Lake Oswego traveled 65km to stage a gun-control rally in the state capital, Salem, on Monday morning.
“We are empowered youth,” they chanted, while holding signs that read “End gun violence, our lives matter,” and “Together we can end gun violence.”
“We want to promote change. We’re tired of the massive number of school shootings and the massive lack of action,” 15-year-old student Eli Counce said.
Scarlett Scott-Buck, another student, said she came to protest “because I’m scared to attend my own school. And I’m here to be an activist for my rights — to live, my friends’ rights to live, and my mother’s fear.”
Brown came down from her office to speak to the more than 100 students from Lakeridge High School in Lake Oswego, who sat on a broad stairway underneath the Capitol rotunda. She urged those who are 18 to register to vote.
“You want what?” she asked them.
“Change,” they shouted.
“How do you make change?” Brown asked.
“Vote!” the students shouted.
A couple of hours later, Brown met in her office with a dozen students from different schools.
They agreed more needs to be done, including expanded access to mental health counseling to prevent unstable students from reaching the breaking point and committing violence.
However, some students said gun control is also needed.
“Nationally, I think there needs to be things like assault rifle bans, but also closing the gun-show loophole ... and making it so background checks aren’t time limited,” student Eamon Walsh said as he left the governor’s office.
Such a time limit allowed Dylann Roof to buy the gun he is accused of using to kill nine churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, Walsh noted.
The bill that Brown signed on Monday closes a loophole in a 2015 law that excluded some abusers from the ban on buying or owning guns and ammunition, such as people who they do not live with the partner they are abusing or threatening, and those under restraining orders.
The measure had been introduced before the Feb. 14 Florida shooting,
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
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