Now is not the time to talk about gun control (1 Viewer)

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    PARKLAND, Fla. (AP) — Joaquin “Guac” Oliver died in the 2018 Parkland, Florida, high school massacre, but federal lawmakers who oppose tighter gun regulations began getting phone calls in his voice on Wednesday, lambasting them for their position.

    The families of Oliver and five others killed with guns are using artificial intelligence to create messages in their loved ones’ voices and robocalling them to senators and House members who support the National Rifle Association and oppose tougher gun laws. The protest is being run through The Shotline website, where visitors select which offices receive calls.

    The campaign launched on Valentine’s Day because it’s the sixth anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, which left the 17-year-old Oliver, 13 other students and three staff members dead. Oliver was murdered as he lay wounded on the floor, the fatal bullet blasting through the hand he raised as the 19-year-old killer leveled his AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle……..

    To make the recordings, the Olivers and other families gave an AI company audio of their loved ones and it re-created their voices, changing tone and pattern based on relatives’ suggestions.


    Joaquin’s AI voice identifies him and then says, “Many students and teachers were murdered on Valentine’s Day ... by a person using an AR-15, but you don’t care. You never did. It’s been six years and you’ve done nothing.”

    It continues, “I died that day in Parkland. My body was destroyed by a weapon of war. I’m back today because my parents used AI to re-create my voice to call you. Other victims like me will be calling too, again and again, to demand action. How many calls will it take for you to care? How many dead voices will you hear before you finally listen?”

    The NRA did not respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment.…….

    Others involved in the new campaign include the families of 23-year-old Akilah Dasilva, one of four people slain during a 2018 shooting at a Waffle House restaurantin Tennessee, and 10-year-old Uziyah Garcia, who died in the 2022 massacre at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school. There are also the parents of 15-year-old Ethan Song, who died in an accidental shooting, and a 20-year-old murder victim and the family of a man who committed suicide.

    Brett Cross, the uncle who was raising Uziyah, said the boy wanted to help people as a police officer. In the AI’s message, Uziyah’s voice says, “I’m a 4th grader at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Or at least I was when a man with an AR-15 came into my school and killed 18 of my classmates, two teachers and me.” His voice then tells lawmakers, “What is it going to take for you to help make sure violence like this stops?”

    Cross said his family is participating “so that no other child will have to go through what Uzi did. No other parent should have to go through what we have.”………

    apnews.com

    They died from gun violence. Now NRA-supporting lawmakers are getting phone calls from their voices

    The family of a teen murdered at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is launching a campaign where re-created voices of gun violence victims will call federal lawmakers.
    apnews.com apnews.com
     
    Optimus Prime said:
    PARKLAND, Fla. (AP) — Joaquin “Guac” Oliver died in the 2018 Parkland, Florida, high school massacre, but federal lawmakers who oppose tighter gun regulations began getting phone calls in his voice on Wednesday, lambasting them for their position.

    The families of Oliver and five others killed with guns are using artificial intelligence to create messages in their loved ones’ voices and robocalling them to senators and House members who support the National Rifle Association and oppose tougher gun laws. The protest is being run through The Shotline website, where visitors select which offices receive calls.

    The campaign launched on Valentine’s Day because it’s the sixth anniversary of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, which left the 17-year-old Oliver, 13 other students and three staff members dead. Oliver was murdered as he lay wounded on the floor, the fatal bullet blasting through the hand he raised as the 19-year-old killer leveled his AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle……..

    To make the recordings, the Olivers and other families gave an AI company audio of their loved ones and it re-created their voices, changing tone and pattern based on relatives’ suggestions.


    Joaquin’s AI voice identifies him and then says, “Many students and teachers were murdered on Valentine’s Day ... by a person using an AR-15, but you don’t care. You never did. It’s been six years and you’ve done nothing.”

    It continues, “I died that day in Parkland. My body was destroyed by a weapon of war. I’m back today because my parents used AI to re-create my voice to call you. Other victims like me will be calling too, again and again, to demand action. How many calls will it take for you to care? How many dead voices will you hear before you finally listen?”

    The NRA did not respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment.…….

    Others involved in the new campaign include the families of 23-year-old Akilah Dasilva, one of four people slain during a 2018 shooting at a Waffle House restaurantin Tennessee, and 10-year-old Uziyah Garcia, who died in the 2022 massacre at a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school. There are also the parents of 15-year-old Ethan Song, who died in an accidental shooting, and a 20-year-old murder victim and the family of a man who committed suicide.

    Brett Cross, the uncle who was raising Uziyah, said the boy wanted to help people as a police officer. In the AI’s message, Uziyah’s voice says, “I’m a 4th grader at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Or at least I was when a man with an AR-15 came into my school and killed 18 of my classmates, two teachers and me.” His voice then tells lawmakers, “What is it going to take for you to help make sure violence like this stops?”

    Cross said his family is participating “so that no other child will have to go through what Uzi did. No other parent should have to go through what we have.”………

    apnews.com

    They died from gun violence. Now NRA-supporting lawmakers are getting phone calls from their voices

    The family of a teen murdered at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is launching a campaign where re-created voices of gun violence victims will call federal lawmakers.
    apnews.com apnews.com
    Click to expand...

    I understand why they're doing it but I'm not going to lie, that's creepy.
     
    CHARLESTON, S.C. — The pastor meant to devote Bible study to the gravity of marriage, but here they were, once again, talking about guns.
“A man shot his girlfriend and then killed himself,” one congregant said from the second row of their historic Black church, referencing a clip he’d just seen on the news.

    “How do we intercede,” a woman to his left chimed in, “when we notice the warning signs?”
The Rev. Eric S.C. Manning, senior pastor at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church — known worldwide as Mother Emanuel — had prayed for the words to counsel his members through America’s ceaseless violence. They were all aware, intimately so, that the worst can happen and nothing much changes.

    This Wednesday meeting used to convene in the basement before a white supremacist showed up one June night in 2015 and opened fire, killing nine people.

    Now Republican presidential candidates and their backers crisscrossing South Carolina ahead of the state’s Feb. 24 primary seemed to be exhibiting what the 56-year-old pastor called a “lapse in memory.”

    Since the start of January, the United States has counted six mass killings, its rate of firearm-wrought bloodshed outpacing every other wealthy nation by far.

    The candidates vying for the GOP nomination, if they address the carnage at all, make no mention of safeguarding access to the weapons used in attack after attack after attack.


    Donald Trump and Nikki Haley’s comments on the campaign trail have troubled Manning and others close to Mother Emanuel, many of whom have lobbied for stronger background checks, a policy shift most Americans support, only to meet resistance from conservative leaders.

    The familiar disappointment crept back when, just as the Republican contenders were descending on Iowa for its caucuses, a teenager not far from Des Moines staged the first school rampage of 2024. Meet-and-greets resumed before the dead were buried……..

     
    "the best we can do is ban something unrelated to the incident"
    apnews.com

    Missouri House votes to ban celebratory gunfire days after Chiefs' parade shooting

    Missouri's Republican-led House has passed a ban on celebratory gunfire in cities less than a week after a deadly shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs' Super Bowl parade.
    apnews.com apnews.com

    Kansas City police have said the shooting appeared to stem from a dispute between several people and not celebratory gunfire. One woman was killed and 22 people were injured. About half of the injured people were under the age of 16.
     
    zztop said:
    "the best we can do is ban something unrelated to the incident"
    apnews.com

    Missouri House votes to ban celebratory gunfire days after Chiefs' parade shooting

    Missouri's Republican-led House has passed a ban on celebratory gunfire in cities less than a week after a deadly shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs' Super Bowl parade.
    apnews.com apnews.com

    Kansas City police have said the shooting appeared to stem from a dispute between several people and not celebratory gunfire. One woman was killed and 22 people were injured. About half of the injured people were under the age of 16.
    Click to expand...
    That is so 🤬 stupid! Doing nothing would have been the better option.
     
    Both the armorer and Baldwin are guilty of involuntary manslaughter IMO.

    www.cnn.com

    ‘Rust’ film armorer’s manslaughter trial opens with both sides debating whose negligence matters most | CNN

    In opening statements of “Rust” film armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed’s manslaughter trial Thursday, both the prosecution and the defense agreed that negligence was to blame for the on-set shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
    www.cnn.com www.cnn.com

    CNN —
    In opening statements of “Rust” film armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed’s manslaughter trial Thursday, both the prosecution and the defense agreed that negligence was to blame for the on-set shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

    But whose negligence, exactly?

    New Mexico prosecutor Jason Lewis said Gutierrez Reed’s failures allowed six live bullets to make their way onto the set, and she did not make vital safety checks that would have caught the problem.


    “The evidence you’re going to hear throughout this trial is that the defendant was unprofessional and that she failed to do the essential safety functions of her job, and that these failures resulted in live ammunition being spread throughout this entire set,” he said. “Once the live ammunition was on the set, she failed to detect it, because she didn’t follow those essential safety protocols that required her to inspect every round before they were placed into the gun.”
     
    WASHINGTON (AP) — Eleven-year-old Domonic Davis was not far from his mom’s Cincinnati home when a hail of gunfire sprayed out from a passing car. Nearly two dozen rounds hurtled through the night at a group of children in the blink of an eye.

    Four other children and a woman were hurt in the November shooting that killed Domonic, who had just made his school basketball team.

    “What happened? How does this happen to an 11-year-old? He was only a few doors down,” his father, Issac Davis, said.

    The shooting remains under investigation. But federal investigators believe the 22 shots could be fired off with lightning speed because the weapon had been illegally converted to fire like a machine gun.

    Communities around the U.S. have seen shootings carried out with weapons converted to fully automatic in recent years, fueled by a staggering increase in small pieces of metal or plastic made with a 3D printer or ordered online. Laws against machine guns date back to the bloody violence of Prohibition-era gangsters. But the proliferation of devices known by nicknames such as Glock switches, auto sears and chips has allowed people to transform legal semi-automatic weapons into even more dangerous guns, helping fuel gun violence, police and federal authorities said.



    “Police officers are facing down fully automatic weapon fire in amounts that haven’t existed in this country since the days of Al Capone in the Tommy gun,” said Steve Dettelbach, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF. “It’s a huge problem.”

    The agency reported a 570% increase in the number of conversion devices collected by police departments between 2017 and 2021, the most recent data available.


    Guns with conversion devices have been used in several mass shootings, including one that left four dead at a Sweet Sixteen party in Alabama last year and another that left six people dead at a bar district in Sacramento, California, in 2022.

    In Houston, police officer William Jeffrey died in 2021 after being shot with a converted gun while serving a warrant. In cities such as Indianapolis, police have seized them every week.

    The devices that can convert legal semi-automatic weapons can be made on a 3D printer in about 35 minutes or ordered from overseas online for less than $30. They’re also quick to install……

    apnews.com

    A surge of illegal homemade machine guns has helped fuel gun violence in the US

    In the last several years, a proliferation of tiny pieces of plastic and metal is fueling a spike in semi-automatic handguns converted to fully automatic fire.
    apnews.com apnews.com
     
    California legislators are moving to standardize how public schools conduct active-shooter drills. If passed, the legislation would require school administrators to notify parents, teachers and students before a drill, and ban the use of fake gunfire during drills.

    Individual schools and districts currently create their own procedures and often contract with law enforcement or private companies to create scenarios that mimic school shootings, which can include students lying on the ground and the use of fake blood and firearms.

    These exercises can traumatize students in the name of preparing for an event that, while frightening, is unlikely to happen, according to a 2021 study published in Nature.

    “When it comes to fire drills, we are not filling the halls with smoke and turning up the thermostat,” said state Assemblymember Chris Ward, who introduced the legislation and represents parts of southern California including San Diego, in a statement on Tuesday.


    “We should not be doing the same to our kids when it comes to active-shooter drills. We need to make sure these drills are not doing more harm than good in preparing our students for the possibility of these tragic events occurring,” Ward said.

    Last month, a principal at an elementary school outside Los Angeles was put on leave after pretending to shoot students and announcing that they were “dead” during a drill, KTLA reported. In some cases, schools also do not notify teachers, parents and students about the shooter drills, resulting in confusion and panic.…..

    www.theguardian.com

    California moves to ban fake gunfire in school active-shooter drills

    New legislation would standardize how public schools conduct such drills and avoid ‘doing more harm than good’
    www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
     

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