WASHINGTON POST: For more than three decades, the NRA has sponsored legal seminars, funded legal research and encouraged law review articles that advocate an individual’s right to possess guns, according to the organization’s reports. The result has been a profound shift in legal thinking on the Second Amendment. And the issue of individual gun-possession rights, once almost entirely ignored, has moved into the center of constitutional debate and study. For proponents of stricter gun control, the NRA’s encouragement of favorable legal scholarship has been a mark of its strategic, patient advocacy. “I think this was one of the most successful attempts to change the law and to change a legal paradigm in history,” said Carl T. Bogus, a professor at Roger Williams University School of Law in Rhode Island and the editor of “The Second Amendment in Law and History,” a collection of essays that challenges the interpretation of the individual right. “They were thinking strategically. I don’t think the NRA funds scholarship out of academic interest. I think the NRA funds something because it has a political objective.” The Second Amendment states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Before the Heller decision, the Supreme Court and lower courts had interpreted the language as “preserving the authority of the states to maintain militias,” according to a Congressional Research Service analysis. “It was a settled question, and the overwhelming consensus, bordering on unanimity, was that the Second Amendment granted a collective right” enjoyed by the states, not individuals, Bogus said. Under this interpretation, the Constitution provides no right for an individual to possess a firearm. MORE

RELATED: Four people were killed and two others critically injured in the shootings on Wednesday in the sleepy New York villages of Herkimer and Mohawk, which face one another across the Mohawk River. The villages are about 220 miles northwest of New York City. Police said they did not know of a motive behind the shooting sprees. “The violence that was inflicted yesterday on these victims was horrible,” D’Amico said. Shortly before 9:30 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, Myers drove to John’s Barber Shop in Mohawk, and after a brief exchange of words inside the shop, he opened fire with a shotgun, according to police. Two customers were killed, and the owner and another customer were critically wounded, D’Amico said. They remained in critical condition on Thursday, he said. “Totally unprovoked, we believe he fired a number of rounds from the shotgun,” he said on Wednesday. Myers then drove to Gaffey’s Fast Lube in the neighboring Herkimer, and fired again, D’Amico said, killing two people. MORE

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PHILLY MAG: Between January 1, 2001, and May 29th of this year, 18,043 people were shot in Philadelphia. That equates to about one shooting every six hours. In that same time period, there were 3,852 murders—a new body yielded up for disposal nearly every day. The entire length of the conflict in Afghanistan hasn’t produced as many dead Americans as we’ve picked up off our city’s streets. Unfortunately, political debate over urban violence reduces to opposites: On the left, politicians blame economic factors, bad schools and ineffective, even racist law enforcement; to the right, conservatives preach personal responsibility, citing out-of- wedlock births, absentee fathers and the welfare culture. But many decades of violence—equivalent to a protracted shooting war in neighborhoods like Kensington’s Norris Square—have yielded a more pressing problem. According to some medical experts, a diagnosis we most commonly associate with troubled military combat veterans now fits many thousands of people in our poorest neighborhoods: post-traumatic stress disorder.

PTSD symptoms include intrusive, upsetting memories; nightmares; chronic anxiety and fear; memory loss; diminished interest in life; emotional numbing and angry outbursts. But it’s the effect of these symptoms that tears at the fabric of families and communities and produces the dysfunctional neighborhoods we see today. A war vet who suffers from PTSD is more likely to be unemployed, stuck in an abusive relationship, addicted to drugs or alcohol, mired in poverty and subject to violence. The same is true of people living in this city’s most impoverished neighborhoods. And it’s not a coincidence. PTSD has been studied most in soldiers. But in research conducted in Philadelphia, Drexel doctors John Rich and Theodore Corbin have found PTSD rates of more than 70 percent among young men who survive being shot or stabbed. Steven Berkowitz, of Penn’s psychiatry department, citing the research conducted so far, suggests the PTSD rate among the urban poor at large could be as high as 40 percent. “We’re talking about huge portions of entire communities that are impaired in terms of their basic functioning,” says Rich, chair of Drexel’s Department of Health Management and Policy. “These people are suffering and require medical attention, or the cycle will continue.”

The cyclical nature of urban trauma confounds us. We throw up our hands in disgust at the young, violent men of this city; we’re unable to comprehend how anyone could be so emotionally numb, so calloused toward the value of human life. What we fail to grasp, in terms of any coherent policy, is trauma’s strange dual nature. Violent or traumatic events can produce what some researchers have termed “limbic scars”—real, measurable, physical damage to the brain. This is an effect of violence. But it’s also a cause, because the damage done impairs brain function—producing people who are emotionally numb, indifferent to the value of life and likely to lash out. “It’s a cycle that feeds on itself,” says Rich. “Without intervention, violent, traumatic events precipitate more violent, traumatic events.” […] What Rich and other trauma specialists really seem to be saying is: We meet the kids of Philadelphia’s poor neighborhoods too late—in mug shots, crime stories and obituaries. This distorted, narrow view wrecks our understanding of what’s really at work— showing only the ending, through death or a jail sentence, of a life that spans an entire narrative arc. MORE

PREVIOUSLY:  Murder Is My Business And Business Is Good

INQUIRER: The night of Feb. 12, six months before he allegedly gunned down Police Officer Moses Walker Jr., Rafael Jones was arrested and charged with sticking a handgun into the chest of a man walking to a Germantown bus stop and stealing his designer jacket, Nike sneakers, and $65. The victim, identified in court papers as E.J., 26, ran barefoot two blocks to his girlfriend’s apartment to call police, who quickly arrested Jones, still on probation for a previous gun offense. In the months that followed, E.J. made a fateful decision. He failed to testify. Despite extensive efforts by prosecutors and police to get him into court, E.J., who has a history of narcotics arrests, failed to appear at three court hearings between February and June. With no gun recovered and without the testimony of E.J. and his girlfriend – who told police that she, too, saw Jones with the gun, but also failed to show up in court – the District Attorney’s Office was forced to withdraw charges and was denied a chance keep Jones in prison. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: Mayor Nutter and Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey led a solemn procession of police officers along Lehigh Avenue on Sunday as a horse-drawn carriage bore the body of slain Philadelphia Police Officer Moses Walker Jr. to a church for a viewing. Walker, 40, was fatally shot Aug. 18 in an apparent robbery attempt shortly after finishing his shift in the 22d District in North Philadelphia. Late Sunday afternoon, minutes after a police honor guard had carried his flag-draped casket from the carriage into the sanctuary of Deliverance Evangelistic Church in North Philadelphia, word spread among the officers outside that the second suspect in his killing had been apprehended in Alabama. MORE

Photo by JOE KAZCMAREK

DEENEY: The black market for guns itself remains mercurial, shifting and changing and hard for researchers to accurately quantify. It’s amazing how little we know at this late stage about the illegal gun market in America.  Johns Hopkins’ Webster says that straw purchasers—legal buyers who then turn the guns over to drug dealers or stick-up artists (a federal felony)—play a role. Yet drug dealers in Baltimore (as elsewhere in the US) can also go to gun shows in nearby Virginia to take advantage of the circuit’s freewheeling, unregulated cash-and-carry policies, but according to Webster, the extent to which gun shows serve as the source for the illegal market remains unknown. In North Philly, where former hustler–turned–CeaseFire outreach worker Terry Starks says guns are so plentiful that “getting a strap ain’t nothin’,” the weapons also find their way onto the streets via suburban and rural gun owners who target the neighborhood as a high-demand market where they can easily unload arms they no longer want. “White dudes from upstate will come right up to you on the corner like, ‘I got a nine, what’ll you gimme for it?’” says Starks. “They know they get $100, $150 for it. They already got the serial number scratched off.” MORE

RELATED: Murder Is My Business

Illustration by ALEX FINE

“I wanted to draw something more to do with Holmes’ mental illness and less to do with Batman so I came up with this image.  It just struck me how normal he looked as a teen and how — with the way the gun lawa are currently structured — seemingly normal people can buy assault weapons and kill you any time they feel like it. And, according to the latest Gallup Poll, we like it this way”. — ALEX FINE

THE NUMBER OF AMERICANS KILLED BY GUNFIRE SINCE 9/11: 281,757 [SOURCE: Politifact]

THE NUMBER OF AMERICANS KILLED BY TERRORISM SINCE 9/11: 33 [SOURCE: Think Progress]

*Banality of evil is a phrase coined by Hannah Arendt in the title of her 1963 work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.^[1] Her thesis is that the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths, but by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal.

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INQUIRER: The day started out stellar but was marred by three shootings, one by police, about 9:20 p.m. blocks from the celebration. Police grazed a 16-year-old male in the chest after he wounded at least one person, possibly two, then aimed his gun at officers near 17th and JFK Boulevard, police said. Authorities believe that the teenager had fired on a 17-year-old male and struck him in the leg. They believe the alleged shooter next shot a 19-year-old man in the left leg. “The officer saw him shoot the other person, and he ordered him to drop the gun,” said City Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey. “He didn’t, and [the officer] shot him.” All three were reported in stable condition, Ramsey said. In his four years involved with the fireworks celebrations in Philadelphia, this was the first shooting nearby, Ramsey said. He noted that it did not occur at the concert in the Art Museum area, but near Love Park, at 16th and JFK Boulevard, where a group of about 1,000 teenagers had gathered earlier in the evening. “It actually went pretty well,” Ramsey said of the annual event, shortly after the fireworks ended, though he added that the large crowd still had to be dispersed. MORE

DAILY NEWS: Chaos erupted around the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Center City after a 17-year-old youth and a 19-year-old man were each shot in the leg about 9:20 p.m. during a dispute. Soon afterward, as police were chasing the alleged shooter — a 16-year-old boy — he pulled out a gun and pointed it at cops, prompting an officer to shoot him near 17th Street and JFK Boulevard, police said. To add to the chaotic scene late Wednesday, a mass of sweaty, angry Occupy National Gathering protesters were making their way up Arch Street, chanting and pumping their fists, when reports of chaos amid the festivities on the Parkway began to spread. Hundreds of people swarmed the Parkway and surrounding streets, with cops on foot, in vehicles and on bikes, and some streets closed off. Lt. Marty Best, of the 9th Police District, standing at 17th Street and JFK Boulevard, said afterward, “It is a little crazy. You have so much going on. You have a lot of different people. People throwing firecrackers, the traffic. You have the volume of people in general. You have groups of people running. By the time we sort it out, it’s all a little bit draining.” Best said a man — later said to be the 17-year-old — was shot in the leg near 17th Street and JFK, then ran toward 16th Street and the Parkway, where police found him. “The doer was seen running from the scene,” from 17th onto JFK, Best said. Police later said that a 19-year-old also had been shot in the leg at 17th and JFK by the 16-year-old. Standing on the Parkway about 9:45, Chief Inspector Joseph Sullivan said the alleged shooter had “pulled a gun on police” so “police shot him.” Best said the man shot by police suffered a graze wound to the chest. MORE

RELATED: Although it has not been the best of times lately for singer Lauryn Hill, she still graced fans with her presence to help celebrate the 4th of July holiday yesterday evening during a surprise live performance. Just a few days ago we report that Lauryn Hill will be facing up to three years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of tax evasion dating back to 2005 through 2007 for $1.8 million in earnings. The Fugees singer will be sentenced this coming November, but that didn’t  stop her from showing up in a surprise performance during the closing act of the annual Wawa Welcome Philadelphia concert last night.

RELATED: Philadelphia police are looking for surveillance photos and potential witnesses in the death of a 32-year-old man, shot in the chest early Sunday morning near Fourth and Lombard Streets in Society Hill. Michael G. Hagan Jr., an information-technology consultant who grew up in Pennsauken and moved to the city’s Fishtown neighborhood several years ago, was an apparent robbery victim. Family members said Hagan had been out Saturday night on the Delaware River waterfront with two old friends from Pennsauken, a schoolteacher and a Peace Corps volunteer. At some point, the friends shared a cab headed toward South Street, but they had separated when the fatal shooting occurred. A passerby found Hagan slumped near the corner of Fourth and Lombard and called police about 3:30 a.m. Sunday, the authorities said Wednesday. He was taken to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and pronounced dead at 4:30 a.m. In November, another brutal, unsolved shooting took place about a block away. A 46-year-old man, Darren Rogers, was knocked to the ground as he walked past two men in hoodies on the 400 block of Pine Street. They punched and kicked him for about 45 seconds, then fired a single shot into his chest, which struck his spinal cord and left him paralyzed. MORE

RELATED: Police pulled a dead body out of the Delaware River near the Seaport Musuem minutes ago. DEVELOPING

UPDATE: The identity of the woman hasn’t been released and police say she appears to be in her early 20s. Police are investigating the circumstances surrounding her death. MORE

Sparks Street, Olney, Monday night, by JOE KACZMAREK

DAILY NEWS: IN A CITY where justice frequently is thwarted by a no-snitching culture, Rodney Ramseur did what others are too scared or too heartless to do: He spoke up and told what he allegedly saw, fingering a former friend at a court hearing last week as the gunman who shot a neighbor in 2010. But Monday night, someone gunned down Ramseur and his girlfriend as they sat in a springtime drizzle on the porch of his Olney home. Now, police are probing whether a retaliation-minded murderer targeted Ramseur for his role in helping authorities prosecute the neighbor’s slaying. “He was only outside 10 minutes. Somebody had to be waiting for him,” his stepfather, Christopher Hyman, 44, said Tuesday morning, as friends and relatives gathered to grieve at the family’s home at 3rd and Sparks streets. Hyman was inside watching basketball on TV when he heard the explosion of gunfire outside just before 8:30 p.m. Monday. He ran outside to discover Ramseur and girlfriend Latia Jones, both 21, shot multiple times in the head and chest. MORE

DAILY BEAST: Thirty-two murders that have taken place in Philadelphia since the start of 2012. This recent rash of homicides comes quickly on the heels of a year when Mayor Michael Nutter and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey were touting a steep reduction in violent crime, with homicides down 22 percent, robberies down 23 percent, and overall violent crime down 16 percent in 2011 from their 2007 highs.  The Mayor blames the homicide spike on a steady flow of illegal handguns into the city as groups like the NRA stymie his attempts to pass local gun-control laws. Richard Berk, a statistician who studies crime at the University of Pennsylvania, says the uptick could also be within the bounds of the “natural variation” of crime rates. Others have hypothesized that the unusually warm winter brought the annual springtime murder-rate jump a few months early. Whatever the cause, the mayor wants to snuff out the brushfire, and has released a new anti-crime plan that promises to put 100 more cops on the streets over time, targeting neighborhood hot spots where guns and drugs are most concentrated. The district attorney’s office promises to seek maximum penalties against defendants accused of carrying illegal guns. And the mayor is increasing to $20,000 rewards for tips that lead to the convictions of murder suspects, and will allow residents to anonymously text those tips in.“I just put a bounty on your head,” the mayor said at a press conference at a North Philadelphia High School, speaking to city’s perpetrators of violence. “We are coming for you.” MORE

INQUIRER: Just before 2:25 a.m. Saturday, Kless and two female friends were walking on Chestnut Street near Fourth Street when he tried to hail a cab. The bars had just let out, and the three had just left Lucy’s Hat Shop Restaurant & Lounge a few blocks away. The cab’s rooftop lights were on, signaling it was available, but there were passengers inside, and the taxi didn’t stop. Police said Kless yelled, “Turn off your f-ing lights. A maroon Mazda with four men inside drove up behind the cab as traffic likely slowed briefly. The people in the Mazda may have thought Kless was yelling at them, one investigator said. It is not known whether Kless and the men exchanged words. Two men got out of the car and attacked Kless, who was walking arm in arm with his girlfriend, near the bank steps. One of Kless’ companions said Kless tried to protect the women from the attackers. For a few moments, his attackers beat him as his friends cried for help. A third man got out of the Mazda, and the attack resumed with greater ferocity, investigators said. The assailants smashed Kless’ head against a low granite wall in front of the bank building, police said. The men then drove off. A security camera captured an image of the Mazda 626, which police described as a four-door sedan, possibly from the 2000-2003 model years. MORE

[Photo via multi.lectical.net]

GOP mayoral candidate Karen Brown made a startling accusation today on Radio Times, claiming the murder rate is in fact much higher than the figures cited by Mayor Nutter. Seizing on Nutter’s remarks during his inauguration that if he did not reduce the murder rate by at least 30% he should not be re-elected (in fact, he did call for a reduction of the murder rate by 30% to 50% in the next three to five years, but never said he shouldn’t be re-elected if he doesn’t) Brown claims that the Philadelphia Police Department has been using creative accounting to inflate the progress made under Nutter. Brown claims the reduction in the murder rate is closer to 18%, not the 22% Nutter claims. Brown says she has been told on background by rank and file city cops that any murder case that is out of the ordinary is categorized as a ‘special circumstances’ crime instead of a homicide and as such is not counted in the annual tally of murders. A police spokesperson told NewsWork’s Dave Davies that Brown has her facts wrong. You can hear her remarks HERE at the 30:00 minute mark. You can download a PDF of Nutter’s inauguration speech HERE. You can download the Philadelphia Police Department’s 2001 homicide analysis HERE.

[Source: Philadelphia Police Department]

INQUIRER: An off-duty Philadelphia police officer allegedly shot and killed a man and wounded two other people in South Philadelphia on Sunday night after what witnesses said was an argument over a playful water battle. The encounter happened around 6:30 on the 1800 block of Hoffman Street, according to police spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore. MORE

RELATED: Around 8 p.m. Jesus, still holding the baby, began walking across the street toward her home. Suddenly, two young men opened fire at each other, police said. The baby was caught in the cross fire and was hit in the right armpit. She was listed in critical but stable condition at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children Sunday night. MORE

RELATED: A 13-year-old boy was shot once in a shoulder and once in the back, and a 12-year-old girl was shot twice in the stomach around 2:30 a.m. on Ninth Street near Somerset Street. MORE

DAILY NEWS: Pennsylvania residents who are denied a license to carry a concealed weapon, or have theirs revoked, have found a loophole that allows them to get a license from another state that must be honored here. “They could be disapproved here and they could apply in Florida and we are not notified,” said Philadelphia Police Lt. Lisa King, commander of the Gun Permit Unit. “So if we are not giving them a permit to carry, how is Florida allowed to override our decision?” District Attorney Seth Williams said that the loophole defeats local efforts to keep streets safe. Police and prosecutors are furious about the loophole, but gun-rights advocates say that it’s the Philadelphia Police Department that has put a loophole in the process by requiring far more of applicants seeking permits for concealed weapons than the other counties in the state, where permits are issued by their sheriff’s departments. “You can purchase a firearm but you can’t get a permit in Philadelphia to save your life,” said Richard Oliver, a firearms instructor in Northeast Philadelphia who teaches safety courses for those seeking permits out of Florida and Utah. “That’s what causes people to go to other states to get the permits.” Pennsylvania’s firearms reciprocity agreements require the state to recognize permits from 24 other states that have permit laws as strict or stricter than its own and that those states, in turn, recognize Pennsylvania weapons permits. Among the states covered, there are three – Florida, Utah and New Hampshire – that allow out-of-state residents to get permits even if they don’t qualify or apply for permits in their home state. Locally, though, it’s become known as the “Florida loophole” because that’s where most of the out-of-state permits are coming from, according to police and prosecutors. MORE

INQUIRER: Martin Thomas looked at the flier and blanched. “Don’t stand next to this man. You might get shot.” The threat was scribbled on a copy of his signed statement to police, implicating a man in a murder. Thomas, then 20, had revealed a buried cache of weapons and named one of the gunmen who killed a man at 22d and Somerset on a summer night. Now, there were his words to detectives, posted on the wall of a Chinese restaurant in North Philadelphia for all to see. Panicked, Thomas fled, flagged down a police car, and told the officers he feared for his life. Police and prosecutors, who described Thomas’ flight from the restaurant, said he had every reason to be frightened. Another witness in the murder case, a 17-year-old, had been killed 10 days after testifying at a preliminary hearing. They said Thomas worried that he could be next. Witness intimidation pervades the Philadelphia criminal courts, increasingly extracting a heavy toll in no-show witnesses, recanted testimony – and collapsed cases. “It’s endemic. People are frightened to death,” said District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham. “We’ve had witness after witness intimidated, threatened, frightened.” And the city cannot guarantee their protection. “That fear, that’s real,” said Jamie Egan, a former city prosecutor. “When people would ask me if I could guarantee their safety, I would say, ‘Unfortunately, I cannot.’ ” Abraham has long fought for more money to protect and relocate witnesses in criminal cases. For 15 years, she has repeatedly complained, to no avail, that the city’s program was underfunded and failing to meet a crucial need. Local funding for witness relocation is a fraction of the spending in the vaunted federal witness-protection program. Efforts to pump city money into the local program have failed year after year. MORE

RELATED: U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter said yesterday that a Senate subcommittee would conduct a preliminary inquiry into a report in The Inquirer that the Philadelphia courts are in crisis – plagued by low conviction rates, widespread witness fear, a massive number of fugitives, and the early dismissals of thousands of cases. “It’s a very serious situation,” Specter said yesterday. “I decided I should show an immediate response.” The Democratic senator said he was alarmed by the newspaper’s findings that the court system fails to punish violent crimes, dismisses thousands of cases without any decision on the merits, and has a growing pool of 47,000 fugitives. “When the allegation is made that so many violent criminals are on the loose, it threatens the entire region,” Specter said. MORE