This morning, President Obama and VP Joe Biden announce their plans to curb gun violence. Even though California already has some of the strictest gun laws, some lawmakers are working harder to curb gun violence. Then, a researcher calls for a change to Scrabble's point system, an L.A. photographer documents prison inmates' 'Re-Entry' into society, and much more.
VIDEO: Obama announces new gun control measures
This morning, President Obama announced the most aggressive and expansive national gun-control agenda in generations.
The proposals will include measures to mandate background checks for all firearms buyers and prohibit assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips. Despite public opinion being in favor for many of his proposed measures, the President is expected to face an uphill battle in Congress.
The following are the 23 Executive Actions the President announced Wednesday:
Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background check system.
Address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.
Improve incentives for states to share information with the background check system.
Direct the Attorney General to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.
Propose rulemaking to give law enforcement the ability to run a full background check on an individual before returning a seized gun.
Publish a letter from ATF to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.
Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign.
Review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes (Consumer Product Safety Commission).
Issue a Presidential Memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.
Release a DOJ report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and make it widely available to law enforcement.
Nominate an ATF director.
Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations.
Maximize enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.
Issue a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.
Direct the Attorney General to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenge the private sector to develop innovative technologies.
Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes.
Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities.
Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers.
Develop model emergency response plans for schools, houses of worship and institutions of higher education.
Release a letter to state health officials clarifying the scope of mental health services that Medicaid plans must cover.
Finalize regulations clarifying essential health benefits and parity requirements within ACA exchanges.
Commit to finalizing mental health parity regulations.
Launch a national dialogue led by Secretaries Sebelius and Duncan on mental health.
California lawmakers work to further thwart gun violence
California already has some of the nation's toughest gun laws. KPCC's Julie Small says state lawmakers are moving forward with plans of their own to further thwart gun violence.
Shortly after the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, California lawmakers introduced a slew of bills they say will deter gun violence.
State Senator Kevin De Leon’s (D-LA) bill would require people to get a license to purchase ammunition.
“We require a license if you in fact you want to hunt, we require a license if you want to fish, however anyone can walk into any gun store in California and purchase all the ammunition they like—no questions asked.” Says De Leon.
Under De Leon’s Senate Bill-48, California’s Department of Justice would issue the license to purchase ammunition and buyers would have to renew every year.
“We have some pretty restrictive gun laws on the books in California—I think they’re an example for the nation, however, we never look at the fuel that actually feeds the violence which is the ammunition.”
Senator Leland Yee’s (D-SF) Senate Bill 47 would ban the use of so called “bullet buttons” and other devices that allow for quick reloading of military-style assault weapons. An earlier version of the bill stalled in committee last year.
Senator Ted Gaines (R-Rocklin) plans to introduce legislation this weekend to impose a lifetime ban on gun ownership for anyone a court has deemed dangerous because of a mental disorder or illness—even if they’ve been treated.
“I hope everyone with any mental illness gets the treatment and rehabilitation they need to live a healthy and productive life.” Gaines said in a written statement. “But if the court has ruled you are a danger to others, that’s it. That is your one strike. We are not going to pave the way for you to own a firearm ever again.”
Not all the efforts to thwart violence are focused on restricting access to guns and ammunition. Senator Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) has re-introduced legislation currently Senate Bill-49 to compel schools to prepare for the unimaginable:
“Maybe someone knows—let’s say there’s an active shooter on school campus-- that they should lock their door…but maybe they don’t think ‘oh maybe we should barricade it as well and maybe stick a file cabinet behind it.’” Lieu says there are just things that a person may not think about during an emergency situation when their adrenaline is pumping. “So I think it’s important to have a school safety plan so that people have some sort of training before such a catastrophe happens.”
California requires schools to prepare and update emergency plans. But Lieu says no government entity enforces the law.
“No one tracks them!” he says. “So if you were to ask the question today, which schools have school safety plans statewide and which do not—no one has that answer.”
Lieu says he’s still waiting to learn whether the public school his two young sons attend has such a plan.
Lieu's bill would empower the state to withhold funds from school districts that fail to ensure emergency plans are up to date. He first tried to pass the measure in 2011—after nine LA-area schools were put on lockdown. Lieu says it became clear that some schools were grossly unprepared. But school districts defeated the effort. Lieu thinks the tragedy at Sandy Hook will change their minds.
Democrats—who support gun control—hold a supermajority in both houses. That makes passage of gun control laws more likely over the next couple of years.
Democratic Governor Brown—who last year signed a ban on openly carrying unloaded handguns in public--has shown he’s willing to tighten state gun control laws.
“I’ve signed some bills last year.” Brown said at recent press conference. “California has the strongest gun laws in the country, I’ll be glad to look at other ones.”
Brown declined to comment on whether he’d sign any of the gun measures making their way through the legislature-- but he didn’t rule it out.
San Diego Mayor Bob Filner plans to open office in Tijuana
San Diego's new mayor, Bob Filner, has announced a plan to open a city office south of the border in one of Tijuana's swankiest high rises. Here with more details is Adrian Florido, a reporter with the Fronteras Desk in San Diego.
Should Scrabble's point system be rearranged?
In the future, the words luxury, boxy, zombie and doozy might not hold the same weight in a Scrabble game, that is, if one UC San Diego researcher has his way. He's been floating a very controversial proposal to change the value of some tiles to more accurately reflect modern usage.
Researcher Joshua Lewis argues that the point values of the letters in Scrabble were assigned according to their frequency of appearance on the front page of the 1930s New York Times. The English language has changed a bit since then, rendering high-point letters like Z and X unfairly high in points.
According to his calculations, points for the letter "Z" should drop from 10 points to six, and X would go from eight to five.
Stefan Fatsis, NPR commentator and author of the book, "Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players," joins the show to talk about the implications of these proposed rules.
Photographer documents prison inmates' 'Re-Entry' into society
Award-winning Photographer Joseph Rodriguez has documented jihadists in Afghanistan, the torture of Kurds in Southeast Turkey, and the destruction wrought by hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, but some of his most devastating images are of daily life right here in Los Angeles.
In 1993 he documented gang life in East L.A. in his project East Side Stories. His new work is a photo series called Re-Entry in Los Angeles, and it features men and women recently released from prison as they return to life on the outside. The project grew out of his own experience: as a teenager Rodriguez did two stints in Rikers Island.
This year Joseph Rodriguez will travel with this new project to universities and community colleges in California to help train young journalists how to better cover people as they leave prison and re-enter society.
Interview Highlights:
On his motivation for Re-Entry: Los Angeles:
"I think for me it was about taking a really close look at them as individuals, to illustrate some of the data coming out. California is amazing in terms of its research and data, but what I wanted to do was to humanize the subjects, humanize the data to look at the person and try and get a story."
On his own personal experience with being released from prison:
"I wound up in Riker's Island…A teenager, I grew up in lots of violence. Not so much gang violence, but domestic violence. My step father was a drug addict and by the time I became a teenager. It was the late '60s early '70s and drug culture was everywhere in New York, like it was out here in California. I wanted to get rid of that pain. The pain of trauma and what we call today Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. So I became a heroin addict just like my stepfather."
On going from shooting heroin to shooting pictures:
"I came out of Riker's Island a second time. Things are so different today, in terms of the kinds of support networks out there for young folks. I was at the point where I was going to commit suicide…I had a heroin addiction I was kicking in jail, and there wasn't methadone or things to give you to calm down. When the judge called me that day, that was the day I was considering to jump off the tier, seriously. Then I got called into court, then they released me on probation and my probation officer said Ok you need to get a job, that was it.
"I went out and bought a cheap camera, got some chemicals, I build a dark room. I used to photograph in my community in Brooklyn, but always with a telephoto lens. I was afraid of people because I didn't know how to deal with that world of communication, but communicating with a camera was a whole other way to develop myself."
On the themes of his photography:
"The family has always been key in my photography. You can go way back to my first project in Spanish Harlem, and continue on from there, its always been about the family. If we're going to talk about re-entry, if we're going to talk about incarceration, we've got to talk about the family…It takes a lot of courage for a mother or a father to try to regroup with your children after time has been spent and you have not been there for your child."
On the image of Jorge Carbajal and his family:
"The fathers are invited to come to these parenting meetings…This man was a really special husband and father. He quit his job, he was working for an airline and he was doing a lot of traveling, but when his wife got into trouble, he said,'Wwhoa I really want to be there for my wife and kids.' He really manned up and was there and you can see it, he comes to the meetings and tries to be supportive and tries to take care and be the man, be the father and the husband. I put them together as a family, and you have to wait when you're photographing children because they move a lot, you have to shoot a fair amount. Finally we got this picture that I like a lot, it speaks about the family.
On the image of the father showing his infant daughter how to load a gun:
"I'd been working with this guy for quite sometime ... He lives on a corner where his rival gang also lives, so he's really in a vulnerable spot. All the guns were there because the night before his homeboys were there standing by the windows protecting the family. When I asked him what would be the caption for this photo, he said, "Last night they tried to shoot at my father," speaking as if he was the daughter…the baby.
"It really was a moment of survival, complex of course. I have to be honest to tell you. I always had trouble with this photograph, because it's so loaded. In 1993, the Brady Bill was being passed in Congress, the assault weapons ban, I can't believe today we're having the same conversations we did in 1993, so for me, the project "East Side Stories" was always about the mothers that I met who told me that you must tell this story because our children are dying on the streets because there are so many guns on the streets. Simply put."
San Jose State partners with Udacity to expand online education
The country's largest university system is wading into the world of online education. Yesterday, San Jose State announced it's joined forces with one of the leading for-profit online education companies, Udacity
Later this month, students will have the option to take an online class in math.
Governor Jerry Brown hailed the agreement at a press conference.
Historian Ward Wilson debunks nuclear bomb myths in new book
Did the nuclear bomb really cause Japan to surrender? Is it an effective military weapon? And has nuclear deterrence actually prevented war?
Nuclear historian Ward Wilson explodes some misconceptions about the bomb in a new book called "Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons."
Sir Ernest Shackleton's epic Antarctic journey to be recreated by adventurers
Now we turn to Antarctica, where an expedition is about to embark on a re-enactment of a famous, and perilous journey. Almost one hundred years ago, British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton's attempt to cross Antarctica on foot ended when the ship carrying his expedition was crushed by ice and sank.
Shackleton then left most of his crew on desolate Elephant Island and set in out a tiny lifeboat out to find help. His efforts to rescue his men has gone down in the history books as one of the most daring journeys ever.
Tomorrow, weather permitting, adventurer Tim Jarvis will lead a team of six on what would be the first authentic re-enactment of Shackleton's historical journey across the stormy Southern Ocean.
Tim Jarvis joins us from Antarctica as he makes final preparations.
California authors make shortlist for National Book Critics Circle awards
The National Book Critics Circle announced finalists for its annual awards earlier this week. Several California authors made the short list, including one based right here in Los Angeles.
Here to talk about this and other literary news is our regular book critic David Kipen, owner of the bookstore/lending library, Libros Schmibros in Boyle Heights.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY:
Reyna Grande. The Distance Between Us. Atria Books
Maureen N. McLane. My Poets. Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Anthony Shadid. House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Leanne Shapton. Swimming Studies. Blue Rider Press
Ng?g? wa Thiong’o. In the House of the Interpreter. Pantheon
BIOGRAPHY:
Robert A. Caro. The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson. Alfred A. Knopf
Lisa Cohen. All We Know: Three Lives. Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Michael Gorra. Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece. A Liveright Book: W. W. Norton
Lisa Jarnot. Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus: A Biography. University of California Press
Tom Reiss. The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo. Crown Publishers
CRITICISM:
Paul Elie. Reinventing Bach. Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Daniel Mendelsohn. Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture. New York Review Books
Mary Ruefle. Madness, Rack, and Honey. Wave Books
Marina Warner. Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights. Belknap Press: Harvard University Press
Kevin Young. The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness. Graywolf Press
FICTION:
Laurent Binet. HHhH. tr. by Sam Taylor. Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Ben Fountain. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. Ecco
Adam Johnson. The Orphan Master’s Son. Random House
Lydia Millet, Magnificence. W. W. Norton
Zadie Smith. NW. The Penguin Press
NONFICTION:
Katherine Boo. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. Random House
Steve Coll. Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power. The Penguin Press
Jim Holt. Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story. A Liveright Book: W. W. Norton
David Quammen. Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic. W.W. Norton
Andrew Solomon. Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity. Scribner
POETRY:
David Ferry. Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations. University of Chicago Press
Lucia Perillo. On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths. Copper Canyon Press
Allan Peterson. Fragile Acts. McSweeney’s Books
D. A. Powell. Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys. Graywolf Press
A. E. Stallings. Olives. Triquarterly: Northwestern University Press