International
Supreme Court gun ruling stuns Las Vegas shooting survivors
![](https://newstrends.ng/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Heather-Gooze-survived-the-2017-mass-shooting-at-a-Las-Vegas-music-festival-that-led-to-the-initial-bump-stock-ban.jpg)
Supreme Court gun ruling stuns Las Vegas shooting survivors
On 1 October 2017, Heather Gooze was serving drinks at the Route 91 music festival in Las Vegas when concert-goers began running into her bar, screaming and covered in blood.
A gunman perched high in a Las Vegas hotel had opened fire on the festivities below. He killed 60 people and wounded over 400 more. He was able to carry out what is still the deadliest mass shooting in US history because of a mechanism he installed on his gun known as a bump stock.
In the aftermath of the massacre, then-President Donald Trump banned bump stocks, a modification that allows a rifle to fire like a machine gun. It was a rare example of the US making a change to its gun policies in the wake of a mass shooting, and it was a reform that survivors of the attack welcomed.
The ban was all the more extraordinary because it was instituted by a Republican president and supported by the National Rifle Association, figures that would normally oppose a gun control proposal.
On Friday, the US Supreme Court struck down the ban, deciding in a 6-3 opinion that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had overstepped its authority to outlaw the device.
For survivors like Ms Gooze, who identifies as liberal and thought Trump’s ban was “phenomenal”, the ruling felt like a step backward for the country.
“Who has ever used a bump stock for good?” she told the BBC. “There’s no reason for a civilian to use a mass shooting machine.”
Ms Gooze, 50, still vividly remembers the panic of helping people flee the carnage, and the frantic battle to save the people struck by the more than 1,000 rounds that the gunman fired with the help of his weapon’s modification.
“I had my finger in the bullet hole of one of our angels in the back of their head,” she said of one victim she tried to save. She stayed with the body of another victim for hours, using a phone she found in their pocket to contact the family.
“I watched people’s lives change right in front of my face, as well as my own,” she said.
One of those lives was Brittany Quintero’s. Ms Quintero was separated from her friend in the chaos of the shooting, and though they both survived, she has spent years working through the trauma the shooting inflicted.
READ ALSO:
- Tinubu’s June 12 fall: Humour, karma, compassion, By Farooq Kperogi
- Minimum wage: New law to sanction defaulting states coming – Senate
- FG bows to pressure, reconstitutes governing boards of 111 tertiary institutions
She told the BBC that the Supreme Court’s decision had left her reeling.
“It feels like another slap in the face, to be honest,” she said.
Ms Quintero, 41, said she does not necessarily believe that more stringent gun restrictions would help prevent mass shootings. She also believes not enough proposed solutions address mental health.
“I don’t think taking away people’s Second Amendment rights is going to solve these things that keep occurring,” she said, referring to the protections for gun owners enshrined in the US Constitution.
“If someone has it in their mind to do it, they’re going to find a way or other means.”
But despite her reservations, she still thinks the Supreme Court was wrong to reinstate access to bump stocks.
The Route 91 survivors were not universally disheartened by the Supreme Court decision. Several were discussing the news in a private Facebook group, Ms Gooze said, and some members of the community had responded that the ruling did not bother them.
“A gun isn’t the issue, we need them to keep what little freedom we have left. It’s the government that’s the enemy,” one survivor wrote in a message that Ms Gooze read to the BBC.
Gun violence remains a major public safety issue in the United States. The nation has experienced 215 mass shootings so far in 2024, according to the Gun Violence Archive (their methodology defines a mass shooting as when four or more people are shot or killed, not including the shooter).
Both Ms Gooze and Ms Quintero lamented that the gun debate had grown so politicised.
“I don’t think I’m ever going to see in my lifetime a true law or decision that will be made to solve the gun violence issue,” Ms Gooze said.
Repeated attempts to ban bump stocks through federal legislation have stalled, and face little chance of passing in the near term due to a divided Congress.
Trump, who is again running for president, said he would respect the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down his policy and reaffirmed his support for broader access to guns.
“The Court has spoken and their decision should be respected,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “President Trump has been and always will be a fierce defender of Americans’ Second Amendment rights and he is proud to be endorsed by the NRA.”
In video on X, formerly Twitter, the gun shop owner who challenged the bump stock ban at the Supreme Court celebrated his victory and said he had prevented the government from banning other gun parts.
The nation’s highest court sided with his argument that the Trump administration overstepped when it sought to regulate bump stocks like machine guns.
“I stood and fought,” said gun shop owner Michael Cargill, “and because of this, the bump stock case is going to be the case that saves everything.”
Supreme Court gun ruling stuns Las Vegas shooting survivors
BBC
International
Minister arrested over alleged witchcraft
![](https://newstrends.ng/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Fathimath-Shamnaz-Ali-Saleem.jpg)
Minister arrested over alleged witchcraft
A high-ranking politician in the Maldives has been arrested and detained, reportedly on suspicion of casting spells against the country’s president.
Fathimath Shamnaz Ali Saleem, State Secretary for Environment, Climate Change, and Energy, was taken into custody along with her ex-husband and two other accomplices.
The group has been ordered to remain in jail for a week pending an investigation.
The arrests have sent shockwaves through the political landscape of the Maldives, a nation known more for its idyllic beaches and tourism than for allegations of sorcery at the highest levels of government.
READ ALSO:
- Tenure of FCT council chairmen expires in 2026, INEC clarifies
- I lost over N10m to Abuja market fire, trader laments
- Tale of woes in Abuja market after fire outbreak
The Maldives police have not officially stated the reasons behind the arrest of the minister. However, they have declined to confirm or deny media reports suggesting that the charges involve ‘black magic’ directed at President Mohamed Muizzu.
The accusations have sparked widespread speculation and concern among the public and within political circles.
Fathimath Shamnaz Ali Saleem has been a prominent figure in the government, actively involved in shaping policies related to climate change and sustainable development.
Her sudden arrest on such unusual charges has raised many questions about the underlying political dynamics at play.
Minister arrested over alleged witchcraft
International
Israeli forces arrest 28 Palestinians in raids in occupied West Bank
![](https://newstrends.ng/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Israeli-forces-detain-28-Palestinians-in-West-Bank-raids.jpg)
Israeli forces arrest 28 Palestinians in raids in occupied West Bank
The Israeli military has arrested 28 Palestinians in a series of raids across the occupied West Bank, according to a Palestinian rights group.
The overnight raids, part of Israel’s increasingly violent assault on the occupied territories, targeted the governorates of Jenin, Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah and el-Bireh, Nablus and Jerusalem, said the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society on Thursday.
Israeli forces had doled out “severe beatings” and made threats against detainees’ families, said the group, which keeps a daily tally of arrests.
Violence in the West Bank, already on the rise before Israel’s current war on Gaza erupted in October, has since escalated with frequent army raids on Palestinian groups, rampages by Jewish settlers in Palestinian villages, and deadly Palestinian street attacks.
Reporting from Ramallah, Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh said the Israeli military had “dramatically” increased its operations, conducting about 38 raids a day, with an uptick in detentions. Home demolitions have gone up by 25 percent since last year, displacing more than 1,000 Palestinians.
In Jenin, where nine Palestinians were arrested, armed confrontations broke out in the city and its refugee camp in the early hours of Thursday.
READ ALSO:
- Palestinians in Lebanon ready to fight if Israel starts war with Hezbollah
- Biden struggles during heated debate with Trump ahead the 2024 US presidential election
- President Tinubu exposes Nigeria’s big thieves
Palestinian media said Israeli forces had raided a pharmacy near Jenin Government Hospital, on the outskirts of Jenin refugee camp, transferring detainees to an unknown destination.
A resident said Israeli bulldozers destroyed infrastructure inside the camp and in the city of Jenin.
During the raid, Palestinian fighters attacked Israeli armoured vehicles with explosive devices, killing one soldier and wounding 16.
“There were two explosions. The first one caused injuries. The second, that’s where the death happened,” said Odeh.
“According to preliminary Israeli investigations, the devices were buried or located a metre and a half into the ground, so deeper than the Israeli military vehicles usually dig to be able to find those improvised devices,” she said.
The Israeli military confirmed the death. The soldier “fell during operational activity in the area of Jenin”, it said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the Wafa news agency reported that four Palestinians were arrested in an overnight swoop on Hebron.
Israeli forces had stormed the town of Yatta, south of the city of Hebron, arresting three people, including a female university student. Another man was arrested in the town of Dura, southwest of Hebron.
The Israeli military also arrested a man after shooting him in the foot in the Qalandiya refugee camp, while another man was taken into custody in Deir Ghassana village, northwest of Ramallah.
Since October 7, Israel has carried out a total of 9,430 arrests in the West Bank in near daily raids.
The United Nations’ human rights chief Volker Turk warned this month that the situation in the West Bank was “dramatically deteriorating”, saying earlier that people there were being “subjected to day after day of unprecedented bloodshed”.
Israeli forces arrest 28 Palestinians in raids in occupied West Bank
International
Palestinians in Lebanon ready to fight if Israel starts war with Hezbollah
![](https://newstrends.ng/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/The-PFLP-GC-has-a-presence-in-Palestinian-refugee-camps-across-Lebanon.jpg)
Palestinians in Lebanon ready to fight if Israel starts war with Hezbollah
Shatila refugee camp, Beirut, Lebanon – Palestinians in Lebanon have watched Israel’s assault on Gaza with simmering anger and are now facing the prospect of a similar fate if Israel wages an all-out war against the Lebanese group Hezbollah.
Hezbollah began engaging Israel almost immediately after the latter began its war on Gaza, which has killed more than 37,000 people and uprooted almost the entire population.
The Lebanese group has repeatedly said it would stop its attacks on Israel once a ceasefire took hold in Gaza and Israel stopped its bombardment on the people living there.
Israel’s assault followed a Hamas-led surprise attack on Israeli communities and military outposts on October 7, in which 1,139 people were killed and 250 taken captive.
Ready to go home
In the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, many people involved in resistance movements told Al Jazeera that they’re not scared, and would fight to support Hezbollah and the wider “axis of resistance” in the region against Israel.
READ ALSO:
- Biden struggles during heated debate with Trump ahead the 2024 US presidential election
- President Tinubu exposes Nigeria’s big thieves
- Three persons injured in Jigawa farmers-herders clash
But they fear for their families and civilians, worrying that Israel would deliberately target densely populated residential areas in Lebanon, like the Palestinian camps, where tens of thousands of people live packed tightly together.
“The Israeli army has no ethics. They don’t abide by human rights or consider the rights of children,” said Ahed Mahar, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command [PFLP-GC] in Shatila.
-
metro1 day ago
Hajj: Chief Imam Ayilara hits back at Soun of Ogbomosho over query
-
Entertainment3 days ago
#Chivido2024: Davido, Chioma wed in Lagos, with Obasanjo, Ooni, govs, celebs attending
-
News13 hours ago
Sanusi remains Kano emir, Nasarawa palace a distraction – state govt
-
Business3 days ago
Naira goes for N1,500/$ at parallel market
-
Opinion15 hours ago
President Tinubu exposes Nigeria’s big thieves
-
News14 hours ago
Wike slams Ozekhome for defending election riggers, says Shehu Sani failed as senator
-
International3 days ago
Pentagon chief seeks urgent diplomacy to avoid Israel-Hezbollah war
-
Sports3 days ago
Osimhen’s attitude, character scaring European clubs, says ex-striker Peter Ijeh