Tag Archives: gun control

Gun control, Gun violence, Mass killings, Mass shootings

Epidemic of 133 Mass Shootings in the US over the first 98 days of 2021

161 Killed and 524 Injured in just the MASS shootings so far this year (4 or more victims)

By Roger Straw, April 9, 2021

The Gun Violence Archive shows so much more than just numbers.  Each number represents the horrific story of friends’ and families’ nightmare.  See the numbers below, and so much more at Gun Violence Archive.

“Mass Shootings are, for the most part an American phenomenon. While they are generally grouped together as one type of incident they are several with the foundation definition being that they have a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, not including any shooter who may also have been killed or injured in the incident.”

TOTAL OF 133 MASS SHOOTINGS JAN. 1 TO APR. 8, 161 KILLED, 524 INJURED
Source: Gun Violence Archive: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/ where you can read details on each incident, and much more.
Incident Date State City Or County Address # Killed # Injured
8-Apr-21 Texas Bryan 350 Stone City Dr 1 5
7-Apr-21 South Carolina Rock Hill 4456 Marshall Rd 6 1
7-Apr-21 Wisconsin Milwaukee 2627 W Capitol Dr 2 2
6-Apr-21 District of Columbia Washington 4100 block of Ames St NE 0 4
6-Apr-21 Michigan Detroit 6100 block of Lodewyck St 1 3
5-Apr-21 Illinois Chicago 6800 block of S Justine Ave 0 7
5-Apr-21 Maryland Baltimore 300 block of N Eutaw St 0 5
4-Apr-21 Louisiana Monroe 207 Sterlington Rd 0 6
4-Apr-21 Alabama Birmingham 3969 14th Ave N 1 5
4-Apr-21 Texas Beaumont 6035 S M L King Jr Pkwy 0 4
3-Apr-21 North Carolina Wilmington 718 Kidder St 3 4
3-Apr-21 Alabama Tuscaloosa 2314 4th St 0 5
3-Apr-21 Texas Allen 1517 Pine Bluff Dr 6 0
3-Apr-21 Florida Quincy 2114 Pat Thomas Parkway 0 7
31-Mar-21 California Orange 202 West Lincoln Ave 4 2
31-Mar-21 District of Columbia Washington 1300 block of Congress St SE 2 3
28-Mar-21 Ohio Cleveland 5100 Pearl Rd 0 7
28-Mar-21 Illinois Chicago I-57 and W 127th St 0 4
28-Mar-21 Maryland Essex 1601 Middleborough Rd 5 1
28-Mar-21 Texas San Antonio 2011 Dollarhide Ave 0 4
27-Mar-21 Illinois Chicago 500 block of N Leamington Ave 0 4
27-Mar-21 Mississippi Yazoo City Dr Martin Luther King Jr Dr and Shady Dr 0 6
27-Mar-21 Illinois River Grove Belmont Ave 1 3
26-Mar-21 Virginia Virginia Beach 2000 block of Atlantic Ave 0 9
26-Mar-21 Illinois Chicago 2515 W 79th St 1 7
26-Mar-21 Virginia Norfolk 100 block of W Balview Ave 0 4
26-Mar-21 Tennessee Memphis 500 block of Arrington Ave 3 2
26-Mar-21 Pennsylvania Philadelphia 1080 N Delaware Ave 0 7
23-Mar-21 Alabama Aliceville 1st Ave SW and 15th St 2 2
22-Mar-21 Colorado Boulder 3600 Table Mesa Dr 10 1
22-Mar-21 Michigan Detroit 13300 block of Davidson St 1 3
20-Mar-21 Texas Houston 10266 North Fwy 0 5
20-Mar-21 Texas Dallas 10333 Technology Blvd 1 7
20-Mar-21 Pennsylvania Philadelphia 4234 Germantown Ave 1 5
18-Mar-21 Oregon Gresham 750 E Powell Blvd 0 4
18-Mar-21 Louisiana New Orleans 2400 Annette St 0 4
17-Mar-21 California Stockton Oro Ave and E Main St 0 5
16-Mar-21 Georgia Acworth 6468 Hwy 92 8 1
16-Mar-21 Arizona Phoenix 6215 W Elm St 4 1
15-Mar-21 Indiana Indianapolis 2300 block of N Harding St 1 4
14-Mar-21 Florida Tampa 10101 US-92 0 4
14-Mar-21 Illinois Chicago 2600 block of E 77th St 0 4
14-Mar-21 Illinois Chicago 6798 block of S South Chicago Ave 2 13
13-Mar-21 New York Brooklyn 917 Flushing Ave 0 5
13-Mar-21 Florida Orlando 200 block of Ring Rd 1 3
13-Mar-21 Indiana Indianapolis 300 block of N Randolph St 4 1
13-Mar-21 Virginia Richmond 5100 block of Richmond Henrico Tpke 2 4
12-Mar-21 North Carolina Greensboro 100 block of Huffman St 1 3
12-Mar-21 Texas Austin 7408 Cameron Rd 0 4
11-Mar-21 New Mexico Ohkay Owingeh (Chamita) 89 Rio Arriba Co Rd 56 1 3
11-Mar-21 Pennsylvania Philadelphia 1400 block of N 76th St 1 3
10-Mar-21 Texas Houston 6300 Ranchester Dr 3 1
8-Mar-21 Florida Clearwater US-19 ALT and Drew St 1 3
7-Mar-21 Mississippi Edwards 607 Wallace Dr 0 4
6-Mar-21 California Yuba City Countryside Dr and Littlejohn Dr 2 3
6-Mar-21 North Carolina Fayetteville 200 block of Shads Ford Blvd 1 4
5-Mar-21 California Compton 600 block of N Long Beach Blvd 1 4
4-Mar-21 District of Columbia Washington 3900 Martin Luther King Jr Ave SW 0 5
3-Mar-21 Pennsylvania Erie 2105 Buffalo Rd 2 3
28-Feb-21 Ohio Cincinnati 3600 block of Idlewild Ave 3 3
28-Feb-21 Indiana East Chicago 1205 W Chicago Ave 0 4
28-Feb-21 Delaware Dover 21 S Little Creek Rd 0 4
28-Feb-21 South Carolina Mccormick 437 Talbert Rd 0 4
28-Feb-21 Louisiana Shreveport 4914 Mansfield Rd 0 5
28-Feb-21 Texas Houston 13484 Northwest Fwy 0 4
27-Feb-21 Mississippi Columbus 1200 block of 7th St S 0 4
27-Feb-21 Mississippi Pattison Pattison-Tillman Rd 2 3
26-Feb-21 Texas Houston 8708 Beechnut St 1 5
26-Feb-21 Louisiana Baton Rouge 4700 block of Paige St 0 4
26-Feb-21 California San Diego 841 S 45th St 1 3
21-Feb-21 Missouri Kennett 1615 1st St 1 4
21-Feb-21 North Carolina Teachey Thomas Smith Ln and Bay Rd 0 4
20-Feb-21 Pennsylvania Norristown (East Norriton) 2912 Swede Rd 1 4
20-Feb-21 Colorado Grand Junction 1000 block of Teller Ave 1 3
20-Feb-21 Illinois Springfield 1100 block of S Grand Ave W 1 4
20-Feb-21 Louisiana Metairie 6719 Airline Dr 3 2
18-Feb-21 Louisiana Baton Rouge 2047 N Foster Dr 1 3
17-Feb-21 Pennsylvania Philadelphia 5597 Old York Rd 0 8
16-Feb-21 Florida Saint Petersburg 2968 Emerson Ave S 3 1
13-Feb-21 California San Francisco 3rd St and Quesada Ave 0 6
13-Feb-21 Indiana Indianapolis 3800 block of N Sherman Dr 0 4
13-Feb-21 California Oakland 1000 block of Washington St 0 6
13-Feb-21 North Carolina Cary 101 Reed St 1 3
11-Feb-21 Georgia Columbus 2001 South Lumpkin Rd 1 4
10-Feb-21 Georgia Atlanta 62 Harwell Rd NW 0 4
9-Feb-21 Texas Houston 945 W Little York Rd 0 4
9-Feb-21 Minnesota Buffalo 755 Crossroads Campus Dr 1 4
6-Feb-21 Tennessee Murfreesboro Ewing Blvd and West St 1 4
6-Feb-21 Louisiana Thibodaux 1100 block of Tiger Dr 0 4
6-Feb-21 Illinois Bloomingdale 250 W Schick Rd 1 5
6-Feb-21 Washington Tacoma 3634 E McKinley Ave 1 3
5-Feb-21 Pennsylvania Mohnton 360 E Wyomissing Ave 1 3
5-Feb-21 Mississippi Benoit 1017 Lake Bolivar Rd 3 1
4-Feb-21 North Carolina High Point 2912 W English Rd 2 3
3-Feb-21 Tennessee Memphis 800 block of Olympic St 1 3
3-Feb-21 Colorado Oak Creek 200 block of Wild Hogg Dr 3 2
2-Feb-21 Florida Fort Lauderdale (Sunrise) 10100 Reflections Blvd W 3 3
2-Feb-21 Oklahoma Muskogee 903 Indiana St 6 1
1-Feb-21 New York Rochester 400 block of Lyell Avenue 1 3
31-Jan-21 Illinois Chicago W Congress Pkwy and S Independence Blvd 0 4
30-Jan-21 New York Albany 200 block of Central Ave 1 4
29-Jan-21 Pennsylvania Mc Kees Rocks (Mckees Rocks) 824 Island Ave 2 3
28-Jan-21 Michigan Flint 1900 block of Tebo St 1 4
27-Jan-21 California Santa Ana 1614 S Standard Ave 0 4
25-Jan-21 District of Columbia Washington 1406 Good Hope Rd SE 1 4
24-Jan-21 Indiana Indianapolis 3540 Adams St 5 1
24-Jan-21 Nevada Las Vegas W Wilson Ave and H St 0 5
22-Jan-21 Kentucky Covington 217 E Martin Luther King Jr Blvd 0 5
21-Jan-21 California Oakland 107th Ave and Apricot St 1 3
18-Jan-21 Pennsylvania Tobyhanna 960 PA-196 0 4
17-Jan-21 Arizona Phoenix 2340 W Northern Ave 0 5
17-Jan-21 Arizona Phoenix 2236 E University Dr 1 6
16-Jan-21 Illinois Kankakee 600 block of N Evergreen Ave 0 5
15-Jan-21 Pennsylvania Philadelphia 5000 block of N 10th St 0 4
11-Jan-21 Florida Miami 2491 NE 58th St 0 4
9-Jan-21 Illinois Evanston 100 Asbury Ave 6 2
9-Jan-21 Texas Houston 5828 Martin Luther King Blvd 1 3
7-Jan-21 District of Columbia Washington 1300 block of Columbia Rd NW 0 5
6-Jan-21 Texas Livingston 201 Maple Ln 2 2
6-Jan-21 Virginia Manassas 10010 Ellis Rd 3 3
4-Jan-21 Louisiana New Orleans 1600 block of N Galvez St 0 4
4-Jan-21 Florida Tampa 1225 S 78th St 0 5
4-Jan-21 Florida Fort Lauderdale (Lauderhill) 1828 NW 38th Ave 0 7
3-Jan-21 Oregon Gresham NE 181st Ave and NE San Rafael St 0 4
3-Jan-21 Texas Houston 2900 Travis St 1 4
3-Jan-21 Florida Miami 3632 NW 25th Ave 0 6
3-Jan-21 Louisiana Shreveport 6900 block of Jewella Ave 2 3
3-Jan-21 California Santa Barbara 1200 block of Liberty St 2 2
3-Jan-21 Florida Miami 10525 NW 24th Ave 0 8
1-Jan-21 Arkansas Fort Smith 3211 Towson Ave 0 7
1-Jan-21 Texas Amarillo 2650 Dumas Dr 1 3
1-Jan-21 Iowa Sioux City 2637 S Walker St 1 4
1-Jan-21 Illinois Galesburg 1000 block of Monroe St 0 4
133 MASS SHOOTINGS, TOTALS KILLED AND INJURED: 161 524
Gun control, Mass killings, Mass shootings, President Joe Biden, Rep. Mike Thompson

Rep. Mike Thompson on long overdue need for gun control

Thompson lauds Biden’s steps against ‘ghost guns’ – Congressman hopes his background check bill is next

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, praised the president's announcement on gun safety measures. (Rich Freedman--Times-Herald)
Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, praised the president’s announcement on gun safety measures. (Rich Freedman–Times-Herald)
Vallejo Times-Herald, by Richard Freedman, April 8, 2021

U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson has long emphasized he’s a Second Amendment believer. He just doesn’t believe some weapons should be legal or purchased without extensive background checks.

So it wasn’t a surprise that the Democratic congressman from St. Helena was thrilled hearing President Biden’s announcement of a series of executive actions to curb what he called an “epidemic” of gun violence across the country at Thursday’s Rose Garden Ceremony.

“Today is a new day and I’m proud to have a president willing to do the tough work needed to help prevent gun violence and save lives,” Thompson said in a statement. “We need action on all fronts, from the President and the Congress, to help keep our communities safe. Gun violence takes thousands of lives each year and costs our country nearly $300 billion each year. It’s an epidemic and we must act to combat it.”

Calling gun violence “a public health crisis,” Biden announced six executive actions, adding that “nothing impinges on the Second Amendment.”

Biden is tightening regulations of buyers of “ghost guns” — homemade firearms that usually are assembled from parts and milled with a metal-cutting machine and often lack serial numbers used to trace them. It’s legal to build a gun in a home or a workshop and there is no federal requirement for a background check.

Another action — more heavily regulating arm braces used to make firing a pistol more accurate — directly relates to the March shooting in Boulder, Colo., where such a device used to kill 10 people.

“Today’s Executive Actions are an important piece of what is needed to get ahead of the curve,” Thompson said in the morning statement. “These actions will better regulate ghost guns which increasingly are being used in gun violence incidents and concealable rifles like the gun used in the Boulder mass shooting. These are actions I have led the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force in asking the president to take.”

The executive actions “are critical steps forward in our work to prevent gun violence. But they cannot be our last steps as more action is still needed. I remain firm in my work to ensure the Senate holds a vote on H.R. 8, my bipartisan bill to expand background checks and save lives. Our work must continue,” Thompson said.

Later Thursday afternoon in a brief phone interview, Thompson reiterated his support of Biden’s actions.

“I’ve been lobbying for this,” Thompson said before catching a flight back to the Bay Area. “I’ve been pushing this ever since the president was elected.”

The Rose Garden event “was very exciting,” Thompson said, attending the ceremony with “a handful of members of Congress, two senators, and I think four House members. There were a number of people who had gun violence prevention groups and a number of those who have lost their children, wives, husbands, loved ones to gun violence.”

Thompson was invited after the ceremony to the Oval Office, where he chatted briefly with Biden.

“I mentioned that the last time I had been to the White House was to have a meeting on gun violence with his (Biden’s) predecessor (Donald Trump), who made all kinds of promises of what he was going to do and how he was going to fix it. By the time I got to my office, the NRA called him and he already reversed his position.”

Thompson hinted that it was a relief working a president good on his word.

“This president not only knows this policy and knows what he is talking about, he’s heartfelt and committed,” Thompson said. “Every victim here (at the ceremony), this president sat down with.”

Biden “has worked with us to find solutions to gun violence,” Thompson said.

A pro-gun organization, The Second Amendment Foundation, sent a press release out Thursday morning, warning the Biden administration “that if it steps over its legal authority with any executive action or order regarding the constitutionally-protected right to keep and bear arms, legal action is a certainty.”

The threatening lawsuit didn’t surprise Thompson.

“That’s what they do,” he said. “There were cops there today who experience violence every day. They’re not for suing. The victims aren’t for suing. Members of Congress who have come forward with solutions weren’t for suing. I don’t think the American people are.”

Thompson said his background check bill headed to the Senate is supported by 90 percent of the public.

If and when it passes the Senate and is signed by the president, “I’m going to jump for joy,” Thompson said. “There should be background checks and not soon enough.”

Assault weapons, Federal Regulation (Canada), Gun control, Gun violence, Mass shootings

Canada Orders Immediate Ban on Assault Weapons in Wake of Deadly Mass Shooting

PM Justin Trudeau said the government had been in the process of introducing the ban when its agenda was overturned by the pandemic.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada attending a news conference in Ottawa on Friday. Credit…Blair Gable/Reuters
New York Times, by Ian Austen, May 1, 2020

OTTAWA — Nearly two weeks after the deadliest mass shooting in Canada’s history, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday introduced an immediate ban on what he described as “military-style assault weapons.”

“These weapons were designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time,” Mr. Trudeau said. “There is no use and no place for such weapons in Canada.”

The ban means that Canadians will no longer be able to own rifles like the AR-15, the military-style weapon used in several mass shootings in the United States including those in Newtown, Conn.; Orlando, Fla.; and Parkland, Fla.

By introducing the ban, Mr. Trudeau partly fulfills a gun control promise he made during last year’s federal elections. He said the government had been in the process of introducing an assault weapons ban when its agenda was overturned by the coronavirus pandemic.

In making the announcement, Mr. Trudeau noted several gun killings and repeatedly cited the shooting rampage in rural Nova Scotia that left 23 people dead, including the gunman.

The gunman’s arsenal included two models banned on Friday, said Bill Blair, the country’s public safety minister.

The killer did not have a firearms license and many of his guns and rifles had been smuggled into Canada from the United States, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, highlighting one difficulty Canada may face in enforcing the new measure. The U.S. federal government has not barred assault weapons since a previous ban expired in 2004.

The swift response by Mr. Trudeau to the killings in Nova Scotia stands in contrast to that of officials in the United States, where repeated efforts to renew the now-lapsed assault weapons ban have failed.

A makeshift memorial for Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Heidi Stevenson, who was killed in the shooting in Nova Scotia. Credit…Tim Krochak/Reuters

The Canadian government has drawn up a list of about 1,500 gun models covered by the new ban. It estimates that about 100,000 such semiautomatic rifles are now legally owned by Canadians.

Mr. Trudeau said the government will introduce legislation to buy back the rifles, another part of his campaign promise, at a future date. Until then, owners have been given two years to keep their rifles although they can no longer use them, trade them or sell them except to buyers outside Canada with a permit. Gun shops can return any of the weapons they now have in stock to manufacturers.

While handguns and automatic weapons are tightly restricted in Canada, most rifles and shotguns have been more loosely regulated. The previous Conservative government shut down a registry for such weapons that had been set up after a man gunned down 14 young women and injured 13 others in 1989 at the École Polytechnique engineering school in Montreal.

That database was beset by technical problems and was deeply unpopular in rural areas. Mr. Trudeau has resisted calls from gun control groups to revive it.

Mr. Trudeau said on Friday that his planned legislation will also include a measure that will allow cities to ban handguns within their boundaries, another of his campaign pledges.

Andrew Scheer, the leader of the Conservative Party, repeated his longstanding opposition to any ban and buyback of military-style weapons, noting that many mass killers, including Gabriel Wortman in Nova Scotia, and other criminals use illegal firearms brought in from the United States.

“It’s easy but lazy government to ask the people who follow all the rules to follow more rules,” Mr. Scheer told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He also criticized Mr. Trudeau for introducing the measure through a cabinet order while Parliament is not meeting in normal sessions because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Wendy Cukier, the president of the Coalition for Gun Control, said that most mass shootings in Canada have involved legally owned rifles and said there’s evidence that the availability of military-style weapons may make such killings more likely.

“Most mass shooters are law abiding until they are not,” she said.

What motivated the 13.5-hour killing spree in Nova Scotia by Mr. Wortman, a denture fitter, remains unknown. It started in the tiny summer community of Portapique when Mr. Wortman assaulted his partner and tied her up. She escaped and he began shooting people inside and outside of their homes while he also set fire to several buildings, including some of his own properties.

After the police arrived shortly before midnight on April 18, they found two replica Royal Canadian Mounted Police cruisers registered to Mr. Wortman on fire and located a third at his full-time residence in Halifax. That led the police to believe, they said, that he may have committed suicide and was in one of the burning buildings.

But after hiding in the woods all night, Mr. Wortman’s partner told police that he was traveling in a fourth replica police car that did not have license plates. Investigators subsequently discovered that he had eluded them by driving through a farm field and then hiding in another town where he resumed his killing spree in the morning.

He was eventually shot and killed after pulling into a gas station while driving a car belonging to one of the victims.

Ms. Cukier acknowledged that the government will have to continually update its list to prevent manufacturers from circumventing the ban by modifying current models and reintroducing them as new weapons. Her group, she said, will recommend that future legislation focus more on a system in which gunmakers must get approval to sell specific weapons rather than on steps to ban the weapons.

And while her group generally takes stances that oppose those of the Conservatives, she agreed that more must be done about smuggled weapons.

“There are a lot of things that have to happen,” she said. “Most Canadians don’t know the extent to which our laws have been eroded.”

Alan Drummond, who has long pushed for more gun controls through the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, praised Mr. Trudeau and members of his cabinet for their unequivocal statements about the need to ban assault weapons.

“What struck me was the absolute clarity and conviction,” he said.

Coronavirus, Covid 19, Donald Trump, Gun control, National Rifle Association

“Reopen” protests organized by gun rights groups, state Republican Party organizations, conservative think tanks, religious and advocacy groups

Who’s Behind the “Reopen” Domain Surge?

KrebsOnSecurity.com, April 20, 2020
A “reopen California” protest over the weekend in Huntington Beach, Calif. Image: Reddit.

The past few weeks have seen a large number of new domain registrations beginning with the word “reopen” and ending with U.S. city or state names. The largest number of them were created just hours after President Trump sent a series of all-caps tweets urging citizens to “liberate” themselves from new gun control measures and state leaders who’ve enacted strict social distancing restrictions in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s a closer look at who and what appear to be behind these domains.

A series of inciteful tweets sent by President Trump on April 17, the same day dozens of state-themed “reopen” domains were registered — mostly by conservative groups and gun rights advocates.

KrebsOnSecurity began this research after reading a fascinating Reddit thread over the weekend on several “reopen” sites that seemed to be engaged in astroturfing, which involves masking the sponsors of a message or organization to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participants.

The Reddit discussion focused on a handful of new domains — including reopenmn.com, reopenpa.com, and reopenva.com — that appeared to be tied to various gun rights groups in those states. Their registrations have roughly coincided with contemporaneous demonstrations in Minnesota, California and Tennessee where people showed up to protest quarantine restrictions over the past few days.

A “reopen California” protest over the weekend in Huntington Beach, Calif. Image: Reddit.

Suspecting that these were but a subset of a larger corpus of similar domains registered for every state in the union, KrebsOnSecurity ran a domain search report at DomainTools [an advertiser on this site], requesting any and all domains registered in the past month that begin with “reopen” and end in “.com.”

That lookup returned approximately 150 domains; in addition to those named after the individual 50 states, some of the domains refer to large American cities or counties, and others to more general concepts, such as “reopeningchurch.com” or “reopenamericanbusiness.com.”

Many of the domains are still dormant, leading to parked pages and registration records obscured behind privacy protection services. But a review of other details about these domains suggests a majority of them are tied to various gun rights groups, state Republican Party organizations, and conservative think tanks, religious and advocacy groups.

For example, reopenmn.com forwards to minnesotagunrights.org, but the site’s WHOIS registration records (obscured since the Reddit thread went viral) point to an individual living in Florida. That same Florida resident registered reopenpa.com, a site that forwards to the Pennsylvania Firearms Association, and urges the state’s residents to contact their governor about easing the COVID-19 restrictions.

Reopenpa.com is tied to a Facebook page called Pennsylvanians Against Excessive Quarantine, which sought to organize an “Operation Gridlock” protest at noon today in Pennsylvania among its 68,000 members.

Both the Minnesota and Pennsylvania gun advocacy sites include the same Google Analytics tracker in their source code: UA-60996284. A cursory Internet search on that code shows it also is present on reopentexasnow.com, reopenwi.com and reopeniowa.com.

More importantly, the same code shows up on a number of other anti-gun control sites registered by the Dorr Brothers, real-life brothers who have created nonprofits (in name only) across dozens of states that are so extreme in their stance they make the National Rifle Association look like a liberal group by comparison.

This 2019 article at cleveland.com quotes several 2nd Amendment advocates saying the Dorr brothers simply seek “to stir the pot and make as much animosity as they can, and then raise money off that animosity.” The site dorrbrotherscams.com also is instructive here.

A number of other sites — such as reopennc.com — seem to exist merely to sell t-shirts, decals and yard signs with such slogans as “Know Your Rights,” “Live Free or Die,” and “Facts not Fear.” WHOIS records show the same Florida resident who registered this North Carolina site also registered one for New York — reopenny.com — just a few minutes later.

Merchandise available from reopennc.com.

Some of the concept reopen domains — including reopenoureconomy.com (registered Apr. 15) and reopensociety.com (Apr. 16) — trace back to FreedomWorks, a conservative group that the Associated Press says has been holding weekly virtual town halls with members of Congress, “igniting an activist base of thousands of supporters across the nation to back up the effort.”

Reopenoc.com — which advocates for lifting social restrictions in Orange County, Calif. — links to a Facebook page for Orange County Republicans, and has been chronicling the street protests there. The messaging on Reopensc.com — urging visitors to digitally sign a reopen petition to the state governor — is identical to the message on the Facebook page of the Horry County, SC Conservative Republicans.

Reopenmississippi.com was registered on April 16 to In Pursuit of LLC, an Arlington, Va.-based conservative group with a number of former employees who currently work at the White House or in cabinet agencies. A 2016 story from USA Today says In Pursuit Of LLC is a for-profit communications agency launched by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch.

Many of the reopen sites that have redacted names and other information about their registrants nevertheless hold other clues, mainly based on precisely when they were registered. Each domain registration record includes a date and timestamp down to the second that the domain was registered. By grouping the timestamps for domains that have obfuscated registration details and comparing them to domains that do include ownership data, we can infer more information.

For example, more than 50 reopen domains were registered within an hour of each other on April 17 — between 3:25 p.m. ET and 4:43 ET. Most of these lack registration details, but a handful of them did (until the Reddit post went viral) include the registrant name Michael Murphy, the same name tied to the aforementioned Minnesota and Pennsylvania gun rights domains (reopenmn.com and reopenpa.com) that were registered within seconds of each other on April 8.

A large number of “reopen” domains were registered within the same one-hour period on April 17, and tie back to the same name used in the various reopen domains connected to gun rights groups. A link to the spreadsheet where this screen shot is drawn from is included below.

A Google spreadsheet documenting much of the domain information sourced in this story is available here.

No one responded to the email addresses and phone numbers tied to Mr. Murphy, who may or may not have been involved in this domain registration scheme. Those contact details suggest he runs a store in Florida that makes art out of reclaimed or discarded items, and that he operates a Web site design company in Florida.

Update, April 21, 6:40 a.m. ET: Mother Jones has published a compelling interview with Mr. Murphy, who says he registered thousands of dollars worth of “reopen” and “liberate” domains to keep them out of the hands of people trying to organize protests. KrebsOnSecurity has not be able to validate this report, but it’s a fascinating twist to this tale: How an ‘Old Hippie’ Got Accused of Astroturfing the Right-Wing Campaign to Reopen the Economy

Update, April 22, 1:52 p.m. ET: Mr. Murphy told Jacksonville.com he did not register reopenmn.com or reopenpa.com, contrary to data in the spreadsheet linked above. I looked up each of the records in that spreadsheet manually, but did have some help from another source in compiling and sorting the information. It is possible the registration data for those domains got transposed with reopenmd.com and reopenva.com, which included Mr. Murphy’s information prior to being redacted by the domain registrar.

Original story:

As much as President Trump likes to refer to stories critical of him and his administration as “fake news,” this type of astroturfing is not only dangerous to public health, but it’s reminiscent of the playbook used by Russia to sow discord, create phony protest events, and spread disinformation across America in the lead-up to the 2016 election.

This entire astroturfing campaign also brings to mind a “local news” network called Local Government Information Services (LGIS), an organization founded in 2018 which operates a huge network of hundreds of sites that purport to be local news sites in various states. However, most of the content is generated by automated computer algorithms that consume data from reports released by U.S. executive branch federal agencies.

The relatively scarce actual bylined content on these LGIS sites is authored by freelancers who are in most cases nowhere near the localities they cover. Other content not drawn from government reports often repurpose press releases from conservative Web sites, including gunrightswatch.com, taxfoundation.org, and The Heritage Foundation. For more on LGIS, check out the 2018 coverage from The Chicago Tribune and the Columbia Journalism Review.