View previous stories
	Guns are the leading killer of children in America by Giffords, Everytown, VPC, agencies   May 2023   2023 is on track to be the worst in recent history for mass killings in the US.   According to data from the Gun Violence Archive, as of 7 May 2023, there had been 202 mass shootings – defined by the archive as involving at least four people killed or injured by firearms, since the beginning of the year.   The incidents have spanned the country, from Chicago to Mississippi and Tennessee to Texas. They have occurred at shopping malls, schools and parties and in countless neighborhoods.   Yet another mass shooting took place in Allen, Texas, on Saturday, leaving eight dead and several injured in hospital. The shooter opened fire at a shopping mall, spraying bullets indiscriminately before being killed by a police officer. A three-year-old boy and two elementary school children were among the victims.   On Sunday, Texas saw a mass killing: a driver plowed his truck into a crowd at a bus stop near a shelter serving migrants in the southern city of Brownsville, killing eight.   No other industrialised country outside war and conflict zones experiences such habitual gun violence in civic life.   In Texas, gun laws were repeatedly loosened after mass shootings. It has had 41 mass shootings so far in 2023. It has not even been one year since 19 children and two teachers were killed in a shooting at Robb elementary school in Uvalde, the deadliest shooting in the state and the third-deadliest school shooting in the US.   U.S President Joe Biden has repeatedly called on Republicans to back his calls for more gun control measures. As the waves of shootings have intensified, he has pleaded with the Republican controlled Congress to enact tougher measures such as banning assault weapons.   “Once again I ask Congress to send me a bill banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Enacting universal background checks. Requiring safe storage. Ending immunity for gun manufacturers. I will sign it immediately. We need nothing less to keep our streets safe.”   16 Apr. 2023   Deadly mass shooting at teen birthday party in Alabama.   At least four people were killed and more than 28 others injured, mostly teens, in a Saturday night shooting at a birthday party in Alabama, officials said, in the latest spasm of American gun mass violence.   Local news reports said the shooting occurred at a Sweet 16 party at a dance studio in Dadeville, a small town northeast of the state capital Montgomery.   Pastor Ben Hayes, who serves as chaplain for the Dadeville Police Department and for the local high school football team, said most of the victims are teenagers.   Hayes said worried families swarmed the local hospital Saturday night trying to find the condition of their children. He said the small city is “sad, traumatized, in shock.”   The nearby Lake Martin Community Hospital received 15 individual gun-shot wound patients, mostly victims in their teens, Heidi Smith, from the rural health facility's operator IvyCreek Healthcare, told news agencies.   U.S. President Joe Biden was briefed on the shooting, the White House said, adding that it is closely monitoring the situation and has been in touch with local officials and law enforcement to offer support.   “What has our nation come to when children cannot attend a birthday party without fear? When parents have to worry every time their kids walk out the door to school, to the movie theater, or to the park?” Biden said in a statement Sunday. “Guns are the leading killer of children in America, and the numbers are rising – not declining. This is outrageous and unacceptable.”   Biden called on Congress to “require safe storage of firearms, require background checks for all gun sales, eliminate gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability, and ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.”   The latest deaths came on the 16th anniversary of the deadliest US school shooting on record, in which 32 people were killed at Virginia Tech in 2007. Separately, police confirmed two people were killed and four others wounded in a shooting late Saturday at a crowded park in Louisville, Kentucky, the same city where a bank employee slaughtered five people at his workplace last Monday.   There have been 163 mass shootings in the United States so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The non-profit group defines a mass shooting as having a minimum of four victims shot, either injured or killed, excluding any shooter.   Efforts to tighten gun controls have for years run up against opposition from Republicans, whose near "pathological" defence of the constitutional right to bear arms is a ideological touchstone. The political paralysis endures despite widespread outrage over recurring shootings.   http://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/u-s-endures-deadliest-6-months-of-mass-killings-on-record http://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/watch-pbs-newshour-presents-ricochet-an-american-trauma http://www.childrensdefense.org/policy/policy-priorities/gun-violence-prevention/ http://giffords.org/blog/2022/08/guns-are-now-the-leading-cause-of-death-for-american-kids/ http://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/06/gun-deaths-among-us-kids-rose-50-percent-in-two-years/   http://giffords.org/press-release/2023/05/giffords-americas-lax-gun-laws-fuel-armed-hate/ http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/15/south-dakota-governor-kristi-noem-grandchild-guns-nra http://www.bradyunited.org/press-releases/ http://everytownlaw.org/press/ http://vpc.org/press/states-with-strong-gun-laws-and-lower-gun-ownership-have-lowest-gun-death-rates-in-the-nation-new-data-for-2021-confirms/ http://vpc.org/press/ http://momsdemandaction.org/stories/ http://www.sandyhookpromise.org/ http://studentsdemandaction.org/news/   Feb. 2023   Outcry as US Court blocks Domestic Violence Gun Ban   Everytown Law, the nation’s largest team of gun violence prevention litigators, and Moms Demand Action released the following statements in response to the decision of a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Rahimi, which struck down the federal law that prohibits individuals who are subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms.   “This extreme and dangerous ruling is a death sentence for women and families as domestic violence is far too often a precursor to gun violence,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action.   “When someone is able to secure a restraining order, we must do everything possible to keep them and their families safe — not empower the abuser with easy access to firearms. This ruling cannot stand and must quickly be overturned.”   “The Fifth Circuit panel’s decision is wrong and endangers lives,” said Janet Carter, senior director of issues and appeals at Everytown Law. “Prohibiting dangerous people from accessing deadly weapons—including those who have abused their partners or children—is absolutely consistent with the Second Amendment. If the full Fifth Circuit doesn’t reverse this misguided decision, the Supreme Court should do so.”   Gun-related intimate partner violence is a devastating and lethal crisis facing women and families in the United States. Every month, an average of 70 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner. In addition, intimate partner mass shootings are not uncommon, though many don’t make headlines.   An Everytown analysis of mass shooting incidents—in which four or more people are shot and killed, not including the shooter—in the United States from 2009 to 2020 revealed that in at least 53 percent of these shootings, the perpetrator shot a current or former intimate partner or family member.   http://momsdemandaction.org/everytown-law-moms-demand-action-respond-to-court-decision-striking-down-foundational-domestic-violence-prohibitions/   * National Coalition Against Domestic Violence - Domestic Violence & Guns   An estimated 13.6% of American women alive today have been threatened by intimate partners with firearms. 43% of these reported having been physically injured. A survey of contacts by the National Domestic Violence Hotline found, of respondents’ whose abusers had access to firearms; 10% said their abusers had fired a gun during an argument: http://bit.ly/3HAUu1I Visit the related web page
	Tax saves lives by Tax Justice Network, University of St Andrews   May 2023   It’s horrific that there are so many people across the world who still don’t have access to ‘survival rights.’ Things like basic sanitation, clean water, quality education, decent healthcare so that mothers can survive childbirth – and so their children can even survive their childhood! This is where tax justice gets the most urgent, because tax literally saves lives.   In this Taxcast edition, host Naomi Fowler talks to people who’ve looked at new data that demonstrates this.   “The world needs to start looking at tax as a human rights issue. Fair tax saves lives, tax abuse costs lives and the pathway to paying fair tax is through tax transparency. So corporations publishing their taxes and profits on a country by country basis, but also governments creating the right environment so that this is the norm, as opposed to the exception.” ~ Eilish Hannah, University of St Andrews   “We’re going to see more and more of this data being made public one way or another, both voluntarily and by mandate in different places. That’s the end game. In the meantime though, we’re losing time, we’re losing tax revenues, we’re losing the lives of children, of mothers. We’re losing public health and all sorts of public spending around the world. This is an urgent matter and we really should just move straight to public reporting, whichever way we can do it, wherever we are, as soon as possible.” ~ Alex Cobham, Tax Justice Network   “Just getting companies to disclose tax information is not something new. Already in the 1960s and ’70s African and Asian nations supporting the UN resolution on the New International Economic Order, were trying to gain sovereignty because they realised that even though they’d decolonised, the global economy was in the hands of the richest nations, in the hands of former imperial powers. And one of the ways this is done is through corporate power.   Many of the multinationals are operating in these countries then, and still today are headquartered in the richest nations in the world. If companies aren’t paying their fair share of tax and are actually just shifting the profits out of countries, it means that governments are losing their revenue, losing their sovereign right to decide how to use taxpayer’s tax money and determine how to allocate it best for the nation. And government knows best, not companies.” ~ Rachel Etter-Phoya, Tax Justice Network   http://taxjustice.net/2023/05/01/tax-saves-lives-the-tax-justice-network-podcast-the-taxcast/   Mar. 2023   How can corporate taxes contribute to sub-Saharan Africa’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? A case study of Vodafone, by Eilish Hannah , Bernadette O’Hare , Marisol Lopez , Stuart Murray , Rachel Etter‑Phoya, Stephen Hall and Michael Masiya. (University of St Andrews)   The COVID-19 pandemic and the climate emergency threaten progress in reaching many of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets by 2030. The under-5 mortality and maternal mortality rates are well below the targets, and if we progress at the current pace, there is a high risk of not meeting the 2030 goals. Furthermore, the initial progress in the decline in child and maternal mortality since 1990 is likely to be eroded.   Much of this progress has resulted from increased sanitation, drinking water, education, and health service coverage. The adequate provision of public services is possible if there is sufficient government funding. When governments have more income, they spend more on public services, which increases access to fundamental economic and social rights and, thus, contributes to the SDGs.   One of the key drivers of government financing, taxation, constitutes 70% of government revenue in low- and lower-middle-income countries. Corporate income tax constitutes 18.8% of tax revenue in African countries compared to 10% of tax revenue in OECD countries. Therefore, it plays a critical role in SDG progress. This paper aims to quantify the contribution of one large taxpayer, that publishes their tax payments, (Vodafone Group Plc) on progress towards SDGs in six African countries. We use econometric modelling to estimate the impact of an increase in government revenue equivalent to Vodafone's average tax paid between 2007-2017.   We find that government revenue equivalent to Vodafone's taxes made a significant contribution to progress in attaining selected SDGs. We found that the revenue equivalent to Vodafone's taxes allowed 966,188 people to access clean water and 1,371,972 people to access basic sanitation each year. Over the time period studied, 858,054 children spent an extra year in school and 54,275 children under five years and 3,655 mothers survived. In just one of these countries, Tanzania, the revenue equivalent to Vodafone's tax contribution allowed 174,121 people to access clean water and 223,586 to access sanitation each year. Over the time studied 187,023 children spent an additional year at school, 6,569 additional children under five and 625 additional mothers survived.   These findings demonstrate that the reported contributions from a single multinational corporation drive SDG progress. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of transparent taxes and explores the responsibilities of global institutions, governments, investors, and multinational corporations.: http://tinyurl.com/2uprwz7a   http://risweb.st-andrews.ac.uk/portal/en/researchoutput/tax-abuse(28d26a93-f474-451a-b74f-74b7a3bd7cb6).html http://tinyurl.com/yc2stnn3   Who owns the climate crisis? (The Tax Justice Network)   We’re experiencing the hottest global temperatures ever recorded. For millions of us, the climate crisis is already hitting hard. And we need to know, we must know – Who are the beneficial owners of the climate crisis?   “The emissions that are attributable to investments in polluting companies and sectors are estimated to be so, so, so much higher in volume than those consumption emissions for the majority of people. The regulation that is needed and that we’re asking for only pertains to a very small group of people on the whole, which makes it a very attractive policy option for most people.” ~ Franziska Mager, Tax Justice Network   “The most important thing when it comes to the richest people and climate change is their political power capturing governments, shaping policy, shaping laws. The fact that the tax havens are still open is a demonstration of their power and likewise for the polluter elite who derive their wealth and their luxury lifestyles from polluting activities, they are the ones who are using everything they can to block governments at national, regional and local level from basically pushing forward cleaner and greener technologies which would mean that the companies they’re invested or they own permanently lose market share, that’s what terrifies them. And that’s why, the political power of the polluter elite is so important to focus on and to counter. To actually shift things, you have to challenge the power.” ~ Dario Kenner, Carbon Inequality and the Polluter Elite Database   http://taxjustice.net/2023/07/27/who-owns-the-climate-crisis-the-tax-justice-network-podcast-the-taxcast/ http://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/july-2023-set-be-hottest-month-record http://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/22/g20-countries-fail-to-reach-agreement-on-cutting-fossil-fuels http://climatenetwork.org/2023/06/23/paris-summit-fails-to-raise-the-bar-on-truly-transforming-global-finance/ http://climatenetwork.org/2023/06/15/civil-society-reacts-to-bonn-climate-conference/ http://reliefweb.int/report/world/climate-change-could-see-london-and-other-world-cities-run-out-water-christian-aid-warns http://reliefweb.int/report/pakistan/burning-emergency-extreme-heat-and-right-health-pakistan http://www.savethechildren.net/news/five-ways-which-heatwaves-threaten-child-rights-education-daily-meals http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/pdf/born-into-the-climate-crisis.pdf/
	View more stories