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(NEW YORK — This report is a part of “Rethinking Gun Violence,” an ABC News series examining the level of gun violence in the U.S. — and what can be done about it.

The United States has a gun violence epidemic, and it’s not one shared by its peers. The nation that by one estimate has more guns than people has the highest rate of firearm deaths compared with other high-income countries. Mass shootings, an all-too-common occurrence in the U.S., are also exceedingly rare in peer countries — where governments have often been quick to pass gun reform in the wake of such tragedies.

“Compared to the other peer countries, basically what we have is lots and lots of guns, particularly handguns, and we have by far the weakest gun laws. Not surprisingly, we have huge gun problems,” David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, told ABC News. “I think if we had basically the gun laws of any other developed country, we’d be better off.”

It’s unclear if gun prevalence definitively impacts gun violence, though research by Hemenway’s center has found links between a large number of guns and more firearm homicides, suicides and accidents. The implementation of new gun restrictions has also been associated with a drop in firearm deaths, a 2016 review of 130 studies across 10 countries found.

The U.S. is “not necessarily a more violent society than others,” Dr. Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis, told ABC News.

“What we have is unique access to a technology that changes the outcome — firearms,” he said.

It’s not uncommon to compare the U.S. with other developed countries, especially after yet another horrific mass shooting. There are developing countries with higher rates of firearm deaths than the U.S., though comparing gun violence among peers helps to control for other factors, Hemenway said. And while there are lessons in other nations’ policy measures that could help address the problem here, because the U.S. is on such a different plane when it comes to civilian gun ownership, it will also take more research and multiple, targeted solutions to address the scope of the problem, experts said.

“Other countries do better. We should be able to figure out how to do better,” Hemenway said.

Watch ABC News Live on Mondays at 3 p.m. to hear more about gun violence from experts during roundtable discussions. And check back next week, when we look into what some gun owners say could solve the gun violence issue.

American disease?

The U.S. has become so synonymous with its gun culture, that when Australia was working on enacting tighter firearm policies after its deadliest mass shooting ever, known as the Port Arthur massacre, then-Prime Minister John Howard pointedly said, “We do not want the American disease imported into Australia.”

In 1996, Martin Bryant used a semiautomatic rifle to shoot and kill 35 people and injure another 23 near a popular tourist resort in Port Arthur, Tasmania. In the wake of the shooting, all states and territories adopted the National Firearms Agreement, which, among other things, established a national gun registry, required permits for gun purchases and banned all semiautomatic rifles and semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns. A government buyback program also retrieved some 650,000 now-banned firearms.

In the years since the NFA, gun deaths in Australia decreased, most significantly gun suicides, a RAND Corporation survey found. The review concluded there was weak evidence to support that it had an impact on firearm homicides overall, though noted there was a decline in female firearm homicide victimization after adoption of the NFA, which included a provision denying gun licenses to people subject to a domestic violence order. A 2018 study by the University of Syndey also found that Australia only had one mass shooting in the 22 years since the NFA reforms, compared with 13 in the 18 years prior.

Mass shootings have similarly prompted Switzerland, New Zealand and, on several occasions, Canada and the United Kingdom to quickly enact gun reforms. These measures have ranged from bans on semiautomatic firearms to longer purchase waiting periods to stricter background checks and national registry requirements.

In the U.S., where guns are more accessible, the firearm death rate per 100,000 people in 2016 was nearly four times that of Switzerland, five times that of Canada, over 10 times that of Australia and 35 times that of the United Kingdom, according to a 2018 study published in the Journal of the American Medicine Association. Americans are notably more likely to be killed in a gun homicide, suicide or unintentional shooting than in other high-income countries, a 2015 study in the American Journal of Medicine found. Rates of nonlethal crimes and overall suicides are similar among the countries, but the U.S. does have a higher homicide rate overall, “fueled by the firearm homicide rate,” according to the study.

“What other countries have done demonstrates that you can have policymakers react quickly after a horrific tragedy to make the country and communities safer from gun violence,” Chelsea Parsons, vice president of Gun Violence Prevention at the Center for American Progress, a nonpartisan policy institute, told ABC News. “I think we sometimes in this country, we’re too accustomed to federal policymaking being almost an impossibility when it comes to an issue like gun violence. But the experience of other countries just shows that it doesn’t have to be this hard.”

Unique challenges toward reform

The number of guns in the U.S. is unparalleled; the country has less than 5% of the world’s population, but 40% of the world’s civilian-owned guns, according to a 2018 report by the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey. There were over 393 million firearms in civilian possession in 2017 — or 120 per 100 persons, the highest rate globally, the report found. That’s more than double the second-highest rate, in Yemen, at nearly 53 per 100 persons.

For Joel Dvoskin, a forensic psychologist at the University of Arizona College of Medicine who specializes in violence prevention, reducing gun ownership to levels seen in peer countries is “literally impossible.”

“The horse is already out of the barn, as they say,” Dvoskin told ABC News.

Efforts to address the problem at the national level may be hindered by no one government agency taking “overall responsibility” for it, he said. “Our system’s spread out across a bunch of different agencies.”

The U.S. stands apart from nearly every country in the world, not its just peers, with a constitutional right to bear arms — though that doesn’t mean the federal government can’t ban certain firearms or enact other restrictions, according to Allison Anderman, senior counsel and director of local policy for the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

“Gun advocates use the Second Amendment as a defense to any and all gun laws, but it’s not legally accurate,” Anderman told ABC News. “The Second Amendment, at least as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court, permits a whole host of gun regulations, including assault weapons bans.”

The U.S. did in fact ban the sale of certain semi-automatic weapons, until the bill expired in 2004 after a decade.

Universal background checks, a key effort among gun control advocates, is a “really basic” law abroad that the U.S. lacks but nearly all Americans support, Parsons said. The massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012, where 20 children and six adults were gunned down, appeared to be a watershed moment for gun reform. But four months later, legislation to expand background checks failed to pass the Senate due to what then-President Barack Obama blamed on lies by the “gun lobby and its allies.” A reintroduced bill passed the House in March and is currently before the Senate.

“The difference between the United States and other countries isn’t the Second Amendment, it’s the gun lobby and the power of the gun lobby in this country, and an extremist ideology among red states, essentially, that prohibits any meaningful action,” Anderman said.

There is an “opportunity for change” when gun laws become a “single voting issue,” she said. It’s a tactic long employed by gun rights advocacy groups like the National Rifle Association, the country’s largest pro-gun lobby. Mobilizing its 5 million members around gun policies has been a “pivotal component to our continued influence and success,” the organization told The Atlantic in an article published in September. ABC News had reached out to the NRA for this piece but did not receive a response.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll from April found that those who strongly prioritized enacting new laws to try to address gun violence versus protecting the right to own guns were nearly even — about four in 10 in both camps. Overall, the public’s priority on enacting new gun control laws has waned — to 50% from 57% three years prior, with the sharpest decline among 18- to 29-year-olds.

“When people say that they’re fed up and they’ve had enough and they’re only going to vote for representatives who reflect their interests on this topic, then there can be change,” Anderman said.

The “uneven patchwork” of gun laws enacted at the state level is another challenge in addressing the gun violence problem, Parsons said. Research by the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence has found a correlation between stronger gun laws, such as permit requirements and waiting periods, and lower gun homicides and suicides, the latter of which account for most gun deaths in the U.S. But regulations vary widely from state to state, with red states largely having weaker gun laws, according to the center.

“You have states that have enacted really good, comprehensive, strong gun laws, but those laws are undermined by the much weaker laws of the states surrounding them,” Parsons said.

The “classic example” of this, she said, is Chicago. Illinois is neighbored by states including Indiana and Wisconsin that have comparatively weaker laws, such as a lack of universal background checks, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

“What you see is a very clear pattern of guns being illegally trafficked from some states that have much weaker laws into places and states that have much stronger laws,” she said, arguing that it makes the case for stronger laws at the federal level.

How do we live with guns?

In confronting the gun violence problem, for experts like Dvoskin and Hemenway, the conversation needs to include, “How do we live with guns?” It’s a public health approach akin to measures taken, for instance, to make driving safer or prevent smoking, and demands a broad focus.

“We’ve learned that there are limits to what you can do to prevent firearm violence if you just focus on firearms themselves,” Wintemute said. “It’s important to focus on the determinants of violence, whether firearms are involved or not.”

To that effort, Wintemute’s research program recently found a link between male gun owners with a history of alcohol charges and suicide risk, and is studying the intersection between firearm ownership and opioid use in suicide risk.

More firearms research and data are needed to find solutions in what has been for decades a federally underfunded area, Hemenway said. That could mean more studies looking at what is working in other countries to reduce gun violence. Support and funding for non-legislative approaches to the problem, such as community-based violence prevention, has also been advocated.

“With public health, it’s data-driven, so you don’t look at politics or values, you look at what the data says. And what the data says about public health, usually, is that one size never fits all,” Dvoskin said. “Different segments of the population need different strategies.”

Measures to safely live with guns, such as storage requirements, smart guns that can only be used by the owner and features that prevent guns from firing when dropped or after the magazine is removed, could also be improved, Hemenway said.

“Too many people just think gun control means taking away people’s guns,” Hemenway said. “There’s just so, so many things that we could do as a country if we wanted to reduce the problem.”

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — This report is a part of “Rethinking Gun Violence,” an ABC News series examining the level of gun violence in the U.S. — and what can be done about it.

Gun violence is an endemic problem in the United States — once again getting worse in some areas after many years of declines and persistent at high levels in others.

Despite being one of the leading causes of death, one thing that’s difficult to know is the scope of the problem, fueled in part by a more than a two-decade-long prohibition — recently changed — on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention using federal funds to “advocate or promote gun control.”

It wasn’t always this way — the CDC in 1983 adopted a public health approach to gun violence.

“At that point in time in 1983, there were two types of frequent injury deaths. One was motor vehicle crashes, and the other was gun violence,” Dr. Mark Rosenberg, CEO of the Task Force for Global Health and former member of CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, told ABC News.

During the 1990s, public and private programs conducted gun-related research — among them was the CDC’s Injury Prevention Program, where Rosenberg worked, and the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis.

But in 1996, Congress passed an amendment to the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Bill. The bill modification, commonly known as the Dickey Amendment, prohibited the use of federal funds to “advocate or promote gun control,” leading to the elimination of all CDC funding to conduct firearm-related research — having a lasting impact still limiting what we know today about gun violence.

Even though the funding spigot has recently been turned back on, researchers are still feeling the effects of the lack of data to study gun violence. Researchers say the gun violence problem is urgent and requires an outsized solution detached from politics.

Watch ABC News Live on Mondays at 3 p.m. to hear more about gun violence from experts during roundtable discussions. And check back next week, when we look into what some gun owners say could solve the gun violence issue.

“If we can understand the causes, we can change the effects and we can change the effects for the better, so science is a way to understand the causes and the effects and the way to link them,” Rosenberg told ABC News.

Here’s what to know about the data issue around gun violence and what advocates say can be done:

Impact of the Dickey Amendment

In the early 1990s, the CDC had a $2.6 million budget dedicated to gun violence research both for internal research and for external studies.

“We started looking at, what’s the problem,” Rosenberg told ABC News. The agency studied the number of people dying from gun violence, the weapons used and the causes behind it.

Dr. Garen Wintemute, head of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, says the program received two grants at the time to conduct much-needed research on firearms.

“All of these grants made use of unique data that are collected in California,” said Wintemute, who explained to ABC News that the organization was linking gun purchases with criminal records as part of its prevention research.

But everything changed when the Dickey Amendment was introduced by former Rep. Jay Dickey, R-Ark.

Four years before the Dickey Amendment was enacted, the CDC had published its first study on gun violence. The report looked at the correlation between safety and guns, finding that having a weapon in a household didn’t necessarily result in safer outcomes, Rosenberg said.

“These results weren’t pleasing to the NRA. And so they stepped up their attack on our research program,” Rosenberg told ABC News.

ABC News reached out to the National Rifle Association requesting comment on the allegations made by Dr. Rosenberg but has not heard back.

The Dickey Amendment reallocated the $2.6 million away from gun research to other health research on subjects like traumatic brain injury, according to Wintemute.

Researchers fought the effects of the amendment, which prohibited advocacy for gun control — but which had an impact beyond advocacy because experts said they viewed vague language in the amendment as a “threat.”

“This Dickey Amendment had a real chilling effect,” Rosenberg told ABC News. “It was enough to discourage individual researchers and, at the same time, Congress took away the money we were using for the research we were doing.”

The CDC sent ABC News a statement saying it was “subject to appropriations language that states that none of the funds made available to CDC may be used to ‘advocate or promote gun control.”

“The lack of dedicated and sustained research funding for firearm injury… limited our ability to conduct research to gain understanding of how best to prevent firearm-related injuries and deaths relative to other public health problems,” it said.

Shortage of funds

Wintemute’s program suffered from a shortage of federal funds after the amendment passed. Although it was able to continue doing some research through private funding, that work was limited. He originally had around 12 people on his team but says he was left with only four, including himself, limiting the program’s reach.

While The Department of Justice still allocated some funds to firearm research under the National Institute of Justice (the DOJ’s research arm), Wintemute said it was insufficient.

For example, in 2004, a total of $461,759 was granted by the agency to three different institutes for gun-related research — a far cry from the millions normally required for extensive study.

“We had to revert to simpler, more descriptive studies that made use of available data. There wasn’t money to go out and collect data writ large,” Wintemute said.

Other institutions conducting research were also affected.

“Because of the Dickey Amendment, we had dropped firearm injuries from our portfolio,” said Dr. Frederick Rivara, an epidemiologist and professor at the University of Washington, who was conducting research on injury prevention, including firearm-related injuries.

“It really discouraged any serious firearm research,” Rivara said.

This gap in gun research led to a shortage of people familiar with the subject and a lack of data still felt by today’s experts.

“It’ll be another five to 10 years before we have anything like an adequate number of experienced researchers on the case,” Wintemute said.

Research resumes

The need for research and data collection was finally re-addressed by the federal government after the Parkland mass shooting in 2018 that left 17 dead.

After the mass shooting, an omnibus bill was signed by President Donald Trump clarifying that restricting the use of federal funds to advocate or promote gun control doesn’t ban research.

In 2019, Congress began to again allocate funds for research and data collection on gun violence and injuries.

Although the Dickey Amendment remains in place, Dickey, its author who died in 2017, saw the consequences of it on gun-related research and changed his mind, according to Rosenberg — who later became Dickey’s friend.

“Jay Dickey eventually saw the disastrous consequences of gun violence…with mass shootings with rising numbers of gun homicides and gun suicides,” Rosenberg told ABC News. “He switched his position.”

In an op-ed co-authored with Rosenberg in 2012, Dickey says he “served as the NRA’s point person in Congress” to cut the gun violence research budget.

“We were on opposite sides of the heated battle 16 years ago, but we are in strong agreement now that scientific research should be conducted into preventing firearm injuries and that ways to prevent firearm deaths can be found without encroaching on the rights of legitimate gun owners,” reads a section of the piece published in The Washington Post.

More funds needed

Federal funds are now available to study gun violence, but organizations working on policy recommendations are still struggling to conduct it.

“There is more money for research now. But what is missing is datasets,” said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, referring to datasets at the federal level that could help in the research on firearms. “We destroy background check records at the federal level in 24 hours… how do you suppose to understand who’s purchasing firearms and what the implications are, if you can’t examine that data,” he added.

The nonprofit, affiliated with the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence located in Washington D.C., focuses on looking for evidence-based policy solutions and programs that can reduce gun-related violence.

“The data deficit has hurt us because we don’t understand all the solutions,” Horwitz told ABC News.

Despite the lack of research, experts say there is still a path forward for finding solutions to the high levels of gun violence plaguing the country.

“This is a solvable problem,” Rosenberg said. “We can find out what are the patterns, what’s the problem, we can find out the causes, we can find out what works to both reduce gun violence and protect gun rights.”

The key to finding possible solutions is focusing on science as opposed to politics, researchers say.

“Science is not advocacy, science is understanding things as they are,” Wintemute said.

While the landscape for gun-related research has improved, there is still a long way to go, Wintemute said.

For fiscal year 2022, Congress approved at least $25 million to fund gun violence research, according to the CDC. And although that represents an increase of $12.5 million compared with the last fiscal year, more resources are needed, according to Wintemude.

“Congress has not followed through,” he said.

He believes the budget for gun-related research has to match the extent of the problem and also help make up for the Dickey Amendment’s toll, including the gaps in data and expertise it created.

“To help get history out of the way and let us attack the problem with a program of research that’s adequate to the size of the problem itself we need to do away with the Dickey Amendment, even as amended,” he added.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Notorious serial killer Keith Jesperson, better known by the “Happy Face Killer” nickname he was given in the ’90s, has spent decades behind bars but his daughter believes he would kill again if released from prison today.

“I sometimes now wonder, if he was freed now, if he was released, would he kill again? And I believe he would,” Melissa Moore told “20/20” in a new interview. “I don’t believe my dad is sorry at all … what he is sorry about, though, is that he got caught.”

Jesperson, now 66, is serving five non-consecutive life sentences in Oregon’s state penitentiary.

A Canadian-born long-haul truck driver and divorced father of three, Jesperson claimed to have killed eight women in five states: Washington, California, Florida, Wyoming and Oregon.

Watch the full story on “20/20” TONIGHT at 9 p.m. ET on ABC

His killing spree spanned from 1990 until 1995, when he turned himself into authorities. At the time, he was being investigated for the murder of his last known victim, 41-year-old Julie Winningham, who some described as his girlfriend.

In a 2010 interview with ABC News, Jesperson equated committing murder to “shoplifting.” When ABC News’ Juju Chang challenged him on that framing, Jesperson doubled down, saying his killings were “everything like shoplifting.”

“It became a nonchalant type thing, because I got away with it,” he continued. “It is everything like shoplifting. You’re breaking the law but you’re getting away with it. And so, there’s a thrill of getting away with it.”

He was dubbed the “Happy Face Killer” for the smiley face drawings he included on a letter he sent to a Portland, Oregon, newspaper, in which he bragged about his crimes.

“It’s just a moment in time when situations present themselves, and you become what you are,” Jesperson told ABC News in a previous interview. “I’m sorry it happened, [I] wish it never happened … it’s done, it’s over with.”

After Jesperson came forward in March 1995, he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder charges for his first known victim, 23-year-old Taunja Bennett, and Winningham. Both women’s bodies were found on opposite sides of the Columbia River from each other.

“What really stood out to me about my father is that once he killed Taunja Bennett, it’s like he got a taste for blood and power and control that he’s probably never had in his life and that excited him. So much so that he seemed to start killing very rapidly again after Taunja,” Moore said.

Jesperson was linked to murdering six other women, some of which remain unknown to this day: an unidentified woman who Jesperson said was named “Claudia” in August 1992 near Blythe, California; Cynthia Lynn Rose in September 1992 in Turlock, California; Lori Ann Pentland in November 1992 in Salem, Oregon; an unidentified woman who Jesperson said was named “Carla” in June 1993 in Santa Nella, California; an unidentified woman who Jesperson said was named “Suzanne” in September 1994 in Crestview, Florida; and Angela Subrize in January 1995 in Laramie County, Wyoming.

Moore believes her father has no remorse. Even now, she said, if her father could go back in time to change anything, it would be to have never turned himself in so he could keep killing.

“I believe he would be killing more women” if he were a free man, she said.

Growing up, Moore said the father she knew as a young child wasn’t violent. He was a man who carried her on his shoulders and made her feel “on top of the world,” she said, someone who made up bedtime stories about a princess and tucked her in at night.

One of the last things he bought her, Moore said, was a karaoke and music recording system for her 10th birthday. Shortly after that, her parents got divorced and that’s when she said her father changed.

Dr. Robert Schug, a forensic psychologist, has spoken to Jesperson multiple times. He said that Jesperson’s violent outbursts may have stemmed from his divorce.

“Keith mentions this period of his marriage when things really went south, so all of this really starts creating a very turbulent emotional period for the entire family,” Schug said. “But, particularly for Keith.”

Moore said she thought her father unleashed his anger over the divorce into his killing of Bennett.

“Then after that release and that excitement and the thought that he got away with it, plus two other people getting the blame, he was free to kill again, and he did very quickly,” she said.

A jury first convicted a Portland, Oregon, woman named Laverne Pavlinac for Bennett’s murder in 1990, largely based on her detailed confession to police in which she falsely claimed she helped her boyfriend John Sosnovske rape and kill the young woman.

Sosnovske later pleaded no contest to the murder charge.

In reality, neither had anything to do with the crime. Jesperson told investigators one of the reasons he wanted to come forward was he wanted credit for Bennett’s murder and to get Pavlinac and Sosnovske out of prison. The two were released in 1995.

It had been more than 15 years since Moore spoke to her father until she said he called her this past Father’s Day. With all the time that had passed, she decided to accept the call.

“It was interesting to hear his voice again, and just that old, familiar voice. It’s aged … He sounds more like my grandfather,” Moore said. “As we signed off, he said, ‘Goodbye, my daughter,’ and it definitely asserted that he wanted to control that I would have a relationship with him.”

Now a parent herself, Moore said her children are curious about their grandfather. They had visited him in prison when they were young, but they have no memory of the meeting. In letters to ABC News, Jesperson expressed how much he would like to reunite with his family.

“For years, I have reached out to my children to be a part of their lives,” Jesperson wrote in one of these letters. “They’re in my thoughts daily and I love them and am proud of them.”

Still, Moore said she doesn’t want her children to have a relationship with her father.

“I don’t want my dad to get into the psyche of my children and hurt them in any way because he is manipulative. He is a psychopath. He has the potential, still, to hurt, even if not with physical violence or murder, but with his words,” she said.

Moore’s 21-year-old daughter Aspen Moore, who said she learned the truth about her grandfather when she was about 10 years old, agrees that she doesn’t want to meet him.

“I think that he has excuses for his actions,” she said. “I don’t feel that his actions can be just brushed off.”

Melissa Moore maintains she doesn’t want to have a relationship with her father and said there was nothing he could offer her to bring her “any kind of closure.”

“There isn’t going to be closure,” she said. “But I’m okay with that. I’m content with my life, and I don’t need him to say sorry. I don’t need him to ask for forgiveness, and I frankly wouldn’t believe in his request for forgiveness.”

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(BRUNSWICK, Ga.) — The murder trial of three white Georgia men charged in the 2020 killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man prosecutors allege was “hunted down” and shot to death while out for a Sunday jog, is set to begin on Friday with opening statements.

The evidence portion of the high-profile case will kick off around 9 a.m. in Glynn County Superior Court in Brunswick, Georgia.

“I do feel like we’re getting closer to justice for Ahmaud day by day,” Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, said in an interview scheduled to be broadcast Friday night on ABC’s Nightline.

The trial will begin under a cloud of controversy after a jury comprised of 11 white people and one Black person was selected on Wednesday, prompting an objection from prosecutors that the selection process, which took nearly three weeks, ended up racially biased.

On Thursday afternoon, one of the seated jurors, a white woman in her 40s or 50s, was dismissed from the panel for undisclosed medical issues. One of the alternate jurors, a white person, replaced her, bringing the number of alternates to three. All of the alternates are white.

The three defendants are Gregory McMichael, 65, a retired police officer; his son, Travis McMichael, 35; and their neighbor, William “Roddie” Bryan, 52.

The men have pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, aggravated assault and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.

The McMichaels and Bryan were also indicted on federal hate crime charges in April and have all pleaded not guilty.

Arbery was out jogging on Feb. 23, 2020, through the Satilla Shores neighborhood near Brunswick when he was killed.

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(RICHMOND, Va.) — For a month, FBI agents listened in as two members of a white supremacist group discussed their sinister plans: a plot to use a pro-gun rights rally in Richmond, Virginia, to engage in mass murder and attacks on critical infrastructure, which they believed would mark the start of a racial civil war.

Patrik Mathews, a former Canadian Army reservist illegally in the U.S., and Brian Lemley, a Maryland resident and self-described white nationalist, fantasized about the brutal murders they’d soon carry out against law enforcement and Black people, all with the goal of bringing about the “Boogaloo,” or the collapse of the U.S. government in order to prop up a white ethno-state, according to recordings of the pair’s discussions.

“We need to go back to the days of … decimating Blacks and getting rid of them where they stand,” Mathews said in one recording. “If you see a bunch of Blacks sitting on some corner you f***ing shoot them.”

“I need to claim my first victim,” Lemley said in another recording. “It’s just that we can’t live with ourselves if we don’t get somebody’s blood on our hands.”

The two men were each sentenced in late October to nine years in prison, and ABC News has now obtained newly released audio from the FBI’s secret recording of Mathews and Lemley at their Delaware residence in late 2019.

The tapes offer a chilling look into the private plotting of the two members of “The Base,” a white supremacist extremist group that the FBI says has, since 2018, recruited members both in the U.S. and abroad through a combination of online chat rooms, private meetings, and military-style training camps. In their plea agreements and at sentencing, Mathews and Lemley both acknowledged their membership in the group.

After the two men were arrested in January 2020, just days before the Richmond rally was set to take place, law enforcement found tactical gear, 1,500 rounds of ammunition, and packed cases of food and supplies in their residence.

In the course of their investigation they also found that Lemley and Mathews had both attended military-style training camps with other members of The Base, and had built a functioning assault rifle that they tested out at a gun range in Maryland.

The recordings captured by the FBI included Mathews and Lemley discussing potential acts of terror they could carry out around the Richmond rally that would lead authorities and, eventually, the U.S. government, to capitulate to the chaos and bloodshed taking place.

“You wanna create f***ing some instability while the Virginia situation is happening, make other things happen,” Mathews said. “Derail some rail lines … shut down the highways … shut down the rest of the roads … kick off the economic collapse of the U.S. within a week after the [Boogaloo] starts.”

“I mean, even if we don’t win, I would still be satisfied with a defeat of the system … and whatever was to come in its place would be preferable than what there is now,” Lemley said. “And if it’s not us, then you know what, we still did what we had to do.”

Prior to their sentencing, Mathews and Lemley had pleaded guilty to firearms and immigration violation-related charges. At their Oct. 28 sentencing hearing, U.S. district judge Theodore Chuang went above the sentencing guidelines in applying a terrorism enhancement to each charge, sentencing both men to nine years in federal prison.

FBI Director Christopher Wray testified earlier this year that the number of domestic terrorism investigations into white supremacist individuals and groups has tripled since he joined the bureau in 2017.

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(CHICAGO) — Protests erupted at McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago this week after a text exchange between the fast food giant’s chief executive and Mayor Lori Lightfoot seemed to blame the parents of two children who were recently shot to death in the city.

Lightfoot had visited McDonald’s headquarters and met with CEO Chris Kempczinski in April, the day after the fatal shooting of 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams, who died in a hail of bullets fired into her family’s car that was in a McDonald’s drive-thru lane. The child’s death came as the city was still mourning and outraged over the fatal shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo by a police officer.

In a text exchange recently made public, Kempczinski wrote to Lightfoot: “With both, the parents failed those kids, which I know is something you can’t say. Even harder to fix,” according to ABC Chicago station WLS-TV.

The comment sparked immediate backlash and accusations of racism and victim blaming.

Images shared to social media by the labor advocacy group Fight for 15 Chicago, which helped organize a protest on Wednesday, showed crowds of protestors descending on McDonald’s headquarters. Many of those marching were children.

“As the leader of the largest fast food corporation, Mr. Kempczinski has a responsibility to do much better for Black and Brown communities than add on to racist stereotypes,” Fight for 15 Chicago said in a Tweet.

Kempczinski acknowledged the text exchange in a note sent to McDonald’s U.S. corporate employees, which was viewed by ABC News.

“In the text exchange, I thanked Mayor Lightfoot for the visit and reflected on our conversation about the recent tragedies, commenting that ‘the parents failed those kids,'” the CEO wrote. “When I wrote this, I was thinking through my lens as a parent and reacted viscerally.”

“But I have not walked in the shoes of Adam’s or Jaslyn’s family and so many others who are facing a very different reality,” Kempczinski added. “Not taking the time to think about this from their viewpoint was wrong, and lacked the empathy and compassion I feel for these families. This is a lesson that I will carry with me.”

Kempczinksi lamented the “senseless surge in gun violence that is affecting so many children,” adding that, “it is also clear to me that everyone has a role to play.”

“Quite simply, it is on all of us to do better for the children of our communities,” the CEO stated, saying he was committed to working with civic leaders and elected officials to “understand what that means for McDonald’s.”

Lightfoot did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment Thursday, but a spokesperson for the mayor told told WLS-TV: “Victim shaming has no place in this conversation.”

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(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 750,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.

Just 68% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:

Nov 04, 8:45 am
Majority of US workers to fall under vaccine mandate on Jan. 4

Nearly 100 million U.S. workers will be required to get the COVID vaccine by Jan. 4, with some workers allowed to test weekly instead, under sweeping federal rules released Thursday by the Biden administration that identifies COVID-19 as an occupational hazard.

The regulations are aimed at health care workers and businesses with 100 or more employees, covering two-thirds of the nation’s workforce. Businesses that don’t comply could be fined $14,000 per infraction and hospitals could lose access to Medicare and Medicaid dollars.

Biden’s plan also gives federal contractors an extra month to comply, sliding a previous Dec. 8 deadline set by the administration. Federal workers are still required to be vaccinated by Nov. 22.

Nov 03, 3:11 pm
White House says central vaccine website will be live for kids on Friday

Vaccines.gov is not yet live with appointments for children, but White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients says the site will be up and running Friday.

“You need to get the vaccines to those sites,” he said at a Wednesday White House briefing. “Over the next 24 hours alone there will be millions more doses in the air and on trucks heading to cities and towns across the country. From Bar Harbor, Maine, to Anchorage, Alaska, to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Packing and shipping will continue over the weekend and into next week, with doses arriving at thousands of vaccination sites in every state, tribe and territory.”

CVS said it will offer the pediatric vaccine at “nearly 1,700” pharmacy locations across 46 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., beginning Nov. 7.

Parents can start scheduling CVS appointments online now.

Nov 03, 2:46 pm
Colorado now has its highest hospitalization rate since December

Health officials in Colorado are growing increasingly concerned as the state’s daily case rate has more than doubled in the last month.

Nearly 200 COVID-19 patients are being admitted to hospitals each day — the highest number of people seeking care since December 2020, according to federal data.

There are currently more than 1,300 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 across Colorado, the majority of whom — 80% — are unvaccinated, according to state data.

With the statewide hospital capacity falling under 10%, Gov. Jared Polis has signed a “particularly urgent” executive order that would permit the state’s health department to order hospitals to transfer or stop admitting patients after reaching or nearing capacity.

Federal data show just 61.7% of the state’s total population is fully vaccinated.

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(NEW YORK) — Weather globally and across the U.S. has grown increasingly violent, with Americans seeing a steady increase in tornado events since 1950. More than 900 tornadoes have been confirmed since Jan.1, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

However, Tornadoes are not the only severe weather event leaving behind a trail of destruction. Tropical storms and hurricanes also have been wreaking havoc, amassing billions of dollars in damages.  Since 1980, when NOAA began calculating overall damage costs, the U.S. has seen more than 300 extreme weather events rack up bills of over $1 billion each. Collectively, these events exceeded $ 2 trillion.

In 2020, there were 22 weather and climate disasters totaling $1 billion — a new record. This also marked the 10th consecutive year the nation had at least eight disasters with billion-dollar tabs.

Hurricane Ida slammed Louisiana in August, becoming just the third hurricane in history to make landfall in the state with winds of at least 150mph. Hurricane Laura in 2020, and the “Last Island” hurricane from 1856 are the other two. Costs from Ida are expected to surpass $64 billion, making it the second-most damaging hurricane in Louisiana, behind Hurricane Katrina.

According to Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards the most recent disasters could have been worse as a system of flood gates, pumps and levees costing more than $14 billion were put to the test, avoiding disastrous flooding similar to those caused by Katrina.

“Our levees really did perform extremely well,” he said, adding, “There were a few smaller levees that were overtopped… but they did not fail.”

Still, more than a million people in Louisiana were left without power, over 90 people killed across eight states, and the remnants of Ida crippled parts of the Northeast. New York City issued a flash food emergency for the first time in history, and Central Park saw a record 3.15 inches of rainfall in a single hour, according to the National Weather Service.

“You have to meet a $30 million threshold in order to qualify for the additional FEMA assistance. We shattered that number. We’re at least $50 million in damages,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said. “Because of climate change, unfortunately, this is something we’re going to have to deal with with great regularity.”

Texas was sent into a deep freeze in February after historically low temperatures and multiple severe winter storms swept through northwest, central, and eastern states, leading to a catastrophic power outage. Millions suffered with no heat or drinking water, and over 125 people were killed in Texas alone. NOAA reports this as the most costly U.S winter storm on record at more than $20 billion, eclipsing the “Storm of the Century” in 1993.

Memories of being left cold and in the dark are still fresh for those like Houston resident Michael Ashby, telling ABC News, “Our temperature in the house went from 80 degrees, all the way down to 45. So, we were just snuggled together, bundled up.”

The tornadoes, hurricanes and even Texas’ deep freeze share a common source according to Stanford University climate specialist Noah Diffenbaugh.

“The heat in the upper layers of the ocean is increasing. That’s providing more energy for storms. We are seeing not just stronger storms, but also this rapid intensification of storms,” Diffenbaugh said.

More than 530 people have died this year due to severe-weather events with a price tag of about $350 billion, according to government meteorologists.

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(MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.) — Minneapolis voters on Tuesday rejected a charter amendment that would have replaced the Minneapolis Police Department with a Department of Public Safety.

About 56% of voters voted “no” on the charter amendment, which was pitched as a “public health approach” to policing in response to the anti-police brutality movement of 2020.

Corenia Smith, campaign manager for Yes 4 Minneapolis, the group behind the charter proposal, released a statement on the proposal’s loss.

“This campaign began with working-class Black and brown residents marching together to demand a higher standard of public safety in the city,” Smith said. “It grew into a citywide movement that spanned race, income and neighborhoods, to give residents a say in their future and to advocate for the resources that they need.”

The amendment would have removed the police department from the city’s charter, removed the requirement to employ 1.7 officers for every 1,000 residents and would have replaced the police chief with a commissioner, who would be nominated by the mayor and approved by the city council.

Police reform has been a powder keg issue following the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. His death prompted national divisions over whether to “defund” policing systems across the country in order to change the way departments operate.

“While this is not the result that we hoped for, the story of our movement must be told,” Smith wrote.

Yes 4 Minneapolis collected over 22,000 signatures, knocked on over 100,000 doors, made almost 200,000 phone calls and sent 300,000 text messages to Minneapolis residents about expanding public safety in the city, according to Smith.

The movement, which also included the work of partnering organizations, faced several challenges, including a lawsuit by several Minneapolis residents who sued the city council for promoting a “misleading ballot question.”

Those residents claimed in the lawsuit that the council “approved an incomplete and misleading ballot question regarding an amendment to the City Charter that would eliminate the Minneapolis Police Department without any plan for replacing that department’s critical public safety functions.”

The proposal language was challenged several times and vetoed by Mayor Jacob Frey until the city council finally passed the official language that appeared on the ballot.

Frey, a member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, denounced the efforts.

“My primary reason for opposing this charter amendment comes down to accountability,” Frey previously said in a statement to ABC News. “If passed, this proposal will dilute accountability by diffusing responsibility for public safety across 14 policymakers. The result would likely leave voters — and the department — uncertain of who among the 13 council members and mayor’s office is actually directing, and responsible for, the department’s activity.”

Frey said he believes that a change in department leadership would lead to a major setback for “accountability and good governance.”

Smith claims the proposal was misrepresented throughout the campaign season by Frey and others who oppose the changes to policing.

“We spoke the truth, while the opposition, Democrats and Republicans alike, spread lies and mischaracterized our measure to create confusion, distrust and fear,” Smith alleged.

Some voters also said the charter change was confusing and lacked specifics and a clear message of how the transition would affect the city.

“I knew it wasn’t gonna pass,” said Tallaya Byers, a North Minneapolis resident who was in favor of the amendment. “There’s a lot of people that don’t understand. It was all confusing. People didn’t understand the plan behind replacing it with the Public Safety Department. So I knew that it was going to end up like that.”

Some voters say a lack of resident input helped lead the proposal to its downfall.

“[Voters] want to take an approach that is well thought out, well researched and includes the voices and perspectives of community members who are normally marginalized in our society,” said Minneapolis resident Nekima Levy Armstrong, who was against the charter amendment.

Teto Wilson, a North Minneapolis resident who was also against the charter amendment, said he rejected the amendment because it seemed “arbitrarily” put together and hopes the council works on a more thorough plan for the city in the upcoming legislative periods.

Leili Fatehi, the campaign manager of All of Mpls, an advocacy group against the charter, said she hopes Mayor Jacob Frey and the city council commit to addressing the issues of policing.

“Minneapolis voters have made clear that they want a planful approach to transforming policing and public safety in our city that includes meaningful consultation with the communities most impacted by violence and over-policing, and a real conversation about how to ensure every resident is protected from crime and from police brutality,” Fatehi said in a statement to ABC News.

Despite the loss, activists say that their efforts won’t stop, as roughly 43% of people voted “yes” for the charter amendment.

“Even though ballot question #2 wasn’t approved this year, we will continue to fight to expand what safety looks like for Black and brown communities,” Rashad Robinson, the spokesperson for Color of Change, said. “In doing so, we will challenge how our society views safety and the resources attached to addressing public safety, in hopes of providing a more just and equitable future for all.”

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(GLYNN COUNTY, Ga.) — A jury was impaneled on Wednesday to decide the fate of three white Georgia men accused of chasing down and killing Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who prosecutors allege was just out for a Sunday jog in 2020 when he was attacked.

Opening statements in the murder trial will likely begin Friday in Brunswick, Georgia, the judge said.

The jury panel in the Glynn County Superior Court case was picked after an arduous selection process that lasted nearly three weeks and started with a pool of 1,000 potential jurors. The 12 selected include 11 white people and one Black person, which caused an objection based on racial bias. Each juror was revisited and the court felt that it did seem there was discrimination, but was limited as to what could be done.

“This is the most complicated jury selection that I have ever been part of and that includes death penalty cases,” Kevin Gough, the attorney for defendant William “Roddie” Bryan, said during a court hearing Thursday morning.

The 16 jurors, including four alternates, were selected from a smaller pool of 64 qualified would-be candidates. All 16 jurors will be sworn in to hear evidence in the case.

Before the final stage of jury selection commenced, one of the potential jurors in the qualified pool was dismissed for cause after Gough alerted the court to a series of TikTok videos brought to his attention overnight of the 44-year-old woman performing what he described as a “dance tribute” to Arbery. Gough noted that at least one of the videos posted by the prospective juror included a heart emoji and the hashtag RunWithMaud.

“Clearly this juror has an emotional connection to Mr. Arbery,” Gough said.

The pool of 48 from which they were drawn included 36 whites and 12 African Americans, a makeup that is more in line with the population of Glynn County, which is 30% Black.

The three defendants are Gregory McMichael, 65, a retired police officer, his son, Travis McMichael, 35, and their neighbor, Bryan, 52.

The men have pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, aggravated assault and criminal attempt to commit false imprisonment.

The McMichaels and Bryan were also indicted on federal hate crime charges in April and have all pleaded not guilty.

Arbery was out jogging on Feb. 23, 2020, through the Satilla Shores neighborhood near Brunswick when he stopped and went into a house under construction, according to evidence presented at the preliminary hearing. A surveillance video showed Arbery, who lived in another neighborhood of Brunswick, inside the unsecured house looking around and leaving empty-handed.

Arbery continued running past the McMichaels’ home, where Gregory McMichael spotted him and believed he matched the description of a neighborhood burglary suspect, according to his lawyer.

Investigators allege that Gregory McMichael and his son armed themselves and chased after Arbery in a pickup truck bearing a vanity plate of a Confederate flag. Bryan allegedly joined the pursuit and, according to prosecutors, attempted to use his truck to block Arbery’s path.

Travis McMichael is also expected to claim self-defense, arguing the use of deadly force was justified when Arbery violently resisted a citizens’ arrest under a law that existed at the time. The pre-Civil War-era law that was repealed in May primarily due to the Arbery killing gave civilians the power to arrest someone they “reasonably suspected” of trying to escape from a felony.

Bryan recorded a cellphone video of the confrontation that partly caught Travis McMichael shooting Arbery during a struggle and is expected to be the key evidence prosecutors plan to present at trial.

Bryan’s lawyer claims he was just a witness to the incident, but prosecutors alleged he was an active participant. Prosecutors also allege that Bryan told investigators he overheard Travis McMichael yell a racial slur at Arbery as he lay dying in the street, an allegation the younger McMichael denies.

Since Arbery’s killing, the case has frequently been in the national spotlight as protesters took to the streets for weeks to demand the suspects be arrested and as two district attorneys recused themselves.

Former Brunswick District Attorney Jackie Johnson, the first prosecutor to get the case and who once had a working relationship with Gregory McMichael, was indicted in September on a felony count of violating her oath of office by allegedly “showing favor and affection” to Gregory McMichael and a misdemeanor count of hindering a law enforcement officer. Johnson, who lost a reelection bid in November 2020, has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

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