WJI's daily reads for Nov. 15, 2021

Gazette Extra: It cost the state more than $812,000 per girl last year to incarcerate juveniles at Copper Lake.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Judge dismisses gun charge against Kyle Rittenhouse.

Rittenhouse’s defense team had long battled to get the charge dismissed, arguing that the dimensions of Rittenhouse’s rifle fell within an exception in the law for 16- and 17-year-olds.

The Nation: Why public defenders are standing with the a gun rights group in court.

Despite the Second Amendment’s claimed protections—that have only expanded in the last 60 years—Black and brown men in New York, Chicago, and other localities around the country aren’t protected like white gun owners: We’re arrested, prosecuted, and warehoused in prisons. The questioning by Supreme Court Justices in the oral arguments underscores a major reason why: Guns in the hands of Black and brown people are seen as a threat to public safety, while in the hands of white gun owners they are viewed as an essential means of self-defense—a constitutional right. Embedded in the justices’ inquiries—full of racially coded language and myths about “high-crime areas” and “muggings”—was a false assumption that police keep communities safe and a dangerous distinction between “these people with illegal guns” (read: Black people living in cities) and “ordinary hardworking people” who have to commute home every night (read white people in the suburbs).

The New York Times: Ghost guns are fueling an epidemic of violence.

“People aren’t buying regular guns anymore,” said Antoine Towers, who works for an anti-violence program in Oakland. “Almost all the youngsters are using ghosts.”

Brian Muhammad, who works with at-risk young people in Stockton, said he recently asked a group of teenagers where they got their guns. “Did you drive to Vegas?” he asked, referring to Nevada’s looser gun laws. They looked at him as if he were crazy.

“Who would do that?” one of them replied. “You order them in pieces using your phone.”

AP via KUTV: Inside federal prisons, employees are committing crimes.

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