July 29, 2025 ❧ Faulty Guns Kill; SCOTUS Has Robe Rage; and Yes, Bret, It Is A Genocide

Plus: The latest on the genetically engineered mosquitoes protecting birds, missionaries using spyware to convert indigenous Brazilians, and voting dogs! 

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AROUND THE STATES

❧ DEEP DIVE: Guns don’t kill people, SIG Sauer kills people. 

When gun-related tragedy strikes, the gun lobby and their supporters have a familiar response: blame mental illness, video games, criminals, and anything else that doesn’t have a trigger. But SIG Sauer, one of the U.S.’s largest gun manufacturers, can’t use this approach—because their guns are firing without anybody pulling the trigger. 

Oh great, a new way to get shot in America. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

SIG Sauer has sold 2.5 million P320 Pistols. A variant of the gun is a standard issue sidearm for the U.S. military and is used by more than a thousand law enforcement agencies. But the gun lacks key safety features. All but one of the versions branded for civilian use do not have an external safety preventing the trigger from being pulled. Worse, the internal safety mechanisms, which users cannot access, can be disabled if the trigger is depressed by as little as the width of a nickel. Normally, pulling a trigger both cocks the gun and initiates a firing mechanism, but in the P320 the firing mechanism is always cocked. It’s the equivalent of a bow that is always pulled back in tension, where the slightest twitch can release an arrow.

A Florida cop’s gun discharged while in its holster in a school cafeteria. Florida’s law giving teachers the right to have guns in classrooms went into effect the next day. (Image: Pasco County Sheriff's Office)

More than 100 people have reported being shot by the gun without the trigger being pulled, and at least two were killed. The Air Force this week paused the use of a military version of the gun after a serviceman was killed by an unintentional discharge. Police departments nationwide are returning the guns after officers get shot. (In a move sure to make their communities safer, some departments are reselling the faulty guns to unknowing civilians.) 

SIG Sauer’s response to their handiwork has been pathetic. Before signing its deal with SIG Sauer to purchase millions of P320s, the Army found that the gun would fire when dropped at certain angles. SIG Sauer upgraded the guns it ultimately sent to the military, but did not upgrade the guns sold to civilians, and they did not inform civilians about the risk of unintended fire. Perhaps the most moral thing the company did was launch a voluntary program where gun owners can upgrade their P320s for free, but upgraded guns can still fire without warning. 

The government can issue recalls for lapel pins and cat food, but not guns. A 1972 law written by an NRA board member makes guns exempt from US consumer safety law. Perhaps SIG Sauer took inspiration from that legislative exemption when it sought to address its safety issues. Earlier this year, the company convinced ($$$) the New Hampshire legislature to pass a law preventing consumers from suing SIG Sauer over the P320’s design flaws. SIG Sauer is based in New Hampshire, and the company argued that its business would suffer if it were held responsible under liability laws that apply to every other product made in New Hampshire. State Representative Terry Roy was convinced by their argument: “Do you want people to be able to sue car manufacturers because they sell cars that don’t have air conditioning?” 

Juries, however, have been unconvinced by Roy’s sentiments. In Pennsylvania, a jury awarded $11 million to an army veteran whose P320 shot him while he was walking down a flight of stairs. A Georgia jury gave more than $2 million to a man who was shot in the leg while he was taking the gun out of its holster. But SIG Sauer is now trying to leverage the New Hampshirian law to prevent other victims from holding them accountable. 

Multiple lawsuits involving more than 80 people injured by the gun have been filed since early 2022, but SIG Sauer’s lawyers argue that the law, even though it exempts “any claim that has been fully adjudicated, settled, or dismissed,” protects the company from the then-pending cases. No judge has yet ruled on their argument, but we can only hope they aren’t as lenient on the company as the legislative branch.

In Other News:

❧ Hawaii is being besieged by beneficial mosquitos. Scientists have created a species of mosquito that doesn’t bite, can’t reproduce, and fights extinction. Mosquitos are not native to the islands, and avian malaria has decimated native bird populations. But by dropping thousands of genetically engineered mosquitoes across the state, scientists hope to control the mosquito population.

❧ ICE Officers are joking about arresting U.S. citizens. This week, an 18-year-old US citizen named Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio recorded his arrest by ICE agents. The video is chilling. Officers threw him and his friends to the ground, despite them not resisting. One officer told him, “you’ve got no rights here. You’re a migo, brother.” (Sneer in original.)

Current Affairs Vol. 6, Issue 33, by Aidan Y-M

❧ Coke to sell more Coke. Coke announced that the company would release a line of their signature drink sweetened with cane sugar. Currently, the red cans of our dreams are sweetened with patriotic high-fructose corn syrup. That won’t change – grocery stores will just now have another type of Coke among the ranks of Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Plus, Coke Zero, Coke Quebec Maple, and Coke Durian. (Only one of those is made up.) Writers in need of an afternoon pick-me-up were disappointed by Coke’s decision not to also reinstate their lines of soda flavored with cocaine.

❧ Trump is suing more journalists. Trump sued the Wall Street Journal and individual journalists after the outlet reported that Trump had given Jeffrey Epstein a birthday card featuring a drawn image of a naked woman. The card also featured an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein, wherein Trump wrote “We have certain things in common, Jeffrey… enigmas never age.” For legal reasons, we at the News Briefing note that whenever we refer to Donald Trump, we are referring to the hypothetical Donald Trump who became president of hypothetical America, because this timeline cannot be real.

Current Affairs Vol. 8, Issue 45, by Mort Todd

BAD TAKE OF THE WEEK / AROUND THE WORLD

❧ Bret Stephens doesn’t know what genocide is. ❧

What did we do to the New York Times to deserve this? On a lovely Saturday afternoon, we got a push notification—a push notification—for Bret Stephens’ argument that Israel cannot be committing genocide because they have not killed enough people. He starts by noting that “this sounds harsh” (no shit), but if Israel really were committing genocide, the IDF has the ability to kill hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. They haven’t, he claims; ergo, no genocide. 

First, let us rebut this in good faith. Why has Israel “only” killed more people than the Uyghur, Rohingya, and Srebrenica genocides combined? For one thing, the reported death toll is likely a massive undercount. A 2024 study in the Lancet estimated that the Gaza Health Ministry’s figures likely undercounted casualties by 40 percent, and the first independent survey of deaths found significantly higher casualties than the GHM reported. Even putting aside the deaths we don’t know about, the 60,000 corpses we have counted are not a feat of military restraint. Just this week Stephens’ own employer reported that the IDF had no evidence that Hamas stole aid from the UN, which was the supposed justification for throwing Gaza into mass starvation. 

But there’s more. The legal definition of genocide, and the one Stephens cites in his piece, requires one of five acts committed “with intent to destroy” a group. One of those five acts is mass murder; the others are not. Stephens doesn’t mention that “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a group’s destruction” can also constitute genocide, as can mass injury, kidnapping of children, and mass sterilization. Add back in the inconvenient parts of the definition and Stephens’ argument collapses. Israel has admitted to, no, boasted about making Gaza unlivable. The point, per Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, is to destroy Palestinians by destroying Palestine: “Gaza will be entirely destroyed” That is genocidal intent, expressed by a cabinet member. 

Current Affairs Vol. 5, Issue 23, by Mattie Lubchansky

Now for the fun part of the analysis: let us rebut this in less-good faith. Last week was a bad one for Israel. Aside from the reveal that there was no basis to starve millions of people, two major European countries announced their intent to recognize Palestinian statehood, and for the first time, two major Israeli human rights groups accused the country of genocide. So how to defend the Times’ favorite ethnostate? Obfuscation. 

Stephens agrees at the end of the piece that “the war in Gaza should be brought to an end in a way that ensures it is never repeated.” But does he dedicate his precious column to, I don’t know, advocating for an end to the war? He does the opposite—providing ideological cover for continuing the violence (it’s not that bad, guys), while slipping in a call to end the war at the end, after any use has been wrung out of his 700 words. Rhetorically pausing killing, while in reality extending it. It’s the kind of skillful argumentation that could only be written by a guy named Bret.

If you must read it…here’s a link. And as an antidote to that link, here’s human rights lawyer Qasim Rashid’s much longer debunking of Stephens, point-by-point. 

In Other News:

❧ France will recognize Palestinian statehood. Emmanuel Macron has announced that he plans to join the vast majority of the world in recognizing the State of Palestine. The support of France, the largest western power to recognize Palestine, is enormous on the global stage. But the news is bittersweet for Palestinians, who may have to suffer through French mannerisms. 

❧ The IDF attacked an Amazon union organizer. When Chris Smalls, the Amazon organizer famous for successfully leading a Staten Island union drive, arrived near the coast of Gaza alongside 20 activists being food aid, they were all arrested. But only Smalls, the sole Black man on the boat, was singled out and assaulted—seven IDF agents “choked him and kicked him, leaving visible signs of violence on his neck and back,” according to the organization Smalls sailed with. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien has yet to comment on Smalls’ treatment, despite Smalls’ Amazon union being a Teamsters affiliate. O’Brien has, however, found time to promote his interviews with Tucker Carlson and Vivek Ramaswamy.

Current Affairs Vol. 8, Issue 45, by Aidan Y-M

❧ Missionaries are using hidden audio devices to convert indigenous Brazilians. Some Christian groups have placed solar-powered devices reciting Bible verses among isolated indigenous communities in Western Brazil in an effort to convert them. Brazilian law prohibits contacting indigenous groups for conversions, but aggressive Baptist ministries are not afraid to aggressively recruit uncontacted tribes. Their techniques, while technologically adept, are not necessary—if you truly want to show the world the beauty of God’s creations, one need only forward this News Briefing to their friends and family.

❧ British age restrictions silence speech. Recent age verification laws in the UK are stifling speech online. Anyone using social media in the UK has their viewable content restricted to certain “age-appropriate” materials until they submit government-issued IDs or facial scans to platforms, although much of the blocked material is obviously not pornographic or inappropriate in nature. Already, “UK users of X have been blocked from viewing footage of an anti-asylum protest, a tweet calling for single-sex spaces and a video of a speech in parliament,” per Spiked, along with Goya’s Saturn Devouring his Son and trivia about the life of Richard the Lionheart. Spiked is a right-leaning website—note the complaint about “single-sex spaces,” a nod to transphobia—but they’re right here, and even lefties like Owen Jones agree. Leave it to Sir Keir Starmer to enact a policy everyone hates.

ROBE RAGE

Last week, we wrote about our writer’s deeply personal struggle confronting the Supreme Court’s shadow docket. (The Supreme Court can issue nationwide rulings with no written justification, but we can’t expense lunch without a receipt? Bullshit.) The shadow docket—formally called the emergency docket—was intended for the Court to give expedited decisions on emergency procedural matters that could not wait for a full suite of briefings. We say “was” because the Trump administration is now using the shadow docket to have the Supreme Court endorse non-emergency executive actions before lower courts can declare them unconstitutional. 

For this inaugural Robe Rage session, we’re quantifying how much the Supreme Court is in Trump’s bag. The answer: A lot. 

In his first 20 weeks in office, Trump filed 19 emergency applications asking the Supreme Court to prevent lower court losses from going into effect. For reference, Biden filed 19 over four years in office; Bush and Obama filed eight over their total 16 years in office. Of the 14 cases decided before the end of June, the Supreme Court took Trump's side in 12. (Some cases were consolidated from others, and some cases involved multiple emergency applications.) A 12-2 record makes Trump the winningest DC sports team in 40 years. 

This is bad for many reasons, least of all that the Court is endorsing Trump’s agenda. But this is also causing chaos for lower courts. The Supreme Court has taken up the habit of expecting lower courts to treat shadow docket decisions as precedent, guiding how courts should rule on similar cases. But when the Court issues a ruling with no rationale, there’s no way for lower courts to decide what is or is not similar! It turns judges into mind-readers, expected to divine whatever rationale Clarence Thomas refuses to say aloud. But if judges could read minds, one would have given us lucky lotto numbers by now.

CANINE FACT OF THE WEEK

Even wild dogs can be more democratic than the Trump administration. Research by scientists affiliated with Brown University found that African wild dogs vote by sneezing to decide when to hunt. But it’s not a perfect democracy. When popular dogs initiate a rally, they need about three sneezes to begin a hunt. Less popular dogs need 10 sneezes. Like the electoral college. Sneezes aside, researchers noted that the dogs live in a “despotically driven social system.” Rough.

Dog, if you want to come, just lmk and I’ll holla achoo. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Writing and research by Grady Martin. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson and Alex Skopic. Header graphic by Cali Traina Blume. This news briefing is a product of Current Affairs Magazine. Subscribe to our gorgeous and informative print edition here, and our delightful podcast here.

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