Home » CO Ceasefire News: White House Honors East High Grad, High Court to Hear Mexico Case

CO Ceasefire News: White House Honors East High Grad, High Court to Hear Mexico Case

White House Honors East High Grad for Gun Safety Work

Morgaine Wilkins-Dean, a 2024 graduate of Denver’s East High School, received an award Oct. 10 from First Lady Jill Biden for working to enact a policy requiring all DPS superintendents to regularly inform district families about Colorado’s safe storage laws and how to protect children from guns at home.

Wilkins-Dean was honored along with nine other young women at a “Girls Leading Change” event at the White House to mark the Oct. 11 International Day of the Girl. She worked with Denver School Board member Michelle Quattlebaum on the policy after experiencing three school shootings her junior year at East. She now is a freshman at Sacramento State University.

Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Mexico Case

On October 4th, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear a case brought by the Government of Mexico against a number of gun manufacturers. The Court will decide “whether the production and sale of firearms in the United States is the proximate cause of alleged injuries to the Mexican government stemming from violence committed by drug cartels in Mexico and whether the production and sale of firearms in the United States amounts to ‘aiding and abetting’ illegal firearms trafficking because firearms companies allegedly know that some of their products are unlawfully trafficked.”

Mexico sued seven gun manufacturers and one distributor in 2021, blaming them for rampant violence and gun trafficking from the US. Mexico has strict gun control laws that make it nearly impossible to purchase guns. The lawsuit says 70 to 90 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico come from the US.

Supremes Toss PA Emergency Carry Decision

In other High Court news, justices unanimously tossed out a decision allowing 18-year-olds to openly carry guns during emergencies in Pennsylvania, letting stand a ban on people aged 18 to 20 carrying guns in public during a declared state of emergency.

The case comes amid major shifts in the firearm legal landscape following the Court’s Bruen decision in 2022, which expanded gun rights. The high court said any firearm restrictions must have a strong basis in history. Pennsylvania officials argued that the tradition of limiting guns to people 21 and older dates back to the 1850s.

FBI, DEA Slammed for ‘Destroyed’ Parts Found in Ghost Guns

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration have been called out for failing to properly secure gun parts slated for destruction, some of which ended up in ghost guns.

An audit by the Justice Department Office of the Inspector General (PDF) said “We concluded that inadequate policies regarding the destruction of employee issued firearms create significant risks that firearms or their parts could be lost or stolen and used in subsequent crimes without accountability.”

The issue was discovered last year when an unidentified suspect was arrested with a “ghost gun,” which is typically made from kits that in the past didn’t require a background check or registration. As it investigated the case, the DEA realized that the barrel and slide came from a DEA gun that was to be destroyed in 2019. According to DEA records, the slide and barrel were part of a DEA employee-issued firearm that had been destroyed over three years earlier.

Both agencies say that they have tightened security and set up formal procedures for storing and destroying employee firearms. The FBI said it moved the unit that handles the guns to Alabama in 2021.

Researchers Study ERPO Law Impact

Researchers from the Injury & Violence Prevention Center and the Firearm Injury Prevention Initiative at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus are working to analyze how Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs) influence communities across Colorado, focusing on awareness, use, and perceptions of these “red flag” laws among Colorado’s law enforcement officers.

A recent study published in Preventative Medicine Reports, “Implementation of Extreme Risk Protection Orders in Colorado from 2020 to 2022: Firearm Relinquishment and Return and Petitioner Characteristics,” (PDF) examined how ERPOs are used and implemented. The study found that many cases lack detailed documentation regarding the type of firearms removed, where they are stored, and how they are returned to owners once an order expires. These findings show the need for better documentation practices that accurately track firearms and specify storage locations. Addressing these documentation gaps for firearm relinquishment can improve public trust in ERPOs and ensure they effectively reduce violence and injury.

Building on these findings, the research team wants to gather additional perspectives from members of law enforcement involved in the ERPO process. The Injury & Violence Prevention Center and Firearm Injury Prevention Initiative are working with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office and law enforcement agencies throughout Colorado to gather law enforcement perceptions, training needs, and limitations of implementing ERPOs. Survey data will help develop training materials for law enforcement officers.
Law enforcement officers interested in learning more or participating in the survey are encouraged to contact Christopher Knoepke at Christopher.Knoepke@cuanschutz.edu.

Book a GVP Presentation!

Colorado Ceasefire offers free workshops and presentations to spread awareness about gun violence prevention. Let us know if you would like us to come to your school, workplace, or community group to increase GVP awareness and safety. Presentation options include:

Youth workshops on Safe Storage, Safe2Tell, and Extreme Risk Protection Orders
History of Gun Violence and Laws in Colorado
Current State/Federal Laws & What More is Needed
Answering the Arguments of Gun Rights Activists
Safe Storage Saves Lives (English & Spanish)
Gun Violence as a Public Health Issue
Extreme Risk Protection Orders: What It Is, How It Works (English & Spanish)

Click here to learn more and request a free presentation in your community.

Register to Vote!

It’s time to make sure you are properly registered and ready to vote next month.. All Colorado voters who register at least eight days before Election Day will receive a mail ballot. You can also register to vote in person through Election Day if you prefer–but why not do it beforehand?
If you are receiving this newsletter, you probably already know what a critical time this is for gun violence prevention legislation at the federal, state and local levels. As we have seen from recent Supreme Court decisions, your vote for candidates who support common-sense gun laws—and spreading the word among people you know—is more important now than ever. Register to vote here.

We hope you find this newsletter valuable. If you are interested in the news you see here and want to get involved, please consider volunteering!

You may have received a fundraising email earlier this week in which we talked about our former intern Luna Saldana Lopez, who now works on the national level with Brady. If you don’t know her story, or would like to learn about the other great things Ceasefire Outreach does to spread the message, click here. We’d be grateful if you’d consider a donation!

And feel free to subscribe and pass this news along to anyone else you think may be interested, either as a link or by cutting and pasting into your own newsletter (if forwarding, please take out the ‘unsubscribe’ message at the bottom first!)–this is how the movement grows. And remember, when we fight, we win!