Up First from NPR - Supreme Court Scuttles Bump Stock Ban, Ukraine Peace Summit, Latest on Bird Flu

Episode Date: June 15, 2024

The U.S. Supreme Court of Friday tossed out a ban on bump stocks - modifications that make semi-automatic rifles work more like machine guns. Also Ukraine is hosting a peace summit in Switzerland, but some key players, including Russia, will not be there. Plus, a series of new reports released this week tell us more about the bird flu is speading through cattle in the U.S..Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the federal ban on bump stocks. That's a gun modification that was banned in 2018, a year after a gunman using bump stocks killed 58 people in just 11 minutes in Las Vegas. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. And I'm Lauren Frayer. This is Up First from NPR News. Bump stocks allow semi-automatic weapons to fire much faster like machine guns. And they are now legal again. We'll tell you what that means for gun owners and gun control advocates. Also, Switzerland is hosting a Ukraine peace summit, but two key players, Russia and China, won't be there. We'll tell you who will be there and what they can realistically accomplish.

And more cattle are getting infected with the bird flu. But it looks like humans are a factor in spreading the virus. We'll tell you more. Stay with us. We have the news you need to start your weekend. Now, Our Change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to Our Change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future.

Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a ban on bump stocks, basically attachments that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire hundreds of rounds per minute. Bump stocks were banned under then-President Donald Trump in 2018. But after this Supreme Court decision, Americans who live in states that don't ban them, and that's most states, can once again modify their guns to fire at machine gun speeds. NPR's Martin Kossi has followed this story for the past few years. Hey, Martin. Good morning, Danielle.

All right. So first, explain what a bump stock is for those who don't know. So picture a semi-automatic rifle. Now, when you shoot it, it recoils. And what the bump stock does is it kind of captures that motion and fires the gun for you over and over again by sort of capturing that bouncing action when it's up against your shoulder. You're holding your finger on the trigger and it's kind of moving the gun around the trigger. And so what basically happens is the trigger is moving very fast, but you're not doing it. The gun is doing it. You basically spray a lot of bullets really fast. The gun is hard to aim, but some people apparently seem to enjoy just sort of spraying a lot of bullets down range really fast. But also bump stocks were used in

that 2017 Las Vegas massacre, right? Right. That was really a turning point for bump stocks. It was a horrible situation where this man set up in a high hotel room window looking down over a music festival and he used rifles with bump stocks to just send a torrent of bullets kind of indiscriminately down into this crowd, quickly killing 58 people at the time, wounding more than 400. And that's the incident that moved the Trump administration to ban these devices. So now the Supreme Court has overturned that ban. What is their reasoning for that? Well, it's about legal semantics, the technical definition of a machine gun. Federal law says a machine gun is something that fires multiple rounds with, quote, a single function of the trigger.

Note that's not a pull of the trigger. It's a function of the trigger. And with a bump stock, the trigger is moving around a lot. It's just you pull it once, but the trigger is moving as the gun moves. That, the court says, is enough of a difference that the ATF was wrong to call a bump stock a machine gun as defined by the law. So how much of an effect will this have on how people use guns in America? Do we know that right now? Well, this is a ruling about regulations. It's not about the Second Amendment. So this ruling does not stop the states from banning bump stocks. More than a dozen states do, and those bans should stay in place.

The court has said that Congress could step in here and amend the law to expand the definition of machine gun to include bump stocks. It should also be noted that besides that horrific example in Las Vegas, bump stocks aren't appearing a lot in criminal acts. Of the roughly half million or so of these that have reportedly been sold before the ban, most of them are used on gun ranges or out in the woods by people who just burn up a lot of ammo. The vast majority of murders with guns in this country are committed by people with handguns, not rifles with bump stocks. But there is a device on the handguns that people should probably be more worried about. The police certainly are, and those are Glock switches or

auto sears. That's another device that modifies handguns and lets them shoot very fast. Those have become a growing problem in cities, but this ruling does not overturn any restrictions on those. Now, I'm curious about gun control advocates. How are they reacting to this ruling? In a broad sense, they don't like the fact that the court was so willing to throw out this ban based on this narrow technical rationale. They're also kind of spooked by the fact that the court seems to be intent on limiting the powers of agencies to interpret laws when definitions are imprecise. They're worried that that could affect things like the limitations on ghost guns. Those are those untraceable guns without serial numbers that are sometimes made

from kits. The ATF sees them as illegal right now, but some gun safety people think that that could be at risk here now with this ruling by the Supreme Court. That's NPR's Martin Kassi. Martin, thank you so much. You're welcome. Even as its war with Russia is well into its third year, Ukraine has organized a summit focused on future peace talks. It's being held in Switzerland, and Russia did not get an invite. Another absence, China, a key Russian ally. It's not sending a representative either, but at least 90 countries will be there, including the U.S., represented by Vice President Kamala Harris. For more on this, we turn to NPR Ukraine correspondent Joanna Kakisis,

who is in western Ukraine right now. Good morning, Joanna. Good morning, Danielle. So what is Ukraine hoping will come out of the summit? So Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky wants leverage for future peace negotiations. And to get that leverage, Zelensky must convince as many countries as possible to back Ukraine's plan for peace. Now, this plan has 10 conditions, including the withdrawal of all Russian forces from Ukrainian

territory and the prosecution of Russia for war crimes. But this weekend, Ukraine is focusing on points that have the most global consensus, things like food security, nuclear safety, and the return of thousands of Ukrainian children deported to Russia from occupied territories. This summit does come at a time when Zelensky can point to some diplomatic wins. The U.S. and Ukraine just signed an important 10-year bilateral security agreement on the sidelines of the G7 on Thursday. And at the G7, Ukraine was also promised a loan of about $50 billion. This loan will be securitized through the use of profits from interest on Russian assets that were frozen by Western nations. Well, now, as we mentioned, Russia was not invited to this summit. So how is the Kremlin reacting to all this? Well, the Kremlin has

dismissed Ukraine's summit as pointless. And on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered his own terms for peace. He wants Ukraine to give up four regions partially occupied by Russia and to drop its NATO bid. Of course, Ukraine immediately rejected this offer. Zelensky told an Italian television network that Putin looks weak. He understands that most of the world is on the side of Ukraine, on the side of life. Zelensky wants Ukraine to look strong, and so he's pressed world leaders to attend this summit in person. The leaders of European powers like France, Germany and Britain will be there. But Zelensky was disappointed that President Biden sent Vice President Kamala Harris instead. Now, in addition, China will not be attending this summit, as we mentioned.

What does it look like for Ukraine to set a foundation for peace without China and countries like India, which have remained neutral? Yes, Danielle, indeed, Ukraine needs China, a global powerhouse that uses Russian oil and supplies goods to Russia's manufacturing base. Earlier this month, Zelensky even accused China of pressuring countries to avoid the summit. But Southeast Asian nations like the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, they will be attending. Meanwhile, India is sending a representative and another neutral country, Brazil, is attending as an observer. Now you are in Ukraine right now. What's the mood there as this conference unfolds? Well, you know, the war is well into its third year and Ukrainians are downbeat. I'm in western Ukraine right now, where draft age men try to cross a river into Romania

to escape conscription into the military. And locals here told me they're losing faith in the government and in the West. And in eastern Ukraine, on the front line, it's a grinding battle for both sides, though Russia is making incremental gains. That's NPR's Joanna Kakisis in western Ukraine. Thank you, Joanna. You're welcome. A flurry of new reports out this week are giving a clearer picture of how the bird flu is spreading among dairy cows. Cases have been documented in about a dozen states with new infections popping up. A few humans have been infected with the virus as well, which has some people worried about another pandemic. We have NPR's Will Stone with us now to tell us more. Good morning, Will.

Hey there. So what did we learn from these latest reports? Well, we got a better sense of how bird flu is spreading between different dairy farms. The virus has been detected in more than 90 herds in a dozen states since late March. Many of these cases were in Michigan. The USDA drilled down into what's happening there. They found it's mainly being transmitted from herd to herd in three ways. So first, through shared equipment and vehicles. Second, people are carrying the virus inadvertently on their clothing or boots. And finally, some animals that are

infected are moving between farms. There had been concern that wild birds could be repeatedly reintroducing the virus into dairy cattle. So far, federal officials say the evidence does not support that. Based on genetic sequencing of viral samples, it appears there was a single spillover event when a wild bird spreaded into cattle in Texas sometime last year, and that sparked this unprecedented nationwide outbreak in dairy cattle. Right. Well, and beyond animals, though, I know a few humans have contracted this flu, which has some folks concerned about this sparking a pandemic. Do we have any better sense of the risk to people here? So right now, federal health officials say the risk to the general public remains low. If you work with dairy cattle, obviously the risk level is higher.

There still have only been three human cases reported. The most recent one was in a Michigan dairy worker. That was more concerning because the person actually had respiratory symptoms. I asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week whether there were any alarming mutations in the samples of the virus they collected from that person. Here's what Dr. Nirav Shah with the CDC told me. We didn't see any signs in the virus's fingerprints that suggest that it's more able to transmit between humans or from animals to humans. So clearly that is reassuring, but without a doubt, there are people in public health who

are deeply worried about the situation and the fact that we don't have more visibility around this outbreak. Are there unknowns that have public health officials concerned? There's a lot. For starters, exactly how many cattle are infected right now, we don't know. I asked the CDC if we even have some sense of the trajectory here. Have we hit the peak of cases in cattle? The answer was also, we don't know. Andrew Pekosz brought up another big concern when I spoke to him, which is better surveillance on the human side of things. Pekosz is a virologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. That's really the critical thing that we're now worried about is if this virus gets into humans,

then the virus can adapt to humans directly. This has been going on long enough so that there should be antibody signatures in the blood of people who have gotten exposed, and that would really give us a sense of how much low-level exposure, perhaps mild disease, has been in this population. So basically, figuring out how many cases we might have missed by looking for evidence of a past infection, that can help us gauge the overall risk to humans. Pekosz says it still seems that within a herd, the virus is primarily spreading in the process of milking. It could be the virus just keeps doing that and doesn't end up adapting to spread from human to human if we can keep it from infecting other people. But that's optimistic and not something we can bank on.

That's NPR health correspondent Will Stone. Thanks, Will. Thank you. And that's Up First for Saturday, June 15th, 2024. I'm Lauren Freyer. And I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. Michael Radcliffe produced today's episode with help from Andrew Craig and Samantha Balaban. Danny Hensel was the director. Michael Radcliffe produced today's episode with help from Andrew Craig and Samantha Balaban. Danny Hensel was the director. It was edited by Dee Parvez, Nick Spicer, Scott Hensley, Catherine Fox, and Gigi Duban. Our technical director is Hannah Glovna, with engineering support from Nisha Hynas, Tom Marquito, and Arthur Laurent.

Evie Stone is our senior supervising editor. Sarah Oliver is our executive producer. Jim Kane is our deputy managing editor. Tomorrow on the Sunday Story podcast, comedian Roy Wood Jr. has a new podcast, looking at a storied baseball field in Alabama and how it tells the story of the civil rights movement. And you can listen to more news, interviews, sports all weekend long on your NPR station. Even some game shows. This is the weekend after all. To find your station, go to stations.npr.org.