gun laws

COMMENTARY
(Getty Images)

Guns have changed everything, especially childhood

BY: - May 16, 2023

I learned to shoot on the family ranch, as ranch kids are wont to do. My gun education was furthered at a Catholic summer camp, and I still have my paper target proving my marksmanship. Hunter safety classes, and calm, clear-eyed common sense. This was the rural approach to guns I grew up with. Then […]

COMMENTARY
South Dakota's all-Republican congressional delegation, from left: Sen. John Thune, Rep. Dusty Johnson and Sen. Mike Rounds. (Photos courtesy of Thune/Johnson/Rounds offices; composite by South Dakota Searchlight)

South Dakota’s members of Congress are wasting their potential influence on gun violence

BY: - April 16, 2023

Whenever there is a mass shooting in the United States, it seems as if a memo goes out to Republican members of Congress so that they are all on the same page when asked about the prospect of reforming the country’s gun laws.  Sometimes they say they don’t want to politicize a tragedy, and other […]

South Dakota Chief Justice Steven Jensen gestures as he participates in oral arguments with other state Supreme Court justices on March 23, 2023, in Brookings. (David Bordewyk/South Dakota Newspaper Association)

Limits, application of South Dakota ‘stand your ground’ law debated before Supreme Court

BY: - March 24, 2023

BROOKINGS — In 2019, Minnesota native Ramon Deron Smith killed a man and wounded two others in a Sioux Falls parking lot during his first visit to the city.  He kept shooting as his targets fled across a busy urban thoroughfare. After doing so, he drove back to Minneapolis, shaved his head, ditched the vehicle […]