Vox Sentences: “This is something we should politicize”

President Obama really doesn't want to give another speech after a mass shooting; a major Senate criminal-justice reform bill; and why DMV closures in Alabama could be a voter-suppression issue.

TOP NEWS

A shooting at Umpqua Community College

Mary Wilson/Getty Images

• A mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon killed at least 10 people and injured at least seven.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• The suspect, who's been identified as a 20-year-old male, died at the scene.

• One witness said the shooter asked people to stand and "state their religion" and then started firing.

  [NRToday / Ian Campbell]

• Another witness was tweeting from inside the building — prompting several reporters to ask to get in touch with her. This was treated as deeply offensive, but it's really the ugly nature of breaking news reporting.

  [Deadspin / Barry Petchesky]

• President Obama issued both a written statement and spoken remarks. The second is as angry as Obama publicly gets: "This is something we should politicize."

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• This summer, Obama told the BBC that his biggest frustration as President was Congress' failure to pass gun control legislation in the face of "repeated mass shootings."

  [BBC ]

• It might seem like mass shootings happen all the time now. But whether they're really getting more frequent depends on how you define "mass shooting."

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

Good news for federal criminal-justice reform?

Win McNamee/Getty Images

• Here's what you need to know about the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, the major, bipartisan criminal-justice reform bill introduced in the Senate today:

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• 1) The bill is a compromise — not just between Republicans and Democrats, but between supporters of criminal-justice reform and Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley (who's gone from staunch opposition to some form of support).

  [National Journal / Lauren Fox]

• 2) It doesn't eliminate mandatory minimum sentences, but it weakens them — not just for drug offenses, but also for people who had a gun on them when committing another crime.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• 3) It will not singlehandedly solve mass incarceration. Most prisoners are in state prisons, and the plurality of them are in for violent crimes.

  [Slate / Leon Neyfakh]

• 4) But the bill is not supposed to be a model for the states. The states are way ahead of the federal government on criminal-justice reform.

  [Pew Charitable Trusts / Adam Gelb]

• 5) The bill restores some power to judges, and theoretically takes it away from prosecutors. But there are plenty of ways that an aggressive prosecutor can still use mandatory minimums to coerce a defendant.

  [Simple Justice / Scott Greenfield]

• 6) There's a narrow window for the bill to pass. Congress probably won't want to take up a big bill in 2016, and there's a government shutdown fight to get through between now and then.

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

Shut out in the Black Belt

Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty

• The state of Alabama is closing down all but four DMVs throughout the state — leaving 29 counties without a place to get an ID.

  [WIAT]

• That happens to include every county where over 75 percent of residents are black.

  [AL.com / John Archibald]

• In a state where government-issued ID is required to vote — and which is overhauling its state IDs for early 2016 — that means a lot of black voters are going to need to travel a very long way to get the documentation they need to cast ballots.

  [AL.com / Kyle Whitmire]

• One of the most common criticisms of voter-ID laws is that black residents are less likely to have IDs to begin with. Some recent studies have estimated up to 20 percent of black registered voters don't have ID.

  [Government Accountability Office]

• It's also harder for such voters to get ID. 1.2 million black eligible voters live more than 10 miles from the nearest ID-issuing office (that's open more than 2 days a week).

  [Brennan Center for Justice / Keesha Gaskins and Sundeep Iyer]

• The federal government is currently arguing lawsuits against several voter-ID laws, including a particularly aggressive one in North Carolina.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• But Alabama pundit John Archibald thinks the DMV closures are practically an "invitation" for the DOJ to take on Alabama next.

  [AL.com / Kyle Whitmire]

MISCELLANEOUS

People without high school degrees are over four times likelier to die in car crashes than college grads. [Washington Post / Emily Badger and Christopher Ingraham]

• There is no such thing as a truly authentic politician — and that's fine.

  [NYT / Brendan Nyhan]

• Digital books should look dramatically different — dramatically better — than print books. They don't. What went wrong?

  [Aeon / Craig Mod]

• Under the 14th amendment, states that suppress voting can have House seats stripped from them. Why is that provision not being used?

  [The Nation / Richard Kreitner]

• If you ever want to REALLY get away, try Tristan da Cunha, the most isolated inhabited island on Earth.

  [Slate / Ella Morton]

VERBATIM

"When a friend from boot camp sent Lawton an email full of links to videos made by the Islamic State — the execution of James Foley, clips from the day ISIS executed 250 Syrian soldiers in the desert — Lawton looked up ‘'how to fight ISIS'’ on his lunch break." [NYT Mag / Jennifer Percy]

• "A hookup app recently told me that I have said ‘no’ to over 9,000 photos of other users."

  [Mesh / Zach Myers]

• " 50 Cent's power came through domination, through mercilessness. Jay recognized that power was also about symbolism and signaling."

  [Complex / David Drake]

• "The modern man has thought seriously about buying a shoehorn."

  [NYT / Brian Lombardi]

• "Another word of advice when you feel like shouting at your colleagues: Read Aristotle’s Ethics."

  [Chronicle of Higher Education / Jeff Erikson]

WATCH THIS

Ta Prohm’s haunting ruins are also a 1,000-year-old climate change warning [YouTube / Joe Posner]

Vox / Joe Posner