Doing the Gun Lobby's Bidding
Breaking news in our country is increasingly and all too often about a mass public shooting. Within the past nine weeks, we have heard about three such horrific incidents. First, the deadliest shooting in modern American history, which left 58 people dead and hundreds more wounded in Las Vegas. Next, in Sutherland Springs, Texas, a shooter murdered 26 people attending church services. And most recently, in Tehama, California, a shooter with a known history of violent behavior killed five people and injured 10 others after being unable to enter an elementary school that went into lockdown. (click the title to read more)
How High Is Our Capacity For Carnage?
When the gunfire that was spraying the parking lot of a grocery store in Tucson momentarily stopped, an injured woman sprang into action – grabbing a magazine that the perpetrator had just dropped in an attempt to reload. He had already emptied his first magazine. It held 33 bullets. But he couldn't continue his deadly spree, because the moment of pause provided just enough time to thwart him. This heroic effort almost certainly saved lives, and it could've saved more if the first magazine had been smaller. (click the title to read more)
Conceal Carry Permits Could Be Valid Across State Lines
The bill, which the National Rifle Association has called its top legislative priority, would treat concealed carry permits more like drivers licenses, authorizing gun owners to travel with their firearms to other states that allow concealed carry. They say the measure would help otherwise law-abiding gun owners to avoid unwittingly violating conflicting state laws. (click the title to read more)
Background Checks Skyrocket on Black Friday
The FBI received its highest number of background check requests in a single day on Nov. 24 — Black Friday, the big post-Thanksgiving shopping day. The agency reported its National Instant Criminal Background Check System received 203,086 requests, according to USA Today. This beat the previous single-day record of 185,713 requests reported, also on Black Friday, in 2016. (click the title to read more)
What Parents Should Know About Guns
In the United States, the third overall leading cause of death of children ages 17 or younger is firearm-related injuries, and the majority of these unintentional deaths occur in the home. Considering more than 90 percent of all gun-related deaths in high-income countries in the world occur in the U.S., and 1 in 3 homes have guns in them, it is imperative parents understand how to approach gun safety for their children. (click the title to read more)
Trump Mixes Up Wrong Shooting
Late Tuesday, the president tweeted his condolences to the victims – except he referred to the deadly incident that occurred at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Nov. 5, with no mention of California. (click the title to read more)
AR-15 Popularity
They're lightweight, relatively cheap and extremely lethal, inspired by Nazi infantrymen on the Eastern Front during World War II. They're so user-friendly some retailers recommend them for children, yet their design is so aggressive one marketer compared them to carrying a "man card" -- although ladies who dare can get theirs in pink. (click the title to read more)
Bulletproof Backpack Inserts
Florida Christian School, a K-12 nondenominational private school, distributes an order form for the $120 ballistic panel on its website. The insert, which reportedly weighs less than a book, can be slipped into a backpack as a security tool, the school's head of security told The Miami Herald. (click the title to read more)
Pain In A Place of Prayer
At least 26 people died and 20 were injured Sunday in a mass shooting at First Baptist Church in the rural town of Sutherland Springs, Texas. A man dressed in black and wearing a ballistic vest opened fire on parishioners during a Sunday morning worship service and fled the scene in his car after engaging with an armed resident outside the church. Following a car chase, police found the gunman, identified as 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley, dead in his vehicle. (click the title to read more)
College Carry Permits
In a spring 2017 U.S. News survey, 103 colleges and universities reported that they allow students to carry firearms in some capacity. Forty have concealed carry policies, meaning eligible students can possess handguns across most of campus if the weapons are hidden from view. The other schools have more restrictive policies. (click the title to read more)
Cub Scout Kicked Out Over Gun Control
"I was shocked that you co-sponsored a bill to allow domestic violence offenders to continue to own a gun," Ames said, according to a video posted to YouTube by his mother, Lori Mayfield. "Why on earth would you want someone who beats their wife to have access to a gun?" (click the title to read more)
Post Vegas Lawsuit
The lawsuit, filed by Paige Gasper, accuses MGM Resorts International, which owns the venue where the festival was held, and the Mandalay Bay hotel, where Paddock opened fire from an upper-floor suite, should have done more to stop him from spraying gunfire on a crowd of thousands attending a country-music festival below. It also questions why hotel staff at the Mandalay Bay didn't notice Paddock's behavior leading up to the shooting, and accuses the resort of failing to respond to the shooting of security guard Jesus Campos, who went to Paddock's suite not long before the shooting began, in a timely manner. (click the title to read more)
No More Complicity In Gun Violence
By now, we're all familiar with the predictable steps of this sick routine. Everyone expresses shock and horror and sends their thoughts and prayers. Most Republicans usually stop there, unless there's a way they can pivot to another issue, such as mental illness or international terrorism. Many Democrats will renew calls for Congress to strengthen gun laws that could save the lives of innocent Americans. And Republicans respond with a faux outrage that anyone would "politicize" a tragedy so soon after it occurred. Repeat, ad nauseam. (click the title to read more)
Ban The 'Bump Stock'
It's possible, just possible, that the Las Vegas shootings horror might lead to some progress on gun safety. According to press reports, congressional Republicans are open to banning "bump stocks," gun conversion kits that allow semiautomatic weapons to operate more like automatic ones; this sort of device allowed Stephen Paddock to rake the Route 91 Harvest Festival attendees with so many bullets. "Clearly that's something we need to look into," House Speaker Paul Ryan told conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt Thursday, for example. (click the title to read more)
New Approach to Gun Deaths
Our reaction is always shock and sorrow – followed almost immediately by the same predictable partisan debate on guns. I fervently believe that electing more centrist independents can help break through this paralyzing tribalism. What exactly would a centrist gun policy look like? Is it possible for a handful of pragmatic lawmakers in the political middle to break through the gridlock on an issue as emotional as gun violence? (click the title to read more)
How Dangerous People Get Guns In The U.S.
The fact is that, even leaving aside the assault in Las Vegas and terrorist attacks like the one in San Bernardino, California, in 2015, gun violence is becoming almost routine in many American neighborhoods. The U.S. homicide rate increased more than 20 percent from 2014 to 2016, while last year's 3.4 percent rise in the violent crime rate was the largest single-year gain in 25 years. (click the title to read more)
Follow Australia With Gun Control?
Advocates have used the statistic in an effort to urge Americans to support greater gun regulation in the wake of the Oct. 1 shooting in Las Vegas that marks the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Authorities said 64-year-old Stephen Paddock of Mesquite, Nevada, opened fire into a crowd gathered there for the the Route 91 Harvest Festival, a three-day country music festival scheduled to end Sunday. At least 59 people died and more than 500 others were wounded. Authorities reported that weapons, including AR-15-style assault rifles, were found in his hotel room. (click the title to read more)
House To Vote on Gun Silencer Legislation
The House is poised to pass legislation legalizing the use of gun silencers as early as this week, a move that critics say could make it more difficult to identify where gunshots are coming from during a mass shooting like the one that took place in Las Vegas Sunday night. (click the title to read more)
Trump Team Deploys Additional Feds to Chicago
President Donald Trump has followed through on his January threat to "send in the feds" to Chicago, deploying additional agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to help combat the city's gun violence. (click the title to read more)
Gun Regulations By State
From 2014 to 2015, the United States experienced its largest annual increase in firearm deaths over the past 35 years, a 7.8 percent upturn in a single year. In 45 of the 50 states the rate of overall deaths from firearms increased and the firearm homicide rate rose in every state except West Virginia. (click the title to read more)
Firing Back At The Gun Lobby
When Maryland lawmakers banned assault weapons after the Sandy Hook tragedy, they had to know it would come under a fierce legal challenge from the gun lobby. They made a bet that the country was ready to accept bolder solutions to our gun violence epidemic. And this month they prevailed, winning an important victory in court. That victory has important lessons for a nation beset by catastrophic rates of gun violence. (click the title to read more)
Breaking Free of the NRA
When we look back at this election season, we will no doubt remember it as the one that broke all the political rules. The reasons for that characterization are too varied to recite, but there's one more historians should add to the list: 2016 is the year that the politics changed on guns. (click the title to read more)
3D Printing Weapons
Following the recent mass shooting in Orlando, and the shootings in Minnesota and Dallas, the sharp political divisions over gun control within the U.S. are once again on display. In June, House Democrats even staged a sit-in to advocate for stronger laws. (click the title to read more)
Domestic Abusers Losing Gun Rights
In a 6-2 ruling that brought together the left and right wings of the court, the justices ruled that a federal law that prohibits anyone convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence from buying a gun also extends to attackers found guilty of "reckless" behavior – not just those whose attacks were intentional. (click the title to read more)
AR-15 For Civilians
"Our father, Eugene Stoner, designed the AR-15 and subsequent M-16 as a military weapon to give our soldiers an advantage over the AK-47," Stoner's family told NBC NewsWednesday. "He died long before any mass shootings occurred. But, we do think he would have been horrified and sickened as anyone, if not more by these events." (click the link to read more)
No-Fly No-Buy
The massacre at a gay nightclub that left at least 50 people dead on Sunday morning has reignited the debate in Congress over legislation that would prevent people on the federal terrorist no-fly list from purchasing firearms. (click the title to read more)
Company Creates Gun That Looks Like A Cellphone
Sometimes you want to carry your gun in peace, but people keep drawing attention to your piece. This very issue plagued Kirk Kjellberg, the creator of Ideal Conceal, a gun that folds up to look like a smartphone. "A boy spotted me in [a] restaurant and said loudly, 'Mommy, Mommy, that guy's got a gun!' And then pretty much the whole restaurant stared at me," Kjellberg told NBC News. He developed Ideal Conceal to avoid those awkward situations. (click the title to read more)
Apple Resist Order to Unlock Encrypted Iphone
Apple is opposing a court order issued at the behest of the FBI to unlock an encrypted iPhone 5c used by the shooter who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, in December, beginning a showdown likely to fuel the political controversy surrounding privacy software. (click the title to read more)
Is Gun Violence A Public Health Issue
The gun-control debate in the aftermath of a mass shooting is a stark reminder of the deeply held beliefs in the U.S. about firearms and access to them. Some members of the medical community, however, have been trying for years to broaden those conversations to include, not just arguments about the Constitution or political ideologies, but a discussion about the toll gun violence takes on public health. Their goal: to work to reduce incidents of gun violence in the same way as campaigns that targeted polio, smoking-related cancer or car accidents. (click the title to read more)
'Backdoor' Bullet Ban
The bureau wants to make it illegal to manufacture and sell – but not possess – SS109 and M855 “green tip” cartridges, which are used by the rifles popular for self-defense and pleasure shooting. (click the title to read more)