May 13, 2013
At least five Pennsylvania state-owned universities are now allowing guns on campus after the state's lawyers concluded that an outright ban on weapons was likely unconstitutional.
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May 13, 2013
A state senator is concerned about the possibility of someone creating a gun from a 3-D printer.
Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) wants regulations that would possibly track the printers and who has access to them, though he’s not sure how he wants the legislation to work.
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May 10, 2013
A state Senate committee today advanced six bills aimed at reducing gun violence — but not before Democrats made a flurry of changes to appease critics who claimed they didn’t go far enough.
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May 10, 2013
Reps. Jim Townsend of Royal Oak, Vicki Barnett of Farmington Hills and Andy Schor of Lansing announced the legislation Thursday.One of the measures would expand the current permit-to-purchase process for pistols to all guns. Townsend says his legislation would require residents buying any kind of gun to get a permit from local law enforcement and pass a background check. That process currently only applies to pistols.
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May 10, 2013
Illinois State Police say they’re trying to deal with a huge backlog of applications for Firearms Owner Identification cards.The agency received more than 28,000 applications for cards during April alone.That’s on top of an existing backlog of nearly 76,000 applications. The state police say they are dealing with a record number of applications.
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May 9, 2013
A House panel has approved legislation that would greatly curtail when veterans deemed mentally incompetent are reported to the FBI's background check system.
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May 9, 2013
The legislation signed Wednesday is the first bill in a package of gun control measures proposed by Markell after the Connecticut school shooting in December to be enacted into law.
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May 9, 2013
A New Jersey Senate committee is set to consider several gun control bills, but a limit on the number of bullets allowed in ammunition magazines is not among the measures due to be discussed.
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May 8, 2013
The state's top gun advocacy group says membership has soared in recent months.The Gun Owners Action League of Massachusetts said that it has surpassed 16,000 members in the state. The group said it has added about 3,000 members since January.
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May 8, 2013
Oregon Senate President Peter Courtney blocked four gun control bills from coming to the Senate floor to avoid what appeared to be a certain defeat for them.
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May 8, 2013
Even as President Barack Obama works with legislators in Washington to revive efforts to enact stricter federal gun control legislation, local politicians have filed seven pro gun bills in an effort to pass even more permissive state gun laws.
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May 8, 2013
It's honestly a strange time for politicians to push ever tighter restrictions on gun controls. Even if you're the sort of person who thinks that everybody's personal liberty should be restricted if somebody, somewhere, misbehaves, a report released today by the Bureau of Justice Statistics makes it apparent that crimes committed with firearms continue their steady, two decade decline. In terms of specific policy, the recent focus on restricting "assault weapons" makes no sense in an environment in which the preferred weapon for committing those diminishing crimes is the handgun. And the recent obsession with extending background checks on people making legal gun purchases is a true head scratcher, since most criminals don't buy their guns legally, with fewer than one percent acquiring their weapons at much demonized gun shows.
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May 8, 2013
Gun crime has plunged in the United States since its peak in the middle of the 1990s, including gun killings, assaults, robberies and other crimes, two new studies of government data show.Yet few Americans are aware of the dramatic drop, and more than half believe gun crime has risen, according to a newly released survey by the Pew Research Center.
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May 8, 2013
The debate over gun control is coming back to the Senate earlier than expected.Sen. Tom Coburn (R Okla.) intends to file a pair of firearms related amendments to the Water Resources Development Act that the Senate began considering on Tuesday afternoon.One amendment would repeal a gun prohibition on land under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineers. The other would require annual reports from federal agencies on ammunition and gun purchases as well as firearm thefts, excepting some national security arms of government.
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May 8, 2013
National rates of gun homicide and other violent gun crimes are strikingly lower now than during their peak in the mid-1990s, paralleling a general decline in violent crime, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data.
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May 8, 2013
A Missouri House committee has advanced a proposed constitutional amendment aimed at protecting gun rights.The amendment approved on Tuesday would define the right to bear arms as "unalienable" and require the state to defend against any "infringement" of that right. It would also include defending one's "family" with a firearm as a guaranteed constitutional right.
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May 7, 2013
It's May, and for most seniors in high school, thoughts turn to final exams, getting a date for the prom and graduation. For David Cole Withrow, an 18 year old senior at Princeton High School in Princeton, N.C., his final days will be spent dealing with a suspension, an arrest record and a felony charge in criminal court.Mr. Withrow, who goes by "Cole," is not a criminal. He's an Eagle Scout and an honor student. He has a college scholarship, and he has been accepted at both Campbell University and East Carolina University. So far, so good.Mr. Withrow arrived at Princeton High on April 29 just as he would on any other school day -- until he realized that he inadvertently left a pair of unloaded shotguns in his pickup, secured there after he went skeet shooting the day before.
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May 7, 2013
Four gun control bills have hit a wall in the Oregon Legislature.Senate President Peter Courtney said Monday the bills won't get a vote on the Senate floor because there isn't enough support for them to pass.
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May 7, 2013
A late amendment to a bill mandating universal background checks for gun purchases in Nevada has given the effort renewed life in the state Legislature.
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May 7, 2013
The Texas House of Representatives on Monday gave final approval to a proposal to allow concealed handgun license holders to carry guns into buildings on college campuses.The proposal, which was approved on a vote of 102 41, would allow public colleges and universities to opt out of allowing guns in buildings after consulting with students, faculty and staff. Private colleges and universities could opt in.
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May 7, 2013
The Republican led House on Monday night tentatively approved a bill that would expand where concealed weapon permit holders can carry or store their pistols, while lengthening penalties for crimes committed with a gun.
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May 7, 2013
One of the principal sponsors of defeated gun background check legislation says he isn't giving up on getting a bill passed.
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May 7, 2013
It's only been a few weeks since the Senate struck down a measure aimed at expanding background checks for gun buyers, but Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D Nev., says his party is already a "couple" votes closer to the support needed to approve the legislation.Reid, speaking in an interview with the Las Vegas Review Journal, was optimistic that the Senate would ultimately be able to pass the so called Manchin Toomey amendment, a bipartisan compromise that was hammered out after weeks of negotiations, and which fell five votes short of passage in last month's vote."Joe Manchin called me yesterday," Reid said, according to a video posted on the Huffington Post. "He thinks he has a couple more votes."
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May 6, 2013
Some North Carolina lawmakers want to give concealed weapon permit holders more places to carry or store their pistols.
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May 6, 2013
The U.S. Supreme Court is giving Illinois' attorney general more time to decide whether to appeal a ruling that the state's ban on the public possession of firearms is unconstitutional.
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May 6, 2013
Behind the scenes dealing over reviving stalled gun control legislation will get a push next week when Sen. Joe Manchin, a strong proponent of expanding background checks, plans to meet individually with lawmakers, a Senate source tells CNN.
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May 6, 2013
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has invited Vice President Biden to debate him on gun control.The invitation came during Cruz's speech Friday in Houston at the annual National Rifle Association convention."I would like to issue an invitation to the vice president," Cruz told the crowd. "I would like to invite the vice president to engage in an hour long conversation and debate: 'How do we stop crime?'
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May 6, 2013
The gun control debate is one of the most dishonest arguments we have in American politics. It is dishonest in its particulars, of course, but it is in an important sense dishonest in general: The United States does not suffer from an inflated rate of homicides perpetrated with guns; it suffers from an inflated rate of homicides. The argument about gun control is at its root a way to put conservatives on the defensive about liberal failures, from schools that do not teach to police departments that do not police and criminal justice systems that do not bring criminals to justice. The gun control debate is an exercise in changing the subject.
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May 6, 2013
President Barack Obama and national media are demonizing law abiding gun owners in the wake of recent violent acts, National Rifle Association leaders and political allies said on Friday at its first convention since the Connecticut school massacre."Our freedom is under attack like never before," Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, said during a leadership forum. "When a deranged criminal murders innocent children, they blame us."
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May 6, 2013
In speech after speech at the National Rifle Association's annual convention here this weekend, its top leaders and political allies blasted President Obama and other gun control advocates, warned against "all out, historic attacks" on the constitutional right to possess firearms, and issued a rallying cry to members to become a political force in next year's midterm elections and the 2016 presidential race.
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May 3, 2013
By close votes Thursday, a legislative committee supported expanding mandatory background checks on gun show purchases and rejected a proposal to allow Mainers to carry a concealed weapon without a permit.
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May 3, 2013
The Delaware Senate narrowly passed amended legislation Thursday that would require gun owners to call police if they lost or had their weapon stolen.
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May 3, 2013
Vice President Joe Biden is planning a new gun control offensive -- one he told a group of law enforcement officials he hasn't informed President Barack Obama about yet.
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May 3, 2013
President Obama vowed Thursday during a press conference in Mexico City that the White House would continue pushing for an expansion of background checks to cover firearms purchases online and at gun shows.
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May 3, 2013
Fresh off a huge victory over President Barack Obama on gun control, the message from the National Rifle Association is clear: The fight has just begun.
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May 3, 2013
The Alabama House has approved a bill that allows gun owners to carry a pistol in their vehicle. The House voted 74-27 to pass the legislation. It now goes back to the Senate to approve changes made to the legislation in the House.
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May 2, 2013
The National Rifle Association opens its annual convention Friday in gun friendly Houston, fresh off its success last month in blocking a congressional bid to expand background checks for firearms purchases.For the NRA's leadership, however, the three days of meetings, banquets and exhibits at the George R. Brown Convention Center will be anything but a victory celebration.
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May 2, 2013
Young people have helped push the gay marriage issue to the forefront, with so many voters 30 and under supporting marriage equality that Republicans have been forced to accept -- or at least re examine -- the matter. Sticking to an anti gay rights agenda could cost the GOP votes down the road, and many Republicans are wisely seeing that on a purely political basis, things need to change.The same trend, however, is not mirrored on the matter of gun control. According to a recent study by Harvard University's Institute of Politics, voters aged 18 29 are not clamoring for more gun control, even after the tragedies in Colorado and at Sandy Hook elementary school.
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May 2, 2013
Gun control legislation that would ban the sale of high capacity ammunition magazines is headed to the full House for consideration following a 3 2 House committee vote Wednesday.
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May 2, 2013
House Speaker Paul Thissen decided Wednesday that the Minnesota House won't vote on any gun control bills this year, a major priority for many Democrats coming into the legislative session but one that got stymied by divisions in the party over access to guns.
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