America's Complex Relationship with Guns: An In-Depth Look at the Attitudes and Experiences of U.S. Adults
"As a nation, the U.S. has a deep and enduring connection to guns. Integrated into the fabric of American society since the country’s earliest days, guns remain a point of pride for many Americans. Whether for hunting, sport shooting or personal protection, most gun owners count the right to bear arms as central to their freedom. At the same time, the results of gun-related violence have shaken the nation, and debates over gun policy remain sharply polarized.
 

A new Pew Research Center survey attempts to better understand the complex relationship Americans have with guns and how that relationship intersects with their policy views."

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As States Expand Gun Rights, the Police Object
"Guns in bars. Guns in airports. Guns in day care centers and sports arenas. Conservative state lawmakers around the country are pressing to weaken an array of gun regulations, in some cases greatly expanding where owners can carry their weapons.

But the legislators are encountering stiff opposition from what has been a trusted ally: law enforcement.

In more than a dozen states with traditions of robust support for gun ownership rights, and where legislatures have moved to relax gun laws during the past year, the local police have become increasingly vocal in denouncing the measures. They say the new laws expose officers to greater danger and prevent them from doing their jobs effectively."

Gun Deaths Outpaced Motor Vehicle Deaths in 12 States

May 29 - Gun deaths outpaced motor vehicle deaths in 12 states and the District of Columbia in 2010, the most recent year for which comprehensive state-level data is available, a new analysis from the Violence Policy Center (VPC) shows. Nationwide, improved safety standards have steadily reduced traffic fatalities over the past decade, while firearm deaths (homicides, suicides, and fatal unintentional shootings) continue unabated.

Nationally in 2010, there were 31,672 firearm deaths and 35,498 motor vehicle deaths, compared to 28,874 firearm deaths and 42,624 motor vehicle deaths in 1999. More than 90 percent of American households own a car while little more than a third of American households contain a gun.

In 2010, gun deaths (including gun suicides, homicides, and fatal unintentional shootings) outpaced motor vehicle deaths in: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, District of Columbia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, and Washington (see below for the mortality figures for each jurisdiction). Data is from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

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Mass Violence, Gun Control and the American Culture of Death

Monday’s bombings at the Boston Marathon took the lives of three people and injured at least 175, some critically. The blasts also threaten to take another casualty, postponing, if not entirely derailing, the Senate debate on gun control as right-wing opponents of firearm safety legislation rush to argue the folly of trying to stop violence with any type of legislative reform. 

The questions for progressives thus arise: Should we urge the Senate to proceed with the debate? Or should we condemn both chambers of Congress and the president for doing too little, too late to deal with the problem of mass violence, whatever its origin, and what some have termed the nation’s culture of death?
The answer is both, with an urgent emphasis on the latter. 

Let’s start by looking at the bright side. On April 11, by a margin of 68-31, the Senate voted to begin consideration of gun legislation, turning back a Republican filibuster threat and paving the way for the most significant congressional debate on gun policy since the expiration of the assault weapons ban in 2004. 

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At Least 4 People Were Accidentally Shot By Toddlers Since Last Weekend

All week, official Washington is fixated on the question of whether the 14 senators who’ve promised to filibuster any gun safety legislation will succeed in their efforts to maintain the status quo. Meanwhile, gun violence continues unabated in the rest of the nation. In a particularly tragic chapter in our nation’s struggle with such violence, at least four people — including two children — were seriously injured or killed since last weekend in accidental shootings where toddlers obtained loaded weapons:

• A Tennessee woman was shot in the stomach by her 2-year-old child on Sunday. Rekia Kid was sleeping with the toddler and her three-week-old baby when the toddler discovered a Glock 9 mm stored underneath her pillow and discharged the weapon. Kid managed to get out of the house and crawl to a neighbor’s porch where she was found by the neighbor, who told local news “[s]he just kept screaming that she didn’t think she was going to make it, she didn’t think she was going to make it and to please please take care of my children.”

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Armed citizen’ campaign in Arizona promises free shotguns for residents in crime-ridden neighbourhoods

— A campaign promising free shotguns for people to protect themselves in this Arizona city has divided some residents in a community still reeling from a shooting rampage in 2011 that killed six people, left a congresswoman and several others wounded, and made Tucson a symbol of gun violence in America.

The Armed Citizen Project is part of a national campaign to give shotguns to single women and homeowners in the nation’s crime-ridden neighbourhoods, an effort that comes amid a national debate on gun control after mass shootings in Arizona, Colorado and Connecticut.

While towns in Idaho, Utah, Virginia and Pennsylvania have debated ordinances recommending gun ownership, the gun giveaway effort appears to be the first of its kind.

“If you are not willing to protect the citizens of Tucson, someone is going to do it, why not me? Why not have armed citizens protecting themselves,” said Shaun McClusky, a real estate agent who plans to start handing out shotguns by May.

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12 Photos of Presidents Packing Heat

When they're not coming for yours, presidents love their guns. Below, photos of modern presidents enjoying their right to bear arms. (And scroll down for some bonus shots featuring Eleanor Roosevelt, Dick Cheney, and Joe Biden.)

A young Theodore Roosevelt, back when being into fringey gun stuff meant something entirely different, 1885.

Library of Congress

 

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Is gun control dead?

Monday marks five years since the massacre at Virginia Tech, where a mentally ill student, Seung Hui Cho, used two handguns he had bought legally to kill 32 people and wound 25 others. Other than a relatively minor law to improve the national database used for background checks, no significant gun-control legislation followed that tragedy.

Since then, there have been several mass shootings, including additional school rampages and the attempted assassination last year of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).Yet there remains little political will to reform this country’s flawed gun-safety rules — unless, of course, someone is proposing to make access to guns easier.

But if gun control is dead politically, it remains alive and well in the courts, despite a few high-profile Supreme Court rulings. For all the talk of America’s gun culture, we also have a gun-control culture. Gun control is as much a part of America’s DNA as the Second Amendment and the six-shooter.

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This is from a Washington Post editorial. Tom