Gun Control

Let's face it, guns are a permanent fixture on the American landscape. Fortunately, most American voters believe that substantial responsibilities go hand in hand with the right of law-abiding citizens to own a gun. That includes the voters of New Jersey. Despite this, the debate about gun rights continues to paralyze the search for public-policy solutions to the real issue - gun violence and the guns that make their way into the hands of criminals or, sadly, adults and children who are so troubled that they take out their frustrations and despair on those around them.

"Trail of Blood" (June 6) was gun control rhetoric in the guise of news. The annual cost of "gun violence" (which according to the article is either $116 billion or $40 billion or $4 billion) will not be affected by an ammunition tax. "A bullet hit the side of . . . a single bullet traveling out of a handgun . . . bullets cause disease" - all as if the bullet decided to do these things. Inanimate objects cannot cause violence. Rodolfo decided to deal drugs. A customer decided to shoot him. Decisions are made by people.

WASHINGTON - Recalling the shooting of 20 first graders as the worst day of his presidency, President Obama pledged Sunday to put his "full weight" behind a legislative package next year aimed at containing gun violence. In an interview with NBC's Meet the Press , Obama voiced skepticism about proposals to put armed guards in schools in the aftermath of the deadly assault Dec. 14 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. In his boldest terms yet, he vowed to rally the American people behind an agenda to limit gun violence and said he supports increased background checks and bans on assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Searching for ways to reduce the tide of gun violence in Philadelphia, a panel of state lawmakers heard testimony today from an array of civic leaders at City Hall. Led by State Reps. Babette Josephs and Dwight Evans, members of the House Judiciary and Appropriations Committees held a forum that featured city, school and public-health officials. City Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller pointed to the need for legislation to ease the flow of guns into the city. She said Philadelphia needed to be able to draft its own guns laws, independently of state lawmakers in Harrisburg.

TUCSON, Ariz. - A campaign promising free shotguns for people in Tucson's most troubled neighborhoods 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 the city a symbol of gun violence in America. The nonprofit Armed Citizen Project is part of a national campaign to give shotguns to single women and homeowners in neighborhoods with high-crime rates. The effort comes amid a national debate on gun control after mass shootings in Arizona, Colorado, and Connecticut.

Just in case anyone out there is still interested in the facts about guns, here are some worth considering. The National Rifle Association, which is behind the nationwide, state-by- state effort to legalize carrying concealed weapons, is fond of citing statistics that show that after Florida passed such a law, the handgun homicide rate decreased in 1990 and 1991. Beware of NRA statistics; it picks and chooses, and its numbers can be misleading. Of the 13,220 people slain with handguns in America in 1992, only 264 were justifiable homicides by civilians.

I suppose you think I'm going to write another gun control column, don't you? You think the Arkansas killings - four children and a teacher dead at the hands of a pair of barely adolescent misfits - are going to send me off like a 10-cent rocket, that I'm going to roll around on the floor, wailing about the need to regulate firearms. You're wrong. The last time I wrote a column like that, hundreds - and I mean hundreds - of gun lovers wrote in to inform me of the error of my ways.

Eight years after John W. Hinckley Jr. shot him in the head, James Brady came to Capitol Hill in a wheelchair yesterday to chastise Congress for its failure to reduce "the handgun violence plaguing our nation. " "I have no choice but to be here today because too many members of Congress have been gutless on the issue," the press secretary to former President Ronald Reagan told a Senate subcommittee. "They have closed their eyes to tragedies like mine. They ignore the statistics.

JOHN AND JUDY PHELPS of North Carolina are marching for a cause. They were in Philly the last two days during a 300-mile trek from a firehouse near Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., to Washington, D.C., where they hope to talk gun control with their state's senators, Richard Burr and Kay Hagan. John Phelps said he founded a group called Gun Control Today and got the idea for the walk after last month's unsuccessful Senate vote on gun control left him in disbelief.

CHICAGO - President Obama's support for gun control has its roots in a hometown plagued by deadly shootings - a city, he said Friday, where as many children die from guns every four months as were slaughtered at Sandy Hook school in Connecticut. Obama told a Chicago audience that high-profile mass shootings were one part of a national tragedy created not just by guns, but by communities where there was too little hope. As a result, he said, "too many of our children are being taking away from us. " It was an emotional return to a city whose recent shooting victims have included Hadiya Pendleton, 15, a drum majorette gunned down a mile from Obama's Chicago home just days after she performed at the president's inauguration in Washington.