3-+Compulsory+Resources

=Compulsory Resources=

Displayed below are **__four articles__** and **__two videos__** that will serve to explain the gun laws in the United States and the event in Arizona.

=Why more gun control laws won't help prevent shootings like the one in Arizona =  =By: Dan Baum January 21 =

It's tempting, after a hideous event like the shooting in Tucson, to want to "do something" about gun violence. But let's pause to consider what that something could be, and what price we might pay for doing it.

Much has been made of Arizona's notoriously lax gun laws. But Arizona law was irrelevant to Jared Loughner's purchasing the gun. The background check is federal, and he passed it. Yes, his carrying concealed to the Safeway, without a permit, was legal under Arizona's new law, but if it hadn't been, would he have been dissuaded? He headed off to commit murder; he was already far over the line where a concealed-carry law would have made any difference to him.

As a liberal Democrat, I worry about the damage we might do by rushing toward a fresh raft of gun-control laws. It's very hard to demonstrate that most of them -- registration, waiting periods, one-gun-a-month laws, closing the gun-show loophole, large-capacity-magazine restrictions, assault-rifle bans -- have ever saved a life. It's a hard thing to accept, but in a country of 350 million privately owned guns, the people who are inclined to do bad things with guns will always be able to get them. One might as well combat air crashes by repealing gravity.

I'm not one for slinging statistics, because everybody can read into them what he wants to see. One, though, seems pretty hard to ignore: The rates of murder and other violent crime have dropped by about half in the past 20 years -- one piece of unalloyed good news out of the past two decades. During those same 20 years, gun ownership has gone way up, and gun laws have become far looser.

Gun guys are convinced there's a causal relationship -- they say that criminals become timid in the face of an armed citizenry. I think the crime drop has more to do with changing demographics and smarter policing. Either way, it is obvious that more guns and looser gun laws did not cause crime to rise. We on the left, who have an impulse toward ever tighter gun laws, need to look squarely at that. If what we want to do is reduce violent crime, perhaps we should continue what we're doing. While it may be true that nothing can be done to keep guns out of the wrong hands, it is plainly false that nothing can be done to reduce violence. Lots is being done, and quite successfully. It just doesn't involve restricting guns.

Gun control not only does no practical good, it actively causes harm. It may be hard to show that it saves lives, but it's easy to demonstrate that we've sacrificed a generation of progress on things like health care, women's rights, immigration reform, income fairness, and climate change because we keep messing with people's guns. I am researching a book on Americans' relationship to their guns, and keep meeting working-stiff gun guys -- people whose wages haven't risen since 1978 and should be natural Democrats -- who won't even listen to the blue team because they're convinced Democrats want to take away their guns. Misguided? Maybe. But that's democracy for you. It's helpful to think of gun control as akin to marijuana prohibition -- useless for almost everything except turning otherwise law-abiding people into criminals and fomenting cynicism and resentment. All the talk of a new large-magazine ban hits gun guys' ears like liberals using this disaster to trim back gun rights a little. It reinforces the toxic narrative that the Democrats are the enemy of regular guys, which is the last thing we need right now.

If, say, a ban on large-capacity magazines would actually do some good -- i.e. save some lives -- we could argue about whether it's worth taking some heat from the gun guys over it. But politics is a cost-benefit analysis -- what are you going to get vs. what you're going to lose. In this case, progressives have a tremendous amount to lose, and almost nothing to gain. As a nation, we have a lot of work to do on many fronts, and all of it is going to require cooperation. Let's not make the job harder, in our hour of grief, by blindly running toward new gun-control "solutions" that will do little if anything to prevent further tragedies.

= Gun control activists slam Arizona over Gabrielle Giffords shooting = = By [|SHIRA TOEPLITZ] | 1/8/11 10:34 PM EST Updated: 1/9/11 4:54 PM EST   = = = Gun control activists slammed Arizona for its gun laws Saturday, which allow almost any adult who can pass a federal background check to purchase a firearm.

Jared Lee Loughner, the alleged gunman in an incident that claimed the lives of six people and injured 13 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, legally purchased a semi-automatic pistol in the state, The Washington Post reported.

Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence told POLITICO that he hopes the incident will “start a discussion on what we can do to prevent these things from happening.”

“It’s a state that has very weak gun laws. It’s a state almost where they encourage people to carry guns with them,” Helmke said. “You’ve got a dangerous situation.”

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">Helmke said it is also a moment to review federal laws. The extended magazine the gunman used for extra bullets may have been illegal under the federal ban on assault weapons, which expired during the Bush administration, Helmke said.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">“This is clearly an illustration of why we must all work together to fight gun violence in America and keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of the wrong people,” said New York Rep. Carolyn McCarthy in a Saturday evening statement.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">McCarthy’s husband was killed and her son was wounded in 1993, when an unstable gunman opened fire at a Long Island commuter train, murdering six and injuring 19 others.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">“At some point, we need to ask the question: How did this man with this history of mental instability end up with this weapon?” Durbin said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">“How did he go through the process and end up with this gun and with this ammunition?”

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">Two senators disagreed Sunday.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">“I do think we need to responsibly enforce our existing gun laws,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) on “Fox News Sunday.” But he said that “we need to make sure we move to the challenges in front of us, getting people back to work,” dealing with the debt and deficit and Afghanistan.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">Asked if Arizona’s more lenient standards may need to be strengthened, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said, “No, I don’t think so.”

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">“Weapons don’t kill people; it’s the individual who kills people,” Paul said.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">In April, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed a law that allows citizens to carry a concealed gun without a permit, joining Alaska and Vermont as the only states with such a law.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">Advocates for the concealed weapon law say that it allows citizens to protect themselves when law enforcement is not around.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">Charles Heller, the founder of the Arizona Citizens Defense League, which pushed for the law used the Tucson shooting as an example, pointing out that law enforcement officers did not arrive until after members of the crowd tackled the gunman.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">“The reason the perpetrator was caught was because of rapid action of the citizen militia,” Heller said. “And it’s crucial, it’s vital, if a guy like that was to get loose and reload, it’s crucial to have armed people ready to defeat him.”

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">Heller’s group lobbied heavily for the law, which eliminated the required permit for a concealed weapon anywhere that a person can carry a gun openly, except for bars and restaurants.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">At the time the law was passed, Brewer released a statement, saying it “protects the Second Amendment rights of Arizona citizens.”

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">Brewer’s predecessor, two-term Democratic governor and now Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano vetoed several similar laws.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">This isn’t the first time in recent history that the state’s gun laws have garnered national attention. In 2009, national media took note when a man openly carried a semiautomatic rifle to a protest outside a speech by President Barack Obama in Phoenix.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">Heller also said he considered Giffords a friend. Giffords’s spokesman told a local newspaper in 2008 that Giffords owned a Glock handgun. However, the National Rifle Association’s political arm only awarded her a low grade of a “D+” on gun issues.

**<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 21pt;">Tucson Tragedy: Is Gun Control a Dead Issue? ** <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">By ** [|MICHAEL GRUNWALD] ** <span style="color: #999999; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;">Monday, Jan. 24, 2011

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">llustration by Thomas Miller for TIME; Gun: Getty Images <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">Like them or not, guns are as American as covered wagons and the infield-fly rule. The revolutionaries and pioneers who forged the nation and peopled its wilderness really did cling to their guns as tenaciously as they clung to their religion. And while modern cosmopolitans may be shocked by the gun violence in this country — the worst among wealthy nations by far — well, that's an American tradition too.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">Gun control is not. The mayhem in Tucson has revived a debate over America's gun culture that resurfaces every time some lunatic overexercises his right to bear arms. How could Jared Loughner be considered too dangerous to attend community college but not too dangerous to buy a Glock? Why are we allowed to pack heat at a Safeway when we can't pack shampoo in our carry-ons? Does the Second Amendment really protect our right to a magazine that holds 30 bullets? It's a necessary debate, but in the political arena, at least, the results are consistently lopsided. As National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre proclaimed two years ago, the guys with the guns make the rules.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">Arizona, with its Old West heritage, has been at the forefront of the gun-rights movement. Last year, it passed a law making it the third state — after predominantly rural Vermont and Alaska — to allow citizens to carry concealed weapons without a permit. Another law allows Arizonans to carry guns in bars, as long as they're not drinking. The vast majority of the state's politicians — including Loughner's primary target, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat and gun owner — are strong Second Amendment supporters. Congressman Trent Franks, a Republican and gun owner, points out that Arizona has a much lower gun-violence rate than Washington, D.C., which has much more restrictive gun laws. "Criminals always prefer unarmed victims," Franks says. There have been no reports out of Arizona of any credible push for new gun restrictions; in fact, several reports show citizens are flocking to gun shops to increase their firepower.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">Unfortunately, the gun-rights vision of well-armed citizens shooting down an outlaw like Loughner midrampage did not come true in this case. Nationally, less than 1% of all gun deaths involve self-defense; the rest are homicides, suicides and accidents. In a study of 23 high-income countries, the U.S. had 80% of the gun deaths, along with a gun homicide rate nearly 20 times higher than the rest of the sample. Still, the gun-control movement has gotten little political traction outside selected major cities, and all but three states have laws that invalidate local gun restrictions. According to the NRA, 25 states have adopted "your home is your castle" laws that give homeowners wide latitude to shoot people on their property without fear of prosecution, and only 10 states prohibit or severely restrict the carrying of firearms in public.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">In recent years, despite periodic spasms of attention after mass killings like those at Columbine and Virginia Tech, gun control has made no headway at the federal level either. It's telling that a progressive Chicago Democrat like President Obama — a longtime gun-control advocate whose election inspired fervent warnings about Big Government's confiscating firearms — has carefully avoided the topic in the White House. He even signed two laws that included provisions expanding gun access, one in national parks and one on Amtrak trains. If he objected to the provisions, he kept his objections to himself. A Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence report gave Obama an F for leadership on gun control. "We haven't seen a lot of political courage on this issue," says Brady Campaign president Paul Helmke, a former Republican mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind. "Republicans march in lockstep with the NRA, and Democrats are scared to death."

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">Modern gun politics can be traced to a brief flurry of federal restrictions set early in Bill Clinton's presidency. In 1993, Congress passed the Brady Bill, requiring licensed gun dealers to perform background checks to keep guns away from would-be buyers with felony records or histories of dangerous mental illness. And in 1994, Clinton's crime bill included a 10-year ban on many assault weapons and huge magazines, which seem to be designed more for gangbangers than sportsmen. But the Republican electoral sweep that November persuaded many Democrats that anti-gun stances were politically toxic in many swing districts and reflected a kind of elitist, wine-rack, city-slicker mentality that condescended to working-class, beer-track rural voters. It suggested an ignorance of values shared by millions of Americans who like guns for reasons that have nothing to do with economic insecurity and resent gun restrictions for reasons that have nothing to do with paranoia.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">On the Republican side, George W. Bush vowed to extend the assault-weapons ban in 2000 when he was running as a "compassionate conservative" and was keen to tailor his appeal to suburban moms. But he allowed the ban to expire in 2004 after shifting his focus to the GOP base. When Democrats took back Congress in 2006 — thanks in part to a new wave of pro-gun candidates like Giffords, who was recruited by a former Clinton aide turned Illinois Congressman named Rahm Emanuel — the ban did not return. Obama has made no effort to revive it, even though he talked about gun restrictions during the campaign; Attorney General Eric Holder, who called for renewing the ban early in 2009, swiftly walked it back, and the Administration's rhetoric since has echoed NRA talking points about enforcing gun laws already on the books.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">The NRA remains incredibly influential, but it isn't omnipotent. In 2008, it spent millions bashing Obama in several states, almost all of which he won anyway. In 2010, 27 NRA-endorsed Democrats lost, while all but two Democrats who had cosponsored gun-control legislation were re-elected. The NRA has been uncharacteristically muted since the massacre, merely offering condolences to the victims. And polling data suggest that Americans support at least some gun restrictions — requiring background checks for all gun sales, requiring a waiting period and limiting sales of assault weapons. Helmke hopes the attack on one of their own will finally galvanize members of Congress into action, if for nothing else than to reinstate the ban on magazines with over 10 rounds. If that law had been in place Jan. 8, Loughner might have gotten off 20 fewer shots.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">Still, it's never wise to bet against the NRA, especially now that Republicans control the House. The Second Amendment is pretty clear about the right to bear arms, although scholars argue about that "well-regulated militia" clause, and the Supreme Court has invalidated blanket handgun bans. Meanwhile, the NRA has done a brilliant job persuading some gun owners and many politicians that even modest restrictions represent ominous steps toward tyranny. But the court has suggested that less draconian gun regulations are perfectly constitutional, and some politicians have searched for middle ground on an issue dominated by macho hands-off-my-gun posturing and maudlin think-of-the-children appeals.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; line-height: 12pt;">One of those politicians is now recovering from head trauma at Tucson's University Medical Center. It has become well known that Giffords owns guns and that she filed a friend-of-the-court brief opposing a handgun ban in Washington. It is less well known that as a state legislator, she favored restrictions on guns in Arizona. Her NRA grade was a D. "She told me she believed in the Second Amendment," Helmke says, "but she also believed in being reasonable. Maybe now that it's personal, Congress will as well."

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; text-transform: uppercase;"> CASE STUDY = Supreme Court Gun Ruling: More Bark Than Bite? = By ** [|ADAM COHEN] **   Tuesday, Jun. 29, 2010 <span style="color: #999999; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">

A man holds a Colt .45 semiautomatic pistol in Manassas, Va. The Supreme Court struck down a Chicago handgun ban in a landmark ruling that limits state gun-control laws across the country KAREN BLEIER / AFP / Getty Images <span style="color: black; line-height: 15.75pt; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">This is a big week for guns and the people who want to carry them. The question: Just how big? <span style="color: black; line-height: 15.75pt; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">The Supreme Court ruled on Monday, June 28, in a challenge to Chicago's gun-control law, that Americans in all 50 states have a constitutional right to possess firearms for self-defense. Gun-rights supporters are ecstatic about the decision. The floodgates are now open for lawsuits challenging state and local gun-control laws nationwide. But based on what the majority actually said, it seems likely that many of these challenges will fail. <span style="color: black; line-height: 15.75pt; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">Though gun-rights groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA) have wielded power on Capitol Hill for decades, the legal battle over the constitutional right to possess a firearm heated up only two years ago. In a challenge to a tough gun-control law in Washington, D.C., the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Second Amendment gives people an individual right to bear arms. To many judicial observers and gun-control advocates, that came as something of a shock, since for more than 200 years, the overwhelming view in the legal world had been that the Second Amendment only protected a state's right to maintain a "well-regulated militia." <span style="color: black; line-height: 15.75pt; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">This week, the court answered a technical question about its 2008 ruling, concerning whether the federal right it recognized (the District of Columbia is on federal land) also applied to the 50 states. By another 5-4 vote, the court said it does. <span style="color: black; line-height: 15.75pt; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">While the court's five-member conservative majority has been bold about declaring a Second Amendment right to have a gun, it has been less than clear about which gun-control laws violate that right. In fact, the court did not actually strike down Chicago's law, which is effectively a near ban on the possession of handguns by private citizens. It simply asked a lower court to take another look at it. <span style="color: black; line-height: 15.75pt; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">In both the Chicago and D.C. cases, the Supreme Court focused narrowly on people's rights to use guns to protect themselves in their own homes. The court emphasized that it was not casting doubt on many kinds of gun regulations — including prohibitions on gun possession by felons and the mentally ill, laws keeping guns away from schools and government buildings and laws imposing restrictions like waiting periods on the sale of guns. <span style="color: black; line-height: 15.75pt; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">That still leaves a sizable gray area. As Justice Stephen Breyer noted in his dissent, the court has not given any real guidance on whether the right to be armed extends outside the house, whether it includes the right to use a semiautomatic weapon or what registration laws are permissible. <span style="color: black; line-height: 15.75pt; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">These are some of the issues lawyers will be fighting over. And despite all of the celebration by pro-gun forces, it is far from clear that they will win when the battle turns to specific gun-control measures. Perhaps that's why supporters of gun control were notably upbeat when the ruling came down. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence declared that it "does not prevent elected representatives from enacting commonsense gun laws." Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago said his city has already begun crafting a law that will withstand constitutional challenge — by, for instance, focusing it on gun registration, background checks, requirements for gun owners to get training and perhaps requirements to carry insurance. <span style="color: black; line-height: 15.75pt; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">The stakes in this battle are extremely high. Pro-gun advocates have done a good job of trumpeting the rights of people to carry firearms. But less attention is given these days to the right not to be put into danger by guns. More than 100,000 Americans are killed or injured by guns every year, according to the Brady Center. By some estimates, the Chicago gun-control law that is now in jeopardy has saved as many as 1,000 lives since it was enacted in the early 1980s. <span style="color: black; line-height: 15.75pt; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">Pro-gun groups try to create the impression that the vast majority of Americans support greater gun rights. But the will of the people has long favored some kind of gun control. A CBS–New York//Times// poll in April found that 40% of Americans thought gun-control laws should be more strict, while 42% thought they should be kept as they are. Just 16% said they should be less strict. All 50 states have gun regulations, and the Chicago and D.C. laws were enacted by democratically elected governments. <span style="color: black; line-height: 15.75pt; margin-bottom: 11.25pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">There is one more reason the impact of this week's ruling could be limited. The dissenting justices continued to question the thinking underlying the court's 2008 decision recognizing a constitutional right to carry guns. If one of the court's conservatives leaves and is replaced by a liberal, the Second Amendment could revert to what it was for more than two centuries: a right that belongs to states, not to individuals.

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