Index d'articles mis à jour le 28 Septembre 2013

Guns, the NRA - 01➫ 01. Ten Crazy Gun Laws Introduced Since Newtown - Mother Jones, 15.03.2013

➫ 02. Comment la NRA a monopolisé le débat sur les armes aux Etats-Unis, Le Monde, 09.01.2013

➫ 03. USA : 300 millions d'armes à feu, 30 000 morts par an - Le Monde, 08.01.2013

➫ 04. BATTLEGROUND AMERICA - The New Yorker, 23.04.2012

➫ 05. Une ex-élue du Congrès, survivante d'une fusillade, s'attaque aux armes, Le Monde,

➫ 06. Giffords and Kelly: Fighting gun violence - USA Today, 08.01.2013

➫ 07. Fusillade du Connecticut : le frère du tireur présumé a été arrêté - Libération, 14.12.2012

➫ 08. Report: States Restoring Gun Rights to Very Scary People - Mother Jones, 14.11.2011

➫ 09. More Guns, More Mass Shootings—Coincidence ? (1) - Mother Jones, 26.09.2012

➫ 10. More Guns, More Mass Shootings—Coincidence ? (2) - Mother Jones, 26.09.2012

➫ 11. How the NRA and Its Allies Helped Spread a Radical Gun Law Nationwide - Mother Jones, 07.06.2013

➫ 12. STUDY: Gun Violence Hospitalizations Cost Over $600 Million In 2010 Alone - Think Progress, 13.09.2013

➫ 13. Justifiable Homicides Up 200 Percent in Florida Post-Stand Your Ground - Mother Jones, 16.09.2013

➫ 14. More Guns, More Mass Shootings—Coincidence? - Mother Jones, 15.09.2013

➫ 15. Americans Are More Likely To Blame Mental Health Issues, Not Easy Access To Guns, For Mass Shootings - Think Progress, 20.09.2013

➫ 16. NRA Tried To Stifle Study Showing Gun Retailers Support Background Checks - Think Progress, 27.09.2013

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POLITICAL MOJO—By Gavin Aronsen and Deanna PanFri Mar. 15, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

01 . Ten C razy Gun Laws Introduced Since Newtown

Nomad_Soul/Shutterstock

In the wake of the Newtown massacre in December, lawmakers in nearly every state in the nation have introduced gun legislation, either to strengthen gun controls or push back against them. There has also been a flurry of activity in local jurisdictions. Some of the proposals fall into the category of reasonable policy ideas, while others just seem to fire wildly, in both political directions. Here are 10 of them:

Glocks and gimlets: Allowing guns in bars has become something of a trend lately. A bill introduced in South Carolina would legalize concealed carry in bars and void the current law punishing the same with a fine of up to $2,000 or three years in jail. Gun owners would be required to remain sober, but the prospect of patrons packing heat in places where alcohol and attitudes mix remains worrisome, especially as self-defense laws grow increasingly lax. Another bill awaiting approval from the state senate in Georgia would allow guns in bars and churches.

K-12 teachers packing heat: Never mind that recently armed guards in schools have forgotten their guns in restrooms and fired them by mistake: Lawmakers in at least six states have pushed bills since Newtown to allow K-12 teachers to carry guns. A few school districts around the country already allow teachers to carry them; in early March, South Dakota became the first state to sign into law a bill explicitly giving all its teachers the right to do so.

Aiming for an A+ in target practice: In January, state Sen. Lee Bright (R) introduced a bill in South Carolina that would create an elective high school class on gun safety and the 2nd Amendment taught by police officers. The class would meet at a local gun range and let students fire away. One high school junior said she thought the law could make her school safer (even though students would only use the guns off-campus), but told the local news station, "Just getting [guns] into the hands of certain students, that could potentially harm others."

Anger management classes for ammo buyers: Florida state Sen. Audrey Gibson (D) recently proposed a law that would outlaw the sale of ammunition to anyone in the state who hasn't completed at least two hours of anger management training, regardless of prior history. Gibson said the bill was inspired by a teenager shot to death during an argument over loud music, and she just wanted ammo buyers to be "introspective." Her detractors have called the bill unconstitutional and an "insult" to gun owners.

Felony charges for guns that fire more than one round: Gun enthusiasts got worked up about New York's new assault weapons ban limiting magazines to seven rounds—the strictest in the nation—but consider this: Connecticut state Sen. Edward Meyer (D), a gun-control advocate who also made news recently for wielding a BB gun in a church, proposed a bill in January that would make it

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a class C felony to own any gun made to fire more than a single round. The bill hasn't gone anywhere, but if Meyer's intentions were to rile up the right, he succeeded.

Busting business owners for banning guns: A bill introduced in January by Colorado state Sen. Kent Lambert (R) would require businesses open to the public to either allow concealed carry permit holders to bring their guns inside or hire armed security officers (1 for every 50 customers). If a business fails to comply and violence on the premises ensues, the business would be held liable for any injuries or deaths that might've hypothetically been prevented by an armed citizen. "There's a responsibility for businesses to provide some security when they have asked people not to defend themselves," Lambert told KOAA News 5.

Felony charges for introducing gun-control legislation: Last month, Missouri state Rep. Mike Leara (R) introduced a bill that would charge "[a]ny member of the general assembly who proposes a piece of legislation that further restricts the right of an individual to bear arms, as set forth under the second amendment of the Constitution of the United States" with a class D felony. In fairness, Leara told TPM that he had "no illusions" about the bill passing.

Sheriff visits in your living room: A bill to ban assault weapons in Washington, introduced by state Sen. Ed Murray (D), was roundly criticized by conservatives and liberals alike for violating gun owners' civil liberties. The legislation allowed current assault weapon owners to keep their guns, but only if they allowed the local sheriff to inspect their homes once a year to ensure the guns were safely stored. Murray followed up with a revised bill without that language, telling the Seattle Times, "I have to admit that shouldn't be in there."

Rejecting or even arresting the feds: Speculating about a federal gun grab, lawmakers in at least 15 states have introduced bills aimed at barring officials from enforcing federal gun laws. In Montana, a voter referendum championed by gun lobbyist Gary Marbut would grant police the authority to arrest FBI agents trying to enforce gun laws and charge them with kidnapping. In Arizona, Richard Mack has called for his fellow sheriffs to refuse to enforce federal law. The proposals, the latest nullification protests against the Obama administration, would most likely be unenforceable since, well, they violate federal law.

Requiring literally everybody to have one: Next month, the city council of Nelson, Georgia, will vote on a law that would mandate gun ownership for the town's "safety, security, and general welfare" and for "emergency management." The proposal, modeled on a law in nearby Kennesaw, includes exemptions for felons, the mentally ill, and those who oppose guns. Towns in

Idaho and Utah are considering similar laws. In Byron, Maine, population 140, a mandatory gun law was rejected even by the man who proposed it, after he concluded that he should have just made it a recommendation.

1 More Than Half of Mass Shooters Used Assault Weapons and High-Capacity Magazines2 The Showdown Over Gun Laws From Coast to Coast3 Newtown "Changed America," But Will Congress Change Gun Laws?4 Under Obama, Feds Holster Gun Cases5 A Guide to Mass Shootings in America

See our full special report on gun laws and the rise of mass shootings in America.

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Le Monde.fr 09.01.2013 à 17h34 Par Hélène Sallon

0 2 . C o m m e n t l a N R A a monopolisé le débat sur les armes aux Etats-Unis.

"La seule façon de stopper un méchant avec une arme est de lui opposer quelqu'un de bien avec une arme." Alors que le débat sur un contrôle accru des armes à feu est relancé aux Etats-Unis par la tuerie de Newtown, dans le Connecticut, où 20 enfants et 6 adultes ont été tués par un assaillant de 20 ans lourdement armé, c'est avec cet argument choc que Wayne LaPierre, le vice-président de l'Association nationale des détenteurs d'armes, la National Rifle Association (NRA), a

justifié la nécessité d'armer les professeurs dans les écoles. M. LaPierre a également annoncé la mise en place par son organisation d'un "programme de protection" des écoles, baptisé "National School Shield" (Bouclier pour l'école) qui a déjà son site Internet.

Lire : Armer les professeurs : après la tuerie de Newtown, l'idée fait son chemin aux Etats-Unis

Avec quatre millions d'adhérents et 11 000 instructeurs, la NRA est devenue l'un des plus puissants lobbies capables d'influencer la politique américaine. Pourtant, lorsqu'elle est fondée en 1871 par un avocat et un ancien journaliste du New York Times, la NRA se consacre principalement à la chasse et au tir sportif, relate Jill Lepore dans le New Yorker. Mais depuis qu'elle s'est investie sur le terrain du lobbying politique en 1968, elle a réussi à imposer l'idée que la détention et le port d'arme est une liberté fondamentale, garantie par le second amendement, mais aussi un acte citoyen. Et, depuis une vingtaine d'années, elle a réussi à bloquer toute initiative destinée à durcir la législation sur les armes à feu.

Ce lobbying politique auprès des assemblées législatives des Etats mais aussi au Congrès, à la présidence et dans les tribunaux, est opéré par une demi-douzaine d'entités au sein de l'organisation. Il est financé par des donateurs issus notamment de la sphère conservatrice et de l'industrie des armes.

Lors d'un congrès de l'organisation, le Violence Policy Center a ainsi relevé les noms de donateurs liés à cette industrie et leurs contributions, à l'instar de Harlon Carter ou de Joe Foss, deux anciens chefs de la NRA ayant fait don de millions de dollars à l'organisation. Une convergence d'intérêts qui poussent certains commentateurs à se demander,comme Lee Fang dans The Nation, si la NRA agit en faveur des détenteurs d'armes, qu'il estime majoritairement partisans aujourd'hui d'une plus grande régulation des armes, ou en faveur de l'industrie de l'armement, uniquement intéressée par vendre ses produits ?

➫ Lire le rapport en anglais Le Prix du sang du Violence Policy Center

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LA NRA, FAISEUR DE ROI

Ses premières heures de gloire, la NRA les a connues avec l'élection du républicain Ronald Reagan en 1980. Premier président soutenu par l'organisation, Ronald Reagan va permettre aux conservateurs de la NRA

d'inscrire dans la législation leur interprétation du second amendement, notamment par la loi de 1986 sur la protection des détenteurs d'armes à feu. A partir de cette date, la NRA s'investira systématiquement dans le financement d'hommes politiques opposés au contrôle des armes.

L'influence politique que le lobby des armes a acquise est telle qu'on lui prête la défaite d'Al Gore à l'élection présidentielle de 2000. Le candidat démocrate avait perdu les Etats de l'Arkansas, du New Hampshire et du Tennessee, où l'opinion est très majoritairement acquise au lobby pro-armes. Instruits par cet échec, les démocrates ont dès lors cessé de militer pour le contrôle des armes, trop dangereux en termes électoraux. Et de fait, analyse Vincent Michelot, spécialiste des Etats-Unis à l'Institut de sciences politiques de Lyon, "le port d'armes est un très fort indicateur de vote" avec la pratique religieuse et la question de l'avortement.

➫ Lire : Etats-Unis : 300 millions d'armes à feu, 30 000 morts par an (à lire ci-dessous)

L'organisation excelle dans les primaires républicaines, où elle est capable de susciter des candidatures concurrentes à celles de candidats qui n'auraient pas adopté une position claire sur le contrôle des armes. "La NRA a une remarquable capacité d'intervention dans l'espace public et de mobilisation de ses soutiens politiques. Ils ne travaillent jamais seuls. Quand ils voient monter un homme politique qui est contre les armes, ils vont travailler avec d'autres groupes conservateurs sur les questions de l'avortement, du mariage homosexuel, etc., pour proposer un adversaire à cet homme ou femme politique. Cela s'est vu dans les dernières élections depuis 1996", analyse Vincent Michelot.

OBAMA, L'HOMME À ABATTREPour son président actuel, David Keene, toutes ces victoires sont fragiles. Notamment en présence du président Barack Obama, qui a siégé de 1994 à 2002 au conseil d'administration de la Fondation Joyce à Chicago, qui finance la recherche et l'action pour le contrôle des armes. A son arrivée en mai 2011 à la tête de la NRA, l'éminence grise

des conservateurs, qui aurait dit-on l'oreille de tous les présidents républicains, avait fait de Barack Obama l'homme à abattre lors de la présidentielle de 2012.

➫ Voir le portrait de David Keene sur le site Internet de la NRA

L'échec de la NRA aux élections de 2012 ne s'est pas limité à la présidentielle. Six des sept candidats aux élections sénatoriales dans lesquelles la NRA s'est financièrement engagée ont été battus. La NRA y a décelé une "anomalie" liée à la forte participation des jeunes électeurs, mobilisés par Obama, à des scrutins organisés le même jour que l'élection présidentielle. "Dans des circonstances normales, nous aurions fait la différence", a estimé David Keene, ajoutant que les idées défendues par son groupe sont toujours majoritaires à la Chambre des représentants comme au Sénat. D'après un sondage Reuters-Ipsos réalisé en avril, 68 % des Américains auraient une opinion favorable sur la NRA.

Mais, analyse Vincent Michelot, "il ne faut pas fantasmer sur une NRA toute puissante qui peut bloquer toute initiative. La NRA est efficace pour utiliser le débat public à ses fins et faire passer l'idée que le contrôle des armes n'est pas une solution consensuelle". Par ailleurs, poursuit-il, "la NRA n'est pas puissante de manière égale sur tout le territoire américain. Il existe des Etats où la culture des armes est forte comme dans le Sud et à l'inverse, certains Etats où il existe un fort contrôle". Influente parmi les démocrates comme les républicains au Texas, elle a peu d'ancrage

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dans le Nord-Est des Etats-Unis. "On peut faire un bras d'honneur à la NRA quand on est à New York, dans l'Oregon et à Washington mais pas en Floride, en Virginie ou en Louisiane, où il y a une forte tradition du port d'armes", précise M. Michelot.

Il demeure que, dans son secteur, la NRA n'a pas d'équivalent et demeure incontournable sur la question du port d'armes. Fragmentés, ses adversaires ne font pas le poids. "On a, d'un côté, la gauche américaine, principalement urbaine, qui dit que le droit de porter des armes n'est pas un droit de la personne et que le second amendement a été perverti, analyse Vincent Michelot. Le deuxième groupe est composé des forces de l'ordre et des organisations nationales de la police qui s'inquiètent des armes faites pour tuer les flics." Si ces deux groupes se rejoignent sur cette question, ils n'ont pas constitué d'organisation équivalente à la NRA. "La NRA conserve de ce fait le monopole de la rhétorique sur cette question et peut à elle seule structurer le débat public", poursuit le chercheur.

DES COMBATS À VENIRDans les mois à venir, la NRA devrait une nouvelle fois éprouver son pouvoir d'influence dans les

sphères publique comme politique. Après la tuerie de Newtown, le président Obama semble déterminé à imposer une nouvelle législation plus restrictive sur le contrôle des armes au niveau national. Une législation à laquelle l'opinion américaine semble plus que jamais favorable. Selon un sondage publié le 27 décembre par le quotidien USA Today, 58 % des Américains se disent en faveur de lois plus strictes sur la vente des armes, une forte hausse par rapport à octobre

2011, quand seulement 43 % d'entre eux adhéraient à cette idée.

Lire : Obama travaille sur un ambitieux plan de contrôle des armes et "Contrôle des armes : Obama aura une marge d'action limitée"

Sur la scène internationale, le puissant lobby des armes a déjà mobilisé ses troupes en prévision de la reprise des négociations à l'Assemblée générale de l'ONU qui doivent aboutir au premier traité international sur le commerce des armes conventionnelles (ATT). La NRA s'oppose fortement à toute réglementation internationale du commerce des armes, qui pourrait selon elle fournir un argument de taille pour imposer sur le territoire national des restrictions. La NRA a gagné une première bataille en juillet avec l'échec des premières négociations sur l'ATT, sabordées par l'administration Obama en pleine campagne présidentielle. La situation pourrait avoir changé avec la réélection de Barack Obama. Mais il faudra toutefois à ce dernier convaincre une majorité des deux tiers du Sénat, dont il ne dispose pas, pour ratifier le traité.

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Le Monde.fr 08.01.2013 à 12h05 Par Hélène Sallon

03. USA : 300 millions d'armes à feu, 30 000 morts par an

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La tragédie survenue le 14 décembre dans l'école de Newtown, dans le Connecticut, où 20 enfants et 6 adultes ont été tués par un assaillant de 20 ans lourdement armé, a profondément choqué l'Amérique. Cette nouvelle tuerie a relancé le débat sur le contrôle des armes à feu aux Etats-Unis. La détention et le port d'armes pour les particuliers y sont garantis au nom du deuxième amendement de la Constitution : "Une milice régulée étant nécessaire à la sécurité d'un Etat libre, le droit du peuple à détenir et porter une arme ne doit pas être enfreint." Une interdiction fédérale sur la possession, le transfert et la production d'armes d'assaut semi-automatiques, votée en 1994, a expiré en 2004.

"STAND YOUR GROUND"La législation relative à la détention et au port d'armes à feu diffère d'un Etat à un autre. Depuis 1980, 44 Etats ont promulgué des lois permettant aux détenteurs d'armes à feu de porter des armes en dehors de chez eux pour leur protection personnelle. Cinq autres Etats avaient des lois similaires avant 1980.

En 2005, l'Etat de Floride a passé le Stand Your Ground Act ("loi pour la défense de son territoire"), une extension de la doctrine selon laquelle les citoyens utilisant une force létale face à un assaillant ne seront pas poursuivis, même s'ils avaient la possibilité de s'enfuir en toute sécurité. Ce droit s'applique hors du domicile, à tout endroit où le citoyen a le droit d'être. Trente-quatre Etats ont promulgué une telle disposition.

➫ La législation sur les armes à feu aux Etats-Unis, Etat par Etat, sur le site du Centre juridique pour la prévention de la violence liée aux armes (en anglais)

Dans la plupart des Etats américains, pour acquérir une arme auprès d'un distributeur accrédité, il est nécessaire d'avoir un permis de port d'armes. Ce permis s'obtient après un entraînement à la sécurité des armes. Toutefois, comme l'indique le New Yorker (lire ici), 40 % des armes achetées aux Etats-Unis sont achetées à des particuliers lors de foires ou par annonces.

300 MILLIONS D'ARMESPresque 300 millions d'armes à feu sont ainsi détenues par des particuliers aux Etats-Unis (106 millions de pistolets, 105 millions de fusils et 83 millions de fusils de chasse), selon la dernière étude sociologique nationale (GSS) de l'année 2010 effectuée par le Centre de recherche national de sondage (NORC) de l'Université de Chicago. Avec 315 millions d'habitants et une moyenne d'une arme à feu par habitant, les Etats-Unis sont le premier pays au monde pour la détention d'armes à feu par les civils, loin devant le Yémen. Chaque détenteur en possède en moyenne deux à trois.

La mise en perspective des études successives réalisées annuellement par le NORC depuis 1973, à laquelle s'est adonnée le Violence Policy Center (VPC) (PDF), basé à Washington, révèle toutefois que le taux de détention d'armes à feu par foyer est en baisse. Ce pourcentage est passé de 49,1 % en 1973 (année de la première GSS) à 32,3 % des ménages américains en 2010.

Les explications de ce déclin sont multiples : le vieillissement de la population en détenant – principalement les hommes blancs – et le peu d'intérêt des jeunes générations pour les armes à feu ; la fin de la conscription militaire ; la baisse de la population pratiquant la chasse ; les limites faites aux activités de chasse et de tir en relation avec les questions environnementales et de planification ; et la hausse du nombre de ménages composés de mères seules, les femmes détenant rarement une arme.

30 000 MORTS PAR ARMES À FEU PAR ANEn dépit de la baisse significative du taux de détention d'armes à feu par ménage, un nombre constant de victimes par arme à feu a été enregistré. Entre 2000 et 2008, 272 590 personnes sont mortes à la suite de blessures par armes à feu aux Etats-Unis, selon les chiffres de la banque de

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données WISQARS du Centre américain pour la prévention et le contrôle des maladies et du Centre national pour la prévention et le contrôle des blessures, cité par le Violence Policy Center (VPC). En moyenne, 30 288 personnes sont tuées chaque année par une arme à feu.

Plus inquiétant, note le VPC, entre 2000 et 2008, un total de 617 488 personnes ont été victimes de blessures par arme à feu aux Etats-Unis, soit environ 68 610 personnes par an. Ce nombre est en constante augmentation au cours des dernières années, tandis que l'amélioration de la prise en charge des blessés par les services médicaux d'urgence a permis de maintenir constant le nombre de morts par arme à feu.

Hélène Sallon

L'industrie de l'armement➫ L'interdiction des armes d'assaut passe un obstacle, avant le mur➫ Aux Etats-Unis, le Connecticut veut à son tour restreindre le port d'arme➫ Les ventes d'armes ont baissé pour la première fois en vingt ans

Édition abonnés Contenu exclusif➫ Mobilisation générale contre la réduction du budget de la défense➫ Armes à feu : 51 % d'Américains favorables à un contrôle accru➫ Etats-Unis : le port d'armes, un débat explosifDOSSIER

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BY JILL LEPOREAPRIL 23, 2012

04. BATTLEGROUND AMERICAOne nation, under the gun.

Every American can be his own policeman; the country has nearly as many guns as it has people. Photograph by Christopher Griffith.

Just after seven-thirty on the morning of February 27th, a seventeen-year-old boy named T. J. Lane walked into the cafeteria at Chardon High School, about thirty miles outside Cleveland. It was a Monday, and the cafeteria was filled with kids, some eating breakfast, some waiting for buses to drive them to programs at other schools, some packing up for gym class. Lane sat down at an empty table, reached into a bag, and pulled out a .22-calibre pistol. He stood up, raised the gun, and fired. He said not a word.

Russell King, a seventeen-year-old junior, was sitting at a table with another junior, Nate Mueller. King, shot in the head, fell face first onto the table, a pool of blood forming. A bullet grazed Mueller’s ear. “I could see the flame at the end of the gun,” Mueller said later. Daniel Parmertor, a sixteen-year-old snowboarder, was shot in the head. Someone screamed “Duck!” Demetrius Hewlin, sixteen, was also shot in the head, and slid under the table. Joy Rickers, a senior, tried to run; Lane shot her as she fled. Nickolas Walczak, shot in his neck, arm, back, and face, fell to the floor. He began crawling toward the door.

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Ever since the shootings at Columbine High School, in a Denver suburb, in 1999, American schools have been preparing for gunmen. Chardon started holding drills in 2007, after the Virginia Tech massacre, when twenty-three-year-old Seung-Hui Cho, a college senior, shot fifty-seven people in Blacksburg.

At Chardon High School, kids ran through the halls screaming “Lockdown!” Some of them hid in the teachers’ lounge; they barricaded the door with a piano. Someone got on the school’s public-address system and gave instructions, but everyone knew what to do. Students ran into classrooms and dived under desks; teachers locked the doors and shut off the lights. Joseph Ricci, a math teacher, heard Walczak, who was still crawling, groaning in the hallway. Ricci opened the door and pulled the boy inside. No one knew if the shooter had more guns, or more rounds. Huddled under desks, students called 911 and texted their parents. One tapped out, “Prayforus.”

From the cafeteria, Frank Hall, the assistant football coach, chased Lane out of the building, and he ran off into the woods.

Moments later, four ambulances arrived. E.M.T.s raced Rickers and Walczak to Chardon’s Hillcrest Hospital. Hewlin, Parmertor, and King were flown by helicopter to a trauma center at MetroHealth Medical Center, in Cleveland. By eight-thirty, the high school had been evacuated.

At a quarter to nine, police officers with dogs captured Lane, about a mile from the school.

“I hate to say it, but we trained for exactly this type of thing, a school emergency of this type,” Dan McClelland, the county sheriff, said.

Danny Parmertor died that afternoon. That evening, St. Mary’s Church opened its doors, and the people of Chardon sank to their knees and keened. At the town square, students gathered to hold a vigil. As night fell, they lit candles. Drew Gittins, sixteen, played a Black Eyed Peas song on his guitar.

“People killin’, people dyin’,” he sang. “People got me, got me questionin’, Where is the love?”

Russell King had been too badly wounded. A little after midnight, doctors said that they couldn’t save him.

There are nearly three hundred million privately owned firearms in the United States: a hundred and six million handguns, a hundred and five million rifles, and eighty-three million shotguns. That works out to about one gun for every American. The gun that T. J. Lane brought to Chardon High School belonged to his uncle, who had bought it in 2010, at a gun shop. Both of Lane’s parents had been arrested on charges of domestic violence over the years. Lane found the gun in his grandfather’s barn.

The United States is the country with the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in the world. (The second highest is Yemen, where the rate is nevertheless only half that of the U.S.) No civilian population is more powerfully armed. Most Americans do not, however, own guns, because three-quarters of people with guns own two or more. According to the General Social Survey, conducted by the National Policy Opinion Center at the University of Chicago, the prevalence of gun ownership has declined steadily in the past few decades. In 1973, there were guns in roughly one in two households in the United States; in 2010, one in three. In 1980, nearly one in three Americans owned a gun; in 2010, that figure had dropped to one in five.

Men are far more likely to own guns than women are, but the rate of gun ownership among men fell from one in two in 1980 to one in three in 2010, while, in that same stretch of time, the rate among women remained one in ten. What may have held that rate steady in an age of decline was the aggressive marketing of handguns to women for self-defense, which is how a great many guns are

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marketed. Gun ownership is higher among whites than among blacks, higher in the country than in the city, and higher among older people than among younger people. One reason that gun ownership is declining, nationwide, might be that high-school shooting clubs and rifle ranges at summer camps are no longer common.

Although rates of gun ownership, like rates of violent crime, are falling, the power of the gun lobby is not. Since 1980, forty-four states have passed some form of law that allows gun owners to carry concealed weapons outside their homes for personal protection. (Five additional states had these laws before 1980. Illinois is the sole holdout.) A federal ban on the possession, transfer, or manufacture of semiautomatic assault weapons, passed in 1994, was allowed to expire in 2004. In 2005, Florida passed the Stand Your Ground law, an extension of the so-called castle doctrine, exonerating from prosecution citizens who use deadly force when confronted by an assailant, even if they could have retreated safely; Stand Your Ground laws expand that protection outside the home to any place that an individual “has a right to be.” Twenty-four states have passed similar laws.

The day before T. J. Lane shot five high-school students in Ohio, another high-school student was shot in Florida. The Orlando Sentinel ran a three-paragraph story. On February 26th, seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin left a house in a town outside Orlando and walked to a store. He was seen by a twenty-eight-year-old man named George Zimmerman, who called 911 to report that Martin, who was black, was “a real suspicious guy.” Zimmerman got out of his truck. Zimmerman was carrying a 9-mm. pistol; Martin was unarmed. What happened next has not been established, and is much disputed. Zimmerman told the police that Martin attacked him. Martin’s family has said that the boy, heard over a cell phone, begged for his life.

Zimmerman shot Martin in the chest. Martin did not survive. Zimmerman was not charged. Outside Orlando, the story was not reported.

The day after the shooting in Ohio, I went to a firing range. I’d signed up for a lesson the week before. Once, when I was in Air Force R.O.T.C. for a year, I spent an afternoon studying how to defeat a sniper, but I’d never held a gun before.

The American Firearms School sits in an industrial park just north of Providence, in a beige stucco building topped with a roof of mint-green sheet metal. From the road, it looks like a bowling alley, but from the parking lot you can tell that it’s not. You can hear the sound of gunfire. It doesn’t sound like thunder. It doesn’t sound like rain. It sounds like gunfire.

Inside, there’s a shop, a pistol range, a rifle range, a couple of classrooms, a locker room, and a place to clean your gun. The walls are painted police blue up to the wainscoting, and then white to the ceiling, which is painted black. It feels like a clubhouse, except, if you’ve never been to a gun shop before, that part feels not quite licit, like a porn shop. On the floor, there are gun racks, gun cases, holsters, and gun safes. Rifles hang on a wall behind the counter; handguns are under glass. Most items, including the rifles, come in black or pink: there are pink handcuffs, a pink pistol grip, a pink gun case, and pink paper targets. Above the pink bull’s-eye, which looks unnervingly like a breast, a line of text reads, “Cancer sucks.”

The American Firearms School is run by Matt Medeiros, a Rhode Island firefighter and E.M.T. Medeiros is also a leader of the Rhode Island chapter of Pink Heals, a nonprofit organization of emergency and rescue workers who drive pink fire trucks and pink police cars to raise money for cancer research and support groups. Last year, when Pink Heals opened a women’s center in West Warwick, Medeiros held a fund-raiser at the Firearms School.

Unlike many firing ranges, which are private clubs, the American Firearms School is open to the public. Most mornings, federal, state, and local law-enforcement agencies, as well as private security

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firms, rent out the ranges for training and target practice. Classes, from beginner to advanced, are held in the afternoons, and are run by certified instructors.

In many states, to purchase a gun from a licensed dealer you need a permit, which requires you to complete firearms-safety training, not unlike driver’s education. But, even if all states required this, not everyone who buys a gun would have to take a class. That’s because forty per cent of the guns purchased in the United States are bought from private sellers at gun shows, or through other private exchanges, such as classified ads, which fall under what is known as the “gun-show loophole” and are thus unregulated.

At the American Firearms School, the Learn to Shoot program, for novices, costs forty dollars for ninety minutes: a lesson, a gun rental, range time, two targets, and two boxes of bullets. This doesn’t constitute sufficient instruction for a gun permit in the state, but the school offers a one-day, ninety-nine-dollar course that does: Basic Firearms Safety includes shooting fundamentals, a discussion of firearms law, and guidance in safe firearms storage.

The idea that every man can be his own policeman, and every woman hers, has necessitated revisions to the curriculum: civilians now receive training once available only to law-enforcement officers, or the military. A six-hour class on concealed carrying includes a lesson in “engaging the threat.” N.R.A. Basic Personal Protection in the Home teaches “the basic knowledge, skills, and attitude essential to the safe and efficient use of a handgun for protection of self and family” and provides “information on the law-abiding individual’s right to self-defense,” while N.R.A. Basic Personal Protection Outside the Home is a two-day course. A primer lasting three hours provides “a tactical look at civilian life.” This raises the question of just how much civilian life is left.

As I waited for my lesson, I paged through a stack of old magazines while watching Fox News on a flat-screen television. In Michigan and Arizona, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum were competing in that day’s Republican primaries. At the top of the hour came the headlines: in Ohio, Demetrius Hewlin had just died. For a tick, the news announcer fell silent.

I put down Field and Stream and picked up American Rifleman, a publication of the N.R.A. The magazine includes a regular column called “The Armed Citizen.” A feature article introduced David Keene, the N.R.A.’s new president. Keene, who is sixty-six, is a longtime conservative political strategist. Grover Norquist once called him “a conservative Forrest Gump.” The 2012 Presidential election, Keene told American Rifleman, is “perhaps the most crucial election, from a Second Amendment standpoint, in our lifetimes.”

The Second Amendment reads, “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Arms are military weapons. A firearm is a cannon that you can carry, as opposed to artillery so big and heavy that you need wheels to move it, or people to help you. Cannons that you can carry around didn’t exist until the Middle Ages. The first European firearms—essentially, tubes mounted on a pole—date to the end of the fourteenth century and are known as “hand cannons.”

Then came shoulder arms (that is, guns you can shoulder): muskets, rifles, and shotguns. A pistol is a gun that can be held in one hand. A revolver holds a number of bullets in a revolving chamber, but didn’t become common until Samuel Colt patented his model in 1836. The firearms used by a well-regulated militia, at the time the Second Amendment was written, were mostly long arms that, like a smaller stockpile of pistols, could discharge only once before they had to be reloaded. In size, speed, efficiency, capacity, and sleekness, the difference between an eighteenth-century musket and the gun that George Zimmerman was carrying is roughly the difference between the first laptop computer—which, not counting the external modem and the battery pack, weighed twenty-four pounds—and an iPhone.

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A gun is a machine made to fire a missile that can bore through flesh. It can be used to hunt an animal or to commit or prevent a crime. Enough people carrying enough guns, and with the will and the training to use them, can defend a government, or topple one. For centuries before the first

English colonists travelled to the New World, Parliament had been regulating the private ownership of firearms. (Generally, ownership was restricted to the wealthy; the principle was that anyone below the rank of gentleman found with a gun was a poacher.) England’s 1689 Declaration of Rights made a provision that “subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their condition and as allowed by law”; the Declaration was an attempt to resolve a struggle between Parliament and the Crown, in which Parliament wrested control of the militia from the Crown.

In the United States, Article VI of the Articles of Confederation, drafted in 1776 and ratified in 1781, required that “every state shall always keep up a well regulated and disciplined militia, sufficiently armed and accoutred, and shall provide and constantly have ready for use, in public stores, a due number of field pieces and tents, and a proper quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage.” In early America, firearms and ammunition were often kept in public arsenals. In 1775, the British Army marched to Concord with the idea of seizing the arsenal where the Colonial militia stored its weapons. In January of 1787, a Massachusetts resident named Daniel Shays led eleven hundred men, many of them disaffected Revolutionary War veterans, in an attempt to capture an arsenal in Springfield; they had been protesting taxes, but they needed guns and ammunition. Springfield had been an arsenal since 1774. In 1777, George Washington, at the urging of Henry Knox, made it his chief northern arsenal. By 1786, Springfield housed the largest collection of weapons in the United States.

In the winter of 1787, the governor of Massachusetts sent the militia to suppress the rebellion; the Springfield arsenal was defended. That spring, the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia. Among the matters the delegates were to take up was granting to the federal government the power to suppress insurgencies like Shays’ Rebellion. From Boston, Benjamin Franklin’s sister Jane wrote to him with some advice for “such a Number of wise men as you are connected with in the Convention”: no more weapons, no more war. “I had Rather hear of the Swords being beat into Plow-shares, and the Halters used for Cart Roops, if by that means we may be brought to live Peaceably with won a nother.”

The U.S. Constitution, which was signed in Philadelphia in September of 1787, granted Congress the power “to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions,” the power “to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress,” and the power “to raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years.”

Ratification was an uphill battle. The Bill of Rights, drafted by James Madison in 1789, offered assurance to Anti-Federalists, who feared that there would be no limit to the powers of the newly constituted federal government. Since one of their worries was the prospect of a standing army—a permanent army—Madison drafted an amendment guaranteeing the people the right to form a militia. In Madison’s original version, the amendment read, “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.” This provision was made in the same spirit as the Third Amendment, which forbids the government to force you to have troops billeted in your home: “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

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None of this had anything to do with hunting. People who owned and used long arms to hunt continued to own and use them; the Second Amendment was not commonly understood as having any relevance to the shooting of animals. As Garry Wills once wrote, “One does not bear arms against a rabbit.” Meanwhile, militias continued to muster—the Continental Army was disbanded at the end of the Revolutionary War—but the national defense was increasingly assumed by the United States Army; by the middle of the nineteenth century, the United States had a standing army, after all. Harpers Ferry was the U.S. Army’s southern armory, Springfield its northern. In 1859, when John Brown and his men raided Harpers Ferry, they went there to get guns.

At the American Firearms School, you can either rent a gun or bring your own. It’s like an ice-skating rink that way, except that renting skates when you don’t know how to skate is different from renting a gun when you don’t know how to shoot. The guys who work at the school don’t take any chances. In the twelve years since the school opened, there has never been an accident. “You can’t do anything here without us watching you,” Tom Dietzel told me. “In a swimming pool, there are lifeguards. And this place is a lot more dangerous than a swimming pool.”

Dietzel, who is twenty-four and has long dark hair, is one of the few instructors at the school who isn’t ex-military, ex-police, or ex-rescue. He led me to a classroom, opened a case, and took out a .22-calibre Mark III Target Rimfire pistol. Dietzel studied history in college, and on weekends he gives tours of the Freedom Trail, in Boston. We talked about the eighteenth-century portraits in the new wing of the Museum of Fine Arts; we debated the oratory of Joseph Warren. Dietzel owns a flintlock musket; he’s a Revolutionary War reënactor, with the Thirteenth Continental Regiment. He showed me a photograph of himself in costume: a cocked hat, a mustard-colored scarf of flax. He could have been painted by Gilbert Stuart.

Dietzel is a skilled and knowledgeable teacher, steady, patient, and calm. He had written safety rules on a whiteboard: Never point your gun at anyone. Keep your finger off the trigger. Don’t trust the safety. Assume every gun is loaded.

He explained how to load the magazine. “This is a semiautomatic,” he said. “After you fire, it will load the next bullet, but you have to pull the trigger again to fire. We don’t have automatics here.” Automatic weapons are largely banned by the federal government. “An automatic, you pull the trigger and it keeps shooting.” Dietzel shook his head. “Because: why? Why?”

Gun owners may be more supportive of gun-safety regulations than is the leadership of the N.R.A. According to a 2009 Luntz poll, for instance, requiring mandatory background checks on all purchasers at gun shows is favored not only by eighty-five per cent of gun owners who are not members of the N.R.A. but also by sixty-nine per cent of gun owners who are.

Dietzel rose. “Stand like a shortstop about to field a ball,” he said.

He showed me how to hold the .22.

Every day, Dietzel goes to work and, at some point, has to hand a gun to a perfect stranger who has never used one. He went over the rules again.

We got earplugs and headgear and ammunition and went to the range. I fired a hundred rounds. Then Dietzel told me to go wash my hands, to get the gunpowder off, while he went to clean the gun.The halls at the American Firearms School are decorated with framed prints: Monet’s “Impression, Sunrise”; van Gogh’s “Irises.” A sign on the door of the women’s restroom reads, “Every Tuesday Is Ladies Night. Ladies Get FREE Range Time from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM.”

I opened the door, and turned on the tap. T. J. Lane had used a .22-calibre Mark III Target Rimfire pistol. For a long time, I let the water run.

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On March 8th, Trayvon Martin’s father, Tracy Martin, held a press conference in Orlando. “We feel justice has not been served,” he said. He demanded the release of recordings of calls to 911. “Family Wants Answers in Teen’s Death,” the Associated Press reported.

Two days later, the biggest gun show in New England was held in West Springfield, Massachusetts, in an exposition center the size of an airport hangar. (Nationwide, there are about five thousand gun shows annually.) Early in the morning, men with guns lined up to have them inspected at the door: two policemen made sure that every gun was unloaded; a plastic bucket on the floor, half filled with sand, was for dumping ammunition, like the bin at airport security where T.S.A. officers make you chuck your toothpaste. Tickets cost eleven dollars, but there was no charge for children younger than twelve.

Inside was a flea market: hundreds of folding tables draped with felt tablecloths and covered with guns, along with knives, swords, and a great deal of hunting gear. Long guns stood on their stocks, muzzles up. Handguns rested under glass, like jewelry. “Cash for Guns,” the sign at the Tombstone Trading Company read. Ammunition was sold outdoors, in cartons, as in the fastener aisle of a hardware store. At the N.R.A. booth, membership came with a subscription to one of the N.R.A.’s three magazines, an N.R.A. baseball hat, twenty-five hundred dollars of insurance, “and the most important benefit of all—protecting the Constitution.”

I stopped at the table of Guns, Inc., which advertises itself as the largest firearms dealer in western Massachusetts. Guns, Inc., is also an arsenal: a place where people who don’t want to keep their guns at home can pay to have them stored.

In the nineteenth century, the Springfield Armory grew to become the single biggest supplier of long arms to the U.S. Army. It shut its doors in 1968. A National Historic Site now, it houses about ten thousand weapons, most of which are shoulder arms. A sign on the door warns that no firearms are allowed inside. “People ask about that,” Richard Colton, a park ranger and the site’s historian, told me when I visited, “but we have plenty of guns here already.”

The story of the Springfield Armory illustrates a shift in the manufacture and storage of firearms: from public to private. In 1974, a family in Illinois founded a company devoted to arms manufacturing and import called Springfield Armory, Inc. The firm, “the first name in American firearms,” is one of the largest of its kind in the United States. Dennis Reese, the current C.E.O., and his brother Tom have staunchly opposed gun regulation. I asked Brian Pranka, of Guns, Inc., if he had any Springfield Armory guns. He said, “You can’t buy a Springfield handgun in Springfield.” The company does not make handguns that conform to all the gun-safety regulations in states like Massachusetts, New York, and California, and in Illinois they have lobbied the legislature, successfully defeating a state ban on assault weapons. In 2008, the Illinois State Rifle Association gave the Reeses the Defenders of Freedom Award.

On the first day of the Springfield gun show, Trayvon Martin’s parents appeared on “Good Morning America.” On March 19th, the Department of Justice, responding to growing protests, announced that it would conduct an investigation. On March 23rd, President Obama answered questions about the shooting at a press conference. “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” the President said. Later that day, Rick Santorum spoke outside a firing range in West Monroe, Louisiana, where he’d just shot fourteen rounds from a Colt .45. He told the crowd, “What I was able to exercise was one of those fundamental freedoms that’s guaranteed in our Constitution, the right to bear arms.”

In the two centuries following the adoption of the Bill of Rights, in 1791, no amendment received less attention in the courts than the Second, except the Third. As Adam Winkler, a constitutional-law scholar at U.C.L.A., demonstrates in a remarkably nuanced new book, “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America,” firearms have been regulated in the United States from the start. Laws banning the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813,

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and other states soon followed: Indiana (1820), Tennessee and Virginia (1838), Alabama (1839), and Ohio (1859). Similar laws were passed in Texas, Florida, and Oklahoma. As the governor of Texas explained in 1893, the “mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man.”

Although these laws were occasionally challenged, they were rarely struck down in state courts; the state’s interest in regulating the manufacture, ownership, and storage of firearms was plain enough. Even the West was hardly wild. “Frontier towns handled guns the way a Boston restaurant today handles overcoats in winter,” Winkler writes. “New arrivals were required to turn in their guns to authorities in exchange for something like a metal token.” In Wichita, Kansas, in 1873, a sign read, “Leave Your Revolvers at Police Headquarters, and Get a Check.” The first thing the government of Dodge did when founding the city, in 1873, was pass a resolution that “any person or persons found carrying concealed weapons in the city of Dodge or violating the laws of the State shall be dealt with according to law.” On the road through town, a wooden billboard read, “The Carrying of Firearms Strictly Prohibited.” The shoot-out at the O.K. Corral, in Tombstone, Arizona, Winkler explains, had to do with a gun-control law. In 1880, Tombstone’s city council passed an ordinance “to Provide against the Carrying of Deadly Weapons.” When Wyatt Earp confronted Tom McLaury on the streets of Tombstone, it was because McLaury had violated that ordinance by failing to leave his gun at the sheriff’s office.

The National Rifle Association was founded in 1871 by two men, a lawyer and a former reporter from the New York Times. For most of its history, the N.R.A. was chiefly a sporting and hunting association. To the extent that the N.R.A. had a political arm, it opposed some gun-control measures and supported many others, lobbying for new state laws in the nineteen-twenties and thirties, which introduced waiting periods for handgun buyers and required permits for anyone wishing to carry a concealed weapon. It also supported the 1934 National Firearms Act—the first major federal gun-control legislation—and the 1938 Federal Firearms Act, which together created a licensing system for dealers and prohibitively taxed the private ownership of automatic weapons (“machine guns”).

The constitutionality of the 1934 act was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1939, in U.S. v. Miller, in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s solicitor general, Robert H. Jackson, argued that the Second Amendment is “restricted to the keeping and bearing of arms by the people collectively for their common defense and security.” Furthermore, Jackson said, the language of the amendment makes clear that the right “is not one which may be utilized for private purposes but only one which exists where the arms are borne in the militia or some other military organization provided for by law and intended for the protection of the state.” The Court agreed, unanimously. In 1957, when the N.R.A. moved into new headquarters, its motto, at the building’s entrance, read, “Firearms Safety Education, Marksmanship Training, Shooting for Recreation.” It didn’t say anything about freedom, or self-defense, or rights.

The modern gun debate began with a shooting. In 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald bought a bolt-action rifle—an Italian military-surplus weapon—for nineteen dollars and ninety-five cents by ordering it from an ad that he found in American Rifleman. Five days after Oswald assassinated President Kennedy, Thomas Dodd, a Democratic senator from Connecticut, introduced legislation restricting mail-order sales of shotguns and rifles. The N.R.A.’s executive vice-president, Franklin L. Orth, testified before Congress, “We do not think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States.”

Gun-rights arguments have their origins not in eighteenth-century Anti-Federalism but in twentieth-century liberalism. They are the product of what the Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet has called the “rights revolution,” the pursuit of rights, especially civil rights, through the courts. In the nineteen-sixties, gun ownership as a constitutional right was less the agenda of the N.R.A. than of black nationalists. In a 1964 speech, Malcolm X said, “Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun.” Establishing a constitutional right to carry a

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gun for the purpose of self-defense was part of the mission of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, which was founded in 1966. “Black People can develop Self-Defense Power by arming themselves from house to house, block to block, community to community throughout the nation,” Huey Newton said.

In 1968, as Winkler relates, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., gave the issue new urgency. A revised Gun Control Act banned mail-order sales, restricted the purchase of guns by certain high-risk people (e.g., those with criminal records), and prohibited the importation of military-surplus firearms. That law, along with a great deal of subsequent law-and-order legislation, was intended to fight crime, control riots, and solve what was called, in the age of the Moynihan report, the “Negro problem.” The regulations that are part of these laws—firearms restrictions, mandatory-sentencing guidelines, abolition of parole, and the “war on drugs”—are now generally understood to be responsible for the dramatic rise in the U.S. incarceration rate.

The N.R.A. supported the 1968 Gun Control Act, with some qualms. Orth was quoted in American Rifleman as saying that although some elements of the legislation “appear unduly restrictive and unjustified in their application to law-abiding citizens, the measure as a whole appears to be one that the sportsmen of America can live with.”

David Keene, the N.R.A.’s president, is the former chairman of the American Conservative Union. In his office in Washington, he has a photograph of Ronald Reagan on the wall and a view of Pennsylvania Avenue out the window. Keene has white hair, blue eyes, and an air of plainspoken geniality. When he was eight or nine, he says, his grandfather taught him how to shoot by aiming a .22 at squirrels and rabbits.

Keene’s parents were labor organizers. They never once voted for a Republican. “My first political activity was going door to door passing out pamphlets for J.F.K. in the snows of Wisconsin,” Keene told me. In the nineteen-fifties, he said, “Lionel Trilling considered conservatism to be a political pathology.” Keene became a conservative in high school, when he read “The Constitution of Liberty,” by Friedrich Hayek. In 1960, at the Republican National Convention, Barry Goldwater said, “Let’s grow up conservatives, if we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday. Let’s get to work.” Four years later, Keene volunteered for Goldwater’s campaign.

After Goldwater’s defeat, Keene finished college and went on to law school. He became the national chairman of the Young Americans for Freedom. “What brought conservatism to dominance was the Great Society,” Keene argues, because Johnson’s vision represented “the culmination of the thinking that you could solve everything with money, and nothing worked.” Keene went to D.C. to work for Spiro Agnew, and then for Richard Nixon.

On Election Day in 1970, Keene was at the White House. Joseph Tydings, a Democratic senator from Maryland who had introduced a Firearms Registration and Licensing Act, was running for reëlection. “The returns were coming in, and someone said, ‘What’s going on in Maryland?’ ” Keene recalled. “And someone answered, ‘I can tell you this: everywhere except Baltimore, there are long lines of pickup trucks at the polls. He’s going down over gun control.’ ”

In the nineteen-seventies, the N.R.A. began advancing the argument that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to carry a gun, rather than the people’s right to form armed militias to provide for the common defense. Fights over rights are effective at getting out the vote. Describing gun-safety legislation as an attack on a constitutional right gave conservatives a power at the polls that, at the time, the movement lacked. Opposing gun control was also consistent with a larger anti-regulation, libertarian, and anti-government conservative agenda. In 1975, the N.R.A. created a lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, headed by Harlon Bronson Carter, an award-winning marksman and a former chief of the U.S. Border Control. But then the N.R.A.’s leadership decided to back out of politics and move the organization’s headquarters to Colorado Springs, where a new

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recreational-shooting facility was to be built. Eighty members of the N.R.A.’s staff, including Carter, were ousted. In 1977, the N.R.A.’s annual meeting, usually held in Washington, was moved to Cincinnati, in protest of the city’s recent gun-control laws. Conservatives within the organization, led by Carter, staged what has come to be called the Cincinnati Revolt. The bylaws were rewritten and the old guard was pushed out. Instead of moving to Colorado, the N.R.A. stayed in D.C., where a new motto was displayed: “The Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed.”

Ronald Reagan was the first Presidential candidate whom the N.R.A. had endorsed. David Keene ran Reagan’s Southern campaign. Reagan’s election, in 1980, made it possible for conservatives to begin turning a new interpretation of the Second Amendment into law. As the legal scholar Reva B. Siegel has chronicled, Orrin Hatch became the chair of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, and commissioned a history of the Second Amendment, which resulted in a 1982 report, “The Right to Keep and Bear Arms.” The authors of the report claimed to have discovered “clear—and long-lost—proof that the Second Amendment to our Constitution was intended as an individual right of the American citizen to keep and carry arms in a peaceful manner, for protection of himself, his family, and his freedoms.”

In March of 1981, John Hinckley, Jr., shot Reagan, the White House press secretary, James Brady, a D.C. policeman, and a Secret Service agent. He used a .22 that he had bought at a pawnshop. A month later, the Times reported that Harlon Carter, then the N.R.A.’s executive vice-president, had been convicted of murder in Laredo, Texas, in 1931, at the age of seventeen. Carter had come home from school to find his mother distressed. She told him that three teen-age boys had been loitering nearby all afternoon, and that she suspected them of having been involved in stealing the family’s car. Carter left the house with a shotgun, found the boys, and told them that he wanted them to come back to his house to be questioned. According to the trial testimony of twelve-year-old Salvador Peña, Ramón Casiano, fifteen, the oldest of the boys, said to Carter, “We won’t go to your house, and you can’t make us.” Casiano took out a knife and said, “Do you want to fight me?” Carter shot Casiano in the chest. At Carter’s trial for murder, the judge, J. F. Mullally, instructed the jury, “There is no evidence that defendant had any lawful authority to require deceased to go to his house for questioning, and if defendant was trying to make deceased go there for that purpose at the time of the killing, he was acting without authority of law, and the law of self-defense does not apply.” Two years later, Carter’s murder conviction was overturned on appeal; the defense argued that the instructions to the jury had been improper.

When the Times broke the Casiano murder story, Carter at first denied it, saying the trial record concerned a different man with a similar name. He later said that he had “nothing to hide” and was “not going to rehash that case or any other that does not relate to the National Rifle Association.”

James Brady and his wife, Sarah, went on to become active in the gun-control movement, but neither the assassination attempt nor Carter’s past derailed the gun-rights movement. In 1986, the N.R.A.’s interpretation of the Second Amendment achieved new legal authority with the passage of the Firearms Owners Protection Act, which repealed parts of the 1968 Gun Control Act by invoking “the rights of citizens . . . to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.” This interpretation was supported by a growing body of scholarship, much of it funded by the N.R.A. According to the constitutional-law scholar Carl Bogus, at least sixteen of the twenty-seven law-review articles published between 1970 and 1989 that were favorable to the N.R.A.’s interpretation of the Second Amendment were “written by lawyers who had been directly employed by or represented the N.R.A. or other gun-rights organizations.” In an interview, former Chief Justice Warren Burger said that the new interpretation of the Second Amendment was “one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word ‘fraud,’ on the American public by special-interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

The debate narrowed, and degraded. Political candidates who supported gun control faced opponents whose campaigns were funded by the N.R.A. In 1991, a poll found that Americans were

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more familiar with the Second Amendment than they were with the First: the right to speak and to believe, and to write and to publish, freely.

“If you had asked, in 1968, will we have the right to do with guns in 2012 what we can do now, no one, on either side, would have believed you,” David Keene said.Between 1968 and 2012, the idea that owning and carrying a gun is both a fundamental American freedom and an act of citizenship gained wide acceptance and, along with it, the principle that this right is absolute and cannot be compromised; gun-control legislation was diluted, defeated, overturned, or allowed to expire; the right to carry a concealed handgun became nearly ubiquitous; Stand Your Ground legislation passed in half the states; and, in 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court ruled, in a 5–4 decision, that the District’s 1975 Firearms Control Regulations Act was unconstitutional. Justice Scalia wrote, “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia.” Two years later, in another 5–4 ruling, McDonald v. Chicago, the Court extended Heller to the states.

Nevertheless, Keene says that all of these gains are fragile, because President Obama—who in his first term has not only failed to push for gun control but has signed legislation extending gun rights—has been hiding his true convictions. (From 1994 to 2002, Obama served on the board of the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation, which funds pro-gun-control advocacy and research.) “If this President gets a second term, he will appoint one to three Supreme Court justices,” Keene says. “If he does, he could reverse Heller and McDonald, which is unlikely, but, more likely, they will restrict those decisions.”

This issue has been delivering voters to the polls since 1970. Conservatives hope that it will continue to deliver them in 2012. Keene, in his lifetime, has witnessed a revolution. “It’s not just the conservative political victories, the capture of the Republican Party, the creation of a conservative intellectual élite,” he said, “but the whole change in the way Americans look at government.” No conservative victories will last longer than the rulings of this Supreme Court.

One in three Americans knows someone who has been shot. As long as a candid discussion of guns is impossible, unfettered debate about the causes of violence is unimaginable. Gun-control advocates say the answer to gun violence is fewer guns. Gun-rights advocates say that the answer is more guns: things would have gone better, they suggest, if the faculty at Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Chardon High School had been armed. That is the logic of the concealed-carry movement; that is how armed citizens have come to be patrolling the streets. That is not how civilians live. When carrying a concealed weapon for self-defense is understood not as a failure of civil society, to be mourned, but as an act of citizenship, to be vaunted, there is little civilian life left.

In 2002, Keene’s son David Michael Keene was driving on the George Washington Memorial Parkway when, in a road-rage incident, he fired a handgun at another motorist. He was sentenced to ten years in prison for “using, brandishing, and discharging a firearm in a crime of violence.” I asked Keene if this private tragedy had left him uncertain about what the N.R.A. had wrought. He said no: “You break the law, you pay the price.”

I asked Keene if any public atrocity had given him pause. He explained that it is the N.R.A.’s policy never to comment on a shooting.

I asked him how he would answer critics who charge that no single organization has done more to weaken Americans’ faith in government, or in one another, than the N.R.A.

“We live in a society now that’s Balkanized,” Keene said. “But that has nothing to do with guns.”

On Monday, March 26th, thousands of students rallied in Atlanta, carrying signs that read, “I am Trayvon Martin,” and “Don’t Shoot!” One week later, in Oakland, a forty-three-year-old man named

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One Goh walked into Oikos University, a small Christian college. He was carrying a .45-calibre semiautomatic pistol and four magazines of ammunition. He grabbed Katleen Ping, a receptionist, and dragged her into a classroom. Nearby, Lucas Garcia, a thirty-three-year-old E.S.L. teacher, heard a voice call out, “Somebody’s got a gun!” He helped his students escape through a back door. Dechen Yangdon, twenty-seven, turned off the lights in her classroom and locked the door. She could hear Ping screaming, “Help, help, help!” “We were locked inside,” Yangdon said later. “We couldn’t help her.”

Goh ordered the students to line up against the wall. He said, “I’m going to kill you all.”

They had come from all over the world. Ping, twenty-four, was born in the Philippines. She was working at the school to support her parents, her brother, two younger sisters, and her four-year-old son, Kayzzer. Her husband was hoping to move to the United States. Tshering Rinzing Bhutia, thirty-eight, was born in Gyalshing, India, in the foothills of the Himalayas. He took classes during the day; at night, he worked as a janitor at San Francisco International Airport. Lydia Sim, twenty-one, was born in San Francisco, to Korean parents; she wanted to become a pediatrician.

Sonam Choedon, thirty-three, belonged to a family living in exile from Tibet. A Buddhist, she came to the United States from Dharamsala, India. She was studying to become a nurse. Grace Eunhea Kim, twenty-three, was putting herself through school by working as a waitress. Judith Seymour was fifty-three. Her parents had moved back to their native Guyana; her two children were grown. She was about to graduate. Doris Chibuko, forty, was born in Enugu, in eastern Nigeria, where she practiced law. She immigrated in 2002. Her husband, Efanye, works as a technician for A.T. & T. They had three children, ages eight, five, and three. She was two months short of completing a degree in nursing.

Ping, Bhutia, Sim, Choedon, Kim, Seymour, and Chibuko: Goh shot and killed them all. Then he went from one classroom to another, shooting, before stealing a car and driving away. He threw his gun into a tributary of San Leandro Bay. Shortly afterward, he walked into a grocery store and said, “I just shot some people.”

On Tuesday night, a multilingual memorial service was held at the Allen Temple Baptist Church. Oakland’s mayor, Jean Quan, said, “Oakland is a city of dreams.” A friend of Choedon’s said, “Mainly, we’re praying for her next life, that she can have a better one.” In Gyalshing, Bhutia’s niece, Enchuk Namgyal, asked that her uncle’s body be sent home to be cremated in the mountains above the village, across the world from the country where he came for an education, religious freedom, and economic opportunity, and was shot to death.

Kids in Chardon High are back in school. Nickolas Walczak is in a wheelchair. There are Trayvon Martin T-shirts. Oikos University is closed. The N.R.A. has no comment.

In an average year, roughly a hundred thousand Americans are killed or wounded with guns. On April 6th, the police found One Goh’s .45. Five days later, George Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder. In May, T. J. Lane will appear at a hearing. Trials are to come. In each, introduced as evidence, will be an unloaded gun. ♦

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Le Monde.fr avec AFP 09.01.2013 à 08h34

05 .Une ex -é l ue du Cong rès , survivante d'une fusillade, s'attaque aux armes

L'ancienne élue du Congrès américain Gabrielle Giffords, grièvement blessée à la tête lors d'une fusillade il y a tout juste deux ans, a lancé mardi 8 janvier une campagne pour s'attaquer au puissant lobby des armes aux Etats-Unis et demander une réglementation plus stricte.

Alors représentante de l'Arizona (sud-ouest) au Congrès, Mme Giffords avait été touchée d'une balle en pleine tête, le 8 janvier 2011 à Tucson, lorsqu'un tireur avait

ouvert le feu à l'occasion d'une réunion électorale. Six personnes, dont une fillette et un juge fédéral, avaient perdu la vie dans cette tragédie qui avait choqué le pays.

L'élue démocrate avait échappé de peu à la mort, et, après une longue convalescence, elle avait annoncé fin janvier 2012 sa démission du Congrès. Mardi, Mme Giffords, qui est devenue depuis une figure emblématique, a annoncé qu'elle lançait l'initiative "Des Américains pour des solutions responsables" après une visite à Newtown (Connecticut, dans le nord-est du pays), où 27 personnes, dont 20 enfants, ont été tuées en décembre par un jeune homme armé.

SE BATTRE POUR CE QUI EST JUSTEDans un éditorial (reproduit ci-dessous) publié par le quotidien USA Today, cosigné de son époux l'astronaute Mark Kelly, l'ancienne élue estime que "réussir une réforme pour réduire la violence due aux armes, et empêcher les fusillades de masse, signifie se démener autant que les lobbies des armes et avoir autant d'argent qu'eux", en référence au puissant lobby de la NRA (National Rifle Association). Elle précise que son initiative "récoltera les fonds nécessaires pour contrer l'influence du lobby des armes" et appuyer les hommes politiques "qui se battent pour ce qui est juste".

Le président Barack Obama a promis des mesures pour s'attaquer à la violence due aux armes dans le pays, après la tragédie de Newtown. La NRA a proposé peu après le drame que des gardes armés soient postés dans les écoles. Le lobby des armes va rencontrer le vice-président américain Joe Biden, qui pilote un groupe de travail pour revoir la réglementation sur le contrôle des armes, a annoncé mardi la Maison Blanche.

Le sujet reste très sensible aux Etats-Unis, où un groupe américain de médias en ligne Gawker a publié mardi la liste de plus de 23 000 personnes autorisées à détenir une arme à feu à New York, quelques jours après une publication similaire, très controversée, dans un journal local.

NEWTOWN, UN "MOMENT CRITIQUE"Mme Giffords dit ne pas vouloir remettre en question le sacro-saint deuxième amendement de la Constitution, qui donne aux Américains le droit de détenir des armes. "Ce que nous voulons, c'est ce

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que veulent la majorité des membres de la NRA et d'autres Américains : des modifications responsables de nos lois pour une détention responsable des armes, et pour réduire la violence."

L'ancienne élue a aussi précisé sur la chaîne ABC News que la tragédie de Newtown était un "moment critique". "Désormais, c'est différent. Vingt petits d'une école primaire tués dans leur salle de classe, cela parle à tout le monde." Le couple ajoute dans son éditorial qu'il veut d'abord voir l'introduction de contrôles sur le passé des acheteurs potentiels d'armes, lors des transactions privées. "Pourquoi ne pourrait-on pas rendre difficile, pour un malade mental ou un criminel, l'achat d'une arme ?", a lancé M. Kelly.

Il remet également en cause les chargeurs à grande capacité. L'homme qui a blessé Gabrielle Giffords, Jared Lee Loughner, avait un pistolet semi-automatique Glock avec un chargeur de 33 coups. Quelque 30 000 morts par an aux Etats-Unis sont dues aux armes.

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9:45a.m. EST January 8, 2013

06. Giffords and Kelly: Fighting gun violence

Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly : Our new campaign will launch a national dialogue and raise funds to counter influence of the gun lobby. (Photo: Rob Schumacher, The Arizona Republic)

In response to a horrific series of shootings that has sown terror in our communities, victimized tens of thousands of Americans, and left one of its own bleeding and near death in a Tucson parking lot, Congress has done something quite extraordinary — nothing at all.

I was shot in the head while meeting with constituents two years ago today. Since then, my extensive rehabilitation has brought excitement and gratitude to our family. But time and time again, our joy has been diminished by new, all too familiar images of death on television: the breaking news alert, stunned witnesses blinking away tears over unspeakable carnage, another community in mourning. America has seen an astounding 11 mass shootings since a madman used a semiautomatic pistol with an extended ammunition clip to shoot me and kill six others. Gun violence kills more than 30,000 Americans annually.

This country is known for using its determination and ingenuity to solve problems, big and small. Wise policy has conquered disease, protected us from dangerous products and substances, and made transportation safer. But when it comes to protecting our communities from gun violence, we're not even trying — and for the worst of reasons.

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An ideological fringeSpecial interests purporting to represent gun owners but really advancing the interests of an ideological fringe have used big money and influence to cow Congress into submission. Rather than working to find the balance between our rights and the regulation of a dangerous product, these groups have cast simple protections for our communities as existential threats to individual liberties. Rather than conducting a dialogue, they threaten those who divert from their orthodoxy with political extinction.

As a result, we are more vulnerable to gun violence. Weapons designed for the battlefield have a home in our streets. Criminals and the mentally ill can easily purchase guns by avoiding background checks. Firearm accessories designed for killing at a high rate are legal and widely available. And gun owners are less responsible for the misuse of their weapons than they are for their automobiles.

Forget the boogeyman of big, bad government coming to dispossess you of your firearms. As a Western woman and a Persian Gulf War combat veteran who have exercised our Second Amendment rights, we don't want to take away your guns any more than we want to give up the two guns we have locked in a safe at home. What we do want is what the majority of NRA members and other Americans want: responsible changes in our laws to require responsible gun ownership and reduce gun violence.

We saw from the NRA leadership's defiant and unsympathetic response to the Newtown, Conn., massacre that winning even the most common-sense reforms will require a fight. But whether it has been in campaigns or in Congress, in combat or in space, fighting for what we believe in has always been what we do.

Let's not be naiveWe can't be naive about what it will take to achieve the most common-sense solutions. We can't just hope that the last shooting tragedy will prevent the next. Achieving reforms to reduce gun violence and prevent mass shootings will mean matching gun lobbyists in their reach and resources.

Americans for Responsible Solutions, which we are launching today, will invite people from around the country to join a national conversation about gun violence prevention, will raise the funds necessary to balance the influence of the gun lobby, and will line up squarely behind leaders who will stand up for what's right.

Until now, the gun lobby's political contributions, advertising and lobbying have dwarfed spending from anti-gun violence groups. No longer. With Americans for Responsible Solutions engaging millions of people about ways to reduce gun violence and funding political activity nationwide, legislators will no longer have reason to fear the gun lobby. Other efforts such as improving mental health care and opposing illegal guns are essential, but as gun owners and survivors of gun violence, we have a unique message for Americans.

We have experienced too much death and hurt to remain idle. Our response to the Newtown massacre must consist of more than regret, sorrow and condolence. The children of Sandy Hook Elementary School and all victims of gun violence deserve fellow citizens and leaders who have the will to prevent gun violence in the future.Gabrielle Giffords is the former Democratic U.S. representative from Arizona. Mark Kelly is a former astronaut.

More: Arizona marks two years since Giffords shooting

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14 décembre 2012 à 18:54 (Mis à jour: 15 décembre 2012 à 00:05)

(AFP)

07. Fusillade du Connecticut : le frère du tireur présumé a été arrêté

Sur le lieu de la fusillade. (Photo Michelle McLoughlin. Reuters)

L'essentielLa fusillade survenue vendredi matin dans une école du Connecticut, dans le nord-est des Etats-Unis, a fait 27 morts : 20 enfants, 6 adultes, et le tueur. Le tueur a abattu sa mère, qui a été retrouvée morte à son domicile. Il a été identifié comme étant Adam Lanza, 20 ans, habitant de Newtown, selon les autorités locales.

0H44. Le frère du tireur présumé, Ryan Lanza, 24 ans, a été arrêté pour être interrogé dans le New Jersey. Il est apparu menotté à la télévision américaine. Leur mère a été retrouvée morte dans leur maison de Newtown, qui était toujours encerclée par la police dans la soirée. Deux colocataires de Ryan étaient aussi interrogés par la police.

MINUIT. «Le diable a visité cette communauté aujourd'hui» déclare le gouverneur du Connecticut, le républicain Dan Malloy. «J'étais maire de Standford lors du 11-Septembre. J'ai perdu de nombreux citoyens et amis ce jour-là. Je n'aurais jamais cru vivre ça deux fois dans ma carrière publique», ajoute t-il.

23H30. Les réactions de la communauté internationale tombent. «Je voudrais exprimer mon choc après la fusillade tragique», déclare la responsable de la diplomatie européenne, Catherine Ashton, dans un communiqué ajoutant qu’elle pensait «aux victimes, à leurs familles et au peuple américain en ce moment difficile». Pour le président de la Commission européenne, José Manuel Barroso, ce sont «de jeunes vies porteuses d’espérance (qui) ont été détruites». «C’est avec un choc profond et horreur que j’ai appris la fusillade tragique dans le Connecticut», a-t-il indiqué en exprimant ses «sincères condoléances» au nom de la Commission européenne et en son nom personnel.

23 HEURES. Le tueur est identifié comme étant Adam Lanza, le frère de celui qui avait été nommé auparavant. Il était équipé de trois armes et d'un gilet pare balles. Les armes étaient enregistrées légalement sous le nom de sa mère.

22H30. Le débat sur la législation sur la détention d'armes aux Etats-Unis reprend de plus belle. «Notre pays a traversé ce genre de choses trop souvent», a observé Barack Obama, en évoquant des fusillades meurtrières qui se sont déroulées dans l’année écoulée, au Colorado (ouest), dans l’Oregon (nord-ouest) et au Wisconsin (nord). «Ces quartiers sont nos quartiers, ces enfants sont nos enfants», a rappelé le président, pour qui «il va falloir que nous nous rassemblions et entreprenions

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des actions significatives pour empêcher de telles tragédies, indépendamment de la politique politicienne».

22H20. Une pétition a été ouverte par des citoyens sur le site de la Maison Blanche afin de déterminer une date pour discuter de la législation sur les armes aux Etats-Unis.

22 HEURES. Le président de la République François Hollande adresse un message de condoléances à son homologue américain Barack Obama. «La nouvelle (...) m’a horrifié (et) je souhaite vous dire toute mon émotion et ma consternation», selon le texte du message présidentiel. «En ce moment si douloureux pour les Etats-Unis, je vous adresse mes condoléances attristées, en mon nom personnel et au nom du peuple français. Je vous saurais gré de bien vouloir faire part aux familles des victimes de ma solidarité dans cette cruelle épreuve», conclut le message.

21H30. Le bilan se précise. Le chef de la police parle de 20 enfants morts, 6 adultes, et le tireur. L'identité de ce dernier reste floue. Le détenteur du profil Facebook portant son identité clamerait qu'il est bien vivant et qu'il n'a rien à voir avec la tuerie. Le profil a ensuite été suspendu.

21H15. L'allocution du président des Etats-Unis débute. Très ému, les larmes aux yeux, il évoque les «beaux enfants» qui sont partis aujourd'hui. «Nous avons vécu trop de tragédies» déclare Barack Obama en essuyant ses larmes d'une main, expliquant avoir «le cœur brisé».

21H10. Obama ordonne la mise en berne des drapeaux sur les édifices publics.

20H40. Barack Obama fera une intervention à 20h15 GMT.

20H30. Le jeune homme, identifié comme Ryan Lanza, 24 ans, aurait tué son père à son domicile avant de se rendre en voiture jusqu'à l'école où a eu lieu la fusillade, où il a tué sa mère, qui y travaillait, selon la presse américaine.

20 HEURES. «Le tireur est mort dans l'établissement», selon la police locale, sans donner de précision sur les conditions de sa mort, précisant que la police s’intéressait désormais au profil de cet homme. Selon un bilan évoqué par la chaîne CBS News, la tragédie aurait fait au moins 27 morts, dont 18 enfants.

19 HEURES. La police parle de 27 morts, dont 18 enfants.

18 HEURES. La fusillade s’est produite vendredi matin à l'école Sandy Hook de la petite bourgade de Newtown, une ville de 27 000 habitants environ située à 128 kilomètres de New York. La police locale a été alertée peu après 09H30 (14H30 GMT), a précisé M. Vance. Elle a à son tour immédiatement demandé l’aide à la police de l’Etat, qui s’est elle aussi rendue sur les lieux. «Notre principal objectif était d'évacuer aussi rapidement et aussi efficacement que possible tous les élèves et le personnel de l'établissement. L'école en entier a été fouillée. Tout cela a été accompli», a-t-il poursuivi.

(AFP)

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—By Siddhartha MahantaMon Nov. 14, 2011 11:40 AM PST

08. Report: States Restoring Gun Rights to Very Scary People

National News/Zuma

Federal law dictates that people with felony convictions on their records lose their right to own guns. But the New York Times reports that states have been reinstating those rights, frequently for violent offenders, and with virtually no review. Take Washington state, for example:

Since 1995, more than 3,300 felons and people convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors have regained their gun rights in the state—430 in 2010 alone—according to the analysis of data provided by the state police and the court system. Of that number, more than 400—about 13 percent

—have subsequently committed new crimes, the analysis found. More than 200 committed felonies, including murder, assault in the first and second degree, child rape and drive-by shooting.

Even some felons who have regained their firearms rights say the process needs to be more rigorous.

"It’s kind of spooky, isn’t it?" said Beau Krueger, who has two assaults on his record and got his gun rights back last year in Minnesota after only a brief hearing, in which local prosecutors did not even participate. "We could have all kinds of crazy hoodlums out here with guns that shouldn’t have guns."

The NRA-backed Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 rolled back a number of federal gun laws, kicking the issue of felons' gun rights down to the states. And the movement to restore gun rights to felons, the Times explains, has picked up speed, thanks to a 2008 Supreme Court ruling that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to bear arms. Presently, restoration of firearms rights is automatic in at least 11 states for many nonviolent felons, after staying out of trouble for a certain amount of time.

In Washington, the most serious felons are barred from owning guns. But that didn't prevent at least one tragedy:

In February 2005, Erik Zettergren came home from a party after midnight with his girlfriend and another couple. They had all been drinking heavily, and soon the other man and Mr. Zettergren’s girlfriend passed out on his bed. When Mr. Zettergren went to check on them later, he found his girlfriend naked from the waist down and the other man, Jason Robinson, with his pants around his ankles.

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Enraged, Mr. Zettergren ordered Mr. Robinson to leave. After a brief confrontation, Mr. Zettergren shot him in the temple at point-blank range with a Glock-17 semiautomatic handgun. He then forced Mr. Robinson’s hysterical fiancée, at gunpoint, to help him dispose of the body in a nearby river.

It was the first homicide in more than 30 years in the small town of Endicott, in eastern Washington. But for a judge’s ruling two months before, it would probably never have happened.

For years, Mr. Zettergren had been barred from possessing firearms because of two felony convictions. He had a history of mental health problems and friends said he was dangerous. Yet Mr. Zettergren’s gun rights were restored without even a hearing, under a state law that gave the judge no leeway to deny the application as long as certain basic requirements had been met. Mr. Zettergren, then 36, wasted no time retrieving several guns he had given to a friend for safekeeping.

"If he hadn’t had his rights restored, in this particular instance, it probably would have saved the life of the other person," said Denis Tracy, the prosecutor in Whitman County, who handled the murder case.

The Times piece is loaded with other, terrifying stories like this. Read them all.

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—By Mark FollmanWed Sep. 26, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

0 9 . M o r e G u n s , M o r e M a s s Shootings—Coincidence ? (1)America now has 300 million firearms, a barrage of NRA-backed gun laws—and record casualties from mass killers.

Update, 9/28/12: On September 27, a day after this story was published, a workplace shooting in Minneapolis left six people dead (including the killer, who committed suicide) and two others wounded. The story has been updated to include the additional data from that case.

In the fierce debate that always follows the latest mass shooting, it's an argument you hear frequently from gun rights promoters: If only more people were armed, there would be a better chance of stopping these terrible events. This has plausibility problems—what are the odds that, say, a moviegoer with a pack of Twizzlers in one pocket and a Glock in the other would be mentally prepared, properly positioned, and skilled enough to take out a body-armored assailant in a smoke- and panic-filled theater? But whether you believe that would happen is ultimately a matter of theory and speculation. Instead, let's look at some facts gathered in a two-month investigation by Mother Jones.

MoJo's map, timeline, and analysis of 30 years of mass shootings in America.

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In the wake of the slaughters this summer at a Colorado movie theater and a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, we set out to track mass shootings in the United States over the last 30 years. We identified and analyzed 61 of them, and one striking pattern in the data is this: In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun. Moreover, we found that the rate of mass shootings has increased in recent years—at a time when America has been flooded with millions of additional firearms and a barrage of new laws has made it easier than ever to carry them in public. And in recent rampages in which armed civilians attempted to intervene, they not only failed to stop the shooter but also were gravely wounded or killed.

America has long been heavily armed relative to other societies, and our arsenal keeps growing. A precise count isn't possible because most guns in the United States aren't registered and the government has scant ability to track them, thanks to a legislative landscape shaped by powerful pro-gun groups such as the National Rifle Association. But through a combination of national surveys and manufacturing and sales data, we know that the increase in firearms has far outpaced population growth. In 1995 there were an estimated 200 million guns in private hands. Today, there are around 300 million—about a 50 percent jump. The US population, now over 314 million, grew by about 20 percent in that period. At this rate, there will be a gun for every man, woman, and child before the decade ends.

There is no evidence indicating that arming Americans further will help prevent mass shootings or reduce the carnage, says Dr. Stephen Hargarten, a leading expert on emergency medicine and gun violence at the Medical College of Wisconsin. To the contrary, there appears to be a relationship between the proliferation of firearms and a rise in mass shootings: By our count, there have been two per year on average since 1982. Yet 24 of the 61 cases we examined have occurred since 2006. This year alone there have already been six mass shootings—and a record number of casualties, with 110 people injured and killed.

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Armed civilians attempting to intervene are actually more likely to increase the bloodshed, says Hargarten, "given that civilian shooters are less likely to hit their targets than police in these circumstances." A chaotic scene in August at the Empire State Building put this starkly into perspective when New York City police officers confronting a gunman wounded nine innocent bystanders.

Surveys suggest America's guns may be concentrated in fewer hands today: Approximately 40 percent of households had them in the past decade, versus about 50 percent in the 1980s. But far more relevant is a recent barrage of laws that have rolled back gun restrictions throughout the country. In the past four years, across 37 states, the NRA and its political allies have pushed through 99 laws making guns easier to own, easier to carry in public, and harder for the government to track.

The NRA surge: 99 laws rolling back gun controls in 37 states.

A m o n g the more striking measures: Eight states now allow firearms in bars. Law-abiding Missourians can carry a

gun while intoxicated and even fire it if "acting in self-defense." In Kansas, permit holders can carry concealed

weapons inside K-12 schools, and Louisiana allows them in houses of worship. Virginia not only repealed a law requiring handgun vendors to submit sales records, but the state also

ordered the destruction of all such previous records. More than two-thirds of these laws were passed by Republican-controlled statehouses, though often with bipartisan support.

The laws have caused dramatic changes, including in the two states hit with the recent carnage. Colorado passed its concealed-carry measure in 2003, issuing 9,522 permits that year; by the end of last year the state had handed out a total of just under 120,000, according to data we obtained from the County Sheriffs of Colorado. In March of this year, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that concealed weapons are legal on the state's college campuses. (It is now the fifth state explicitly allowing them.) If former neuroscience student James Holmes were still attending the University of Colorado today, the movie theater killer—who had no criminal history and obtained his weapons legally—could've gotten a permit to tote his pair of .40 caliber Glocks straight into the student union. Wisconsin's concealed-carry law went into effect just nine months before the Sikh temple shooting in suburban Milwaukee this August. During that time, the state issued a whopping 122,506 permits, according to data from Wisconsin's Department of Justice. The new law authorizes guns on college campuses, as well as in bars, state parks, and some government buildings.

And we're on our way to a situation where the most lax state permitting rules—say, Virginia's, where an online course now qualifies for firearms safety training and has drawn a flood of out-of-state applicants—are in effect national law. Eighty percent of states now recognize handgun permits from at least some other states. And gun rights activists are pushing hard for a federal reciprocity bill—passed in the House late last year, with GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan among its most ardent supporters—that would essentially make any state's permits valid nationwide.

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Indeed, the country's vast arsenal of handguns—at least 118 million of them as of 2010—is increasingly mobile, with 69 of the 99 new state laws making them easier to carry. A decade ago, seven states and the District of Columbia still prohibited concealed handguns; today, it's down to just Illinois and DC. (And Illinois recently passed an exception cracking the door open to carrying). In the 61 mass shootings we analyzed, 53 of the killers packed handguns—including in all 14 of the mass shootings since the surge of pro-gun laws began in 2009.

In a certain sense the law was on their side: 80 percent of the killers in our investigation obtained their weapons legally.

We used a conservative set of criteria to build a comprehensive rundown of high-profile attacks in public places—at schools, workplaces, government buildings, shopping malls—though they represent only a small fraction of the nation's overall gun violence. The FBI defines a mass murderer as someone who kills four or more people in a single incident, usually in one location. (As opposed to spree or serial killers, who strike multiple times.) We excluded cases involving armed robberies or gang violence; dropping the number of fatalities by just one, or including those motives, would add many, many more cases. (More about our criteria here.)

There was one case in our data set in which an armed civilian played a role. Back in 1982, a man opened fire at a welding shop in Miami, killing eight and wounding three others before fleeing on a bicycle. A civilian who worked nearby pursued the assailant in a car, shooting and killing him a few blocks away (in addition to ramming him with the car). Florida authorities, led by then-state attorney Janet Reno, concluded that the vigilante had used force justifiably, and speculated that he may have prevented additional killings. But even if we were to count that case as a

successful armed intervention by a civilian, it would account for just 1.7 percent of the mass shootings in the last 30 years.

More broadly, attempts by armed civilians to stop shooting rampages are rare—and successful ones even rarer. There were two school shootings in the late 1990s, in Mississippi and Pennsylvania, in which bystanders with guns ultimately subdued the teen perpetrators, but in both cases it was after the shooting had subsided. Other cases led to tragic results. In 2005, as a rampage unfolded inside a shopping mall in Tacoma, Washington, a civilian named Brendan McKown confronted the assailant with a licensed handgun he was carrying. The assailant pumped several bullets into McKown and wounded six people before eventually surrendering to police after a hostage standoff. (A comatose McKown eventually recovered after weeks in the hospital.) In Tyler, Texas, that same year, a civilian named Mark Wilson fired his licensed handgun at a man on a rampage at the county courthouse. Wilson—who was a firearms instructor—was shot dead by the body-armored assailant, who wielded an AK-47. (None of these cases were included in our mass shootings data set because fewer than four victims died in each.)

Appeals to heroism on this subject abound. So does misleading information. Gun rights die-hards frequently credit the end of a rampage in 2002 at the Appalachian School of Law in Virginia to armed "students" who intervened—while failing to disclose that those students were also current and former law enforcement officers, and that the killer, according to police investigators, was out of ammo by the time they got to him

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MARK FOLLMANSenior EditorMark Follman is a senior editor at Mother Jones. Read more of his stories, follow him on Twitter, or contact him with tips or feedback at mfollman (at) motherjones (dot) com. RSS | TWITTER

IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE...

➫ The NRA Surge: 99 Laws Rolling Back Gun Restrictions - In the past four years a barrage of measures across 37 states have made it easier to own, carry, and conceal firearms.

➫ A Guide to Mass Shootings in America - There have been at least 61 in the last 30 years—and most of the killers got their guns legally.

➫ What Exactly Is a Mass Shooting, Anyway? - What defines a mass shooting, how often they occur, and how to distinguish between a mass murderer and serial killer.

➫"I Was a Survivor": Recalling a Mass Shooting Four Years Ago Today - A Tennessee man who witnessed carnage at a church gathering sheds light on a recurrent national problem.

➫ How the NRA and Its Allies Helped Spread a Radical Gun Law Nationwide - Years before Trayvon Martin was killed, gun lobbyists conspired to give Stand Your Ground shooters immunity everywhere.

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—By Mark FollmanWed Sep. 26, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

10. More Guns, More Mass Shootings—Coincidence ? (2)What should you do if a gunman opens fire at your workplace? A new video from the City of Houston offers answers.

America now has 300 million firearms, a barrage of NRA-backed gun laws—and record casualties from mass killers.

How do law enforcement authorities view armed civilians getting involved? One week after the slaughter at the Dark Knight screening in July, the city of Houston—hardly a hotbed of gun control—released a new Department of Homeland Security-funded video instructing the public on how to react to such events. The six-minute production foremost advises running away or otherwise hiding, and suggests fighting back only as a last resort. It makes no mention of civilians using firearms.

Law enforcement officials are the first to say that civilians should not be allowed to obtain particularly lethal weaponry, such as the AR-15 assault rifle and ultra-high-capacity, drum-style magazine used by Holmes to mow down Batman fans. The expiration of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban under

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President George W. Bush in 2004 has not helped their cause: Six killers since then have wielded assault weapons in mass shootings.

Screen shot: City of Houston video on mass shooters.

But while access to weapons is a crucial consideration for stemming the violence, stricter gun laws are no silver bullet. Another key factor is mental i l lness. A major New York Times investigation in 2000 examined 100 shooting rampages and found that at least half of the killers showed signs of serious mental health problems. Our own data reveals that the majority of mass shootings are murder-suicides: In the 61 cases we

analyzed, 35 of the shooters killed themselves. Others may have committed "suicide by cop"—seven died in police shootouts. Still others simply waited, as Holmes did in the movie theater parking lot, to be apprehended by authorities.

Drum-style magazine for assault rifles Brownells.com

Mental illness among the killers is no surprise, ranging from paranoid schizophrenia to suicidal depression. But while some states have improved their sharing of mental health records with federal authorities, millions of records reportedly are still missing from the FBI's database for criminal background checks.

Hargarten of the Medical College of Wisconsin argues that mass shootings need to be scrutinized as a public health emergency so that policy makers can better focus on controlling the epidemic of violence. It would be no different than if there were an outbreak of Ebola virus, he says—we'd be assembling the nation's foremost experts to stop it.

But real progress will require transcending hardened politics. For decades gun rights promoters have framed measures aimed at public safety—background checks, waiting periods for purchases, tracking of firearms—as dire attacks on constitutional freedom. They've wielded the gun issue so successfully as a political weapon that Democrats hardly dare to touch it, while Republicans have gone to new extremes in their party platform to enshrine gun rights. Political leaders have failed to advance the discussion "in a credible, thoughtful, evidence-driven way," says Hargarten.

In the meantime, the gun violence in malls and schools and religious venues continues apace. As a superintendent told his community in suburban Cleveland this February, after a shooter at Chardon High School snuffed out the lives of three students and injured three others, "We're not just any old place, Chardon. This is every place. As you've seen in the past, this can happen anywhere."Additional research contributed by Deanna Pan and Gavin Aronsen.

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—By Adam WeinsteinThu Jun. 7, 2012 3:10 AM PDT

11. How the NRA and Its Allies Helped Spread a Radical Gun Law NationwideYears before Trayvon Martin was killed, gun lobbyists conspired to give Stand Your Ground shooters immunity everywhere.

STAND YOUR GROUND, EXPLAINEDThe three legal concepts that turned a reasonable self-defense law into a recipe for vigilante justice.

1. Hell no, I won't run away.People who believe they are in danger in public spaces are not required to try to retreat from the perceived threat before defending themselves with force.

2. I'm totally justified in doing this.People acting in self-defense in their homes, vehicles, or other designated areas are assumed to have reasonably believed they were in imminent danger. The burden of proving otherwise falls on the prosecution.

3. Ha-ha, you can't sue me.People who use justifiable force to defend themselves are protected not only from criminal prosecution but also civil liability. (The former is common in self-defense legislation; the latter is not.

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THE FLORIDA LAW MADE INFAMOUS this spring by the killing of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin was conceived during the epic hurricane season of 2004. That November, 77-year-old James Workman moved his family into an RV outside Pensacola after Hurricane Ivan peeled back the roof of their house. One night a stranger tried to force his way into the trailer, and Workman killed him with two shots from a .38 revolver. The stranger turned out to be a disoriented temporary worker for the Federal Emergency Management Agency who was checking for looters and distressed homeowners. Workman was never arrested, but three months went by before authorities cleared him of wrongdoing.

More: the killing of Florida teenager Jordan Davis. And: racial discrimination and a spike in homicides linked to Stand Your Ground.

That was three months too long for Dennis Baxley, a veteran Republican representative in Florida's state Legislature. Four hurricanes had hit the state that year, and there was fear about widespread looting (though little took place). In Baxley's view, Floridians who defended themselves or their property with lethal force shouldn't have had to worry about legal repercussions. Baxley, a National Rifle Association (NRA) member and owner of a prosperous funeral business, teamed up with then-GOP state Sen. Durell Peaden to propose what would become known as Stand Your Ground, the self-defense doctrine essentially permitting anyone feeling threatened in a confrontation to shoot their way out.

Or at least that's the popular version of how the law was born. In fact, its genesis traces back to powerful NRA lobbyists and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing policy group. And the law's rapid spread—it now exists in various forms in 25 states—reflects the success of a coordinated strategy, cultivated in Florida, to roll back gun control laws everywhere.

Baxley says he and Peaden lifted the law's language from a proposal crafted by Marion Hammer, a former NRA president and founder of the Unified Sportsmen of Florida, a local NRA affiliate. A 73-year-old dynamo who tops off her 4-foot-11 frame with a brown pageboy, Hammer has been a force in the state capital for more than three decades. "There is no more tenacious presence in Tallahassee," Gov. Jeb Bush's former chief of staff told CNN in April. "You want her on your side in a fight."

Ever since neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin point-blank in the chest, the term Stand Your Ground has been widely discussed, but what does it really mean? A Mother Jones review of dozens of state laws shows that the concept is built on three planks from the pioneering Florida legislation: A person claiming self-defense is not required to retreat from a threat before opening fire; the burden is almost always on prosecutors to prove that a self-defense claim is not credible; and finally, the shooter has immunity from civil suits relating to the use of deadly force. While the so-called Castle Doctrine (as in "a man's home is his") has for centuries generally immunized people from homicide convictions if they resorted to deadly force while defending their home, Florida's law was the first to extend such protection to those firing weapons in public spaces—parking lots, parks, city streets.

Stand Your Ground was shepherded through the Legislature with help from then-state Rep. Marco Rubio and signed into law by Bush on April 26, 2005. It was the "first step of a multi-state strategy," Wayne LaPierre, a long-standing NRA official who is now the group's CEO, told the Washington Post. "There's a big tailwind we have, moving from state legislature to state legislature. The South, the Midwest, everything they call 'flyover land.'" The measure was adopted as model legislation by ALEC, a corporate-sponsored national consortium of lawmakers—which is how it ended up passing in states from Mississippi to Wisconsin. "We are not a rogue state," says Baxley, who was bestowed with the NRA's Defender of Freedom Award shortly before his bill passed. "But we may be a leader."

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How "Stand Your Ground" Spread NationwideFlorida enacted the self-defense law in 2005. By 2012, with help from the NRA and its allies, 24 more states had adopted similar laws.

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35

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SUPPORTERS OF SUCH LAWS cite the slippery-slope argument: Seemingly reasonable regulations—waiting periods, licenses, limits on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines—inevitably lead to ever-stricter measures, they argue, until citizens' constitutional right to defend themselves against government tyranny has vanished. Hammer suggests that an assault on gun rights motivated her move to Tallahassee from her native South Carolina in 1974: "Florida was seeing what I would call a burst of gun control measures being filed by Northerners who had moved to South Florida," she told a radio interviewer in 2005. "There was so much gun control being filed that it was very difficult for the NRA to deal with it from over 1,000 miles away."

After leaving work late one night in the mid-1980s, Hammer claims, a group of men in a car threatened her, only to be scared off when she pulled a gun on them. No police report was ever filed, but Hammer maintains that shortly after this incident a local police chief told her that she could have been arrested had she shot them. It was a convenient tale. She soon became a driving force behind Florida's "shall issue" legislation, passed in 1987, which stripped authorities of the ability to deny a concealed-weapons permit to someone they consider potentially dangerous.

Gun permits were given to two fugitives with outstanding arrest warrants, a cop who'd been convicted of a DUI, and a dead man.The shall-issue law would allow thousands of ex-convicts and spouse beaters to pack heat; a Florida state attorney called it "one of the dumbest laws I have ever seen." A 1988 investigation by the St. Petersburg Times found permits had been given to two fugitives with outstanding arrest warrants, a

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disgraced cop who'd been convicted of a DUI and turned down for a county gun license, a man charged with fondling an eight-year-old girl, and a dead man. Florida has since issued more than 2 million concealed-weapons permits.

That same year Hammer called a panel of Florida legislators "a modern-day Gestapo" for considering legislation to keep guns away from violent criminals and the mentally ill. ("This is the lowest standard of integrity I have ever seen for a lobbyist in Tallahassee," one pro-gun Republican responded at the time.)

But Hammer's efforts really picked up steam when she served as the NRA's first female president from 1995 to 1998—by the end of which time Bush had been elected governor and the GOP had taken firm control of the Statehouse. Hammer and her allies have since barred city and county governments from banning guns in public bui ldings; forced businesses to let employees keep guns in cars parked in company lots; made it illegal for doctors to warn patients about the hazards of gun ownership (this controversial "Docs versus Glocks" law was overturned by a George W. Bush-appointed federal judge); and secured an exemption to Flor ida's celebrated open-records laws in order to keep gun permit holders' names a secret. (Baxley had cosponsored a similar bill, explaining in its original text that such lists had been used "to confiscate firearms and render the disarmed population helpless in the face of Nazi atrocities" and Fidel Castro's "tyranny.")

As Florida became known to some as the "Gunshine State," it began exporting its l aws , w i th ALEC 's he lp , to o the r statehouses. This effort was no doubt aided by the fact that the vice president of Hammer's Unified Sportsmen of Florida is John Patronis, cousin to Republican state Rep. Jimmy Patronis—sponsor of the aforementioned bill that kept names of concealed-weapons license holders secret and ALEC's current Florida chairman.

The organization would also be instrumental 38

to spreading Stand Your Ground nationwide. "We definitely brought that bill forward to ALEC," said Baxley, a member of the group. "It's a place where you can share ideas. I don't see anything nefarious about sharing good ideas." The NRA has served as "corporate co-chair" of ALEC's Public Safety and Elections task force, which pushed Stand Your Ground and other gun laws. Since 2005, the year Florida's law was passed, gun manufacturers like Beretta, Remington, and Glock have poured as much as $39 million into the NRA's lobbying coffers.

Baxley defends the NRA's involvement: "They have lots of members who want this statute. They're people who live in my district. They're concerned about turning back this lawless chaos and anarchy in our society." Records show that the NRA's Political Victory Fund has long supported Baxley—from a $500 contribution in 2000 (the state's maximum allowable donation) to $35,000 spent on radio ads in support of his state Senate bid in 2007. Peaden received at least $2,500 from the NRA and allied groups over the years. The NRA also maxed out on direct contributions to Jeb Bush's gubernatorial campaigns in 1998 and 2002, and it gave $125,000 to the Florida GOP between 2004 and 2010—more than it gave to any other state party. According to the Center for Media and Democracy, the NRA spent $729,863 to influence Florida politics in the 2010 election cycle alone.

Once fairly open to speaking with the media, Hammer has proved elusive since the Trayvon Martin killing. When I approached her for this story, explaining that I was a third-generation gun collector with a Florida carry permit, she declined to comment on the record. "Unfortunately," she wrote in an email, "if you did a truly honest article on the law, it would either never be printed in Mother Jones, or if they did publish it, it would not be believed by the mag's audience!" A CLIMATE OF FEAR helped spread Stand Your Ground, according to the National District Attorneys Association. In 2007, it conducted the first in-depth study on the expansion of the Castle Doctrine and found that it took root in part because "there was a change in perceptions of public safety after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Many citizens...became concerned that government agencies could not protect every citizen in the event of subsequent terror attacks." Indeed, the NRA used 9/11 to promote its legislative agenda, most notably in its unsuccessful push to let all commercial airline pilots pack heat. "What would have made 9/11 impossible?" LaPierre asked a crowd at the 2002 NRA convention in Reno, Nevada. "If those pilots on those four airplanes had the right to be armed."

Steven Jansen, vice president and CEO of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys and a former prosecutor in Detroit, was one of the study's authors. He first noticed the Stand Your Ground movement in early 2006 when it spread from Florida to Michigan, sponsored there by Republican state Sen. Rick Jones, an ALEC member. The law was "troublesome to me," Jansen told me. "We didn't really see a public safety need for it, and it could only muddy the legal waters."

With a confrontation like the one between Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, cops and prosecutors would now be forced to make judgment calls about which participant felt like he was in more peril. That raised serious questions about whether real-world situations would ever be as clear-cut as the lawmakers assumed. Jansen pointed to scenarios ranging from road rage to scuffles between rival fraternities: "To presume from the outset, as Florida's law arguably does, that a deadly response in these situations is justified would be at best irresponsible; at worst, that assumption could create a new protected set of behaviors that might otherwise be considered hate crimes or vigilantism."

But legislators across the country nevertheless ignored objections from law enforcement. Indeed, Stand Your Ground gives armed civilians rights that even cops don't enjoy: "Society hesitates to grant blanket immunity to police officers, who are well-trained in the use of deadly force and require yearly

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H a m m e r c a l l e d Florida lawmakers "a modern-day Gestapo" for trying to keep guns away f rom v io len t c r i m i n a l s a n d t h e mentally ill.

testing of their qualifications to carry a firearm," Jansen has written. "Yet the expansion of the Castle Doctrine has given such immunity to citizens."

Is it worth losing a life over a car radio? That's happened, too.Back when Florida passed Stand Your Ground, a few legislators did raise concerns. "This could be two gangs, deciding to have a fight in the street in Miami," said then-Rep. Jack Seiler, a Democrat from South Florida. "They both have a right to be standing on Biscayne Boulevard." It was a prescient warning. In 2006, a Miami man avoided prosecution after spraying a car filled with gang members with 14 bullets. In 2008, a 15-year-old Tallahassee boy was killed in a shoot-out between rival gangs; two of the gang members successfully took refuge behind Stand Your Ground.

The cumulative effect of those cases has been staggering: Two years after Stand Your Ground passed in Florida, the number of "justifiable homicides" by civilians more than doubled, and it nearly tripled by 2011. FBI statistics show a similar national trend: Justifiable homicides doubled in states with Florida-style laws, while they remained flat or fell in states that lacked them. (Update, 6/11/12: A new study from Texas A&M University shows that SYG laws result in no crime deterrence—while adding 500 to 700 homicides per year nationally across the 25 states with the laws.) Jansen also notes that research has shown that, when it came to domestic-abuse cases, "the only thing Stand Your Ground did was blur the lines between who was the batterer and who was the victim."

He says the laws have been passed without legislators asking basic questions: What, exactly, makes a fear of imminent harm reasonable? Do the laws have a disparate negative effect on minorities or juveniles? And, perhaps the simplest question: "Is it worth losing a life over a car radio?"

That's happened, too. In Miami, a man was granted immunity in March for chasing down a burglar and stabbing him after the thief swung a bag of stolen car radios at him. He "was well within his rights to pursue the victim and demand the return of his property," the judge ruled. A state attorney for Miami-Dade County disagreed: "She, in effect, is saying that it's appropriate to chase someone down with a knife to get property back."

For now, Florida has deemed that it is indeed appropriate, and polls taken after the Martin killing show that half of voters agree. But outrage over that case (as well as ALEC's push for voter ID laws; see page 30) has cost ALEC prime corporate sponsors—including McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Kraft, and Procter & Gamble—and its tax-exempt status has been challenged by Common Cause. In April, ALEC disbanded the panel that pushed Stand Your Ground and redirected funds to "task forces that focus on the economy."

But Hammer and her allies are still pressing for laxer gun laws. This spring, Hammer got Florida to drop the cost of gun permits and lower the age restriction to 17 for military members, and she's still fighting to allow residents to carry their guns openly. And the NRA is pumping millions into the November elections nationally. "America needs us now more than ever as we gather together as one in the most dangerous times in American history," LaPierre told the NRA's annual convention in St. Louis in April. "By the time I finish this speech, two Americans will be slain, six women will be raped, 27 of us will be robbed, and 50 more will be beaten. That is the harsh reality we face every day." With an unabashed reference to the shooting that brought Stand Your Ground to national attention, LaPierre drove home his point. "But the media, they don't care. Everyday victims aren't celebrities. They don't draw ratings and sponsors, but sensational reporting from Florida does."

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I n A p r i l , A L E C disbanded the panel that pushed Stand Your Ground and redirected funds to "task forces tha t f ocus on the economy."

Safety Off

Since 2005, Florida lawmakers have taken aim at gun control with a barrage of deregulation measures:

■ Requiring employers to let employees keep guns in their cars while at work

■ Requiring city and county governments to allow guns in public buildings and parks

■ Lifting a long-standing ban on guns in national forests and state parks

■ Allowing military personnel as young as 17 to get concealed-weapons licenses. (Age limit remains 21 for everyone else.)

■ Withholding the names of concealed-carry licensees in public records

■ Permitting concealed-carry licensees "to briefly and openly display the firearm to the ordinary sight of another person." (The original bill would have allowed guns on college campuses, but it was amended after a GOP lawmaker's friend's daughter was accidentally killed with an AK-47 at a frat party.)

■ Prohibiting doctors from asking patients if they keep guns or ammo in the house unless it's "relevant" to their care or safety. (Overturned by a federal judge.)

■ Allowing legislators, school board members, and county commissioners to carry concealed weapons at official meetings. (Didn't pass; another bill to let judges pack heat "at any time and in any place" died in 2009.)

■ Designating a day for tax-free gun purchases. (Didn't pass.)

■ Exempting guns manufactured in Florida from any federal regulations. (Didn't pass.)

For more, take a closer look at the money trail behind Florida's Stand Your Ground law, read about how the NRA pushed for the right to pack heat anywhere, and explore our comprehensive explainer on the Trayvon Martin killing. Also be sure to check out the Tampa Bay Times' eye-opening investigation of nearly 200 Stand Your Ground cases in Florida.

IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE...➫ See How Quickly "Stand Your Ground" Spread Nationwide > MAP: From coast to coast Americans can shoot each other and get away with it more easily. Here's where the bullets are flying.➫ The Money Trail Behind Florida's Notorious Gun Law > The National Rifle Association invested heavily in the legislation that helped keep Trayvon Martin's killer a free man.➫ The Trayvon Martin Killing, Explained > The latest on how a teenager armed with Skittles and iced tea got gunned down by an overeager neighborhood watch captain.➫ Selling Trayvon Martin for Target Practice > An unidentified entrepreneur aimed to profit from selling gun targets depicting the slain teenager.➫ How the NRA Pushed the Right to Pack Heat Anywhere > Mass shootings have done nothing to deter gun-rights groups, which have helped make it easier than ever to buy and carry firearms.

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BY SY MUKHERJEE ON SEPTEMBER 13, 2013 AT 2:41 PM

12. STUDY: Gun Vio lence Hospitalizations Cost Over $600 Million In 2010 Alone

CREDIT: Shutterstock

Emergency room and inpatient procedures related to firearm injuries cost $629 million in 2010 alone, according to a new study by the Urban Institute. Since a large majority of these injuries afflicted poor males from low-income regions, U.S. taxpayers subsidized over half the costs of the treatments through public insurance programs.

Victims of gun violence are almost exclusively men aged 15 years and older, with American males between the ages of 15 and 34 comprising 69 percent of firearm assault injuries. Women constituted just nine percent of gun injuries across all ages.

Researchers found that the average emergency room visit for a gun injury ran $1,126, while an inpatient visit cost $23,497 — $14,000 more than the average cost of all inpatient stays in 2010.

These injuries were also concentrated in low-income regions with high numbers of uninsured Americans and Medicaid beneficiaries. In fact, over half of all the injuries occurred in zip codes in the lowest income quartile, while just seven percent occurred in areas with the highest incomes. That means that many of these hospitalization costs had to be covered by taxpayers through public insurance and assistance to hospitals that serve large numbers of the uninsured:

CREDIT: The Urban Institute

Earlier research has also found gun violence to be a costly enterprise for t he hea l t h ca re sys tem and taxpayers.

An extensive Center for American Progress (CAP) report on gun violence found that three types of violent crime involving guns — homicide, robbery, and aggravated assault — cost taxpayers $3.7 billion per year in higher medical costs, lost work productivity from injuries, and spending on police and the courts.

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The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has concluded that nonfatal gun injuries and gun-related deaths ultimately cost the U.S. $5.6 billion in medical spending every year. That number goes up to $64.6 billion when accounting for lust productivity due to the injuries.

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—By Tim MurphyMonday September 16, 2013 12:36 PM PDT

13. Justifiable Homicides Up 200 Percent in Florida Post-Stand Your GroundJustifiable homicides increased by an average of 53-percent since 2005 in the 22 states that have passed stand-your-ground laws—while falling in the rest of the country—according to a new report from the National Urban League* and Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a pro-gun-control organization helmed by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. In Florida, where the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman first thrust the laws into the national spotlight last spring, the increase in justifiable homicides was even higher—200 percent.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns

The report was released on Monday, in advance of Tuesday's Senate judiciary committee hearing on stand your ground laws. Martin's mother, Sabrina Fulton, is scheduled to testify at the hearing.

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The report also highlights stark racial disparities. In instances where an older white man shot a younger black man, a court was likely to rule the case a justifiable homicide 49 percent of the time. When an older black man shot a younger white man, there was just an 8-percent chance it would be ruled justifiable.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns

This isn't the first time Florida's racial disparities have been brought to light. After the Martin shooting, Republican Gov. Rick Scott created a special panel to put study the effects of the law. Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, it reported back that the law was working—a finding the state government seems more than happy to abide by.

*Correction: This post originally identified the report as being produced by the Urban Institute.

5 Things You Wouldn't Know From Listening to Obama's Financial Crisis SpeechWhat Does Aaron Alexis' Race Say About the Navy Yard Shooting?

TIM MURPHYReporterTim Murphy is a reporter at Mother Jones. Email him with tips and insights at tmurphy [at] motherjones [dot] com. RSS | TWITTER

IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE...➪ No, the Rolling Stones Aren't Boycotting Florida Over Stand Your Ground > And neither is Rihanna, apparently.➪"Stand Your Ground" Did Indeed Play a Role in the Zimmerman TrialActually, Stand Your Ground Played a Major Role in the Trayvon Martin Case > From the pull of the trigger to the not-guilty verdict, here's how the self-defense law mattered.➪ New Hampshire House Votes to Repeal Stand Your Ground > A slim majority votes against the controversial law that allows anyone who feels threatened to shoot first.

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➪ 8 Months After Trayvon: "Stand Your Ground" Law Deemed Just Fine by FloridaDespite troubling research on the controversial law, Gov. Rick Scott's task force gives it the thumbs-up.

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—By Mark FollmanSeptember 15, 2013

14. More Guns, More Mass Shootings—Coincidence?America now has 300 million firearms, a barrage of NRA-backed gun laws—and record casualties from mass killers.

In the fierce debate that always follows the latest mass shooting, it's an argument you hear frequently from gun rights promoters: If only more people were armed, there would be a better chance of stopping these terrible events.

This has plausibility problems—what are the odds that, say, a moviegoer with a pack of Twizzlers in one pocket and a Glock in the other would be mentally prepared, properly positioned, and skilled enough to take out a body-armored assailant in a smoke- and panic-filled theater?

But whether you believe that would happen is ultimately a matter of theory and speculation. Instead, let's look at some facts gathered in a five-month investigation by Mother Jones.

In the wake of the massacres this year at a Colorado movie theater, a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, we set out to track mass shootings in the United States over the last 30 years. We identified and analyzed 62 of them, and one striking pattern in the data is this: In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun.

And in other recent (but less lethal) rampages in which armed civilians attempted to intervene, those civilians not only failed to stop the shooter but also were gravely wounded or killed. Moreover, we found that the rate of mass shootings has increased in recent years—at a time when America has

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been flooded with millions of additional firearms and a barrage of new laws has made it easier than ever to carry them in public places, including bars, parks, and schools.

America has long been heavily armed relative to other societies, and our arsenal keeps growing. A precise count isn't possible because most guns in the United States aren't registered and the government has scant ability to track them, thanks to a legislative landscape shaped by powerful pro-gun groups such as the National Rifle Association.

But through a combination of national surveys and manufacturing and sales data, we know that the increase in firearms has far outpaced population growth. In 1995 there were an estimated 200 million guns in private hands. Today, there are around 300 million—about a 50 percent jump.

The US population, now over 314 million, grew by about 20 percent in that period. At this rate, there will be a gun for every man, woman, and child before the decade ends.

There is no evidence indicating that arming Americans further will help prevent mass shootings or reduce the carnage, says Dr. Stephen Hargarten, a leading expert on emergency medicine and gun violence at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

To the contrary, there appears to be a relationship between the proliferation of firearms and a rise in mass shootings: By our count, there have been two per year on average since 1982. Yet, 25 of the 62 cases we examined have occurred since 2006. In 2012 alone there have been seven mass shootings, and a record number of casualties, with more than 140 people injured and killed.

Armed civilians attempting to intervene are actually more likely to increase the bloodshed, says Hargarten, "given that civilian shooters are less likely to hit their targets than police in these circumstances." A chaotic scene in August at the Empire State Building put this starkly into perspective when New York City police officers trained in counterterrorism confronted a gunman

and wounded nine innocent bystanders in the process.

Surveys suggest America's guns may be concentrated in fewer hands today: Approximately 40 percent of households had them in the past decade, versus about 50 percent in the 1980s.

But far more relevant is a recent barrage of laws that have rolled back gun restrictions throughout the country.

The NRA surge: 99 recent laws rolling back gun regulations in 37 states.

In the past four years, across 37 states, the NRA and its political allies have pushed through 99 laws making guns easier to own, carry, and conceal from the government.

➪ Among the more striking measures: Eight states now allow firearms in bars.

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➪ Law-abiding Missourians can carry a gun while intoxicated and even fire it if "acting in self-defense."

➪ In Kansas, permit holders can carry concealed weapons inside K-12 schools, and Louisiana allows them in houses of worship.

➪ Virginia not only repealed a law requiring handgun vendors to submit sales records, but the state also ordered the destruction of all such previous records.

➪ More than two-thirds of these laws were passed by Republican-controlled statehouses, though often with bipartisan support.

The laws have caused dramatic changes, including in the two states hit with the recent carnage.

➪ Colorado passed its concealed-carry measure in 2003, issuing 9,522 permits that year; by the end of last year the state had handed out a total of just under 120,000, according to data we obtained from the County Sheriffs of Colorado.

➪ In March of this year, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that concealed weapons are legal on the state's college campuses. (It is now the fifth state explicitly allowing them.)

➪ If former neuroscience student James Holmes were still attending the University of Colorado today, the movie theater killer—who had no criminal history and obtained his weapons legally—could've gotten a permit to tote his pair of .40 caliber Glocks straight into the student union.

➪ Wisconsin's concealed-carry law went into effect just nine months before the Sikh temple shooting in suburban Milwaukee this August. During that time, the state issued a whopping 122,506 permits, according to data from Wisconsin's Department of Justice. The new law authorizes guns on college campuses, as well as in bars, state parks, and some government buildings.

And we're on our way to a situation where the most lax state permitting rules—say, Virginia's, where an online course now qualifies for firearms safety training and has drawn a flood of out-of-state applicants—are in effect national law.

➪ Eighty percent of states now recognize handgun permits from at least some other states. And gun rights activists are pushing hard for a federal reciprocity bill—passed in the House late last year, with GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan among its most ardent supporters—that would essentially make any state's permits valid nationwide.

Indeed, the country's vast arsenal of handguns—at least 118 million of them as of 2010—is increasingly mobile, with 69 of the 99 new state laws making them easier to carry.

➪ A decade ago, seven states and the District of Columbia still prohibited concealed handguns; today, it's down to just Illinois and DC. (And Illinois recently passed an exception cracking the door open to carrying).

In the 62 mass shootings we analyzed, 54 of the killers had handguns—including in all 15 of the mass shootings since the surge of pro-gun laws began in 2009.

In a certain sense the law was on their side: nearly 80 percent of the killers in our investigation obtained their weapons legally.

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We used a conservative set of criteria to build a comprehensive rundown of high-profile attacks in public places—at schools, workplaces, government buildings, shopping malls—though they represent only a small fraction of the nation's overall gun violence.

The FBI defines a mass murderer as someone who kills four or more people in a single incident, usually in one location. (As opposed to spree or serial killers, who strike multiple times.)

We excluded cases involving armed robberies or gang violence; dropping the number of fatalities by just one, or including those motives, would add many, many more cases. (More about our criteria here.)

➪ There was one case in our data set in which an armed civilian played a role. Back in 1982, a man opened fire at a welding shop in Miami, killing eight and wounding three others before fleeing on a bicycle. A civilian who worked nearby pursued the assailant in a car, shooting and killing him a few blocks away (in addition to ramming him with the car).

Florida authorities, led by then-state attorney Janet Reno, concluded that the vigilante had used force justifiably, and speculated that he may have prevented additional killings.

But even if we were to count that case as a successful armed intervention by a civilian, it would account for just 1.6 percent of the mass shootings in the last 30 years.

More broadly, attempts by armed civilians to stop shooting rampages are rare—and successful ones even rarer.

➪ There were two school shootings in the late 1990s, in Mississippi and Pennsylvania, in which bystanders with guns ultimately subdued the teen perpetrators, but in both cases it was after the shooting had subsided.

➪ Other cases led to tragic results. In 2005, as a rampage unfolded inside a shopping mall in Tacoma, Washington, a civilian named Brendan McKown confronted the assailant with a licensed handgun he was carrying. The assailant pumped several bullets into McKown and wounded six people before eventually surrendering to police after a hostage standoff. (A comatose McKown eventually recovered after weeks in the hospital.)

➪ In Tyler, Texas, that same year, a civilian named Mark Wilson fired his licensed handgun at a man on a rampage at the county courthouse. Wilson—who was a firearms instructor—was shot dead by the body-armored assailant, who wielded an AK-47. (None of these cases were included in our mass shootings data set because fewer than four victims died in each.)

Appeals to heroism on this subject abound.

So does misleading information.

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➪ Gun rights die-hards frequently credit the end of a rampage in 2002 at the Appalachian School of Law in Virginia to armed "students" who intervened—while failing to disclose that those students were also current and former law enforcement officers, and that the killer, according to police investigators, was out of bullets by the time they got to him. It's one of several cases commonly cited as examples of ordinary folks with guns stopping massacres that do not stand up to scrutiny.

How do law enforcement authorities view armed civilians getting involved? One week after the slaughter at the Dark Knight screening in July, the city of Houston—hardly a hotbed of gun control—released a new Department of Homeland Security-funded video instructing the public on how to react to such events. The six-minute production foremost advises running away or otherwise hiding, and suggests fighting back only as a last resort. It makes no mention of civilians using firearms.

Screen shot: City of Houston video on mass shooters.

Law enforcement officials are the first to say that civilians should not be allowed to obtain particularly lethal weaponry, such as the AR-15 assault rifle and ultra-high-capacity, drum-style magazine used by Holmes to mow down Batman fans.

The expiration of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban under President George W. Bush in 2004 has not helped that cause: Seven killers since then have

wielded assault weapons in mass shootings.

But while access to weapons is a crucial consideration for stemming the violence, stricter gun laws are no silver bullet.

Another key factor is mental illness.

A major New York Times investigation in 2000 examined 100 shooting rampages and found that at least half of the killers showed signs of serious mental health problems.

Our own data reveals that the majority of mass shootings are murder-suicides: In the 62 cases we analyzed, 36 of the shooters killed themselves. Others may have committed "suicide by cop"—seven died in police shootouts. Still others simply waited, as Holmes did in the movie theater parking lot, to be apprehended by authorities.

Drum-style magazine for assault rifles Brownells.com

Mental illness among the killers is no surprise, ranging from paranoid schizophrenia to suicidal depression.

But while some states have improved their sharing of mental health records with federal authorities, millions of records reportedly are still missing from the FBI's database for criminal background checks.

Hargarten of the Medical College of Wisconsin argues that mass shootings need to be scrutinized as a public health emergency so that policy makers can better focus on controlling the epidemic of violence. It would be no different than if there were an outbreak of Ebola virus, he says—we'd be assembling the nation's foremost experts to stop it.

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But real progress will require transcending hardened politics.

For decades gun rights promoters have framed measures aimed at public safety—background checks, waiting periods for purchases, tracking of firearms—as dire attacks on constitutional freedom. They've wielded the gun issue so successfully as a political weapon that Democrats hardly dare to touch it, while Republicans have gone to new extremes in their party platform to enshrine gun rights. Political leaders have failed to advance the discussion "in a credible, thoughtful, evidence-driven way," says Hargarten.

In the meantime, the gun violence in malls and schools and religious venues continues apace.

As a superintendent told his community in suburban Cleveland this February, after a shooter at Chardon High School snuffed out the lives of three students and injured three others, "We're not just any old place, Chardon. This is every place. As you've seen in the past, this can happen anywhere."

Additional research contributed by Deanna Pan and Gavin Aronsen.

MARK FOLLMANSenior is a senior editor at Mother Jones. Read more of his stories, follow him on Twitter, or contact him with tips or feedback at mfollman (at) motherjones (dot) com. RSS | TWITTER

IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE...➪ The NRA Surge: 99 Laws Rolling Back Gun Restrictions > Kansas now allows guns inside K-12 schools—one of a barrage of looser state laws passed in the last four years.➪ A Guide to Mass Shootings in America > At least 13 people died in an attack at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday—the fifth mass shooting in the US this year.➪ What Exactly Is a Mass Shooting? > What defines a mass shooting, how often they occur, and how to distinguish them from spree and serial killings.➪"I Was a Survivor": Recalling a Mass Shooting 4 Years Ago Today > A Tennessee man who witnessed carnage at a church gathering sheds light on a recurrent national problem.➪ How the NRA and Its Allies Helped Spread Florida's Radical Gun Law Nationwide > Years before Trayvon Martin was killed, gun lobbyists conspired to give Stand Your Ground shooters immunity everywhere.

MoJo's map, timeline, and analysis of 30 years of mass shootings in America.

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BY TARA CULP-RESSLER ON SEPTEMBER 20, 2013 AT 2:06 PM

15. Americans Are More Likely To Blame Mental Health Issues, Not Easy Access To Guns, For Mass Shootings

CREDIT: Shutterstock

When assigning the blame for mass shootings, the public is more likely to blame the gaps in the nation’s mental health system rather than loose guns laws, according to a new Gallup poll released on Friday.

Eighty percent cite the “failure of the mental health system to identify individuals who are a danger to others” as a great deal or a fair amount

to blame for shootings, while 61 percent say the same for easy access to guns.

Compared with public opinion polling that was conducted two years ago, about the same number of people think mental health issues are at fault for these type of crimes.

But fewer people now think guns are the problem. The number of Americans who say that loose gun laws are “a great deal” at fault for mass shootings has declined from 46 to 40 percent.

That attitude is reflected in current attitudes about gun legislation, too. Since the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting last December, fewer people now think the laws governing the sale of firearms should be made stricter. According to Gallup, that figure has declined from 58 percent after the Newtown shooting to 49 percent after this week’s Navy Yard shooting.

It’s true that many Americans aren’t getting the mental health care they need. It’s currently easier for Americans to get a gun than it is to get mental health treatment. Most Americans, even the ones who have health insurance, simply can’t afford it.

In the aftermath of incidents of mass gun violence, many conservative lawmakers, along with the National Rifle Association, tend to seize on mental health issues as a way of deflecting attention from potential legislation to tighten gun control.

Typically, however, that’s little more than empty rhetoric. The Republican lawmakers who tout addressing mental health issues as the best response to gun violence are often the same ones who try to block measures that would actually strengthen the mental health care system. Some of them have overseen huge cuts to state-funded mental health services, which have been slashed by billions in the aftermath of the economic recession.

And health advocates caution that the national conversations in this area can often end up stigmatizing the Americans who are living with mental illnesses. In fact, people with mental illnesses

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aren’t any more prone to violence than the general population. The media and entertainment industries typically depict the mentally ill as violent criminals — but people living with mental health issues are actually more likely to be the victims of crimes than the perpetrators of them.

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BY REBECCA LEBER ON SEPTEMBER 27, 2013 AT 11:03 AM

16. NRA Tried To Stifle Study Showing Gun Retailers Support Background Checks

CREDIT: AP

A new survey from a University of California-Davis professor shows that even a majority of gun sellers support background checks. Looking at 1,601 federally licensed gun dealers in 2011, Director of UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program Garen Wintemute found that 55 percent support comprehensive background checks, despite the NRA’s position against it. Wintemute found high levels of support for denying guns to people convicted of assault and robbery, as well as those with alcohol abuse and serious mental illnesses.

When the author began his survey in 2011, he says he received a warning from the National Rifle Association urging members not to participate. An NRA member himself, Wintemute showed Al Jazeera America the email sent, though it appears gun dealers did not heed the NRA’s warning: If you are a federally licensed dealer in firearms, you may recently have received a survey questionnaire from gun control supporter Dr. Garen Wintemute, of the University of California, Davis.

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Why is Dr. Wintemute sending the survey? Consider the source. Over the years, he has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from anti-gun organizations to conduct “studies” designed to promote gun control.

While the NRA claims Wintemute is backed by more powerful special interests, the NRA is the giant by any measure, worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Meanwhile, thanks to the NRA’s success banning Center for Disease Control funding, there is virtually no funding for gun violence research. As a result, researchers have chosen unusual routes to pursue data on gun deaths, including going as far as crowdsourcing his or her own research.

Even though more than 90 percent of the public and 74 percent of NRA members back universal background checks, the Senate rejected the simple gun violence reform in April. Under current law, only federally licensed gun dealers must comply with background screenings, leaving out about 40 percent of guns sold through private sales.

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