In about a week, the legislators in the US state of Missouri will vote to override the state governor’s veto on a sweeping state law that would nullify all US federal gun laws in Missouri. This legislation would make it a crime for US federal agents to enforce federal gun laws in the state of […]
Category: Gun violence
Valuable resource
Herb Linn, who I believe is Assistant Director for Outreach at West Virginia University Injury Control Research Ctr, has begun posting bi-weekly Injury Prevention Research, Practice & Policy News on the INJURY_PREV_NEWS@listserv.wvu.edu. I assume any readers of this blog can arrange to receive these (and other) valuable items on this listserve. I cannot reproduce an example of what […]
6 year old shoots sister: ‘just a tragic ‘accident’?
A 5 year old in Kentucky unintentionally shot his 2 year old sister with a rifle designed for children and given to him as a birthday present. Caroline’s death was ruled accidental and no charges will be filed against her 5-year-old brother. But what about charges against the parent who gave the child the gun, […]
NRA supports like-minded legal ‘scholars’ to reshape gun laws
Last month the Washington Post had a story describing the role the NRA has played in shaping current US gun regulations. This is an excerpt which I hope will persuade blog readers that my apparent obsession with the NRA is fully justified. As recently as 1977 the role of the second amendment to the US […]
A small first step toward meaningful gun control
The Governor of Connecticut has signed a gun-control bill that includes a strengthened assault weapons ban. The pens he used to sign the bill were distributed to parents of children massacred at Newtown in December. In signing the Governor note that “When 92 percent of Americans agree that every gun sale should be subject to a […]
$12 million from Bloomberg to support gun control
Efforts to advance gun control legislation in the United States are stalling. Even in the state of Connecticut, where the Newtown shootings took place, legislative efforts to address gun related violence haven’t gone anywhere. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/nyregion/connecticut-still-working-on-gun-law-frustrating-some.html?src=xps It is amazing to see how the political will to address the issue of gun violence has lost energy so […]
Department of good news-bad news
Today on FairWarning (an excellent site, btw) there was a good news announcement that the governor of Colorado signed a bill restricting firearms. As of July 1, background checks would be required for private and online gun sales and ammunition magazines holding more than 15 rounds would be banned. That is the good news. The bad […]
The gun debate and domestic violence
A controversial article pertains to two themes highlighted in Injury Prevention blogs this year – violence against women and gun ownership. On March 17, the New York Times published the article “In Some States, Gun Rights Trump Orders of Protection”, with reporting contributed by Griff Palmer and research contributed by Kristen Millares Young and Jack Styczynski. The lengthy article cites […]
A round up of gun control stories from the US (Dec 2012-March 2013)
This understandably hot topic dominates the news I receive from various sources in the US, especially the major news media. I cannot do justice to the details in each of these reports but have tried to offer a précis of the main points in several of these. Guns don’t stop mass shootings Late in December, […]
Learning from the experience of gun control in Australia
Simon Chapman points out that his 2006 paper in Injury Prevention “Australia’s 1996 gun law reforms: faster falls in firearm deaths, firearm suicides, and a decade without mass shootings,” was downloaded over 80,000 time in December 2012, presumably following the tragedy in Sandy Hook. The article usage statistics for this paper (as for all the papers we publish) […]