Embattled Michigan Governor Rick Snyder vetoed ill-timed legislation that would have allowed experienced gun owners to carry concealed weapons in public schools. This is among the first tangible impacts of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The bill was delivered to Snyder’s desk early Tuesday afternoon and he vetoed it [...]

Before this fight gets waged, however, there has to be some understanding of what problem needs to be solved. I completely agree with Mark Kleiman that asking “how do we stop the type of shootings we saw in Newtown” risks solving the wrong problem. The gun safety debate should not just focus on protecting children, and it may not be accurate to tailor policies toward preventing mass shootings. There are certainly things we can do to curtail the 9,000-odd homicides with guns used each year, but they may not be applicable to the case of the young, mostly white, often mentally disturbed individuals who commit mass murder, often out of a need for attention, which is then lavished upon them by the news media.

This to me is a key part of the President’s remarks at last night’s vigil in Newtown, Connecticut: This is our first task — caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged. And by that [...]

Dianne Feinstein, author of the 1994 assault weapons ban that expired under President George W. Bush in 2004, told Meet the Press that she plans to reintroduce the law on the first day of the new Congress in 2013. The bill seeks to respond to the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, [...]

I haven’t been posting this afternoon because I’ve been preoccupied with other things, but also because of a general frustration with how America responds to gun tragedies. Really the lowest form of our political discourse comes out on these days. It seems as if somebody is just inventing scenarios to increase the outrage over the [...]

A few more comments on last night’s debate: • I don’t think the college student worried about his job prospects was looking for the answer Obama gave about the budding rise of manufacturing. He’s not looking for a factory job. I think high-skill manufacturing should absolutely be part of the mix of the 21st-century job [...]

A Justice Department Inspector General’s report on the Fast and Furious matter largely exonerates Attorney General Eric Holder, claiming that he knew nothing about the gun-running operation until after the death of a US Border Patrol agent. The report by the Justice Department’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz said there is “no evidence that … Holder [...]

Today, gun violence claimed the life of another American outside the Empire State Building. But the muddled and confusing aftermath offers a lesson as to why the preferred conservative response to mass shootings, i.e. arm more citizens, would be disastrous: A clothing designer who had been fired from a Midtown Manhattan company shot and killed [...]

The nation witnessed another incident of right-wing domestic terrorism yesterday, when a suspected white supremacist killed 7 people at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. This is only the latest in the suffering of the Sikh-American community in the United States, which has endured discrimination for over 10 years since 9-11. Sikhs are continuously [...]

President Obama made his strongest comments since 2008 on gun control in a speech before the National Urban League last night, arguing for a variety of limits on gun proliferation: With the last public event of a four-day trip that started with a visit to the Aurora, Colo., hospital where almost two dozen victims were [...]

New gun control legislation will not pass this Congress. I’m confident saying it won’t pass the next Congress either, or the next. In essence, new gun control legislation will never pass Congress again, as long as this generation of Democrats remains in power. The assault weapons ban passed in 1994, not that long ago. Every [...]