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And where are we really?  Background checks didn't pass, the Democratic senators who voted against the proposed legislaton are still in Congress, and still against it, and the NRA is still whooping it up in victory. There have been a few signs of hope -- with NYC Mayor Bloomberg taking out ads against those running for office who are pro-gun, and his most controversial stand yet, urging big donors to deny funds to those four senators who joined the Republicans in killing the background check legislation, even if their seats may now fall to Republicans. You have to admire his drive -- though sitting on billions of dollars helps. And Democrats, according to The New York Times today, are also renewing their push for gun measures.  Jonathan Weisman writes that Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, though, is cautioning that he won't accept any bill that is weaker than the one voted on in April. But has anything really changed?  Hero teacher Victoria Soto's sisters were on mo...

Where do you stand on genetically modified food ?  If you're like most Americans, you'd rather not -- or at least know when you're eating it. But the agriculture industry has been successful in fighting the distribution of this knowledge, using big bucks and political allies (read: Congressmen they sponsor). But last month Vermont became the first state to pass a bill requiring "labeling of foods produced using these genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, and thankfully, my home state, Connecticut. Right to Know GMO, a self-described grass-roots coalition with members in 37 states, counts 26 states that have introduced labeling bills, passed its own, according to Dan D'Ambrosio of USA Today. Barbara Boxer, Democrat from California, always in the forefront of protecting the consumer, whether from guns or artificially assembled food, told D'Ambrosio in an e-mail, "As more and more states take action, I believe lawmakers in Washington will realize tha...

I'm sure it doesn't come as a surprise to anyone but I was truly shocked when I read yesterday in The New York Times' that gun manufacturers feel no responsibility, just complete indifference  and resistance to the idea that any tracing of guns used by criminals -- or remorse -- might have prevented the recent killings at Newtown and other mass shootings. In fact, many of them were downright self-righteous, with the old "guns don't kill people, people kill people" mantra.  I'm not sure I'd be so holier-than-thou if I had the deaths of 20 elementary school students on my  watch. As Mike McIntyre and Michael Luo reported, the attitude of most sellers of guns is who, me?  "The president of Sturm, Ruger was not interested in knowing how often the police traced guns back to the company’s distributors, saying it 'wouldn’t show us anything," the writers related. And certainly a large swath of the public agrees.   Profit at the company s...

So from everything I've been reading and seeing, the background check has been somewhat gutted.  Gun rights advocates won in the ban against so-called "friends and neighbors" gun sales, where people can still sell to relatives without requiring the buyer to go through a background check.  And I'm not clear on this, but I believe the idea of registering gun owners -- to me, an absolute necessity -- is also dying. David Weigl at slate.com notes that the NRA feels it's "winning" because, even though they're losing, in their minds, some of their "rights," they're gaining members opposed to any expansion of gun control.  But Weigl also reports that they can't really consider themselves winning because it's become open season on members, something this country has not seen since the 1990s. Anyway. . .so at least gun control advocates have topped the first hill, "defeating (in the Senate) an effort by conservatives to derail a...