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While we know way too many children and teens are killed by guns (last count: 11,000  people, many of them younger than 12, in 2013, according to Slate, which took up the accounting after Newtown), did you know that a lmost one child or teen an hour is injured by a firearm seriously enough to require hospitalization? Michelle Healy at USA Today reports that a new study shows that six percent of the 7,391 young hospitalizations analyzed resulted in a death, quoting February's  Pediatrics , released today. "Every day, 20 of our children are hospitalized for firearms injury, often suffering severe and costly injuries, clearly shows that this is a national public health problem," Robert Sege, director of the Division of Family and Child Advocacy at Boston Medical Center and a co-author of the study, tells Healy. I don't know about you but I have a horrifying thing to say.  I am becoming numb to all the mass murders and drive-by shootings of innocent children who ju...

I guess we shouldn't be surprised (horrified is more like it), but gun violence in movies has tripled since 1985, the year the rating was introduced. According to newswise.com, "The most popular PG-13 movies of 2011 and 2012 showed significantly more gun violence than R-rated movies of the same time period, a new study reveals." Could we be any more depressed?  I read yesterday that a gun rights advocate who wrote a (very mild) piece for Guns and Ammo about how maybe we should consider regulating guns just a little, was immediately fired from the magazine and vilified and threatened by his peers, while his editor wrote a meek apology for publishing the story, and was himself fired. Meanwhile, the killings in real life continue, with (you're not going to believe this) 16 mass killings since Newtown, where 20 first graders and six adults were gunned down last December.  (I so dread the anniversary coming up, especially because the vile NRA has promised to hold...

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...

I used to think that background checks -- while important -- were a weak deterrent to gun sales and a sad culmination of all the anguished lobbying in Washington after Newtown. But reading in The New York Times today, I was shocked to see how much gun violence they could possibly prevent.  I realize "possibly" is the operative word here. But The Times gave as an example a felon (who would not legally be able to purchase a gun through legitimate means) who advertised for one on armslist.com, and each day, his request grew more and more desperate.  Looking like a crime in need of a weapon. This felon was convicted of  burglary and domestic violence. And now, to hear that Republicans, once again, are caving in to the gun lobby, or at least, saying they will probably not vote for this most miniscule (in the end) legislation, I feel despair and rage. While you can't really connect the Boston Marathon bombings and disasters like Newtown, you can see the connection betwe...

Sadly, more and more schools are buying into Wayne LaPierre's insanity -- oops, I meant, logic -- that schools need armed guards to be safe. As Justin Green writes in The Daily Beast, some schools in very rural areas are too far away for the police to respond quickly.  So in Missouri, for one, they've turned to installing armed guards in these schools. And the townspeople love it. Excuse me, but I don't see how having any kind of weapon in a school is a good thing.  I believe the Columbine killers used their armed guard's gun against him, did they not?  Closer to home, and Newtown, some schools have indeed voted for people to patrol their halls with guns.  Enfield, Conn., is one, which is pretty funny because this is a town with less than 45,000 residents, where the population has only gone up .1% since 2000 and which is located in the suburbs,  rolling hills, to be exact. A Florida mother has handed out a $12,000 check for armed guards in her daugh...

So they're coming together.  The Democrats and Republicans have finally found an issue on which they can both agree when it comes to gun control.  Mental health. Whoopee. While there's no doubt that mentally ill people are the ones behind these horrendous mass killings, that still doesn't do anything about the fact that they can get their hands on weapons in the first place.  For all the celebrating (me, included) on just getting a gun control bill to the floor for debate, really, how far have we come to our goal? Saturday Night Live last night did a very funny (and, to me, heartbreaking) opener on just what's been agreed to so far, and for all the laughs and elbow nudging, the comics playing the two senators who triumped over recalcitrant GOP members to allow the bill to be debated, there was a sad, sad truth. As the comedians played to laughs that Domino's would no longer be able to give away free rifles with pizzas, or allow people to shoo...

So it's happened. A fatal shooting not at an elementary or preschool but at a daycare center.  Two men shot at and killed each other in Quebec there.  Fortunately, this time, none of the children were harmed. And so it goes.  The contract has been broken.  Used to be, schools and places where children -- and babies -- gathered used to be sacrosanct, like churches an hospitals. Bad things just didn't happen there.  If people were angry, they killed each other in their homes, and later, supermarkets or theaters or places where adults came together .  Not places where innocent children learned or played. But then there was Newtown.  And we, or at least I, realized that evil can grow and live anywhere.  Maybe I'm naive for thinking people who are out to kill keep certain situations out of the question.  It would seem, now, that's no longer a given. Fifthy-three children were at this daycare at the time of the sho...

It's astounding, and heartbreaking, but Newtown isn't going to change anything, after all. According to The Christian Science Monitor, public opinion polls have found that people favoring gun control has dropped by 10%.  Now, less than 50% of Americans believe our gun laws should be changed. Even stories about Newtown have dropped below the fold in many newspapers, and no longer lead the news at night or first thing in the morning.  Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy lamented that we were losing the moment earlier this year, and looks like he was right. "As Congress prepares to vote on a comprehensive gun control bill next month, a poll released Tuesday shows that public support is waning for restrictions on gun ownership," The Monitor's Mark Guarino reported. But the most disturbing story of all appeared at breitbard.com, "Newtown Sides with NRA: Votes for Armed Guards in Schools." In this story it was noted that it's just a request, for now, and...

NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo is backing down, too.  In the face of the assault weapon ban dying in Congress, "Cuomo Favors Easing Part of Newly Passed Gun Law," according to Thomas Kaplan and Danny Hakim of The New York Times. What's he's easing, they report, is the restriction on the legal capacity of magazine rounds, down from seven, as in the newly-passed law, to nothing. The gun-control law, approved in January, banned the sale of magazines that hold more than seven rounds of ammunition. But, guess what?  Seven-round magazines are not routinely manufactured. And, oh, those poor legal gun owners.  "Although the new gun law provided an exemption for the use of 10-round magazines at firing ranges and competitions, it did not provide a legal way for gun owners to purchase such magazines," Kaplan and Hakim write. So here's the "compromise" -- you can still buy magazines that hold 10 rounds. But you can only use seven.  Now who's going t...

T he New York Times reports today on a unique program going on in Los Angeles that identifies kids who fool around with guns and shrapnel and/or have said they want to shoot up a school.  According to Erica Goode, the program hopes to find these ticking time bombs before they detonate. They even have nicknames for the kids, calling one "Jared Loughner," after the man who mowed down people in the Colorado theater last year, who was obsessed with guns and killing, staying in touch with his mother to make sure the teen was stable and not showing any signs of committing violence, Goode writes. Logically enough, many of these kids show the instability or rage or depression that Adam Lanza, the Newtown serial killer who obliterated two first grade classes; Loughner, and others before they commit a crime. The Los Angeles School Threat Assessment Response Team is one of the most intensive efforts in the country working on picking out those who are drawn to violence, and trying...

In a staggering (to me, at least) front-page story in the New York Times today, the presence of guns in homes in this country has declined precipitously. The rate of those who keep guns in their homes is now at 34%, down from 50% in the '70s, the article notes -- in complete contradiction to reports of guns flying off shelves in the wake of the killings of 20 children in Newtown last year, dozens at a movie theater in Aurora, CO, and last month's shooting spree by a former cop in California. So why do I not feel better? Maybe because women are now jumping into the game, too. According to Billy Hallowell, "In a survey last year by the National Shooting Sports Foundation , 73 percent of gun dealers said the number of female customers had gone up in 2011, as had a majority of retailers surveyed in the two previous years," rising from 13% in 2005 to 23% in 2011, as reported in a Gallup poll. KGET.com adds that gun makers are taking notice, "creating everything ...

A scary headline in my local newspaper last week read, "Blumenthal, NRA boss find common ground."  Scary because Democratic Sentator Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut's former attorney general known for challenging illegal drug company marketing practices, cracking down on health insurance companies for fraudulent policies, and others, now can agree with Wayne LaPierre, whose response to Sandy Hook was arm the schools? Phew!  That's a run-on sentence. But what is most frightening to me is that Blumenthal, who has campaigned so agressively for the common man, now believes we're probably not going any further than background checks -- important as they may be -- because the NRA will go along with that.  Forget banning assault weapons.  Registering buyers at gun shows, and everywhere.  Illegal gun prosecutions -- which LaPierre bet Blumenthal will not rise even after the Newtown massacre. Is the best we can hope for, background checks?  I'm not den...

That President Obama feels the need to have photos taken of him skeet shooting?  And that gun zealots have to smugly note that it's "only" skeet shooting, or that the photo was faked?  Isn't what we're talking about here not sport guns vs. assault rifles, but lives?  That's what's getting lost in all this nonsense.  And who cares if Obama shoots skeets (and what the hell are skeets, anyway?) once a week or once a lifetime? Does that make him less a man, or leader?  I guess to the NRA, it does, who, according to Darlene Superville, is "scoffing" at his claim. And why is Obama going along with this?  Why does he feel the need to shoot, or defend his right not to shoot?  Is that really what we want this all to be about? http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/white-house-releases-photo-obama-firing-gun-18385919 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/02/nra-obama-skeet-shooting_n_2608177.html

Now I've heard everything.  The New York Times today ran a story today about how some people think rethinking mental health isn't going to do anything to curb violence. That's because, according to the article, some experts think it's unfair to single out mentally ill people as an answer to gun violence because "people with serious mental illness are involved in only about 4% of violent crime," and are far more likely to be victims of it -- 11 or more times the general population. Of course, fixing mental health is the NRA's answer to violence committed by people with assault weapons with multiple clips.  (Remember: guns don't kill people.  People kill people. But as I saw on a sign in the NYT yesterday, "Guns just let it happen.") Lest we forget, Adam Lanza was able to kill 20 first graders and six teachers in a matter of minutes with the availability of guns that sprayed 13 or more bullets at a time.  And had hundreds of clips left. ...

According to Slate, more than 1400 people have been killed by guns since the horrific massacre in Newtown.  And the Web site is actually compiling the numbers from every state to get an exact count. It's hard, because since Congress killed the research by the CDC, there's no one place to get the stats from. The only way, Slate notes, to get the correct data is to crowd-source.  Pretty sad, huh? What horrified -- then enraged -- me this week was gun rights activists booing down one of the fathers of the victims when he spoke at the Connecticut capitol. . . the Washington Post sanctimoniously ran the definition of "heckled" and said it didn't count. I keep seeing Wayne LaPierre's face and wanting to spit. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/12/gun_death_tally_every_american_gun_death_since_newtown_sandy_hook_shooting.html http://mbd.scout.com/mb.aspx?s=18&f=1717&t=11222652

OK, so we've heard all the back-and-forth between presidential and legislative forces and the NRA.  Make all gun buyers and owners register.  No weapons sold to those with mental health conditions, as recommended by healthcare professionals.  And my favorite: armed guards at schools.  Puhleeze. But Kaiser News reports that children, teens and young adults, and their mental health -- along with the teachers, counselors and therapists who could spot problems before they happen -- are a big part of President Obama's gun plan. Spoiler alert:  I live about 20 miles from Newtown and this crime has struck me far more than any other "mass shooting." (I remember my shock when Colin Ferguson entered the Long Island train and began shooting and I thought then, what is the world coming to.)  And when mass shootings referred to war, and  wasn't a common phrase in our language. http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2013/January/17/mental-health-gun-control...