LANSDOWNE, Va. -- Even as she acknowledged that passing a new assault weapons ban would be a challenge, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) called on Congress to consider the “boldest possible package” to reduce gun violence in the “small window” that has opened for action.

An assault weapons ban was one of 15 proposals in a plan issued Thursday by a Gun Violence Prevention Task Force led by Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), which mirrored a similar report from a White House panel led by Vice President Joe Biden.

The Democratic leader, speaking to reporters during a House Democratic issues conference at a golf resort outside Washington, said she endorsed each of the principles of the report. When pressed specifically on the assault weapons ban, she questioned the “justification” for such a weapon.

“I think we have to try to have the boldest possible package that reduces gun violence. And I don’t think we should try to find the slowest route right now. I think we should move as boldly as possible and see where we come out, rather than throwing in the towel on something that has no justification,” she said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-pelosi-boldest-possible-gun-legislation-20130207,0,6085487.story

SACRAMENTO, Calif. Weeks after New York enacted the nation's toughest gun laws, California lawmakers said Thursday they want their state to do even more in response to recent mass shootings, particularly the Connecticut school massacre.

Democrats who control the state Legislature revealed 10 proposals that they said would make California the most restrictive state for possessing firearms.

They were joined at a Capitol news conference by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, along with several police chiefs.

"California has always been a leader on the issue of gun safety," Villaraigosa said. "New York has stepped up and stepped forward. California needs to answer the call."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57568322/calif-lawmakers-seek-toughest-gun-laws-in-nation/

PHILADELPHIA — In a darkened classroom, 15 eighth graders gasped as a photograph appeared on the screen in front of them. It showed a dead man whose jaw had been destroyed by a shotgun blast, leaving the lower half of his face a shapeless, bloody mess.

Next came a picture of the bullet-perforated legs of someone who had been shot with an AK-47 assault rifle, and then one of the bloated abdomen of a gunshot victim with internal injuries so grievous that the patient had to be fitted with a colostomy bag to replace intestines that can no longer function normally.

These are among about 500 gunshot victims who are treated each year at Temple University Hospital, an institution in the heart of impoverished, crime-ridden North Philadelphia. While President Obama and Congressional leaders debate legislation intended to prevent mass killings like the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., the hospital is trying to slow the rate of street killings by helping teenagers understand the realities of gun violence.

The unusual program, called Cradle to Grave, brings in youths from across Philadelphia in the hope that an unflinching look at the effects that guns have in their community will deter young people from reaching for a gun to settle personal scores, and will help them recognize that gun violence is not the glamorous business sometimes depicted in television shows and rap music.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/us/07philly.html?hpw&_r=0

The moment that most deserves to be remembered from Sunday's thrilling Super Bowl came before the game, when Jennifer Hudson joined students from Sandy Hook Elementary School in singing “America the Beautiful.”

It was a heart-rending elegy for the fallen — and a stirring call to action.

The brave students, in khakis and white polo shirts, survived the unspeakable massacre in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 of their schoolmates dead, riddled with bullets from an assault rifle fired by a madman. Hudson, the acclaimed recording artist and Oscar-winning actress, lost her mother, brother and nephew to Chicago's endemic gun violence in 2008 when a troubled relative went on a murderous rampage; she had to identify all three bodies at the morgue.

The performance brought tears to the eyes of some of the players — and, surely, many television viewers. It was a reminder that life goes on, but also that we must not lose sight of unfinished business: reducing the awful toll that barely regulated, insufficiently monitored commerce in powerful weapons takes on innocent victims, day after day after day.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/commentary/article/Pro-gun-lobby-overplaying-hand-4253505.php#ixzz2KDHqABSK

As President Obama stakes out a gun safety position previously held by Ronald Reagan, and endorsed as constitutional by Antonin Scalia, today's loudest conservative voices are comparing the Reagan/Scalia/Obama position to Hitler and threatening responses that go as far as impeachment, nullification, violent resistance and secession. It's all rather head-spinning, to say the least.

But the elite US media treats it as perfectly normal. And in one sense they're right: for decades now, it's been the norm for conservatives to switch gears and reinvent themselves in crazy ways, rather than deal soberly with the policy failures their previous lock-step thinking has created.

The Tea Party brand of so-called "constitutional conservatism" was born out of the ashes of the George W Bush brand of so-called "compassionate conservatism", which in turn was born out of the ashes of the Newt Gingrich/Dick Armey brand of "impeach Clinton conservatism", which in turn was born out of the ashes of... well, you get the idea.

For a political philosophy that supposedly worships eternal values, hallowed traditions and continuity, rather than abrupt change, conservatism of late seems to tear through costume changes like a drag queen on steroids.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/20132371127714836.html

ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - Congress is considering ways to toughen the penalties for people who help convicted felons get guns by lying on their paperwork.

Trista Frederick is a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. She says in St. Louis, many of the guns which end up in the hands of felons committing crimes on the street were purchased illegally by “straw parties” who claimed the gun they were purchasing was for themselves.

“Straw purchasing is a significant problem in the St. Louis area and is a major contributing factor to the cycle of violence that occurs in St. Louis,” Frederick said. “Unfortunately, we can’t say with any accuracy the number of firearms that are straw purchased because the violations often go undetected by law enforcement and the industry. It’s often not until a firearm is used in a crime that the straw purchase is discovered.

Both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives are considering plans to raise the penalty for straw purchasing a gun from the current ten years in prison to thirty.

http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2013/02/06/straw-purchases-contributing-to-st-louis-gun-violence/

AUGUSTA — A new coalition is backing legislation that would require background checks for private gun sales, ban high-capacity magazines and prevent people who are seriously mentally ill from buying guns.

The group, “Coalition for a Safer Maine – No More Newtowns!," was launched today at a State House press conference.

Former Lewiston Mayor Larry Gilbert, and former U.S. Attorney Paula Silsby are serving as co-chairs. Others include South Portland Police Chief Ed Googins, and Robert McAfee, a retired surgeon and past president of the Maine Medical Association and the American Medical Association.

The Maine Council of Churches and the Maine Citizens Against Handgun Violence has also joined the group.

http://www.kjonline.com/news/Maine-coalition-to-back-laws-limiting-gun-violence.html

California lawmakers are pondering a move to make violence liability insurance mandatory for all gun owners. If the measure passes, California would be the only state with the requirement, according to the Associated Press . Similar bills have been introduced in Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania. AB231 puts the onus of paying for gun violence on gun owners as opposed taxpayers picking up the cost of gun violence.

What is the impetus behind California's legislation?

Assemblyman Philip Ting of San Francisco told the AP he was "moved" by the Sand Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut. He felt gun violence insurance is a "constructive" way to deal with gun violence. Ting felt owning a gun is like a car when vehicle owners are required to buy insurance. The legislation's details haven't been worked out as of yet.

How does gun violence liability insurance work?

Much like health insurance and car insurance, violence liability insurance premiums could be calculated using several factors. Insurance companies in the private sector would have their own criteria for gun insurance ownership. Those people more likely to be safe would have lower insurance costs, according to financial author John Wasik in Forbes magazine .

Attorney Tricia Dunlap, writing for The Hill , lists similar criteria. A free market system for gun violence liability insurance would impose fewer charges on an antique Civil War rifle owner who keeps his or her firearm on a wall display and higher premiums for someone who carries an assault weapon around all the time. More gun safety classes would mean lower premiums and less costs for violence insurance. Even regular mental health evaluations would less costs to gun owners. Violence liability insurance would cover costs of injuries from shooters and also covers gun owners in case a weapon is stolen.

http://news.yahoo.com/gun-violence-liability-insurance-184900504.html

King owns three handguns, but he questions why gun advocates need deadly weapons like the Bushmaster or the AR-15:

"I have nothing against gun owners, sport shooters, or hunters, but semi-automatic weapons have only two purposes. One is so that owners can take them to the shooting range once in awhile, yell yeehaw and get all horny at the rapid fire and the burning vapour spurting from the end of the barrel. Their other use – their only other use – is to kill people.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings, gun advocates have to ask themselves if their zeal to protect even the outer limits of gun ownership has anything to do with preserving the Second Amendment as a whole, or if it's just a stubborn desire to hold on to what they have, and to hell with the collateral damage."

http://en.avaaz.org/1319/stephen-king-gun-control-ban-assault-weapons

Both sides in the gun debate are misusing academic reports on the impact of the 1994 assault weapons ban, cherry-picking portions out of context to suit their arguments.

Wayne LaPierre, chief executive officer of the National Rifle Association, told a Senate committee that the “ban had no impact on lowering crime.” But the studies cited by LaPierre concluded that effects of the ban were “still unfolding” when it expired in 2004 and that it was “premature to make definitive assessments of the ban’s impact on gun violence.”
Conversely, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has introduced a bill to institute a new ban on assault weapons, claimed the 1994 ban “was effective at reducing crime.” That’s not correct either. The study concluded that “we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.”

Both sides in the gun debate are selectively citing from a series of studies that concluded with a 2004 study led by Christopher S. Koper, “An Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003.” That report was the final of three studies of the ban, which was enacted in 1994 as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.

The final report concluded the ban’s success in reducing crimes committed with banned guns was “mixed.” Gun crimes involving assault weapons declined. However, that decline was “offset throughout at least the late 1990s by steady or rising use of other guns equipped with large-capacity magazines.”

http://factcheck.org/2013/02/did-the-1994-assault-weapons-ban-work/