School Shooting, Gun Control | featured news

The Senate has rejected a bipartisan effort to expand federal background checks to more firearms buyers in a crucial showdown over gun control. Today's vote was a jarring blow to the drive to curb firearms sparked by December's massacre of children and staff at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. President Barack Obama made broadened background checks the centerpiece of his gun control proposals.

Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy is expected on Thursday to sign a tough new gun law that restricts sales of the sort of high-capacity ammunition clips that a gunman used to massacre 26 people in minutes in a December attack on a school.

Officers and a bomb-sniffing dog were on hand as the gun-rights group’s unveiled its recommendation that every school hire armed guards.

Legislative debates over gun rights, up significantly since the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., have spurred alleged death threats resulting in two high-profile arrests and causing lawmakers in one state to declare their legislature was under attack.

Nearly six in 10 Americans want stricter gun laws in the aftermath of last month’s deadly school shooting in Connecticut, with majorities favoring a nationwide ban on military-style, rapid-fire weapons and limits on gun violence depicted in video games, movies and TV shows, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.

A month after a gunman invaded Sandy Hook Elementary School, killing 20 children and six adults, a group of local residents are calling for efforts to make communities safer from gun violence.

The shootings in Newtown, Conn., two weeks ago sparked an intense reaction across the country, and opinion polls captured major changes in the way the public interprets such events and how strict gun laws should be but only minor shifts in support for specific policies.

Recalling the shooting of 20 first graders as the worst day of his presidency, President Barack Obama on Sunday pledged to put his "full weight" behind a legislative package next year aimed at containing gun violence.

The nation's largest gun-rights lobby called Friday for armed police officers to be posted in every American school to stop the next killer "waiting in the wings."

Gun control advocates marched to the National Rifle Association's Capitol Hill office on Monday, in an effort to pressure the powerful organization to stop standing in the way of reform.