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Sequester trumps Sandy Hook: Why gun-control measures may falter

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Many Americans expected a real change in the nation’s gun laws after the killing of 20 first-graders in Newtown. But three months later, the outcome looks unclear. No fewer than four pieces of legislation have passed a Senate panel over the past two weeks to move to the Senate floor. “It’s a step forward,” Debra DeShong Reed, spokeswoman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, told MSNBC.

At the same time, legislators in both the House and Senate have stuck provisions into spending bills that could undermine federal enforcement of both existing and proposed gun control efforts. “It’s gonna be a slog,” Ladd Everitt, spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, told MSNBC.

“The will is there,” Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, told MSNBC. Sugarmann is a longtime gun control advocate who grew up in Newtown decades before this past December’s tragedy. “But the NRA is relentless,” he added. “They are out there in public. They are working behind the scenes, and that is what we are seeing right now.”

To finish reading the story, please click here.

[Correction: The story incorrectly refers to a pump-action, semi-automatic shotgun used in Aurora, Colorado. The weapon used was a pump action shotgun. As many readers pointed out in comments, a weapon could not be both. My apologies. FS]

How the NRA became the fringe

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National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre calls on Congress to pass a law putting armed police officers in every school in America during a news conference Dec. 21, 2012 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Evan Vucci/AP Photo)

On Wednesday, the National Rifle Association’s chief executive officer for the past 22 years, Wayne LaPierre, will testify with other witnesses, including Mark Kelly, whose wife, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is still recovering from a bullet-wound to the head, before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Coming less than a week after Sen. Dianne Feinstein announced what would be, if passed, America’s most sweeping ban on “assault” or military-style semi-automatic weapons, and nearly seven weeks after the Newtown, Connecticut elementary school shooting shocked the nation, the stage is set to debate American gun policies.

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Please go to the MSNBC.com link below to read the full piece on the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its support in prior eras for the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968, unlike today’ NRA led by Wayne LaPierre that opposes almost every form of gun control.

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/01/28/how-the-nra-became-the-fringe/