Movement Roundup

JERUSALEM — Israel's policy on issuing guns is restrictive, and armed guards at its schools are meant to stop terrorists, not crazed or disgruntled gunmen, experts said Monday, rejecting claims by America's top gun lobby that Israel serves as proof for its philosophy that the U.S. needs more weapons, not fewer. Far from the image of a heavily armed population where ordinary people have their own arsenals to repel attackers, Israel allows its people to acquire... [Washington Post / Associated Press, via GunPolicy.org]

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – Last week's slaughter of twenty elementary school children in the United States has tragic echoes with the massacre in Realengo, Rio de Janeiro earlier this year. At 8:30 AM on April 7th, Wellington Oliveira calmly walked into a classroom with two .38 and .32 caliber handguns, and shot twelve children dead. At least sixty shots were fired and twenty boys and girls were critically wounded. It was the worst school massacre in Brazilian history.... [Rio Times, Opinion, via GunPolicy.org]

As long as Turkey does not take action to put in place gun control measures, the country is likely to face mass shootings like the one that shook the United States in mid-December, killing 26 people, observers have said. A 20-year-old man, Adam Peter Lanza, on Dec. 14 shot and killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, at their Newtown home before fatally shooting 20 children and six adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. He then took his own... [Today's Zaman (Istanbul), via GunPolicy.org]

Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, would have been better advised to remain wherever he had been hiding after the Newtown, Conn., massacre, rather than appear at a news conference on Friday. No one seriously believed the N.R.A. when it said it would contribute something "meaningful" to the discussion about gun violence. The organization's very existence is predicated on the nation being torn in half over guns. Still, we were... [New York Times, Editorial, via GunPolicy.org]

The National Rifle Association has gone dark since Sandy Hook. This is not the usual refusal to comment out of respect. Nothing has been posted to their website since the killings last Friday morning in Newtown, Conn. Their last daily video news feed went up the day before. Their Facebook page has been deactivated. Their last Twitter posting ("10 Days of NRA Giveaways – Enter today for a chance to win an auto emergency tool!") must have come early on Friday. There... [Sacramento Bee (California), via GunPolicy.org]

How freely do guns flow in the United States compared with the world's other industrialized countries? According to GunPolicy.org, run by Philip Alpers, a firearms analyst at The University of Sydney, the United States is unusual with what Alpers described as the "two pillars" of gun control: licensing gun owners and registering weapons. "You are basically the only country in the developed world that doesn't license gun owners across the board and you are almost alone... [Huffington Post (USA), via GunPolicy.org]

Guns and cars have long been among the leading causes of non-medical deaths in the U.S. By 2015, firearm fatalities will probably exceed traffic fatalities for the first time, based on data compiled by Bloomberg. While motor-vehicle deaths dropped 22 percent from 2005 to 2010, gun fatalities are rising again after a low point in 2000, according to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Shooting deaths in 2015 will probably rise to almost 33,000,... [Independent (UK) / Bloomberg (USA), via GunPolicy.org]

Investors shunned some of the nation's largest gun makers Tuesday, putting up for sale the manufacturer of the Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle used in the Connecticut school shooting and worrying that the attack could soon bring stricter gun laws. Stocks of other gun companies fell, and one sporting-goods chain said it would temporarily stop sales of military-style firearms. In Washington, some former opponents of gun control signaled that they may change their... [ABC News (USA) / AP, via GunPolicy.org]

The fatal Dec. 14 shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut which claimed the lives of 28 people, including 20 innocent children under 10 once again brought to light the dilemma of gun ownership in the United States and despite the fact that it received no response from the gun rights advocates but a deafening silence, laid emphasis on the necessity for the United States to revise its gun policies. The shooting rampage, in which a mentally... [Al Arabiya (Dubai), via GunPolicy.org]

Twelve days after the worst mass murder in Australian history, when 35 people were shot to death at Tasmania state's Port Arthur tourist mecca in 1996, the government issued sweeping reforms of the country's gun laws. There hasn't been a mass shooting since, and suicides, deaths by firearms and robberies at gunpoint have plummeted. The results of toughened gun rules in Britain after the massacre in the Scottish town of Dunblane that same year weren't so immediate or... [Los Angeles Times, via GunPolicy.org]