Movement Roundup

Tuesday's arraignment of James Holmes, accused of mass murder in Colorado, was a rarity among massacre suspects. Holmes, who was scheduled to enter a plea for the July 2012 murders of 12 patrons in a suburban Denver movie theater and the attempted murder of nearly 60 others, is just one of a handful of suspects to face legal proceedings in a case involving no prior connection to murder victims. Judge William Sylvester declined a request by Holmes' attorneys to delay... [USA Today, via GunPolicy.org]

Australia and the United States share many characteristics. Both are English-speaking democracies of multicultural immigrants. The 2 nations have been allies for nearly a century. Australians and Americans consume similar diets of movies, video games, popular music, recreational drugs, and alcohol. Both have vast interiors, early histories of armed European settlers mistreating native populations, plenty of feral pests to shoot, and many firearm enthusiasts. Yet the 2... [American College of Physicians - Annals of Internal Medicine, via GunPolicy.org]

Draft Arms Trade Treaty text littered with loopholes which need fixing urgently to save lives More than 325,000 people are estimated to have lost their lives through armed violence since negotiations for a treaty to regulate the global arms trade for the first time ground to a halt in July last year, say Oxfam and Saferworld, part of the Control Arms Coalition. The Control Arms Coalition calls on world leaders to urgently adopt robust rules on international transfers... [Oxfam International (Oxford), Media release, via GunPolicy.org]

It's what you might expect to find in James Bond's arsenal of high-tech weapons. But it's turning up in Calgary and possibly gaining popularity with those involved in the city's drug trade. A .22-calibre pen gun with a half-mile range was discovered in a drug bust Tuesday in Forest Lawn. The weapon — which looks like an ordinary retractable pen — is the third of its kind seized by police in the past year. "This pen looks no different than something you could buy... [Calgary Herald (Alberta), via GunPolicy.org]

Bangalore: "Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins," said novelist Ayn Rand. In an era where the misuse of guns and ammunitions are leading to massacres, it is no more a place of nonviolence. Arms and ammunitions leave bitter memories and scar the human race for ages to come. Here are the 10 countries with highest gun ownership, as listed by yahoo.com. USA: USA tops the list of countries with highest gun ownership and this no surprise! The... [SiliconIndia, via GunPolicy.org]

LF: What do you say to people who argue that these kinds of regulations don't work, that criminals will always find some way to get guns? GW: All of the research evidence shows that increasing regulation of firearms—whether the firearms themselves, the people who are allowed to have them, or the conditions under which they are bought and sold—makes a difference. I think it can be hard to prove that any one law makes a difference because laws are enacted in groups,... [Mother Jones (USA), via GunPolicy.org]

Here's a hard truth: all the emotion and outrage and sadness that followed the Dec. 14 shooting of 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook elementary school may make almost no difference in federal gun control laws. How little is the Hill going to do on gun control? As things stand, Congress may not even pass two gun control measures that even some elements of the powerful gun lobby have suggested they could support. But if post-Sandy Hook gun control measures are badly... [Time (USA), via GunPolicy.org]

NEW YORK — The share of U.S. households with guns has declined over the past four decades, a national survey shows, with some of the most surprising drops in the South and the Western mountain states, where guns are deeply embedded in the culture. The gun ownership rate has fallen across a broad cross section of households since the early 1970s, according to data from the U.S. General Social Survey, a public opinion survey conducted every two years that asks a sample... [Globe & Mail (Toronto), via GunPolicy.org]

The share of American households with guns has declined over the past four decades, a national survey shows, with some of the most surprising drops in the South and the Western mountain states, where guns are deeply embedded in the culture. The gun ownership rate has fallen across a broad cross section of households since the early 1970s, according to data from the General Social Survey, a public opinion survey conducted every two years that asks a sample of American... [New York Times, via GunPolicy.org]

The National Rifle Association is so tied up fighting new gun restrictions in the wake of the Newtown shooting that it has failed so far to mount its expected lobbying blitz against a new international arms control control treaty. With just a few weeks to go until the world's first Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is put to a final vote at a UN conference in New York campaigners have voiced surprise at the NRA's relative silence on the issue. Until the Newtown tragedy, in which... [Guardian (UK), via GunPolicy.org]