Democrats took to the House floor today to commemorate the six-month anniversary of the schoolhouse massacre in Newtown, Conn., and to try to jump-start the seemingly moribund effort to get a background-check bill through Congress.

The Senate rejected the bill in April, and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, doesn’t seem likely to bring it to a vote. That didn’t stop Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, from trying to shame him into it today.

And from Rep. Mike Thomspon, D-Napa, who has been House Democrats’ point man on gun violence issues:

Read a transcript of Thompson’s remarks, after the jump…
Read the rest of this entry »

National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, soon after December’s Newtown school massacre, had said some blame should be put upon a video-game industry that glorifies murder, “a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows violence against its own people.”

But what about firearms in video games?

As the video-game industry begins its annual Electronic Entertainment Expo today in Los Angeles, two gun-control groups are calling upon game makers to stop signing lucrative licensing agreements and product-placement deals with gun manufacturers, so that images of actual military-style weapons don’t appear in games.

A report published today by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and The Gun Truth Project says video games often feature real-world weapons identified by make and model, and have offered cross-promotional opportunities to players to buy them once the game is over.

“We are outraged that video game companies and gun manufacturers are entering into deals to market guns to our children, particularly given the real-life epidemic of gun violence in America,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. “The gun industry and their lobbyists have proven time and again that they’re only motive is profit, not encouraging reforms or regulations that would make our children and families safer. To them, our children are pawns to be manipulated for profit.”

Like any other product placement deal, these licensing agreements are meant to increasing the visibility of firearms. One gun industry representative cited in the report said video games provide an opportunity to promote to children, “who are considered possible future owners.”

Yet the report’s authors claim games featuring real-world guns don’t sell any better than games with made-up weapon names – the economic benefit is almost exclusively on the gun manufacturers’ side, the report says.

Redwood City-based Electronic Arts last month announced it will no longer enter into such licensing agreements. “We not only applaud that decision, we are asking the rest of the video game industry to follow suit,” Watts said in a news release. “There is no reason why video game manufacturers should do the gun industry’s dirty work, promoting assault and military-style weapons to our children and teens.”

Actually, EA said it would cut its licensing ties to gunmakers – but continue featuring branded guns without a license.

Watts’ effort to get other companies to sign a pledge is supported by the Every Child Matters Education Fund is supporting the effort. “Thousands of children and teenagers are killed by guns every year,” said fund president Michael Petit. “How any company, knowing that, could continue to market guns to our kids is simply beyond me. It is unacceptable.”

A new “smart gun” prototype and a crackdown on sharing of designs for 3D-printable firearm components mean it’s time to update my gun-tech story of several weeks ago.

A Capitola-based company unveiled a new smart-gun prototype today at a trade show in Las Vegas – a firearm that lets owners remotely engage or disengage the trigger safety from anywhere in the world, using a smartphone.

Yardarm Technologies says its Safety First system revolves around a sensor that can be installed on any firearm to enable wireless, real-time control of the trigger safety; it also serves as a motion detector and a geo-locating device. Gun owners are alerted via a mobile device applet if their firearm is picked up or handled by an unauthorized person, and the owner, using a mobile app or secure website, can instantly engage or disengage the trigger safety.

“Suppose you and your family are on vacation in Las Vegas, and your firearm is back at home. Wouldn’t you want to know in real time if an intruder, or worse, a child is handling your gun?” company CEO Bob Stewart asked in a news release. “With Yardarm, you could immediately disable the firearm, notify local law enforcement and maintain location awareness. We want the gun owner to stay connected to their firearm, no matter what the circumstance.”

The Yardarm sensor prototype was developed in partnership with New Jersey-based DataOnline, and was unveiled this morning at DataOnline’s booth at the 2013 CTIA Expo.

Meanwhile, the website at which Cody Wilson of Texas has been sharing his designs for gun components that can be made with a 3D printer now carries a message that reads:

DEFCAD files are being removed from public access at the request of the US Department of Defense Trade Controls. Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information.

To clarify, that would be the U.S. State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, which controls the export and temporary import of defense articles and defense services covered by the United States Munitions List.

Wilson provided Betabeat.com with a copy of a May 8 letter he received, informing him that he may have released technical data controlled by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations without the required prior authorization from DDTC. The letter asks Wilson to file determination requests for the data files, and until those determinations are made, to “treat the above technical data as ITAR-controlled. This means that all such data should be removed from public access immediately.”

Wilson told Betabeat he thinks he’s immune because his company is a nonprofit and the blueprints are in the public domain, but he complied nonetheless. Even so, he said, his designs already have migrated to other places on the internet.

“I still think we win in the end,” he said. “To think this can be stopped in any meaningful way is to misunderstand what the future of distributive technologies is about.”

The Bay Area was heavily represented as California Attorney General Kamala Harris convened a group of county district attorneys Friday in Los Angeles to seek ways to reduce gun violence through enforcement of existing laws and prevention efforts.

Among the 11 DAs present were Nancy O’Malley of Alameda County, Jeff Rosen of Santa Clara County, Stephen Wagstaffe of San Mateo County, Edward Berberian of Marin County and Gary Lieberstein of Napa County; also present were the top prosecutors from Los Angeles, Merced, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Santa Barbara counties. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck and former Assemblyman Mike Feuer, a Democrat now seeking the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office.

“Gun violence continues to be a distressing and persistent problem in the United States, but California is leading the nation in smart, common-sense gun policies designed to protect our communities,” Harris said in a news release. “By working together, law enforcement and our state’s district attorneys can make a difference by improving enforcement and increasing prevention to help keep all Californians safe from gun violence.”

This “leadership group” will prepare a report of best practices that will serve as models for law enforcement in other communities to adopt, and as models for potential legislative reform.

Harris took the opportunity to once again tout the Armed Prohibited Persons System (APPS), which matches lists of handgun and assault-weapon owners to updated lists of convicts and mental-health patients so that firearms can be seized from those barred by law from owning them. Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed into law SB 140, which diverts $24 million into the badly backlogged APPS program from a surplus of background-check. In the first four months of 2013, agents have collected 461 firearms and 23,080 rounds of ammunition statewide.

Two Assemblymen’s newly merged ammunition tax bill was approved Monday by the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee.

AB 187, authored by Assemblymen Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, and Roger Dickinson, D-Sacramento, would place a 10 percent tax on all ammunition sold in California, with an exemption for law enforcement agencies. The committee’s final tally isn’t yet available, but I’m betting it’ll have been a straight party-line vote.

Under the amended version put forth just before Monday’s hearing, the new tax’s revenue – about $92.4 million per year, according to a Board of Equalization estimate – would be split between crime prevention efforts in areas hard-hit by gun violence and mental health screening and services for children.

“Cities throughout the state, including Oakland, are suffering horrific and increasing gun violence. Oakland witnessed 131 homicides in 2012 – 21 more than 2011 and the highest in six years. Twelve of those victims were children,” Bonta said in a news release. “AB 187 will provide the City of Oakland, and cities in similar circumstances, with sufficient street-level public safety presence to prevent gun violence and attend to it when it does occur.”

And Dickinson said “screening young children for signs of mental illness and addressing any issues early on is the key to a healthier and more productive adult life. A limited tax on ammunition is a small price to pay for better mental healthcare for kids, reduced crime, and safer communities statewide.”

Gun-rights advocates and lobbying groups say it’s not fair to tax law-abiding gun owners to pay for crime prevention and mental health – services for which the entire public should share the cost.

Bonta’s original version of the bill would’ve imposed a 10 percent tax to be used only for crime prevention. Dickinson’s AB 760 – which will advance no further – would’ve imposed a nickel-per-bullet tax solely for mental health for kids.

Bonta acknowledged in March that an ammunition tax won’t be easy to pass, even with Democratic legislative supermajorities and recent Field Poll findings that 61 percent of California voters favor ammunition taxes and 75 percent favor background checks and permits for ammo purchases. Because a new tax faces the hurdle of a two-thirds vote, “it’s a heavy lift,” Bonta said; indeed, some Democratic lawmakers from more suburban and rural areas of the state have balked at discussing various ammunition taxation and regulation bills now pending.

Bonta chairs the Assembly Select Committee on Gun Violence in the East Bay, which will hold its first hearing from 9 a.m. to noon this Friday, May 17th at the Elihu M. Harris State Building, 1515 Clay St. in Oakland. Click here for more information or to RSVP to attend the hearing.

How much of a gun-violence problem do we have in this nation? Not nearly as much as we did 20 years ago, according to a new report from the U.S. Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics that might shake up the nation’s gun-policy debate.

The report released Tuesday shows firearm-related homicides declined 39 percent and nonfatal firearm crimes declined 69 percent from 1993 to 2011. In raw numbers, firearm-related homicides dropped from 18,253 homicides in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011, and nonfatal firearm crimes dropped from 1.5 million victimizations in 1993 to 467,300 in 2011.

Most of that decline, for both fatal and nonfatal incidents, occurred during the 10-year period from 1993 to 2002, the report says. The report says nothing of cause or correlation, so I’ll provide a few ideas here and you pick your own poison:

– The federal ban on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines was in effect from 1994 to 2004.

– The crime wave sparked by the national crack epidemic started to recede in the early ’90s.

– The U.S. economy saw its longest period of peacetime economic expansion from 1991 through 2001.

Be cautious about seizing on the assault weapons ban as a causative factor: The report found that handguns accounted for the vast majority of gun crimes from 1994 through 2011. For example, handguns accounted for 82.7 percent of homicides by firearm in 1994, declining to 72.9 percent in 2011.

The report also notes that in 2007 through 2011, about one percent of victims in all nonfatal violent crimes reported using a firearm to defend themselves during the incident. A small number of property crime victims also used a firearm in self-defense—about 0.1 percent.

The largest number of nonfatal firearm violence occurred in or around the victim’s home (42 percent) or in an open area, on the street, or while on public transportation (23 percent). Less than 1 percent of all nonfatal firearm violence occurred in schools.

From 1993 to 2010, males, blacks and persons ages 18 to 24 were most likely to be victims of firearm-related homicide.

And in 2004 – the most recent year of data available – less than 2 percent of state prison inmates who possessed a gun at the time of their offense said they bought it at a flea market or gun show. About 10 percent of state prison inmates said they bought their guns from a retail store or pawnshop; 37 percent said they got it from family or friends; and 40 percent said they got it from an illegal source.

Though a federal bill to criminalize the 3-D printing of guns or certain gun components is pending in Congress, at least one California lawmaker wants to get in on the action, too.

State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, said he’ll introduce legislation to prohibit use of 3-D printers to create untraceable firearms.

“While I am as impressed as anyone with 3-D printing technology and I believe it has amazing possibilities, we must ensure that it is not used for the wrong purpose with potentially deadly consequences,” Yee said in a news release. “I plan to introduce legislation that will ensure public safety and stop the manufacturing of guns that are invisible to metal detectors and that can be easily made without a background check.”

As I reported late last month, 3-D printing technology eventually could change some of the fundamentals of the nation’s gun-policy debate. Although critics say the plastic parts created by such printers can’t withstand the heat and pressure of use in a firearm, Texas activist Cody Wilson in recent days has announced what he claims is the first fully-printed, fully-operational firearm.

“We must be proactive in seeking solutions to this new threat rather than wait for the inevitable tragedies this will make possible,” said Yee.

The Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988 bans firearms that are invisible to metal detectors or airport X-ray machines. Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., on April 10 introduced H.R. 1474 to renew and expand that law to include specific parts like those Wilson and his peers are producing.

Gov. Jerry Brown has signed into law a Bay Area senator’s bill to use $24 million from gun background-check fees to boost a program that takes handguns and assault weapons away from those who aren’t legally allowed to have them.

This is the first gun-policy bill to make it to Brown’s desk this year.

SB 140 by state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, gives a big boost to the state Justice Department’s Armed Prohibited Persons System (APPS), which cross-references the state’s list of handgun and assault-weapon owners with ever-updated lists of newly convicted felons and mental-health commitments. APPS, launched in 2007, had developed a huge backlog; the new law is effective immediately because it was designated an urgency measure.

“While our state is the only one in the nation that has a system to track and identify persons who at one time made legal purchases of firearms but are now barred from possessing them, until now we have lacked sufficient resources to take back those weapons,” Leno said in a news release. “We know for the safety of our communities that these people should not possess guns, and our reinvestment in this tracking program gives us the opportunity to confiscate them.”

The Justice Department’s Firearms Bureau has identified about 20,000 Californians who illegally possess an estimated 40,000 handguns and assault weapons, and the list grows longer by 15 to 20 people per day. Attorney General Kamala Harris said the money will let her increase the number of agents who go out and seize these firearms.

Agents last year seized more than 2,000 firearms, 117,000 rounds of ammunition and 11,072 illegal high-capacity magazines in targeted sweeps.

Gun-rights and lobbying groups including the National Rifle Association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the California Rifle and Pistol Association had opposed the bill, saying lawful gun owners shouldn’t pay the cost of such a program; any surplus background-check fee money should be returned or lead to a reduction in the fee, they said.

The Legislature’s final votes on SB 140 were 65-10 in the Assembly and 37-0 in the state Senate.

I happened across this story posted yesterday by the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky:

A 5-year-old boy who was playing with a .22-caliber rifle accidentally shot and killed his 2-year-old sister in Cumberland County on Tuesday afternoon, according to a news release from the state police.

The shooting happened just after 1 p.m. at a home on Lawson’s Bottom Road.

The 2-year-old was taken to Cumberland County Hospital, where she was later pronounced dead. An autopsy has been scheduled for Wednesday.

Cumberland County Coroner Gary White identified the girl as Caroline Starks.

He said the children’s mother was at home when the shooting occurred, and the gun was a gift the boy received last year.

“It’s a Crickett,” he said. “It’s a little rifle for a kid. …The little boy’s used to shooting the little gun.”

White said the gun was kept in a corner, and the family did not realize a shell had been left in it.
He said the shooting will be ruled accidental.

“Just one of those crazy accidents,” White said.

No. No, no, no.

This is not “just one of those crazy accidents.” This is negligence, it’s deadly malfeasance, it’s a crime.

Gifting a deadly firearm to a 5-year-old is questionable at best, but leaving it loaded and standing in a corner where he can reach it unattended is criminal.

“Well, it’s Kentucky…” won’t fly – Kentucky is still part of the United States of America, not some third-world backwater. And don’t dare say, “Well, they have a different gun culture there;” any culture that allows for any number of toddlers being shot to death isn’t a culture at all, it’s a sickness.

This is not the price of freedom.

I’ve spent a significant chunk of my professional time since late December writing gun-policy stories, but this tragedy isn’t debatable. Gun-rights enthusiasts – sane ones, at least, must be horrified by a story like this; it goes against every tenet of responsible gun ownership, every tenet of parenting, every tenet of humanity.

We ignore such stories at our own souls’ peril.

Apparently there’s at least one gun-policy bill in Sacramento on which both sides of the aisle can agree.

The state Senate Public Safety Committee today approved SB 644, by Sen. Anthony Cannella, R-Modesto, which would increase penalties for felons caught in possession of firearms.

It’s already illegal in California for convicted felons to possess firearms, but current law limits the punishment for that crime to three years or less; SB 644 would increase that sentence to as much as six years and would automatically count such a conviction as a new strike under the state’s “Three Strikes” law.

“I think we all can agree enforcing existing gun laws and giving them real teeth is good public policy,” Cannella said in a news release. “Under the current statute, a felon in possession of a gun does not constitute a serious or violent crime, whereas someone entering a private residence while no one is home is considered a serious offense. A felon in possession of a firearm is surely more of a danger to public safety than someone entering a private residence while no one is home.

“Getting these criminals off our streets is real gun control,” he said. “This is a common sense bill that makes a difference and keeps our families safer.”

Cannella spokesman Jeff Macedo said the committee passed the bill just a few minutes ago. A final vote isn’t available yet because committee vice chairman Joel Anderson, R-El Cajon, and member Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, were absent and could still add their votes before the committee adjourns today, but there aren’t any “no” votes thus far.

SB 644 now goes to the state Senate Appropriations Committee. It’s supported by the National Rifle Association, the California Rifle and Pistol Association, and the Modesto and Salinas Police Departments.

UPDATE @ 5:06 P.M.: The committee’s final vote was 6-0; contrary to my earlier information, it was actually state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, who was absent and didn’t cast a vote today.