The Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence posted the following video from the “open carry” gun protest at Fort Hunt, Virginia on April 19th, the 15-year anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing — proof of the sheer extremism of the “open carry” movement.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart posted a must-see video on April 12th, about the “open carry” handgun movement, including an interview with Paul Helmke, the President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. WATCH DAILY SHOW VIDEO The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Open Carrier Discrimination www.thedailyshow.com [...]
(We are pleased to post the following “Insights Column” from the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence). ICHV Insights Column by Garrett Evans Garrett Evans was wounded and survived the massacre at Virginia Tech University in 2007. He later graduated from the university and now lives in Chicago, where he frequently speaks about gun violence to [...]
Watch Stephen Colbert’s “Tip of the Hat, Wag of the Finger” on Virginia State Creigh Deeds that aired Jan. 26th. (See article below). The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
(We are pleased to post the following press release from the Violence Policy Center). FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 CONTACT: Mandy Wimmer, Communications Associate, 202-822-8200 x110, mwimmer@vpc.org At Least 51 Innocent People Have Been Killed in Recent Mass Shootings Involving Concealed Handgun Permit Holders Washington, DC–Christopher Bryan Speight, the 39-year-old man who allegedly [...]
According to the Associated Press on Jan. 20th: APPOMATTOX, Va. – A gunman suspected of killing eight people before disappearing into dense Virginia woods and firing on a police helicopter surrendered at sunrise Wednesday, ending an overnight hunt by dozens of law enforcement officers. Christopher Speight, 39, approached officers at the scene of the shootings [...]
Former Virginia Congressman Tom Davis wrote the following opinion piece in Politico on July 22nd, 2009: Today Congress is slated to vote on a bill that would effectively nationalize permits for those who wish to carry concealed guns. However, those of us who support conceal and carry laws must be concerned that Congress would force [...]
A Virginia murder-suicide was reported on June 29th: Henry County, VA– Investigators in Henry County are working a triple shooting death and arson case. Officers say around 12:17am Sunday, they were called to a home on Wilhaven Lane in Axton VA. in reference to a shooting. Timothy Carter, age 22, of Radford University, told them [...]
On June 12, Bill Moyers used his PBS news program to call attention to the rash of recent high-profile shootings and implored lawmakers and the American people to take back our country from the gun lobby’s radical agenda. See video here. TRANSCRIPT Bill Moyers: Finally, you know by now that in our nation’s capital on [...]
The New York Times wrote a lacerating editorial on Sunday, February 8th, criticizing Virginia’s state senators for failing to pass the most common sense of proposals — legislation to require background checks on weapons bought at gun shows. This sensible and life-saving bill sought to prevent another Virginia Tech type massacre. But callous and cowardly [...]
According to the Virginia Richmond-Times Dispatch, Feb. 5, 2009: The ability of Virginians — including convicted felons, the mentally ill and spousal abusers — to go to a gun show, purchase a firearm from a private seller and not be subjected to a background check was preserved yesterday. The state Senate defeated the “gun-show loophole” [...]
Pro-gun Senator Jim Webb’s own aide apparently committed suicide with a gunshot to the head. According to the Washington Post on July 30th: Frederick Wayne Hutchins Jr., who headed up Sen. James Webb’s Roanoke office, was found dead this morning alongside a highway in Botetourt County, according to the sheriff’s office. Hutchins, 26, had been [...]
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: guns, particularly handguns, are a prime target for theft. Why, because they are easy to steal, easy to hide, and easy to sell. So, it’s no surprise that we frequently read accounts of stolen guns from police blotters posted on the Internet. But that doesn’t even [...]
If we had a nickel for every time a self-described “law-abiding†gun owner shoots someone, we’d be vying with Donald Trump for who has the larger bank account. Today we report on a man who had a CCW permit in Virginia – you know one of those “good†gun owners – who shot his wife [...]
The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot: Virginia Takes Center Stage in Gun Debate: Americans clash over guns now more than ever. And nowhere is that conflict at a higher pitch than in Virginia — where the specter of the worst shooting in modern U.S. history hangs over Virginia Tech’s campus. The killings in April in Blacksburg thrust a [...]
When you are part of a lobbying group that opposes laws that would keep criminals and people with mental illnesses from buying firearms at gun shows, maybe it’s because you’ve got some personal issues of your own: an overabundance of greediness (to profit from gun sales no matter what the human toll) and a serious [...]
It’s the responsible thing to do; in fact it is legally required, to check an ID before serving alcohol to someone who appears to be underage. Right? But when it comes to guns, the emotionally-triggered gun advocates don’t cotton to common sense or responsibility. In Virginia, where even Governor Tim Kaine has saddled up to [...]
It’s a familiar refrain by now. A horrible gun tragedy occurs and the gun lobby adopts a “just say no†strategy to any efforts undertaken to curb gun violence. So it’s no surprise that pro-gun lobby legislators in Virginia are already ruling out any tightening of gun laws to help protect the citizens and students [...]
Why would gun dealers who are accused of illegally selling guns be suing Mayor Bloomberg “to restore their good name� It beats us. But a lot of it appears to be anger that a “Yankee†came down to enforce laws in Virginia that weren’t being enforced. As anyone who reads GunGuys knows by now, only [...]
The NRA is furious that a local newspaper in Virginia, The Roanoke Times, changed its advertising policy to no longer accept ads from licensed gun dealers. “The Roanoke Times has amended their policy after the Virginia Tech massacre. It was initiated in the advertising department to be more in line with our editorial stance and [...]
Although bitter rivals in collegiate sports, students at the University of Virginia (UVA) are staging a “Lie-In” on the six month anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre to honor the victims and survivors of the April 16th attack that killed 33 students and professors including the shooter. According to “THE HOOK”, a weekly paper in [...]
A state panel released its report criticizing university officials for actions taken before and after the April 16th gun massacre on the campus of Virginia Tech, where Seung-Hui Cho used two handguns and multiple high-capacity gun magazines to murder 32 students and professors before killing himself. The report faulted university officials for misunderstanding and mismanaging [...]
(In light of the release of the Virginia state panel’s report on the Virginia Tech massacre, we are re-posting our Freedom States Alliance editorial about the April 16th tragedy). In the wake of the deadliest shooting in American history that killed 33 people and wounded dozens of others on the campus of Virginia Tech, it [...]
Excuse us for harping on the “Virginia is for Illegal Gun Sellers” issue, but an August 22nd New York Times editorial cut to the chase: The “Iron Pipeline†of Interstate 95 remains alive and deadly, as a new federal study grimly confirms. Saddest of all is the evidence that some of the most far-reaching shady [...]
As Freedom States Alliance advances its mission of working to prevent gun violence, it has been working more and more with college students. Two of our interns at the New England Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence recently submitted a You Tube question to the Democratic presidential debate. In it, they directly ask the candidates what [...]
Yes, although the state officials in Virginia, including its attorney general, have gone to great lengths to prevent Mayor Bloomberg of New York from exposing illegal gun sales and trafficking from the southern state, newly released figures from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, confirm that the Commonwealth of Virginia is for gunners! An [...]
According to AP: “A pistol used to kill a New York City police officer was originally sold by a Virginia gun shop notorious for putting weapons into the hands of criminals.” The handgun’s initial source was R&B Guns, a store in Hampton, VA. “R&B Guns was shuttered for good in 2001…Records kept by the Bureau [...]
Are there ways to reduce illegal gun activity in addition to legislation? You betcha! In fact, the former executive director of a Freedom States Alliance affiliate group, Iowans for the Prevention of Gun Violence, developed the “Campaign to Close the Newspaper Loophole” What is the purpose of the Campaign? Quite simply it is to persuade [...]
If you haven’t read it yet, you really should check out Andrew Goddard’s testimony to a panel at George Mason University, reprinted over on the Freedom States Alliance website. Goddard is the father of Colin Goddard, a young man who survived the shooting at Virginia Tech, and his message both cuts to the core and [...]
Our parent site, Freedom States Alliance, has posted a very moving piece of testimony from one of the parents of a student wounded at Virginia Tech. Andrew Goddard has experienced firsthand the terror of gun violence in a way that, unfortunately, more and more Americans are experiencing every day. And what he had to go [...]
Trouble in Virginia, as the Virginia Tech victims’ families are actually being forced to fight for representation on the panel set up to investigate the incident. The relatives of more than a dozen victims of the Virginia Tech massacre may want to hire their own private investigator to sit on the panel reviewing the shooting [...]
We’ve heard a lot from both sides about the debacle of Virginian authorities actually passing a law against New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but here’s someone we haven’t heard from yet: the media in Virginia. Obviously their loyalties will probably be to their own elected officials (and they do say that Bloomberg should have [...]
CBS News today covers the situation between legislators in Virginia beholden to the gun lobby, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg who, fed up with gun violence in his city and others, is fighting illegal gun dealers in the southern state. Bloomberg’s campaign has been extremely successful– already a dozen gun dealers have agreed [...]
Finally today, since this is a blog about the dumb stuff that gun guys do, we feel obliged to tell you that yesterday, only hours away from where Cho Seung-Hui killed 32 people and himself with a firearm he never should have been able to obtain, the gun guys were giving away firearms like candy. [...]
The Washington Post is the latest in a series of high profile papers to go after Virginia’s Attorney General for threatening New York’s Mayor Bloomberg when he should be thanking him. They say, as Bloomberg did, that if the AG were as enthusiastic about fighting guns as he was about fighting Bloomberg, we’d all be [...]
Here’s an opinion piece from a staff member from New York’s Buffalo News calling out Virginia (yet again) for letting loose gun laws allow criminals in New York and elsewhere to obtain firearms they clearly shouldn’t have. A top aide of Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., carries a loaded pistol into a U.S. Senate office building, [...]
The New York Times has finished what Bloomberg’s spokesman started last week. Virginia’s Attorney General, during a trip to NYC, delivered a threatening letter telling Bloomberg he should stay away from trying to hold gun dealers responsible for the weapons they sell there. Bloomberg snapped back that the AG should spend as much time working [...]
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been calling out gun dealers and taking names in Virginia– that’s where many of the guns that appear in his city are originally sold. Straw purchases, as the NRA will jump to tell you, are already illegal. But gun dealers still aren’t held accountable by the law for [...]
Once again, it seems like the New York Times must be reading Gun Guys. Not a day after we talk about how the biggest loopholes for gun dealers in the country are being left wide open, they publish an editorial saying just that. Virginia claims that it has closed a loophole that put guns in [...]
Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine now claims he’s closed the loophole that Cho Seung-hui used at Virginia Tech to obtain guns even though he was declared mentally ill. Kaine says he’s going to require Virginia to submit mental health info to the US background check database, but that’s far from a solution– Virginia will still be [...]
A college professor has been fired after making comments in class about the Virginia Tech shootings. The AP is reporting that he mimed shooting a student, and expressed opinions that the students on Virginia Tech’s campus would have been safer if they were armed. An adjunct professor was fired after leading a classroom discussion about [...]
Once again, while our legislators can’t seem to figure out what to do about gun violence, our nation’s newspapers are far from silent on the issue. After last week’s violence, the media from coast to coast has responded, and the editorial pages, just like the citizens they write to, are overwhelmingly in favor of reintroducing [...]
Finally, at the end of a week filled with chaos, mourning and argument about what to do next, we finish with a moment of silence. On Tuesday, the Freedom States Alliance announced that it was inviting the nation to join in a nationwide Moment of Silence, and today at noon Eastern time, thousands of people [...]
Lots and lots (and lots) of media coverage in the past week about the Virginia Tech shooting. Here’s a few highlights. -First off, check out this can’t miss commentary by Robert Reich on NPR. He compares buying a firearm in America to buying anti-depressants or other types of prescription medications. To get any or all [...]
It’s now been discovered that Cho Seung-Hui, the shooter in Monday’s massacre at Virginia Tech, sent a package of photos, videos, and writings to NBC News in between the two shootings. The network only discovered the video within the past day or so (Cho had accidentally put the wrong zip code on the package), and [...]
ABC News has put together a video report which goes in-depth into explaining why Virginia is called the “gun-running capital of America.” They explain exactly why and how criminals like Monday’s gunman are able to obtain weapons, even when it’s clear they shouldn’t have them. The video can be seen right here. In the video, [...]
Finally today, there are a few editorials already posted about yesterday’s shooting. There’s no question at all that when the time for mourning is over, and all the dust settles on what happened in Virginia Tech yesterday, then we’ll need to face what we really require to make sure this never happens again: a serious [...]
Lots of reponses from around the world to yesterday’s mass shooting at Virginia Tech. The shooting was the worst mass shooting in this history of the United States, and though it’s only been a day, leaders and advocates around the world are starting to point out how vitally important it is to make sure this [...]
All of the news today, unsurprisingly, is about yesterday’s Virginia Tech shooting, in which a gunman killed 32 people and then was killed himself (either by his own hand or by police officers). Lots of news is being released about the shooter– he’s a 23-year-old man named Cho Seung-Hui who was born in South Korea [...]
CNN is reporting the breaking news that “at least” 20 people have been killed and seventeen others wounded at Virginia Tech when a gunman opened fire in the middle of the college campus. The Virginia Tech police chief said at least 20 people were killed in twin shootings on the Blacksburg campus Monday morning. “Some [...]
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