Brady Campaign

WASHINGTON — Gun control forces are targeting Sens. Kelly Ayotte, Max Baucus and others as they struggle to persuade five senators to switch their votes and revive the rejected effort to expand background checks to more firearms buyers. With Congress back from a weeklong recess, the bottom line remains familiar: Advocates of broadened checks lack the new votes they need and Congress has moved on to other issues. A few lawmakers who opposed expanding the checks when the Senate defeated...

NELSON, Ga. — A group that supports gun control filed suit Thursday against a north Georgia town that recently passed a law requiring gun ownership that it said is mostly symbolic. The Washington-based Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence filed a federal lawsuit against the town of Nelson, about 50 miles north of Atlanta, claiming the law is unconstitutional. The suit contends the Second Amendment doesn't require anyone to have a gun, and government cannot require citizens to arm themselves.

On March 15, two months after a deadly shooting spree in Tucson left a U.S. congresswoman in critical condition, the nation's leading gun-control activists took seats in Room 4525 at the Department of Justice to push the Obama administration for more firearm regulation. In the hour-and-a-half-long meeting, Assistant Attorney General Christopher H. Schroeder , who has coordinated the government's work on the issue, went around a long conference table soliciting views from representatives of the major advocacy...

WASHINGTON — Gun control forces are targeting Sens. Kelly Ayotte, Max Baucus and others as they struggle to persuade five senators to switch their votes and revive the rejected effort to expand background checks to more firearms buyers. With Congress back from a weeklong recess, the bottom line remains familiar: Advocates of broadened checks lack the new votes they need and Congress has moved on to other issues. A few lawmakers who opposed expanding the checks when the Senate defeated...

The Supreme Court set up a historic decision on gun control Wednesday, saying it will rule on whether restrictive state and local laws violate the Second Amendment right to gun ownership that it recognized last year. The landmark 2008 decision to strike down the District of Columbia's ban on handgun possession was the first time the court had said the amendment grants an individual right to own a gun for self-defense. But the 5 to 4 opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller did not address the question of whether the...

The National Rifle Association always seems to have a target painted on its back. As one of Washington's most powerful and controversial interest groups, it is constantly dodging potshots from one group or another. Enter another group. The American Hunters and Shooters Association is the latest organization to try to dethrone the NRA as chief spokesman for people who care about guns. The association positions itself as an NRA alternative, a group that likes guns and those who shoot them but believes the NRA is...

Armed men seen mixing with protesters outside recent events held by President Obama acted within the law, the White House said Tuesday, attempting to allay fears of a security threat. Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said people are entitled to carry weapons outside such events if local laws allow it. "There are laws that govern firearms that are done state or locally," he said. "Those laws don't change when the president comes to your state or locality. " Anti-gun campaigners...

The Bush administration was sued yesterday over a new policy that would allow people to carry concealed, loaded guns in most national parks and wildlife refuges. "The Bush administration's last-minute gift to the gun lobby, allowing concealed semiautomatic weapons in national parks, jeopardizes the safety of park visitors in violation of federal law," said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "We should not be making it easier for dangerous people to carry concealed firearms...

The mass shootings that have rocked communities across the country in recent years — from Blacksburg, Va., to Tucson to Aurora, Colo., to Oak Creek, Wis., to Newtown, Conn. — have left a well-documented trail of carnage and grief. But those tragedies and others like them also have produced what could prove to be the most formidable, fervent advocates in the looming fight over U.S. gun-control policy: survivors who know what it feels like to be in the crosshairs of a mass murderer and outspoken...

The White House announced Monday that the administration is starting a series of sessions with leaders on both sides of the gun control issue to try to reach compromise on legislation to reduce gun violence. White House Secretary Jay Carney did not announce which groups would be invited to the sessions this week, but he said the Justice Department is "meeting with stakeholders on all sides of the issue to look at ways we can find common ground. " The meetings come after President Obama called...

The mass shootings that have rocked communities across the country in recent years — from Blacksburg, Va., to Tucson to Aurora, Colo., to Oak Creek, Wis., to Newtown, Conn. — have left a well-documented trail of carnage and grief. But those tragedies and others like them also have produced what could prove to be the most formidable, fervent advocates in the looming fight over U.S. gun-control policy: survivors who know what it feels like to be in the crosshairs of a mass murderer and outspoken...

Our nation faces a fundamental question in the aftermath of the tragedy in Newtown, Conn . If gun violence is a problem — and U.S. citizens overwhelmingly think that it is — will our leaders act quickly and wisely to reduce gun deaths? When I was on the Richmond City Council in the 1990s, our city was mired in an epidemic of gun violence and had the second-highest homicide rate in the United States. Later, while I was governor of Virginia, we experienced the horrible mass shooting of students and faculty at ...

The December shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School is reshaping the lobbying landscape on gun laws and mental health services. The classic lobbying nemeses over gun laws have been the National Rifle Association and the Washington gun control group, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. But the Newtown tragedy is prompting some locally based advocacy groups that have previously been silent on gun control to consider stepping in. Mental Health America, an alliance...

The White House is weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to curbing the nation's gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, according to multiple people involved in the administration's discussions. A working group led by Vice President Biden is seriously considering measures backed by key law enforcement leaders that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of...

Joseph A. Califano Jr. [ "The lesson from LBJ," op-ed, Dec. 17] has a selective memory of the gun control "lessons" learned from President Lyndon B. Johnson 44 years ago. He should recall the fate of Sen. Joseph Tydings (D-Md.). Johnson had a clear grasp of what was politically feasible. Undeterred, Tydings, who was widely thought unbeatable, announced that his 1970 reelection would be a "referendum" on federal gun registration and owner licensing. Maryland gun owners mobilized one of the first grass-roots...

JARED L. LOUGHNER was the one being sentenced for last year's shooting rampage that left six people dead and 13 wounded. But some of the strongest words of condemnation at his federal sentencing hearing were directed — deservedly so — at the country's political leaders for their cowardly refusal to debate, let alone deal with, gun violence. As Mr. Loughner awaited sentencing Thursday for the shooting spree in a Tucson shopping center parking lot that targeted and critically injured Gabrielle Giffords , the former...

With the nation's latest shooting massacre came the latest calls by gun-control advocates for tougher laws. But those views, once shared by most Americans, drew little reaction on Friday from a country and its political leaders whose sentiments have shifted dramatically over the past two decades. The Violence Policy Center and dozens of other gun-control groups issued a joint statement blaming an "out-of-control, militarized gun industry" for the shootings at a movie theater in suburban Denver early Friday...

The Post was far too timid in its March 12 editorial " The right of protection ," about U.S. District Judge Benson Everett Legg's ruling that the Second Amendment prohibits Maryland law enforcement from deciding who can carry loaded guns outdoors. This was an irresponsible and dangerous decision that reeks of a political agenda. It should be overturned. This ruling threatens public safety by furthering the "guns everywhere" agenda of the gun lobby, which is based on a renegade interpretation of the Second...

It's over. And in Washington, this place of perpetual nudging and buttonholing and prodding, the end comes hard. Hard because there is another campaign — one fraught with disappointment and measured in the longest of odds — that happens beneath The Campaign. This second campaign is waged to get the attention of the candidates, to get them talking about your issue, your cause, your obsession. And when the polls open on Election Day, the last hopes of so many nudgers, buttonholers and prodders will...

For some, there is a lesson in the story of a 4-year-old Woodbridge boy who got access to a handgun and accidentally killed himself. For others, it is simply a tragedy that borders on the unimaginable. But accident or not, the events that led to the death of Kyrell Kyyon McNeill could have stiff legal consequences. The boy climbed into a relative's truck July 25, found the loaded weapon and accidentally shot himself in the head, police said. He gained access to the gun...