The Gun debate sandbox

Owner Lauren Boebert, a 28-year-old former Miss Junior Colorado and self-described born-again Christian, insists the guns are no gimmick.

"It's a way of life. When you walk into Shooters you are walking into America," she said, a compact Ruger 9-millimeter tucked into the small of her back. "This is what America is."

I don't know if Jesus would sign off on it, Gary, but every joint I ever worked the bartender was armed more often than not.

After he answered a knock at his front door, things went downhill fast for a 22-year-old Florida college student.

Two men barged into his Orlando apartment Tuesday afternoon, and while one ransacked the place, the other forced him to the floor while pointing a gun at his head, WKMG-TV reported.



But the student’s roommate — a fellow University of Central Florida student — went to her bedroom, got her own gun and pointed it at the robbers, who fled, investigators told WESH-TV.

And the perp who had the piece? He dropped it before running off — and it turned out to be not quite as lethal as hers.

“She brought a gun to a pellet gun fight,” Lt. Paul Hopkins of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office told WESH.

Authorities searched the area with K-9s and a helicopter but couldn’t find the culprits.

“Typically, we ask people to comply with the orders of the robber,” Hopkins said. “That way they just get the product and get out. But on this occasion, obviously, the female felt that she had an advantage over them, was able to get her real gun and get these two bad guys out of her apartment.”

Deputies described the two suspects as black males in their early 20s, WKMG noted. Neither of the students were hurt, sheriffs said.

Unlocked apartments 3 miles away were burglarized Monday while students slept inside, WKMG reported, but it’s not clear whether those incidents are related to what happened Tuesday.

A father and mother in Albuquerque may face felony child-neglect charges after their 3-year-old boy found a gun in his mom's purse and shot his parents in a squalid hotel room, a police spokesman said Sunday.

The pair were wounded by the same bullet in the apparently accidental shooting at the Americas Best Value Inn in Albuquerque on Saturday afternoon, police spokesman Simon Drobik told the Los Angeles Times. The mother is eight months pregnant, Drobik said, and the couple also have a 2-year-old girl.

... oldschool tech that ought to make the anti-gunners feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Not all of us have money to burn.

What are the benefits of this hot new round? Didn't you buy one? What's the effective range? How are the ballistics? How will it compliment the average shooter's arsenal?

States With Most Gun Deaths Have High Gun Ownership And Weak Gun Laws, Report Shows

It seems like a relatively obvious equation: The weaker the gun laws and the higher the rate of gun ownership in a given state, the more deaths from gun violence that state will see.

That's the conclusion of a report released Thursday by the Violence Policy Center, a nonprofit organization that researches the public health impact of gun violence.

Alaska has the highest rate of gun fatalities in the country, according to data from 2013. The state saw 19.59 deaths per 100,000 people, which is significantly above the national average of 10.64 deaths per 100,000. VPC's report indicates that Alaska also has the country's third-highest rate of gun ownership, with firearms in 60.6% percent of households.

The study found a similar correlation between gun ownership and gun deaths in the rest of the country. Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Wyoming, the states that followed Alaska in terms of highest gun death rates, had some of the nation's largest percentages of households owning guns.

VPC also noted that states with weaker gun laws tend to see higher gun death rates. All five states named above have gun restrictions that the report's authors describe as "lax."

The study defined states with weak gun laws as those that don't add extra provisions to federal gun laws, such as banning assault weapons or requiring a permit to buy a gun. In addition, states with open or concealed carry laws were considered to have weak gun restrictions.

States with the lowest gun death rates -- the top three were Hawaii, Massachusetts and New York -- were found to have strong gun laws as well as low rates of gun ownership. A separate 2013 analysis from the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence similarly found that these three states were among those with the strongest gun restrictions in place.

A number of previous studies have linked gun laws and gun ownership with deaths by gun violence, challenging the "more guns, less crime" hypothesis that suggests a higher rate of gun ownership makes communities safer. The Violence Policy Center published a similar study last year, using data from 2011. According to the two studies, between 2011 and 2013, the five states with the highest percentages of gun-owning households saw a noticeable spike in gun deaths per 100,00 residents.

Another recent report from researchers at Johns Hopkins and Stanford Universities found a positive link in all 50 states between right-to-carry laws and a rise in violent crimes.

States have a great deal of autonomy when it comes to gun laws. It is up to individual states to determine whether to perform background checks, what types of weapons and ammunition can be sold and where firearm owners can bring their guns.

Hawaii, the state that had the fewest gun deaths in 2013, has only 9.7 percent gun ownership and a gun death rate of 2.71 out of 100,000. Yet VPC's analysis noted that those numbers are still far higher than in many industrialized countries. For instance, in the UK, where very few people own guns and do so under tight restrictions, the gun violence death rate in 2013 was 0.23 deaths per 100,000.

The 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, focused global attention on America's gun crisis and resulted in a pledge from President Barack Obama to work to remedy the situation. Since then, however, Americans have stockpiled more ammunition and firearms than before amid weakened gun laws in many states.