Today’s roundup features an op-ed by President Barack Obama, who held a live town hall on CNN on reducing gun violence yesterday:
A national crisis like this demands a national response. Reducing gun violence will be hard. It’s clear that common-sense gun reform won’t happen during this Congress. It won’t happen during my presidency. Still, there are steps we can take now to save lives. And all of us — at every level of government, in the private sector and as citizens — have to do our part.
We all have a responsibility. [...]
All of us need to demand leaders brave enough to stand up to the gun lobby’s lies. All of us need to stand up and protect our fellow citizens. All of us need to demand that governors, mayors and our representatives in Congress do their part.
Change will be hard. It won’t happen overnight. But securing a woman’s right to vote didn’t happen overnight. The liberation of African-Americans didn’t happen overnight. Advancing the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans has taken decades’ worth of work.
Those moments represent American democracy, and the American people, at our best. Meeting this crisis of gun violence will require the same relentless focus, over many years, at every level. If we can meet this moment with that same audacity, we will achieve the change we seek. And we will leave a stronger, safer country to our children.
Former Congresswoman and co-founder of Americans for Responsible Solutions Gabrielle Giffords, writing in The Washington Post:
Almost three years ago, when a minority of senators caved in to their fear of the corporate gun lobby and blocked sensible, bipartisan background-check legislation in Congress, I said that those senators had failed their constituents and, with every preventable gun death, made shame their legacy.
Many of those same senators, along with a lot of other elected officials and some candidates for president, will be quick to haul out the talking points the gun lobbyists in Washington gave them and attack the president’s reasonable action. They will warn of dire consequences and willfully spread misinformation. But the truth is this: These new steps will hurt no one, and they will protect many.
At Newsweek, Philip Cook dives into where criminals get their weapons:
A national survey of inmates of state prisons found that just 10 percent of youthful (age 18-40) male respondents who admitted to having a gun at the time of their arrest had obtained it from a gun store. The other 90 percent obtained them through a variety of off-the-book means: for example, as gifts or sharing arrangements with fellow gang members. [...] If a gun ends up in criminal use, it is usually after several more transactions. The average age of guns taken from Chicago gangs is over 11 years.
The gun at that point has been diverted from legal commerce. In this respect, the supply chain for guns is similar to the supply chain for other products that have a large legal market but are subject to diversion.
In the case of guns, diversion from licit possession and exchange can occur in a variety of ways: theft, purchase at a gun show by an interstate trafficker, private sales where no questions are asked, straw purchases by girlfriends and so forth.
On a final note, Beth Schwartzapfel of The Marshall Project writes about the sale of ammunition over at CNN Money:
"If someone isn't allowed to possess ammunition, we should probably make sure they can't buy it," says Yashar Hedayat, a spokesman for Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, who is spearheading a new effort on ammunition purchases.
That effort, the Safety for All Act, would require a background check for anyone seeking to buy bullets, using the same system as the existing one for guns. The proposed new law includes several other gun control provisions, including new regulations for ammunition dealers. The state -- plus 44 others and the federal government -- currently has no licensing or regulation for those who sell bullets.