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Many people may be dead following a shooting at a high school in Finland, police have said. The individual with the gun is still inside the vocational college in Kauhajoki, 120 miles from Helsinki, and students are being evacuated.

Total Is About Double The Death Toll In Iraq CHICAGO (CBS) ― An estimated 123 people were shot and killed over the summer. That's nearly double the number of soldiers killed in Iraq over the same time period. In May, cbs2chicago.com began tracking city shootings and posting them on Google maps. Information compiled from our reporters, wire service reports and the Chicago Police Major Incidents log indicated that 123 people were shot and killed throughout the city between the start of Memorial Day weekend on May 26, and the end of Labor Day on Sept. 1. According to the Defense...

OMAHA, Neb. - A La Vista man claims he was beaten by Omaha Police has filed a complaint against the department and plans to hire an attorney. Darnell Birdine, 19, said it happened at Septemberfest Sunday night. Omaha police said they saw someone fire shots near 10th and Webster, which is near the Septemberfest midway. As they responded to that shots fired call, they decided to close the event for the night.

Fox News has a report on the efficacy of "Gun Free Zones" A must see.

The first convention of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC) featured at least one speaker who said college students bearing arms on campus would not make anyone safer. Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign, a gun control advocacy group, said studies show that college students are more likely to engage in risky behavior than the general population. “When I look back on my college days, maybe it was a different era in the late ‘60s, but most of my fraternity brothers didn’t have criminal records – not yet, most of them, even those who were in ROTC and...

A Mississippi congressman (Rep Thompson, D) wants to create even more defensless victim zones. Thompson is displeased with a recent Georgia State law that removes infringements on the right of Georia citizens to bear arms on public transportation. While there is no history of problems in this area, Thompson wishes to ban guns from unspecified zones around airports, far beyond the traditional security zones established to prevent terrorists from smuggling arms onto airliners. Most airports around the country respect the second amendment rights of citizens to bear arms outside the designated security zones.

This past Tuesday a University student, Cassie LeBlanc, was robbed while getting into her car after leaving the library around 9:30 p.m. The robber forced her against her car and asked for her wallet, then he discovered there was no cash. He decided he didn't want it, but after seeing text books on the front seat, the thief decided to take those instead. I was very glad to hear LeBlanc was alright, but a very important question came to mind: What if she had a firearm to defend herself? Would this incident have happened? My answer is probably not. The...

Dallas murder suspect arrested in Zanesville Law enforcement, firefighters and postal investigators respond to the scene of a shooting at the Dallas Post Office Friday afternoon. The road around the post office was closed for hours. POST OFFICE IS CLOSED Following the fatal shooting Friday, the Dallas Post Office will be closed today and until further notice, postal officials said late Friday. Post office box customers at the Dallas Post Office can pick up their box mail at the Valley Grove Post Office, 3470 National Road. Mail delivery for Dallas customers will be conducted as normal, officials said. DALLAS, W.Va....

You could call it the Atlanta version of "High Noon." Top city officials will announce Tuesday that despite a new state gun law that went into effect at midnight, they will have anyone carrying a weapon at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport arrested. The state lawmaker who sponsored the new gun law says if they do, the city will immediately be sued. And state Rep. Tim Bearden (R-Villa Rica) said the plaintiff in the lawsuit could be himself. "I have a permit, and I have family I have to pick up at the airport tomorrow [Tuesday]," Bearden told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on...

Gun Free Zones Endanger The Lives of Children Published on: June 21st, 2008 11:23pm by: unsolvedmysteries (OPENPRESS) June 22, 2008 -- A new blog covers different aspects of culture and society to help people understand aspects of the world around them that is overlooked or taken for granted. The author of this new blog, Abbas Abedi, says that he has been thinking of how to approach this large topic. He says that he could approach this topic like a book, laying groundwork to explain his views or he could rant about stuff that he notices in day to day...

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Gun violence on the streets of Chicago continues to take lives with nearly every day that passes. In a recent town hall meeting on violence, the issue of guns dominated the discussion. The question arose: How does Chicago, with one of the most restrictive laws on handgun ownership, have such a problem with the mayhem their users cause? CBS 2's Rob Johnson the gun debate continues, and some wonder if law-abiding citizens have become outgunned. In April of this year there were 47 murders in Chicago, the highest monthly total in 10 years, and 80 percent of...

A year has passed since the tragic events at Virginia Tech, and there are some assumptions upon which gun control is based that require investigation. Chief among them is the misplaced feeling that banning firearms somehow eradicates them. When examining this notion, we can look for another example of a ban to give us a sense of the difference between banning and eradication. There are people in America known as illegal immigrants who are banned from being here. If the state cannot keep a person from coming into the country illegally, what possible hope does it have in banning a...

A young woman jumped out a second story window after being sexually assaulted early Sunday morning at her home near the University of Minnesota campus, according to Minneapolis Police. Police said a 20-year-old woman was confronted by a stranger in her residence on the 1000 block of 15th Avenue S.E. The woman was sexually assaulted and then fled out of a second story window, breaking her ankle from the fall. Police said she then ran to a neighbor's house to report the assault. Minneapolis police are investigating this recent incident. On April 26, an 18-year-old female student was sexually assaulted...

(CNSNews.com) - Posters reading, "Be Cool... Don't Let Guns Rule" are going up in all public schools in Hamilton County, Tenn., which includes the Chattanooga metropolitan area. "The initiative will aid in keeping guns out of schools, thus allowing students and teachers to focus on learning," the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said in a news release. The ATF says as students walk their school hallways, they will see the posters, which promise anonymity to those who call Crime Stoppers to report what they see or hear. "The time period between preventing an act of violence and...

Last Monday, three colleges and four K-to-12 schools were shut down by threats of violence. This week over 25,000 college students at 300 chapters in 44 states belong to a group, Students for Concealed Carry on College Campuses, that will carry empty handgun holsters to protest their concerns about not being able to defend themselves. With the first anniversary of the Virginia Tech attack last week and the discussions that it created, we clearly have not been able to put that and other attacks behind us. There are good reasons why the safety measures adopted over the last year to...

CHICAGO -- The weekend has gotten off to an especially violent start, with no fewer than 20 people shot on the streets of Chicago, three of them fatally, from Friday afternoon through early Saturday. About 12:50 p.m. Friday, a girl was wounded in the arm when she and another person were shot at 2714 W. 66th St. A Chicago Lawn police sergeant said two people were shot and "one of the victims,'' a girl, was shot in the arm. The sergeant would not disclose the girl's age. The girl was taken to Holy Cross Hospital. About 3:30 p.m., a 15-year-old...

Chavez Clarke, 18, had spent this past Saturday taking catch-up classes so he could graduate on time. As he left a South Side high school that afternoon, he was fatally shot, in broad daylight and in plain view of other students. His death marked a grim end to a week when police and school officials had stepped up their efforts to combat a spike in killings of public school students. The day before, an eighth-grader at a North Side school was shot and killed. In all, 20 Chicago public school students have been fatally shot so far this school year...

A University of Minnesota student lost his wallet, but ended up with the robber's gun, said Deputy Chief Steve Johnson. The victim handed the spring-loaded BB gun to police when they responded to the call around 3:55 a.m. Sunday. Johnson said he isn't sure how the male student ended up with the gun, but "we don't recommend reaching for that." The student, 23, was walking eastbound on University Avenue near SE. 16th Street when the suspect approached and asked for a cigarette. The suspect then displayed a gun and demanded the student's wallet and Walkman. He resisted. The suspect got...

A teenager today admitted beating and stabbing a 17-year-old model to death in broad daylight. Marc King-Bromley attacked Danielle Johnson behind garages in Bounds Green, north London, on May 28 last year. The hair and beauty student, who studied at Waltham Forest College, died on June 8 in the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead. The youngster had been mugged on numerous occasions before her death and had a BB gun held to her head by a fellow student. Her mother, Jan Johnson, claims she went to see police 20 times but was told there was no point in prosecuting the...

We recently witnessed, yet again, another case of firearm violence with the shooting deaths of five people on the Northern Illinois University campus. One of the most surprising things in the aftermath was an almost complete lack of discussion on the topic of gun control. The conversation that did occur centered mostly on keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally unstable. Have we as a country given up on the notion of limiting access to firearms for the general population? Interestingly, in the Northern Illinois killings, even though the shooter had a shotgun, most of the shots were...

How do you feel about allowing loaded guns in our national parks? Do you feel the need to pack heat while wandering the wildflower meadows of Paradise on Mount Rainier? Are you determined to protect yourself against overly aggressive squirrels at Hurricane Ridge? As you may have heard, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne has agreed to modify existing rules that prohibit people from carrying loaded weapons in the national parks. The new rules will be ready for public comment by the end of April [289K PDF]. The push comes from the U.S. Senate. Fifty senators added their signatures to...

I'm going to enjoy writing about a general election campaign against Barack Obama. As Corner contributor Dave Kopel and David Bernstein note, Barack Obama proposed a few years ago a federal law against licensed firearms dealers operating within five miles of a school or park. As Kopel notes, "Every town I've ever visited which has more than a few dozen inhabitants has either a school or a park. Hypothesizing that the ban would apply to city parks (e.g., Central Park in New York City) but not to National Parks, pick a geographical region, and describe where a licensed firearms dealer...

Dicks vows to block bid to lift ban on loaded weapons in national parks WASHINGTON – With a showdown looming, U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks says he’s prepared to block any effort by the administration to lift the current ban on carrying loaded weapons in national parks. It’s not an idle threat. As chairman of the House Appropriations interior subcommittee, Dicks oversees the National Parks Service’s annual budget and is in a position to prevent the administration from dropping the Reagan-era ban. While the Washington Democrat is usually reluctant to add legislative provisions to his spending bill, he is ready to...

Statement of National Gun Violence Prevention Organizations in Wake of Northern Illinois University Shooting Washington, DC--Following yesterday’s mass shooting at Northern Illinois University which left six dead, including the shooter, and 16 wounded, America’s leading national gun violence prevention organizations, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and the Violence Policy Center, issued the following joint statement: “Our sympathies go to all those affected by this terrible tragedy. America is in a gun crisis. Yesterday’s shooting at Northern Illinois University was the sixth mass shooting in less than two weeks. On college campuses,...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Two major safety and security organizations -- the American Society of Safety Engineers and ASIS International -- joined the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence in filing a "friend of the court" brief urging the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm a 2007 federal district court ruling striking down Oklahoma's 2005 guns-at-work law as unconstitutional. In a suit filed by ConocoPhillips and others -- ConocoPhillips v. Henry -- the lower court held that the law, which made it a crime in Oklahoma for employers to bar guns from company property, impermissibly conflicted with the...

Allowing guns on campus: is it supporting students' second amendment rights or is it just an accident waiting to happen? While the South Dakota State Senate failed to pass a bill that would have allowed students to carry guns on South Dakota college campuses, the legislation could be reconsidered if "smoked out"-when the Senate votes to bring the bill out of committee-or if "hog housed"-when another bill is gutted and the language of the gun bill replaces the original language. "I am upset by the fact that they are even considering allowing guns on campus," said Ellen Huelou, a freshman...

SB 1400 Introduced by Senator Johnson; Representatives Barnes, Burges, Pearce: Senators Blendu, Gould, Verschoor; Representatives Clark, Kavanagh, Yarbrough AN ACT Amending title 13, chapter 31, Arizona Revised Statutes, by adding section 13-3114; relating to weapons. Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona: Section 1. Title 13, chapter 31, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended by adding section 13-3114, to read: START_STATUTE13-3114. Gun-free zones; liability; definitions A. This state or any agency or political subdivision of this state or any person, organization or entity that establishes a gun-free zone is liable for damages that result from criminal conduct...

As Northern Illinois University restarts classes this week, one thing is clear: Six minutes proved too long. It took six minutes before the police were able to enter the classroom that horrible Thursday, and in that short time five people were murdered, 16 wounded. Six minutes is actually record-breaking speed for the police arriving at such an attack, but it was simply not fast enough. Still, the police were much faster than at the Virginia Tech attack last year. The previous Thursday, five people were killed in the city council chambers in Kirkwood, Mo. There was even a police officer...

By putting guns into the hands of terrorists, criminals and the mentally ill, the NRA helped create a society where defense by guns becomes mandatory. LET'S GET THIS out of the way. I am a gun owner and a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment. What I do not support is extending the rights embedded in the Second Amendment to terrorists, criminals and children. In the wake of a horrific campus shooting at Northern Illinois University, where 21 students were shot, we're reminded again that national gun laws must be strengthened. Sadly, gun laws have only been weakened since the...

Following a spate of campus attacks and threats, including the fatal shootings at Northern Illinois University and a chilling message scrawled in a boys' bathroom at a Levittown high school, federal lawmakers are renewing a push to beef up gun-control laws, fund safety procedures and study the link between college shootings and mental illness. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), at a news conference yesterday in Manhattan, said he and congressional colleagues plan to step up efforts to close loopholes in gun-control measures and create a federal task force to come up with national school safety guidelines. They also plan to push...

In this fair country of ours, it would seem that the majority of the people consider some of our constitutional rights as more important or more sacred than others. For example, no one, except for the die-hard enemies of democracy, would challenge the first amendment rights of citizens to freedom of speech, religion, and the press. On the other hand, a great multitude of individuals and politicians seem to dismiss the Second Amendment, the right of all Americans to keep and bear arms. Compared to the general public today, our founding fathers felt much differently about this important issue. They...

In the wake of last week’s tragedy at Northern Illinois University and last April’s massacre at Virginia Tech, the seemingly endless series of school shootings has incited debate over the safety of college communities across the country. Yesterday, the Cornell College Republicans placed about 20 signs on the Arts Quad that publicized their stance on the increasingly polarizing issue of the concealed carry of weapons. They have joined the approximately 12,000 students nationwide who are part of a grassroots effort that is advocating for concealed weapons license holders to be able to carry their weapons on campuses. Although prevalent on...

VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: Every shooter crazy 'bout a 'gun-free' zone I see where Clark County School District Superintendent Walt Rulffes has responded to the drive-by murder of a 15-year-old Palo Verde High School inmate by another one of his young charges by whining that it's difficult to prevent his wards from shooting each other given today's "easy access to guns" and television violence. I'm not sure about the TV part -- seems to me most of the drive-bys I've seen portrayed on the tube have concluded with the perpetrator going to prison. Just as it's true that there would be fewer...

Tread carefully all ye citizens, lest the leg-irons of socialism cripple the foundation of freedom ye so eagerly bind with infringing intent. Our schools and Universities are sad examples of a populace willing to cast yesterday's freedoms into the waste bin of lore. Guaranteed rights are scorned as the enlightened elite tell us we have little need for freedom of speech, religion, or self protection. Nowhere is this more evident than in our centers for educational edification; as freedom of thought is often discouraged in lieu of a presumed superiority one supposedly found only in the tenets of Marxism. Quashing...

Nathaniel Sheetz knows he and other Penn State University students are protected by armed campus police. Just the same, he'd like to start bringing his own gun to class. If someone were to pull out a weapon and start shooting, he argues, he and his classmates could be dead in seconds before those officers arrive. Mr. Sheetz belongs to a group whose controversial message is getting more attention after a string of school shootings this month, including one at Northern Illinois University in which a gunman killed five people and wounded 16 in a lecture hall before taking his own...

Since 1976, the criminals of the city have carried handguns and killed with impunity, while the law-abiding have cowered in their midst. This is not what the D.C. Council imagined 32 years ago when it enacted what is regarded as the strictest gun-control measure in the nation. The law did not work out as envisioned, because criminals, serial killers and nut jobs who go postal do not follow the law. This elementary observation inevitably escapes the thought process of the well-meaning. Instead, the well-meaning point to the easy availability of handguns in Maryland and Virginia being the bane on the...

Had to share this if it hasn't already been posted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7pGt_O1uM8

As a journalist, in order to do my job responsibly and to the best of my ability, it is necessary for me to keep up to date with what it going on in Terre Haute, in Indiana and in the U.S., as well as have some idea of what is going on in the world. It helps that I'm a news junkie at heart, but lately, I've read, seen and heard about things that are painful for me to digest. In addition to the war that Americans have become so accustomed to hearing about and seeing, there are school shootings,...

Four months after Peter Hamm, spokesperson for The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, verbally attacked the college-based, grassroots organization Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, telling a Fox News reporter, "You don't like the fact that you can't have a gun on your college campus? Drop out of school," he is stepping up the rhetoric. Not content with encouraging college students to forgo their educations rather than fight for a cause in which they believe, Mr. Hamm has resorted to baseless conspiracy theories and slander. In a February 19, 2008, interview with Anna Hipsley of Australia’s ABC News radio,...

It's become an all-too-familiar scenario: A seemingly normal young man unable to cope with life's stresses shoots up a college campus. The nation mourns the dead and calls on its leaders to do something to stop these random acts of terror. Policymakers and educators who sowed the seeds of massacre by making campuses gun-free eventually settle on a strategy of more bureaucracy and more restrictions on individual liberties, and declare the campuses safe again. Then, another "disturbed individual" goes on a rampage, and the cycle begins anew. Northern Illinois University's response to the Virginia Tech slayings last April was typical....

Gunman's Contradictions Confound Police By ASHLEY M. HEHER and CARYN ROUSSEAU – DEKALB, Ill. (AP) — Steven Kazmierczak had the look of a boyish graduate student — except for the disturbing tattoos that covered his arms. Professors and students knew him as a bright, helpful scholar, but his past included a stint in a mental health center. Many saw him as happy and stable, but he had developed a recent interest in guns and was involved in a troubled — possibly abusive — on-again, off-again relationship. What people initially told police about the Northern Illinois University shooter didn't add up,...

The quandary: Preventing deadly campus shootings while respecting rights A week ago, Steven Kazmierczak walked into Tony's Guns & Ammo, a yellow shop in a back yard near the University of Illinois, and bought a Remington shotgun and a 9 mm Glock pistol. Around the same time, family members noticed that Kazmierczak was acting "erratically," after he had stopped taking prescription medicines for anxiety. Kazmierczak used his two new guns, and two more he had also purchased legally, to kill five students and himself Thursday in a shooting rampage at Northern Illinois University that leaves policymakers again scrambling to figure...

In recent years, Americans have been forced to deal with a rash of senseless, inexplicable school shootings such as that which occurred at Northern Illinois University last week leaving five innocents dead. Part of the unhappy search for explanations in the wake of these gruesome events has invariably included inane pronouncements from the media. After Virginia Tech, Lisa Ling used her platform on the Oprah Winfrey Show to openly worry about a backlash against "anyone who looked Asian". Of course, this did not happen. Ling, you see, was unable to wrap her mind around the concept that the rest of...

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, following a campus shooting in his home state of Illinois that left six dead, said on Friday that the US must do "whatever it takes" to eradicate gun violence. Obama stressed, however, he believes in an individual's constitutional right to bear arms. Obama said he spoke to Northern Illinois University's president this morning by phone and offered whatever help his Senate office could provide in the investigation and improving campus security. The first-term senator, a former constitutional law instructor, said some scholars argue the Second Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees gun ownership only to...

Or so it seems, now that our state Legislature considered the issue of allowing firearms on college campuses in South Dakota. Earlier this week, at least six people died at Northern Illinois University when a gunman opened fire in a classroom. Add that to a handful of other recent college shootings, plus the horrific loss of life at Virginia Tech last year, and the idea of letting students defend themselves against deranged gunmen by carrying weapons on campus seems to almost make sense. Almost, but not quite.

Wis.-Based Internet Gun Dealer Sold Weapons, Accessories To NIU And Va. Tech Shooters MADISON, Wis (AP) ― A Green Bay-based Internet gun dealer who sold a weapon to the Virginia Tech shooter last year sold handgun accessories to the man who killed five at Northern Illinois University on Thursday. Eric Thompson said Friday that his Web site, www.topglock.com, sold two empty 9 mm Glock magazines and a Glock holster to Stephen Kazmierczak on Feb. 4, just 10 days before the 27-year-old opened fire in a classroom and killed five before committing suicide. The order was shipped on Monday and...

After Thursday's mass shooting, should Illinois change its gun laws? My answer is yes. In Illinois, it is illegal for law abiding citizens to carry a concealed handgun for self defense. Source: http://www.handgunlaw.us/ In Texas, a guy walked into a restaurant, and shot and killed 23 people. One of the people who survived, survived because she pretended to be dead. She was a trained shooter and took her legal gun everywhere. She saw the shooter and she could have stopped him. But Texas law prohibted her from taking her gun into the restaurant, so she had left it in her...

DEKALB, Ill. — Steven Kazmierczak checked into a hotel near Northern Illinois University three days before his deadly shooting spree at the campus, paying cash and signing in under only his first name, the hotel manager said Saturday. Kazmierczak was last seen at the Travelodge on Tuesday, hotel manager Jay Patel said. Cigarette butts, empty energy drink and cold medicine containers littered the room Friday. Authorities found a duffel bag, with the zippers glued shut, that Kazmierczak had left in the room, DeKalb police Lt. Gary Spangler said. A bomb squad safely opened the bag Friday, he said. The Chicago...

Thursday's massacre on the campus of Northern Illinois University was the seventh mass shooting in the U.S. in the past month. In the almost-10 months since the nation's worst school shooting killed 33 people at Virginia Tech, debate has grown over campus security and gun laws. Thought the majority of students and universities are pushing for tighter regulation, a vocal minority rejects the idea that tougher gun laws will make schools safer. Michael Guzeman, the leader of the Texas chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, joined "Good Morning America Weekend" Saturday to make the case for his organization....

In my column last week, I wrote about the shooting rampage at the Town Council meeting in Kirkwood, Missouri that took the lives of 5 people. Only a couple of days after the column appeared on the Thinker, another gun-related tragedy occurred; this time at Northern Illinois University and it claimed 5 more innocent lives. That's right: another maniac, with guns bristling all over him, walked into a "gun-free zone" and began picking off human beings as if they were ducks in a shooting gallery. There were only a few minutes left in the ocean sciences class being held in...