Free Republic

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was glum after background checks went down April 17. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) A week after gun legislation suffered a stinging defeat in the Senate, an uncomfortable realization has settled over the Capitol that it will likely take another mass shooting or similar tragedy to reignite momentum for gun control. President Obama called last week’s vote “round one.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pledged that it was “just the beginning.” But gun-control advocates, both inside and outside of Congress, have identified no immediate path forward to alter a political landscape that left them five...

URBANA — Described as a candidate with "outstanding" personal and professional qualities, James Holmes was accepted into the University of Illinois Neuroscience Program in 2011 and was offered financial support through a combination of fellowships, teaching and research assistantships, and tuition and fee waivers, The News-Gazette has learned. However, a few weeks after his visit to the Urbana campus in the spring of 2011 and one day after he was offered admission to the highly selective graduate program, Holmes declined to accept, without elaborating on the reasons or his plans for the future, according to university documents provided to The...

Fareed Zakaria has tried to make “The Case for Gun Control” in Time. The results are not pretty. Virtually every argument he makes misrepresents the underlying data. After a lead that cites the Sikh-temple shooting, the Aurora massacre, and the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others, Zakaria trots out the usual international comparisons: “The gun-homicide rate per capita in the U.S. is 30 times that of Britain and Australia, 10 times that of India and four times that of Switzerland. When confronted with such a large deviation, a scholar would ask, Does America have some potential cause for this...

DHS-funded video gives tips to survive a shooter. http://www.federalnewsradio.com/473/2966001/DHS-funded-video-gives-tips-to-su... After last week's shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., the city of Houston has released a how-to video on surviving a shooter event. The video was created with funds from the Homeland Security Department. "I can't imagine the horror and grief. If it is at all possible for any good to come out of it, perhaps it can be letting people know the options to consider if it happens again," said Mayor Annise Parker in a statement. Entitled "Run, Hide, Fight," the video depicts a fictional shooting incident at...

The lone gunman who killed six Sikh worshippers at a Gurudwara in Wisconsin was motivated by hate and this makes the incident even more tragic, Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate said today. "The tragedy in Wisconsin, where the Sikh temple was invaded by a gunman who was motivated by hate, racial hate, religious hate that makes it even more tragic, and tragic too to have a people that are known for their peaceability and their loving nature to be so brutally attacked," Romney said at a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa. "We're thinking of them. Our hearts go...

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- Jared Lee Loughner pleaded guilty Tuesday to going on a shooting rampage at a political gathering, killing six people and wounding his intended target, then-Congresswoman Gabriele Giffords, and 12 others. Loughner's plea spares him the death penalty and came soon after a federal judge found that months of forcibly medicating him to treat his schizophrenia had made the 23-year-old college dropout competent to understand the gravity of the charges and assist in his defense.

The horrific mass murder at a movie theater in Colorado on July 20 and another at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin on August 5 are the latest in an epidemic of such gun violence over the last three decades. Since 1982, there have been at least 58 mass murders* carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii. We've mapped them below, including details on the shooters' identities, the types of weapons they used, and the number of victims they injured and killed. Of the 134 guns possessed by the killers,...

Wade Michael Page, the tattooed white supremacist and former Army soldier police say gunned down six Sikhs in a Milwaukee-area temple before a police officer killed him, spread his message of hate through several rock bands for more than a decade before mounting his bloody rampage Sunday.