VANCOUVER — Canada's new gun law came into effect Monday. All gun owners who haven't applied for a licence by now face stiff penalties, including fines and jail. But as one of the country's most controversial laws, it has met resistance from several fronts, and a flood of applications in the last few weeks has created a backlog. Ottawa estimates nearly two million Canadians have applied, leaving thousands more who haven't. The government recently announced gun... (GunPolicy.org)

It was the usual ritual, only this time it was in Wakefield, Mass., a suburb of Boston. Relatives, friends and co-workers spent the holiday weekend carrying their grief through the bitter cold to pay their final respects to the seven men and women blasted into eternity by yet another deranged gunman. In the spring of 1999, when two students went on a murder rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., some students inside the school used their cell phones to... (GunPolicy.org)

Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, by Michael A. Bellesiles, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 640 pages, $30 Five months before the publication of Arming America, without seeing the text, The New York Times endorsed its author's claim that few guns, let alone a gun culture, existed in America prior to the Civil War. This was just the beginning of the media blitz that would greet the book. A glowing treatment by Garry Wills adorned the cover of The New... (GunPolicy.org)

NEW YORK — The National Shooting Sports Foundation and seven gun makers said Friday that they had withdrawn a lawsuit against Cabinet member Andrew Cuomo, among others, intended to overturn a "code of conduct" for firearms manufacturers. The foundation said the plaintiffs had dropped the suit because lawyers representing Cuomo, the secretary of housing and urban development, and other defendants, including New York state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, had said in... (GunPolicy.org)