British police forces were warned yesterday that they risked slipping into a US-style "gun culture" where officers are routinely armed. Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said that no one had "signed up" to increase the use of firearms within the UK, but Home Office figures showed the number of incidents where police used guns was on the rise across England and Wales. Mr Hughes' comments come amid mounting concern about officers' use of guns,... (GunPolicy.org)

The Post recently reported how a 69-year-old man successfully rescued his 19-year-old son by shooting a "vicious dog." The story is noteworthy for the very fact that a newspaper reported it at all. Few people realize that civilians use guns defensively, not just against dogs, but to stop about 2 million crimes a year — five times more often than guns are used to commit crimes, according to national surveys. Yet when was the last time you heard the evening news talk... (GunPolicy.org)

SAN FRANCISCO — In a major defeat for gun control advocates, California's Supreme Court ruled on Monday that firearms manufacturers cannot be held legally responsible for the criminal use of their weapon. The Supreme Court justices found that Miami-based Navegar Inc. could not be sued over a 1993 attack in which a disgruntled businessman used a Navegar-made TEC-DC9 military assault pistol to kill nine people, including himself, in a San Francisco office... (GunPolicy.org)

SAN FRANCISCO — Victims cannot sue gunmakers when criminals use their products illegally, California's top court ruled Monday, rejecting a suit stemming from the 1993 massacre of eight people in a skyscraper. The 5-1 decision by the California Supreme Court kept in step with other courts in insulating weapons manufacturers from liability. Every state high court and federal appellate court in the nation to consider such lawsuits has ruled that makers of legal,... (GunPolicy.org)

John Horstman set out on a six-hour bicycle ride July 24. As he rolled east across the Illinois Prairie Path bridge near West Chicago, a DuPage County sheriff's officer stopped him. Now, Horstman is embarking on a legal and political odyssey that may be the test case for an ambiguous clause in the state's gun-control law. The officer searched Horstman and found a Taurus 9 mm handgun in his backpack. Horstman says it was unloaded and slipped safely in a Velcro pocket in... (GunPolicy.org)

Editor's note: This is the fourth installment in an NRO series on the United Nations Conference on Small Arms. At the U.N. Small Arms Conference, Iran took the lead in promoting a ban on weapons supplies to non-states. The "non-state actors" clause would require vendors "to supply small arms and light weapons only to governments, or to entities duly authorized by government." This would make it illegal, for example, to supply weapons to the Kurds or religious... (GunPolicy.org)

MAPUTO — There are said to be around seven million guns buried in caches all over Mozambique — the hangover from a bitter 17-year civil war that set brother against brother. The country sits on a vast powder keg which many fear could explode at any time — triggered by the crippling poverty which besets every corner of this southern African land. Most Mozambicans cannot read or write and less than one in three people has access to safe drinking water. In... (GunPolicy.org)

Angry because the Senate rejected his effort to spend another $15 million for a federal gun buyback operation, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) snarled that the program is not a "feel-good" exercise, as some opponents had charged. He's right about that. Spending millions of dollars on a program that is universally considered one of the least effective anti-crime measures — instead of on measures that might actually reduce crime and save lives — shouldn't make anybody... (GunPolicy.org)