Gun-control advocates weren't happy to see Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. win the Maryland governorship. But are gun-control laws really effective at reducing violent crime? Compare Maryland's record with Virginia's. Other than a one-handgun-per-month purchase law, the two states have little in common on gun control. Gun-control measures in Maryland include: - A ban on the cheap handguns known as Saturday night specials (1988). - A waiting period for the purchase of assault... (GunPolicy.org)

As United Nations inspectors get closer to unearthing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, President Bush is pushing U.S. allies ever harder to accept the logic of pre-emptive strikes that would end the possibility that Iraq would use such weapons. Indeed, denying murderous dictators chemical, biological and nuclear weapons is insurance we all can use. This focus, however, ignores the weapons terrorists and dictators rely on the most and that already kill vast numbers... (GunPolicy.org)

DAGUPAN CITY — The Philippine National Police (PNP) disclosed yesterday that it will mount relentless operations against loose firearms after establishing that loose firearms outnumber licensed guns 2 to 1 in Region 1. "There are more loose firearms in the hands of civilians in the Ilocos region that those that have been actually licensed," Police Regional Director Arturo Lomibao Jr. admitted during a press conference over the weekend. Lomibao told newsmen here that... (GunPolicy.org)

For the four officers, it was a routine patrol. Their police car was cruising along one of the main roads in Rio de Janeiro's North Zone on Wednesday evening when it was ambushed. Thirty men appeared, armed with shotguns, pistols, rifles, submachine-guns and grenades. Bullets rained on the car, killing two of the policemen and, by mistake, a 51-year-old woman in a passing bus. The ages of the gang members, one of the city's most feared drug factions, said police, were... (GunPolicy.org)

It's Scotty the Skateboard versus Eddie Eagle in a duel over gun safety. A National Rifle Association magazine editor called the Michigan Education Association and Lansing police "anti-gun" for their gun safety video called "Scotty the Skateboard." "Shame on the MEA for such blatant anti-gun hypocrisy as to not take some gun safety assistance from the oldest, most respected firearms association in the nation!" Mark Chesnut wrote in the current edition of "America's... (GunPolicy.org)

Outgunned: Up Against The NRA The First Complete Insider Account Of The Battle Over Gun Control By Peter Harry Brown and Daniel G. Abel The Free Press, $26 Few things arouse Americans' passions as much as the issue of gun control. It touches all our lives in various ways. Most of us know people on both sides of the issue — victims of gun violence, or hunters, or friends who sleep with firearms under the bed or keep them in the car. In "Outgunned: Up Against the... (GunPolicy.org)

Rap star Ms Dynamite has called for an end to gun crime as she performed at a concert to remember two teenagers shot dead in Birmingham. She called for black people to "start loving instead of killing each other" in a poem she read out to an 8,000-strong audience. The concert-goers also had a pledge from Prime Minister Tony Blair that he would not rest until the gun criminals were brought to justice, in a letter sent to the event's organisers. But singer Beverley... (GunPolicy.org)

VANCOUVER — The shooting death of a Clark County sheriff sergeant's young daughter with his service handgun is giving urgency to weapons policy reviews among law enforcement agencies from Multnomah to King counties. On Saturday, Sgt. Craig Randall and his wife, Marilee, buried their youngest child, 10-year-old Emilee Joy, who was killed Monday when a gun held by her 13-year-old brother Matthew discharged. Emilee's death helped prompt the Multnomah County Sheriff's... (GunPolicy.org)