Gun laws should be tightened to prevent weapons getting into the hands of people whose only knowledge of firearms is "what they've seen on TV", says the Council of Licensed Firearms Owners. Council chairman John Howat wants law changes after a 14-year-old boy was struck on the side of his head by an air rifle pellet at Waitangi. He was treated in the emergency department of Whangarei Hospital on Thursday and discharged that night. An 18-year-old will appear in... (GunPolicy.org)

A Centreville man whose son killed two Fairfax County police officers outside a police station last year was ordered released on $100,000 bond yesterday, one day after being charged with providing the arsenal of weapons his son used in the attack. Brian Kennedy, 50, a meat counter manager, stood quietly in U.S. District Court in Alexandria and was instructed by Magistrate Judge T. Rawles Jones Jr. to stay away from guns and drugs. He was then released into the custody... (GunPolicy.org)

Guns have silenced three generations of males in Darlene Santistevan's family. First, her husband killed himself when their son, Elias, was 4 months old. Then, Elias grew up to become a violent man himself. Last August, after beating his wife, 22-year-old Elias Santistevan took his own son hostage and, after a four-hour standoff with police, killed his 5-year-old boy, then himself. Young Deion was found lying on his dad's chest, shot in the head. "My grandson was... (GunPolicy.org)

Australia's annual firearm theft rate has dropped more than 70 per cent in a decade and almost half of the stolen weapons were not stored safely. There were 1470 guns stolen nationwide in 2004-05 compared with 5170 stolen 10 years earlier, the Australian Institute of Criminology has found. About 200 guns, or 13 per cent, were taken from vehicles. The report also noted that stolen firearms were recovered in just one in every eight incidents. At the same time, guns... (GunPolicy.org)

Virginia State Police are no longer making public a database of permit holders of concealed handguns after the attorney general said yesterday that it should be off-limits to citizens. The database, according to an advisory opinion released by Attorney General Bob McDonnell, was put together solely as an investigative tool and therefore is an exception to the state Freedom of Information Act requiring public access to many government documents. "Anyone that submits a... (GunPolicy.org)