A popular anti-gun crime program in Richmond that has been copied by other cities, states and the Bush administration is not responsible for the dramatic decrease in that city's gun-related homicides in the late 1990s, a new study says. The more than 30 percent drop in killings often attributed to Project Exile, a six-year-old program that imposes automatic five-year sentences on felons caught carrying guns, probably would have occurred anyway as crime fell nationwide,... (GunPolicy.org)

Congress should stand up to the powerful gun lobby and not make the industry immune to lawsuits. It will consider bills early this year that do just that. Gun manufacturers would like the bills passed before April 25, when a landmark California trial starts. Municipalities there claim gun makers and distributors supplied firearms to an illegitimate market and failed to provide warnings and safety features. Lawsuits like that, as well as Detroit's 1999 suit against gun... (GunPolicy.org)

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario — A 7-year-old girl shot her 6-year-old brother dead while the two played with a .45-calibre handgun owned by their adult brother, police said Saturday. The incident happened Friday afternoon when the two young children were playing in a bedroom where they discovered the high-powered, semiautomatic pistol. The girl pointed the gun at her brother and shot him, police said in a news release. The boy was pronounced dead at Credit Valley Hospital a... (GunPolicy.org)

Protests against Canada's gun registry proceeded much as expected this week. A man who carried an unregistered, unloaded rifle sealed in plastic to the Alberta legislature had his gun confiscated, but was not charged. A man who appeared on Parliament Hill with part of a gun was arrested and charged with carrying a weapon to a public meeting. This is the way of civil disobedience: that a person who breaks the law to make a point should expect to pay the legal... (GunPolicy.org)

To kill his Lake Worth Middle School teacher, 13-year-old Nathaniel Brazill used a cheap, silver, short-barreled .25-caliber pistol commonly known as a Saturday night special. The gun is easily concealed, has no trigger lock, and aims so poorly that hunters and marksmen have no use for it. Eleven years after the manufacturer, Raven Arms Inc., went out of business, the gun is still listed by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms as one of the nation's top... (GunPolicy.org)

You would think from their orchestrated bleats that Maryland gun dealers were caught off guard — and hadn't known perfectly well for nearly three years that an internal-trigger-lock law would take effect on Jan. 1, 2003. Suddenly, and no doubt in hopes of tearing at the heartstrings of Gov.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., opponents of the safety requirement say that they fear for their livelihoods, that only a small number of handgun models on the market meet the law's... (GunPolicy.org)