One Year After Sandy Hook, Gun Lobbyist Says 'The Legislation That Is On The Books Is Lethal'

WASHINGTON -- Guns don't kill people. Gun laws kill people, argued Larry Pratt, head of Gun Owners of America, on Fox News Sunday.

Host Chris Wallace asked Pratt if the complete inability of Congress to pass any gun safety legislation in the year since the Newtown massacre counted as a victory for the gun lobby.

"We're not really going to be able to talk about a victory until we get rid of the laws that prohibit people from having guns to protect themselves in schools and in other places," Pratt said. "Every one of our mass murders in our country has occurred in places where guns were prohibited."

Newtown Plans Quiet Anniversary Of School Shooting

NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — Church bells tolled in Newtown on Saturday to mark the anniversary of the shooting massacre that killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and President Barack Obama called on Americans to help prevent future violence in a radio address on the tragedy.

The bells rang 26 times as names of each of the victims were read at St. Rose of Lima church in Newtown, one of several houses of worship that held private services Saturday for a community still grieving the deaths of 20 children and six educators.

Here's A Look At All The Gun Control Laws Congress Has Passed Since Newtown

The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., sent a shockwave through the collective conscience of the nation. The images of distraught children leaving the school. The details of a gunman sweeping through classrooms filled with kindergarteners and first-graders. The murders of 26 people, including 20 young students, before the shooter killed himself. The event haunted us, and left many, including scores of lawmakers, saying that it was finally time to move forward on legislation to address the all-too-frequent episodes of mass gun violence.

NRA Robocalls In Newtown Spark Outrage From Local Gun Control Group

WASHINGTON -- The National Rifle Association came under fire late Thursday from members of a gun-control advocacy group in Newtown, Conn., after reports surfaced of Newtown residents receiving robocalls and pro-gun postcards from the NRA.

The advocacy group, the Newtown Action Alliance, posted a Facebook message Thursday about the calls, prompting responses from people who said they'd received communications from the NRA and were upset by them.

Newtown school massacre a hoax to tighten gun laws: Latest conspiracy theory

WASHINGTON—The United States has long been a breeding ground for conspiracy theorists, spurred by an often violent history riddled, in particular, with shadowy political assassinations.

But the latest conspiracy movement seems custom-made to underscore the need for a national debate on mental illness. Some of the Sandy Hook Truthers, as they’ve been dubbed, believe last month’s mass shooting in Newtown, Conn., was a hoax.

Backfire: The Disgusting NRA Press Conference

I fully expected the National Rifle Association to hold a press conference this morning that would help blunt the momentum for gun control legislation now building in Washington: to solemnly pay tribute to those lost at Sandy Hook; to pledge to work with all sides to stop this from happening again while subtly trying to shift the conversation more towards mental health issues and, heck, maybe video games too. It would make the NRA seem reasonable, and concerned, and give hesitant members of Congress some comfort in sticking to the NRA line.

NRA Press Conference: Wayne LaPierre Calls For Armed Police Officers At Every School

WASHINGTON -- The nation's largest gun-rights lobby is calling for armed police officers to be posted in every American school to stop the next killer "waiting in the wings."

The National Rifle Association broke its silence Friday on last week's shooting rampage at a Connecticut elementary school that left 26 children and staff dead.

Should Teachers Carry Guns?

There are many things we ask of teachers and students. In New York, we are in the middle of a fight about teacher evaluations—the metrics used, their weight in promotion and firing. Since the shooting in Sandy Hook, there has been talk about not only what it means to stand in front of a class but what it’s like to keep six-year-olds silent in a closet with a gunman steps away, or, like Victoria Soto, a teacher laid to rest Wednesday, to die trying to protect them. Paul Simon sang “Sounds of Silence” at Vicki’s funeral—his sister-in-law knew the Soto family; Derek Jeter called her mother, because he’d heard she was a Yankees fan. Those are fitting tributes. What is confounding, though, is the idea, put forward by gun advocates, that this all would have been better if only Soto and her colleagues had been carrying guns, too—if they had served as field officers in some sort of counterattack.

NRA calls for gun-toting police officers in every U.S. school in wake of Newtown school massacre

WASHINGTON—The powerful U.S. gun rights lobby went on the offensive on Friday arguing that schools should have armed guards, on a day that Americans remembered the victims of the Newtown, Connecticut school massacre with a moment of silence.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” said Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the National Rifle Association, noting that banks and airports are patrolled by armed guards, while schools typically are not.

Commentary: TDSB, not me, told my 6-year-old son about Newtown

On the way to school Monday my son Benson, who turns 7 on Saturday, was upset, asking me over and over: “Why do people litter?”

A few hours later, his sprightly, sensitive little brain was processing another level of horror, that a man had stormed a U.S. school and shot 20 little kids — kids like him — to death.

My wife and I had chosen to not tell Ben about the Connecticut massacre. Newspapers were flipped, radios hushed.

James Dobson: Connecticut Shooting Linked To Gay Marriage

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson said Monday that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary resulted from America turning its back on God, joining other conservative Christian leaders in assigning blame for Friday's Connecticut shootings. Speaking to listeners of his "Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk" program, Dobson said God "has allowed judgment to fall upon us."

    Our country really does seem in complete disarray. I'm not talking politically, I'm not talking about the result of the November sixth election; I am saying that something has gone wrong in America and that we have turned our back on God.

From Newtown to Afghanistan: Connecting the dots of a violent society

Just as people in places like the Maldives, Bangladesh and Pakistan may have shook their heads at the cluelessness of Americans who suddenly woke up to climate change when Sandy came to town, people living in hot spots of violence around the world now have every right to be shaking their heads at the collective American refusal to see and understand how, in the wake of the Newtown massacre, we are much to blame for our own misery.

The U.S. is the largest arms manufacturer and exporter in the world.  We have by far the largest military.  We are also by far the most heavily armed civilian population in the world, with some 300 million guns circulating among our population of about 300 million people. Americans, we need to acknowledge that collectively, as a nation, we have been responsible for hundreds, and probably thousands of deaths of children worldwide through the weapons we sell abroad.

China Watches Newtown: Guns and American Credibility

The children of Chengping were still filtering into the local elementary school on Friday morning, China time, when a deranged thirty-six-year-old man named Min Yingjun entered the campus. He carried a knife. (China bans private gun ownership.) By the time the security guards got to him, he had wounded twenty-two children and one adult. All survived. China, like most places, had seen this kind of madness before: one especially heavy string of school attacks in 2010 killed nearly twenty people and wounded more than fifty. The killers are as hard to recall in their particulars as they deserve.

White House On Newtown School Shooting: Today Not The Day For Gun Control Debate

WASHINGTON -- In an immediate response to a shooting at a Connecticut elementary school on Friday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said today is not the day for a debate on gun control.

"I think it's important, on a day like today, to view this -- as I know the president, as a father, does, and I as a father and others who are parents certainly do, which is to feel enormous sympathy for families that are affected and to do everything we can to support state and local law enforcement and support those who are enduring what appears to be a very tragic event," Carney told reporters in the daily White House press briefing. "There is, I am sure -- will be, rather -- a day for discussion of the usual Washington policy debates, but I do not think today is that day." Carney did say that President Barack Obama remains committed to renewing a ban on assault weapons.