Armed with all of the righteous indignation a second amendment Carry and Conceal holder could have, I requested an interview with Campus Security and Police Services Executive Director, Jon Uda. Should we allow conceal and carry on campus? At first, I thought yes. But after speaking to Uda, he disarmed my questions with his thought-provoking insights as to why it is best to leave gun defense on campus to trained professionals. Once the interview was over, he had radically changed my perception. On campus, guns should only be carried by those trained to use them.

Uda, whose training in law enforcement is extensive, is passionate about the security of the Boise State.

“The death of a student keeps me awake at night,” Uda said.

And should that death be at the hands of an inexperienced marksman, it would be devastating to the former FBI agent. Uda has witnessed crimes committed by the dregs of society and yet, to hear his emotion when speaking of the students on campus, it is realized how seriously he takes his job.

http://arbiteronline.com/2013/03/11/concealed-weapons-not-necessary-at-boise-state/

DES MOINES -- The public will never know and authorities can never check to see whether applicants in two Iowa counties were honest when they applied for permits to carry weapons.

Why? Because sheriff's offices in O'Brien and Woodbury counties routinely return or destroy the only copies of the applications once they are processed, even though a line near the top of the document says in capital letters: "INFORMATION PROVIDED ON THIS FORM IS A PUBLIC RECORD."

O'Brien County Sheriff Michael Anderson simply said his office doesn't need that record once a permit has been issued or denied. In Woodbury County, Lt. Brad Carlson said his office doesn't want to be responsible for the public record.

That's legal, but not advisable, according to an open records advocate, the state's ombudsman and an official from the Iowa Department of Public Safety. Among their concerns:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/12/iowa-gun-permit-applications-destroyed/1980869/

FAIRWOOD, Wash. -- Police are giving strong, urgent pleas for help finding a double murder suspect who they fear is now trying to obtain additional weapons.

Michael (Chad) Boysen, 26, is the suspect in the murder of his grandparents on Friday night, said Sgt. Cindi West with the King County Sheriff's Office.

Detectives have been told that Boysen may be trying to get additional weapons because evidence showed Boysen searched the internet for information on gun shows across the Pacific Northwest and Nevada, West said.

Boysen is now considered "an extreme danger to the public and police," West said.

http://www.komonews.com/news/local/police-Michael-Boysen-seeking-weapons-extreme-danger-to-public-196804151.html

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, perhaps the single highest-profile advocate for stricter gun control laws in America, said he is "optimistic Congress will do something" to rein in gun violence during an interview on "Face the Nation."

Bloomberg voiced support for an assault weapons ban but argued that a national background check system for gun purchases would actually be a more effective way to curb gun violence. "The truth of the matter is only about 400 people a year get killed with assault weapons or high-capacity magazines," he said. "That is 400 too many, and they're all tragedies. But you compare that to handguns, pistols this year are going to kill 12,000 Americans. And 19,000 Americans are going to commit suicide with handguns."

"Federal law requires background checks when a gun dealer sells you a gun," Bloomberg noted, "but no background check if the sale is done over the Internet or a gun show. Fourteen states have closed that loophole and in those 14 states the suicide rate is half the national average, and the number of women that get killed in domestic violence is something like 40 percent less than in other states. So background checks do work."

Bloomberg blamed the lack of prior action on gun control on the long political shadow cast by the National Rifle Association, noting, "Up until now it has only been the NRA that has been talking about guns to the public and to Congress.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-57573442/bloomberg-pushes-background-checks/

The share of American households with guns has declined over the past four decades, a national survey shows, with some of the most surprising drops in the South and the Western mountain states, where guns are deeply embedded in the culture.

The gun ownership rate has fallen across a broad cross section of households since the early 1970s, according to data from the General Social Survey, a public opinion survey conducted every two years that asks a sample of American adults if they have guns at home, among other questions.

The rate has dropped in cities large and small, in suburbs and rural areas and in all regions of the country. It has fallen among households with children, and among those without. It has declined for households that say they are very happy, and for those that say they are not. It is down among churchgoers and those who never sit in pews.

The household gun ownership rate has fallen from an average of 50 percent in the 1970s to 49 percent in the 1980s, 43 percent in the 1990s and 35 percent in the 2000s, according to the survey data, analyzed by The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/us/rate-of-gun-ownership-is-down-survey-shows.html?hp&_r=0

The national debate over firearms regulation is often presented as a battle of extremes: those who view any effort to tighten gun laws as an infringement of rights versus those who see guns as a menace to society.

But gun owners like Michael Kundu come from a largely unexplored middle ground — a place of nuance and contradiction.

Mr. Kundu is a master marksman from rural Washington who owns pistols and assault rifles for self-defense, all while claiming to detest the presence of guns in his life and in the broader American culture.

“I’d love to see all guns destroyed,” he said. “But I’m not giving up mine first.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/us/gun-owners-arent-always-gun-lovers.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Brazil has a gun culture, a gun industry and a gun problem -- much like the U.S. In fact, more Brazilians than Americans died of gunfire in 2010. Yet Brazil's 2010 tally, 34,300 deaths, was significantly lower than its gun fatalities in 2003 (39,284), when the government enacted major gun-control regulation. I asked Brazilian political scientist Antonio Bandeira, who coordinates the arms-control program of Viva Rio, a nongovernmental organization in Rio De Janeiro, how the campaign for gun regulation succeeded in Brazil.

Q: What strategy did you adopt?

A: We decided to work with civil society, to build pressure to apply to parliament. First, we had to prove in scientific terms that gun control was necessary to improve public security. Brazil had more deaths caused by firearms than any other nation. In Rio de Janeiro, my team of experts was able to access and evaluate data on 720,000 guns seized by the police.

Our analysis destroyed many myths. For example, most people believed that narcotrafficantes used mainly foreign guns. We proved that 90 percent of illegal guns were Brazilian-made. People believed criminals relied on high-caliber weapons. We proved that 88 percent of guns used in crimes were revolvers or pistols.We also demonstrated that guns are good for attacking, but not for self-defense. (The surprise factor is the attacker's advantage.)

In addition, we found that most gun deaths were committed with legal guns, by previously law-abiding citizens -- and not by organized criminals. The perpetrators of gun violence are husbands shooting wives, neighbors shooting neighbors, employees firing at bosses, children's accidents, suicides, etc. All put together, they largely surpass homicides perpetrated by organized crime.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-08/how-brazil-exploited-sexual-insecurity-to-curb-guns-an-interview-with-antonio-bandeira.html

Ex-Springfield Police Commissioner Edward Flynn has heated exchange on gun control with Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham

A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week on a proposed assault-weapons ban and gun control was expected to be emotional, considering the passion portrayed by people on both sides of the argument.

But when U.S. Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., and Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn got into a debate of sorts over the effectiveness of background checks, the result was a viral video of the exchange that has been talked about almost as much as the content of the conversation.

When interrupted by Flynn, Graham was in the middle of voicing concern over reports that although almost 80,000 people were denied gun permits in 2012 because they lied or provided incorrect information on their applications, just a handful were charged with a crime.

"When almost 80,000 people fail a background check and 44 people are prosecuted, what kind of deterrent is that? I mean, the law obviously is not seeing that as important," Graham began. "I'm a bit frustrated that we say one thing – how important it is – but in the real world, we do absolutely nothing to enforce the laws on the books.

"Now let's talk a..." Graham uttered before Flynn cut him off.



http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/03/ex-springfield_police_chief_ed.html

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A draft ordinance proposed by the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office would declare large-capacity ammunition magazines a “public nuisance” and authorize police to confiscate and destroy them.

In a report delivered to the City Clerk’s office, the proposed municipal ordinance would provide for high-capacity ammunition clips of more than 10 rounds to be taken off the streets by law enforcement, confiscated and destroyed as a public nuisance that threatens the public health, safety and welfare.

Trutanich filed the ordinance in response to a motion by City Councilmember Paul Krekorian and at the request of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee on Feb. 22 to draft a municipal law that would authorize a ban on large-capacity magazine clips.

Under California law, the manufacture, sale or exchange of large-capacity ammunition magazines of more than 10 rounds is prohibited.

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/03/05/report-police-can-confiscate-high-capacity-ammo-clips-as-public-nuisance/