The parents of a slain Chicago police officer and a Mississippi gun shop they sued for selling the gun used to kill their son to a straw buyer said Tuesday that they reached a settlement.

Carolyn and Thomas Wortham III and Ed's Pawn Shop & Salvage Yard in Byhalia, Miss., said in a joint statement that they resolved the dispute "to the satisfaction of all parties."

The pawn shop agreed to increased vigilance on gun sales.

"The agreed policies will include the video recording of all handgun sales; three year storage of the video recordings of all handgun sales; and immediate notification to the local and federal authorities of any multiple handgun purchases that occur within any thirty day period," the statement said.

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/thomas-wortham-gun-settlement-256367991.html

Some Midlands homes will be showing off a traditional Easter flower this weekend in place of a firearm.

The Richland County Sheriff’s Department and the Faith Coalition on Gun Violence sponsored a Peace Lilies for Guns event Saturday at Washington Street Methodist Church in Columbia.

“If we can take even one gun off the street and that action saves a life, then this program is a success,” Sheriff Leon Lott said.

The event invited anyone with an unwanted firearm to drop it off with deputies at the church Saturday. No questions were asked, and those dropping off firearms were allowed to remain anonymous.

http://coladaily.com/2014/04/21/sheriffs-deputies-join-faith-group-to-encourage-trading-firearms-for-flowers/

A Washington man is on trial this morning, accused of first-degree manslaughter for gunning down a man who was stealing his SUV.

The shooting happened on March 25, 2013. Gail Gerlach, 56, walked outside his Spokane home to see Brendon Kaluza-Graham driving off in his SUV, so he fired a single shot from his 9mm semiautomatic from about 60 feet away.

The bullet went through the rear window and headrest, hitting Kaluza-Graham’s spine at the base of the skull and killing him almost instantly. Gerlach has a permit for the weapon.

Gerlach claims that he thought he saw Kaluza-Graham pointing a gun at him and believed his life was in danger.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/man-trial-shooting-car-thief/story?id=23187445

A year ago Thursday, the United States Senate failed us.

It was last April — mere months after the senseless slaughter of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. — that a minority of senators blocked legislation that would have made it harder for criminals and people with dangerous mental illnesses to get their hands on deadly firearms.

Given the opportunity to stand up to the gun lobby by supporting legislation favored by two-thirds of Americans, these senators did what all politicians do when they fear upsetting powerful interests: They voted for the status quo.

These were some of the same senators who had sat across the table from the grieving parents of children massacred at Sandy Hook or who looked me in the eye as I told them what it is like to learn to walk and talk again after a bullet from a madman’s gun nearly took my life.

http://www.indystar.com/story/opinion/2014/04/18/gabby-giffords-politicians-will-pay-siding-nra/7888477/

KANSAS CITY - Police are investigating how a felon charged with three shooting deaths at two Jewish community sites in Overland Park, Kan., was able to gain possession of both a shotgun and a handgun, reports the Kansas City Star.

Frazier Glenn Cross, 73, has been charged with one count of capital murder for the deaths of a 14-year-old boy and his grandfather outside the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City, said Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe. Cross also faces one count of first-degree, premeditated murder for the death of a woman who was gunned down while visiting her mother at a nearby retirement complex.

None of the three people killed in the attacks was Jewish.

A law enforcement source familiar with the case told the Star that investigators believe Cross was able to purchase the guns with the help of a straw buyer, someone who could clear background checks and obtain the weapon for the suspect.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/straw-gun-buyer-suspected-in-kan-jewish-center-shootings/

A South Side shooting left four girls and a boy hurt, and on the Northwest Side a 15-year-old girl was shot while riding in a car as shootings across Chicago Sunday night added to the toll of a violent holiday weekend.

At least nine people were killed and at least 36 wounded since Friday. Two of the deaths came Sunday morning when a Cook County Sheriff's Office correctional officer apparently shot to death his wife, a Chicago police officer, inside their Southwest Side home before turning the gun on himself, authorities said. Three of the deaths and 14 of the wounded were shot between 9 a.m. and 10 p.m. on Sunday.

Five children, ranging in age from 11 to 15, were shot by someone who fired from a car shortly after 7:30 p.m. Sunday in the 6600 block of South Michigan Avenue in the Park Manor neighborhood on the South Side, police said.

The children had been playing at a park near an elementary school and were walking home when a car pulled up and someone asked if they were in a particular gang, family members and police said.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-2-men-seriously-wounded-in-south-side-shooting-20140420,0,3822278.story

FOUR PEOPLE are killed and about 265 injured in the Marathon Day bombings and their aftermath and thereupon follows an astonishing outpouring of grief, compassion, media coverage, and money. In the year since, an estimated 235 have been shot — 35 of them dead — largely in Boston’s poorest and predominately minority sections and we have seen .?.?. almost nothing. Why?

To even ask that question, to draw the comparison, may seem almost sacrilegious. Yet it is being asked, particularly in Boston’s communities of color, by some who look at the extraordinary consideration given to those who suffered in the bomb blasts — the best of health care, millions of dollars of donations — and wonder why the same treatment, resources, and concern have not come their way. One Boston, they wonder, or two?

There are reasons why April 15, 2013, was sui generis for Boston. Yet there should be lessons too: Sometimes, out of the media spotlight and largely unseen, it’s too easy to ignore the daily tragedies occurring in our backyards. Just because they’re commonplace shouldn’t make them acceptable.

The impact, the importance, of the bombings lies not simply in the number of lives lost. If body count were the measure of a calamity, then the Texas fertilizer plant explosion, which occurred just two days later and killed many more, would have captured much more attention. It didn’t, nor did numerous horrendous events that have occurred since then, such as last week’s sinking of a South Korean ferry that may have left as many as 300 dead.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/columns/2014/04/19/one-boston-not-areas-plagued-gun-violence/T5D3U4KUUsHzDKxPFnWINP/story.html

When guns are involved in domestic violence, women die.

This simple fact was the basis for a tweet from Everytown for Gun Safety, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's new gun violence prevention group, which noted that the presence of a gun makes it five times "more likely that domestic violence will turn into murder." Everytown has stated that they want to help prevent these deaths by closing "the loopholes that make it easy for domestic abusers to get guns without a background check." While federal law prohibits a convicted domestic abuser or individual subject to a permanent restraining order from owning a gun, abusers subject to temporary restraining orders can still buy firearms in many states, and abusers can avoid background checks by purchasing their firearms through private sales.

But conservative media ignored these facts to falsely claim Everytown wanted to "disarm women," not their abusers, and argued women would be safer if they had increased access to guns to use as self-defense. Breitbart.com's AWR Hawkins wrote that Everytown was putting victims in danger because "the gun may be the only thing that gives the victim of abuse a fighting chance of survival." Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich told NRA News that the gun safety group was playing on the fears of "ignorant, emotional women." And former Washington Times senior opinion editor Emily Miller claimed on Fox that all of Everytown's gun safety efforts were merely an effort "to lure in women voters," arguing that because gun murders are down, it was somehow impossible that domestic murder could be a significant problem facing women.

But the data shows that Everytown is right. Having a gun in the house doesn't make women safer -- in fact, studies have shown that domestic violence involving guns is significantly more likely to result in women dying.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/23180-guns-make-domestic-violence-deadlier

When public support for gun control peaked after the Newtown mass murder, the National Rifle Association decided to double down.

The NRA called in all its political chips to vigorously and successfully block even the mildest and most sensible of gun reform intended to limit easy access to military style weapons and ammo.

Instead, the NRA offered its own novel analysis of the problem and proposed its own gun friendly solution. It spread the word that our astoundingly high murder rate is not facilitated by the fact that we pack 300 million guns. No, the problem is just the opposite -- the U.S. has too few guns. The best way to prevent mass murder in the schools would be to arm the teachers and the security guards.

The recurrent shootings at Fort Hood have been met with the same 'the-best-defence-is-a-good-offense' NRA strategy. According to the Alice In Wonderland NRA logic, we need to repeal existing laws that restrict guns on military bases and make sure every soldier is armed at all times.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allen-frances/packing-more-heat-will-re_b_5091012.html

The complexity of this issue does not obscure Coffin's simple truth: Force will be inevitably met by more force. It is the nature of humans and of sovereign nations to respond to threats defensively. From our provincial position, "evil" nations like North Korea should not have dangerous weapons. From their provincial position, our possession of nuclear weapons provides a practical and moral imperative that they have equally deadly capabilities.

This simple truth also escalates the danger in our domestic life, in the seemingly unrelated realms of gun violence and politics.

Due in large part to the irresponsible rhetoric of the NRA, parroted by the legislators they've bought, the response to force is more force. How many times must we hear the sophomoric, glib and unsupportable claim that the only protection against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun? In an admittedly less lethal way than nuclear proliferation, a society filled with armed "bad guys" and "good guys" is an increasingly hostile place for the peaceful majority. The "less lethal" concession is of little solace to victims of gun violence.

The aggressive climate created by the gun lobby has spawned Stand Your Ground laws that crystalize this force-to-force mentality into a justification for shooting anyone you perceive as a threat. Millions of Americans are on hair trigger alert, poised to shoot first and ask questions later. The most likely threat any such individual actually faces is another individual who also "carries" because of this propaganda-induced paranoia. It might be comical if not for the flow of real blood, too often from small bodies of innocent children.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-nelson/disarming-the-nation_b_5112413.html