Since the Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the Second Amendment includes the right to bear arms in self defense, guns rights advocates, led by the NRA, have challenged laws that have put restrictions on carrying guns in public. Their argument has been that these restrictions prevent them from protecting themselves in public. Many of these challenges have failed, with lower courts ruling that restrictions are in line with the ruling of District of Columbia v Heller, which said that handguns in the home were permissible for self defense.

In the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote: "Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose." The opinion even pointed out that laws banning concealed carry were permissible.

New Jersey's law is very strict and make it all but impossible for anyone not a member of law enforcement to carry a gun in public. It requires gun owners to indicate "specific threats or previous attacks demonstrating a special danger to applicant's life that cannot be avoided by other means" in order to get an open carry permit. Approval must be granted by the local police and a Superior Court judge.

The "justifiable need" requirement survived two lower court challenges, which were upheld in 2012 by the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. The plaintiffs petitioned the Supreme Court to challenge the appeals court ruling. This week, the Supreme Court rejected the challenge, leaving in place the 3rd Circuit's ruling and New Jersey's law.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/23619-new-jersey-allowed-to-require-justifiable-need-to-carry-a-firearm-in-public

GRADY COUNTY, GA (WALB) -Grady County Commissioners are saying no to firearms at Barber Park.

County leaders are standing by their decision that flies in the face of a recently passed state law. When you drive through the gates into Barber park, county leaders say you'll have to leave your guns at home.

"We just don't believe that's necessary, so by a vote of 5 to 0 the commission voted not to allow firearms, at our recreation facility," said commission chairman T. D. David.

The decision comes after the Georgia General Assembly passed and Governor Deal signed a law that allows guns to be carried into bars, churches and some government buildings but the David says it's just not the right choice for his county.

http://www.walb.com/story/25469181/grady-co-sticking-to-guns-on-park-gun-ban

State agents Tuesday arrested the owner of a gun shop and security school, charging him with fraudulently certifying he witnessed an armed security guard applicant pass a firearms proficiency test when, the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services alleges, he did not instruct the applicant.

Frank Abay, 43, is one of about 20 state-licensed firearms instructors the Team6 Investigators has confirmed are under investigation for providing fraudulent firearms proficiency certificates to about 2,400 armed security guards.

He is charged with four felonies: scheme to defraud, forgery, uttering a fraudulent firearms training certificate and witness tampering.

Abay was a subject in a Team6 Investigation last week that traced one apparently fraudulent certificate to an armed guard who killed a barber shop owner in the Little Haiti mall he was patrolling, and was then shot to death by a Miami police officer.

http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Firearms-Instructor-Arrested-In-Probe-Of-Bogus-Armed-Security-Guard-Licenses-257264371.html

This is a mailer from the National Association for Gun Rights. Inside is a fundraising letter sent by Sen. Rand Paul:

[center][/center]

The quote on the outside of the mailer comes from an Obama speech after the Newtown shooting. Obama’s quote was not about banning guns, it was about engaging citizens.

This is the full quote:

“In the coming weeks, I’ll use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens — from law enforcement, to mental health professionals, to parents and educators — in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this, because what choice do we have? We can’t accept events like this as routine.”

http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/gun-rights-letter-signed-by-rand-paul-takes-obama-insanely-o

A teenager's fatal shooting of a troubled Army veteran father who threatened his family then tossed the child a loaded gun was legally justified, a Vermont prosecutor said Wednesday.

No charges will be filed against the child of Kryn Miner, 44, a veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, who was shot and killed inside the family's Essex Junction home last month.

Miner had threatened to kill his four children, physically assaulted his wife and threw a loaded handgun to the teen who came to her aid.

"Do you want to play the gun game?" Miner — who served in the 82nd Airborne Division and was sniper qualified — asked the teen, according to authorities. The teen said no, but fired six shots when Miner pulled another gun from a bag. Miner was hit five times.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/prosecutor-shooting-dad-veteran-justified-23624567

Missoula Mayor John Engen said while international media have focused on the recent shooting of a teenager by a Grant Creek homeowner claiming self-defense, a national gun violence group he belongs to has not dug into the so-called “castle doctrine” yet.

“I am a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns,” Engen said Friday. “My part in that is about promoting common-sense gun laws, and chief among those are programs for expanded background checks. I think other common-sense gun organizations are paying attention to this, but I haven’t had contact on this issue.”

German exchange student Diren Dede was killed while allegedly trespassing in the garage of Missoula homeowner Markus Kaarma on April 27.

Kaarma has been charged with felony deliberate homicide, but his lawyer plans to claim self-defense under Montana’s “defense of an occupied structure” law. It’s a variation of the “your home is your castle” doctrine, absolving a shooter of guilt for using lethal force for self-defense at home.

http://missoulian.com/news/local/mayors-against-illegal-guns-yet-to-take-stand-on-castle/article_6f032f6a-d255-11e3-a1b4-0019bb2963f4.html

…is 30,000 corpses each and every year. There are a lot of other secondary considerations. But that is, overwhelmingly, from a prolife perspective, the single most important fact.

My views on our gun culture are fairly simple. It can be boiled down to this: the human tradition of the second amendment does not trump the divine revelation of the fifth commandment. That’s because, to repeat, the single most important fact of our gun culture is 30,000 corpses each year.

In case that is still fuzzy, allow me to repeat it one more time: The single most important fact about American gun culture is 30,000 dead people each year. Are there other important questions about property, safety, and liberty? Sure. But the single most important fact is 30,000 corpses.

If it were Al-Quaida killing 30,000 Americans each year, it would be treated as a civilizational emergency requiring a national effort to prevent as many of those deaths as possible. But because it is Americans killing themselves and each other, the reply that I consistently get to that fact is a huge amount of fantasizing about the Great Hitler Gun Confiscation that Is To Come, and a kind of terrified paralysis that turns a blind and hostile eye to even the most common sense attempts to effect even the teeniest change to the status quo.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2014/05/the-single-most-important-fact-about-our-gun-culture.html

History, politics and law are all tangled up in contemporary court interpretations and public understanding of the Second Amendment, and politics is the greater part of the mix these days.

Last week, I wrote that we’ve so misread the amendment that maybe we ought to get rid of it. That’s certainly not on the horizon, but the idea drew a strong response and suggested to me that a review of the amendment’s history might be helpful. (Some of the responses also reinforced my belief there are many people who should not be allowed anywhere near a gun. What does racist name calling have to do with gun rights anyway?)

One theme that ran through comments supportive of unrestricted gun-ownership rights was that it is necessary for individuals to own guns to protect themselves against both crime and the U.S. government, and that the framers of the Constitution intended for the amendment to protect that individual right.

That’s a new way of reading the amendment.

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023554896_jdlcolumn08xml.html

If there’s any nation accustomed to bad press, it’s North Korea. Reporters have recently alleged that Kim Jong Un executed a top deputy with a flamethrower, that his uncle was fed alive to dozens of starving dogs and that North Korean toughs threatened a London barber over an advertisement making fun of their Dear Leader. The United Nations also took a whack at North Korea this year, saying its human rights violations are “without any parallel in the contemporary world.”

Last week, North Korea pushed back, releasing the first of two reports detailing human rights abuses in the United States, which it calls “the world’s worst human right abuser and tundra of a human being’s rights to existence.” North Korea cited racism, poverty, unemployment and surveillance in this “living hell.”

But it left out its biggest criticism for a report released Wednesday titled “U.S. Plagued with Serious Gun-related Crimes.” ”Gun-related crimes are like a malignant tumor hard to cure as they are rampant in the society as a trend,” the report says. “Due to ceaseless gun-related crimes, people are exposed to constant threat to their safety. They are not free from uneasiness and horror.”

The report mentioned recent shootings at Fort Hood near Killeen, Tex., and another near Kansas City, where an ex-Klu Klux Klan member shot and killed three people at Jewish facilities. It also lambasted the United States for other recent violence: Earlier this year, a 2-year-old boy killed his 11-year-old sister in Philadelphia. And in Albuquerque, police threw a flash grenade at a homeless man and shot him — a killing later deemed ”justified.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/05/08/north-korea-slams-u-s-on-gun-violence-like-a-malignant-tumor-hard-to-cure/

An Atlanta woman who used Georgia’s “stand your ground” law as her defense was found guilty of murder Friday by a Fulton County jury.

Shakeithia Wheeler, 32, was convicted on charges of felony murder, aggravated assault and weapons offenses, Fulton County District Attorney Paul L. Howard Jr.’s office announced today. She was sentenced to life plus eight years in prison.

Wheeler admitted to fatally shooting 28-year-old Charles Roberson on May 3, 2009, in the parking lot of her Verdant Drive apartment complex in southwest Atlanta, the news release said.

However, she said she believed that she had the right to do so under the “stand your ground” law.

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/atlanta-woman-using-stand-your-ground-defense-foun/nfqfJ/