DENVER - Amid already high tensions over gun policy inside the state Capitol, a pro-gun lobbyist was thrown out of the building Friday at the request of a Republican House member.

Rep. Cheri Gerou (R-Evergreen) accuses the lobbyist of threatening her with political attack ads through a mail campaign after a heated exchange about upcoming votes on gun issues, which would violate ethics rules.

State Patrol officers responded, but the sergeant-at-arms escorted Rocky Mountain Gun Owners' Association lobbyist Joe Neville from the building at Gerou's request.

Gerou says it started when she got a call from GOP leaders asking if she planned to flip and vote in favor of four gun amendments being debated on the House floor.

http://www.9news.com/news/politics/317265/166/Pro-gun-lobbyist-kicked-out-after-alleged-threat

When President Barack Obama spoke to a joint session of Congress in his State of the Union address, a record 101 women listened as elected members of Congress. Though he didn’t mention it until well into his speech, the issue of gun violence was omnipresent.

Green ribbons honoring the victims of December’s Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting were visible on the lapels of Democrats as well as Republicans. Some wore black or white ribbons in support of gun-control advocacy groups. More than “two dozen Americans whose lives have been torn apart by gun audience,” according to the president, had been invited to hear him call for action to “protect our most precious resource — our children.”

Many believe that having so many women in Congress may change the tone and pass measures that will help reduce the gun violence that kills about 1,000 people every month in this country.

Several of the women have a personal connection to gun violence, including Reps. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), Jackie Spier (D-Calif.) and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2013/02/13/congressional-women-key-to-giving-gun-victims-the-vote-they-deserve/

(WOMENSENEWS)--Jennifer Lynch, an amateur photographer in Portland, Ore., was planning to leave her husband and start over with her cat, her dog and her camera.

But before she made it out of the house and her marriage, her husband shot her dead in the bath tub. It was Valentine's Day, 2006.

Since then, every year around Valentine's Day, Patricia Norling, Lynch's mother, visits the high school in Brookline, Mass., her hometown.

She tells students about her daughter, who grew up locally and who might still be alive if universal background checks, firearms research and other gun safety measures -- now advocated by President Barack Obama -- had come earlier. She also advises the students on ways to reduce their own risk of domestic assault.

http://womensenews.org/story/domestic-violence/130213/obama-gun-measures-are-wives-ex-lovers-too#.UR48OKPpXwo

The GOP has aligned itself closely with the National Rifle Association, whose pro-gun efforts are perceived by some to be racist. An editorial published Wednesday in the Daily Caller cited Latin American drug gangs and urban looters as a reason Americans needed guns. Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough slammed the editorial for “racial undertones” that would hurt the party’s outreach amongst Latinos.

“Everything that Republicans are now trying to do to make up for their 27% showing in the election with Hispanics, Wayne LaPierre has undercut with this letter by talking about Latin American drug gangs, by talking about South Brooklyn,” he said on Thursday’s Morning Joe, referring to the low percentage of Latinos who voted for Romney in 2012 “Again a racially tinged, very suggestive op-ed [by LaPierre] who Republicans are blindly following around.”

The NRA has a history of clashing with Latino politicians, too: In 2009, the NRA angered Latino voters and politicians when they opposed the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Democrats with strong NRA ratings wrote an open letter fighting their opposition to the nomination.

“We are concerned that your opposition will alienate Hispanic NRA members and dismayed that you may unnecessarily force some well-intentioned Senators to choose between disappointing the NRA or infuriating their Hispanic constituents,” wrote Reps. Joe Baca, D-Calif., Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, and Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, and John Salazar, D-Colo, who all had high ratings by the NRA.

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/02/14/pro-gun-policies-nra-may-undercut-gop-latino-outreach/

A ban on high-capacity gun magazines has a good chance of passing the Republican-led U.S. House if it’s offered as a stand-alone bill, said Representative Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat.

With opposition in Congress to an assault-weapons ban, advancing a broad package of firearms restrictions could imperil President Barack Obama’s initiative to curb gun violence, McCarthy said today at a Bloomberg Government breakfast. She said a ban on the high-capacity devices that feed bullets and expanded background checks have support among lawmakers and could be approved.

Democrats initially had wanted to advance one major legislative package, including a ban on assault weapons, in the aftermath of the Dec. 14 shootings that killed 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut. Now, McCarthy says she’s “come around to thinking” a piecemeal approach is best.

“I was one that wanted a comprehensive package,” said McCarthy, whose husband was killed in a 1993 shooting on a Long Island Rail Road train. “I’m not going to derail everything.”

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-02-14/mccarthy-backs-piecemeal-gun-control-strategy-in-congress

“If you take away the large magazines it’s not going to make any difference what kind of a gun you have because you’ll have less bullets into it,” she said. An assault-weapons ban “is more symbolic.”

I have something I’d like to say to everyone out there who thinks we need our semiautomatic weapons in case our government becomes tyrannical. My gawd, it’s a good thing for you that the government doesn’t take you any more seriously than I do. You call yourselves Americans? You call yourselves patriots? Taking up arms against the government is called treason, my friends, and as long as we have anything remotely resembling a functional electoral system, it's also called stupid.

How people like you can fly your American flags and display your patriotic bumper stickers and talk about the need for private citizens to have assault rifles to use against the U.S. government blows my mind.

You have apparently swallowed (hook, line, etc.) what is spewed by people whose main interest is in making money off of your paranoia. You have apparently not paid one bit of attention to the rational arguments made against those people.

http://www.heraldonline.com/2013/02/01/4587023/gun-nuts-misunderstand-meaning.html#storylink=cpy

You remember that serious conversation we were going to have about guns? Here's how serious it has turned out to be.

Recently, President Barack Obama described himself in an interview with The New Republic as an avid skeet shooter. Conservatives scoffed at the claim, whereupon the White House whipped out photographic proof.

It was a meaningless exchange, except insofar as it suggests the White House implicitly accepts the dubious formulation, held by some gun advocates, that if one has no personal experience with guns, one cannot speak about guns. By extension of that logic, Rick Santorum can never say another word about abortion. But of course, he will because the logic is illogical.

Not that that was the most unserious moment in this supposedly serious conversation. No, that came last week when Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that we must avoid new gun restrictions because guns are a citizen's protection in the event the federal government decides to enslave us.

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_22531561/leonard-pitts-jr-gun-nuts-fantasies-vs-real

The New Jersey Legislature took up a collection of nearly two dozen bills on Wednesday that would tighten gun controls, prompting angry protests from hundreds of gun rights advocates who crowded the State House.

New Jersey, which already has some of the strictest gun-control laws in the nation, follows in the footsteps of other states, including New York, that have moved quickly to enact greater restrictions on gun ownership in the wake of the shootings in Newtown, Conn., two months ago.

That shooting “will go down in history as the last straw,” Senator Loretta Weinberg, the majority leader, said at the beginning of the hearing, in Trenton, to jeers from some in the audience. “It will be known as the horrifying tragedy that made the American public snap out of their love affair with unrestricted gun access.”

The package of 20 bills includes legislation that would ban magazines of ammunition with more than 10 rounds, require proof of firearms training to buy a gun, allow schools and day care centers to establish gun-free zones and require the seizure of firearms from people deemed by a mental health professional to be threats to themselves or others.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/14/nyregion/new-jersey-assembly-committee-approves-tightening-gun-laws.html?_r=0

Arlington Police are seeking criminal charges and have seized six large capacity ammunition magazines from a Boston man after he allegedly drove into and severed a telephone pole early Saturday.

Police said Tuesday that they have filed a criminal complaint seeking that Kyle Laidman, 28, be charged with operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol, texting while driving and possession of large capacity ammunition magazines without a license.

The criminal complaint will go before a magistrate in the Cambridge District court for a probable cause hearing sometime in the next month, police said Tuesday.

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/arlington/2013/02/cops_seize_large_capacity_ammu.html