The same people who heckled relatives of slain gun victims at a January town hall meeting in Illinois will soon have guns on their hips as the ban against concealed weapons is repealed.

Anti-gun control activists "laughed and joked about the terminology used by Linda Jenkins as she described the cold-blooded murder of her pregnant sister," at the Guns and Public Safety meeting recently held in the Chicago suburb of Glenview, reported Marjorie Fujara, a participant. Anti-gun control activists turned the event into a "raucous afternoon of... heckling and jeering at panelists," photographing the crowd and speakers with phones and cameras and yelling about abortion, reported the Chicago Sun-Times. They booed and screamed "liar" and "loser" at speakers from the Stop Concealed Carry Coalition and other anti-gun violence groups, reported the Glenview Patch. Let's arm these people!

A mass email from the Illinois State Rifle Association urged anti-gun control activists to pack the event to "ensure that there are more of OUR people there than THEIR people," reported the Patch. "Remember, this is our Lexington, this is our Concord," cajoled the email. "Be prepared to teach the gun controllers a lesson in liberty."

When asked to move from front row seats reserved for the elderly at the event, activist Steven Zahareas posted that he replied, "My name is not Rosa Parks and I am not going to the back of the bus," according to the Guns Save Life website. (See: the NRA's self-characterization as the "oldest civil rights organization in the United States.&quot

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martha-rosenberg/heckling-the-bereaved_b_2645378.html

WASHINGTON — “Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” the deep and dramatic-sounding voice intoned. “Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school?”

When the National Rifle Association aired its 35-second TV spot last month, suggesting that President Barack Obama has a double standard on school security and seemingly using his daughters as props, the White House quickly labeled it “repugnant and cowardly.” But the commercial was another in a long line of bare-knuckled NRA advertisements, many of them controversial but also compelling attacks that have come to define the organization.

Decade after decade, these provocative broadsides have been the product of one of the longest collaborations in the history of advertising, and they have all originated from the same advertising and public relations agency, Oklahoma City-based Ackerman McQueen, and its Alexandria, Va. subsidiary, the Mercury Group.

Ackerman McQueen has managed the NRA’s image and helped fight its political wars for more than 30 years. The ad agency played a pivotal role in its transformation from a sportsman’s group to one of Washington’s most powerful lobbying organizations, shaping a message rooted in uncompromising combativeness, securing its influence inside the NRA and reaping millions of dollars in contracts.

http://www.standard.net/stories/2013/02/14/ad-agency-nras-hired-gun

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