Gubs for the day

The BBC has an article about gubs in the US:

President Barack Obama has announced a series of proposals to reduce gun violence, ranging from a proposed ban on military-style assault weapons to universal background checks. The proposals to tighten gun controls follows the shooting of twenty children and seven women by lone gunman Adam Lanza in Newtown, Connecticut in December of 2012.
The Second Amendment to the Constitution protects the right of citizens "to keep and bear arms". However, restrictions on lawful gun ownership vary by state.
New York recently passed gun control laws that supporters say are now the tightest in the nation. The New York measures include a wider ban on assault weapons, a law limiting high-capacity ammunition magazines, and provisions to keep guns from mentally ill people who make threats. Some gun owners will also have to register them with authorities.
In Arizona, handguns can be bought with an instant background check and carried without a permit (in certain places), whereas, in Illinois, special ID is required and concealed weapons are unlawful. The vast majority of states do not require rifles or shotguns to be registered and no permit is needed to buy or carry them. Handguns are more tightly restricted, with 38 states requiring a permit for carrying. Only a handful of states still restrict semi-automatic "assault weapons", after a 1994 nationwide ban lapsed in 2004.
New York and New Jersey ban assault weapons outright, as, in effect, does Massachusetts. Connecticut has a ban on assault weapons, but some semi-automatic weapons can be possessed as long as they meet certain criteria. In California, assault weapons may not be sold, although existing weapons may be possessed if registered.
They are banned in Chicago (although not the whole of Illinois), while Hawai'i and Maryland ban assault pistols.
Some 9,960 people were murdered with a firearm in the USA in 2010, a rate of 3.2 per 100,000 people. On a global scale, this rate puts the US twenty-sixth in the world, behind Honduras, El Salvador, and Jamaica, according to UN data. However, when compared with other highly developed countries, the rate shows the US as an outlier.
The US firearm murder rate has been fluctuating in recent years, from 3.9 per hundred thousand people in 2006 down to 3.2 in 2010, according to the UN. Different data from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report indicates that the 2011 rate is 2.8 per 100,000, but this varies across states.
Gun ownership across the country is falling, according to the comprehensive General Social Survey, which regularly asks respondents whether their household or they themselves own a firearm. While some 46% of households and 29% of individuals said they owned a gun in 1990, two decades later this had fallen to 32% and 21%.
One gun-owning household was that of Adam Lanza and his mother, Nancy. It has been reported that the weapons he used were all legally held by Mrs Lanza, who was her son's first victim on 14 December 2012. They ranged from a semi-automatic rifle to hand guns.

Rico says that he, alas, has contributed to the fall in gub ownership; he's down to only a couple now, for cowboy and Civil War reenacting...

The BBC also has a story about a state that thinks differently:

The state of South Dakota has enacted a law allowing school districts to arm teachers and other school staff. The law's backers say it will prevent mass school shootings like a December massacre in Connecticut that killed 26.
Amid a push by the White House to strengthen gun laws, the bill reflects a growing divide in the US over whether more or fewer guns keep people safe.
The measure does not force school districts to arm teachers and will not require teachers to carry guns. But it allows each school district to choose if staff could be armed. It takes effect in July.
Under the Republican-sponsored bill, school staff given permission to carry firearms on campus will be known as "school sentinels". The state has given a law enforcement commission the task of establishing a training programme for the sentinels.
Several representatives of school boards, teachers and other staff spoke against the bill in legislative hearings, arguing guns would make schools more dangerous.
But sponsor Representative Scott Craig said he had heard from a number of school officials who back it. Craig said rural districts do not have the money to hire full-time police officers.

Rico says this is an experiment to watch...

The BBC has yet another video, about a guy who doesn't fit the labels:

Freelance writer Dan Baum is a self-described gun guy. But even though he has fifteen firearms locked in a cabinet in his garage and loves an outing at the shooting range, he does not exactly fit the stereotype.
"I am a Jewish, liberal Democrat, and a gun guy," he says, "which in the US is a very weird hybrid." The writer, who grew up in New Jersey and now lives in Colorado, says he is representative of millions of ordinary gun-owning Americans. He wants both sides of the gun control debate, the politicians who want background checks as well as the National Rifle Association, which opposes new regulations, to listen to what these "average gun guys" want.
For his new book Gun Guys: A Road Trip, Baum travelled across the US and met a variety of gun owners, from those blasting automatic weapons in the desert to a school teacher hunting pigs. He talks in the video about his attempt to explain his own and Americans' fascination with firearms.

Rico says we're everywhere, and mostly invisible...