Guns

WASHINGTON - Minutes after Greg Hicks learned that the perimeter of the U.S. mission in Benghazi had been breached by men with guns, he punched a cellphone number to reach Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, his immediate boss, who was at the scene. "Greg, we're under attack," Stevens told Hicks, the deputy chief of the mission, Hicks testified to Congress on Wednesday. Then the connection was lost. Hicks never spoke to his boss again. Stevens died soon afterward, as the Benghazi mission went up in flames around him. Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee were universal in their praise of the gripping, soft-spoken, minute-by-minute account they heard Wednesday from Hicks, the first public testimony from a government official who was in Libya during the assault that killed four Americans in September.

SACRAMENTO - State lawmakers advanced measures related to firearms and violence Thursday, including two introduced after the mass killing at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. One would require gun owners to keep their firearms locked away if they live with someone prohibited by law from using guns. The bill provides for sentences as long as three years and a fine of $10,000 for anyone convicted of allowing such a person access to guns if death or great bodily injury resulted.

Police said Friday that they arrested 13 people on suspicion of firing guns into the air at midnight New Year's Eve. Officers also seized 23 guns as part of an ongoing campaign to stop celebratory gunfire.

President Obama was asked about the metastasizing Benghazi scandal in a joint news conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday. Referring to the Americans who died in Benghazi, the president said, "We dishonor them when we turn things like this into a political circus. " He added that "the whole issue of talking points, throughout this process, frankly, has been a sideshow.… There's no there there. " He's half right. The talking points drafted by the State Department, the CIA and the White House and given to congressional Republicans and, most famously, to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice are not the center of this story.

Rapper-actor Snoop Dogg will avoid jail time after pleading no contest Wednesday to two felony charges -- but he might be legally allowed to continue smoking marijuana. The entertainer, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, entered the plea to a charge of gun possession by a convicted felon and a marijuana-related drug charge, prosecutors said. Dogg, 35, appeared before Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Terry Smerling in Pasadena clad in a leather jacket, black jeans and a T-shirt.

WASHINGTON - First came the letter-writing campaigns, then the protests at town hall meetings and now the television ads. The last several weeks in New Hampshire have had the feel of a heated electoral season - but the target of this siege, first-term Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte, isn't on the ballot until 2016. Welcome to Round 2 in the battle over gun control. The first round ended last month, when a proposal to expand the background check system to cover most commercial gun sales fizzled in the Senate.

More than 17% of children considered to be at risk of committing suicide have guns in the home that could make a passing destructive impulse deadly, and between 15% and 30% of those adolescents told researchers they had access to those guns, to bullets, or to both. Those figures, presented over the weekend at the American Academy of Pediatrics' annual meeting, underscore a growing interest in pediatricians in weighing in on gun violence and its toll on children. The new research was unveiled during a session of the physicians' confab devoted to understanding the role of violence in media, the challenge of recognizing which kids are potentially violent, and what role guns play in the death and injury of children.

A James Bond-style ultrasonic gun disguised as a pair of binoculars was used to stun a top thoroughbred during a race, and could have become the key tool in a massive drug and betting conspiracy, a British court was told Tuesday. Defense attorney Jonathan Goldberg said the high-pitched sound from the gun caused the thoroughbred, Ile de Chypre, to veer suddenly and throw jockey Greville Starkey as they were heading for victory at Ascot racecourse on June 16, 1988.

Five reputed gang members were indicted in federal court Tuesday on charges that they conspired to steal firearms from Southern California gun dealers. Four of the five were arraigned Tuesday morning in U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter's courtroom. The fifth, named in the indictment as George Batiste Thenarse, was arraigned later Tuesday.

In the Beef n' Roses department comes this little tidbit: During Tuesday's ceremony honoring the placement of guitarist Slash's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame , actor Charlie Sheen used his speech to predict a humble future for Slash's former bandmate, Axl Rose. The event featured others praising the former Guns n' Roses guitarist, but it was, somewhat predictably, Sheen who drew the most attention. Discussing his friend and neighbor Slash, Sheen kicked off his speech with a cheap shot: "I think it's very appropriate that Slash is getting a star on the very street Axl Rose may some day be sleeping on," said Sheen, whose new show, "Anger Management," premiered last month on FX, as Slash looked down and shook his head.

WASHINGTON - First came the letter-writing campaigns, then the protests at town hall meetings and now the television ads. The last several weeks in New Hampshire have had the feel of a heated electoral season - but the target of this siege, first-term Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte, isn't on the ballot until 2016. Welcome to Round 2 in the battle over gun control. The first round ended last month, when a proposal to expand the background check system to cover most commercial gun sales fizzled in the Senate.

Re "Another kind of gun control," Opinion, May 5 David M. Kennedy's Op-Ed article saying that efforts to curtail gun violence should be focused on "hot" groups and areas, instead of on doomed legislation, was a refreshing moment of clarity in this debate. The recent massacres certainly demand a focused, spirited response, but current gun control measures being pushed do nothing to address the root causes of these horrible events. Rather than infringing on the rights of law-abiding citizens, the focus should be on enforcing current laws to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, implementing a robust overhaul of mental health services to recognize and treat those who may have the potential to carry out mass murder, and targeting the inner-city gangs that are responsible for an outsized proportion of gun violence.

Re "Beliefs on gun crime way off," May 8 How can The Times manage to mention that "some researchers" attribute the significant reduction in gun crime in the United States to the reduced use of lead in gasoline (other causes mentioned were the decline in crack cocaine use and high incarceration rates), but not the fact that the number of violent crimes involving guns has decreased coincidentally with the increase in the rate of gun ownership in this country? Crimes committed with guns become less common as more people are armed, especially in places allowing open and concealed carry of firearms by law-abiding citizens.

Four people who provided crucial information in the hunt for former Los Angeles Police Officer Christopher Dorner will split what is expected to be a $1-million reward in the case, authorities announced Tuesday afternoon. The division of the highly anticipated reward, sought by at least 12 people after a February gun battle that led to Dorner's death, was overseen by three retired judges and made public in a 12-page report released by the Los Angeles Police Department. The money will be paid in installments to a couple held captive by Dorner, a ski resort employee and a tow truck driver.

The number of violent crimes involving guns has plummeted in the last two decades, but more than half of Americans think the opposite is true, according to reports released Tuesday. Killings, assaults, robberies and other crimes involving guns have dropped since their peak in the mid-1990s, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics reported. The rate of killings by gun has been cut nearly in half, according to another analysis of the same data by the Pew Research Center. The rate of other violent gun crimes fell even more sharply, by 75%, paralleling a broader drop in violent crimes committed with or without guns.

More than 17% of children considered to be at risk of committing suicide have guns in the home that could make a passing destructive impulse deadly, and between 15% and 30% of those adolescents told researchers they had access to those guns, to bullets, or to both. Those figures, presented over the weekend at the American Academy of Pediatrics' annual meeting, underscore a growing interest in pediatricians in weighing in on gun violence and its toll on children. The new research was unveiled during a session of the physicians' confab devoted to understanding the role of violence in media, the challenge of recognizing which kids are potentially violent, and what role guns play in the death and injury of children.

Guns don't kill people. People kill people--with guns. JOE MORHAIM Culver City

Supporters of a measure that would have expanded background checks for firearm purchases decried the bill's death in the Senate last month. But was the defeat really such a bad thing? Had it passed, the new law would have been hailed as a historic breakthrough by "anti-gun" forces and a historic mistake by "pro-gun" forces. But on the ground, where American citizens are being shot and killed every day, nothing much would have changed. That's the way things have gone for decades in the grinding American culture war over guns.