Since the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired in September 2004, murder and overall violent-crime rates have fallen. In 2003, the last full year before the law expired, the U.S. murder rate was 5.7 per 100,000 people, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report. By 2011, the murder rate fell to 4.7 per 100,000 people. One should also bear in mind that just 2.6% of all murders are committed using any type of rifle.

The large-capacity ammunition magazines used by some of these killers are also misunderstood. The common perception that so-called “assault weapons” can hold larger magazines than hunting rifles is simply wrong. Any gun that can hold a magazine can hold one of any size. That is true for handguns as well as rifles. A magazine, which is basically a metal box with a spring, is trivially easy to make and virtually impossible to stop criminals from obtaining. The 1994 legislation banned magazines holding more than 10 bullets yet had no effect on crime rates…

If we finally want to deal seriously with multiple-victim public shootings, it’s time that we acknowledge a common feature of these attacks: With just a single exception, the attack in Tucson last year, every public shooting in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed since at least 1950 has occurred in a place where citizens are not allowed to carry their own firearms.

Nearly twice as many voters say there would be less violent crime if more law-abiding Americans owned guns, than if guns were banned.

In addition, while American voters generally favor strengthening gun laws, 71 percent do not think tougher laws can stop shootings like the one last month in Newtown, Connecticut. Some 22 percent say new laws can prevent the next Sandy Hook…

Majorities of gun owners (81 percent), non-gun owners (58 percent), Democrats (58 percent), independents (72 percent) and Republicans (85 percent) say the people who do these kinds of things “will always find the guns” to commit violent acts.

The NRA is already in the midst of a membership boom, as the actions taken by Obama — and, in particular, his executive orders — convince people that the threat of the government seizing guns or limiting gun ownership is real and, because it is, a counter-weight to that government is needed. (To be clear: Obama has never said anything that would suggest confiscation of guns is a possibility.)

According to NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanadam, the group has added 250,000 new members since gun control re-emerged in the national debate and added 400,000 more followers to its Facebook page (from 1.6 million to 2 million). Arulanadam wouldn’t disclose any information about the pace of donations to the NRA over that same time period, but it’s hard to imagine that hasn’t heavily increased as well…

The likelihood of a small-bore bill coupled with the near-certainty of record growth in membership and money are a sort of best-of-both-worlds scenario for the NRA.

Even allowing for spikes in gun sales that follow every mass killing in the United States and attendant political debates about gun control, industry executives said the surge seems unprecedented…

In some areas, a buyer walking into a gun store now will have to wait up to a year to buy a military-style assault weapon. The prices of available semiautomatics have doubled as buyers bid up the dwindling supply, and stocks of Glock handguns are also low…

Nationally, there were 2,783,765 background checks last month, an increase of 38 percent over November, according to FBI statistics. That is the single highest month since 1998, the year the FBI launched the program as a requirement of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. On Dec. 21, the FBI processed 177,170 background checks, a single-day record.

One thing hasn’t changed: [Obama’s] agenda includes mostly measures that will have little or no effect on the problems they are supposed to address. They are Potemkin remedies—presentable facades with empty space behind them.

This is something that supporters as well as opponents labor to conceal. Treating them as serious allows them both to posture for their own advantage…

The mistakes Obama is making are familiar ones: exploiting misconceptions about guns, exaggerating the value of symbolic actions and presuming that new laws will foil incorrigible lawbreakers. The assault weapons ban was irrelevant to fighting crime before, which is no reason it can’t be irrelevant again.

As your Sheriff, I have taken an oath of office to support and uphold the Constitution of the United States, and to protect the people of Yavapai County. I take this oath seriously.

Now we have politicians that want to prevent millions of law abiding, honest Americans from owning certain firearms and magazines because of the mentally ill and violent criminal offenders.

I do not believe that extreme acts of violent criminal behavior should ever misguide a politician into enacting orders or laws that would take away Constitutional Rights and Liberties from law-abiding Americans.

As Sheriff, I refuse to participate or cooperate with any unconstitutional order that will infringe upon our 2nd amendment rights.

On Monday, Texas State Rep. Steve Toth, who represents an area near Houston, announced he would file legislation “assisting the protection of the Second Amendment.”

Named the “Firearms Protection Act,” the bill would make “any federal law banning semi-automatic firearms or limiting the size of gun magazines unenforceable within the state’s boundaries” and most notably “anyone trying to enforce a federal gun ban could face felony charges under the proposal.”

“We can no longer depend on the Federal Government and this Administration to uphold a Constitution that they no longer believe in,” Toth said in a release. “The liberties of the People of Texas and the sovereignty of our State are too important to just let the Federal Government take them away.”

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