Famed Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein is no stranger to controversy. But Weinstein says he’s turned his sights on his biggest target yet: the National Rifle Association.

“I shouldn’t say this. I’m going to make a movie with Meryl Streep, and we’re going to take this issue head-on and they’re going to wish they weren’t alive after I’m done with them,” Weinstein said during an interview with radio host Howard Stern Wednesday.

“I think the NRA is a disaster area,” Weinstein added, saying, “I don’t think we need guns in this country.”

Deadline Hollywood says the movie is currently titled “The Senator’s Wife” and will focus on the NRA’s successful attempts to lobby federal lawmakers against voting for gun control legislation.

ALBANY — As gun-rights groups seek to overturn last year's gun law, gun-control groups Wednesday said they want additional regulations in New York.

On the one-year anniversary of the SAFE Act, the groups and Democratic lawmakers said New York shouldn't stop at the law passed last year.

“The NY SAFE Act included crucial and widely popular provisions like background checks on all gun purchasers, a prohibition on sales of assault rifles with certain characteristics, a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines, and other measures,” the groups, including New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, said in a statement.

State Legislators Against Illegal Guns-NY said it wants the Legislature to pass bills that would require additional safety storage of guns if the owners have children, require all semi-automatic handguns to have a feature that puts a code on each spent shell casing, called microstamping, and limit buyers to one handgun purchase a month.

By WESLEY JUHL
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

The firearms industry’s trade association joined with Las Vegas police Saturday to highlight the importance of firearm safety.

It was a quiet conference in a small room at the Metropolitan Police Department’s headquarters, but the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Project ChildSafe’s message bellows.

“We’re here today with a very simple and straightforward message,” said foundation President and CEO Steve Sanetti. “If you own a firearm, you have to respect it and secure it when it’s not in use.”

“Everyone needs reminders that just hiding a gun is not safe storage,” said foundation spokesman Bill Brassard.

Amanda Knox has reportedly told an Italian newspaper that if she is again convicted of murder, she will become a fugitive rather than return to an Italian prison.


A representative for Knox, 26, confirmed the interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica and released a statement to TODAY on Friday clarifying her comments.

“[If convicted] legally I'll be defined a ‘fugitive,’ but I will continue to fight for my innocence,’’ Knox said in the statement. “I will not willingly submit myself to injustice."

The current trial is Knox's third for the alleged murder of British roommate Meredith Kercher while both were students in Perugia, Italy, in 2007. Knox was convicted in 2009 and spent nearly four years in an Italian prison before she and ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were acquitted on appeal and released on Oct. 4, 2011. In March of last year, the Italian Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Knox, rejecting the appeals court ruling.

Chicago’s ban on gun sales within the city is unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled, saying the local law on weapons “goes too far.”

The judge delayed the effect of the ruling to give the city time to respond.

This past spring, strangely similar pieces of mail started arriving at the offices of city attorneys in 28 Maryland communities. The tersely worded letters, many dated March 26, warned each town that some of its firearms laws were illegal and needed to be repealed immediately. Takoma Park's letter claimed that ordinances against carrying unlocked guns and possessing or selling guns in public places "grossly" exceeded state law and should be taken off the books, "out of respect for the rule of law." All of the letters warned that failure to comply would put the towns "at risk for a lawsuit."

"Once in a blue moon we get these kinds of letters from activist organizations," says Ryan Spiegel, vice president of the Montgomery County chapter of the Maryland Municipal League and a member of the Gaithersburg city council. What felt different this time, he says, was the coordination—and the timing: Just a month earlier, the Maryland Senate had passed some of the country's toughest gun control measures in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.

The letters came from the Second Amendment Foundation, a prominent pro-gun legal-defense organization, as part of a quiet but mounting campaign to strike down local gun laws across the country. So far, SAF has sent out about 425 letters to cities, towns, and counties in Maryland, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington and has announced plans to target hundreds more local laws.

Though they may be obscure and not always enforced, local gun laws have become low-hanging fruit for anti-gun-control activists since Sandy Hook. The strategy rests on the legal concept of "preemption," which restricts local lawmakers' authority to regulate firearms beyond what's in state law. For more than 30 years, the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun groups have successfully lobbied for preemption laws nationwide: In 1979, 7 states had them, but today, 45 do. Some states, such as Alabama, Idaho, and Maine, make exceptions for local restrictions on when and where people can shoot; some, like California, let localities control where and how guns are sold. All of them, however, set some limits to municipalities' ability to regulate guns, and that's where the Second Amendment Foundation comes in.

By BRYNN GINGRAS



The New Jersey waitress whose story has been questioned after she claimed she received an anti-gay note instead of a tip on a restaurant bill was dishonorably discharged from the Marines last spring after she stopped showing up, NBC 4 New York has learned.

Dayna Morales, a server at Gallop Asian Bistro in Bridgewater, had posted a photo on Facebook earlier this month showing the bill with a line through the tip area. The photo of the receipt showed someone had written, "I'm sorry but I cannot tip because I do not agree with your lifestyle."

A New Jersey couple came forward to NBC 4 New York and said this week that the receipt was theirs but that they had left a tip and did not write a note, suggesting it was used for a hoax. The handwriting, they said, was not theirs, and they also supplied what they said was a credit card statement showing they were charged for the total plus the $18 tip.

NBC 4 New York learned Wednesday from a Pentagon source that Morales was dismissed from the Marine Reserve Corps in May because she wasn't attending drills. It wasn't immediately clear how often those drills were held, and Morales did not respond to a request for comment