Bryan Miller, executive director of the faith-based grassroots gun violence prevention organization known as Heeding God’s Call, said he believes there has been a lot of change since the shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School last year.

While the U.S. Senate fell five votes shy of passing a bipartisan bill expanding background checks in April, there has been legislative change in some states, including as Maryland, Colorado and Connecticut, according to Miller.

After other previous mass shootings, such as the one at the movie theater in Aurora, Colo., the faith community responded by calling for prayer and grief. After the Newtown, Conn., shooting massacre, the faith community stepped it up a notch by recognizing that “We, as a faith community, also need to get involved in making change,” Miller said.

“There’s no doubt there has been a major change in the faith community,” he said.

http://www.delcotimes.com/general-news/20131216/faith-based-anti-gun-groups-continue-to-heed-call

On Dec. 4, seven members of the ad hoc Gun Rights and Responsibilities Committee (GRRC), identifying themselves as the Gun Responsibilities (as opposed to the Gun Rights) side of that committee, published a position statement in the Viewpoints section of Wednesday Journal, the core of which contained a small number of significant recommendations for reducing gun violence in this country. I am one of those seven people.

It was our goal a year earlier to produce a set of recommendations from the entire GRRC, including the gun-rights advocates. We had hoped such a joint effort might produce many of the same recommendations as our Dec. 4 Viewpoints piece. It seemed early on that we would be able to move forward based upon our collective desire to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, the dangerously mentally ill, and minors.

Unfortunately, we never progressed as a group beyond that point. The Gun Responsibilities side felt the system was broken and improvements were necessary. The Gun Rights side seemed content with the system as it existed, stating that the answer to the problem rested with law enforcement officials more aggressively enforcing existing laws. When it became apparent that the GRRC was stuck in gridlock, not unlike that being experienced in Springfield and Washington, the Gun Responsibilities side decided not to let the hard work of the last year go to waste and produced a short and simple set of proposed changes to the law that would protect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners and would reduce the ability of criminals, the dangerously mentally ill and minors to obtain guns.

http://www.oakpark.com/News/Articles/12-17-2013/Waiting-for-the-Gun-Rights-side%27s-proposals/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS

SPRINGFIELD – Police credit a 34-year-old woman, driving home from work early Thursday, with interrupting an armed robbery in the East Forest Park neighborhood, potentially saving the victim from injury or worse.

The incident unraveled as the 27-year-old victim, walking down Island Pond Road at about 2:30 a.m., crossed paths with the two suspects who were walking in the opposite direction, Delaney, aide to Commissioner William J. Fitchet, said.

The suspects jumped the victim, pulled his hooded sweatshirt over his head and began to beat him. One of the suspects then pulled a knife and stole the man’s cell phone.

The good Samaritan, driving down Island Pond Road, saw the robbery, stopped her car, flashed her headlights on the altercation and continuously blared her horn.

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2013/12/springfield_police_credit_woma.html

As 2013 comes to a close, gun advocates can count up their impressive string of victories this year. They defeated the strongest push for new federal gun laws in a generation, handing President Obama an embarrassing defeat and defying the will of 90 percent of the American public. They saw Illinois, the last state to ban people from carrying guns in public, finally loosen its laws. They successfully mounted a recall effort to remove two Colorado lawmakers from office for supporting new gun restrictions. Yet gun advocates may have finally found an opponent they can’t beat: the National Football League.

This week, Guns & Ammo magazine broke the story that the NFL rejected a proposed Super Bowl advertisement for Daniel Defense, a gun manufacturer based in Georgia. The ad, which features a handsome young father explaining that he’s “chosen the most effective tool” for defending his family from harm, was dinged by the NFL for violating the league’s policy on advertisements. That policy prohibits any ads that feature “firearms, ammunition or other weapons.” Although Daniel Defense’s ad doesn’t show any actual firearms—though it does feature the company’s logo, which is an artistic rendering of a military-style rifle—the league barred Fox, the network that will air the Super Bowl, from running it.

To gun advocates, this was nothing less than a declaration of war. Alex Jones, who last made headlines with a notorious anti-gun control rant on Piers Morgan’s show, said the NFL’s decision proved the league was “anti-family,” “anti-liberty,” and “anti-American.” Worse yet, Jones said, the NFL was in cahoots with the imperialistic Obama Administration, which is using the Super Bowl as a venue for political propaganda, just like Hitler did with the 1936 Munich Olympics.

This isn’t the first time the NFL and its broadcast partners ran afoul of gun advocates. Last year, they were furious when sports commentator Bob Costas, during halftime of a Sunday Night Football game, blamed the “gun culture” after Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher shot and killed his girlfriend before taking his own life. Challenging the very essence of gun rights ideology, Costas had the audacity to say that “handguns don’t save lives.”

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115834/nfl-bans-gun-ad-two-americas-favorite-things-go-war

Maintenance staff at Glen Ellyn Elementary District 41 will be adding new signs to the district's five schools over winter break, according to a newsletter sent out by the district Wednesday. The signs, which will be placed at the main entrances of each building, will clearly show that no guns will be allowed on the premises.

This past summer, Illinois passed Public Act 98-63, the Firearm Concealed Carry Act, which allows properly licensed individuals to carry concealed firearms. School districts and other entities that prohibit firearms are required by this law to display a sign provided by the state to make it clear that firearms may not be brought onto school property.

http://glenellyn.patch.com/groups/schools/p/firearms-prohibited-signs-to-be-installed-in-all-district-41-buildings

WASHINGTON (CBSDC) — Big changes for gun owners in the nation’s capital will impact tens of thousands of law-abiding citizens, many of whom have no idea the change is coming.

The new requirement for gun owners in the District goes into effect next year and failure to comply could mean jail time.

Starting Jan. 1 all registered gun owners in D.C. must re-register their firearms within 90 days. D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier says notices will start going out to gun owners soon.

“Every three years you’ll have to confirm you still live in the District and you still have your firearm.” Lanier tells WNEW.

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/12/17/tens-of-thousands-of-d-c-gun-owners-forced-to-re-register-firearms/

It’s not armed robbers or warring gangs who send the greatest percentage of gunshot survivors to Florida emergency rooms.

It’s people who shoot someone, or themselves, accidentally.

Four out of every 10 people who are rushed to a Florida hospital or emergency room with a nonfatal wound were shot by accident, according to hospital data collected by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration and published by the Florida Department of Health.

It’s a far bigger problem in Florida than elsewhere — double the national average the past three years — according to numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

http://jacksonville.com/breaking-news/2013-12-19/story/gun-accidents-florida-are-double-national-average