A bill introduced by a Republican state lawmaker seeks to exempt Georgians from any new federal gun laws.

The bill, proposed by state Rep. Tom Kirby (R-Loganville), would nullify any future federal gun restrictions, rendering laws that regulate firearms manufactured in Georgia "unenforceable."

Kirby and the bill's cosponsors -- state Reps. Delvis Dutton (R-Glennville), Paulette Braddock (R-Powder Springs), Kevin Cooke (R-Carrollton), David Stover (R-Newnan), and Trey Kelley (R-Cedartown) -- want Georgia gun owners to be free from federal laws governing ownership and registration of firearms, ammunition and accessories.

"It's sad that we need a bill like this," Kirby told Creative Loafing Atlanta. "We want to remind Congress that they don't have the right to violate the Second Amendment more than anyone else."

Last year, in the weeks following the mass shooting of elementary school children in Newtown, Conn., Georgia state Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta) proposed tougher gun restrictions, including a ban on assault weapons.

In response to Kirby's proposal, Fort told Creative Loafing it's "unfortunate" Republicans feel the need to make "extremist, ideological statements."

(In admiring, affectionate memory of The Political Carnival's Paddy Kraska. Safe home, PaddyK.)

As gun violence increases and pro-gun forces achieve new legislation, the gun control movement in the United States is rapidly unraveling. In the year since Sandy Hook, when you'd think there'd be the political and popular will for reasonable new gun regulations, gun sales have reached record highs and AR-15s, the firearm used at Aurora and Sandy Hook, are the trendiest, best-selling weapons in the industry.

And now, in Florida, it's possible that you can lawfully shoot a man in the chest at point-blank range to defend yourself against the lethal use of a popcorn. If not popcorn, definitely Skittles.

The notorious Florida law known as "Stand Your Ground" is back in the news. This time, it's very likely the statute that will be used in defense of the 71-year-old ex-cop, Curtis Reeves, who shot and killed a man, Chad Oulson, inside a Tampa movie theater. Oulson had been texting his daughter's baby-sitter during the trailers to mention that he'd be turning off his cellphone during the movie. Reeves was annoyed by the texting and an argument broke out. No punches were thrown, but Oulson tossed a bag of popcorn at Reeves who responded by brandishing a .380 calibre handgun and shooting Oulson and his wife.

So Reeves told sheriff deputies after his arrest that he was "in fear of being attacked." And Chris Nocco, the Pasco County sheriff, said that Stand Your Ground will surely be used in Reeves' case, though he intends to fight it.

While it's true that Florida state law qualifies the popcorn-throwing as, technically, an assault, there's no logical justification whatsoever for lethal force to be used in response to it. But in Crazy Florida the Stand Your Ground law authorizes deadly force if a person "reasonably believes" he or she is threatened with "great bodily harm" or "death," and it doesn't matter if there's an opportunity to walk away from the fracas.

However, Reeves was the one who started the ill-fated argument, one, and two, there was no indication that Oulson was going to inflict "great bodily harm" or "death." But he can easily make a debatable case for it, given his age and the popcorn attack.

Needless to say, the law is absurd. It expands and indeed bastardizes self-defense, providing a handy-dandy excuse to shoot and kill someone with whom you're having a heated argument. Even if the argument descends into fisticuffs (or aggressive popcorn hurling) there's no logical or proportional need for a firearm to be involved in any way. Stand Your Ground is simply and transparently a catalyst for selling more guns and giving the buyers something to do with them -- all in the ironical name of preventing gun violence.

But none of these details really matter. The very existence of this concealed-carry-Stand-Your-Ground Brundlefly has helped to breed a culture that encourages and even glorifies this inexcusable behavior as somehow dutiful and patriotic.

Reeves and so many others exist in a bubble of hubris, anger and entitlement. Reeves obviously felt as though he was entitled to, as a God-given right, carry a loaded firearm into a movie theater. The possession of that weapon provided him with the 'roid-rage hubris to allegedly instigate a fight, and the existence of Stand Your Ground provided a legal framework in which he could apparently end that fight by discharging his weapon.

In a broader sense, and feeding this sense of entitlement, the gun lobby and the anti-Obama conservative entertainment complex have collectively fabricated a climate of defiant anger in the face of a president who they believe hates white people, hates the Constitution and is clinically obsessed with persecuting anyone who clings to their guns and Christian faith. Anyone following the administration closely enough knows that this isn't anywhere close to being realistic. In fact, until Sandy Hook, President Obama had been mostly and admittedly unresponsive, at least at the policy level, to gun violence.

Yet the very existence of an African-American liberal in the White House has touched off a five year end-times-ish freakout among the more unhinged elements of the conservative movement. We've reached an era in America when it's okay to walk into a fast-food restaurant carrying a semi-automatic assault rifle. It's okay to hang out in a parking lot with a group of cohorts, all armed with loaded military-style weapons. It's okay for a sitting member of Congress to troll liberals by giving away two AR-15s -- again, the Sandy Hook weapon -- in online contests. It's legally permissible and societally acceptable to shoot an unarmed teenager because he was wearing a hoodie, walking the streets while black.

Blogger Milt Shook wrote in the Banter comments yesterday:

Just in the last few weeks, a woman was shot for knocking on a guy's door to ask for help because her car broke down in Michigan. In Colorado, a teenager was shot and killed by her stepfather as she came home after sneaking out all night, because he thought she was a burglar. And in Virginia, another young person was shot and killed when they stumbled into the wrong house because they were too drunk to realize where they were. In every single one of these cases, the shooter had a choice, and chose to take a life immediately, rather than assess the situation and call police for assistance.

Meanwhile, the gun control effort continues to be an exercise in futility. In the vacuum created by an almost total lack of a serious gun control movement, the quick and easy purchase of firearms will only grow as a resigned acceptance of the gun culture expands. There will only be more Curtis Reeves cases and more George Zimmerman cases. All because we've been conditioned to believe that the law and the Constitution is on the side of the well-armed, heroic shooter, and very seldom on the side of the victim.

Cross-posted at The Daily Banter.

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WASHINGTON -- A foundation running a program in Philadelphia which allowed members of the public to exchange guns for grocery-store gift cards with no questions asked wasted nearly half-a-million dollars in federal grants, the Justice Department Inspector General found in a report issued Thursday.

The expenditures for the program, also known as Goods For Guns, were unallowable, unsupported and unreasonable, according to the report and a separate related audit, which also found that the executive director of Philadelphia Safety Net, Raymond Jones, spent over $3,000 in federal grant money on unreimbursed personal expenditures. Additionally, the board of PSN -- which included Jones' sister -- didn't properly oversee the organization.

PSN said in response to the findings that it had suspended all operations of the organization until a new board of directors was elected. But the foundation disagrees that Jones was overcompensated, suggesting that since he was PSN's only employee he also performed roles in addition to his job as executive director, including project manager, public relations director, grant manager, office manager and outreach coordinator.

The total unallowed costs associated with PSN included $346,394 related to the executive director's compensation, $43,697 in rent and utilities, gift cards totaling $36,300 and $52,792 in consultant expenditures.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Authorities say the wife of Miami Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill left a rifle in the back of a rental SUV in South Florida earlier this month.

The Broward Sheriff's Office reported Wednesday that Lauren Tannehill rented a Nissan Rogue from EZ Rental Car at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport the afternoon of Jan. 4. She returned about two hours later to swap the Rogue for a different car, but authorities say she left behind an LMT AR-15, which was secured in a case.

Anyone who's dealt with anger and disappointment directed at another person, who's been bowed by heart-crushing sorrow and depression, who's experienced and gotten past a psychotic episode, or been pumped to irrationality by the adrenaline of rage and despair, knows -- at least in retrospect -- that those impulses coursing through bodies and brains in moments of heightened emotion will and do shift, change, and pass, just as the pitch of the moments do.

Afterwards, when the heat has cooled, when intervention has had impact; when the passage of time has lent greater clarity and less anguish to the situation, most of us can look back at a fight with a loved one and be stunned that a vase was thrown across the room in a fit of anger. We can reflect on a heartbreak that sent us into prolonged grief and question, with some incredulity, why we hit such a nadir of desolation. We can feel shame over an ugly outburst at a waitress, an overly aggressive response to a bad driver or an overwrought reaction to a belligerent child. We can wish we hadn't trashed a gift given to us by a departed lover or promise to be better about dealing with a divorced spouse. The common thread in all of these circumstances is the reality that we are given a new moment. A re-set is allowed, the opportunity to rethink, reassess, and reframe something that was -- is -- TEMPORARY. Transitory, changeable, reparable, forgivable. We often embrace that re-set with profound gratitude that we can do something differently, better, less charged; grateful that we didn't do anything... irrevocable.

What isn't irrevocable?

Responding to any of the above with a loaded gun.

Three gut-wrenching stories crossed my path today: a retired policeman shooting and killing a father texting his child in a movie theater, a student opening fire on fellow students at a school in Roswell, New Mexico, and a friend's nephew shooting and killing himself after his ex-wife picked up their daughter with her new boyfriend in tow. In each case, the matter of "mental health" will surely be invoked, cries for better gun control will be echoed, but what will not be as transparently and candidly discussed is the simple fact that, in each case, NOT having a gun would have completely changed the narrative.

Whatever anger, mental illness, fear, grief, rage or uncontrollable impulse drives a human being to act in violence, the one factor that is controllable is what objects are within that person's reach with which to inflict that violence. And regardless of hollow arguments about "guns don't kill people, people kill people" (is there a wearier trope??), the ability to -- in that moment of impulse -- pick up an item that can so easily and irrevocably end a life becomes a very salient issue. The theatergoer annoyed by the texting father might have raised his voice, raised a ruckus, even raised a fist, but by virtue of having that gun at his easy and clearly uncontrollable disposal, he took a very minor incident, one we have all experienced in our cellphone burdened society, and escalated it into an act of madness that ended a young father's life and forever changed his own.

The student in Roswell might have picked up a bat and smashed a few desks, knocked over some chairs or even broken a few bones. He might have trashed a locker, broken a window or spewed graffiti across a wall. But leaving a child critically wounded with a shot to the face? Only a gun can inflict that result.

My friend's nephew might have wept and mourned in anguish over losing his marriage and having to now share his beloved child with a man he didn't know. He might have drank himself to oblivion, slashed his wrists, or taken pills to extinguish his grief, but with each of those particular self-negations, there would still be time for him to change his mind or for someone to intervene towards his ultimate rescue. A gun to the head leaves no such options.

Some of the gun people I know insist that it is "protection" that drives their desire to own and accrue a cache of firearms. One fellow, a Texas conservative, gets all "cold dead hands" when the conversation gets to analyzing the role guns play in turning almost any adversarial encounter into something deadly. He, too, cites protection of his loved ones, his home, his belongings as reasons for perpetually packing heat and yet, even those situations can metasticize into unintended tragedy when the immediate response is to reach for and use a weapon that leaves little room for shifting circumstances:

In March of 2013, 16-year-old Caleb Gordley, a universally well-liked but typically rebellious teen, snuck out of his house after being grounded, got seriously drunk at a party, and, later that night, after being dropped off in his neighborhood of cookie-cutter homes, mistakenly climbed through the window of what he thought was his own house (identical to the one he entered). Once inside, he drunkenly made his way through the house to go up to what he thought was his room, but was confronted by the homeowner -- who was understandably terrified with no idea of who this person was clamoring through his home. With a 40-caliber pistol equipped with a laser and flashlight in hand, the man yelled at Caleb to get out of the house, but even as the confused and clearly inebriated boy turned to walk back down the stairs to do just that, the homeowner, according to autopsy results, shot him in the back. Not the leg, not the arm -- the back. The boy died, the homeowner was purportedly horrified once he realized what he had done; the family is destroyed... an all-around devastating situation for everyone involved.

We can anticipate gun aficionados clamoring that "who wouldn't point a gun at an unknown intruder in their home??" -- something we can all surely understand -- but let's play devil's advocate. What if there wasn't a gun? What if the homeowner, instead, had a stun gun, a bat; a knife? Isn't it likely that having that gun in his hand made it too easy for him to pull the trigger (reportedly four or five times) and kill an unarmed teenage boy already making his way out of the house? Of course it is. Guns simply make death -- accidental, intended, suicidal -- far too easy.

Do we care? Hard to answer that question. It appears we care more about owning guns than saving ourselves from them. We care more about being able to carry them, defend them, shoot them, and justify the damage caused by them. We care so much about all that, wrapped in arguments of outdated constitutional amendments, that we've basically agreed, tacitly or otherwise, that we will live in a society where an irate moviegoer can kill someone for texting, an angry child can destroy a classmate out of anger, and a distraught father can end his life out of despair.

I do not want to live in that kind of society. Do you?

"Non-Violence" sculpture by Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd photographed by Francois Polito @ Wikimedia Commons

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Follow Lorraine Devon Wilke on Facebook, Twitter, and Rock+Paper+Music. Details and links to her other work at www.lorrainedevonwilke.com.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — Bullets and beer long have been part of the lore in Deadwood, the western South Dakota gambling town where Wild Bill Hickok met his demise during an 1876 poker game.

Now, an FBI agent nearing retirement hopes to tap that history by opening a combined indoor shooting range and saloon a block off Deadwood's historic Main Street.

The overwhelming presence of guns in the United States is the result of an arms race -- a three-way arms race. Potential gun owners are persuaded to get guns with the newest technology designed to be more deadly in each generation. Much of the persuasion is by showing use by the idealized warriors of law enforcement agencies. These agencies are pressured and encouraged by their members and by industry get for themselves more extreme weaponry than the most outrageous real or imaginary "bad guys." And the actual criminals and lawless persons strive to keep up their image on the street while they get guns from gun owners and businesses by theft or diversion.

This triangle has become a cycle where each group drives the next into being ever more armed. The arms industry and gun culture media work to energize the cycle at each step; although they would deny deliberately encouraging the illegal armament of criminals. The important thing about a cycle is that every stage depends on all the others and it can be speeded or slowed at any point.

I'm going to start with law enforcement and it's effect on gun sales, interest and ownership by the public. As agencies have built up their firepower, the newsstands have been populated with slick magazines showing it off such as Harris Publications' Special Weapons for Military and Police. Many items such as submachine guns, short barrel shotguns and rifles and silencers are regulated by the National Firearms Act (NFA) and require an expensive and difficult to get license for civilians and a substantial tax on each transfer. There has been a movement to expand the possible weapons that citizens can have without such regulation. Several states have passed laws such as the Montana Firearms Freedom Act that would override federal law and allow possession of such weapons made and held within the state without federal regulation. These laws are currently untested in the courts. At the same time manufacturers have employed a battalion of engineers to design weapons that are technically outside the NFA definitions but extend both actual firepower and aggressive appearance to new levels. A popular example is the KSG bullpup type shotgun such as the one recently returned to George Zimmerman. The non-NFA version for most non-law enforcement sales is built to the NFA rule and has the barrel extend deeply into the stock to meet the 18-inch barrel length minimum. It has two ammunition magazine tubes for double the number of rounds. But Guns and Weapons for Law Enforcement features the "sawed off" version. Bullpup and this KSG design is the new more aggressive shotgun. It's way beyond the Remington 870 used by the Navy Yard shooter who already could add ammunition to his gun at any time by just shoving shells into a hole. No need to change magazines for an indefinite shooting spree.

All of this technology and hype is exciting to a lot of people looking for something to put their time, interest and money into. Shooting can be a lot of fun. It's been decades since I was in the Army and fired heavy-duty arms, but I remember it well. There is lots of company and places to go and something new all the time. Hobbyists in general are obsessive and gun hobbyists especially so. They take in the media material and talk with their shooting friends and rush down to the gun store and buy loads of the new exciting models. The frenzy has only expanded since the tragic shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the expansion is still going.

All of the guns that cause trouble start out legally. Sometimes an owner turns bad but mostly guns are stolen and diverted to get into dangerous hands. The exceptions are small; gun smuggling is an export industry in the U.S., homemade "zipguns" are interesting but rare and losses from law enforcement are much smaller than the hundreds of thousands of guns stolen from dealers and users each year. The 3D printers in the news lately may create a problem with detectability but are way too slow and crude to be a factor in our mass gun problem, at least for the next decade or so .

A lot of our gun deaths and injuries come directly from guns in legal hands. Accidents, domestic homicides and especially suicide usually are from legal guns. But the big problem of so many nearly unregulated guns is that they go from legal to prohibited hands. A giant hole in the background check system allows any prohibited person to buy whatever he wants as long as he doesn't use a federally licensed dealer and winks when he tells the seller he's OK. Some states make it tougher, but there are no checks at the border between states and guns flow like water. Stolen guns are the other main source of guns going to criminals. The FBI gets reports of over 200,000 guns stolen per year, and it's likely that reports don't reach the FBI in most of the cases.

Illegal gun users such as gang members see the media hype too. They are looking for respect mostly from each other. When the media write about gun crimes, they focus on the most extreme examples. Just looking at DC, which is near to me, we have events like 12 killed or 13 injured in the last year and many smaller ones.

Law enforcement agencies have adopted service weapons with a large bullet capacity in order to be sure to have more than anyone they could possibly confront. They receive funds disproportionately to face rare but extreme confrontations. It seems that every agency has to have a SWAT team no matter how small the jurisdiction. In smaller and medium cities there is little for such teams to do and they have to justify their existence. So they don't wait for a hostage situation but they become proactive and serve warrants. While I don't usually agree with the Cato Institute, I am amazed by their map of "Botched Paramilitary Police Raids." Publicity hungry Sheriff Joe Arpaio has obtained and shown off the the press a belt-fed 50 cal. machine gun. Agencies get the weaponry for the funding, for show and for fun, but the process is driven by a perception of ever better armed adversaries. They, unfortunately, focus on rare extreme events such as the North Hollywood Shoot Out of 1997 where nearly 2000 rounds of ammunition were fired or the rogue ex-cop Christopher Dorner who had a 50-cal. Barrett sniper rifle.

So the cycle goes on and gives us a greater and greater number of more and more deadly weapons. To restore some sort of sanity and reduce the carnage, it will be necessary to slow this process at each corner of the triangle. We can get better leadership in our law enforcement agencies that works to stop the game of getting more and deadlier arms than actually needed. Leadership that takes command and recognizes the effect both inside and outside the agency of militarization police. We can regulate private ownership of guns to eliminate unchecked purchase and limit the most unsafe weapon types. We can block the diversion of guns by illegal sale and by theft. A good way to stop diversion is to require that gun owners have insurance that pays victims and remains responsible if guns are transferred by theft or otherwise to uninsured parties. Because this problem is a cycle, improvements in policy at each point will have a cumulative effect.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A state lawmaker proposed Monday that California extend its requirement that gun buyers undergo background checks and register their weapons to anyone who assembles a firearm in their home.

The legislation by state Sen. Kevin de Leon is part of a growing effort across the country to pre-empt the spread of undetectable guns that can be made using 3-D printers. His bill also would apply to anyone who buys parts that can be assembled into a gun.

I woke up this morning to my nearly 5-year-old son, his big blue eyes close to mine, saying "Mama! Let's play!" Somehow, I dragged myself to the living room where he had set up dinosaurs. He told me the rules: "My dinosaurs have superpowers and yours don't. Mine find yours and then kill them with their power!" That woke me up.

I wondered if I should say something to him about killing -- again. I tried to redirect the violence in the play by having my dinosaurs offer friendship and joint living in a cave. He didn't bite. "No! they are not friends! OK mama? OK?" "OK," I said, in resignation. Because at that moment, it felt like I had lost that battle.

What happened to my gentle little boy who would cradle his dolls if they happened to fall on the ground? Where is the boy who would never consider the possibility of intentionally hurting another? And where did this one, who pretends to shoot others, come from? "My son will never do that," I used to say.

As usual, parenting is humbling.

Guns first showed up last year. Amidst his love affair with Mary Poppins and Annie, he also started asking about weapons. He wanted me to cut a gun out of cardboard so he could take it to school. Mortified, I imagined his teachers' reactions when they saw it.

We talked about how guns are best used for protection, only by those whose job it is to protect -- the police, the army. I told myself that he was interested in guns in the same way he was interested in a policeman's pad, handcuffs and hat -- fun tools of the trade.

Eventually, he didn't accept my explanation and started asking questions I didn't have the answers to. And they were questions that I ask myself all the time. Why would we need protection? From whom? Does protecting mean hurting someone else?

As a therapist, I am fully aware of a child's need to use play as a way to experience anxiety in a non-threatening situation. Through play, children can express what they find confusing, exciting and overwhelming about the world.

As a mom, it's not that simple. A therapist is trained to put her own issues aside, or to use them in a way that will benefit the patient. But as a mom, my ego is wrapped up in my son. His behavior often feels like a reflection of who I am and how I am perceived. I know this feeling is detrimental, but it is sometimes hard to shake.

My own associations to guns and violence are not the same as my son's. At just the mention of guns, I feel a wave of sadness and despondence. I think about school shootings, accidental shootings in homes with guns, and wars.

My son's interest in guns has to do with his developmental stage as a kid and as a boy. He is becoming more aware of his own agency. He experiments with being defiant. "You are not a good mama!" he says, when he is upset at me. "I hate this food!" he says, about dishes he loved a day earlier. Then he looks up at me with red cheeks to see if he has crossed the line, wanting to make sure that there is indeed a line.

He divides the world into black/white, good/bad, yes/no, perhaps as a way to simplify a world that he is beginning to sense is not so simple.

He is becoming more aware of those around him and how their actions reflect on him. He sees fellow students who are older and more competent than he is in certain areas and feels disempowered, just by their presence.

That's why he loves superheroes. Playing games with a clear bad guy to defeat --and a clear good guy who usually has a little extra power born out of goodness -- makes him feel safe again. I get that. It is the preoccupation with weapons and violence that stops me in my tracks. I struggle with whether his play stems from the desire to HURT another, or OVERPOWER another.

So, what do I do?

When I can I play with him, hoping that if he acts out the dynamics of good and bad, powerful and weak, healthy and injured, he is releasing some of his anxiety.

On some days I allow him to defeat me with his powerful dinosaurs. I let him make up the rules and I pretend to be scared of his strength. He becomes exhilarated and later seems to be much better company during the dinner/bath marathon.

On other days I fight back, unable to put my own sense of powerlessness aside. My army people find a place to hide, my dinosaurs demonstrate their own strength and I try to outsmart him (we all know it is impossible to outsmart a kid).

On my worst days I freeze up. He mentions guns and I wonder where I went wrong. I feel as though the future is bleak and full of pain and war, and I couldn't do anything to help, not even raise a mensch. In those moments, I don't allow him to be him.

I talk to him about the difference between play and real life. I tell him that, in real life, guns and weapons can hurt people to the point of death. We talk about what it means not to be living anymore.

This afternoon we sat down to play again. I was prepared to let him express his every desire and overpower me in whatever way he chose, even if it scared me. This time, he told me that our dinosaurs were cleaning up with sponges connected to the bottom of their feet. No violence, no drama. I was ridiculously disappointed, because for a moment, I thought I had figured out a tiny little aspect of parenting my son.

And then the doozy hit at dinner. What does he want for his fifth birthday? A light saber! Lego Chima! Sword! Stay calm. He needs to play it out to understand it, and he needs to play with someone he feels safe with.

Little does he know that this playing partner is still trying to work it all out herself, and sometimes feels just as terrified and confused as he does.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Having failed in an earlier effort to bar federal agents from enforcing gun regulations in Missouri, conservative lawmakers are trying a new tack this year: banding together with other like-minded states to defy certain federal laws at the same time.

Supporters believe it will be more difficult for the federal government to shrug off such statutes if more states act together.

Faced with the expense of rearming his deputies with new weapons, a North Carolina sheriff managed to turn two dusty old vault finds into dozens of brand-new AR-15 rifles.

"We were disposing of all types of equipment in preparation for a move, when we found these weapons in our vault," Forsyth County sheriff William Schatzman told The Huffington Post. "We did some research and found out they were very valuable."

The weapons, Schatzman said, were two vintage Thompson submachine guns, commonly known as "Tommy guns." The sheriff said the weapons had been out of service for about 50 years.

Made in 1928, the fully functioning automatic weapons had been donated to the sheriff's department by the RJ Reynolds tobacco company in the 1930s.

"They are [the same type of] weaponry once used by Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde and FBI," Schatzman said.

The sheriff's department, which is made up of about 500 officers, who protect some 350,000 residents, was cash-strapped and in desperate need of new weapons. Schatzman said he decided to solve the problem by selling the two guns.

"We [cleared it with] the ATF and offered them up to our law enforcement licensed suppliers of weaponry. They bid on them and the winning bid was $60,000," Schatzman said.

The sheriff pushed for a trade, rather than cash and ultimately netted 88 new Bushmaster AR-15 rifles. But that's not all, he also managed to get dozens of Glock .45-caliber magazines and other parts in exchange for 14 Smith & Wesson revolvers that were also collecting dust in the Forsyth County armory.

"We were able to get equipment we needed, instead of destroying [something of] value to a collector," Schatzman said.

The weapons, the sheriff added, also proved to be of great value to local citizens, who were ultimately saved a great deal of expense.

"This was an opportunity to save tax payers here some money, so we jumped on it," Schatzman said. "Anytime we can be more efficient we do that."

A Kentucky state lawmaker accidentally fired her handgun in her legislative office Tuesday.

State Representative Leslie Combs, a Democrat, was unloading her gun in her Capitol Annex office when it went off. Fellow state Rep. Jeff Greer was also in her office at the time, but no one was hurt in the incident.

"I'm a gun owner," Combs said Wednesday, according to the Courier-Journal. "It happens."

“I was purposely disarming it to put it up because I didn't like it and I didn’t want to use it any more," she continued. "I had had it in my purse I carry usually, and I thought I'm going to put that sucker away."

As the Lexington Herald-Leader reports, Combs has a concealed carry license, which she says she obtained several years ago "as I travel widely and sometimes at night."

Combs said she will continue to carry her handgun.

"I strongly support our Second Amendment rights and our state's concealed-carry law, and believe just as strongly that gun safety and education must be part of that equation," she said.

According to a statement from Combs' office, Kentucky police investigated the incident and determined that no portion of the round fired went anywhere outside her office.

Previously, I wrote that when we look at all 50 states we find there is a correlation between states with strict gun laws and low rates of homicide. I noted:

For example, the states with the strictest gun laws are among the states that have the lowest gun violence. Also, states with higher gun ownership and weak gun laws lead nation in gun deaths. These are true findings, but these do not prove gun bans work. It could be than laws or it could be the culture in those states; it could be police funding; it could be an excellent mental health or an excellent school system. It could be any number of third variables.

I based my assumptions on the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, which suggests which states with tougher gun laws have fewer gun homicides. The Campaign selects states that make its point. While their intention and heart are in the right place -- to prevent gun violence -- their methodology is not useful or scientifically rigorous.

If we look at all 50 states, as I did using 2010 census data on the homicide rate per state and correlate that with the Brady's state ranking of strict gun laws, we find a correlation of about .05, which is to say there is no correlation. Even when I looked at the five states with the strictest gun laws and the five states with the least strict gun laws, I did not find a correlation. I also did not find a correlation between the 10 strictest and lest restrictive gun laws states. I looked at the extremes and excluded the states in the middle because there may be a tipping point that could result in a correlation. There was not.

Qualifications

Now, it is extremely important to qualify correlation or the lack thereof and what does and doesn't mean.

• My approach should not be used by gun rights advocates to make any point. My approach is not conclusive, and it is not meant to be. Correlation is not a useful tool to make a point for or against gun laws and their relationship with gun crime.

• Correlation is not causation. Everyone knows this, yet both sides of this issue like to violate this rule. Just because you have a correlation, it does not mean there is a causal relationship.


• We can have causation without correlation. Strict gun laws may result in lower gun homicides, or they may not. Just because we don't find a correlation it doesn't mean that the gun laws don't help. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. The point is that correlation is not a useful scientific measurement tool to determine causation or the lack thereof.


• I only looked at one year's worth of data. This is insufficient to draw any conclusions about a correlation or the lack thereof.


• I only looked at gun homicide rates. In looking at gun homicide rates, I am not including gun suicide rates or shootings that did not result in a death.

Often times supporters of the Second Amendment like to point out that Chicago has perhaps the strictest gun laws in the nation but one of the highest homicide rates. This is a cherry-picked example. The other side can also point to New Orleans and its very high rate of gun violence and the very loose gun laws. Cherry-picking is done by both sides of this issue and it does not advance gun safety or a better understanding of what works and what doesn't.

The point of this article is two fold: 1) It is important and responsible to question assumptions and revise statements when something new is learned. This is not flip-flopping as opponents like to say. It is a responsible use of facts and research methods. Both sides of this issue need to do this. And 2) I previously urged caution with the use of correlation and I am further urging caution on this. I want to slow down the loose use of correlation as a way to prove or disprove that there is a causal relationship between strict gun laws and gun homicide rates. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. Correlation is not going to answer this question.

Paul Heroux is a state representative from Massachusetts. He previously worked for a prison and a jail, and he has a Master's in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master's in Public Administration from Harvard. Paul can be reached at paulheroux.mpa@gmail.com.

Jerome Hauer, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's director of homeland security, reportedly used the laser sighting device on his handgun as a pointer during a presentation to a foreign delegation, according to the Times Union.

The Times Union reports the incident happened October 24 in Albany at the emergency operations center below State Police headquarters, according to public officials who described the incident:

These officials, one of whom claimed to be an eyewitness, said that three Swedish emergency managers in the delegation were rattled when the gun's laser tracked across one of their heads before Hauer found the map of New York, at which he wanted to point.

Hauer, commissioner of the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, was disabled by a stroke a few years ago and can be unsteady. He isn't a law enforcement official. He carries the loaded 9-millimeter Glock in a holster into state buildings, an apparent violation of state law barring state employees from bringing weapons to the workplace, several witnesses say.

The incident with the Swedish delegation occurred during a two-hour briefing at the operations center concerning the state's response to Superstorm Sandy, according to one of the officials.

In an earlier report, the Times Union said Hauer told a reporter who asked about the Glock to search his name on Google. Hauer said he carried the weapon because he'd received threats, likely referencing those who've criticized his work as New York City’s emergency management director during 9/11.

Cuomo nominated Hauer as Commissioner of the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services in October 2011. He was unanimously confirmed in January 2012.

Hauer said he looked "forward to serving the mission of the division and protecting the public safety of the 19 million residents and countless visitors in our great state."

Read more at the Times Union.