History > 2007 > USA > Gun violence (IV)

Cops:

Man, 93, Shoots Violent Robber

July 27, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:49 p.m. ET
The New York Times

EL DORADO, Ark. (AP) -- An elderly man beaten unconscious by an assailant wielding a soda can awoke and shot the man during an attempted robbery, police said.

Willie Lee Hill, 93, told police he saw the robber while in his bedroom Wednesday night. Hill confronted the man and was struck at least 50 times, police said. He was knocked unconscious.

Covered in blood, Hill regained consciousness a short time later and pulled a .38-caliber handgun on his attacker. The suspect, Douglas B. Williams Jr., saw the gun and charged the man, who fired a bullet that struck Williams in the throat, police said.

''I got what I deserved,'' Williams, 24, told police when they arrived, officers said. Investigators reported finding, among other items, a Craftsman drill bit set, three pocket knives and two hearing aids inside his pockets.

Paramedics took Hill and Williams to the Medical Center of South Arkansas for treatment. Doctors sent Williams to the Louisiana State University Medical Center at Shreveport, where he was listed in critical condition Friday.

Employees at the Medical Center of South Arkansas refused to give Hill's condition or say if he'd been discharged from the hospital Friday, citing medical privacy laws.

Police plan to charge Williams with residential burglary, second-degree battery, theft of property and theft by receiving.

    Cops: Man, 93, Shoots Violent Robber, NYT, 27.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Soda-Can-Shooting.html

Boy to Stand Trial for Killing Principal

July 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:24 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BARABOO, Wis. -- Nearly a year after a 16-year-old shot and killed his principal, jurors will be asked to decide if he was a bullied, immature child or a murderer bent on revenge.

Eric Hainstock is charged with first-degree murder and is being tried as an adult in the shooting death of Weston Schools Principal John Klang. If convicted, he could face life in prison. Hainstock's trial was to begin Thursday.

According to a criminal complaint, Hainstock told detectives he took guns to Weston the morning of Sept. 29 because he was upset that Klang and other school officials had done nothing to stop fellow students from teasing him. He told investigators he wanted to make people listen to him.

But Klang rushed him in a school hallway and tackled him. Hainstock told detectives he shot the principal three times during the struggle. A wounded Klang managed to take the gun from Hainstock.

Sauk County District Attorney Pat Barrett has portrayed Hainstock as a selfish liar who reacts violently whenever adults tell him what to do. He is expected to introduce evidence at the trial that in the two weeks leading up to the shooting, Hainstock threw a stapler at a teacher and a book at a student, saying ''I am going to laugh when everyone in this school gets hurt.''

Hainstock's attorneys, public defenders Rhoda Ricciardi and Jon Helland, have said Hainstock was bullied and that teachers looked the other way.

    Boy to Stand Trial for Killing Principal, NYT, 26.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-School-Shooting.html

Ill. Student Accused of Terrorist Threat

July 25, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:25 a.m. ET
The New York Times

EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. (AP) -- A Southern Illinois University student was arrested after authorities say he threatened a ''murderous rampage'' similar to the Virginia Tech shootings that left 32 people and the gunman dead.

A gun dealer had alerted federal authorities about the man, saying he had seemed overly anxious to get a shipment of semiautomatic weapons, according to an affidavit filed in court by a police detective.

Olutosin Oduwole was charged Tuesday with attempting to make a terrorist threat, a felony. He remained jailed Wednesday in lieu of $1 million bail.

According to the affidavit, the 22-year-old student wrote a note demanding that money be deposited to a PayPal account, threatening that ''if this account doesn't reach $50,000 in the next 7 days then a murderous rampage similar to the VT shooting will occur at another highly populated university. THIS IS NOT A JOKE!''

Authorities found the note Friday in Oduwole's car on campus, said university spokesman Greg Conroy. Police also said they found a loaded gun in Oduwole's dorm room.

The detective said in the affidavit that Oduwole, of Maplewood, N.J., had recently bought three .38-caliber semiautomatic guns online but had not yet received them, and also had ordered a .45-caliber semiautomatic gun similar to an Uzi.

A gun dealer alerted the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives because Oduwole ''appeared very anxious to get these firearms and seemed very impatient,'' the affidavit said.

It wasn't immediately clear if Oduwole had an attorney who could speak for him. Conroy said Oduwole was taking summer courses this year.

The Madison County state's attorney did not immediate respond to a message seeking comment.

Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville is about 20 miles northeast of St. Louis and has an enrollment of about 13,500 students.

    Ill. Student Accused of Terrorist Threat, NYT, 25.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Student-Threat-Charges.html

Kan. Shooting Leaves 3 Dead, 1 Injured

July 18, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:12 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) -- A hostage standoff at an apartment complex ended early Wednesday with three people killed, including the suspected gunman, and another critically injured, police said.

Two police officers were also shot when they arrived at the scene. Their wounds were not considered life threatening, police said.

The bodies of the suspected gunman, a 21-year-old man, and of an 18-year-old woman were found when police burst into a second-floor apartment, police spokesman Gordon Bassham said. Police believe the gunman killed himself.

A 22-year-old man shot several times was rescued from the apartment and was in critical condition, Bassham said. When officers searched the apartment complex, a third victim was found in a nearby apartment.

The relationships between the victims were not immediately clear and a motive was under investigation, Bassham said.

One of the injured officers was in surgery with a wound to the lower torso and the second was shot in the leg.

    Kan. Shooting Leaves 3 Dead, 1 Injured, NYT, 18.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Murder-Suicide.html

Wyo. Shooting Suspect Commits Suicide

July 18, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:25 a.m. ET
The New York Times

LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) -- A tipster on horseback led authorities to the remote hideout of a former military sniper accused of fatally shooting his wife while she sang at a Cheyenne night club.

As searchers closed in, David Munis, 36, shot himself in the chest, authorities said. Munis was found at a small camping trailer about five miles outside the search area, Albany County Sheriff's Lt. Michael Garcia said.

He was flown to a hospital and pronounced dead, ending a daylong manhunt in the Rogers Canyon area about 10 miles northeast of Laramie.

''I'm glad it's over,'' Garcia said. ''People in the community can feel more at rest, people in Rogers Canyon can feel more at ease.''

Munis' estranged wife, Robin Munis, 40, was singing with a classic-rock and country group at the Old Chicago restaurant and bar in Cheyenne early Saturday when a bullet pierced a plate glass door and hit her in the head, killing her.

David Munis' truck was spotted late Monday in the mountains north of Laramie, about 50 miles west of Cheyenne, and dozens of heavily armed officers searched the area Tuesday.

Sheriff's officials said they knew little about the anonymous rider who called 911 on a cell phone Tuesday evening. But they said he didn't live in the area where he was riding at the foot of the Laramie Range.

The Munises were recently separated, and Robin Munis had contacted police just hours before she was shot to complain that her estranged husband was making harassing calls to her cell phone.

Investigators said it was unclear whether the shot that killed her came from the restaurant parking lot, about 25 yards away, or from an open green space, roughly 100 yards off.

Witnesses told police that a pickup matching the one owned by David Munis was seen leaving the scene.

A handwritten note of about six pages, addressed to ''Everyone,'' was found at Munis' home, police said Tuesday. ''I'm calling it a near-confession,'' Cheyenne police Capt. Jeff Schulz said. ''He does not come out and say, `I did it.''' The police spokesman would not give details, but Munis was charged with first-degree murder.

Police had suspected from the outset that Munis, a devoted hunter and outdoorsman, would flee into terrain where his training and experience could give him the advantage.

He had been a member of the Wyoming Army National Guard since 2003 and was a 2001 graduate of the Army Sniper School at Fort Benning, Ga., according to the National Guard. He was assigned to an infantry regiment at Ft. Campbell, Ky., according to Lt. Col. Kevin V. Arata, public affairs officer with the U.S. Army Human Resources Command. Arata said he couldn't determine from Munis' military records if he was ever in combat.

    Wyo. Shooting Suspect Commits Suicide, NYT, 18.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Singer-Shooting.html

Pickup Found in Wyo. Singer Shooting

July 17, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:26 a.m. ET
The New York Times

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) -- Police located the pickup truck of a military sharpshooter suspected of killing his estranged wife as she sang at a Cheyenne nightclub, but the man was nowhere in sight, police said Tuesday.

The search for David Munis, 36, focused Tuesday morning on a canyon area north of Laramie where the pickup was spotted late Monday, Police Lt. Jeff Schulz said.

Schulz said officers would be searching the rugged terrain by foot and a Wyoming National Guard Blackhawk helicopter would assist from the air. Knowing Munis' firearms training, the hunt had searchers on edge.

Police don't know what kind of guns Munis may be armed with, but after searching his home, they assumed he had at least one high-powered rifle with him. Schulz has said the search also turned up evidence connecting Munis to his wife's death, though he did not elaborate.

Munis has been a member of the Wyoming Army National Guard since 2003, was previously in the U.S. Army and was a 2001 graduate of the Army Sniper School at Ft. Benning, Ga., according to the National Guard.

''Apprehending a man with that kind of sniper skill and the weaponry he has available to him is an extremely dangerous type of proposition,'' Schulz said.

Robin Munis, 40, had been singing with a classic-rock and country group at the Old Chicago early Saturday when a bullet pierced a plate glass door and hit her in the head, killing her. Police said Monday they were securing an arrest warrant for her estranged husband charging him with homicide.

Schulz said investigators were speaking to David Munis' relatives in Montana and a friend at an Army base in Kentucky with whom he had been in contact. Authorities didn't specify which base, but the Munises had lived within a few miles of Fort Campbell, Ky.

Robin Munis' brother, Art Werner, declined to comment on his sister's death when reached Tuesday at their parents' home in Clarksville, Tenn. He said her funeral service had not been set.

John Plaster, a sniper instructor for military and law enforcement agencies around the country and author of ''The Ultimate Sniper,'' said graduates of the nation's military sniper schools are trained in evading capture, but he said he would be surprised if the hunt ended in a shoot out.

''A guy like that, his enemy, in his mind, was his wife,'' Plaster said. ''I don't think a guy like that would want to go out of his way to shoot at police. But if you corner him, you've got a very dangerous individual.''

The sniper training in the Army and Marine Corps is rigorous and screens out in advance any potential thrill killers or people who seem to have emotional problems, he said. Instead, military sharpshooters think of their work in terms of saving the lives of their own troops on the battlefield.

Plaster said he believes that a highly trained soldier who snapped and killed a spouse would be likely to commit suicide. ''All the honor of being a solider, of being devoted to country, and so on, that's gone,'' he said.

Associated Press writers Ben Neary in Cheyenne and Kristin M. Hall in Nashville contributed to this report.

    Pickup Found in Wyo. Singer Shooting, NYT, 17.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Singer-Shooting.html

Rapper Remy Ma Arrested in NYC Shooting

July 15, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:21 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- Grammy-nominated rapper Remy Ma was arrested Saturday on charges of attempted murder in a shooting outside a trendy Manhattan nightspot, police said.

The 26-year-old rapper, whose real name is Remy Smith, had been sought for questioning in the shooting of a 23-year-old woman early Saturday after a verbal dispute near a bar in the Meatpacking District. She reported to police Saturday evening and was also arrested on charges of assault and criminal possession of a weapon, police said.

The rapper's manager said Saturday that she could not talk and referred calls to Remy Ma's attorney, who was with the rapper as she reported to police.

''I ask everyone to keep an open mind,'' attorney Scott Leemon said. ''Things are not always as they seem.''

He said an arraignment would be likely be held on Sunday.

A 911 call reporting gunfire led police to a woman with a gunshot wound. Three blocks away, officers discovered a luxury SUV owned by Remy Ma; the vehicle had been involved in a single-car crash and abandoned, police said.

The victim, Makeda Barnes-Joseph, was in stable condition at a hospital.

Sasha Tcherekoff, owner of the Pizza Bar, said a review of security videotape taken inside his nightspot showed the rapper and her friends having a good time before they exited.

''The police have indicated to us that the altercation happened a block away,'' the owner said. ''The security tapes determined there was no physical or verbal altercation while they were in the Pizza Bar.''

Remy Ma was nominated for a Grammy as part of the Terror Squad for the 2004 summer smash ''Lean Back.'' She also earned the ''Best Female Hip Hop'' award at the 2005 BET Awards.

She went on to a solo career, releasing last year's ''There's Something About Remy.'' She has appeared on recordings with best-selling performers including Fat Joe, Eminem and R. Kelly, according to a biography on her Web site.

------

On the Net:

Remy Ma: http://www.remyma.com/

    Rapper Remy Ma Arrested in NYC Shooting, NYT, 15.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-People-Remy-Ma.html

"Iron river of guns" flows from U.S. to Mexico

Fri Jul 13, 2007
9:58AM EDT
Reuters
By Tim Gaynor

PHOENIX (Reuters) - When machinegun-toting hit men fought a bloody battle with police and troops around the Mexico town of Cananea that left 23 dead in May, it at first seemed to be the latest chapter in a very Mexican drug war.

But as U.S. and Mexican detectives subsequently traced powerful assault weapons recovered from the battlefield to Texas and Arizona, it raised the curtain on a deadly and controversial flow of arms from the United States.

A war without quarter for control of cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin trafficking routes has killed 1,300 people this year in Mexico, and has created a huge demand among rival drug gangs for weapons of all kinds, authorities say.

Gun sales are illegal in Mexico, and many of the firearms used in Mexican crime are simply bought over-the-counter in the United States, where everything from pistols to high-powered assault rifles can be obtained legally, detectives say.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) estimates that gunrunners haul thousands of weapons a week over the border to Mexico, and they say demand is voracious.

"Just as you see the flow of drugs that comes north, there is an iron river of guns that flows south into Mexico to supply criminal organizations on the border," said Tom Mangan, senior special agent with ATF in Phoenix.

"They are in the market for machine guns, hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles ... It's like they are outfitting an army," he added.

PISTOLS AND MACHINEGUNS

The ATF says the gangs favor high-powered AR-15 and Kalashnikov assault rifles, semi-automatic versions of which can be bought at gun shops and gun shows. Also in demand are the drug lords' favorite: heavily decorated Colt .38 Super pistols.

The guns were made popular by the late Juarez cartel capo Amado Carrillo Fuentes in the 1990s, whose monogrammed Colt encrusted with emeralds is exhibited in a drug trafficking museum in Mexico.

"It's like a general who has a commemorative sidearm, these guns are status symbols for the drug lords," said Mangan.

Investigators say the illicit trade is border-wide and the cartels are resourceful.

To ensure a steady supply of weapons to drug killers in the badlands of northeast Mexico in the 1990s, notorious Gulf cartel founder Juan Garcia Abrego bought seven gun shops in Brownsville, Texas, and used them to run guns south.

Nowadays police say criminal fixers known as "gatekeepers" who live in Mexican border towns rely on networks of buyers who shop to order in the United States.

Many traffickers buy weapons from private sellers at gun shows where transactions often leave no paper trail. Others pay intermediaries $50 to $100 a time to make multiple "straw purchases" on their behalf at gun shops.

"We have seen them use the little old guy on the park bench, or homeless people ... to buy guns on their behalf," said William Newell, ATF special agent in charge of the Phoenix field division.

CRACKING DOWN ON THE TRADE

Detectives say the traffickers often make several trips a day over the border with a trunk full of weapons, selling them in Mexico for a markup of 300 to 400 percent.

Specialist cartel armorers then set to work retrofitting the semi-automatic rifles to turn them in to machine guns, some using a high degree of workmanship.

"We've seen guns that were milled and converted that looked like they were done in a factory," Newell said.

The vigorous black market trade has stirred up a storm of criticism south of the border, where Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina slammed slack U.S. gun laws as "absurd."

Mexico announced in May that it was setting up an intelligence network with U.S. law enforcement agencies to try to stamp out the trade.

As part of that effort the ATF has agents stationed in Mexico -- in the capital and in the industrial powerhouse of Monterrey south of Texas -- working to train, support and share intelligence with Mexican counterparts.

A key part of that drive is to trace crime guns by running their serial numbers through ATF databases to build up a detailed picture of where each weapon was bought and by whom in a bid to nail the gatekeepers and armorers.

But with a drug-fueled war machine to the south and an estimated 200 million guns in private hands in the United States, ATF agents are under no illusion that it will be easy.

"We are at a crossroads where firearms trafficking and the drug trade come together," Mangan said. "It really is the perfect storm."

    "Iron river of guns" flows from U.S. to Mexico, R, 13.7.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1223853620070713

2 Police Officers Shot in Brooklyn

July 9, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:24 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- Two New York City police officers were shot and wounded during a Brooklyn traffic stop on Monday, including one who was gravely injured, authorities said.

An intense manhunt was underway for three occupants of a stolen sport utility vehicle; the shots apparently were fired by two of them, police said.

"The suspects in this brazen shooting are still at large," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at a news conference at Kings County Hospital, where the officers were taken.

A security video near the scene captured the shooting; another video showed three men, believed to be the suspects, ducking into a driveway after seeing a patrol car approach.

"One will recover and one is clinging to life. I ask all New Yorkers to pray for their recovery," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said of the officers.

Officer Russell Timoshenko, 23, was shot in the face and neck, and was in "extremely critical condition," said Kelly.

Bloomberg said that while meeting with Timoshenko's parents, he gave them "thanks from a concerned city."

Officer Herman Yan, 26, shot in the chest and left forearm, was in stable condition. "We have every reason to believe that his life was saved by his bulletproof vest," Kelly said.

The incident occurred at 2:30 a.m. in the Crown Heights section when the two officers pulled over a black BMW SUV that had license plates belonging to another car.

Kelly said the uniformed officers approached the SUV and someone inside it started shooting, hitting Timoshenko first. Yan returned fire but was hit too, Kelly said.

Police found the SUV abandoned near the shooting scene. Inside it were two .45-caliber shell casings, Kelly said. The SUV, and the plates from the second vehicle, had been stolen from a Long Island dealership.

Police said Timoshenko, of Staten Island, joined the department in January 2006. Yan, of Brooklyn, joined three years ago.

"The terrible events are proof once again of the unfortunate truth that guns, when they fall into the hands of the wrong people, have tragic consequences," said Bloomberg.

    2 Police Officers Shot in Brooklyn, NYT, 9.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/nyregion/AP-NY-Two-Officers-Shot.html?hp

Iraq War Veteran Recalls Casino Shooting

July 9, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:25 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) -- At first, Justin Lampert thought the popping sounds he heard were coming from an electronic game at the Las Vegas casino where he had been eating a hot dog. When a crowd of panicked people stampeded past, he realized it was something more serious.

It was then the Iraq war veteran saw a bearded, older man, dressed in a light-colored trench coat, walking behind the fleeing casino-goers. Lampert said the man's hair was tousled as if he'd just gotten out of bed, and his stroll and nonchalant demeanor was a sharp contrast to the chaos.

He passed Lampert on his right, about 20 yards away, then turned to look at him. Lampert saw a 9 mm pistol and observed the man attempting to reload.

''He said, `I'm going to ... kill you,''' Lampert said Saturday. ''We made eye contact and I took off after him. I just kind of dumped him.''

Lampert was the first tackler among a group of men who subdued Steven Zegrean, 51, of Las Vegas, accused of wounding four people in a random fusillade of bullets early Friday at the New York-New York casino. No one was seriously hurt.

Lampert, 24, is a staff sergeant in the North Dakota Army National Guard and a student at North Dakota State University, majoring in zoology with a minor in criminal justice. He hopes to graduate this winter.

He served in Iraq from March 2004 until February 2005, clearing roadside bombs near Balad, north of Baghdad.

A native of Crosby, in North Dakota's northwestern corner, Lampert had been in Las Vegas since Wednesday for the bachelor party of a friend who is getting married later this month.

Lampert said he tackled Zegrean and got him in a choke hold. Zegrean's gun dropped behind him, out of his field of vision. He said Zegrean was squirming, looking for his gun and was on the verge of freeing himself when Lampert stuck the fingers of his right hand in Zegrean's mouth.

Another man, David James, a Navy Reservist from Jacksonville, Fla., rushed up. ''He got the gun out of there, and he kicked the guy and the guy let go of my fingers,'' Lampert said.

Two other men, Robert and Paul Ura, who are agents for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, also came to help.

Lampert said he suffered small cuts on the index and middle finger of his right hand, a scratch on his left hand and a scratch on the back of his neck.

''It's all minor, just little stuff,'' he said.

He estimated the entire struggle lasted a minute. He had had ''a few beers'' before the shooting began, but he did not believe he was impaired.

''There really wasn't anything going through my mind,'' he said. ''Either he is going to kill us or we're going to get him.''

Police said Zegrean, who was arrested and held without bail under suicide watch, acted alone and appeared to have picked the casino at random for the shootings just before 1 a.m. Friday. Formal charges were expected Monday.

Lampert described the experience as ''a totally different thing'' than serving in Iraq, where he said the enemy was mostly invisible.

''We were looking for bombs,'' Lampert said. ''It wasn't a guy walking directly at you with a gun.''

    Iraq War Veteran Recalls Casino Shooting, NYT, 9.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Casino-Shooting.html

Scared Silent

A Little Girl Shot, and a Crowd That Didn’t See

July 9, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

TRENTON, July 8 — A woman who was standing 10 feet away when a stray bullet from a gang fight struck 7-year-old Tajahnique Lee in the face told the police she had been too distracted by her young son to see who fired the shots.

A man who was also in the courtyard when that .45-caliber round blew Tajahnique off her bicycle told detectives he had been engrossed in conversation with neighbors and ducked too quickly to notice what had happened.

Indeed, at least 20 people were within sight of the gunfight among well-known members of the Sex Money Murder subset of the Bloods gang 15 months ago, but the case remains unsolved because not a single one will testify or even describe what they saw to investigators. The witnesses include Vera Lee, Tajahnique’s grandmother, who declined to be interviewed for this article. People who have spoken to her about the shooting said she would not talk to the police for fear she would “have to move out of the country.”

When it happened, Tajahnique’s shooting in the Wilson-Haverstick housing project in Trenton promised to become a tipping point in the city’s five-year struggle to control gangs, with residents furious that anyone could be callous enough to stage a gun battle in broad daylight where dozens of children were playing. The horror and anger inspired by Tajahnique’s image — her beatific smile, and the thought of her lying injured in a pool of blood as neighbors screamed — made gang violence the focal point of the city’s mayoral campaign and pressured the feuding gangs to announce a truce as the police arrested two of their members in connection with the shooting.

Instead, the case stands as a striking example of the way witness intimidation has stymied law enforcement and allowed gangs to tyrannize entire communities. The truce quickly unraveled. The charges against the two gang members were dropped within a month. Even a local program designed to coax young men out of gangs by buying them business suits has seen its limitations; one participant had his outfit designed in Bloods red.

Ten months after Tajahnique was wounded, 18-year-old Naquan Archie was shot and killed on the same corner during a robbery that the police believe was carried out by a member of the Bloods. Neighbors and detectives say there were at least three witnesses, but none have identified the gunman.

“I watched my nephew die in my apartment,” said Mr. Archie’s aunt, so terrified of retaliation that she would speak only on the condition her name not be published. “People saw him get shot. But they know what’s going to happen if they talk. There’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

Such silence has spread over the last decade in cities across the country, as the proliferation of gangs like the Crips, Bloods and Latin Kings has made witnesses an endangered and elusive component of countless criminal investigations. Criminologists say gang culture has made fair game of brutally punishing anyone who helps the police. What results is a self-perpetuating cycle of intimidation and helplessness: residents refuse to risk their lives by helping a police force that cannot protect them; the authorities say they are powerless to lock up gang members without witnesses willing to testify.

In Trenton, a city of 85,000 where the police estimate that the Bloods have as many as 2,000 members, overall crime is down and officials say violence is largely confined to areas where gangs are most prevalent. But gang killings remain a persistent problem. There were 20 homicides in the city last year; the police have made arrests in nine of the 16 killings they consider gang related, and in three of the others. In the first half of this year, murders increased by 50 percent.

“Our informants have told us what happened and given us a good idea of who is responsible” in Tajahnique’s case, said Capt. Joseph S. Juniak, head of Trenton’s criminal investigation bureau. “But getting someone to say it in court is a whole different matter.”

Bobby Johnson, a member of Sex Money Murder, said he had heard detailed accounts of the shooting, but would never discuss it with anyone outside the gang because “that’s the rules of the game.”

In the area of the Wilson-Haverstick Houses, where Tajahnique’s neighbors routinely encounter gang members in coin laundries and convenience stores, on street corners, at bus stops and occasionally in church, many people say that silence is a survival tactic.

“You just keep to yourself,” said Shaunte Bellamy, who raised her children in the project, explaining that she concerns herself only with what happens inside her own apartment. “If it didn’t happen in 3C, it didn’t happen to me.”

A Silent Insult

The gun battle that led to Tajahnique’s getting shot began with the fluttering of $1 bills.

Trenton police officers had been aggressively pressuring Sex Money Murder members who dealt cocaine in the Wilson-Haverstick Houses. The gang’s resulting financial woes had become so widely known that on the morning of March 31 last year, a leader of a rival group, the Gangsta Killer Bloods, drove through the housing project taunting the idled drug dealers by tossing dollars out the window of his pickup truck.

To members of Sex Money Murder, it was a disrespectful call to arms. Within an hour, about 30 of them had gathered at Coolidge and Eisenhower Avenues, waiting for a chance to strike back. Shortly after 5 p.m. that day — as residents and passers-by moved about the crowded housing complex — the truck returned.

The police say there were about six shots in 10 seconds. They said one — fired by a man who emerged from the crowd shouting, “This is it!” — missed the truck and hit Tajahnique as she rode a two-wheeler toward her grandmother’s apartment in the complex. The bullet passed in one cheek and out the other, knocking out two molars and clipping the tip of her tongue. She was the only person injured in the shootout.

The police descended en masse. Wilfredo Rodriguez, a Trenton detective who interviewed more than 100 people in the days after the shooting, said the anger in the eyes of many of Tajahnique’s neighbors made investigators hopeful that they would solve the case quickly.

Tajahnique became known in the news media as “Trenton’s Sweetheart,” and donations poured in to help pay her medical bills, send her to Disney World and buy her a new bike. A businessman from nearby Philadelphia offered a $70,000 reward, and Vera Lee appeared alongside him at a news conference to say, “They have to pay for what they did to my granddaughter.”

Leaders of Sex Money Murder had a news conference of their own to insist they had nothing to do with the shooting. They declared a cease-fire and accused the police of unfairly tarnishing their reputation. The police rounded up more than 100 suspected gang members, and, six days after the shooting, arrested two members of Sex Money Murder.

Trenton’s mayor, Douglas H. Palmer, who was in the final weeks of a heated re-election campaign, accompanied Tajahnique’s family to court for the bail hearing, vowing to rid the city of guns and gangs.

But the case fell apart quickly. The police said that the lone witness had offered his information in an attempt to win leniency on an unrelated gun charge, and when detectives tried to corroborate his story they found he had lied about where he was during the shooting — and about his own name. Three weeks after the arrest, prosecutors released the two men.

By that time, the truce declared by the Bloods had dissolved. Members of Sex Money Murder had rekindled their drug business. Investigators who returned to the neighborhood to search for new witnesses found little more than closed doors.

“People don’t want to talk,” said a rap artist known as The Big Ooh who walks the neighborhood surrounded by an entourage. “Because they don’t want to take a bullet.”

In recent interviews, many who were asked about what they saw that afternoon mentioned Kendra DeGrasse, a Trenton woman who had planned to testify against her ex-boyfriend regarding a 2001 shootout with the police. Then in 2003 she received a letter from prison.

“If you come to court Monday to testify against me, it’s over for me as well as you and your son (straight like that),” read the letter, which handwriting experts attributed to the ex-boyfriend. “I am not afraid to die, what about you?”

Ms. DeGrasse recanted. Two years later, she was killed, an unsolved shooting the police call retaliatory.

“What are you going to do, testify so they can come back and get the rest of your family?” asked one of Tajahnique’s neighbors, who spoke on the condition she be identified only as Traci.

Tynesia Lee, Tajahnique’s mother, would not discuss the investigation, but said in an interview that she was relieved her family survived without further bloodshed.

“She still has nightmares about it sometimes, and she says she’s never going back there,” Tynesia Lee said as she held Tajahnique, whose bright smile and radiant face show no signs of the gunshot. “She’s better, though. She came back.”

‘It Takes Time’

Little has changed at the intersection of Coolidge and Eisenhower. Drug dealers and prostitutes openly solicit business around the clock, as a network of sentries alerts others via cellphone to the arrival of the police or any unfamiliar visitor.

Officers have tried to counter the sophistication of local gangs by using databases to track their members’ movements. In February, in conjunction with other law enforcement agencies, including the state police, they arrested 47 suspected gang members.

Among them was Reginald Jackson, known as Hamburger, who the police believe was involved in the gunfight last year, but who is being held on unrelated charges. Mr. Jackson’s lawyer, Ed Heyburn, said he was not responsible for shooting Tajahnique.

Joseph J. Santiago, Trenton’s police director, said he was optimistic that detectives would eventually solve the case — and get a handle on the city’s gang problem — but he sees it as a protracted battle.

“Los Angeles has had a gang problem for 40 years, and they’re still trying to figure it out,” Mr. Santiago said. “Trenton has only had these kinds of gangs for five years or so. Hopefully, it won’t take us 40 years. But it takes time.”

Some community leaders are trying to speed that process by working to change gang culture from within. Earlie Harrell, a high-ranking member of Sex Money Murder who goes by the street name Messiah and helped broker the truce after Tajahnique’s shooting, worked with local ministers and business owners to create Buy a Brother a Suit. One weekend last month, 13 members of the gang, including a 7-year-old boy, were picked up in a limousine, fitted for tailored suits, then honored at a church ceremony heralding the beginning of a nonviolent chapter of their lives.

“I have a kid; I don’t want her to get shot, and I don’t want anyone else’s kid to get shot either, so we’ve got to teach these kids it’s not right, it’s not Blood, to go shooting people up,” said Mr. Harrell, 31. But he also tells young gang members “not to be talking about what they see, because they could get hurt.”

“If they know too much,” he added, “police might try to blame them for something they didn’t even do.”

The weekend after the suit ceremony, part of a broader effort known as the Trenton Peace Movement, two men were slain within a quarter mile of the church and the housing project. The police say both killings were gang related and occurred in front of more than 10 people.

No witnesses have come forward.

    A Little Girl Shot, and a Crowd That Didn’t See, NYT, 9.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/nyregion/09taj.html?hp

Giuliani Questioned About Gun Control

July 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:38 p.m. ET
The New York Times

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) -- Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, a strong proponent of gun control during his years as New York mayor, told a Southern audience Friday that he supports the constitutional right to bear arms.

During a town-hall style meeting, Giuliani focused on combatting terrorism, cutting taxes and ending illegal immigration. Several in the audience of some 200 raised questions about issues at the forefront for some conservative Southerners: gun rights and embryonic stem-cell research.

''It doesn't matter if I believe in it or not -- and I do -- it is the Second Amendment,'' Giuliani said. ''I'm a strict constructionist. The Second Amendment says you have an individual right to bear arms.''

Giuliani earned a reputation for strictly enforcing gun laws while New York mayor.

Asked about President Bush's recent veto of federal funding for stem-cell research, Giuliani said he could support government funding with ''very, very strict limits'' on the use of stem cells from human embryos.

''The strict limits should be that life is not created for the purpose of destroying life and just for the purpose of scientific experimentation,'' he said to loud applause.

In May, during a Republican presidential debate, Giuliani said he supported stem cell research ''as long as we're not creating life in order to destroy it,'' then added he would back funding for research along the lines of legislation pending in Congress.

However, the bill he cited does not increase federal support for research on embryonic stem cells. Rather, it dealt with adult stem cells.

Earlier in the day, Giuliani campaigned in South Carolina, his first campaign appearance there since his former state campaign chairman, Treasurer Thomas Ravenel, was indicted on a federal cocaine charge last month.

Giuliani said he was shocked to hear about the indictment.

''That's something he's going to have to answer for,'' Giuliani said.

Ravenel, who was suspended from the treasurer's office he won in November, also stepped down from Giuliani's campaign.

Ravenel, through an attorney, pleaded not guilty to the charge Friday. He is currently at a 30-day rehab program at an Arizona psychiatric hospital, according to court documents.

Ravenel's father, a former congressman who also served in the state Senate, is still working for Giuliani campaign. On Friday, the Democratic National Committee accused Arthur Ravenel of making racist comments, including one in 2000 when he referred to the NAACP as ''the National Association for Retarded People'' during the state's debate over removing the Confederate flag from the Statehouse dome.

''Giuliani doesn't understand that as president you need to represent all Americans and bring the country together,'' DNC spokeswoman Karen Finney said in a statement.

Giuliani did not take questions from reporters when he returned to South Carolina later in the day to speak to supporters at an oyster company in Bluffton.

Giuliani campaigned in the state with his wife, Judith, who doesn't often show up on the campaign trail.

--------

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton told a Louisiana audience Friday that federal resources spent on the Iraq war should be redirected to more pressing domestic problems, such as rebuilding the Gulf Coast.

Addressing a friendly crowd of several hundred at an Essence Music Festival seminar, Clinton said the government must focus on helping single mothers and working families find affordable health and child care, improving the lot of the 55 percent of black men who don't graduate from high school and helping New Orleans residents still exiled by Hurricane Katrina come home and resume their lives.

''I believe it is an American responsibility to rebuild New Orleans,'' she said.

Clinton and her chief rival, Barack Obama, were the two candidates hoping to connect with voters at Essence, one of the nation's premier black cultural events. Obama addressed the gathering late Thursday.

Obama said New Orleans was plagued by poverty, failing schools and high crime and murder rates for far too long before the catastrophic storm even hit.

''The legacy of race and poverty continues to shape our lives every day and it's time we did something about it,'' Obama said.

Earlier in the day, Clinton promised cheering steelworkers in Cleveland that she would offer a labor-friendly White House and would promote manufacturing if elected president.

''We are going to revitalize our manufacturing base,'' the Democratic senator from New York told union leaders at a conference on manufacturing sponsored by the United Steelworkers of America.

------

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- More than 50 religious conservatives in Iowa will lead an effort to convince Republicans to support presidential candidate Sam Brownback.

In a statement, Brownback said the conservatives ''share my goal to rebuild the family and renew the culture'' and could play an important role in his bid for the GOP nomination.

Chuck Hurley, a former state legislator and a leader among the state's religious conservatives, will head Brownback's ''Faith and Family'' committee. Hurley heads the conservative Iowa Family Policy Center, but he stressed that role is separate from his efforts for Brownback, with whom he has ties that date to college days in Kansas.

''I don't want to overstate it, but some of these are pretty well known in their circles of faith leaders,'' said Hurley. ''It really does give Sam a boost.''

The list of religious conservatives backing Brownback comes from throughout the state, and Hurley said they can play an important role in encouraging members of their congregations and fellow religious conservatives to show up for next winter's precinct caucuses.

Those conservatives have a history of playing an important role in Iowa Republican politics, such as in the 1988 caucuses when they helped TV evangelist Pat Robertson to a second-place showing.

------

MASON CITY, Iowa (AP) -- Grammy-award winning singer and songwriter Paul Simon joined longtime friend and Democratic presidential hopeful Chris Dodd on campaign appearances across Iowa on Friday, saying the political process is too focused on money and not on issues.

Simon said he watched a recent Democratic debate held in New Hampshire and felt the most serious issues questions weren't directed toward the candidates with the most expertise, including Dodd, who he's known for about a quarter-century.

''The (political) process is not really eliciting the best thinking because it's focused on how much money is raised and it's difficult to come around the media and speak to people ...'' he said.

Simon, of Simon and Garfunkel fame, went on to have a successful solo career featuring such hits as ''50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,'' ''Loves me Like a Rock,'' and ''Slip Slidin' Away.''

He donned a baseball cap, button-down striped shirt and had sunglasses hanging around his neck during an appearance at a cafe in Mason City early Friday, where he mingled with a crowd of about 125 people.

------

KENSINGTON, N.H. (AP) -- Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden says he's not surprised by the recent defections by prominent Republicans on the Iraq war.

In the past two weeks, Republican Sens. Richard Lugar of Indiana, George Voinovich of Ohio and Pete Domenici of New Mexico have said they no longer support President Bush's strategy in Iraq and called on the administration to begin reducing the military's role there.

Though most other Republicans say they want to wait until September to see if the president's troop buildup is working, Biden said Friday that he doesn't believe there are more than a dozen senators who truly believe in Bush's strategy.

''I've been predicting since January that we will change the minds of 17 Republicans,'' he said, which would give Democrats the 67 votes needed to override a presidential veto.

''You've got a lot of folks (moving) in the Republican Party now. Why? A, they know he's wrong, and b, they know if they don't move they'll lose, they're gonna lose the next election.''

Biden said he has pressed Democrats to keep proposing Iraq legislation as a way to pressure and embarrass Republicans.

''To force them to have to choose between the troops and the president,'' he said. ''Between American interests in the president.''

Associated Press writers Thomas J. Sheeran in Cleveland, Seanna Adcox in South Carolina, Amy Lorentzen in Mason City, Iowa, Mike Glover in Des Moines, Iowa, Stacey Plaisance in New Orleans and Holly Ramer in Kensington, N.H., contributed to this report.

    Giuliani Questioned About Gun Control, NYT, 6.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-On-the-2008-Trail.html

3 Shot Dead in Ohio Fireworks Dispute

July 5, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:24 p.m. ET
The New York Times

CLEVELAND (AP) -- A neighbor apparently angry about fireworks at a noisy Fourth of July party shot three people to death early Thursday and wounded two others, police said.

Terrance Hough Jr., a 35-year-old off-duty firefighter, was arrested in connection with the shootings, police spokesman Lt. Thomas Stacho said.

No charges had been filed Thursday morning because police were still gathering evidence and interviewing witnesses, Stacho said. There was no phone listing for Hough's address.

Police had received a number of complaints in recent years about loud parties, fireworks and drag racing connected to the house where the victims were shot, Stacho said. Some complaint calls came from Hough's address, but no one called police about the party Thursday night.

The neighbors were throwing a party when two men and a woman, all in their 20s, were shot to death shortly after midnight, Stacho said. He said another man was shot in the elbow and a woman was wounded in the hand.

A police officer who lives nearby heard the shooting and arrested Hough, Stacho said. He said a handgun believed to have been used in the shootings was among a dozen guns found at the home.

The area of neat ranch homes overlooking the industrial Cuyahoga River valley is popular among firefighters and police officers who are required to live in the city.

Near Seattle, another man was shot during an argument at a fireworks celebration and died after aid workers trying to help him felt threatened by a hostile crowd, authorities said.

More than 100 people were present when the two men began arguing around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday in a parking lot in Skyway, an unincorporated area between Seattle and Renton, Wash. Paramedics called after the shooting found the crowd so threatening, they had to quickly take the wounded man out to continue CPR, said David Nelson, a spokesman for county Fire District 20.

Sheriff's Detective Bob L. Conner said it was unclear whether moving the man before continuing CPR was a factor in his death. King County sheriff's deputies were searching for the suspect.

    3 Shot Dead in Ohio Fireworks Dispute, NYT, 5.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Fireworks-Shooting.html

Woman Accused of NYC Shooting to Return

June 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:44 a.m. ET
The New York Times

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A woman accused of shooting a commune leader and then fleeing to Philadelphia was ordered back to New York to face an attempted murder charge.

Rebekah Johnson, 44, was arrested this month while getting off an elevated train in West Philadelphia. She is accused of shooting Jeff Gross five times on May 29, 2006, after ambushing him outside his home.

Gross, who helped found the Staten Island-based shared-living community Ganas, survived. Gross has accused Johnson of stalking him.

Johnson, who was with the group for six years, did not fight extradition and Common Pleas Judge Susan Schulman ordered her Thursday to return to New York.

Johnson lived with the Ganas community from 1986 to 1990, then from 1994 to 1996. She was later asked to leave, according to neighbors and commune members. She has accused the group of brainwashing and sexual assault.

About 80 members of the Ganas community share eight homes, generally paying $700 a month for room and board. The group promotes environmentalism, diversity and problem-solving, according to its Web site.

On the Net:

Ganas Community: http://www.well.com/user/ganas/ 

    Woman Accused of NYC Shooting to Return, NYT, 29.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Shared-Living-Shooting.html

3 People Found Dead in Kentucky Home

June 25, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:35 p.m. ET
The New York Times

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- Three people were found dead in a house and a 12-year-old boy was shot in the face in what authorities said appeared to be a case of domestic violence.

The boy ran to a neighbor's house Sunday evening and said his mother and sister had been shot, police Chief Robert White said. Their bodies, along with the body of a man identified as the shooter, were found in the Louisville home.

''It appears to be a domestic situation,'' he said.

The boy, shot in the cheek, underwent surgery and was in serious condition Monday, police spokeswoman Alicia Smiley said.

''Until we have a chance to talk with him, we're not going to know the sequence of events,'' Smiley said.

The man found dead had apparently had a relationship with the mother, Smiley said.

    3 People Found Dead in Kentucky Home, NYT, 25.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-BRF-Kentucky-Shooting-Deaths.html

Prisoner Kills Officer at Utah Hospital

June 25, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:09 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A prison inmate getting medical treatment at the University of Utah stole a gun from a corrections officer Monday and fatally shot him, authorities said.

The inmate fled the scene and drove to a Arby's restaurant, where he was captured by police.

The prisoner was inside an examination room at the campus orthopedic center, university Police Chief Scott Folsom said.

''There was some sort of altercation. The inmate got hold of the weapon and shot the officer,'' he said.

A spokesman for the Utah Department of Corrections said officers routinely transport prisoners to the university for medical appointments.

''Nobody here can remember one of our officers every being killed during a transfer,'' spokesman Jack Ford said.

    Prisoner Kills Officer at Utah Hospital, NYT, 25.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Medical-Center-Shooting.html

Man Charged in Deaths of Wife, 3 Kids

June 23, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:45 p.m. ET
The New York Times

JOLIET, Ill. (AP) -- A suburban Chicago man found shot alongside the bodies of his wife and their three children in the family sport utility vehicle earlier this month was charged Saturday in their shooting deaths.

Christopher Vaughn, 32, was charged with eight counts of first-degree murder, prosecutor James Glasgow said.

The announcement came nine days after the bodies of 34-year-old Kimberly Vaughn and her children -- Abigayle, 12, Cassandra, 11, and Blake, 8 -- were found in a 2004 Ford Expedition parked on a service road near Interstate 55 in Channahon, about 40 miles southwest of Chicago. Kimberly Vaughn was shot once and the children were shot multiple times.

The announcement of the charges came around the time funerals for Kimberly Vaughn and her children were to begin in Missouri, where the family once lived.

Their bodies were discovered after police received a 911 call from a passer-by flagged down by Christopher Vaughn, authorities have said. A handgun was found at the scene.

Vaughn, who works as a computer forensic adviser, had been shot in the thigh and was released from a nearby hospital later that day. Police initially said he was not a suspect.

    Man Charged in Deaths of Wife, 3 Kids, NYT, 23.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bodies-Found.html

Suspect in Harlem Shooting Is Critically Wounded

June 23, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:48 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- A suspect in a deadly shooting was shot and critically wounded after a police chase punctuated by gunfire early Friday, police said.

The string of shootings unraveled from an argument between the suspect and victim Warren Dandridge outside a fried-chicken restaurant in central Harlem, Sgt. Mike Wysokowski said.

The suspect shot Dandridge in the abdomen, buttocks and ankle. Then the suspect fired at two of Dandridge's friends when they intervened, hitting one in the arm and grazing the other, Wysokowski said.

Two uniformed housing police officers heard the gunshots as they approached on patrol in a marked van at around 12:20 a.m. Then they spotted two of the wounded men and saw the suspect running away, police said.

The officers dashed after the suspect and fired their weapons, although it wasn't clear whether the officers' bullets were responsible for his wounds or whether he had also fired, Wysokowski said.

The 20-year-old suspect was hit in the abdomen, and the officers quickly caught up with him in front of a nearby building, police said. They said the officers found a .45-caliber gun at the shooting scene near Fifth Avenue and East 110th Street, where .45-caliber shell casings were strewn on the street.

The suspect was in critical condition at St. Luke's Hospital, where Dandridge, 26, of Staten Island, died later Friday morning, police said. The victim wounded in the arm was in stable condition, and the man with the graze wound also went to the hospital on his own for treatment, police said.

The officers weren't wounded, police said.

    Suspect in Harlem Shooting Is Critically Wounded, NYT, 23.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/nyregion/AP-NY-Police-Shootout.html

Killings Surge in Oakland, and Officials Are Unable to Explain Why

June 22, 2007
The New York Times
By SOLOMON MOORE

OAKLAND, Calif., June 15 — The names of friends and family members killed in this city over the last two years come easily to Rob Wilson, a rangy, dreadlocked 17-year-old gang member.

A brother was shot to death in a drug deal in 2005. Oakland police officers killed a cousin in a shootout last year. Gang members shot down a friend in March.

“It used to be I would just hear about somebody getting shot, but I wouldn’t know them,” said Mr. Wilson, who is known as Deka and who pulled up a pants leg to show a bullet wound from a shooting last year. “Now, it’s getting closer and closer to me, these deaths.”

The shootings are part of a cresting wave of violence in Oakland, which recorded 148 homicides in 2006, a 57 percent increase over 2005 and the highest number in 11 years. As of last week, 43 people had been killed in 2007, fewer than the 60 killed over the same period last year, but still far short of a turnaround.

Law enforcement officials and community organizers in Oakland are hard pressed to explain the rise, particularly since homicides in the two other big cities in the Bay Area, San Jose and San Francisco, have not increased substantially.

Possible explanations include large numbers of violent parolees returning from prison, increasing gang violence, the availability of guns, a growing methamphetamine trade and police recruitment shortfalls. But some of those factors also exist in San Francisco and San Jose, which has a comparable number of parolees and, arguably, a larger and longer-standing gang problem than Oakland.

“We’re trying to make sense of it,” said Officer Roland Holmgren, a spokesman for the Oakland Police Department. “But it’s irrational.”

The variable and somewhat mysterious homicide rates in the Bay Area mirror a national pattern in crime data for 2006 released earlier this month by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The data show killings increased significantly in some cities, including Atlanta, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington, and decreased in others, including Dallas, Los Angeles and Miami, with no definitive explanation for the differences.

Many criminologists and law enforcement officials are debating whether the violent-crime data signal a significant national trend. In a report, “A Gathering Storm — Violent Crime in America,” the Police Executive Research Forum, a professional organization of police chiefs, warned last year that violent crime increases were “the front end of a tipping point of an epidemic of violence not seen for years.”

Among other factors, the chiefs blamed a decline in federal spending for a decrease in crime prevention and community policing programs and for a dip in police staffing.

Many criminologists, however, question whether the recent increases in killings are large enough, widespread enough or consistent enough to be considered a trend. And even those who do discern a pattern say that they are often unable to explain why it is happening or what policing strategies would be best to use.

“There are a thousand different stories competing against each other,” said Frank Zimring, a criminologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “When you put all the dots together, instead of knowing more, we know less.”

Murders rose 6.7 percent in 2006 in cities with more than a million people, but in the nation’s three largest cities, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, violent crime either declined or held steady. In cities with populations from 250,000 to 500,000 violent crime increased 3.2 percent and murders rose 3.7 percent.

“Two years does not a trend make, but two years can be the beginning of one; we just don’t know yet,” said Joel Wallman, a criminologist at the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation in New York City. “Some of these are such small changes, and the timeframe of the trend is so short that it’s very difficult to determine whether this is a real trend or just random noise.”

Junious Williams, the chief executive of the Urban Strategies Council, a group in Oakland that studies urban poverty and crime, said the increase in homicides was prevalent in many predominantly African-American cities. Over the last five years, African-American suspects accounted for 65 percent of Oakland’s killings, according to a study by the council, and 77 percent of victims.

“Most of the cities experiencing increases in homicides have black pluralities, if not majority black populations,” Mr. Williams said. “Here in Oakland, the majority of the crimes are being committed by young brothers.”

Poor educational opportunities, high unemployment and a criminal justice system that reinforces criminal behavior have led to an “honorific culture” akin to that of the Wild West for many inner city black communities, said a Harvard sociologist, Orlando Patterson.

Respect for traditional social norms was on the decline, Mr. Patterson said, in the face of a growing hip-hop culture that puts an emphasis on street credibility for respect.

Some criminologists argued that the recent increases signified that the historic declines in crime in the late 1980s and 1990s had bottomed out after abnormally high levels in the wake of the crack cocaine epidemic. Tougher sentencing guidelines, widespread incarceration and the subsiding crack trade have run their course, these criminologists say, and without those overriding factors, crime rates are returning to more natural, regional levels.

“Even the kind of crime we’re seeing now is nowhere near what we were seeing in the early 1990s,” said Jack Riley, a researcher at the RAND Corporation, a research organization in Santa Monica, Calif.

Whatever the debate nationally about a crime trend, many people who live and work in Oakland are seeing more death at their doorsteps.

Jordan Murphy, 18, barely made his high school graduation last week, having been mistaken for a rival gang member and shot in the thigh in August.

Tony Alcala, 17, survived three bullets, one in the stomach and two in the back, when he was shot last year. The police told him later that two of the men who attacked him had been arrested, and a third gunman had been killed by gang members sympathetic to Mr. Alcala.

Dr. Javid Sadjadi, an emergency room doctor at Highland Hospital, Oakland’s main public trauma center, said doctors there treated 425 shooting victims last year, some of them several times.

“We’re starting to see the same people getting shot several times in several different incidents,” Dr. Sadjadi said, recounting a 14-year-old shooting victim who died recently after being admitted to the hospital, his third admission for having been shot.

Dr. Sadjadi recalled one day last summer when the hospital treated more than 10 victims of shootings.

“We’re also seeing much younger patients,” he said. “Last year was a record for shooting victims who were youths between the ages of 14 and 17.”

    Killings Surge in Oakland, and Officials Are Unable to Explain Why, NYT, 22.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/us/22oakland.html

2 Dead, Officer Wounded in Ky. Shootout

June 21, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:46 a.m. ET
The New York Times

GLASGOW, Ky. (AP) -- A gunman fatally shot a man and wounded a police officer during a 6 1/2-hour standoff that ended in the suspect's apparent suicide, authorities said.

Officers were called to a residence near downtown Glasgow in south-central Kentucky on Wednesday afternoon on a report of shots fired. An officer found a man fatally wounded outside the house and was then fired on, Trooper Todd Holder said.

Glasgow Officer J.D. Walden was shot in the back, police said. He was released from a hospital after treatment, authorities said.

During the siege, police sent in two camera-equipped robots and determined the first floor was clear. Officers then entered the house and found the suspect in an upstairs room, dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, Police Lt. Maxie Murray said.

The identities of the man found dead outside the house and the gunman were not released.

Glasgow, in Barren County, is about 100 miles south of Louisville.

It was the second time in a week a police officer had been shot in Kentucky.

Clay City Police Chief Randy Lacy was fatally shot on June 13 in his squad car while making a DUI arrest. Lacy was the only officer in the eastern Kentucky police department.

    2 Dead, Officer Wounded in Ky. Shootout, NYT, 21.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Fatal-Shooting.html

Parents, 2 Girls Dead in Murder - Suicide

June 19, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:56 p.m. ET

ORINDA, Calif. (AP) -- A man apparently distraught over financial problems shot his wife and two young children to death at a popular park before turning the gun on himself, police said.

An officer responding Monday night to a report of fireworks going off found the bodies at a remote area of Tilden Regional Park, in the East Bay area between Berkeley and Orinda.

A note found at the scene, apparently written by Kevin Morrissey, 51, indicated he was distressed about money difficulties at the skin care practice he ran with his wife, East Bay Regional Park Police Chief Timothy Anderson said.

''It's looking like a murder-suicide. ... In the note he expressed remorse and explained his actions,'' Anderson told KTVU-TV.

Police identified the other victims as Morrissey's wife, Dr. Mamiko Kawai, 40, and the couple's daughters, Nikki Morrissey, 8, and Kim Morrissey, 6. The girls were found in the rear seat of a car and the adults on the ground nearby. All had been shot to death, and a .357 Magnum revolver was found at the scene, Anderson said.

Detectives searched the family's Berkeley home to ensure there were no other victims, he said.

Tilden Regional Park covers more than 2,000 acres of canyons and eucalyptus groves in the otherwise densely populated East Bay.

    Parents, 2 Girls Dead in Murder - Suicide, NYT, 19.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bodies-Found.html

Miami Party Shooting Kills 1, Wounds 6

June 17, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:14 a.m. ET
The New York Times

MIAMI (AP) -- Four armed men with white bandannas covering their faces opened fire at a party early Sunday, killing a 20-year-old man and injuring six other people, police said.

Authorities were searching for the four men, and the shootings were believed to be gang related, police said.

About 300 people were attending the graduation and birthday party that began Saturday night and continued into the early morning at the Polish American Club in Miami.

At about 1 a.m., the four gunmen entered the party and began arguing with people, police said. They then started shooting, hitting people ages 15 to 20, police said.

The 20-year-old man, whose name was not immediately released, died at a hospital, police said.

Two victims were in critical condition Sunday. The rest were in stable condition, police said.

    Miami Party Shooting Kills 1, Wounds 6, NYT, 17.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-BRF-Party-Shooting.html

Presley's Gun Auctioned for $28, 800

June 17, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:40 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BEVERLY HILLS (AP) -- A gold-plated gun and a pill bottle owned by Elvis Presley, an umbrella twirled by Marilyn Monroe and Alfred Hitchcock's passport were among items that attracted bidders at an auction Saturday.

The umbrella used by Monroe in a famous 1949 seaside photo shoot by Andre de Dienes sold for $42,000 at the annual Julien's Summer Auction, CEO Darren Julien said in a statement. The buyer, William Doyle, said he planned to display the umbrella at the Museum of Style Icons in County Kildare, Ireland.

Hitchcock's passport sold for $19,200 during the eight-hour auction at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

Presley's gun commanded $28,800, while a microphone used by the rock icon on the Louisiana Hayride in the 1950s sold for $15,000.

A prescription pill bottle belonging to Presley sold for $2,640.

''We'd planned to sell the bottle with the pills, but the Los Angeles Police Department told us it would be a federal crime to do it, so sad to say we had to remove the pills,'' Julien said before the auction.

The undated bottle was for the antihistamine and decongestant drug Naldecon, prescribed by George Nichopoulos, who was Presley's personal physician from 1970 until his death.

----

On the Web:

http://www.juliensauctions.com

    Presley's Gun Auctioned for $28, 800, NYT, 17.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Memorabilia-Auction.html

Op-Ed Contributor

Washington’s Secret Gun Files

June 16, 2007
The New York Times
By RAYMOND W. KELLY

A NARROWLY divided Congress will vote in the coming days on whether to renew legislation that stops the federal government from sharing with local police departments and prosecutors crucial information about guns used in crimes. The Tiahrt amendment, first passed in 2003, prohibits Washington from releasing crime data about guns that used to be provided to state and local law enforcement. If House members reauthorize the measure, they will harm efforts to curtail gun violence in this country.

When a gun is recovered from a crime scene, the police ask the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to trace the weapon’s provenance. Yet when our officers request the trace data for all gun crimes, the Tiahrt amendment stops us dead in our tracks — even though this aggregate information would tell us which individuals and dealers are most often involved in buying and selling guns that end up in the hands of criminals. In New York City, about 90 percent of the guns used in crimes come from out of state. Without full access to national trace data, it is far more difficult for our officers to disrupt the “iron pipeline” that brings illegal guns to our streets.

Trace data combined with other information can be a rich source for police investigations. The firearms bureau acknowledges that numerous traces from a single dealer to guns used in crimes are grounds for suspicion. Yet Congress undermines the value of the government’s data repository by requiring local police departments to investigate illegal gun trafficking rings without this information.

The defenders of the amendment — including the Republican representative who introduced it, Todd Tiahrt of Kansas — contend that it protects the anonymity of undercover officers and the confidentiality of law enforcement investigations. But there is no reason we cannot protect the anonymity of undercover officers while at the same time releasing trace data for gun crimes. I oppose unfettered public access to investigative information that may be attached to trace data, like the identities of witnesses and the particulars of active cases. But law enforcement agencies and their partners in state and local government — the people charged with safeguarding our communities against gun violence — need broad access to the federal government’s data to coordinate interdiction efforts and enforcement strategies.

By collecting and analyzing our own data, the New York Police Department has developed increasingly sophisticated methods of identifying patterns and trends for assaults, robberies, drug sales, shootings and every other type of crime. Yet Congress prevents us from seeing the national data that would allow us to crack down on the No. 1 public safety threat facing our officers and the American public: illegal gun-trafficking rings.

My paramount concern is for the safety of the police officers involved in this dangerous work, and I understand the need to preserve the confidentiality of their active investigations. But as a former Treasury under secretary charged with overseeing the firearms bureau, I know the value of this data to inform and advance the crime-fighting agendas of states and localities.

During my tenure as under secretary, from 1996 to 1998, we routinely shared aggregate gun-crime data in the form of Crime Gun Trace Analysis Reports. These reports, no longer available since 2004, enabled police analysts to identify the nation’s illicit gun markets and the major access routes that fed them. We released timely information without jeopardizing investigations and while safeguarding privacy rights.

We can protect undercover officers and still give our detectives the tools they need to do their jobs. That’s why I, along with more than two dozen other law enforcement organizations, including the International Association of Chiefs of Police and a bipartisan coalition of 225 mayors, oppose reauthorization of the Tiahrt amendment. Congress can help save lives by killing this awful law.

Raymond W. Kelly is the police commissioner of New York City.

    Washington’s Secret Gun Files, NYT, 16.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/16/opinion/16kelly.html

Police: Woman Slain at SoCal Office

June 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:19 p.m. ET
The New York Times

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- A man carrying a bouquet of roses shot his pregnant girlfriend to death at her medical office, police said. He later surrendered.

Dawnna Denize Wright, 31, was shot Tuesday afternoon at the office where she worked as a receptionist, police said. One man suffered a superficial graze wound, and police evacuated about two dozen workers from the building.

The gunman fled after the shooting. About an hour later, the woman's boyfriend, Roger McDowell, 34, called police to surrender, Lt. Jeff Sferra said.

McDowell was arrested without incident on suspicion of murder and attempted murder, authorities said.

Witnesses told police the Wright and McDowell had an ''on-again, off-again'' relationship, Sferra said.

Relatives of Wright told KNSD-TV she was a single mother with three young daughters and was three months pregnant with McDowell's child.

    Police: Woman Slain at SoCal Office, NYT, 13.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-BRF-Bouquet-Killing.html

Official: Ky. Police Chief Shot to Death

June 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:02 p.m. ET
The New York Times

CLAY CITY, Ky. (AP) -- A man in custody shot a small-town police chief to death Wednesday from the back seat of the chief's cruiser in eastern Kentucky, a county official said.

Powell County Judge-Executive Darren Farmer said Police Chief Randy Lacy was shot by a man he had arrested shortly after 11 a.m. The suspect was being taken to the Montgomery County jail, state police spokesman Phil Crumpton said.

Crumpton confirmed a police officer was fatally shot but declined to release the identity. He said state police were still investigating and he did not have further details.

A dispatcher who answered the phone for the Clay City police department declined to comment. The town, with about 1,300 residents, is 40 miles east of Lexington.

It was at least the second fatal shooting involving law enforcement officers in Powell County. Sheriff Steve Bennett and deputy Arthur Briscoe were killed while trying to arrest a man in 1992. The shooter was convicted and is now on Kentucky's death row.

    Official: Ky. Police Chief Shot to Death, NYT, 13.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Police-Chief-Shot.html

Bill Passed in Response to VaTech Attack

June 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:08 p.m. ET
The New New York Times

The New York Times*WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House Wednesday passed what could become the first major federal gun control law in over a decade, spurred by the Virginia Tech campus killings and buttressed by National Rifle Association help.

The bill, which was passed on a voice vote, would improve state reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System to stop gun purchases by people, including criminals and those adjudicated as mentally defective, who are prohibited from possessing firearms.

Seung-Hui Cho, who in April killed 32 students and faculty at Virginia Tech before taking his own life, had been ordered to undergo outpatient mental health treatment and should have been barred from buying two guns he used in the rampage. But the state of Virginia had never forwarded this information to the national background check system.

If it moves through the Senate and is signed into law by the president, the bill would be the most important gun control act since Congress banned some assault weapons in 1994, the last year Democrats controlled the House. In 1996, Congress added people convicted of domestic violence to the list of those banned from purchasing firearms.

The bill was the outcome of weeks of negotiations between Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., the most senior member of the House and a strong supporter of gun rights, and the NRA, and in turn, with Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., a leading gun-control advocate.

''This is good policy that will save lives,'' McCarthy said.

The NRA insisted that it was not a ''gun control'' bill because it does not disqualify anyone currently able to legally purchase a firearm.

The NRA has always supported the NICS, said the organization's executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre. ''We've always been vigilant about protecting the rights of law-abiding citizens to purchase guns, and equally vigilant about keeping the guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally defective and people who shouldn't have them.''

Under a gun control act that passed in 1968, the year Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were killed, people barred from buying guns include those convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year in prison, illegal drug users, those adjudicated as mentally disabled, and illegal aliens.

The legislation approved Wednesday would require states to automate and share disqualifying records with the FBI's NICS database. The bill also provides $250 million a year over the next three years to help states meet those goals and imposes penalties, including cuts in federal grants under an anti-crime law, to those states that fail to meet benchmarks for automating their systems and supplying information to the NICS.

The NRA did win some concessions in negotiating the final product.

It would automatically restore the purchasing rights of veterans who were diagnosed with mental problems as part of the process of obtaining disability benefits. LaPierre said the Clinton administration put about 80,000 such veterans into the background check system.

It also outlines an appeals process for those who feel they have been wrongfully included in the system and ensures that funds allocated to improve the NICS are not used for other gun control purposes.

''It was necessary to make some accommodations to address the concerns of gun owners,'' said House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., adding that he would be closely monitoring the provision on restoring gun rights to veterans judged to have mental disabilities.

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said his group supported the legislation, noting that the Virginia Tech shootings ''tragically demonstrated the gaps in the system that allowed a dangerous person to be armed.''

He said he hoped Congress and the gun lobby would go a step further and extend background checks to all gun sales, not just those licenses dealers covered by current law.

The only dissenting vote in the short House debate on the bill was voiced by GOP presidential aspirant Ron Paul of Texas. He described the bill as ''a flagrantly unconstitutional expansion of restriction on the exercise of the right to bear arms protected under the 2nd Amendment.

McCarthy, in an emotional speech, said that ''this has been a long, long journey for me.'' She ran for Congress on a gun control agenda after her husband was gunned down on a Long Island commuter train in 1993.

------

The bill is H.R. 2640

On the Net:

Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov
 
NRA: http://www.nra.org

Brady Campaign: http://www.bradycampaign.org/

    Bill Passed in Response to VaTech Attack, NYT, 13.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Congress-Gun-Control.html

Police: Fla. Woman Kills Co - Worker, Self

June 8, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:52 p.m. ET
The New York Times

SARASOTA, Fla. (AP) -- A disgruntled employee fatally shot a co-worker at a doctor's office Friday morning, then went home and killed herself, authorities said.

The alleged shooter, Jacquelyn Ann Ferguson, 51, of Sarasota, fled the building afterward and was found dead on the patio of her home about two hours later, officials told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. It wasn't immediately clear how she died.

About 10 other employees were in the medical office at the time of the shooting, and they walked out of the building with their hands in the air, sheriff's Lt. Chuck Lesaltato said at a news conference. Lesaltato did not immediately return phone messages left by The Associated Press.

The slain woman's name was not being released until family members could be notified, Sarasota County fire spokesman Paul Dezzi said.

Sarasota is about 45 miles south of Tampa.

    Police: Fla. Woman Kills Co - Worker, Self, NYT, 8.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Office-Shooting.html

NYC Police: Boy Took Gun to School

May 25, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:08 p.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- A second-grader brought a gun to school, and his mother and teenage brother were arrested, police said.

The mother, a traffic enforcement agent, faced charges of endangering a child's welfare. The 14-year-old brother was charged because he owned the gun, said Kevin Ryan, a spokesman for the Queens district attorney.

The 7-year-old boy brought the unloaded .38-caliber handgun to Public School 63 in Queens on Thursday, police said. A teacher took it away after hearing from other students that he was showing it off.

Ryan said the teen had gotten the gun from someone else, and his mother told him to get rid of it, but he did not.

Andrea Clarke, 35, was awaiting arraignment on Friday. The district attorney's office said the name of her lawyer was not immediately available; her home number could not be located.

The 14-year-old brother was charged as a juvenile with reckless endangerment in family court.

(This version CORRECTS that gun was unloaded. )

    NYC Police: Boy Took Gun to School, NYT, 25.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-BRF-Gun-at-School.html

3 Shot During Chicago Bank Robbery

May 22, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:17 p.m. ET
The New York Times

CHICAGO (AP) -- Three masked bank robbers shot a security guard, starting a shootout in a bank Tuesday morning that wounded a teller and a customer before the suspects fled, authorities said.

The suspects were only in the bank for four or five minutes and got away with a small amount of cash, Deputy Police Chief Michael Shields said. He said police were checking the license plate of a vehicle caught on surveillance tape leaving the area.

The three victims -- a male security guard, a teller and a female customer -- were all hospitalized in either serious or critical condition, Shields said.

''Due to the extreme amount of violence in this crime,'' the FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for their arrests, FBI spokesman Frank Botche said. He said authorities believe the same suspects may have been involved in another bank robbery two weeks earlier.

The suspects entered the Illinois Service Federal Savings and Loan around 9 a.m., grabbed a weapon from one of the bank's two guards, and one suspect jumped over the counter, Shields said.

The bank has no bulletproof separation between customers and tellers, said Chicago Alderman Freddrenna Lyle, a customer of the bank in her ward. She said the bank was trying to appear less intimidating to customers in the largely black community.

Pilar Jones said her daughter, Jasmine Tate, is a teller at the bank and called her from the building. It was her second day on the job.

''She yelled into the phone: 'We're being robbed. A security guard has been shot and I can't get out,''' Jones said. Tate, 18, was unhurt, her mother said.

A recorded message left on the bank's main telephone number Tuesday morning instructed callers to try back later and a voicemail was not immediately returned. Several messages left for comment at the bank's other Chicago branch were not immediately returned.

    3 Shot During Chicago Bank Robbery, NYT, 22.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bank-Robbery.html

Trial in Videotaped Shooting Delayed

May 21, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:34 p.m. ET
The New York Times

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) -- The trial of a former sheriff's deputy charged in the videotaped shooting of an Iraq war veteran was delayed Monday because the defense attorney's wife was in labor.

Opening statements were rescheduled for May 29.

''That did put a kink in our plans,'' San Bernardino County Judge Michael A. Smith said. ''I apologize for the delay.''

Former San Bernardino County sheriff's Deputy Ivory Webb Jr., 46, has pleaded not guilty to felony charges of attempted voluntary manslaughter and assault with a firearm. If convicted, he could face more than 18 years in prison.

A grainy videotape taken by a bystander on Jan. 29, 2006, shows Webb shooting Air Force Senior Airman Elio Carrion, who appears to be obeying an order to get up off the ground.

The video was aired repeatedly on national TV.

A jury was sworn in last Wednesday after undergoing two rounds of questioning and filling out a 26-page questionnaire.

Carrion, who has recovered from his wounds, is expected to testify at the trial. He has also filed a civil claim against San Bernardino County.

Carrion, now 23, was a passenger in a car that crashed in Chino, about 50 miles east of Los Angeles, while being chased by Webb. Carrion testified at a preliminary hearing that he had been drinking at a barbecue to celebrate his recent return from Iraq.

On the 40-second video clip, he can be heard swearing at Webb before the deputy tells him to ''get up! get up!'' Carrion was then shot three times in the chest, left leg and left shoulder.

Webb's lawyer, Michael Schwartz, has previously suggested that his client might actually have shouted ''don't get up!'' He has also argued that Webb may have believed Carrion was reaching for a weapon in his jacket pocket as he stood up. Carrion was found to be unarmed.

    Trial in Videotaped Shooting Delayed, NYT, 21.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Airman-Shooting.html

4 Dead, 2 Injured in Idaho Shootings

May 21, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:36 p.m. ET
The New York Times

MOSCOW, Idaho (AP) -- The wife of a gunman who killed two people and himself at a courthouse and a church was found dead inside her home, police said Monday.

Crystal Hamilton, 30, a courthouse maintenance worker, died of a single gunshot to the head, Latah County Sheriff Wayne Rausch said. Authorities believe she was killed before her husband, Jason Hamilton, went on his spree late Saturday and early Sunday, Rausch said.

This is a breaking news update. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

MOSCOW, Idaho (AP) -- With the First Presbyterian Church wrapped in yellow crime scene tape, parishioners had to go elsewhere to mourn the victims of a shooting rampage that has stunned this quiet college town.

A gunman sprayed dozens of bullets into a courthouse, killing a police officer and wounding a sheriff's deputy and a civilian, then went to a nearby church where he apparently killed a church sexton and himself, police said.

''These kinds of things aren't supposed to happen in this community,'' Police Chief Dan Weaver said Sunday at a news conference.

Police said the gunman started shooting from a parking lot across from the courthouse shortly after 11 p.m. Saturday. A hail of more than 30 bullets ripped through the county's emergency dispatch center, an apparent attempt to lure people into the line of fire.

''Whoever the shooter is wanted to draw people to the courthouse,'' assistant Chief David Duke said. ''When officers responded, he did open fire on them.''

Officer Lee Newbill was killed as he rushed to the courthouse, and a Latah County Sheriff's deputy helped pull the officer out of the way before being shot, Duke said.

The gunman apparently retreated to the nearby First Presbyterian Church, where police heard the last gunshot shortly after 1 a.m.

About 6 a.m., three SWAT teams entered the church and found the bodies of the shooter and another man, Duke said. An assault rifle, ammunition and spent shells were found next to the gunman's corpse.

The shooter died of what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, Duke said. His body was found in the sanctuary, and the body of another man was found in the church office. The second man also died of gunshot wounds, Duke said.

The Rev. Norman Fowler identified the victim as Paul Bauer, a grandfatherly presence at the church where he lived. Bauer was in his 60s.

Police did not release the gunman's identity or information about his motive. ''He was just shooting at anybody he could,'' Duke said.

Moscow, home of the University of Idaho, is located 80 miles south of Spokane, Wash., and surrounded by vast farmland. Streets in the area had been barricaded and residents had been told to stay inside. Graduation ceremonies at the university were just a week ago.

Newbill, the first officer at the scene, had served with the police department since March 2001 and is the city's first officer killed in the line of duty.

Deputy Brannon Jordon, a 17-year veteran, was shot as he took cover behind a tree after pulling Newbill out of the line of fire, Duke said. Jordon was in serious condition with multiple gunshot wounds, the assistant chief said.

Authorities did not release the name of the injured civilian, but said he lived in the neighborhood and had gone outside after hearing the gunshots. The man was in serious but stable condition.

On Sunday, Fowler canceled his plans to fly with 18 members of his congregation to help with Hurricane Katrina rebuilding efforts. Instead, Fowler found himself urging sobbing parishioners to pray for the family of the shooter during a service at a nearby university music hall.

''Preparing for the service today was basically leaving it up to the spirit to move me,'' Fowler said later.

    4 Dead, 2 Injured in Idaho Shootings, NYT, 21.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Idaho-Shootings.html

S.C. Considers Allowing Guns on Campuses

May 16, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:14 p.m. ET
The New York Times

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- To prevent school shootings, some South Carolina legislators want more guns on campuses.

A House subcommittee approved a measure Wednesday that would allow concealed weapon permit holders to carry guns onto public school campuses, from elementary schools to universities. Supporters say having trained and armed gun owners in schools could prevent massacres like the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech, where one armed student killed 32 people.

Only Utah currently has a law allowing concealed weapons on campuses.

''We're not talking about kids. We're talking about responsible adults,'' said Republican Rep. Jeff Duncan, who sponsored the bill.

Opponents fear more guns will mean more accidental shootings.

''You can't call a bullet back,'' said Democratic Rep. Seth Whipper. ''It's a bad idea.''

The bill heads to the House Judiciary Committee, though it is not expected to pass the Legislature before the scheduled adjournment June 7.

Nationwide, 37 states ban weapons at schools. Of those, 16 explicitly prohibit weapons on college campuses, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

College police chiefs across South Carolina said such a law would make it difficult to pinpoint a criminal. ''Today, if we respond, we know the person with the weapon is the bad guy,'' said Ernest Ellis, the law enforcement director at the University of South Carolina.

To obtain a concealed weapon permit in South Carolina, a resident must be at least 21, undergo at least eight hours of handgun training, and pass criminal and mental background checks.

    S.C. Considers Allowing Guns on Campuses, NYT, 16.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Guns-on-Campus.html

2 Bank Workers Killed in Alabama Robbery

May 14, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:18 p.m. ET
The New York Times

BESSEMER, Ala. (AP) -- A gunman fatally shot two bank employees during a robbery Monday morning at a Wachovia branch, authorities said.

Deputies later shot one suspect as he left the bank with a gun held to a female hostage's head, and they were searching for a possible second suspect, a Jefferson County sheriff's spokesman told The Birmingham News. The spokesman said two other employees were shot and wounded.

The conditions of the wounded employees and the suspect were not immediately known. Calls to the sheriff's department and Bessemer police for additional details were not immediately returned.

Wachovia spokeswoman Evelyn Mitchell said bank officials were working with police and the FBI.

''It's a terrible day for Wachovia,'' Mitchell told The Birmingham News. ''Our hearts are with our employees and their families right now.''

Bessemer is about 15 miles southwest of Birmingham.

    2 Bank Workers Killed in Alabama Robbery, NYT, 14.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bank-Robbery.html

Group: Still easy for mentally ill to buy guns

13.5.2007
USA Today
By Kevin Johnson

Information on 90% of mental health records that could disqualify prospective gun buyers has not been supplied to the FBI database used to screen firearm purchases, a report to be released today shows.

The report was conducted by Third Way, a Washington think tank founded by several former senior aides to President Clinton to advocate policies for Democrats. It comes weeks after Virginia Tech University shooter Seung Hui Cho — found mentally ill by a Virginia judge prior to buying two handguns — committed the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.

Federal law bans people who have been judged mentally ill and committed for treatment from buying guns. But 28 states do not provide mental health records to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), FBI spokesman Steve Fischer said.

Virginia does provide mental health records to the database, but because Cho was voluntarily committed for treatment, the court judgment was not supplied to the FBI. Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine has since closed that loophole.

The Third Way report said the national database remains "deeply flawed."

While the number of mental health records supplied to the database has increased from 90,000 in 2002 to 234,000 in 2005, Jim Kessler, Third Way's vice president for policy, said at least 2.6 million records should be in the system. That estimate "is likely low" because the figure was drawn from a 2000 Government Accounting Office report on NICS, said Kessler, former legislative director for Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

"Stopping a severely mentally ill person from buying a gun through the NICS system is a matter of pure chance," he said.

Chris Cox, chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, accused the authors of the new report of "trying to exploit a tragedy to make themselves relevant," but added, "Clearly, there is a problem when only 22 states enter (mental health) records (to the NICS system)."

The report also says a quarter of felony convictions have not been supplied to the database.

States have not supplied information for a variety of reasons, including privacy law interpretations and the lack of automation to transfer records.

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., whose husband was killed by a deranged gunman, is sponsoring legislation that would provide $375 million in each of the next three years to the states to assist in the transfer of records to the NICS database.

    Group: Still easy for mentally ill to buy guns, UT, 13.5.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-05-13-guns-mentally-ill_N.htm

Shooting in NY Courtroom; No Injuries

May 9, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:06 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SUFFERN, N.Y. (AP) -- A man who had been acquitted of charges he groped a woman fired a sawed-off rifle at her during a court hearing over attorney's fees, authorities said. No one was injured but the shot narrowly missed the judge's head.

''I should have shot that b---- two years ago,'' Leo Lewis Jr. said as he stood up and pulled the trigger on Monday night, according to a felony complaint issued Tuesday. The complaint also said Lewis confessed he had previously thought about killing the woman.

Lewis had been acquitted of charges of forcibly touching the 21-year-old woman, and on Monday he was seeking attorney's fees from her in small claims court, according to Louis Valvo, chief assistant district attorney for Rockland County.

The hearing was being held in the small town of Sloatsburg, and the courtroom on the second floor of Village Hall has no metal detectors.

The shot missed the woman and struck a window several feet above a judge's head, police said. An officer who was in the courtroom for traffic court fired off a shot, then chased Lewis down and, with the help of a bystander and a village court officer, tackled him in a parking lot as he fled, authorities said.

Bail was set at $500,000, and the woman and the Sloatsburg judge, Thomas Newman, were given orders of protection against Lewis.

The gun was brought into court in a large manila envelope. Valvo said more weapons and ammunition were found at the defendant's house.

Lewis, his face bruised from being tackled, was arraigned on second-degree attempted murder and weapon possession charges Tuesday. He pleaded not guilty.

''This is not the man I married,'' the defendant's wife, Julie Lewis, said tearfully outside court. She said her 60-year-old husband had terminal cancer and ''I have no idea'' why he allegedly committed the crime. She said the woman who had accused him was a family friend.

Sloatsburg is a village about 40 miles northwest of New York, where the woman lives and the hearing was held. The complaint was filed Tuesday in Suffern, a nearby town.

Sloatsburg Mayor Carl Wright told the Journal News that an effort to install security cameras and other safety measures was under way but the plan did not include a metal detector.

(This version CORRECTS accuser was 21, not 49.)

    Shooting in NY Courtroom; No Injuries, NYT, 9.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Courtroom-Shooting.html

Cho Didn't Get Court - Ordered Treatment

May 7, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:13 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The gunman who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech failed to get the mental health treatment ordered by a judge who declared him an imminent threat to himself and others, a newspaper reported Monday.

Seung-Hui Cho was found ''mentally ill and in need of hospitalization'' in December 2005, according to court papers. A judge ordered him into involuntary outpatient treatment.

However, neither the court nor community mental health officials followed up on the judge's order, and Cho didn't get the treatment, The Washington Post reported, citing unnamed authorities who have seen Cho's medical files.

Federal, state and local law enforcement and local mental health officials contacted Monday by The Associated Press would not confirm the story. School officials did not immediately return multiple calls seeking comment.

''The system doesn't work well,'' said Tom Diggs, executive director of the Commission on Mental Health Law Reform, which has been studying the state mental health system and will report to the General Assembly next year.

On Dec. 13, 2005, Cho e-mailed a roommate at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg saying that he might as well commit suicide. The roommate called police, who took Cho to the New River Valley Community Services Board, the area's mental health agency.

Cho was detained temporarily at Carilion St. Albans Behavioral Health Clinic in Christiansburg, a few miles from campus, until a special justice could review his case in a commitment hearing.

On Dec. 14, special judge Paul M. Barnett found that Cho was an imminent danger to himself and ordered him into involuntary outpatient treatment. Special justices are lawyers with some expertise and training who are appointed by the jurisdiction's chief judge.

Terry W. Teel, Cho's court-appointed lawyer at the time, said he does not remember Cho or the details of his case. But he said Cho most likely would have been ordered to seek treatment at Virginia Tech's Cook Counseling Center.

The court doesn't follow up because ''we have no authority,'' Teel said.

Virginia Tech mental health officials would not discuss Cho's case because of privacy laws.

Virginia law says community services boards ''shall recommend a specific course of treatment and programs'' for people such as Cho who are ordered to receive outpatient treatment. It also says these boards ''shall monitor the person's compliance.''

''That's news to us,'' said Mike Wade of the New River Valley Community Services Board.

    Cho Didn't Get Court - Ordered Treatment, NYT, 7.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Virginia-Tech-Cho.html

A Liberal Case for Gun Rights Helps Sway Judiciary

May 6, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

In March, for the first time in the nation’s history, a federal appeals court struck down a gun control law on Second Amendment grounds. Only a few decades ago, the decision would have been unimaginable.

There used to be an almost complete scholarly and judicial consensus that the Second Amendment protects only a collective right of the states to maintain militias. That consensus no longer exists — thanks largely to the work over the last 20 years of several leading liberal law professors, who have come to embrace the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns.

In those two decades, breakneck speed by the standards of constitutional law, they have helped to reshape the debate over gun rights in the United States. Their work culminated in the March decision, Parker v. District of Columbia, and it will doubtless play a major role should the case reach the United States Supreme Court.

Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, said he had come to believe that the Second Amendment protected an individual right.

“My conclusion came as something of a surprise to me, and an unwelcome surprise,” Professor Tribe said. “I have always supported as a matter of policy very comprehensive gun control.”

The first two editions of Professor Tribe’s influential treatise on constitutional law, in 1978 and 1988, endorsed the collective rights view. The latest, published in 2000, sets out his current interpretation.

Several other leading liberal constitutional scholars, notably Akhil Reed Amar at Yale and Sanford Levinson at the University of Texas, are in broad agreement favoring an individual rights interpretation. Their work has in a remarkably short time upended the conventional understanding of the Second Amendment, and it set the stage for the Parker decision.

The earlier consensus, the law professors said in interviews, reflected received wisdom and political preferences rather than a serious consideration of the amendment’s text, history and place in the structure of the Constitution. “The standard liberal position,” Professor Levinson said, “is that the Second Amendment is basically just read out of the Constitution.”

The Second Amendment says, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” (Some transcriptions of the amendment omit the last comma.)

If only as a matter of consistency, Professor Levinson continued, liberals who favor expansive interpretations of other amendments in the Bill of Rights, like those protecting free speech and the rights of criminal defendants, should also embrace a broad reading of the Second Amendment. And just as the First Amendment’s protection of the right to free speech is not absolute, the professors say, the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to keep and bear arms may be limited by the government, though only for good reason.

The individual rights view is far from universally accepted. “The overwhelming weight of scholarly opinion supports the near-unanimous view of the federal courts that the constitutional right to be armed is linked to an organized militia,” said Dennis A. Henigan, director of the legal action project of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “The exceptions attract attention precisely because they are so rare and unexpected.”

Scholars who agree with gun opponents and support the collective rights view say the professors on the other side may have been motivated more by a desire to be provocative than by simple intellectual honesty.

“Contrarian positions get play,” Carl T. Bogus, a law professor at Roger Williams University, wrote in a 2000 study of Second Amendment scholarship. “Liberal professors supporting gun control draw yawns.”

If the full United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit does not step in and reverse the 2-to-1 panel decision striking down a law that forbids residents to keep handguns in their homes, the question of the meaning of the Second Amendment is almost certainly headed to the Supreme Court. The answer there is far from certain.

That too is a change. In 1992, Warren E. Burger, a former chief justice of the United States appointed by President Richard M. Nixon, expressed the prevailing view.

“The Second Amendment doesn’t guarantee the right to have firearms at all,” Mr. Burger said in a speech. In a 1991 interview, Mr. Burger called the individual rights view “one of the greatest pieces of fraud — I repeat the word ‘fraud’ — on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

Even as he spoke, though, the ground was shifting underneath him. In 1989, in what most authorities say was the beginning of the modern era of mainstream Second Amendment scholarship, Professor Levinson published an article in The Yale Law Journal called “The Embarrassing Second Amendment.”

“The Levinson piece was very much a turning point,” said Mr. Henigan of the Brady Center. “He was a well-respected scholar, and he was associated with a liberal point of view politically.”

In an interview, Professor Levinson described himself as “an A.C.L.U.-type who has not ever even thought of owning a gun.”

Robert A. Levy, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian group that supports gun rights, and a lawyer for the plaintiffs in the Parker case, said four factors accounted for the success of the suit. The first, Mr. Levy said, was “the shift in scholarship toward an individual rights view, particularly from liberals.”

He also cited empirical research questioning whether gun control laws cut down on crime; a 2001 decision from the federal appeals court in New Orleans that embraced the individual rights view even as it allowed a gun prosecution to go forward; and the Bush administration’s reversal of a longstanding Justice Department position under administrations of both political parties favoring the collective rights view.

Filing suit in the District of Columbia was a conscious decision, too, Mr. Levy said. The gun law there is one of the most restrictive in the nation, and questions about the applicability of the Second Amendment to state laws were avoided because the district is governed by federal law.

“We wanted to proceed very much like the N.A.A.C.P.,” Mr. Levy said, referring to that group’s methodical litigation strategy intended to do away with segregated schools.

Professor Bogus, a supporter of the collective rights view, said the Parker decision represented a milestone in that strategy. “This is the story of an enormously successful and dogged campaign to change the conventional view of the right to bear arms,” he said.

The text of the amendment is not a model of clarity, and arguments over its meaning tend to be concerned with whether the first part of the sentence limits the second. The history of its drafting and contemporary meaning provide support for both sides as well.

The Supreme Court has not decided a Second Amendment case since 1939. That ruling was, as Judge Stephen Reinhardt, a liberal judge on the federal appeals court in San Francisco acknowledged in 2002, “somewhat cryptic,” again allowing both sides to argue that Supreme Court precedent aided their interpretation of the amendment.

Still, nine federal appeals courts around the nation have adopted the collective rights view, opposing the notion that the amendment protects individual gun rights. The only exceptions are the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, and the District of Columbia Circuit. The Second Circuit, in New York, has not addressed the question.

Linda Singer, the District of Columbia’s attorney general, said the debate over the meaning of the amendment was not only an academic one.

“It’s truly a life-or-death question for us,” she said. “It’s not theoretical. We all remember very well when D.C. had the highest murder rate in the country, and we won’t go back there.”

The decision in Parker has been stayed while the full appeals court decides whether to rehear the case.

Should the case reach the Supreme Court, Professor Tribe said, “there’s a really quite decent chance that it will be affirmed.”

    A Liberal Case for Gun Rights Helps Sway Judiciary, NYT, 6.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/us/06firearms.html?hp

NRA: Don't ban gun sales to suspects

USA Today
By Sam Hananel
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON — The National Rifle Association is urging the Bush administration to withdraw its support of a bill that would prohibit suspected terrorists from buying firearms. Backed by the Justice Department, the measure would give the attorney general the discretion to block gun sales, licenses or permits to terror suspects.

In a letter this week to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, NRA executive director Chris Cox said the bill, offered last week by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., "would allow arbitrary denial of Second Amendment rights based on mere 'suspicions' of a terrorist threat."

"As many of our friends in law enforcement have rightly pointed out, the word 'suspect' has no legal meaning, particularly when it comes to denying constitutional liberties," Cox wrote.

In a letter supporting the measure, Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling said the bill would not automatically prevent a gun sale to a suspected terrorist. In some cases, federal agents may want to let a sale go forward to avoid compromising an ongoing investigation.

Hertling also notes there is a process to challenge denial of a sale.

Current law requires gun dealers to conduct a criminal background check and deny sales if a gun purchaser falls under a specified prohibition, including a felony conviction, domestic abuse conviction or illegal immigration. There is no legal basis to deny a sale if a purchaser is on a terror watch list.

"When I tell people that you can be on a terrorist watch list and still be allowed to buy as many guns as you want, they are shocked," said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which supports Lautenberg's bill.

In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, lawmakers are considering a number of measures to strengthen gun sale laws. The NRA, which usually opposes increased restrictions on firearms, is taking different positions depending on the proposal.

"Right now law enforcement carefully monitors all firearms sales to those on the terror watch list," said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam. "Injecting the attorney general into the process just politicizes it."

A 2005 study by the Government Accountability Office found that 35 of 44 firearm purchase attempts over a five-month period made by known or suspected terrorists were approved by the federal law enforcement officials.

    NRA: Don't ban gun sales to suspects, UT, 4.5.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-05-04-nra-measure_N.htm

Lawmakers Ask Feds

to Share Data on Guns

May 2, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:51 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When handguns with bullets that can pierce body armor showed up on the streets of New Jersey, Sen. Frank Lautenberg asked federal regulators to share data that could help local police figure out where the weapons were coming from.

That information, the New Jersey Democrat was told, is off-limits.

The amendment that bars such sharing of gun trace data has now touched off a feud between its sponsor, Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., and a coalition of more than 200 mayors led by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino.

Insisting that gun trace data is an essential crimefighting tool for cities, Bloomberg used his own funds as seed money, formed Mayors Against Illegal Guns and made repealing Tiahrt's amendment its number one issue this year.

Tiahrt and Bloomberg met in Washington earlier this year to try to find a compromise. ''I thought we were close,'' Tiahrt said.

But when Tiahrt showed his proposed changes, ''it was one step forward, three steps back,'' said Bloomberg's criminal justice coordinator, John Feinblatt.

So last week, the mayors' group began airing television ads against Tiahrt's amendment in several media markets, including Tiahrt's Wichita district -- a step Tiahrt said went too far.

''I think that personal attack is something that's very upsetting to me and very unjustified and a great mischaracterization of all my efforts here,'' Tiahrt said.

Two TV stations in Wichita declined to air the ads, saying they could not verify the claims.

Tiahrt said his amendment, first passed in 2003 and typically attached to a major spending bill each year, is meant to protect sensitive information that, if shared with local police, could jeopardize active crime investigations.

Besides, he said, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has misinterpreted the amendment and tends to withhold more information than necessary.

Bloomberg's aide countered that the amendment ''makes police officers do their job with a blindfold on.''

''What you want to know is, for my jurisdiction, are there a small number of dealers who keep supplying crime guns to my city? And you can't get that information,'' Feinblatt said.

Under the Tiahrt amendment, local law enforcement agencies can obtain gun trace data from ATF if it concerns a specific criminal investigation or prosecution. But many police chiefs, mayors and their supporters in Congress say cities need access to ATF's broader data to help fight crime.

In New Jersey's case, Lautenberg said, Tiahrt's amendment made it harder for police to identify trends in illegal gun trafficking, the types of guns criminals are getting, and which gun shops provided the weapons.

''We need to be able to identify where guns come from to combat gun violence and protect our communities,'' Lautenberg said.

Tiahrt sees a political motive at work, noting that the use of trace data in lawsuits and other proceedings led to the revocation of some gun dealers' licenses.

''They say they want the data to prevent crime, but they have no plan to use that data to prevent crime,'' Tiahrt said. ''I think perhaps what they want it for is to move a political agenda forward. A gun control agenda possibly.''

New York City has sued more than two dozen gun dealers nationwide, alleging they sold firearms illegally to undercover private investigators. Officials contend hundreds of weapons used in New York City crimes came from those dealers.

The movement to repeal the Tiahrt amendment has the backing of 10 law enforcement groups, including the International Association of Chiefs of Police, but not the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation's largest law enforcement organization.

''This is like mayoral vigilantism,'' said FOP executive director Jim Pasco. ''It's not their law to enforce. They go out like a bull in a China shop and wander around outside their jurisdictions trying to make civil cases. It's absurd.''

When it first passed in 2003, Tiahrt's amendment had the blessing of the powerful National Rifle Association. The NRA also has been Tiahrt's fourth-largest contributor since he was elected to Congress in 1994, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said part of the Tiahrt amendment's goal is to protect gun manufacturers and gun dealers from lawsuits.

''With that background from ATF, you can learn who the corrupt gun dealers are and how they're fueling the illegal trafficking in guns,'' Helmke said. ''Without that information, it's a lot harder to do it.''

Since the federal assault weapons ban expired in 2004, Helmke said, some lawmakers want to know whether there has been a rise in crime committed with those firearms. Because ATF won't release that data, they can't find out.

Tiahrt claims the ATF could release some of its aggregate gun data and regional reports under his measure and that he plans to revise his amendment to make that clear.

As for Bloomberg, Tiahrt said, ''I'm still committed to working with him if he has a problem with any criminal cases.''

------

On the Net:

Fraternal Order of Police: http://www.grandlodgefop.org/

Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence: http://www.bradycenter.org/

Mayors Against Illegal Guns: http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org

    Lawmakers Ask Feds to Share Data on Guns, NYT, 2.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Gun-Sales-Congress.html

Privacy Laws Slow Efforts

on Gun-Buyer Data

May 2, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL LUO

WASHINGTON, May 1 — Momentum is building in Congress behind a measure that would push states to report their mental health records to the federal database used to conduct background checks on gun buyers.

But a thicket of obstacles, most notably state privacy laws, have thwarted repeated efforts to improve the reporting of such records in the past and are likely to complicate this latest effort, even after the worst mass shooting in United States history at Virginia Tech last month.

Federal law prohibits anyone who has been adjudicated as a “mental defective,” as well as anyone involuntarily committed to a mental institution, from buying a firearm. But only 22 states now submit any mental health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, against which all would-be gun purchasers must be checked.

The erratic reporting is a problem to which gun-control advocates, law enforcement officials and others have sought to draw attention for years.

“We’ve had these wake-up calls for years, and all we ever do is push the snooze button,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

The federal system, in fact, contained only about 235,000 mental health records as of January 2006, even though it is estimated that as many as 2.7 million people have been involuntarily institutionalized nationwide.

“The biggest impediment is privacy relating to mental health records,” said Joey Hixenbaugh, a unit chief in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s criminal justice information systems division.

In 1998, Russell Weston barged into the United States Capitol and fatally shot two police officers. Mr. Weston had been involuntarily committed in Montana as a paranoid schizophrenic, but the authorities in Illinois, where he bought the gun, were unaware of that because privacy laws bar Montana from reporting those records to federal authorities.

Several years later, Peter Troy, who was twice admitted to a mental hospital, killed a priest and a parishioner at a Long Island church with a .22-caliber rifle he bought.

In the case of Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech gunman, a special justice declared in late 2005 that Mr. Cho was mentally ill and a danger to himself, ordering him to outpatient treatment after two women complained that he was harassing them. The finding should have disqualified him from buying a gun under federal law, which says that any court ruling that a person is a “danger to himself or others” because of mental illness is adjudicated as a mental defective.

But because Virginia reported only involuntary commitments to mental health facilities, Mr. Cho’s information was not reported to the state police and federal authorities.

Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia issued an executive order this week to try to close the gap between state and federal law by requiring that commitments for outpatient treatment be reported, as well.

The bill being pushed by Representative Carolyn McCarthy and Senator Charles E. Schumer, both New York Democrats, takes a carrot-and-stick approach that offers money to states to automate records and speed their transmission to the federal database. It also withholds part of federal financing for a crime-prevention program from states that do not comply.

The measure is co-sponsored by Representative John D. Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who is a former board member of the National Rifle Association and a longtime opponent of gun control. Senator Larry E. Craig of Idaho, a current member of the association board, said he supported the thrust of the bill.

Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the N.R.A., said it was mainly mental health groups that had stood in the way of similar legislation in the past.

“We are not an obstacle,” Mr. LaPierre said. “We’re strongly in support of putting those records in the system.”

But Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, said his group was fighting the bill.

“Our biggest concern is this is being done as a denial of a civil liberty, and it’s being done without due process,” Mr. Pratt said.

Mental health advocates also opposed the measure, arguing that reporting these records to a federal database contributed to the stigmatization of mental illness.

David L. Shern, chief executive of Mental Health America, said the bill did not take into account how treatment could cure people.

“This is a classic example of a well-intentioned effort that’s going to have almost no effect and, in fact, is going to do harm,” Mr. Shern said.

The Supreme Court put up another hurdle to having states report records to federal authorities with a controversial ruling in 1997. In a lawsuit financed by the N.R.A.’s civil defense fund, the court struck down an earlier provision of the Brady bill that governs the background checks on gun purchases and ruled that state workers could not be ordered to carry out a federal regulatory program. States can be encouraged to share their information voluntarily, but in many cases they would have to amend their privacy laws to do so, an uphill battle in many states.

In North Carolina, gun-control groups tried in 2002 to require the reporting of additional mental health records but were stymied by both mental health and pro-gun groups.

Robin Peyson of the Texas chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness said she would oppose efforts to change privacy laws in her state.

“Its unintended consequence will be to discourage people from seeking treatment when they need it most,” Ms. Peyson said.

    Privacy Laws Slow Efforts on Gun-Buyer Data, NYT, 2.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/us/02guns.html