ADAM WINKLER

The sweeping ban on high-powered guns and high-capacity magazines that became law in Illinois this month is certain to face legal challenges, and experts are unsure it can hold up.

Voters in Oregon passed one of the nation's toughest gun control laws, but the new permit-to-purchase mandate is facing a legal challenge with days to go before it takes effect.

Permitless carry laws in states including Kentucky, Idaho and Texas are creating a dilemma for police officers working the streets: They now have to decide, sometimes in seconds, if someone with the right to carry a gun is a danger.

An individual right to own a gun for personal protection is an idea deeply ingrained in American culture, but until Dick Heller came along, there was little actual legal framework to back that belief.

President Joe Biden has been intimately involved in some of the gun control movement's greatest successes — and failures.

With mass shootings in Texas, New York and California fresh in Americans’ mind, the Supreme Court will soon issue its biggest gun ruling in more than a decade.

It’s Monday, April 25, and this week political dominoes will start to fall as politicians start lining up for down-ballot races because of the now-enacted congressional map.

Ohio became the 23rd state to drop license restrictions for carrying a concealed weapon. Though it is a complicated issue, experts suggest it won't be the last.

Gun owners are growing more diverse as increasing numbers of underrepresented Americans arm up.

The payouts — which could be covered in part by insurance held by the production company — would likely be in the "millions and millions" of dollars.

Experts predict a tremendous legal fallout after Alec Baldwin pulled the trigger on a prop gun while filming “Rust” in New Mexico and unwittingly killed a cinematographer and injured a director.

The Mexican government is suing U.S. gun manufacturers and distributors, arguing that their commercial practices have unleashed tremendous bloodshed in Mexico.

Records show the number of people stopped from buying guns through the U.S. background check system hit an all-time high of more than 300,000 last year amid a surge of firearm sales.

Judge Roger Benitez's opinion, although it began with a nutty comparison of a Swiss Army knife to an AR-15, may be on solid ground concerning a basic point, columnist George Skelton writes.

A judge’s decision on the 32-year-old law could have national implications if it heads to the US supreme court A customer holds an AR-15 style rifle at a gun show in Costa Mesa, California, last week. Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images In a polarizing decision on Friday night, a federal judge struck down California’s 32-year-old ban on assault weapons, ruling that it violated Americans’ constitutional right to own guns for self protection. In the 94-page decision, Judge Roger Benitez

FILE - In this Nov. 2, 2020, file photo the Supreme Court is seen at sundown in Washington. Scott Applewhite, File)WASHINGTON – A possible expansion of gun rights is on the Supreme Court's agenda, days after mass shootings in Colorado and Georgia. The appeal comes from New York, which gun rights groups say is among eight states that make it difficult if not virtually impossible for people to get permits to carry guns in public. Unclear is whether the recent mass shootings will affect the court's consideration of the case. “The justices may be more reluctant to take a big Second Amendment case right now," Winkler said.

Wolf hunting policies in some states are taking an aggressive turn, as Republican lawmakers and conservative hunting groups push to curb their numbers and propose tactics shunned by many wildlife managers. AdThe timing of the Wisconsin hunt was bumped up following a lawsuit that raised concerns President Joe Biden’s administration would intervene to restore gray wolf protections. The states have been holding annual hunts since, and wildlife officials cite stable population levels as evidence of responsible wolf management. Ad“Too many wolves,” Republican state Sen. Bob Brown said of his mountainous district in northwest Montana. Ad“I’m not surprised we’re seeing hunting groups wrap themselves in the mantle of patriotism,” Winkler said.

The crowded field of Democrats running for the White House has offered a variety of proposals to curtail gun rights. The NICS system was created after passage of the Brady Bill, which mandated background checks to buy a firearm. In 1999, the first full year the system was used, just over 9 million background checks were conducted. Background checks declined under President George W. Bush but picked up again in 2006 and have mostly risen since then, except for 2014 and 2017. In 2018, there were 26.18 million background checks.

They have both an upper and lower receiver two parts as opposed to the single part described in the law. Federal law enforcement officials and members of Congress have been on notice about a potential problem with the language in federal gun law as applied to AR-15s since at least 2016. The documents state that the un-serialized matte black rifle Zawahri used to carry out the attack "appears to have been manufactured from an 80% lower receiver." The documents note that investigators recovered a ROHG Industries invoice for an 80% lower receiver in Zawahri's residence after he was killed by police. The lower receiver in Roh's case does not have a bolt or breechblock and is not threaded to receive the barrel, Nicolaysen noted.

But he said the success of the Trump administration in appointing federal judges, including to the high court, could alter that. Trump has the opportunity to fill a higher percentage of federal court vacancies than any president at this point in his first term since George H.W. Of 179 seats on the federal appellate courts, Trump has nominated 46 judges and had 43 confirmed. Democratic lawmakers said they will continue pushing more firearms restrictions even as some fear they could be thwarted in the federal courts. The gunman also carried a 75-round drum magazine and multiple 40-round magazines, all banned under California law.

The U.S. has recorded nearly 20 mass killings so far this year, the majority of them domestic violence attacks that receive scant national attention compared to high-profile public shootings in recent years at schools, churches and concerts. Four mass shootings happened in public places so far this year, compared with 10 in 2018 and seven in 2017. But 2019 saw a big increase in the number of mass killings in domestic disputes, helping to keep this year's overall numbers similar to past years. There have been 10 family mass killings this year; there were 10 during all of 2017. Fox said the public mass shootings do not happen "all that often, but they certainly do shock us."

Expert weighs in on gun control and mental health Adam Winkler, Constitutional Law Professor at UCLA talks about the UC Santa Barbara rampage and the complicated intersection of mental illness and access to guns