The National Gun Victim’s Action Council (NGAC) has announced a Starbucks boycott.

When I heard Jean Quan offhandedly drop that she was on a multi-mayor conference call during a BBC interview, I knew I had heard something of note. The rapid succession of similar crackdowns on Occupy encampments in several US cities seemed like more than a coincidence, and so it was kind of a smoking gun.

Why is it that “the right to bear arms” is enshrined in the Constitution, but the right to vote isn’t?

Adam Winkler’s Gunfight is a book of contradictions: a dispassionate book about a passionately debated topic, a sane book about competing insanities, a page-turner about legal doctrine and obscure bits of history, a piece of serious scholarship combined with journalistic flair.

Oh allowing young people to mix the college experience and guns…spectacular idea! Should be some real enjoyable weekends for campus security.

Obama avoids the discussion of high-capacity magazine clips like the one Jared Loughner used, or the broken American mental health system that never gave Loughner care he clearly needed. Once again we have a cautious middle course. But even on those terms, I’m not sure what he’s endorsing here. Does he want to close the gun show loophole? Does he need legislation to carry out his vision of responsible and consistent background checks? Is it all just a matter of enforcement?

Less remarked-upon is the kinds of systemic issues with public policy that led to the shooting in the first place: the breakdown of the US mental health system, and the ease with which people with intent to kill large numbers of people can get the weapons they need for that purpose. This has become the dog that didn’t bark in this tragedy. One of the victims of the shooting in Tucson was Gabe Zimmerman, a staffer for Giffords. His fiancee is one of the few to actually identify a problem related to the attack, and propose a solution.

Laws and rules are for the little people. Especially the ones without guns.

Ever notice how conservatives’ hatred of terrorists, criminals, undocumented immigrants, and civil liberties always comes in second to their love of guns?

In addition to the lack of discussion of the economic crisis, particularly the forgotten foreclosure crisis, one thing that struck many observers of the State of the Union address was no mention of gun safety, just a couple weeks after the Tucson shooting rampage and the assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.