Commentary

Delegates to the Republican National Convention are considering the most pro-gun political platform ever, supporting national concealed-carry reciprocity, opposing domestic restrictions on ammunition sales, and resisting United Nations interference in gun sales.

The number of hunters age 16 and older in the United States increased 9 percent between 2006 and 2011, reversing a previous downward trend, a preliminary report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and Department of the Interior shows.

Due to overwhelming grassroots opposition from law-abiding gun owners and California’s firearms industry members, SB 249 was pulled from the Assembly Appropriations Committee hearing calendar for Thursday, Aug. 16. This means that the bill is dead for the year.

(GunReports.com) — To encourage collegiate target shooting at both varsity and club levels, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) is inviting schools to apply for a total of $300,000 in grants to be awarded through its Collegiate Shooting Sports Initiative.NSSF, the trade association for the firearms, ammunition, hunting and shooting sports industry, has awarded more than $650,000 to 75 colleges to help establish, expand and sustain shooting clubs and teams. Grant applications are available at…

The University of Colorado will not allow students to bring guns into the Boulder campus dorms this fall, though residents who have concealed-carry permits will be allowed to keep weapons in a limited number of family housing units, school officials announced.

You may recently have seen some in the Internet rumor mill feverishly stirring up fear about recent acquisitions of ammunition by the Department of Homeland Security and a number of smaller agencies. The mildest writers have questioned why seemingly mundane agencies would need ammunition at all; more incendiary authors wrongly suggest that these government agencies are preparing for a war with the American people, NRA-ILA comments.

Police in Thailand say that they will charge a member of the Thai parliament with causing death by negligence for accidentally shooting his secretary dead with a submachine gun, the BBC reports.

John Lott, writing on this personal blog johnrlott.blogspot.com, commented that there has been a lot of discussion about Australia's gun control laws. He cites a piece at the Huffington Post:

There has been no significant change in public views on the issue of gun control and gun rights following the July 20th shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, a Pew Research Center poll released on July 30, shows.

Corey Cogdell is a Trap Shooter who won a bronze medal at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and competed in the 2012 Olympic Games in London, placing 11th in Women’s Trap. She also hunts wild game. After Cogdell published photos on Facebook of herself posing alongside animals she killed, anti-hunting activists took to Twitter to threaten and insult her, the political website Twitchy.com

In an interview on Fox News on Sunday, Justice Antonin Scalia said there “are some limitations that can be imposed” on the purchase of guns.

Very aggressive gun control hasn’t prevented multiple-victim public shootings in Europe, writes economist John Lott at FoxNews.com. And he adds that gun-free zones are a common feature of mass shootings.