#Massachusetts State Police Firearms Certificate

[idavidwilliams]

(Live-Fire , LTC, F.I.D) Massachusetts/ Connecticut License to Carry (LTC) or F.I.D Firearms Safety Course 02/15/2021

(Live-Fire , LTC, F.I.D) Massachusetts/ Connecticut License to Carry (LTC) or F.I.D Firearms Safety Course 02/15/2021

Contact us today. Classes are filling quick. This is a SHOOTING course.   The only way to learn is by seeing, hearing and doing.  You will learn: Safe handling of several different types of firearms, firearms storage laws, self-defense laws, transportation laws and much more. You will also receive safety materials and a CD in class. (This course completes the live fire requirement…

[breakingnewsalert1]

Dems look to take Massachusetts-style Gun Licensing Nationwide

Massachusetts is one of the few states that require a license to own any firearm, including a permit-to-purchase which is needed to buy a handgun and a 6-year license that is needed to maintain possession. A bill would help expand the program nationwide. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)

Democrats on Capitol Hill this week unveiled a program to use taxpayer dollars to help bring Massachusetts-style gun control laws to the rest of the country.

Massachusetts lawmakers U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, along with U.S. Reps. Joe Kennedy III and Ayanna Pressley on Monday introduced their Making America Safe and Secure (MASS) Act. The move would use federal grants to incentivize states to adopt the same gun-licensing standards used by the Commonwealth, which are some of the most restrictive firearm laws in the nation.

“By creating stricter guardrails around firearm purchasing and enforcing stronger gun safety laws, the MASS Act actively curbs the public health crisis that is gun violence,” said Pressley, a Boston-area progressive who won her seat last year with the help of national gun control groups. “Here in Massachusetts, we regularly put forward bold, activist legislation and I am proud to join in partnership with my fellow Bay Staters to say enough is enough.”

Filed in the Senate as S.2014, the bill would establish a U.S. Justice Department grant program open to eligible states that adopt and maintain licensing standards for gun owners. The guidelines would include that gun owners maintain a license, issued by their local chief of police or sheriff, for the entire time they legally possess a firearm. Licensing would include a thorough background check that could include an in-person interview and character references. First-time applicants would have to show proof of firearms training and the agency would have the ability to deny, suspend or revoke a license if they deem the applicant unsuitable.

The MASS Act was introduced with the approval of national gun control organizations to include the Brady Campaign.

Only 14 states have some sort of licensing or pre-certification requirement for the purchase or possession of firearms. The laws themselves are often controversial.

The first state to adopt mandatory gun licensing, New York, did so under the Sullivan Act, a 1911 law that requires anyone desiring a firearm small enough to be concealed to obtain a license. Even a century later, the law has been subject to legal challenges from those who hold licenses can be elusive, with applicants often waiting years or denied outright. In New Jersey in 2015, the case of a woman killed in her front yard by her ex-boyfriend while she was still waiting for her application for a firearm permit to be granted made national headlines. Meanwhile, critics of North Carolina’s Pistol Purchase Permit argue the practice was adopted in that state in 1919 as part of Jim Crow laws to strip minorities of their Second Amendment rights.

The MASS Act had been referred to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Meanwhile, Kennedy and Pressley intended to introduce a House version in their chamber later this week.

The post Dems look to take Massachusetts-style Gun Licensing Nationwide appeared first on Guns.com.

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[blackkudos]

Angela Davis

Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, academic scholar, and author. She emerged as a prominent counterculture activist and radical in the 1960s as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. Her interests include prisoner rights; she co-founded Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex. She was a professor (now retired) at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in its History of Consciousness Department and a former director of the university's Feminist Studies department.

Davis was prosecuted for conspiracy involving the 1970 armed take-over of a Marin County, California, courtroom, in which four persons were killed. She was acquitted in a federal trial.

Her research interests are feminism, African-American studies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music, social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons. Her membership in the Communist Party led to Ronald Reagan's request in 1969 to have her barred from teaching at any university in the State of California. She was twice a candidate for Vice President on the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1980s.

Early life

Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama. The family lived in the "Dynamite Hill" neighborhood, which was marked in the 1950s by the bombings of houses of middle-class blacks who had moved into the area. Davis occasionally spent time on her uncle's farm and with friends in New York City. Her family included brothers Ben and Reginald and sister Fania. Ben played defensive back for the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Davis attended Carrie A. Tuggle School, a segregated black elementary school; later she attended Parker Annex, a middle-school branch of Parker High School in Birmingham. During this time Davis' mother, Sallye Bell Davis, was a national officer and leading organizer of the Southern Negro Youth Congress, an organization influenced by the Communist Party, which was trying to build alliances among African Americans in the South. Consequently, Davis grew up surrounded by communist organizers and thinkers who significantly influenced her intellectual development.

Davis was involved in her church as a child, she was an active member in her church youth group and attended Sunday school regularly. Davis attributes much of her political involvement to her involvement with Girl Scouts of America, in Birmingham, as a young girl. She won many badges and certificates and went as far as to participate in Girl Scouts 1959 national roundup in Colorado. As a Girl Scout she marched and picketed to protest racial segregation in Birmingham.

By her junior year in high school, Davis had applied to and was accepted at an American Friends Service Committee program that placed black students from the South in integrated schools in the North. She chose Elisabeth Irwin High School in Greenwich Village. There she was introduced to socialism and communism, and recruited by a Communist youth group, Advance.

Education

Brandeis University

Davis was awarded a scholarship to Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, where she was one of three black students in her freshman class. She initially felt alienated by the isolation of the campus, but she soon made friends with foreign students. She encountered the Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse at a rally during the Cuban Missile Crisis and became his student. In a 2007 television interview, she said, "Herbert Marcuse taught me that it was possible to be an academic, an activist, a scholar, and a revolutionary." She worked part-time to earn enough money to travel to France and Switzerland before she attended the eighth World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki, Finland. She returned home in 1963 to a Federal Bureau of Investigation interview about her attendance at the Communist-sponsored festival.

During her second year at Brandeis, Davis decided to major in French and continued her intensive study of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Davis was accepted by the Hamilton College Junior Year in France Program. Classes were initially at Biarritz and later at the Sorbonne. In Paris, she and other students lived with a French family. She was in Biarritz when she learned of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, committed by a member of the Ku Klux Klan, in which four girls were killed. She was deeply grieved as she was personally acquainted with the young victims.

Nearing completion of her degree in French, Davis realized her major interest was in philosophy instead. She became particularly interested in the ideas of Herbert Marcuse and, on her return to Brandeis, she sat in on his course. Marcuse, she wrote, turned out to be approachable and helpful. She began making plans to attend the University of Frankfurt for graduate work in philosophy. In 1965 she graduated magna cum laude, a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

University of Frankfurt

In Germany, with a stipend of $100 a month, she first lived with a German family. Later, she moved with a group of students into a loft in an old factory. After visiting East Berlin during the annual May Day celebration, she felt that the East German government was dealing better with the residual effects of fascism than were the West Germans. Many of her roommates were active in the radical Socialist German Student Union (SDS), and Davis participated in some SDS actions. Events in the United States, including the formation of the Black Panther Party and the transformation of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to an all-black organization, made her ready to return to the US.

Postgraduate work

Marcuse had moved to a position at the University of California, San Diego, and Davis followed him there after her two years in Frankfurt. On her way back, Davis stopped in London to attend a conference on "The Dialectics of Liberation." The black contingent at the conference included the Trinidadian-American Stokely Carmichael and the British Michael X. Although moved by Carmichael's rhetoric, she was reportedly disappointed by her colleagues' black nationalist sentiments and their rejection of communism as a "white man's thing."

She joined the Che-Lumumba Club (an all-black branch of the Communist Party USA), named for international Communist sympathizers and leaders Che Guevara and Patrice Lumumba.

Davis earned her master's degree from UC-San Diego. She then earned her doctorate in philosophy from the Humboldt University in East Berlin.

Professor at University of California, Los Angeles, 1969–70

Beginning in 1969, Davis was an acting assistant professor in the philosophy department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Although both Princeton and Swarthmore had tried to recruit her, she opted for UCLA because of its urban location. At that time, she was known as a radical feminist and activist, a member of the Communist Party USA, and an associate of the Black Panther Party.

The Board of Regents of the University of California, urged by then-California Governor Ronald Reagan, fired her from her $10,000 a year post in 1969 because of her membership in the Communist Party. The Board of Regents was censured by the American Association of University Professors for their failure to reappoint Davis after her teaching contract expired. On October 20, when Judge Jerry Pacht ruled the Regents could not fire Davis solely because of her affiliations with the Communist Party, Davis resumed her post.

The Regents released Davis again, on June 20, 1970, when they fired her for the "inflammatory language" she had used in four different speeches. "We deem particularly offensive", the report said, "such utterances as her statement that the regents 'killed, brutalized (and) murdered' the People's Park demonstrators, and her repeated characterizations of the police as 'pigs'".

Arrest and trial

Davis was a supporter of the Soledad Brothers, three inmates accused of killing a prison guard at Soledad Prison.

On August 7, 1970, Jonathan Jackson, a heavily armed, 17-year-old African-American high-school student, gained control over a courtroom in Marin County, California. Once in the courtroom, Jackson armed the black defendants and took Judge Harold Haley, the prosecutor, and three female jurors as hostages. As Jackson transported the hostages and two black convicts away from the courtroom, the police began shooting at the vehicle. The judge and the three black men were killed in the melee; one of the jurors and the prosecutor were injured. The firearms which Jackson used in the attack, including the shotgun used to kill Judge Haley, had been purchased by Davis two days prior and the barrel of the shotgun had been sawn off. Davis was found to have been corresponding with one of the inmates involved.

As California considers "all persons concerned in the commission of a crime, whether they directly commit the act constituting the offense... principals in any crime so committed", Marin County Superior Judge Peter Allen Smith charged Davis with "aggravated kidnapping and first degree murder in the death of Judge Harold Haley" and issued a warrant for her arrest. Hours after the judge issued the warrant on August 14, 1970, a massive attempt to locate and arrest Angela Davis began. On August 18, 1970, four days after the initial warrant was issued, the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover listed Davis as the third woman and the 309th person to appear on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List.

Soon after, Davis became a fugitive and fled California. According to her autobiography, during this time she hid in friends' homes and moved at night. On October 13, 1970, FBI agents found her at a Howard Johnson Motor Lodge in New York City. President Richard M. Nixon congratulated the FBI on its "capture of the dangerous terrorist, Angela Davis."

On January 5, 1971, Davis appeared at the Marin County Superior Court and declared her innocence before the court and nation: "I now declare publicly before the court, before the people of this country that I am innocent of all charges which have been leveled against me by the state of California." John Abt, general counsel of the Communist Party USA, was one of the first attorneys to represent Davis for her alleged involvement in the shootings.

While being held in the Women's Detention Center, Davis was initially segregated from other prisoners, in what she referred to as solitary confinement. With the help of her legal team, she obtained a federal court order to get out of the segregated area.

Across the nation, thousands of people began organizing a movement to gain her release. In New York City, black writers formed a committee called the Black People in Defense of Angela Davis. By February 1971 more than 200 local committees in the United States, and 67 in foreign countries, worked to free Davis from prison. John Lennon and Yoko Ono contributed to this campaign with the song: "Angela" In 1972, after a sixteen-month incarceration, the state allowed her release on bail from county jail. On February 23, 1972, Rodger McAfee, a dairy farmer from Fresno, California, paid her $100,000 bail with the help of Steve Sparacino, a wealthy business owner. Portions of her legal defense expenses were paid for by the United Presbyterian Church.

A defense motion for a change of venue was granted and the trial was moved to Santa Clara County. On June 4, 1972, after three days of deliberations, the all-white jury returned a verdict of not guilty. The fact that she owned the guns used in the crime was judged insufficient to establish her responsibility in the plot. She was represented by Leo Branton Jr., who hired psychologists to help the defense determine who in the jury pool might favor their arguments, a technique that has since become more common. He hired experts to discredit the reliability of eyewitness accounts.

Representation in other media

The first song released in favor of Davis was "Angela" (1971), written by Italian singer-songwriter and musician Virgilio Savona with his group (Quartetto Cetra). He received some anonymous threats.

The Rolling Stones song "Sweet Black Angel", recorded in 1970 and released on their album Exile on Main Street (1972), is dedicated to Davis. It is one of the band's few overtly political releases.

Bob Dylan's song "George Jackson" (1971) is concerned with the events of the case.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded their song "Angela" on their albumm Some Time in New York City (1972) in support.

The jazz musician Todd Cochran, also known as Bayete, recorded his song "Free Angela (Thoughts...and all I've got to say)" that same year.

Tribe Records co-founder Phil Ranelin released a song dedicated to Davis, titled "Angela's Dilemma", on Message From The Tribe (1972), a spiritual jazz collectable.

References in other venues

On January 28, 1972, Garrett Brock Trapnell hijacked TWA Flight 2. One of his demands was Davis' release.

Other activities in the 1970s

Cuba

After her acquittal, Davis visited Cuba. She followed the precedents set by her fellow activists Robert F. Williams, Huey Newton, Stokely Carmichael, and Assata Shakur. Her reception by Afro-Cubans at a mass rally was so enthusiastic that she was reportedly barely able to speak. Davis perceived Cuba to be a racism-free country, which led her to believe that "only under socialism could the fight against racism be successfully executed." When she returned to the United States, her socialist leanings increasingly influenced her understanding of race struggles.

Soviet Union

In 1979, Davis was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union. She visited Moscow in July of that year to accept the prize.

Jonestown and Peoples Temple

In the mid-1970s, Jim Jones, who developed the cult Peoples Temple, initiated friendships with progressive leaders in the San Francisco area including Dennis Banks and Davis. On September 10, 1977, 14 months prior to the Temple's mass murder-suicide, Davis spoke via radio-phone dispatch to members of his Peoples Temple living in Guyana within Jonestown. In her statement during the "Six Day Siege", she expressed support for the People's Temple anti-racism efforts and told members there was a conspiracy against them. She said that "when you are attacked, it is because of your progressive stand, and we feel that it is directly an attack against us as well."

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

In a New York City speech on July 9, 1975, Russian dissident and Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn told an AFL-CIO meeting that Davis was derelict in having failed to support prisoners in various socialist countries around the world, given her stark opposition to the US prison system. He claimed a group of Czech prisoners had appealed to Davis for support, which Solzhenitsyn said she had declined.

Later academic career

Davis was Professor of Ethnic Studies at the San Francisco State University from at least 1980 to 1984.

Davis was a professor in the History of Consciousness and the Feminist Studies Departments at the University of California, Santa Cruz & Rutgers University from 1991 to 2008. Since then, she is Distinguished Professor Emerita.

Davis was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Syracuse University in Spring 1992 and October 2010.

In 2014, Davis returned to UCLA as a Regents' Lecturer. She delivered a public lecture on May 8 in Royce Hall, where she had given her first lecture 45 years earlier.

On May 22, 2016, Davis was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters in Healing and Social Justice from California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco during its 48th annual commencement ceremony.

Political activism and speeches

Davis left the Communist Party in 1991, leaving it to help found the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. Her group broke from the Communist Party USA because of the latter's support of the Soviet coup attempt of 1991 following the fall of the Soviet Union and tearing down of the Berlin Wall. She continues to serve on the Advisory Board of the Committees.

Davis has written several books. A principal focus of her current activism is the state of prisons within the United States. She considers herself an abolitionist, not a "prison reformer." She has referred to the United States prison system as the "Prison-industrial complex," aggravated by the establishment of privately run prisons. Davis suggested focusing social efforts on education and building "engaged communities" to solve various social problems now handled through state punishment.

Davis was one of the founders of Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization dedicated to building a movement to abolish the prison-industrial complex. In recent works, she has argued that the prison system in the United States more closely resembles a new form of slavery than a criminal justice system. According to Davis, between the late 19th century and the mid-20th century, the number of prisons in the United States sharply increased but crime rates continued to rise. During this time, the racism in American society is demonstrated by the disproportionate share of the African-American population who are incarcerated. "What is effective or just about this "justice" system?" she urged people to question.

Davis has lectured at Rutgers University, San Francisco State University, Stanford University, Smith College, Bryn Mawr College, Brown University, Syracuse University, and other schools. As most of her teaching is at the graduate level, she says that she concentrates more on posing questions that encourage development of critical thinking than on imparting knowledge. In 1997, she identified as a lesbian in Out magazine.

As early as 1969, Davis began public speaking engagements. She expressed her opposition to the Vietnam War, racism, sexism, and the prison-industrial complex, and her support of gay rights and other social justice movements. In 1969, she blamed imperialism for the troubles suffered by oppressed populations.

"We are facing a common enemy and that enemy is Yankee Imperialism, which is killing us both here and abroad. Now I think anyone who would try to separate those struggles, anyone who would say that in order to consolidate an anti-war movement, we have to leave all of these other outlying issues out of the picture, is playing right into the hands of the enemy", she declared.

More than a generation later, in 2001 she publicly spoke against the war on terror following the 9/11 attacks, continued to criticize the prison-industrial complex, and discussed the broken immigration system. She said that if people wanted to solve social justice issues, they had to "hone their critical skills, develop them and implement them." Later, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, she declared that the "horrendous situation in New Orleans" was due to the structures of racism, capitalism, and imperialism with which our leaders ran this country.

Davis opposed the 1995 Million Man March, arguing that the exclusion of women from this event necessarily promoted male chauvinism. She said that Louis Farrakhan and other organizers appeared to prefer that women take subordinate roles in society. Together with Kimberlé Crenshaw and others, she formed the African American Agenda 2000, an alliance of Black feminists.

Davis has continued to oppose the death penalty. In 2003, she lectured at Agnes Scott College, a liberal arts women's college in Atlanta, Georgia, on prison reform, minority issues, and the ills of the criminal justice system.

At the University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz), she participated in a 2004 panel concerning Kevin Cooper. She also spoke in defense of Stanley "Tookie" Williams on another panel in 2005, and 2009.

In 2008, Davis participated as a keynote speaker at Vanderbilt University's conference, "Who Speaks for the Negro?". She has visited the University twice since then; most recently she gave the Commemorative Murray Lecture on February 25, 2015, to talk with students in a fireside chat on college activism.

On April 16, 2009, she was the keynote speaker at the University of Virginia Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies symposium on The Problem of Punishment: Race, Inequity, and Justice.

On October 31, 2011, Davis spoke at the Philadelphia and Washington Square Occupy Wall Street assemblies. Due to restrictions on electronic amplification, her words were human microphoned. In 2012 Davis was awarded the 2011 Blue Planet Award, an award given for contributions to humanity and the planet.

At the 27th Empowering Women of Color Conference in 2012, Davis mentioned that she was a vegan. Davis has called for the release of Rasmea Odeh, associate director at the Arab American Action Network, who was convicted of immigration fraud.

On January 23, 2012, Davis was the Rhode Island School of Design's MLK Celebration Series keynote speaker and 2012 Honoree.

Davis is an honorary co-chair of the Women's March on Washington, scheduled for January 21, 2017, the day after the inauguration of Donald Trump as President.

Representation in other media

In Renato Guttuso's painting, The Funerals of Togliatti (1972) by Renato Guttuso, Davis is depicted, among other figures of communism; she's in the left framework, near the author's self-portrait, Elio Vittorini, and Jean-Paul Sartre.

In the movie, Network (1976), Marlene Warfield's character is loosely modeled after Davis.

Bibliography

If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance (New York: Third Press, 1971)

Angela Davis: An Autobiography, Random House (September 1974), ISBN 0-394-48978-0

Joan Little: The Dialectics of Rape (New York: Lang Communications, 1975)

Women, Race, & Class��(February 12, 1983), ISBN 0-394-71351-6.

Women, Culture & Politics, Vintage (February 19, 1990), ISBN 0-679-72487-7.

The Angela Y. Davis Reader (ed. Joy James), Wiley-Blackwell (December 11, 1998), ISBN 0-631-20361-3.

Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday, Vintage Books (January 26, 1999), ISBN 0-679-77126-3

Are Prisons Obsolete?, Seven Stories Press (April 2003), ISBN 1-58322-581-1

Abolition Democracy: Beyond Prisons, Torture, and Empire, Seven Stories Press (October 1, 2005), ISBN 1-58322-695-8.

The Meaning of Freedom: And Other Difficult Dialogues (City Lights, 2012), ISBN 978-0872865808

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement, Haymarket Books (2015), ISBN 978-1-60846-564-4

Interview Angela Davis http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/race/interviews/davis.html

Angela Davis interviews and appearances in audiovisual materials

1971

1972

1977

1985

1992

2000

2001

2002

2011

2014

2016

An Interview with Angela Davis. Cassette. Radio Free People, New York, 1971.

Myerson, M. "Angela Davis in Prison." Ramparts Magazine, March 1971: 20–21.

Seigner, Art. Angela Davis: Soul and Soledad. Phonodisc. Flying Dutchman, New York, 1971.

Interview with Angela Davis in San Francisco on June 1970

Walker, Joe. Angela Davis Speaks. Phonodisc. Folkways Records, New York, 1971.

"Angela Davis Talks about her Future and her Freedom." Jet, July 27, 1972: 54–57.

Davis, Angela Y. I am a Black Revolutionary Woman (1971). Phonodisc. Folkways, New York, 1977.

Phillips, Esther. Angela Davis Interviews Esther Phillips. Cassette. Pacifica Tape Library, Los Angeles, 1977.

Cudjoe, Selwyn. In Conversation with Angela Davis. Videocassette. ETV Center, Cornell University, Ithaca, 1985. 21-minute interview.

Davis, Angela Y. "Women on the Move: Travel Themes in Ma Rainey's Blues" in Borders/diasporas. Sound Recording. University of California, Santa Cruz: Center for Cultural Studies, Santa Cruz, 1992.

Davis, Angela Y. The Prison Industrial Complex and its Impact on Communities of Color. Videocassette. University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, WI, 2000.

Barsamian, D. "Angela Davis: African American Activist on Prison-Industrial Complex." Progressive 65.2 (2001): 33–38.

"September 11 America: an Interview with Angela Davis." Policing the National Body: Sex, Race, and Criminalization. Cambridge, Ma.: South End Press, 2002.

The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975; a (2011) film prominently featuring Davis in a number of rarely seen Swedish interviews.

Woman's Hour, BBC Radio 4, December 3, 2014.

13th (film), about the 13th Amendment and history of the civil rights movement, 2016

Archives

The National United Committee to Free Angela Davis is at the Main Library at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California (A collection of thousands of letters received by the Committee and Davis from people in the US and other countries.)

The complete transcript of her trial, including all appeals and legal memoranda, has been preserved in the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Library in Berkeley, California.

Wikipedia

[polixy]

What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S.

What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S.;

The recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio – along with a spate of shootings in Chicago – have brought renewed attention to deadly gun violence in the United States. As President Donald Trump and lawmakers on Capitol Hill contemplate policy responses, here are 10 common questions about gun deaths in the U.S., with answers based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the FBI and other sources. You can also explore key public opinion findings about gun violence and gun policy in the U.S. by reading our recent roundup.

How many people die from gun-related injuries in the U.S. each year?

In 2017, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 39,773 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., according to the CDC. This figure includes gun murders and gun suicides, along with three other, less common types of gun-related deaths tracked by the CDC: those that were unintentional, involved law enforcement or whose circumstances could not be determined. It excludes deaths in which gunshot injuries played a contributing, but not principal, role. (CDC fatality statistics are based on information contained in death certificates.)

What share of U.S. gun deaths are murders and what share are suicides?

Though they tend to get less attention than gun-related murders, suicides have long accounted for the majority of U.S. gun deaths. In 2017, six-in-ten gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides (23,854), while 37% were murders (14,542), according to the CDC. The remainder were unintentional (486), involved law enforcement (553) or had undetermined circumstances (338).

What share of all murders and suicides in the U.S. involve a gun?

Three-quarters of all U.S. murders in 2017 – 14,542 out of 19,510 – involved a firearm. About half (51%) of all suicides that year – 23,854 out of 47,173 – involved a gun.

How has the number of U.S. gun deaths changed over time?

The 39,773 total gun deaths in 2017 were the most since at least 1968, the earliest year for which the CDC has online data. This was slightly more than the 39,595 gun deaths recorded in the prior peak year of 1993. Both gun murders and gun suicides have gone up in recent years: The number of gun murders rose 32% between 2014 and 2017, while the number of gun suicides rose each year between 2006 and 2017 (a 41% increase overall).

Gun suicides reached their highest recorded level in 2017. But the number of gun murders remained far below the peak in 1993, when there were 18,253 gun homicides – and when overall violent crime levels in the U.S. were much higher than they are today.

How has the rate of U.S. gun deaths changed over time?

While 2017 saw the highest total number of gun deaths in the U.S., this statistic does not take into account the nation’s growing population. On a per capita basis, there were 12 gun deaths per 100,000 people in 2017 – the highest rate in more than two decades, but still well below the 16.3 gun deaths per 100,000 people in 1974, the highest rate in the CDC’s online database.

The gun murder and gun suicide rates in the U.S. are both lower today than in the mid-1970s. There were 4.6 gun murders per 100,000 people in 2017, far below the 7.2 per 100,000 people recorded in 1974. And the rate of gun suicides – 6.9 per 100,000 people in 2017 –  remained below the 7.7 per 100,000 measured in 1977. (One caveat when considering the 1970s figures: In the CDC’s database, gun murders and gun suicides between 1968 and 1978 are classified as those caused by “firearms and explosives.” In subsequent years, they are classified as deaths involving “firearms.”)

Which states have the highest and lowest gun death rates in the U.S.?

The rate of gun fatalities varies widely from state to state. In 2017, the states with the highest rates of gun-related deaths – counting murders, suicides and all other categories tracked by the CDC – were Alaska (24.5 per 100,000 people), Alabama (22.9), Montana (22.5), Louisiana (21.7), Missouri and Mississippi (both 21.5), and Arkansas (20.3). The states with the lowest rates were New Jersey (5.3 per 100,000 people), Connecticut (5.1), Rhode Island (3.9), New York and Massachusetts (both 3.7), and Hawaii (2.5).

How does the gun death rate in the U.S. compare with other countries?

The gun death rate in the U.S. is much higher than in most other nations, particularly developed nations. But it is still far below the rates in several Latin American nations, according to a study of 195 countries and territories by researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

The U.S. gun death rate was 10.6 per 100,000 people in 2016, the most recent year in the study, which uses a somewhat different methodology from the CDC. That was far higher than in countries such as Canada (2.1 per 100,000) and Australia (1.0), as well as European nations such as France (2.7), Germany (0.9) and Spain (0.6). But the rate in the U.S. was much lower than in El Salvador (39.2 per 100,000 people), Venezuela (38.7), Guatemala (32.3), Colombia (25.9) and Honduras (22.5), the study found. Overall, the U.S. ranked 20th in its gun fatality rate.

How many people are killed in mass shootings in the U.S. every year?

This is a difficult question to answer because there is no single, agreed-upon definition of the term “mass shooting.” Definitions can vary depending on factors including the number of victims and the circumstances of the shooting.

The FBI collects data on “active shooter incidents,” which it defines as “as one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.” Using the FBI’s definition, 85 people – excluding the shooters – died in such incidents in 2018.

The Gun Violence Archive, an online database of gun violence incidents in the U.S., defines mass shootings as incidents in which four or more people – excluding the shooter – are shot or killed. Using this definition, 373 people died in these incidents in 2018.

Regardless of the definition being used, fatalities in mass shooting incidents in the U.S. account for a small fraction of all gun murders that occur nationwide each year.

How has the number of mass shootings in the U.S. changed over time?

The same definitional issue that makes it challenging to arrive at an exact number of mass shooting fatalities comes into play when trying to determine the frequency of U.S. mass shootings over time. The unpredictability of these incidents also complicates matters: As Rand Corp. noted in a 2018 research brief, “Chance variability in the annual number of mass shooting incidents makes it challenging to discern a clear trend, and trend estimates will be sensitive to outliers and to the time frame chosen for analysis.”

The FBI found an increase in active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2013. The average number of incidents rose from 6.4 a year in the first seven years of the study to an average of 16.4 a year in the second seven-year period. In subsequent studies, the FBI recorded 20 active shooter incidents per year in 2014 and 2015, followed by 20 incidents in 2016, 30 in 2017 and 27 in 2018.

Which types of firearms are most commonly used in gun murders in the U.S.?

In 2017, handguns were involved in the majority (64%) of the 10,982 U.S. gun murders and non-negligent manslaughters for which data is available, according to the FBI. Rifles – the category that includes many guns that are sometimes referred to as “assault weapons”– were involved in 4%. Shotguns were involved in 2%. The remainder of gun homicides and non-negligent manslaughters (30%) involved firearms that were classified as “other guns or type not stated.”

It’s important to note that the FBI’s statistics do not capture the details on all gun murders in the U.S. each year. The FBI’s data is based on information submitted by state and local police departments, and not all agencies participate or provide complete information each year. In 2017, nine-in-ten law enforcement agencies submitted data to the FBI.

; Blog – Pew Research Center; https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/16/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/; ; August 16, 2019 at 10:22AM

[kathleenseiber]

Universal background checks really do cut gun deaths

Controlling who has access to guns has much more impact on reducing gun-related homicides than controlling what guns people have, researchers report.

As the US reels from three back-to-back mass shootings—which occurred within the span of eight days in Gilroy, California, El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio—Michael Siegel, a researcher at the School of Public Health at Boston University, says that mirrored analyses of FBI and CDC homicide data serve to “double down” on evidence supporting laws that work to cut gun deaths.

“Using completely different data sets, we’ve confirmed the same thing,” Siegel says. “The main lesson that comes out of this research is that we know which laws work. Despite the fact that opponents of gun regulation are saying, ‘we don’t know what’s going on, it’s mental health issues, it’s these crazy people,’ which doesn’t lend itself to a solution—the truth is that we have a pretty good grasp at what’s going on. People who shouldn’t have access to guns are getting access.”

Siegel’s latest study in the Journal of Rural Health reinforces previous research findings that laws designed to regulate who has firearms are more effective in reducing shootings than laws designed to control what types of guns are permitted. The study looked at gun regulation state by state in comparison with Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) data about gun homicides, gathered from police departments around the country.

The researchers’ analysis reveals that universal background checks, permit requirements, “may issue” laws, and laws banning people convicted of violent misdemeanors from possessing firearms can, individually and collectively, significantly reduce gun-related deaths.

It’s a particularly compelling finding because in March 2019, Siegel and collaborators drew virtually the same conclusion by analyzing state laws in comparison with death certificate data the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) collected nationally.

In that study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, Siegel’s team analyzed 25 years of national data to examine the relationship between 10 different types of state laws and the number of deaths by homicide and suicide in all 50 states.

The National Institute of Justice and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Evidence for Action Program funded the studies.

State gun laws requiring universal background checks for all gun sales resulted in homicide rates 15% lower than states without such laws. Laws prohibiting the possession of firearms by people who have been convicted of a violent crime were associated with an 18% reduction in homicide rates.

In contrast, Siegel found that laws regulating the type of firearms people have access to—such as assault weapon bans and large capacity ammunition magazine bans—and “stand your ground” laws have no effect on the rate of firearm-related homicide. The researchers did not find that any of the state gun laws they studied were related to overall suicide rates.

Universal background checks, which have long been a top priority for gun control advocates and policymakers in the United States, appear to have the biggest impact. Though there has been a push for federal gun regulations in recent years, the power to legislate gun sales and gun ownership is largely beholden to the states. And according to Siegel, the data doesn’t lie. The average firearm homicide rate in states without background checks is 58% higher than the average in states with background-check laws in place. As of 2017, only 13 states, including Massachusetts, had laws requiring universal background checks.

Here, Siegel explains the findings of these two studies:

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(Live-Fire, LTC, F.I.D) Massachusetts/ Connecticut License to Carry (LTC) or F.I.D Firearms Safety Course. 12/11, 12/12. 12/18/2021

(Live-Fire, LTC, F.I.D) Massachusetts/ Connecticut License to Carry (LTC) or F.I.D Firearms Safety Course. 12/11, 12/12. 12/18/2021

You will learn: Safe handling of several different types of firearms, firearms storage laws, self-defense laws, transportation laws and much more. . (This course completes the live fire requirement that Springfield, MA, Ludlow, MA and Chicopee Police Depts.  require to apply for a License to Carry Permit.)  Topics covered in this class will be Massachusetts & Connecticut General Laws pertaining…

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(Live-Fire, LTC, F.I.D) Massachusetts/ Connecticut License to Carry (LTC) or F.I.D Firearms Safety Course 10/16, 10/17, 11/06, 11/13, 11/20, 11/21/2021

(Live-Fire, LTC, F.I.D) Massachusetts/ Connecticut License to Carry (LTC) or F.I.D Firearms Safety Course 10/16, 10/17, 11/06, 11/13, 11/20, 11/21/2021

This is a SHOOTING course.   The only way to learn is by seeing, hearing and doing.  You will learn: Safe handling of several different types of firearms, firearms storage laws, self-defense laws, transportation laws and much more. . (This course completes the live fire requirement that Springfield, MA, Ludlow, MA and Chicopee Police Depts.  require to apply for a License to Carry…

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NEW Classes Scheduled!!(Live-Fire , LTC, F.I.D) Massachusetts/ Connecticut License to Carry (LTC) or F.I.D Firearms Safety Course 02/06, 02/07, 02/27, 02/28/2021

NEW Classes Scheduled!!(Live-Fire , LTC, F.I.D) Massachusetts/ Connecticut License to Carry (LTC) or F.I.D Firearms Safety Course 02/06, 02/07, 02/27, 02/28/2021

This is a SHOOTING course.   The only way to learn is by seeing, hearing and doing.  You will learn: Safe handling of firearms, firearms storage laws, self-defense laws, transportation laws and much more. You will also receive additional laws and safety materials. (This course completes the live fire requirement that Springfield, MA, Ludlow, MA and Chicopee Police Depts.  require to apply for a…

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(Live-Fire , Non-Live Fire, F.I.D) Massachusetts/ Connecticut License to Carry (LTC) or F.I.D Firearms Safety Course. 05/02, 05/03, 05/24, 05/30/2020

This is a SHOOTING course.   The only way to learn is by seeing, hearing and doing. 

You will learn:

Safe handling of several different types of firearms, firearms storage laws,  transportation laws and much more. You will also receive safety materials in class. (This class supersedes the Springfield, MA and Chicopee Police Dept. resident requirements for applying for their License to Carry…

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(Live-Fire , Non-Live Fire) Massachusetts/ Connecticut License to Carry (LTC) or F.I.D Firearms Safety Course 03/29/2020, 04/18 and 04/19/2020

Please visit website for additional information.

This is a SHOOTING course.   The only way to learn is by seeing, hearing and doing. 

You will learn:

Safe handling of several different types of firearms, firearms storage laws, self-defense laws, transportation laws and much more. You will also receive safety materials and a CD in class. (This class supersedes the Springfield, MA and Chicopee…

[idavidwilliams]

(Live-Fire) MA/CT License to Carry (LTC) Firearms Safety Course. Several Dates available

(Live-Fire) MA/CT License to Carry (LTC) Firearms Safety Course. Several Dates available

Class Dates are: 04/27/2019, 04/28/2019, 05/05/2019, 05/18/2019 and 05/19/2019

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Cost of class is: is $95 (Normally $…