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advisers are finalizing a proposal that would expand background checks on gun sales without congressional approval.

president has asked his team to complete a proposal and submit it for his review "in short order.

include measures to expand background checks.

He was faced with grieving families looking for answers. Few had concrete suggestions, but a few spoke in favor of raising age limits for buying assault weapons.

ncealed weapons for trained teachers, saying it was something his administration would be “looking at it very strongly.”

Cordover, tearfully told Trump that she “was lucky enough to come home from school.” She added: “I am confident you will do the right thing.”

resident Biden said Tuesday that he and first lady Jill Biden were "devastated" by Monday's shooting in Boulder, Colo., and called on the Senate to pass to gun bills passed by the House earlier this month that would tighten gun laws. Acknowledging there is more to confirm about the shooter's weapons and motivation, Biden said, "I don't need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common-sense steps that will save lives in the future and to urge my colleagues in the House and Senate to act."

Biden said assault weapons and high-capacity magazines should once again be banned and that loopholes in background checks should be closed.

Biden's remarks come a day after 10 people, including a police officer, died in a shooting in a grocery store in Boulder. Police identified the victims on Tuesday, ranging in age from 20 to 65. They also said suspect Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 21, of Arvada, Colo., is in custody. The president has been receiving regular updates on the shooting, the White House said, and has directed that flags be flown at half-staff through Saturday.

With Congress unlikely to move quickly on gun legislation, the White House is pressing ahead with plans for a series of executive orders that President Biden expects to roll out in the coming weeks as a way of keeping up pressure on the issue.

A day after Mr. Biden called on the Senate to pass a ban on assault weapons and strengthen background checks in response to a pair of mass shootings in the past week that left 18 people dead, White House officials said on Wednesday that while moving legislation on gun safety remained a goal, it would take time, given the vehement opposition from Republicans.

For now, administration officials have been reaching out to Democrats in the Senate to consult with them about three executive actions.

WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday approved a pair of bills aimed at expanding and strengthening background checks for gun purchasers, as Democrats pushed past Republican opposition to advance major gun safety measures after decades of congressional inaction.

The House voted 227-203 to approve the expansion of background checks and 219-210 to give federal law enforcement more time to vet gun purchasers.

Gun sales have surged in the past year, requiring the F.B.I. to conduct more background checks than before, according to data obtained by Everytown for Gun Safety, an anti-gun-violence nonprofit. That data showed that over the span of 10 months in 2020, the F.B.I. reported 5,807 sales to prohibited purchasers through the Charleston loophole, more than in any other entire calendar year.

The House approved a pair of bills on Thursday aimed at expanding and strengthening background checks for gun buyers, as Democrats pushed past Republican opposition to advance major gun safety measures after decades of congressional inaction.

In two votes that fell largely along party lines, the House passed legislation that would require background checks for all gun buyers, and extend the time the F.B.I. has to vet those flagged by the national instant check system.

The House voted 227 to 203 to approve the expansion of background checks, and 219 to 210 to give federal law enforcement more time to vet gun buyers.

Black people four times more likely to die from Covid-19, ONS finds

Black people are more than four times more likely to die from Covid-19 than white people, according to stark official figures exposing a dramatic divergence in the impact of the coronavirus pandemic in England and Wales. The Office of National Statistics found that the difference in the virus’s impact was caused not only by pre-existing differences in communities’ wealth, health, education and living arrangements.

after other pre-existing factors had been accounted for, and females from those ethnic groups were 1.6 times more likely to die from the virus than their white counterparts.

Gun control groups insist the government should take action to keep guns away from the mentally ill, citing the recent airport shooting in Fort Lauderdale.

This will affect “tens of thousands of harmless, law-abiding people,” who will lose a constitutional right without due process, according to the National Rifle Association, which also plans to ask the incoming Trump administration to take “corrective action” on the matter

“Everytown applauds the White House for a set of recent executive actions aimed at improving the gun background check system and giving law enforcement tools to combat gun trafficking,” Avore’s letter said. “Those actions included initiating this rulemaking process, which seeks to bring the SSA in line with the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007 ('the NIAA') requirement that federal agencies submit prohibiting records into NICS.” 

(CNN)Momentum on overhauling the country's gun laws has practically stalled at the US Capitol, but the House will vote next week on a narrow proposal that will give schools more money to strengthen security.

But the narrow proposal won't tackle any changes to the country's background check system nor will it address changing gun laws President Donald Trump has asked for including Trump's call to raise the age at which individuals can buy rifles from 18 to 21. Democrats have said they will vote for the proposal, but have slammed GOP leaders for not doing more.

Sens. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican, and Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, have also introduced a plan that would flag individuals to state authorities when they try and fail to buy a gun because they can't pass the background check. Behind the scenes, Toomey has also said he is trying to win more GOP support for a bill he sponsored several years ago that would expand background checks on guns purchased at gun shows and over the internet.

President Biden, calling gun violence in the United States “an international embarrassment,” took a set of initial steps on Thursday to address the problem, starting with a crackdown on the proliferation of so-called ghost guns, or firearms assembled from kits.

The most substantive of the steps was directing the Justice Department to curb the spread of ghost guns. Kits for these guns can be bought without background checks and allow a gun to be assembled from pieces with no serial numbers.

Mr. Biden said he wanted the department to issue a regulation within a month to require that the components in the kits have serial numbers that would allow them to be traced and that the weapons be legally classified as firearms, with the buyers subjected to background checks.

There are many reasons for Trump’s ascent, but changes in the American news media played a critical role. Trump’s manipulation and every one of his political lies became more powerful because journalists had forfeited what had always been most valuable about their work: their credibility as arbiters of truth and brokers of ideas, which for more than a century, despite all of journalism’s flaws and failures, had been a bulwark of how Americans govern themselves.

I think Sulzberger shares this analysis. In interviews and his own writings, including an essay earlier this year for the Columbia Journalism Review, he has defended “independent journalism”, or, as I understand him, fair-minded, truth-seeking journalism that aspires to be open and objective.

It’s good to hear the publisher speak up in defence of such values, some of which have fallen out of fashion not just with journalists at the Times and other mainstream publications but at some of the most prestigious schools of journalism.

31 October 2013 Last updated at 19:42 ET Share this page Email Print Share this page2.6KShareFacebookTwitter Syria chemical weapons equipment destroyed, says OPCW Advertisement $render("advert-post-script-load"); Jerry Smith, OPCW: "We have... observed all of the destruction activities" Continue reading the main story Syria conflict Arms destruction Chemical stockpile 'Please let it be over' Assad opponents Syria's declared equipment for producing, mixing and filling chemical weapons has been destroyed, the international watchdog says. This comes a day before the deadline set by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The weapons have been placed under seal, an OPCW spokesman said. Inspectors were sent to Syria following allegations, denied by the government, that its forces had used chemical weapons in civilian areas. Continue reading the main story Analysis Jonathan Marcus BBC diplomatic correspondent The achievement of this crucial initial target is an important moment for the chemical weapons destruction effort in Syria. The inspectors' first task was to move swiftly to prevent the government from producing any more chemical agent and to destroy facilities and equipment used for mixing agents and filling munitions. Production facilities will be closely monitored to ensure that there are no moves to repair them. The next deadline is mid-November, by which time the OPCW and the Syrians must agree a detailed plan to destroy Syria's chemical weapons stockpile. All sorts of questions are raised. Where will this destruction be carried out ? Who will provide the necessary equipment and so on? Western intelligence agencies will be studying Syria's declarations carefully. They will be eager to direct inspectors to additional locations if there are any grounds to believe that Damascus has been less than frank in its disclosures. The inspections were agreed between Russia and the US after Washington threatened to use force in Syria. Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad

Syria's declared equipment for producing, mixing and filling chemical weapons has been destroyed, the international watchdog says.

nspectors were sent to Syria following allegations, denied by the government, that its forces had used chemical weapons in civilian areas.

Thursday night, Donald Trump stepped off a stage at the North Charleston Coliseum, in South Carolina,

Chances are we will be seeing more of them

Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush, who took their shots at the billionaire from New York, the other candidates seemed to have given up any hope of standing up to him.

In the last month, we have witnessed a barrage of mass shootings across the United States. In each of three shootings -- in Indianapolis, Boulder, and Atlanta -- we learned that the suspects bought guns legally. Even worse, we learned after each of the three shootings that family members and friends had been concerned about these young men.

These checks are not exhaustive enough and the suspects in the recent shootings in Indiana, Boulder and Atlanta sailed through this system, even though they had documented personal struggles, mental health histories or family members and friends who flagged them as unwell.

Canada's federal licensing system is a big reason for this disparity. Buying a gun in Canada is like getting a driver's license. You have to apply for a Possession and Acquisition License (PAL) -- a process that involves a variety of background checks with a minimum 28-day waiting period for new applicants who do not have a valid firearms license. You have to take a safety training course. You have to provide personal references who can vouch for your character. You have to renew the license every five years or else you can be charged with unauthorized possession under the Firearms Act and Criminal Code.

There were 8,583 homicides by firearms in 2011, out of 12,664 homicides total, according to the FBI. This means that more than two-thirds of homicides involve a firearm

Gun violence also affects more than its victims. In areas where it is prevalent, just the threat of violence makes neighborhoods poorer. It's very difficult to quantify the total harm caused by gun violence, but by asking many people how much they would pay to avoid this threat -- a technique called contingent valuation -- researchers have estimated a cost to American society of $100 billion dollars.

19,392 of 38,264 suicides in 2010 involved a gun (50%), according to the CDC.

"The United States of America is not the only country on Earth with violent or dangerous people," Obama said during a press conference surrounded by loved ones of victims of gun violence. "We are not inherently more prone to violence — but we are the only advanced country on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency."

We become numb to it, and start thinking this is normal," Obama said. "And instead of thinking about how to solve the problem, this has become one of our polarized, partisan debates." 

"It doesn't matter where you conduct your business: from a store, at gun shows or over the internet. If you're in the business of selling firearms, you must get a license and conduct background checks," the White House said in a statement emailed Monday night, outlining the policy.

The most widely backed response to the Parkland shooting would provide new incentives for public agencies to submit information that could disqualify prospective gun buyers to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, an action most agree is modest at best.

To Democrats, the fact that the N.R.A. is not opposed to the proposal is prima facie evidence that it falls short.

Mr. Trump told lawmakers they should use a broader bipartisan background check measure that failed in 2013 after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., as the basis for a comprehensive measure that could take in many proposals, including the Cornyn plan, new mental health provisions and added security for schools

Miles’s law states, “Where you stand is based on where you sit.” In other words, your political opinions are shaped by your environment and your experience. We’re products of our place, our time, and our people. Each of these things is far more important to shaping hearts and minds than any think piece, any study, or certainly any tweet.

And it strikes me that many millions of Americans don’t truly understand how “gun culture” is built, how the process of first becoming a gun owner, then a concealed-carrier, changes your life.

It starts with the consciousness of a threat. Perhaps not the kind of threat my family has experienced. Some people experience more. Some less. And some people don’t experience a threat at all—but they’re aware of those who do