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Sunday night’s debate, hosted by NBC News and the Congressional Black Caucus, may give voters the purest look at the differences between the candidates thus far.

The two previous debates were overshadowed by late-breaking news that came in the day before candidates met onstage (the Paris terror attack in November and the Democratic data breach in December

Clinton has plenty of other fodder with which to attack Sanders on gun

Sanders has yet to release the details of a tax plan he needs to fund his proposed single-payer health care plan, and his campaign has given conflicting answers about when it would come.

Sanders worked to remove another piece of baggage the night before the debate, when his campaign announced he would support a bill to revoke the legal immunity granted to gun makers by a 2005 bill for which Sanders voted

Clinton would not give Sanders a pass on what he called a “debate-eve conversion.” Expect the words “flip flop” to come up a lot as Clinton tries to paint Sanders as typical politician. 

In the previous two weeks, the Clinton and Sanders campaigns have exchanged fire on Wall Street regulations, electability, guns, health care, and whether a new Sanders TV ad qualifies as negative.

On health care, Clinton and Sanders have a deep policy difference that reflect a philosophical as well as strategic divide. Sanders supports a single-payer system, while Clinton has defended Obamacare, saying she wants to improve the president’s sweeping healthcare law.  

Clinton and her staff made a series of claims about Sanders’ proposal that many found tendentious

And even many Clinton allies have privately expressed doubts about the wisdom of campaign’s strategy to accuse Sanders of violating his own pledge not to run negative TV ads

Clinton said any moves to scrap the current Affordable Healthcare Act risked plunging the Democrats into "contentious debate". Instead, the party should work on improving the programme, known as Obamacare.

US Democratic debate: Candidates spar on gun control

Before the debate in South Carolina, Mr Sanders unveiled a healthcare plan for all American citizens.

move risked derailing healthcare legislation introduced under President Obama.

Gun control was the first subject in the debate, that was held near a church where nine parishioners were shot dead in June 2015

released an advertisement this week attacking Mr Sanders for his attitude towards gun control

The recently passed House bills would expand background checks beyond Manchin-Toomey, which failed to advance in 2013, to include transactions between private parties, at gun shows or over the Internet and would close the so-called Charleston Loophole, by extending the time a licensed gun sales can go through before required background check is completed.

"I'm still basically where Pat Toomey and I have been: The most reasonable responsible gun piece of legislation called Gun Sense, which is basically saying that commercial transactions should be a background checked. Commercial, you don't know a person. If I know a person, no," Manchin said.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday that "this Senate will be different" with Democrats in control as he promised that the chamber would take up debate on gun legislation.

"I don't need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common sense steps that will save lives in the future," he said, listing a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, as well as strengthening the background check system by closing loopholes, as areas he would like to see Congress act.

Separately, Toomey of Pennsylvania said passing their legislation through the 50-50 Senate "is going to be difficult" but said there are "discussions underway."

The rallying cry on the other side is for “common-sense gun control.” Obama offered his support for this after the mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., early this month. But Rosenberg dismisses these solutions, too. “I don’t think common sense can answer these really tough issues,” he said. Medical literature is littered with solutions that research later proved to be wrong or even harmful, such as gastric freezing to treat stomach ulcers.

The folks at Everytown estimated that 22 million guns were sold in 2020, up 64 percent from 2019. And given the fact that there are more than 390 million guns in private hands, you will not be startled to learn that a lot have been going off.

You do wonder how the founding fathers would have felt about the right to bear arms if they knew their nastiest neighbor had just installed a printer that manufactures guns in his basement.

One problem with our gun debate is that it has the wrong starting point. Let’s raise the bar. Demand that nobody be able to purchase a gun without passing a test demonstrating she knows how to aim it. You’d be astonished at how many enthusiastic owners that would eliminate from contention.

Carrying concealed weapons on college campuses is now banned in 41 states by law or university policy.

In Colorado, North Dakota and Wyoming, legislators are working to allow adults to carry firearms in schools, starting in kindergarten.

As the debate goes forward, legislators would be wise to resort to some facts and consider a new study, based on federal data, by the Violence Policy Center. It strongly suggests that states with weak gun-safety laws and high rates of gun ownership lead the nation in gun deaths.

"The NRA are a powerful counterweight to mass mobilization, even to sympathetic movements like the ones these kids have," Miller said, explaining that the NRA's members maintain a passionate dedication about guns and gun rights, more so than the individuals who want limitations on guns.

Although calls for change always happen after a tragedy such as the Parkland shooting, trends show that the attention usually gets swept aside after the initial intense outrage. The difference, however, is that public outcry feels different this time, according to Ruben, "there is a real chance that some real change can be implemented."

The renewed focus on gun control is expected to cast attention back on Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, who opposes dismantling the legislative filibuster but has long labored — fruitlessly — to pass a bipartisan control proposal.

Following the 2012 shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Mr. Manchin brokered a deal with Senator Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, to close legal loopholes that allow people who purchase firearms at gun shows or on the internet to avoid background checks

By the 2010s, the once-bipartisan organization had become almost completely Republican in its orientation, hardening political divides. Republicans coveted its money — the N.R.A. donated $20 million to six Republican Senate candidates in the 2016 election cycle — but also its ability to rally grass-roots support with endorsements and independent expenditure advertising campaigns.

Over the years, the N.R.A. had become more nonprofit in theory than in practice. Revenue passed $350 million last year, with some prodigious donors continuing into the afterlife

In 2017, eight N.R.A. executives outearned the head of the American Red Cross, another tax-exempt organization, and one with 10 times the revenue, according to a previous analysis by The New York Times

LaPierre’s compensation rose from less than $200,000 a year in the mid-1990s to more than $2.2 million in 2018. Oversight has been complicated by paydays to the 76-member board:

Ackerman lawyers, in court filings, called NRATV “LaPierre’s brainchild,” and said he “routinely urged” the company to “give him ‘more gasoline,’ ” seeking more “notoriety for the N.R.A.

Richard Feldman, a former N.R.A. lobbyist, once explained the challenges to me more bluntly: “The worse it is for the people you represent,” he said, “the better it is for you.”

While the N.R.A. had faced many legal troubles over the years, the February 2018 attack, in which a former student murdered 14 students and three staff members with a legally purchased AR-15-style rifle, had renewed widespread revulsion toward efforts to block gun-control measures. Corporations fled. United and Delta airlines, along with the car-rental giant Enterprise Holdings, stopped offering discounts to N.R.A. members, and the First National Bank of Omaha stopped offering an N.R.A.-branded Visa card.

Brewer decided to take the case. Whatever he felt about the N.R.A., he said, he saw a principle at stake. Government investigators should not target political enemies. “People were not only crossing the lines that are appropriately drawn by our Constitution,” he said, “they were aggressively determined to blur, cross, obliterate those lines. And you know what? If they could do it to those guys, they could do it to me. They could do it to all of us.”

In the early days of the relationship, McQueen worked to soften the N.R.A.’s rough edges. “We’re advertising people, we’re optimists,” McQueen, who died at 74 in July after a struggle with lung cancer, once said in a speech. “Our work fills the spaces that distract the eye from tragedy.”

In recent years, however, that work became increasingly dark, promoting the N.R.A. as the last defense against a threatening world. The apocalyptic promotional effort reached its apotheosis with NRATV, an online streaming service that evolved beyond gun rights into a sort of paranoid-lifestyle channel.

When Donald Trump emerged as a presidential front-runner in 2016, the N.R.A. spent $30 million to help him get elected, much of it on attack ads warning that Hillary Clinton would “leave you defenseless.”

LaPierre, for his part, told me that the relationship “started to go wrong when they” — McQueen — “started NRATV.” While he was initially supportive, he said he and other N.R.A. officials found some content disturbing. In a court filing, the N.R.A. complained that it had spent millions of dollars on a network “viewed as a dystopian cultural rant that deterred membership growth.

Ackerman now says in court filings that “several millions of dollars annually” in expenses for N.R.A. officials were run through the company, adding that LaPierre “made false representations” about expenses used “for his own personal benefit.

When the N.R.A.’s 2017 tax filings were released last year, they showed a nearly-tapped-out $25 million line of credit, backed in part by the deed to its Fairfax headquarters, and that the N.R.A. borrowed against insurance policies taken out on executives. Gun-control groups like Everytown for Gun Safety and Giffords were ascendant, amid outrage about mass shootings, and they outspent the N.R.A. in midterm elections.

Both the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and the Texas Association of Defense Counsel were among those who filed a joint amicus brief against Brewer. “It’s very unusual that a defense bar and a plaintiffs’ bar agree on an issue so much that they file a consolidated brief,” said Brian Lauten, lead attorney on the amicus brief. “The conduct of Bill Brewer directly threatens that constitutional right to a fair and impartial jury.”

Clinton promised continuity. She highlighted her record. She touted her ability to get results within the limitations of the modern political climate.

We have the pharmaceutical industry pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into campaign contributions and lobbying and the private insurance companies as well."

When the debate shifted to foreign policy in its second hour, Clinton displayed a command that was in sharp contrast to Sanders' quiet.

She accused Sanders of calling Obama "weak" and "ineffective" when it came to perhaps Clinton's most vulnerable subject

Sanders' shoot-for-the-moon liberalism and Clinton's embrace of Obama were clearest in their biggest fight of the evening: health care

Just two hours before the debate, Sanders had rolled out a tax plan that would fund his Medicare-for-all proposal to scrap private health insurance entirely and replace it with a government-run program.

Clinton = Obama

6 takeaways from the Democratic debate

On gun control, health care, financial regulation, her "many hours in the Situation Room advising President Obama" and more, Clinton cast herself as the defender of Obama's legacy

Sanders had said many Democrats are "deeply disappointed" in Obama's shifts rightward, and a primary opponent could "begin contrasting what is a progressive agenda as opposed to what Obama is doing."

Purity vs. pragmatism on health care

"He has voted with the NRA, with the gun lobby, numerous times. He voted against the Brady Bill five times. He voted for what we call the Charleston loophole. He voted for immunity for gun makers and sellers," she said.

Nobody's hitting the Republicans

Health care and gun control, in particular, have emerged as key splits in the Democratic race where Clinton believes she can win liberal voters from Sanders.

But as the primaries draw near, voters often spend time thinking about the commander-in-chief test -- and Sanders has a long way to go in convincing voters of his readiness to handle foreign affairs.

Sanders willing to throw punches

"You've received over $600,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs in one year," he said, later turning his focus to criminal justice and noting that "not one of their executives is prosecuted" for actions during the 2008 economic crisis.

To white supremacists, Virginia looks like a perfect example of their ideology: “You’ve got white replacement. You’ve got what they’re calling Jewish gun grabbers, and the people rising up, saying the government is illegitimate.”

Winkler, the gun law expert, said he believed responsibility would ultimately come back to the NRA if the tensions in Virginia did spark any violence. For decades, the NRA has been pushing “overheated rhetoric about the second amendment protecting your right to rise up against the government”, he said. “This is the natural result.”

Memo to the media: Stop saying in somber, serious tones that we must do more about mental health. This might well be true, but in the context of crimes such as those at Stoneman Douglas High, offering such sentiments is to be complicit in propaganda by pretending that a cover story is actually on the leve

In corrupt failed states, politics is about lying and misdirection. On guns, our debate is a pack of lies and evasions. In no other country is the phrase “thoughts and prayers” a sacrilege, a cover for cowardice.

In no other country are the words “mental health” so empty. They are muttered by politicians who have no history of caring in the least about programs to help those with psychological or psychiatric difficulties. But they need to say something to rationalize their allegiance to a gun lobby that appears to be utterly indifferent to mass murder.

We should not have to point out over and over that while mental illness exists everywhere, other countries do not have killing sprees comparable to ours.

At the heart of our political system’s failure to address the epidemic of violence is the Republican Party’s decision to become a paid agent of the gun manufacturers’ lobby. The party of law and order cares about neither if doing so means causing the least disturbance to the National Rifle Association.

Aggravating our difficulty in regulating weapons is the vast overrepresentation of rural states in the U.S. Senate, which makes some Democrats wary of taking on the NRA. This is another classic problem of failed regimes: Their structures are no longer capable of responding to current needs.

The executive actions also call for a $500 million investment to improve access to mental health services, as well as changes to bureaucratic rules that impede the ability of the current national background check system to tap into databases that track people who are banned from obtaining firearms for specific mental health reasons.

200 new examiners and staff to help manage that process. 

"The gun lobby might be holding Congress hostage. But they cannot hold America hostage," Obama said. 

Gun violence, typically brought to the national spotlight in the wake of particularly brutal mass shootings, has been one of the few issues that has repeatedly moved the president to unabashed displays of anger and sadness in the public eye

"There's a general consensus in America about what needs to be done," Obama said Tuesday.

You would think that the ruling of a conservative legend such as Scalia would provide courage to Republicans who want to end the epidemic of mass shootings. Or they could stand with Ronald Reagan. His pleas to lawmakers helped lead to the 1994 ban on assault-style weapons .

After losing to the Gipper, NRA lobbyists in Washington lost their minds. They all but declared war on America’s government while comparing law enforcement officers to Nazis. These “jack-booted government thugs” wanted to “take away our constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property and even injure or kill us.”

GOP politicians and the gun lobbyists they represent live in a bubble. Their indifference to the massacres of innocents will lead to their political ruin. Then, and only then, can we have an honest debate on the epidemic of guns in America.

The legislation also includes millions of dollars to improve school security and train and arm school employees.

caught up in the formidable political divide that has undermined previous attempts to tighten rules for firearms.

President Trump, who plans to meet with leaders of the video game industry Thursday, has not put forward his own school safety proposal, after initially saying he supported arming teachers, raising the age for some gun purchases and even removing guns from people deemed dangerous before a judicial review.

In addition to the waiting period and an increase in the minimum age, the bill also would ban the possession or sale of bump stocks, which allow semiautomatic rifles to fire more rapidly.

The sheer velocity of Donald Trump's false and misleading statements -- along with the proliferation of disinformation on social media -- have demanded significant fact-checking to defend liberal democracy.

Reforms are necessary. As I've written before on CNN Opinion, "Social media and tech platforms have a responsibility not to run knowingly false advertisements or promote intentionally false stories. They must disclose who is paying for digital political ads and crack down on the spread of disinformation. The Honest Ads Act would require the same disclosures that are required on television and radio right now. This is a no brainer. The profit motive from hate news and fake news might be reduced by moving digital advertising toward attention metrics to measure and monetize reader engagement and loyalty, incentivizing quality over clickbait. But perhaps the single biggest reform would come from social media companies requiring that accounts verify they are real people, rather than bots that bully people and manipulate public opinion."

It would be a huge mistake to assume that simply because the velocity of lies from the White House is likely to decrease dramatically that the need for fact checks has expired. Instead, it has only transformed to a broader arena than a presidential beat. It's the part of news that people need most now, the tip of the spear that fights for the idea that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts. This is necessary for a substantive, civil and fact-based debate, which is a precondition for a functioning, self-governing society. And that's why fact checking will remain a core responsibility for journalists in the future.

The first hour of the debate, co-hosted by WABC-TV, aired on broadcast television and may have been the biggest stage yet for the mayoral candidates,

Ms. Wiley, who defended her tenure, slammed Mr. Yang’s record leading Venture for America, the nonprofit he ran before running for president, over its record of job creation and how, records show, he failed to recruit many participants of color. And in one of the most revealing exchanges of the night, she and Mr. Adams had an extended back-and-forth over remarks he made about guns.

Mr. Adams stressed that he saw a distinction between off-duty officers carrying guns and the proliferation of illegal guns, describing an incident that occurred when he was a transit police officer, and he stopped an anti-Asian hate crime on a subway train.

Ms. Wiley is working to assemble a coalition of both voters of color and white progressives, and she has increasingly billed herself as “the progressive candidate that can win this race,” as she seeks to emerge as the left-wing standard-bearer in the race.

Mr. Stringer is a well-funded candidate with significant labor support, but an accusation that he made unwanted sexual advances 20 years ago — which he denies — sapped his momentum and appears to have complicated his ability to grow beyond his Upper West Side base. Onstage, though, he was one of the most vigorous combatants.

In different ways, both Mr. Donovan and Mr. McGuire sought to cast themselves as city government outsiders with serious executive experience who can fix the problems that have daunted others more closely tied to the current administration.

more significant, we are not very good at predicting who is likely to be dangerous in the future.

“Most of these killers are young men who are not floridly psychotic. They tend to be paranoid loners who hold a grudge and are full of rage.”

Even though we know from large-scale epidemiologic studies like the E.C.A. study that a young psychotic male who is intoxicated with alcohol and has a history of involuntary commitment is at a high risk of violence, most individuals who fit this profile are harmless.

“Can we reliably predict violence?  ‘No’ is the short answer. Psychiatrists, using clinical judgment, are not much better than chance at predicting which individual patients will do something violent and which will not.”

Even if clinicians could predict violence perfectly, keeping guns from people with mental illness is easier said than done. Nearly five years after Congress enacted the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, only about half of the s

All the focus on the small number of people with mental illness who are violent serves to make us feel safer by displacing and limiting the threat of violence to a small, well-defined group

But the sad and frightening truth is that the vast majority of homicides are carried out by outwardly normal people in the grip of all too ordinary human aggression to whom we provide nearly unfettered access to deadly force.