Anymore, incidents of so-called “law-abiding citizens” with state-issued permits to carry concealed weapons shooting and killing their fellow citizens are becoming so commonplace as to merit special mention only in particularly noteworthy examples.

The Fort Hood terrorist shooter is a recent example.

The Appomattox mass killer is an even more recent one.

Then yesterday, the Salt Lake Tribune reported a 70-year-old woman has been arrested for shooting and killing a 34-year-old Head Start teacher, the single mother of two children, outside the teacher’s school:

On Friday, 70-year-old Mary Nance Hanson went looking for Tetyana Nikitina carrying a loaded gun, police said.

About 3 p.m., she found the 34-year-old teacher outside the Head Start school where she worked.

Hanson fired five shots from her .38-caliber revolver as Nikitina sat behind the wheel of her Dodge Mangum, killing her.

As the single mother of two bled, Hanson called 911 from the corner of the parking lot and told dispatchers she had just shot the woman. When asked why, Hanson replied she did not know and that was all she was going to say.

And on Friday night, she still wasn’t talking, said Unified Police Lt. Don Hutson.

“That is still a mystery to us. What may have tipped her over the edge, why the timing, that is not clear,” Hutson said. “I’m not sure we’re going to know that until the time comes for trial, because she’s not explaining.”

…

Police say Hanson shot at least five bullets. Nikitina was struck in the head, and her car rolled into a parked minivan. Hutson said police found five shell casings in the parking lot and five bullets in the pistol’s cylinder, noting that Hanson had reloaded the gun.

Hutson said some teachers in the school saw the shooting. Angela Crosby, a parent who was taking a child-development class at the Head Start building, heard the shots.

“When I looked out the window, the lady was in the corner” of the parking lot, Crosby said.

Crosby said Hanson was pointing to herself. Police forcibly took her to the ground, Crosby said, and took her gun. Hanson had a gash on her forehead when she was placed in a police car about an hour later.

Hanson had a concealed firearm permit issued or renewed three months ago, Hutson said….

[more]

Just to be clear: the State of Utah just gave an accused killer — a so-called “law-abiding citizen” — permission to carry a revolver used in the shooting death of a Head Start teacher and single mother.

Apparently Utah thought that was good policy.

(Do you hear that?  Yes, that’s the NRA’s deafening silence.)

Almost 9 million YouTube viewers have seen Beyoncé and Lady Gaga – scheduled to perform on the Grammy Awards this Sunday – in their recent music video, “Video Phone.”

The music was fine, but I wonder why they went out of their way to glorify guns in their production.  Beyond the sexual stereotype of guns in general, it’s hard to understand why they are in the video at all.

What’s more, Lady Gaga has been using fake machine guns as props in her live shows as well, pretending to shoot into the crowd.

Finally, rapper Dwayne “Lil Wayne” Carter was also announced yesterday as a Grammy Award show performer, just months after he pleaded guilty to a gun charge.  He is scheduled to be sentenced in February and is expected to serve as much as a year in jail.

I can hear people say, “Hey, it’s just show business,” and that Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Lil Wayne each put on a good show.  I understand that.

Yet it is difficult to deny the influence that these entertainers have on our popular culture and the young people who absorb it.  Guns aren’t toys, even when they’re made with pretty colors or sung about in rap songs, and it is dangerous to treat them that way.

To Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Lil’ Wayne, the Grammy Award show producers, and CBS, I have a video that I’d like you to promote sometime that gives a different perspective on guns.

Colin Goddard was shot four times at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, and lived to tell his story to the world.  In this video, he describes what it was like that morning, and asks us to call on our elected officials to make it harder for dangerous people to get guns.

Colin is no performer, but he knows that the reality of gun violence isn’t pretty or entertaining.

It is a deadly problem that more of us – including celebrities – should take seriously.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

Colin Goddard knows something about guns on college campuses.

On April 16, 2007, Colin was a student at Virginia Tech when he was shot four times by a mentally disturbed armed classmate who killed 32 fellow students and faculty.

Colin survived his wounds that day, and has become an eloquent activist for sensible gun laws in this country. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch Colin’s story here:

All over America, ordinary citizens and elected officials have been listening to his story.

One of the issues Colin has spoken most forcefully about is an effort by the gun pushers to force colleges and universities to accept loaded, concealed firearms on their campuses.

In 2009, Colin teamed with other young people, college and university faculty and administrators, and campus police chiefs to fight these proposals in state legislatures across the country.

In one battle after another, the gun lobby was defeated after elected officials heard the arguments of new groups like Students for Gun Free Schools and young leaders in the gun violence prevention movement such as Colin, his friend Lily Habtu of Virginia – a fellow survivor of the Virginia Tech shooting who still carries bullet fragments in her jaw; John Woods of Texas, who lost his girlfriend at Virginia Tech; Brian Roach of Missouri, and hundreds of other young activists who were instrumental in defeating these ridiculous and dangerous proposals.

Although gun lobby-backed legislation was introduced in 12 states in 2009, not a single “guns on campus” bill was enacted into law, including failed proposals in Texas, Alabama, Missouri and Louisiana.

In fact, since the shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007, the gun lobby has suffered 34 consecutive defeats in trying to pass such legislation.  In addition, Colorado State University reversed its previous policy and now prohibits guns on its campuses.

Andy Pelosi, director of the organization Gun Free Kids, had it right when he explained, “There comes a point where the gun lobby’s agenda just becomes too extreme for state lawmakers to support.  Most lawmakers simply don’t want to have to explain the fact that they risked the safety of college students just to appease the radical ideology of the gun lobby.”

Colin Goddard has been a big part of this fight, as he personally campaigned in Missouri, wrote letters to Louisiana state legislators, and published op-eds in major Texas newspapers.  For example, in an opinion column for the Dallas Morning News explaining why Texas should reject a “guns on campus” bill under consideration there last spring, Colin recalled that when the shooting started on April 16, 2007:

[M]y whole class thought it was construction noise. Then I thought the killer was a police officer. I barely had time to make the [911] phone call. Anyone who thinks I could have gotten to a weapon and shot somebody I never fully saw watches too many movies.  Instead of putting more guns in that classroom two years ago, I would work toward removing the two that were there, in the hands of the shooter. Guns on campus were the problem two years ago, not the solution. And we have to solve the problem, not make more of them.

Legislators in Texas, Missouri and Louisiana listened to this courageous young man.  It’s time for more sensible politicians to put these “guns on campus” bills away for good.

Instead, elected officials should focus on another effort that Goddard and other young leaders have been advocating for: closing the loophole that allows dangerous people to buy assault weapons, semi-automatic pistols and other firearms at most gun shows from “private sellers” without first passing a Brady criminal background check.

You can see undercover footage that Colin filmed at gun shows across America documenting such dangerous gun sales practices in this remarkable video:

I’m grateful that 2009 was the second straight year when common sense policies on college campuses were upheld without exception.

We need to take more sensible steps to reduce gun violence in 2010.  That would make for a happier new year for us all.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

A U.S. soldier, under investigation by the FBI for his communications with a radical Yemeni cleric tied to al-Qaida, uses a gun to kill thirteen and wound thirty-eight at Fort Hood, one of our nation’s leading military bases. A Nigerian terrorist with ties to the same radical cleric comes close to detonating a bomb on a U.S. airliner about to land in Detroit, stopped only by the bravery of a passenger. As to the airline bomber, President Obama acknowledged that “the system has failed in a potentially disastrous way.” The President undeniably is on the defensive, as his opponents do their best to paint him as “soft on terror”.

I have a modest suggestion for the President. In the State of the Union address, demonstrate that national security trumps fear of the gun lobby.

Make no mistake about it, the gun lobby’s influence has made the war against terrorists harder to fight.

First, during the Bush Administration, Congress responded to the gun lobby’s paranoia about “gun registration” by enacting a requirement – as part of the infamous Tiahrt Amendments named for their sponsor Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) – mandating that records of Brady Law background checks on approved purchasers be destroyed within 24 hours of the purchase. During the Clinton years, these records were preserved for 90 days, which allowed auditing of the background check system to determine if some illegal gun buyers had slipped through the cracks. The National Rifle Association failed in its lawsuit challenging the temporary retention of the records as an illegal “gun registry”; indeed, such a registry was precluded by the Brady Act itself, which mandated the destruction of the records, but did not say when that had to occur.

In the case of Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, the Tiahrt requirement meant that investigators had no way of knowing a rather material piece of information – that Hasan had purchased a gun. Because Hasan had no disqualifying record that would have blocked his purchase, the FBI’s record of his purchase disappeared after 24 hours. (The only other federal record of his purchase – the form he would have filled out at the gun shop – by law must remain at the gun shop, yet another irrational restriction on gun records that has its origins in gun lobby paranoia about “registration.”) According to former FBI agent Brady Garrett, “The piece of information about the gun could have been critical.” Earlier this year, the Obama Administration supported some changes to the Tiahrt Amendments, but proposed no change in the record destruction provision.

Second, due to gun lobby opposition, Congress has done nothing to close the so-called “terror gap” in federal gun laws. Our gun laws are so weak that individuals who have close ties to terrorist groups can be denied guns only if they have already committed a felony, or fall into another of the limited categories of prohibited buyers. The result is a shocking anomaly: a person on the terrorist watch list can be barred from getting on airplanes, but not barred from buying as many guns as he wants. According to the Government Accountability Office, in the five years ending in February of last year, 865 individuals on the terrorist watch list were able to buy guns at licensed gun dealers. As we contemplate why Nidal Hasan and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the airline bomber, were not on the terrorist watch list, let us not overlook the absurdity that, under current law, their inclusion on the list would not have disqualified them from buying 20 assault rifles from a gun shop.

Repealing the Tiahrt record destruction requirement and closing the “terror gap” are not only good policy; for the Obama Administration, they are also good politics. The President should challenge those in Congress who are trying to hang the “soft on terror” label on him to demonstrate their own toughness by standing up to the gun lobby in the interest of national security. He should make them choose between pandering to the paranoia of the gun extremists and preventing terrorists from arming themselves. Keep in mind that a recent survey by Frank Luntz – that most Republican of pollsters – found that 82% of NRA members support “prohibiting persons on the terrorist watch lists from purchasing guns.” On this issue, the NRA’s extremist leadership is hopelessly out of touch with its membership.

We saw multiple U.S. Senators with “A” ratings from the NRA defy the gun lobby to vote to confirm Justice Sotomayor. Which NRA supporters in Congress are willing to vote to allow suspected terrorists to buy guns?

On the politics, don’t take my word for it. Listen to Rahm Emanuel who, slightly more than two years ago, addressed a Brady Center gathering with these words:

“The most important thing we can do, and we’ve got to make this a number one issue . . . if you are on the no-fly list . . . you cannot buy a handgun in America . . . As my old boss used to say, give me that vote, and throw me into that briar patch, and I’ll make politics out of that every day, because if it’s between that terrorist list and the NRA, I know where America is going to be every time and they’re going to make the right choice . . . .”

Rahm, you were right then. And you can do something about it now. Sometimes, on certain issues, the policy and the politics are perfectly aligned. On the issue of guns and terror, that time is now.

For more information, see Dennis Henigan’s new book, Lethal Logic: Exploding the Myths that Paralyze American Gun Policy.

New developments in the Christmas Eve gunplay between Gilbert Arenas and Washington Wizards teammate Javaris Crittenton seem to come out every hour.

Suffice to say, if Arenas violated the law by bringing guns into the District of Columbia to keep them at the Verizon Center, he should go directly from the basketball court to a court of law.

If he is found guilty, Arenas — and any others who have violated the law in this incident — should be required to serve punishment up to and including appropriate jail time.

If media reports are accurate, on top of violations of the law and NBA policy, Arenas also likely violated at least two of the four fundamental rules of responsible gun ownership, the first of which is to remember that “all guns are always loaded.”

Even a casual reading of the news across the nation shows that assuming a gun is unloaded is a recipe for disaster.

• A Texas father thought his weapon was unloaded before he accidentally shot his 2-year old daughter with it.

• A Florida radio personality accidentally shot his wife and his dog with a weapon he believed was unloaded.

• An Ohio teenager accidentally shot and killed a friend with a firearm he believed was unloaded.

The principle here is that guns are not toys.  Guns are designed for killing people — and are used to do so over 30,000 times every year in America.  They should never be treated as a joke.

As captured in a now-iconic photograph, the fact that Arenas and his teammates would laugh while Arenas pretended to gun them all down shows that this message hasn’t even begun to sink in.

Washington Post columnist Dan Steinberg put it best, saying of this spectacle:

What a monumental, colossal, skull-crushingly bad idea that was.

An NBA player who is reckless with firearms is far from the role model that the parents of thousands of his young fans expect him to be.

To that end, NBA Commissioner David Stern was right to suspend Arenas for his behavior, but much more needs to be done.

It is time for America’s athletic community to use its clout and prestige to push for positive reforms in our nation’s gun laws as well as the way American culture addresses — or too often, fails to address — its horrific gun violence problem.

Perhaps as part of his restitution, Gilbert Arenas — like Michael Vick and other athletes before him — could become part of that reformative process.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)