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MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) —
Hillary Rodham Clinton offered an emotional plea for tougher gun control laws on Monday, vowing after last week's deadly Oregon school shooting to tighten regulations on firearms buyers and sellers with a combination of congressional and executive action.
Joined by the mother of a 6-year-old victim of the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, the Democratic presidential candidate said there was little "new" and "nothing unique" about her plans — aside from her determination to take action.
Clinton decried the "extremism" that she said has come to characterize the debate over the nation's gun laws during an appearance at a campaign town hall. She veered between sadness and anger, accusing her Republican opponents of "surrender" to a difficult political problem.
"This epidemic of gun violence knows no boundaries, knows no limits of any kind," she told the crowd of several hundred. "How many people have to die before we actually act, before we come together as a nation? It's time for us to say we're better than this."
Clinton has made strengthening the nation's gun laws a centerpiece of her presidential campaign following a series of mass shootings in the past few months.
Her campaign rolled out a robust set of proposals Monday, including using executive action as president to expand background check requirements. Under current federal law, such checks are not required for sales made at gun shows or over the Internet.
Clinton pledged to require anyone "attempting to sell a significant number of guns" to be considered a firearms dealer, and therefore need a federal license. She did not say how many gun sales would constitute a "significant" number.
Efforts to require such comprehensive background checks have failed several times in recent years in Congress, where Republican leaders have shown no willingness to even hold votes on efforts to curb access to guns.
Clinton's attempt to circumvent staunch opposition would likely spark legal challenges from gun advocates, as well as from Republicans sure to question whether a president has the authority to act directly.
Clinton also said she would support a law to expand the definition of domestic abusers barred from buying guns. She also wants to prohibit retailers from selling guns to people with incomplete background checks, as happened in the June case of a man accused of killing nine people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Clinton proposed repealing legislation that shields gun manufacturers, distributors and dealers of firearms from most liability suits, including in cases of mass shootings.
While Clinton's Republican rivals have condemned the Oregon attack, most were also quick to declare their opposition to stricter gun laws to address mass shootings.
Her plan strikes a contrast with her closest primary rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. While Sanders has wooed the Democratic base with his liberal positions on issues of income inequality and college debt, he's struggled to defend a more mixed record on gun legislation that reflects his rural, gun-friendly home state.
After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, Sanders backed all the Democratic gun bills brought up in Congress. But in 1993, he voted against the landmark Brady handgun bill, which imposed a five-day waiting period for gun purchasers, and he backed legislation in 2005 granting legal immunity to many in the gun industry.
Sanders now says he supports banning assault weapons and closing the so-called gun show loophole that exempts private, unlicensed gun sales from background check requirements.
Clinton declined to address Sanders' positions on guns directly during a Monday morning event hosted by NBC's "Today" show, saying she'd let "Sen. Sanders talk about himself."
But she said she wasn't surprised by his recent rise in New Hampshire polls, mentioning his long tenure representing a neighboring state.
"I really believe this is great for the Democrats and this election," she said of the competitive contest. "We really want to turn out as many people as possible."
The numbers jump off the page: Nine dead on an Oregon college campus, 12 in a theater in Aurora, Colorado. Thirteen soldiers and civilians at Fort Hood, Texas; 32 people at Virginia Tech; 13 at a community center in Binghamton, New York. Twenty-six dead — 20 of them young children — at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.
Mass killings like the one Thursday at the Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, scraped nerves raw, commanded headlines and prompted an anguished President Barack Obama to take to the airwaves — again — to condemn gun violence.
Here's another number: 8,124. That's the total of homicides by gun in 2014, according to the FBI's Crime in the United States report. That works out to an average of 156 a week, more than 22 people shot to death every day across the country.
Dr. Helen Farrell, a forensic psychiatrist who teaches at Harvard Medical School and is on staff at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said people do have more interest in — and there is certainly more intense media coverage of — mass killings because they are relatively uncommon.
"That's unfortunate because those single homicides are far more prevalent and cause just as much pain and suffering to the people involved," she said.
In just the 24 hours surrounding Thursday's Oregon killings, there were at least a dozen shooting deaths. A look at them:
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CLEVELAND
Five-month-old Aavielle Wakefield died Thursday when more than a dozen shots were fired into a car. An angry Police Chief Calvin Williams broke down crying while briefing the media on the shooting. It was the third time in a month that Williams' department has investigated the shooting death of a child. Three-year-old Major Howard was killed in a drive-by shooting, and 5-year-old Ramon "Dink" Burnett was hit and killed by crossfire while playing football in a courtyard behind his grandmother's house on Sept. 4.
"It's been hard to stomach," said Williams.
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FLORIDA
A man in the northern Florida community of Inglis shot two people to death, including his estranged wife, and critically injured a third before killing himself. Police received 911 calls of shots fired Thursday evening and when they arrived at the home about 50 miles from Gainesville, they surrounded the home, believing the gunman was inside. Levy County Sheriff's Office spokesman Lt. Scott Tummond said officers saw a man appear in a second-floor window, then vanish from view. Officers then heard a single gunshot. The shootings took the lives of Walter Terhune, 68, Patricia Tyson, age unknown, and the gunman, 57-year-old Walter Tyson. Police said they believe the Tysons recently split up. It appears that Terhune, a Vietnam veteran, heard shots from across the street, noticed there were children nearby and went to intervene when he was shot. "This is a very ... tragic incident for this small community," Tummond said.
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BALTIMORE
Three shootings Wednesday night and Thursday morning left two men dead and another injured, The Baltimore Sun reported. Just before 10 p.m., police found Deyquawn Charvez Cooper, 21, with a single gunshot wound to his upper body. They announced the next day that he had died and a family member was in custody. A 32-year-old found with gunshots in his upper body also died from his injuries.
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MARYLAND
Two people died in Capitol Heights, a Washington suburb, after a triple shooting Wednesday night. Ernest Gene Lott, 37, and Garland Johnson, 43, both of Washington, D.C., died about a block away from where a security guard at an apartment complex in Capitol Heights was shot and killed in July. Lott and Johnson were pronounced dead outside a three-story apartment building where they were found around 7:45 p.m. Wednesday, police said. Detectives are investigating the case as a double homicide but don't believe it was random.
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ATLANTA
Police responded to an upscale high-rise in Buckhead about 5 a.m. Thursday and found security guard Emmanuel Nwankwo, 23, shot several times. Another guard, Dexter Harper, was taken into custody and charged with murder. Police said an argument led up to the shooting. Another security guard, Ronald Harrison, told WSB-TV that he learned of the shooting when he arrived for work. "With all that's been going on, even with a badge on my chest, it doesn't make me feel better," Harrison told the television station.
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FRESNO, CALIFORNIA
The Fresno Bee reported that a midday gunfight near a busy intersection late Thursday morning left two brothers dead and a bystander wounded. "I heard four shots and a pause and then like three or four more," Katherine Allington told KFSN-TV in Fresno. When police arrived, they learned that the possible gunman was holed up in an apartment. They surrounded the building and ultimately took the man into custody. Fresno police identified the brothers as Willie Ford, 19, and Denzel Ford, 18. Police said Willie Ford was a gang member who was arrested in 2014 when he was caught hiding a loaded handgun in a bag of Cheetos Hot Fries, the paper reported. A third brother, 17-year-old Benzo Ford, died July 12 when a bullet fired from a nearby alley came through a window into a bedroom. Police say they believe he was targeted.
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KENT, WASHINGTON
Police say a confrontation led to the shooting death of a 23-year-old man found in his car in a Target shopping center parking lot. Witnesses reported that the driver of another vehicle fired shots just before 7 p.m. Wednesday, sending shoppers scrambling to stay inside the store. Several shoppers saw shattered glass and bullet casings on the ground as medics tried to save the victim, according to KOMO-TV. "We saw them doing CPR on him when he got taken out of the car for a good five or ten minutes. And then they just stopped and called it," Slav Styrenko told the station. The gunman immediately fled the scene with another person in the car.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) —
The only gun store in San Francisco is shuttering for good, saying it can no longer operate in the city's political climate of increased gun control regulations and vocal opposition to its business.
"It's with tremendous sadness and regret that I have to announce we are closing our shop," High Bridge Arms manager Steve Alcairo announced in a Facebook post on Sept. 11. "It has been a long and difficult ride, but a great pleasure to be your last San Francisco gun shop."
Alcairo said the breaking point came this summer when a local politician proposed a law that would require High Bridge Arms to video record every gun sale and submit a weekly report of ammunition sales to the police. If passed, the law would join several local gun control ordinances on the books in a city still scarred by the 1993 murder of eight in a downtown high-rise and the 1978 assassination of Mayor George Moscone and gay rights activist Harvey Milk.
"I'm not doing that to our customers. Enough is enough," Alcairo said. "Buying a gun is a constitutionally protected right. Our customers shouldn't be treated like they're doing something wrong."
The announcement prompted an outpouring of sympathy and anger online from gun enthusiasts — and a steady stream of customers eager to take advantage of going-out-of-business prices.
The new rifles lining the store's walls are quickly dwindling, and the handguns in the glass cases are going fast. So are T-shirts that boast in English and Chinese that High Bridge is "The Last San Francisco Gun Store."
For years, the High Bridge Arms weathered mounting restrictions imposed by local lawmakers and voters, who passed a handgun ban in 2005 that a judge later struck down. The gun store increasingly stood out in the gentrifying Bernal Heights neighborhood of hot restaurants, trendy bars and a chic marijuana dispensary, while weathering organized campaigns calling for its closure.
High Bridge will close Oct. 31, Alcairo said.
Supervisor Mark Farrell said he introduced the latest bill to help police combat violent crime in the city. "Anything that makes San Francisco safer, I support," he said.
Farrell said the bill hasn't been voted on, and he doesn't understand why the store is closing now. He said it was "comical" that the High Bridge is blaming its closure on a proposed law still months away from taking effect.
Alcairo said news coverage of the bill's introduction in July slowed sales considerably because customers wrongly believed their purchases would be recorded and turned over to police. He said he had to lay off three clerks and that sales slumped throughout the summer. The store's summer slump comes amid an overall gun sales surge in the state, according to California Department of Justice statistics.
The California DOJ reported 931,000 guns sold last year— three times the number sold in 2004 and the second highest annual number since the department began keeping sales records in 1991.
In the end, Alcairo said, he and the High Bridge Arms owner tired of the continued opposition and mountains of paperwork required by the San Francisco Police Department, state Department of Justice and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Alcairo grew up near the store and says he is angry and disappointed with San Francisco.
"This is the city that defended gay marriage and fights for unpopular causes like medical marijuana," he said. "Where's my support?"
Champion pistol shooter Bob Chow opened the store in 1952, four years after competing for the United States in the summer Olympics in London. Chow sold the store to Andy Takahashi in 1988. Chow died in 2003. Takahashi, who also owns the building that houses the store, declined to comment.
Alcairo said the owner shouldn't have a problem attracting another type of business in economically booming San Francisco.
The quirky city fixture attracted gun enthusiasts from around the world, many posing in photos with Alcairo and his pistol-packing clerks. Alcairo said professional athletes would visit the store when playing in San Francisco for the novelty of buying a weapon — and a T-shirt — from the city's last gun store.
"High Bridge has always taken care of me," said Chris Cheng, a San Francisco resident who calls it "my home store." Cheng won a $100,000 cash prize and a professional marksman contract after winning the History Channel's "Top Shot" competition.
"It's always been a challenge for the store to do business in San Francisco," Cheng said.