While citizens and advocates of gun control are responding to Friday’s horrific school shooting in Connecticut by calling on Congress to enact sensible gun regulations, some gun advocacy groups are blaming supporters of the tighter restrictions for the tragedy.

Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, issued a statement this evening attributing the massacre to gun regulations, arguing that had weapons been permitted on school grounds, the murders could have been avoided:

“Gun control supporters have the blood of little children on their hands. Federal and state laws combined to insure that no teacher, no administrator, no adult had a gun at the Newtown school where the children were murdered. This tragedy underscores the urgency of getting rid of gun bans in school zones. The only thing accomplished by gun free zones is to insure that mass murderers can slay more before they are finally confronted by someone with a gun.”

The National Riffle Association (NRA), most well-known gun advocacy group, has yet to issue a statement about today’s events.

Preliminary reports indicate that the gunman, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, was “heavily armed” with “multiple weapons when he entered the school.” He was also reported to be wearing camouflage and a bullet proof vest. At least three guns were used — two pistols and, according to the BBC and AP, a .223-caliber assault rifle.

America seems to be in for another debate over gun regulation after the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School left 27 (mostly children) dead. So it’s worth reviewing five made against regulating gun ownership in the United States:

MYTH #1: More guns don’t lead to more murders. A survey by researchers at the Harvard University School of Public Health found strong statistical support for the idea that, even if you control for poverty levels, more people die from gun homicides in areas with higher rates of gun ownership. And despite what gun advocates say, countries like Israel and Switzerland don’t disprove the point.

MYTH #2: The Second Amendment prohibits strict gun control. While the Supreme Court ruled in D.C. v. Heller that bans on handgun ownership were unconstitutional, the ruling gives the state and federal governments a great deal of latitude to regulate that gun ownership as they choose. As the U.S. Second Court of Appeals put it in a recent ruling upholding a New York regulation, “The state’s ability to regulate firearms and, for that matter, conduct, is qualitatively different in public than in the home. Heller reinforces this view. In striking D.C.’s handgun ban, the Court stressed that banning usable handguns in the home is a ‘policy choice[]‘ that is ‘off the table,’ but that a variety of other regulatory options remain available, including categorical bans on firearm possession in certain public locations.”

MYTH #3: State-level gun controls haven’t worked. Scholars Richard Florida and Charlotta Mellander recently studied state-to-state variation in gun homicide levels. They found that “[f]irearm deaths are significantly lower in states with stricter gun control legislation.” This is backed up by research on local gun control efforts and cross-border gun violence.

MYTH #4: We only need better enforcement of the laws we have, not new laws. In fact, Congress has passed several laws that cripple the ability for current gun regulations to be enforced the way that they’re supposed to. According to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, a series of federal laws referred to as the Tiahrt amendments “limit public access to crime gun trace data, prohibit the use of gun trace data in hearings, pertaining to licensure of gun dealers and litigation against gun dealers, and restrict ATF’s authority to require gun dealers to conduct a physical inventory of their firearms.” Other federal laws “limited the ATF compliance inspections” and grant “broad protections from lawsuits against firearm manufacturers and retail sellers.”

MYTH #5: Sensible gun regulation is prohibitively unpopular. Not necessarily. As the New Republic’s Amy Sullivan reported after the series of mass shootings this summer, a majority of Americans would prefer both to enforce existing law more strictly and pass new regulations on guns when given the option to choose both rather than either/or. Specific gun regulations are also often more popular than the abstract idea.

More than 150 individuals held a vigil in front of the White House this afternoon to grieve for today’s tragic school shooting in Connecticut and encourage President Obama to take real, meaningful action on gun control.

Strangers exchanged hugs and prayed for the victims and their families in the shadow of the White House approximately an hour after President Obama addressed the shooting, fighting back tears in an afternoon statement. Many attendees held signs saying “Enough is enough” and “Today is the day”.

Photos from the event:

Andy Pelosi, a father of two elementary school girls who lives near Newtown, Connecticut, spoke passionately about the tragedy. “No children, no teachers, no staff should have to worry about going to a school in the United States of America and be gunned down,” said Pelosi. “No parent should have to worry when they put their children on a school bus in the morning, like I do and like many of you do, and worry about is my child coming home at the end of the day.”

Watch his remarks:

In his remarks to the nation about the Connecticut school shooting tragedy, President Obama said Friday, “we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.” While he did not get specific, some lawmakers were more blunt, arguing that meaningful gun control legislation is needed to reduce the unfathomable number of such mass shootings the nation has endured since Columbine. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), whose husband was killed and son was injured in a the 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings said she has given the White House notice that “the gloves are off” and will do everything possible to push for gun control — even if it means embarrassing the president.

Among the others speaking out:

1. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY): “If now is not the time to have a serious discussion about gun control and the epidemic of gun violence plaguing our society, I don’t know when is. How many more Columbines and Newtowns must we live through? I am challenging President Obama, the Congress, and the American public to act on our outrage and, finally, do something about this.”

2. Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY): “We cannot tolerate mass shootings as a mere inconvenience or a normal part of our everyday lives. Easy availability of the deadliest weapons to the most dangerous people has cost countless lives and caused immeasurable suffering, never more so than today. Our expressions of sympathy must be matched with concrete actions to stop gun violence.”

3. Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA): “As a nation, we are again confronted with an act of terrifying mass gun violence. While the coming days should be reserved for grieving, as a legislative body, and as a people, we must consider what can be done to improve our laws to prevent the continuation of this horrific trend.”

4. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA): “Tragedy in CT school. Unspeakable carnage. Every parent’s nightmare. Pray for the families. Congress must act now.”

5. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ): “Americans are sick and tired of these attacks on our children and neighbors and they are sick and tired of nothing being done in Washington to stop the bloodshed. If we do not take action to address gun violence, shooting tragedies like this will continue. As President Obama said, we must act now ‘regardless of the politics.’”

6. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA): “This touches us all so deeply, and it is long past time that we enacted sensible gun laws and school safety legislation.”

Mark Kelly, husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) — herself a shooting survivor — and Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) joined in these calls aggressive action on gun control legislation.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino (D) and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I), co-chairs of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, also demanded immediate action. Among their proposals are requiring background checks for all gun purchases and increased enforcement of existing gun laws. Others have also proposed re-regulating military-style assault rifles.

And, conservative columnist David Frum noted, “A permissive gun regime is not the only reason that the United States suffers so many atrocities like the one in Connecticut. An inadequate mental health system is surely at least as important a part of the answer.”

Hours after the terrible shooting in a Newtown, Connecticut elementary school, the Michigan House Republicans issued demanded that Governor Rick Snyder (R) sign a bill that would make it easier for people to receive a gun permit and open up “gun free zones,” including schools. A statement attributed to Press Secretary Ari B. Adler shrugged off any link between guns in schools and school shootings:

What happened in Connecticut, however, is not because of nor related in any way to actions taken by the Michigan House yesterday in approving Senate Bill 59. …

It is the belief of many representatives in our caucus that it is criminals who have no intention of following any law that are the perpetrators of such heinous crimes as school shootings. Strict gun-control laws do not stop criminals from committing evil acts, they merely infringe on the rights of law-abiding citizens who might be able to take action against evil if given the chance.

The vast majority of mass killers in the United States use legally acquired weapons. A significant body of evidence suggests the wide availability of guns is strongly linked with higher murder rates.

Adler’s statement concludes by saying “Regardless of where anyone stands on the gun-rights debate, however, we will encourage everyone to try to refrain from politicizing the tragedy in Connecticut.”

The latest numbers from the Urban Institute add a budgetary reason on top of the human reasons to reform the United States’ massive rates of incarceration: at current trends, spending on prisons will take up 29 percent of the Justice Department’s budget by 2020. Given the possibility of cuts to federal spending from either the fiscal cliff’s sequestration or an alternative budget deal, funding this growth in prison spending could crowd out other crucial agency operations such as investigations and support for state and local governments. The report concludes that reforming front-end decisions about sentencing would do the most to tackle the problem — reducing both sentencing length and the number of offenders sentenced, and most especially reducing those numbers for drug offenses.

On Friday morning, 27 people were reportedly shot and killed at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, CT. According to sources, 18 of these casualties were children. This is the second mass shooting in the US this week, after a gunman opened fire in an Oregon shopping mall on Tuesday, killing 2. ABC News reports that there have been 31 school shootings in the US since Columbine in 1999, when 13 people were killed.

The rate of people killed by guns in the US is 19.5 times higher than similar high-income countries in the world. In the last 30 years since 1982, America has mourned at least 61 mass murders. Below is a timeline of mass shootings in the US since the Columbine High massacre:

December 11, 2012. On Tuesday, 22-year-old Jacob Tyler Roberts killed 2 people and himself with a stolen rifle in Clackamas Town Center, Oregon. His motive is unknown.

September 27, 2012. Five were shot to death by 36-year-old Andrew Engeldinger at Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis, MN. Three others were wounded. Engeldinger went on a rampage after losing his job, ultimately killing himself.

August 5, 2012. Six Sikh temple members were killed when 40-year-old US Army veteran Wade Michael Page opened fire in a gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Four others were injured, and Page killed himself.

July 20, 2012. During the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, CO, 24-year-old James Holmes killed 12 people and wounded 58. Holmes was arrested outside the theater.

May 29, 2012. Ian Stawicki opened fire on Cafe Racer Espresso in Seattle, WA, killing 5 and himself after a citywide manhunt.

April 6, 2012. Jake England, 19, and Alvin Watts, 32, shot 5 black men in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in racially motivated shooting spree. Three died.

April 2, 2012. A former student, 43-year-old One L. Goh killed 7 people at Oikos University, a Korean Christian college in Oakland, CA. The shooting was the sixth-deadliest school massacre in the US and the deadliest attack on a school since the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre.

February 27, 2012. Three students were killed by Thomas “TJ” Lane, another student, in a rampage at Chardon High School in Chardon, OH. Three others were injured.

October 14, 2011. Eight people died in a shooting at Salon Meritage hair salon in Seal Beach, CA. The gunman, 41-year-old Scott Evans Dekraai, killed six women and two men dead, while just one woman survived. It was Orange County’s deadliest mass killing.

September 6, 2011. Eduardo Sencion, 32, entered an IHOP restaurant in Carson City, NV and shot 12 people. Five died, including three National Guard members.

January 8, 2011. Former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) was shot in the head when 22-year-old Jared Loughner opened fire on an event she was holding at a Safeway market in Tucson, AZ. Six people died, including Arizona District Court Chief Judge John Roll, one of Giffords’ staffers, and a 9-year-old girl. 19 total were shot. Loughner has been sentenced to seven life terms plus 140 years, without parole.

August 3, 2010. Omar S. Thornton, 34, gunned down Hartford Beer Distributor in Manchester, CT after getting caught stealing beer. Nine were killed, including Thornton, and two were injured.

November 5, 2009. Forty-three people were shot by Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan at the Fort Hood army base in Texas. Hasan reportedly yelled “Allahu Akbar!” before opening fire, killing 13 and wounding 29 others.

April 3, 2009. Jiverly Wong, 41, opened fire at an immigration center in Binghamton, New York before committing suicide. He killed 13 people and wounded 4.

March 29, 2009. Eight people died in a shooting at the Pinelake Health and Rehab nursing home in Carthage, NC. The gunman, 45-year-old Robert Stewart, was targeting his estranged wife who worked at the home and survived. Stewart was sentenced to life in prison.

February 14, 2008. Steven Kazmierczak, 27, opened fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University, killing 6 and wounding 21. The gunman shot and killed himself before police arrived. It was the fifth-deadliest university shooting in US history.

February 7, 2008. Six people died and two were injured in a shooting spree at the City Hall in Kirkwood, Missouri. The gunman, Charles Lee Thornton, opened fire during a public meeting after being denied construction contracts he believed he deserved. Thornton was killed by police.

December 5, 2007. A 19-year-old boy, Robert Hawkins, shot up a department store in the Westroads Mall in Omaha, NE. Hawkins killed 9 people and wounded 4 before killing himself. The semi-automatic rifle he used was stolen from his stepfather’s house.

April 16, 2007. Virginia Tech became the site of the deadliest school shooting in US history when a student, Seung-Hui Choi, gunned down 56 people. Thirty-two people died in the massacre.

February 12, 2007. In Salt Lake City’s Trolley Square Mall, 5 people were shot to death and 4 others were wounded by 18-year-old gunman Sulejman Talović. One of the victims was a 16-year-old boy.

October 2, 2006. An Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster, PA was gunned down by 32-year-old Charles Carl Roberts, Roberts separated the boys from the girls, binding and shooting the girls. 5 young girls died, while 6 were injured. Roberts committed suicide afterward.

March 25, 2006. Seven died and 2 were injured by 28-year-old Kyle Aaron Huff in a shooting spree through Capitol Hill in Seattle, WA. The massacre was the worst killing in Seattle since 1983.

March 21, 2005. Teenager Jeffrey Weise killed his grandfather and his grandfather’s girlfriend before opening fire on Red Lake Senior High School, killing 9 people on campus and injuring 5. Weise killed himself.

March 12, 2005. A Living Church of God meeting was gunned down by 44-year-old church member Terry Michael Ratzmann at a Sheraton hotel in Brookfield, WI. Ratzmann was thought to have had religious motivations, and killed himself after executing the pastor, the pastor’s 16-year-old son, and 7 others. Four were wounded.

July 8, 2003. Doug Williams, a Lockheed Martin employee, shot up his plant in Meridian, MS in a racially-motivated rampage. He shot 14 people, most of them African American, and killed 7 before killing himself.

December 26, 2000. Edgewater Technology employee Michael “Mucko” McDermott shot and killed seven of his coworkers at the office in Wakefield, MA. McDermott claimed he had “traveled back in time and killed Hitler and the last 6 Nazis.” He was sentenced to 7 consecutive life sentences.

September 15, 1999. Larry Gene Ashbrook opened fire on a Christian rock concert and teen prayer rally at Wedgewood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, TX. He killed 7 people and wounded 7 others, almost all teenagers. Ashbrook committed suicide.

July 29, 1999. Mark Orrin Barton, 44, murdered his wife and two children with a hammer before shooting up two Atlanta day trading firms. Barton, a day trader, was believed to be motivated by huge monetary losses. He killed 12 including his family and injured 13 before killing himself.

April 20, 1999. In the deadliest high school shooting in US history, teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Kiebold shot up Columbine High School in Littleton, CO. They killed 13 people and wounded 21 others. They killed themselves after the massacre.

On Thursday, one day before the tragedy in Connecticut where at least 29 people were killed at an elementary school, the Republican-controlled Michigan legislature passed a bill that would allow people to bring guns into schools.

Amidst a lameduck session that has spawned a host of right-wing legislation, including a so-called “right-to-work” law and an extreme abortion ban, a “sweeping rewrite of Michigan’s concealed handgun law” was also approved yesterday. The legislation changes Michigan’s gun laws in a number of ways, including making it easier for people to receive a gun permit and opening up “gun free zones,” including schools and elsewhere, to people carrying concealed firearms.

MLive has more:

The legislation is the largest rewrite of Michigan’s concealed weapon law since lawmakers made hard-to-obtain permits much easier for adults to receive beginning July 2001. Applications exploded. There were 351,599 permit holders as of Dec. 1, one for every 20 adults.

Most of the attention on the new bill has focused on provisions allowing hidden handguns in places where they are now forbidden, such as schools, university dorms and classrooms, and sporting stadiums.

The bill now sits on Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) desk, who must decide whether to approve or veto the legislation.

A new Public Policy Polling poll finds overwhelming support for filibuster reform generally, and similarly strong support for specific reforms currently under discussion. The poll, which includes respondents from the ten states of Arkansas, California, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Vermont, finds that 61 percent of the public wants their senator to vote to change the Senate’s rules, while only 25 percent support the status quo. Similarly, the poll finds that 62 percent support “allowing one opportunity to filibuster a bill instead of the four different opportunities to filibuster that the current Senate rules allow,” and 70 percent support a proposal to “make Senators who want to filibuster a bill have to continue to debate the bill on the Senate floor.”

The most popular reform tested by the poll, however, is ensuring that “people who have been nominated to serve as judges have an up or down vote on their nominations in a more timely manner.” 75 percent of respondents supported this proposal. Only 17 percent oppose it. This very popular reform closely resembles a proposal by President Obama in his State of the Union Address last January to guarantee every nominee an up or down vote within 90 days.

The Senate, however, does not appear to have not caught up to the President and public opinion in supporting a guaranteed timely floor vote for nominees. In an exclusive interview with ThinkProgress last week, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) expressed doubt that Obama’s proposal would receive the support of a majority of his colleagues. Merkley also proposed a more moderate reform, however, that would go a long way towards ending obstruction of federal judges.

Currently, the minority can force up to 30 hours of floor time to be wasted even after a supermajority of the Senate votes to break a filibuster on a nominee. Because Senate floor time is so precious, the mere threat of this wasted time is often enough to prevent the majority from calling a vote on nominees, even though the nominees enjoy overwhelming bipartisan support. Merkley proposed proposed reducing these 30 hours to just 2 hours, or even to no time at all — thus ensuring that the overwhelming majority of nominees, who face no meaningful opposition even from senators in the minority, will no longer be used as bargain chips in a one-sided game of obstructionism.

Scores of people — including children — were killed on Friday morning when at least one gunman opened fire in an Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, CT.

Children were reportedly told to run out of the building with their eyes closed after the incident occurred Friday. Reports from the Hartford Courant suggest that the shooting took place inside of a kindergarten classroom.

A total of 28 are dead, including 20 children, according to Connecticut state police Lt. Paul Vance. Only one person made it out injured, but alive. The gunman was also killed.

According to Hartford Courant reporter Dave Altimari, the gunman was “heavily armed” with “multiple weapons when he entered the school.” He was also reported to be wearing camouflage and a bullet proof vest. At least three guns were used — two pistols and, according to the BBC and AP, a .223-caliber assault rifle:

Law enforcement officials identified the gunman as 20 year-old Adam Lanza. His brother, 24 year-old Ryan Lanza, is being held for questioning. The mother of the Lanzas, one of those killed in the shooting, worked as a teacher at the school. Every person in the kindergarten classroom of Lanza’s mother was reportedly killed in the attack.

The Sandy Hook school serves children in grades kindergarten through 4th. The entire school system in the area was on lock down earlier in the day, but parents have come forward to bring the children who survived the shooting home. ABC News points out this chilling statistic: There have been an estimated 31 school shootings since the shooting at Columbine in 1999.

A California superior court judge faces public admonishment this week after he said a rape victim “didn’t put up a fight” against her rapist and claimed that a woman’s body “will not permit [rape] to happen.”

In 2008, Superior Court Judge Derek Johnson tried to make the case that the woman in his court couldn’t have been raped because she showed no signs of physical harm. The woman, however, didn’t report the attack until 17 days after it occurred and not all rape is physically violent. Johnson ultimately sentenced the perpetrator of the rape to six years in prison, as opposed to the 16 requested by the prosecutor, downplayed the assault, and said that the crime was only “worth” six:

Johnson made the comments in the case of a man who threatened to mutilate the face and genitals of his ex-girlfriend with a heated screwdriver, beat her with a metal baton and made other violent threats before committing rape, forced oral copulation, and other crimes.[...]

“I’m not a gynecologist, but I can tell you something: If someone doesn’t want to have sexual intercourse, the body shuts down. The body will not permit that to happen unless a lot of damage is inflicted, and we heard nothing about that in this case,” Johnson said.

The California Commission on Judicial Performance voted Thursday 10-0 to admonish Johnson, saying that he violated ethics.

Johnson’s comments are reminiscent of the recent assertion by Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) that rape victims cannot become pregnant because women’s bodies have a way to “shut the whole thing down.” Both assertions are reflection of a broader rape culture, the idea that women are somehow at fault for a rape, and that some other behavioral attribute effects whether she is perceived as a victim or a woman who is “asking for it.”

In his first public remarks since ballot initiatives passed in Washington and Colorado to legalize and regulate marijuana, President Obama said going after recreational marijuana users in states where it is legal is not a “top priority.”

In excerpts from an exclusive 20/20 interview that airs Friday night, ABC News reports that Obama still does not “at this point” support widespread legalization of marijuana, but that shifting public opinion and limited federal resources are reasons to find middle ground:

We’ve got bigger fish to fry … It would not make sense for us to see a top priority as going after recreational users in states that have determined that it’s legal.

This is a tough problem, because Congress has not yet changed the law. I head up the executive branch; we’re supposed to be carrying out laws. And so what we’re going to need to have is a conversation about, How do you reconcile a federal law that still says marijuana is a federal offense and state laws that say that it’s legal?

In citing the duties of the executive branch to carry out existing laws, Obama suggests he might be supportive of some changes of the law, though he added that he wants to “discourage drug use” and that “there are a bunch of things I did that I regret when I was a kid.” Just yesterday, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) revealed that he would be open to softening the federal law prohibiting all marijuana use.

Obama’s comments are a positive signal that the administration is open to shifting attitudes on marijuana legalization and a move away from the harsh crackdowns of the failed War on Drugs. But they are not very dissimilar from his and the Department of Justice’s comments on medical marijuana use in the wake those state laws’ passage, when the Justice Department also said it would not prioritize those compliant with state law, but has since fluctuated on its position.

Obama’s remarks leave many of the most relevant questions unanswered, including how the Justice Department will handle the dispensaries that will become licensed under these two laws. Federal drug crackdowns have never focused on individual “users,” and it is the suppliers and distributors that would be the natural target of federal action. Although the Obama administration does not crack down on individual medical marijuana users in states where it is legal, it has been increasingly aggressive in targeting dispensaries – even those that have seemingly been models of compliance with state law.

Obama also did not foreclose the possibility that the Department of Justice will sue to challenge the laws as preempted by the federal Controlled Substances Act, which makes the possession and sale of marijuana illegal. But he seemed to suggest he was moving away from absolute opposition to a new approach to drug policy, focusing instead on the public health concerns over drug abuse, particularly among children:

It makes sense for us to look at how we can make sure that our kids are discouraged from using drugs and engaging in substance abuse generally. There’s more work we can do on the public health side and the treatment side.

Backers of the Washington and Colorado laws to legalize marijuana proposed the measures to better achieve these public health and public safety goals, citing the failure of the 40-year War on Drugs.