Vice President Joe Biden will deliver remarks today launching a renewed push on gun violence prevention. Biden will emphasize the significant progress made on nearly two dozen executive orders issued by President Obama, while reiterating that there is absolutely no substitute for congressional action.

“Passing common-sense gun safety legislation, including expanding background checks and making gun trafficking a federal crime, remains the single most important step we could take to reduce gun violence,” states a report accompanying Biden’s scheduled press conference, according to USA Today.

One month after the tragic shooting in Newtown, President Obama unveiled a series of executive orders that lifted the ban on federal research dollars from funding studies on gun violence and added greater transparency to the tracking of guns used to commit crimes and seized by authorities, among other things. Biden will announce today that the White House task force has either completed or made significant progress in 21 of the 23 executive orders.

The speech coincides with the release of a new report from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) that provides, for the first time, a glimpse at the annual secondary market for guns acquired through theft or loss.

The ATF report, itself the result of one of the 23 executive orders issued by President Obama in January, documents 190,342 firearms reported as lost or stolen in 2012 alone. Of those, more than 16,000 were reported lost or stolen by Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs).

The problems caused by the massive black market for lost and stolen handguns have also been made worse by the NRA, which in 2004 ushered an appropriations rider through Congress that crippled ATF’s ability to require that federally-licensed gun dealers provide timely information about stolen or lost weapons. President Obama has called on Congress to remove the rider for the 2014 appropriations bill.

The NRA’s rider is the subject of a new report issued by the Center for American Progress, which traced the impact of the rider since it’s inception a decade ago. The report finds that the ATF has been unable to inspect even a quarter of the nearly 60,000 federally licensed gun dealers each year, with most dealerships going more than five years in between inspections. As a result, tens of thousands of handguns go missing each year with little to no accountability.

The multi-pronged effort on gun-related issues this week marks the start of a fresh push by the White House and Congressional Democrats to try and get new legislation enacted after falling short in April. In the months since the Senate failed to pass the Manchin-Toomey bill, Senators like Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) have returned to their districts only to find outraged constituents and furious supporters demanding to know why they voted no on a bill that 90 percent of the country supports.

While North Carolina’s GOP-run legislature moves to loosen state gun restrictions — including relaxing prohibitions on guns in education facilities — a new poll of state voters finds little support for their proposal.

When asked whether they “support or oppose a bill that would allow guns on all educational properties and that would eliminate the requirement for permits for handguns,” a decisive 66 percent of NC voters told PPP they opposed the idea. Just 21 percent said they supported the idea.

Even among those voters who indicated that they’d voted for Mitt Romney in last year’s presidential election, just 32 percent backed the bill and 51 percent opposed it.

Campus administrators have objected to the proposal, as have campus police chiefs. The National Rifle Association backs the bill, which has been endorsed by both the North Carolina House and Senate, mostly along party lines.

Defying 87 percent of the state’s voters, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) vetoed a universal background check bill for gun purchases on Thursday — one day before the six-month anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings.

The bill, passed by Nevada’s Democratically controlled state legislature, would have required a background check prior to all gun sales and would have increased reporting of mental illness data. The National Rifle Association’s lobbying arm called the proposal “misguided gun control legislation being forced on law-abiding citizens of Nevada.”

But far from being forced upon the people, the state legislature was acting on their clear will. An April poll found 87 percent of Nevada voters think a background check should be required on all gun sales — including 75 percent of Nevadans who said that “strongly favor” such a law. Just nine percent of Nevadans strongly opposed the idea. A February poll had shown 86 percent support in Nevada for universal background checks. After voting against the Manchin-Toomey background check compromise in the U.S. Senate, Nevada Sen. Dean Heller (R) was one of several opponents to see their approval ratings drop.

But Sandoval said his decision was in part due to the loud voices of that small minority that does not believe criminal background checks should be required prior to gun purchases. He told a local TV station that he’d received 28,000 calls from opponents, and only about 7,000 from supporters. While indicating support for the mental health data reporting provisions, he wrote in his veto message that requiring an instant background check would have been “an erosion of Nevadans’ Second Amendment Rights under the United States Constitution” that might “subject otherwise law-abiding citizens to criminal prosecution.”

Sandoval’s veto came on the of the six-month anniversary of the tragic shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. At the time, he released a statement lamenting the shootings and ordering that the state’s flags be flown at half-staff in memory of the victims.

WASHINGTON, DC — Most of the country will mark the six-month anniversary of Newtown by reading an article or two about the tragedy and, perhaps, taking a moment of reflection on how we as a society allowed it to happen. Not Sarah Clements.

Clements, a junior at Newtown High School, was in class down the road from Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14 when word spread that something terrible was unfolding. Her mom taught at Sandy Hook, just down the hall to the right of the entrance where Adam Lanza busted through. “He came in and turned left, but if he had turned right…” Clements recounted before trailing off.

There are moments that stuck out to her since. Reuniting with her family that day. The mob of parents in the Sandy Hook parking lot, many of whom wouldn’t get the same opportunity. Her principal crying at the first assembly following the shooting. Comfort dogs that had been brought in from Illinois.

But what’s helped her the most, Clements said, was when she decided in late January to form the Junior Newtown Action Alliance, a group of young people from the area who advocate for stronger gun laws. They’ve organized letter-writing campaigns in the community and made a slew of media appearances to explain why ending gun violence is a youth issue as well.

The group was in D.C. this week for the six-month mark of the tragedy, meeting with lawmakers and their staff on Capitol Hill. After meeting with the staff of Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), as well as Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ) herself, they sat down with ThinkProgress to tell their story.

Watch a highlight from that interview with Clements (left) and another member of the group, Kyra Murray:

Murray later summed up why they are taking time to travel the country in an attempt to strengthen our nation’s gun laws: “I don’t want more towns on the map like Newtown, or like Aurora, or Columbine, or Tucson.”

August 8, 2006 was an unremarkable, slow-news day in Washington. A high of 90, but not especially humid. President Bush had left town a few days earlier for his Crawford ranch – and Congress had split for its August recess even before that. The Nationals were mired in last place in the National League East. And, Talladega Nights: the Legend of Ricky Bobby had just overtaken Miami Vice as the top box office draw.

It was also the last day the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), the agency charged with enforcing the nation’s gun laws, had a Director.

In the 2,499 days since Carl Truscott left his leadership post at ATF, a lot has happened:

• A succession of interim and acting directors have followed – Edgar Domenech, Michael Sullivan, Ronnie Carter, Kenneth Melson, and B. Todd Jones (the current acting director and nominee to be full-time Director).
• The gun lobby has added new restrictions in federal budgets on ATF’s ability to enforce gun laws – and made permanent ones that it had added earlier.
• The “Fast and Furious” scandal broke in 2011 around a botched gun trafficking investigation in which ATF lost track of over 1000 firearms destined for the Mexican cartels. (The Department of Justice’s Inspector General found that leadership and oversight of the operation at ATF headquarters was “seriously deficient.”)
• ATF agents Kimberly Place and John Francis Capano were killed in the line of duty.
• Virginia Tech, Tucson, Aurora, and Newtown.
• More than 80,000 Americans have been murdered with guns.

Why has the ATF not had a leader for almost seven years? By design.

As part of the reorganization of law enforcement agencies pursuant to the Homeland Security Act, ATF was moved from the Department of Treasury to the Department of Justice. Also in the Act was a little-noticed provision that would mean, going forward, the ATF Director position would require Senate confirmation. While adding a requirement for Senate confirmation for an agency head may sound like a “step up,” in ATF’s case, it has allowed a minority of gun-lobby-friendly Senators to use filibusters and other blocking tactics to prevent ATF from having a leader.

The consequences for ATF and the morale of its agents have been dramatic. A non-profit called the Partnership for Public Service conducts an annual survey of “The Best Places to Work in the Federal Government.” Nine years ago, in 2004, ATF ranked 8th highest out of more than 200 agencies and departments. Today, ATF ranks 203rd out of 292 agencies and departments overall – and it’s the rating for “effective leadership” was 284 out of 292.

Today, B. Todd Jones, a United States Attorney and Marine Corps veteran, is finally getting a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee on his nomination to be ATF Director.

Perhaps his principal antagonist will be the ranking Republican on the committee, Senator Charles Grassley. Over the last two years, Grassley has lead the Senate’s investigations of Fast and Furious and complained repeatedly that the operation displayed a “passive leadership,” “poor management,” leadership “failures” – and yet no one has done more than Senator Grassley to ensure that the agency continues to operate without a leader.

Arkadi Gerney is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

In the months leading up to the trial of the Florida man who sparked national controversy over state Stand Your Ground laws when he shot dead 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, several defendants have escaped criminal liability for deadly shootings under the law. Just last week, a Florida jury acquitted a man who killed his wife’s lover in his home after firing three shots into his head and back. But just months after Trayvon’s death, Florida’s notorious Stand Your Ground law did not spare Marissa Alexander, who fired a mere warning shot into the wall during a violent incident with her husband.

Alexander was sentenced to 20 years in prison last year, after a judge rejected her Stand Your Ground defense and a jury convicted her on three counts of aggravated assault. Alexander’s husband was arrested twice before on misdemeanor battery charges against other women. But authorities said Alexander initiated the 2010 incident and pointed the gun at her husband and two step-sons before firing the warning shot into the ceiling.

Alexander would not have needed a Stand Your Ground law to defend her action. While that law goes so far as to authorize unfettered deadly force in self-defense without a duty to retreat, Alexander used significantly lesser force that would fall under a typical self-defense claim. But the judge’s failure to allow the claim comports with studies that have shown the ALEC and NRA-backed laws are discriminatory and applied arbitrarily. Last week, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission voted to undertake an in-depth investigation into racial bias in Stand Your Ground laws, the first such investigation by the agency in decades.

In the meantime, laws that allow deadly force without any duty to retreat remain the law in at least 21 states, and efforts to repeal or alter the laws have failed thus far. And in spite of outcry from the NAACP and others, Alexander remains in prison.

(HT: EURWeb.com)

While Congress has remained immobilized from gun violence prevention reform, California has been among the states making steady progress to improve gun safety since the Newtown massacre. This week, the state’s lawmakers advanced a dozen more measures to improve gun safety, including several measures that target ammunition rather than just the guns themselves. Among seven bills passed by the state Senate this week was one to require background checks and permits for those who buy ammunition, and another to prohibit magazines that hold more than ten rounds of ammunition. Although some commentators said the bills would have a tougher time in the state Assembly, which over-represents rural areas, that house passed its own measure that would require the Department of Justice to notify law enforcement agencies when someone buys more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition and ban kits that convert magazines to more than ten rounds of ammunition, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Nationwide, ammunition is subject to significantly less regulation than guns, with no federal requirement that sellers perform background checks on ammunition purchases. Some have argued that, particularly as technology enables individuals to make their own guns on 3D printers, regulation of ammunition will become particularly crucial.

Earlier this month, Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed legislation that would provide $24 million for confiscating illegally owned weapons that the police have identified, but hasn’t had the resources to seize.

More conservative states, meanwhile, have continued legislative movement in the other direction, as Missouri’s Democratic governor considers letting a bill to nullify federal gun legislation become law without his signature.

Gabriel Gomez, the Republican nominee to fill John Kerry’s open Senate seat in Massachusetts, Tweeted a stunning attack against his opponent Friday, claiming, without any apparent justification, that a campaign ad by Rep. Ed Markey (D) blamed him personally for the Newtown shooting.

Markey’s ad correctly notes that Gomez opposes a federal assault weapons ban and is also against a ban on high-capacity magazines. Gomez has explained his opposition to such weapon restrictions, saying “If they [gun buyers] all the checks and they’re qualified to use a weapon, I don’t think we need to restrict what kind of weapon they use.”

From the ad, titled “Clear Differences”:

NARRATOR: Real differences in the race for Senate: Ed Markey has taken on the NRA. He’ll continue to fight for common-sense laws to stop gun violence. And Gabriel Gomez? Gomez is against banning assault weapons.

GOMEZ (in clip): I don’t believe that we need to do an assault weapon ban.

NARRATOR: And Gomez is against banning high capacity magazines, like the ones used in the Newtown school shooting.

GOMEZ (in clip): I don’t believe that you should have a limit on the high-capacity magazines.

NARRATOR: The more you know, the clearer the choice.

Watch the spot:

Gomez tweeted Friday:

.@edmarkey‘s new TV ad blames me for the horrific Newtown shooting. Exploiting a tragedy for political gain is sick. bit.ly/12GQTEe

— Gabriel Gomez (@GomezForMA) May 17, 2013

In a press release making the same charges, Gomez also inaccurately claims: “The only gun measure before Congress is the Toomey-Manchin proposal for expanded background checks which, just as I do, Congressman Markey supports.” The Senate voted on an assault weapons ban and magazine restrictions last month, at the same time as the minority blocked expanded background checks.

In a January letter, asking for Gov. Deval Patrick (D) to appoint him to the vacant Senate seat, Gomez contradicted his current position, writing: “Two main issues that will dominate the political discussion during this appointment will be Immigration Reform and Gun Control. Given my Latino and Navy SEAL background, I have credibility to contribute thoughtfully on these issues. I support the positions that President Obama has taken on these issues and you can be assured I will keep my word and work on these issues as I have promised.”