A report by the Violence Policy Center shows that deaths caused by firearms outpaced deaths caused by motor vehicles in 10 states in 2009. Deaths caused by cars still outpace those caused by guns nationally, 36,361 to 31,236. The ten states in which there were more gun deaths then car deaths are: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, Washington.

State	Gun Deaths	Motor Vehicle Deaths
Alaska	104	84
Arizona	856	809
Colorado	583	565
Indiana	735	715
Michigan	1,095	977
Nevada	406	255
Oregon	417	394
Utah	260	256
Virginia	836	827
Washington	623	580

According to VPC, a successful decades-long public health-based injury prevention strategy has resulted in a 43% decline in motor-vehicle deaths since 1966. That strategy includes making changes to vehicles and highways to increase safety. Meanwhile, firearms are subject to limited regulation, and the rate of gun deaths remain largely unchanged. VPC Legislative Director Kristen Rand says

Americans are reaping the benefits of smart safety regulation of motor vehicles. The idea that gun deaths exceed motor vehicle deaths in 10 states is stunning when one considers that 90 percent of American households own a car while fewer than a third own firearms. It is also important to consider that motor vehicles–unlike guns–are essential to the functioning of the entire U.S. economy.

Gun rights supporters have reacted to the study predictably by questioning both the analysis and the motivation of VPC. Arizona State Sen. Frank Antenori (R-Vail) said that comparing deaths caused by firearms with those caused by cars is unfair because while car deaths are accidental, most gun deaths are not, while the Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners questioned how VPC connected a firearm to a death. Nevertheless, if public policy makers ignore the data the number of states where there are more gun than car deaths is likely only to increase.

–Alex Brown

Last month, House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa (R-CA) leaked an effort to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress to the media — Issa is upset that Holder’s followed a longstanding Department of Justice practice against endangering ongoing investigations by turning over documents concerning those investigations. Since then, Issa’s become more and more isolated. A broad coalition of senior law enforcement executives came out against his crusade against Holder earlier this month, and even the House Republican leadership has been reluctant to support Holder’s efforts.

Now, according to The Hill, Issa’s crusade appears to be collapsing even among his fellow Republican committee members:

Two of the committee’s 23 Republicans have declined to support the measure at this point, while six other GOP panel members did not respond to repeated requests for comment over the last two weeks.

When compared with the 15 Republicans on the committee who have actively been speaking in favor of the measure, the silence, lack of outspoken support and desire by these eight GOP caucus members to avoid the issue could be a problem for Issa. . . . With only 15 committee Republicans publicly supporting the resolution — and no Democrats — Issa falls short of the 21 votes he needs to pass it out of the 40-member panel to the House floor.

In 2010, when Issa was preparing to take the Oversight gavel, he spoke of his plans as if he were the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse. Issa promised “hundreds of hearings” intended to “measure failures” by the federal government under President Obama, and he highlighted this promise with a braggadocious Twitter avatar depicting himself as a stick-figure policeman sternly keeping watch over the Capitol.

Less than two years later, Issa primary accomplishments are an all-male panel on women’s health, a bizarre conspiracy theory about about a Rube Goldberg-like plan to undermine the Second Amendment, and, now, a witchhunt against the Attorney General that even his fellow Republican lawmakers seem reluctant to support.

For at least the last two years, far right groups have opposed an imaginary treaty which, in the words of the John Birch Society, would “cede control of private Americans’ small arms ownership and use to the United Nations.” This treaty does not exist. Snopes described reports of such a treaty as “scarelore.” ThinkProgress debunked Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) attempt to fundraise off this imaginary treaty more than a year ago. PolitiFact rejected claims that any UN treaty will limit Second Amendment rights as recently as last week.

So, of course, two GOP Congressmen have introduced legislation to block this imaginary treaty:

“The Second Amendment is an individual constitutional right and we must never allow that right to be trampled on by an international treaty,” Rep. Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.) said Monday. “This U.N. treaty is a direct threat to American sovereignty and the constitutional rights of all Americans. . . . Quayle introduced the Second Amendment Sovereignty Act, H.R. 5846, to counter the U.N.’s Arms Trade Treaty, which he and co-sponsor Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) said could limit the rights U.S. citizens have under the Second Amendment. Quayle said the treaty is expected to be concluded sometime this year.

For the record, even if the United Nations wanted to propose a treaty restricting Americans’ Second Amendment rights, and even if President Obama was absolutely determined to support such a treaty, the treaty would be void for violating the Constitution. As Justice Hugo Black once explained, the Supreme Court has long “recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty.”

Last March, police received a report that a taco truck in Pasadena, California had just been robbed. According to a recently released autopsy report, the two officers who arrived to investigate this report ran down and eventually shot a young black suspect seven times:

Nineteen-year-old Kendrec McDade was shot at point-blank range by one Pasadena police officer and handcuffed after being struck by a total of seven bullets, according to the autopsy report released Friday by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office. . . . Three of the wounds — two in his abdomen and one in his right arm — are considered potentially fatal because they lacerated arteries, according to Pasadena police. One bullet entered through the back of the right arm and another the back of the right forearm.

McDade, of Azusa, was killed when Pasadena officers Jeff Newlen and Mathew Griffin responded to a report of an armed robbery at a taco truck in northwest Pasadena. One of the officers pursued him on foot and the other from his police cruiser.

The first officer who fired did so while seated in the patrol car as McDade approached with his hand at his waistband. McDade and the officer were “within a foot” of each other, according to the autopsy report.

It is not yet clear whether McDade was actually involved in the taco truck robbery or if he was merely a bystander. It is clear, however, that the police who shot McDade did so under a cloud of false information. McDade was not armed, and the alleged theft victim later admitted that he lied about his assailants having weapons in order to provoke a faster response by police.

McDade also does not fit the profile of the kind of person who would normally commit armed robbery. He has no gang ties or prior arrests, was a star football player in high school, and was a student at Citrus College at the time of his death.

An unidentified individual from Virginia is hoping to cash in on the tragic death of Trayvon Martin by selling gun range targets meant to resemble him.

While the targets don’t feature a photo of Martin, they do depict a silhouette of a hoodie clutching a can of iced tea and a pack of Skittles hanging out of the pocket, details pulled directly from the descriptions of Trayvon Martin on the night of February 26, when he was shot and killed by George Zimmerman.

According to a local news station in Orlando, the seller of the targets readily admits he’s hoping to make a profit over the tragic shooting of a teenager:

In an email exchange with reporter Mike DeForest, the seller wrote, “My main motivation was to make money off the controversy.”

The seller would not disclose how many paper targets had been made, but said in an email, “The response is overwhelming. I sold out in 2 days.”

Some of those targets were sold to two Florida gun dealers, according to the seller.

The listing, which appeared to have been posted on the online gun outlet store gunbroker.com, has been removed, although as of publication the Google Cache of the page is still available. For $8 plus shipping, anyone could purchase a 10-pack of the paper targets.

Mark O’Mara, the lawyer for Trayvon’s killer George Zimmerman, strongly rebuked the targets, calling it “hate-mongering.”

Gun owners, even those who believe George Zimmerman is innocent, were quick to criticize the targets and the person behind them. “Even though I fully believe Zimmerman was justified in shooting, Trayvon was still a human being and does not deserve that kind of disrespect in death,” one member of the firearm owners association told the Orlando station.

Last night, J.T. Ready, a neo-Nazi anti-immigrant activist with ties to a top Arizona Republican, reportedly killed four people in Gilbert, Arizona before shooting and killing himself. Ready previously ran for Mesa City Council as a Republican, and was seeking the Democratic nomination to be Sheriff of Pinal County at the time of his death. Although the local Democrats promptly disowned him after he announced his intention to do so.

While Ready’s most prominent past supporter, former Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce distanced himself from Ready after his association with the neo-Nazi became widely known, a border vigilante group he helped found called the U.S Border Guards expressed their condolences and said he would be sorely missed. A message posted on their website today read, “God bless you, J.T. You will be fiercely missed:”

Other activists of the same far-right ideological ilk as ready expressed a mix of denial and conspiracy theorizing. As the Southern Poverty Law Center’s blog reports:

In general, the theories surrounding Ready’s death follow a few expected narratives: that Ready was killed by drug smugglers; that Jews running the federal government had come calling; even that Ready was acting in self-defense when he was killed. Whatever the flavor of conspiracy, it’s not surprising that Ready’s death should garner such a response. He was a darling of the movement – a well-spoken and husky presence on the border, almost always armed as if he were going to war.

For all the denials from respectable conservatives now, Ready traveled unusually close to the conservative mainstream for someone on the radical fringe, such as by speaking at Tea Party rallies and holding party positions in the local GOP.