I once went to Berlin for a few weeks and worked with a guy who grew up there in the Soviet Zone. I was fascinated by his stories of living under communism in a cold, industrialized city before the fall of the wall. The thing that struck me the most about the conversations was that he expressed it wasn't nearly as bad as I imagined. They still had parties and punk rock in the '80s, albeit more covertly than your average Westerner. He then went on to tell me that after the wall fell, he traveled to America for the first time for a music tour. It was there on his second or third day that he had a run in with the police on the side of the highway that was worse than anything he had ever experienced in East Germany. The discussion wrapped with him extolling the belief that the U.S. is a brutal police state not much better than the East Germany where he was raised.

A few days later I was in the back of a car driving down the Autobahn, drinking a beer, and trying to explain to a carload of Germans why you could never do that in the U.S. All I was getting in return were confused stares and unanswerable questions. "What does it matter if zi passenger is drinking beer if zay aren't driving?" The best I could offer is, "That's just the rules." I'm guessing from the smattering of German conversation between them that followed, they were all in agreement that our rules are stupid. Between their confusion over such obvious freedoms as drinking responsibly wherever you'd like, and stories of East Germany as compared to American cops, it really got me thinking about this bill of freedom we've been crammed down our throats our whole American lives.

I know, many are fully aware of this fact already and now more than ever. Between Patriot Act spying, whistleblowers on the run, and the general sense that our corporate-influenced government no longer has our best interests in mind, it's almost the only issue many Americans can agree on these days. That's not to say we don't get freedoms, but most can admit there's an exaggeration to the word that's undeniable. For me, personally, I can't help but think of it when any talk about guns gets put on the table. Of course for many, guns -- and the right to own them -- are the physical manifestation of freedom. They see the right to bear arms as the great hope between a citizen and a government that yearns to control them. I, on the other hand, see guns as nothing more than a distraction from the lack of many true freedoms.

Even wildly entertaining the idea of a full scale revolution by the gun owners, they are talking about defending their rights against the world's largest military. Even if every other country combined lent Syrian-rebel style support to the citizens, they would still be outgunned. So the idea of owning guns to defend against our government is just absurd, never mind the fact that if guns were truly dangerous to the governments agenda, they would have been banned long ago. The only thing gun ownership is truly effective for is giving the owners a sense of freedom. The gun is the proverbial bone tossed to a threatening -- yet mostly benign -- populace who cling onto them with the belief they are defending something they don't realize they've already lost.

Including suicides, there have been over 300,000 gun deaths since 9/11. That's 100x more than the catastrophic event used as the impetus for two wars that have cost countless dollars and deaths for over a decade. Yet this government can't even pass a basic background-check bill to fight that threat. The fact is, guns aren't going anywhere, and if someone changes their mind about that -- which if they haven't already, they never will -- then there won't be much you can do about it. That is, unless the military joins in on the coup, at which point we'd really be fucked. I personally don't think guns have any purpose in a functioning society, but the fact is their usefulness at sedating the masses simmering unrest is unparalleled, and for that reason alone will be unchallenged for years to come.

I wish people would understand this and see their guns for what they are, nothing more than shiny, (loud and deadly) distractions from the real issues that separate the people from the government. They are nothing more than shallow expressions of freedom smoke-screening the fact that we're far from free and the whole world knows it but us.

The ironic part is that the corporate powers that influence the government don't fear anyone picking up their guns, as they are experts in dealing with that - the only thing pointing a gun at someone does is gives them a reason to shoot you. Their fear is that you might actually put the guns down and explore other -- more effective -- options to experience your freedoms, some of which might not fit into their program as well as a factory worker getting screwed by the banks, the taxes, and the job, while contently expressing himself by blasting a few drained Bud bottles with his .22 on the weekend. And that would truly be revolutionary.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

WASHINGTON — Indianapolis Colts safety Joe Lefeged was released from jail Tuesday following his weekend arrest in Washington on a gun possession charge.

Lefeged was arrested during a traffic stop after police said they found a semi-automatic pistol in the car in which he was riding. Police say they also smelled what appeared to be marijuana and found an open bottle containing vodka and orange juice in the car's center console. Lefeged and another passenger were taken into custody after they tried to run from officers, and the driver got away, authorities have said.

The debate over addressing gun violence in the aftermath of Newtown fell into a pattern: "The good law-abiding citizens should have the right to own guns, although not assault rifles with magazines that shoot 70 bullets in a minute; the mentally ill people who might commit unexpected massacres should get mental health treatment; the bad criminal 'gang bangers' should go to jail."

Through 35 years of working with tens of thousands of young men and women, I know this viewpoint is wrong in relation to the so-called "gang bangers." We know how to break the cycle of poverty for young adults mired in despair, poverty, and street violence. And when we break that cycle, most of the young people eagerly abandon the culture of violence and reveal their true human desire to build a positive and productive lifestyle.

In 1978, working with young people in East Harlem, we created a program called YouthBuild which has brought education, employment, and leadership opportunities to over 120,000 of America's most disadvantaged youth. Thousands of dedicated individuals in local communities, supported by foundations, corporations, and government, have helped to spread it to 273 urban and rural communities, offering education, employment, counseling, leadership development, and tangible opportunities to serve their communities to 10,000 young people each year. Time and again, we have opened the doors to gang members who turned into positive community leaders and role models.

If America's leaders would invest in proven pathways out of poverty, we could radically diminish violence in America. If America spent as much money offering opportunities to every 16 to 26 year old as we spend locking them up for minor offenses that further cut them off from a positive future, we could end poverty in a generation or two. When young people find a true pathway to opportunity and a caring community, they become excellent parents determined to give their children the world of opportunities they lacked in their own childhood.

There is no mystery in how to do this. We know exactly how to unleash the deep and passionate desire of low-income young adults to create productive life-styles that will release them from fear and despair, and allow them to become good family members, parents, employees, and community leaders.

Recently at the 25th annual YouthBuild Conference of Young Leaders in Washington, DC, 125 students from 37 states gathered for four days to support each other's determination to rebuild their communities and their lives. They shared upsetting personal stories of their lives before YouthBuild, including deep pain, loss, poverty, homelessness, family struggles, murder, suicide, rape, abuse, confusion, fear, gang life, mistreatment by school and criminal justice systems. It broke my heart all over again.

I asked by a show of hands how many of them had friends or relatives who had been killed in street violence: Virtually every young person raised their hands. Every one of them.

Despite their real suffering, their experience of YouthBuild had given them hope. They shared an incredible level of gratitude, love, joy, determination, connection with each other, and eagerness to change the world to make it better for others.

Why? They had experienced the safe, respectful, loving community of YouthBuild in their home neighborhoods. They felt supported on a path to education, employment, and belonging to a shared community of peers with similar hopes and dreams. They had participated in building affordable housing for homeless and low income people in their neighborhoods and felt proud. They had earned their GED or high school diploma. Together they were celebrating their good fortune, their ability to transcend the odds with help from adults who cared, sometimes for the first time in their lives.

This positive energy always amazes and galvanizes me as much as their stories of pain sadden me. If this group of bruised and abused young people can rise up with such enthusiasm to seize another chance, WHY can't we as a society choose to give it to them? WHY is YouthBuild forced to turn away tens of thousands of young people seeking a chance to learn and earn and give back? WHY is our president talking about spending $4 billion for police on the beat to diminish gun violence and not talking about an equal $4 billion to open the doors of opportunity, off the streets, away from the violence, for the young people literally dying for lack of a pathway out?

We are suffering as a nation because millions of low-income young people have been written off by society as hopeless, worthless, and expendable.

If you had seen what I have seen for 35 years... tens of thousands of YouthBuild students eagerly seizing the opportunity with determined grit to climb out of poverty, gangs, dead-end communities, fear, and loneliness, and then showing extraordinary will and skill to help others ... you would know that investment in opportunities for them to find their best selves is the right thing to do. Giving them the skills and opening the doors to a welcoming community would be one of the best investments our nation could ever make. We are wasting talent. We are destroying lives. We are undermining our economy and our future. All because we believe there are bad boys, especially bad boys of color, who don't deserve another chance.

Let us offer the love and opportunity that is needed, seek and unleash the wonderful human potential that is being wasted by our preconceptions, and work together to achieve the Beloved Community envisioned by Martin Luther King. Gun violence will radically diminish in the streets of Chicago and every other low income community.

In March, The Huffington Post began talking to teens and adults throughout the U.S. about their experiences with gun violence. This is one individual's story. You can read others here.

Bradley Galloway, 22, was raised in the Michigan Park neighborhood of Northeast Washington, D.C. Bradley first experienced gun violence before he was 10, and when he was a teenager, one of his closest friends was shot and killed. Galloway did his best to keep away from violence, attending a high school far away from his neighborhood and disassociating himself from local gangs. He is currently a student at the Latin American Youth Center in Washington. He has never been hit by a bullet, but he's been directly shot at twice:

It was a cookout.

Everybody's outside. My family members, everything. It was getting dark. It was summertime.

This car pulls up. It just sat there and turned off its lights. Next thing I know, this dude gets up out the window with an automatic. He shot up the whole block.

I was just out there playing with my little cousins. I heard these gunshots go off. It was coming fast.

Next thing I get pushed on the ground. I got one of my cousins and one of his friends on top of us trying to make sure we're alright.

This dude got hit. It grazed him. This lady, she got hit in the foot.

I was, like, seven or eight years old when this happened. I was scared that day.

Me and my cousin, we left. He brought me home and told me not to say nothing to my mother. I was kinda shook up still, but I just held it in and went upstairs and went to sleep and just continued on with my day the next day.

It was just so random. I never seen nothing like that happen. I wasn't raised, brought up like this to see all this gun violence. My mother kept me in school and books and all that stuff.

When I first seen that, it was like a wake up call -- I need to see what is going on. So that's when I went out and I got a little, some street smarts to see what was going on.

Somebody shot at me and my friends. I was about 16, 17 years old. I didn't really know what was going on at the time.

It was just me and one of my friends. We was dropping his son off to his grandmother's so him and his little cousin, they could play out back in the yard. We was going to go the mall or something. I was just standing there.

I just saw what happened. In the far distance, a dude just shot off a couple times. I got down.

Luckily everybody was OK. But if I didn't look to my right and see him, I might not be here right now.

Another time. It was late again. It was like nine, ten o'clock.

I was in my neighborhood. This car just kept riding past like three or four times. I never even noticed it until one of my friends noticed it.

Then like the fourth time they rode past, it was maybe a block down. They parked. Got out -- like four of them. Four people got out of the car and started shooting.

They ain't shoot at us though. They may have been shooting at us, but when they were shooting, we ain't see no bullet holes, no windows, no break, no nothing. Everybody got down. Nobody got shot, again, luckily. But it was just kind of random. I don't even know what happened that time.

I was just sitting there.

One of my closest friends, I wasn't even there, he got shot on his birthday.

He'd just turned 22. My man Ju Ju, Julius. It was his birthday.

We're seeing him at the station -- Fort Totten -- that was like the meetup spot for everyone in the neighborhood that went to Coolidge [High School].

He outside. Everybody jonesing, having a good time. He saying it's his birthday.

We tell him, "Come around our way and chill with us." But he was like, "Nah, I'm bout to go around Saratoga. I'm bout to go around my way." We're like, "OK son, whatever, will we see you tomorrow?"

The next day I got the station, I see all these people crying. I'm like, what's up with y'all? I didn't see nothing. I stayed in the house. I didn't watch the news or nothing. They all telling me, man, Ju Ju got shot.

He was walking, him and his friends, and they shot him and everybody up. Two of them died, one lived.

He got shot on his birthday.

It's just not right.

When I hear that they got shot, I'm glad that they're still here, but I know them. They not really even supposed to be here right now. When I see them I'm like, man I'm glad you're still out here.

One of the dudes I know that got shot more than five times, he just got shot again, like a month or two ago. He's still fine now. But when I see him, I'm like, God has been at your side every time since you've been shot. I don't understand, you still come outside.

He don't care. That's what I'm saying, you can't do nothing to someone who don't care. If you can't change your ways, then I can't. I still don't mind coming around and chillin with you, but other than that I can't hang out around here.

As told to William Wrigley.

Back in January, a month after the Newtown school slayings and just a few days before his second inauguration, Barack Obama announced he would "put everything I've got" into the fight against gun violence.

Part of his effort -- and an end run around a Congress reluctant to make any move that might rile the National Rifle Association -- was a group of 23 executive actions that, according to the New York Times, "he initiated on his own authority to bolster enforcement of existing laws, improve the nation's database used for background checks and otherwise make it harder for criminals and people with mental illness to get guns."

Among the actions, the president ordered the Justice Department's beleaguered Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) to deliver an annual report on lost and stolen firearms in the United States. The first, covering the year 2012, was issued two weeks ago but promptly buried under a flurry of other news.

The report combines data from the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) and information obtained by the ATF from gun dealers, known as Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs). It makes for fascinating, disturbing reading:

In 2012, NCIC received reports reflecting 190,342 lost and stolen firearms nationwide. Of those 190,342 lost and stolen firearms reported, 16,667 (9% of the total reported) were the result of thefts/losses from FFLs. Of the 16,667 firearms reported as lost or stolen from a FFL, a total of 10,915 firearms were reported as lost. The remaining 5,762 were reported as stolen.

Texas was the top state for total firearms reported lost and stolen in 2012, with 18,874 firearms, which was 10% of all firearms reported lost or stolen in the country. Pennsylvania was the top state for firearms reported lost or stolen from a FFL in 2012 with 1,502 firearms, which was 9% of all firearms reported lost or stolen from a FFL in that year. Pistols were the most common type of firearm reported stolen from a FFL in 2012 with 3,322 reported, while rifles were the most common type of firearm reported lost from a FFL in 2012 with 4,068 reported.

What's even more disturbing is that the real numbers probably are much worse but difficult to quantify. Federal law requires that licensed gun dealers report any theft or loss to police and the ATF within 48 hours. But when it comes to determining how many guns have been lost by or stolen from private citizens, the ATF states,

Reporting by law enforcement is voluntary, not mandatory, and thus the statistics in this report likely reveal only a fraction of the problem. Additionally, even where state and local law enforcement are consistently reporting statistics, many states do not require private citizens to report the loss or theft of a firearm to local law enforcement in the first place. As such, many lost and stolen firearms go entirely unreported.

Moreover, even if a firearm is reported as lost or stolen, individuals often are unable to report the serial number to law enforcement because they are not required to record the serial number or maintain other records of the firearms they own for identification purposes. As a result, many lost and stolen firearms enter secondary and illicit markets with their status undocumented and undetectable.

Got that? Much of this is because government regularly succumbs to the NRA paranoid conspiracy theories of a national gun registry that would be used to seize every citizen's shootin' irons. That's why the ATF has been forced to trace guns, in the words of The Daily Beast's Adam Winkler, "the way 17th-century monks copied texts: by hand."

When a gun is found at a crime scene, ATF agents can't just look up who owned the gun in a computer database. They first have to call the gun manufacturer and find out which wholesaler purchased it. Then they have to get the wholesaler on the line and find out which dealer purchased the gun from the wholesaler. Then they have to call the gun dealer and have the dealer's files searched by hand to identify the first consumer to purchase the gun. If the gun dealer is no longer in business, ATF agents have to search through files -- many of them handwritten -- maintained in cardboard boxes, one by one. Because we don't require background checks on all gun sales, all this work may be for naught. Even if the person who bought the gun is identified, he may just say he sold the gun to an unknown person. For this secondary transaction, which is perfectly legal, there won't be any files to sift through.

They go through this mind-numbing, timewasting process more than 300,000 times a year.

Since 2006, the ATF has been further stymied by the lack of a confirmed director - also blocked by Congress - and restrictions on funding and personnel that limit its inspection of the approximately 70,000 licensed gun dealers in America. On average, it takes around seven years to get to all of them. Plus, as Winkler reports, there's "a law that prohibits the ATF from making more than one unannounced inspection per year to any gun dealer. Purportedly designed to stop the ATF from harassing law-abiding gun dealers, this rule ends up protecting the law-breaking gun dealers, who know that once the ATF has come by, the bureau's agents won't be back for the rest of the year. And at the behest of the gun-control opponents, Congress reduced the penalty for dealers who falsify records, which is now just a misdemeanor.

Thank you, gun lobby. John Diedrich of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who over the last few years has been producing remarkable coverage of the lax oversight of gun dealers and the ATF and its troubles (including some it has brought on itself), spoke with Andrew Molchan, director of the Professional Gun Retailers Association. Molchan told him that the number of missing guns is not a major concern, a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of guns that are sold every year.

"Well under one percent," he said, "which is much better than a jewelry store."

What a relief. On the other hand, when was the last time you heard about someone murdered in their home or on the street -- or in a schoolroom -- with a charm bracelet?

######

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) announced Thursday that he plans to give away a Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle. Another one.

“Why am I giving away an AR-15 rifle? It’s just one way to thank you for defeating Obama’s anti-gun agenda this year,” said an email from Stockman's campaign arm. “But the battle for the right to keep and bear arms is heating up again. President Obama and Sen. Harry Reid [D-Nev.] are not happy that they didn’t pass any gun control yet, so they’re coming back for more.”

In order to draw pro-gun supporters to his campaign, Stockman will give away the free rifle on July 4, according to The Daily Caller.

“I hope you realize that the only reason Obama has not been able to ban semi-autos, magazines and gun shows is because of your activism,” the email continues. The message also refers to the Bushmaster as "the firearm that Obama most wants to ban," and includes a video of an intern shooting the rifle, which can be seen above. The firearm has emerged as particularly controversial in the wake of the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. last year, in which the shooter used a Bushmaster to gun down 26 people.

Stockman employed a similar tactic last month by advertising an AR-15 giveaway on Twitter, inviting readers to "grab this gun before Obama does!"

An outspoken Second Amendment supporter, Stockman is also known for promoting a bumper sticker that read, “If babies had guns they wouldn’t be aborted”. He wrote an open letter earlier this year inviting all gun owners to move to Texas, so their "rights will not be infringed upon."

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A criminal charge has been dismissed against a West Virginia middle school student who refused a teacher's order to remove a National Rifle Association T-shirt he wore to school.

Logan County Circuit Judge Eric O'Briant signed an order dismissing an obstruction charge Thursday against 14-year-old Jared Marcum stemming from an April 18 incident at Logan Middle School.

2:00 pm - 3:00 pm EST

How can Congress act against 90 percent of the American public and get away with it? Why does the gun lobby win? On Friday, June 28, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg explores this uncomfortable divide in an interview with the president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence Dan Gross.

For more information and a schedule of events for the 2013 Aspen Ideas Festival, click here. For real time tweets from the festival, see below:

Tweets about "#aspenideas"

In March, The Huffington Post began talking to teens and adults throughout the U.S. about their experiences with gun violence. This is one person's story. You can read others here.

Keith Warfield, 19, was born and raised in the heart of Chicago's Englewood neighborhood on the South Side. He was only 9 or 10 years old when he first saw a gun, as he watched his mother become the victim of an armed robbery. He was robbed again in November 2008 and knows about 10 people who have been shot at. Warfield is a poet and an active volunteer with Young Chicago Authors, an organization offering writing and performance workshops for youth:

The first time I experienced guns or had them on my radar, I was about 9 or 10 years old. I actually witnessed my mom get robbed at gunpoint, so that was the first time I'd even seen a gun in my life.

Me and my mother and my sister were coming from dropping my grandmother off at home. And we were heading back home, it was already late and it was dark, of course. We had entered the gate to my apartment, and as my mom turned around to close the gate, this guy just pops up out of nowhere and puts the gun to her stomach and he's asking for her purse.

That was the first time I had experienced even seeing a gun. I stood there and couldn't do anything. I was stuck.

In my head, of course, a whole bunch of things were racing. My stepfather at the time, he was upstairs and me and my sister were right at the door. I couldn't even think to press the door bell; I was just shocked.

It was a horrible experience, and that wasn't the last incident. I've actually had a gun pointed to me coming home from school at the train, getting robbed for my cell phone. There was a time I was stuck up again after that, more recently.

(Story continues below)

On the South Side, I mean, the problem is now I notice it's more youth than the adults. My first experience, I saw an adult have a gun, and now it's been people closer to my age with them.

Just knowing that you are in the situation where your life could be taken, so many things are just running through your mind. Right afterward it's the craziest thoughts. You're just sitting, like, "Thank God." It's just really hard to explain. It's definitely a very uncomfortable feeling -- nauseating.

I know multiple people [who've been shot at]. I mean, of course everyone isn't innocent. I have people that I know who are involved in criminal activities and stuff like that that come across these situations, but, I mean, more often it's people I know that aren't involved, the innocent ones. It can be people just minding their own business.

Like people say, "Wrong place, wrong time." However, when you're on the South Side and living in Englewood, that is the wrong place, period. So no matter where you are, it's just luck if it doesn't happen.

I've seen a lot of bad on the South Side; I've seen a lot of good. But with my poetry, of course, I do mention that and I tell the truth of what's going on.

I'd like to see people like [Chicago Mayor] Rahm Emanuel or whoever actually come into those [South Side] neighborhoods to understand. To actually fix situations like these, it helps actually being there and seeing what people who live in these neighborhoods, what they wake up seeing every day. What it's like traveling on a CTA bus through those neighborhoods.

Just the stuff people have to go through living in these neighborhoods, in order to help come up with a resolution for it. Because it's hard to solve problems that you don't really understand.

As told to Joseph Erbentraut.

My hands are shaking; my adrenaline is surging.

No, it's not from the latte I just inhaled or because this is the first time in two years I've been in a Starbucks since declaring a boycott on its open carry gun policy.

What's got me jittery this morning is the 9mm Glock that's holstered on my hip. Me, lead gun policy protester at the 2010 Starbuck's shareholder meeting. Me, a board member of the Brady Campaign. Me, the author of a book about the impact of gun violence, Beyond the Bullet.

Yes, I bought a handgun and will carry it everywhere I go over the next 30 days. I have four rules: Carry it with me at all times, follow the laws of my state, only do what is minimally required for permits, licensing, purchasing and carrying, and finally be prepared to use it for protecting myself at home or in public.

Why? Following the Newtown massacre in December the NRA's Wayne LaPierre, told the country, "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." I wondered what would it be like to be that good guy with a gun? What would it be like to get that gun, live with that gun, be out and about with that gun and finally, what happens when you don't want that gun any more?

I decided to find out.

Getting the permit to carry a concealed weapon was simple. I filled out a form, had my fingerprints taken for a background check and paid $56.50. No training required. It took far longer to get my dog license.

I started my 30-day gun trial with a little window-shopping. I visited a gun show and two gun dealers. I ended up buying a Glock 9mm handgun from Tony -- a gun dealer 4 miles from my house. I settled on this model because it was a smallish gun and because Tony recommended it for my stated purposes of home and self-protection.

It was obvious from the way I handled the gun that I knew nothing about firearms. Tony sold it to me anyway. The whole thing took 7 minutes. As a gratified consumer, I thought, "Well, that was easy." Then the terrifying reality hit me, "Holy hell, that was EASY." Too easy. I still knew nothing about firearms.

Tony told me a Glock doesn't have an external safety feature so when I got home and opened the box and saw the magazine in the gun I freaked. I was too scared to try and eject it as thoughts flooded my mind of me accidently shooting the gun and a bullet hitting my son in the house or rupturing the gas tank of my car, followed by an earth shaking explosion. This was the first time my hands shook from the adrenaline surge and the first time I questioned the wisdom of this 30-day experiment.

I needed help. I drove to where a police officer had pulled over another driver. Now writing this, I realize that rolling up on an on-duty cop with a handgun in tow might not have been a fully thought through concept.

I told him I just bought a gun, had no clue how to use it. I asked him to make sure there were no bullets in the magazine or chamber. He took the magazine out and cleared the chamber. He assured me they were empty and showed me how to look. Then he told me how great the gun was and how he had one just like it.

The cop thought I was an idiot, and he suggested I take a class. But up to that point, I'd done nothing wrong, nothing illegal.

So here I sit at Starbucks, and the irony couldn't be thicker. On March 12, 2010, I was surrounded by big hairy men with guns on their hips, yelling at me as I led a protest against Starbuck's gun policy. Today, I'm surrounded by five-year-old boys sitting with their moms at the next table. Now I'm the one with a gun on her hip. The gun makes me more fearful than I could have imagined.

In some way, I feel a certain vindication. I was right to protest Starbucks policy. Today, they have a woman with absolutely no firearms training and a Glock on her hip sitting within arm's reach of small children, her hands shaking and adrenaline surging.

A judge ruled Wednesday that the head of Utah's gun lobby must stay away from all firearms for at least another month while the court considers a domestic violence charge he received last month.

Clark Aposhian, a professional firearms instructor and chairman of Utah Shooting Sports Council, was arrested on Memorial Day after his ex-wife accused him of showing up at her house in a 2.5-ton Army truck and threatening to "bury" her husband. He's repeatedly denied that there is any validity to the claims, but was given a protective order earlier this month, which prohibited him from possessing any firearms and required him to turn in his cache of around 300 guns to authorities.

Under Utah state law, a domestic violence conviction could force Aposhian to permanently turn over his guns, his concealed-weapons permit and concealed-carry instructor’s license.

Mitch Vilos, Aposhian's attorney, was in court Wednesday asking a judge to reinstate his client's gun rights. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the judge took exception to the tone and format of a request that reportedly included an all-caps argument that the arms-seizure order was unconstitutional.

Aposhian's next chance to get his guns back will be on July 31, when he'll be back in court for a second pre-trial conference. He'll be in court on two other occasions before that date as well, once for a civil stalking injunction filed by his ex-wife’s husband, and again for a hearing on a protective order filed by his ex-wife. The latter could lead to him being permanently stripped of his right to possess a firearm.

Vilos has argued that Aposhian's career requires him to have access to real guns in order to work, but the Tribune reports that the judge still had concerns over the fact that Aposhian's 11-year-old daughter was present at the time of the alleged crime. The judge also argued that Aposhian could use a replica firearm for the purposes of instructional courses.

Nevada's one of the states where the heavy hand of the gun lobby slaps down the majority.

I've just flown back from Vegas, and boy, are my arms tired. And brain boggled. After all these years, it was my first visit, and although I've been to Reno and Tahoe and even the casinos of Winnemucca, Nevada-- "The Crossroads of the West" -- nothing prepared me for the splendor, squalor, sleaze and squander of the ultimate American pleasure dome.

"This is where feminism came to die," my girlfriend Pat sardonically joked as weary, bikinied women danced on bars and we walked through the heat past the umpteenth sidewalk vendor handing out escort fliers and wearing a neon-colored"Las Vegas Girls Direct to You in 20 Minutes" tee-shirt, a piece of apparel so ubiquitous the casino gift shops now sell them as souvenirs.

Then there was the pop-up "Hitched in a Hurry" wedding chapel along the Strip where too-young, too-inebriated couples dressed in shorts and flip-flops were exchanging vows as passers-by watched through the windows. We fought the urge to build pop-up intervention centers a hundred feet on either side.

None of which is to say we didn't have a good time, although in some ways it was more a replica of enjoyment, like the fake Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, Venetian canals and other reproductions that dot the Vegas landscape. This is America through the distorting, funhouse looking glass, whether it's the 32-ounce, frozen cocktails in adult sippy cups or (I'm not making this up) the Kardashian Khaos boutique in the Mirage Hotel.

And guns. True, we didn't spot anyone overtly packing heat, except for the occasional law enforcement officer, but the culture certainly was magnified all around us, from the stores with stacks of "American Gun," the bestseller by Chris Kyle, the ex-Navy SEAL who was shot to death in Texas four months ago, to the multiple billboards advertising machine gun firing ranges and the jeeps in camouflage paint that prowl the boulevards promoting commando-style training in the desert.

The city's homicide rate for the first quarter of this year is up 50 percent from the same period in 2012 In February, for example, a fatal shooting on the Strip only a couple of blocks from our hotel led to a car crash that also killed a cab driver and his passenger, for a total of three deaths, and just two weeks before we arrived, two died and two were injured in a gun-related, double murder-attempted suicide.

The Vegas police department has above average success arresting the perpetrators -- 75 percent against the national rate of 65 percent -- but oddly, as columnist J. Patrick Coolican of the Las Vegas Sun reports, "In nonlethal shootings, when the victim survives, the criminal is more than 90 percent likely to get away with the crime... In 2012, for instance, there were 313 nonlethal assaults with firearms. Just 20 of the cases led to an arrest."

A police spokesman told Coolican that homicides are easier to solve - because, he said, you have a corpse and a murder scene. But Eugene O'Donnell, a former cop who's now a criminologist at the John Jay School of Criminal Justice in New York rejected that rationale and asked, "What's a police department for if not to solve gun violence?"

Obviously, a police department's for a lot of other things, too, but the question bears consideration. Solving gun violence should be a primary goal of law enforcement but government departments remain hamstringed by budget cuts and hiring freezes, not to mention the relentless bigfooting of the NRA, firearms manufacturers and the rest of the gun lobby. Despite continued tragedies and public support for tougher regulation, not only do they continue on a federal level to prevent further regulation, they strongarm states and municipalities into relaxing the rules or changing them to favor the gun business.

Last week, Alaska Governor Sean Parnell made his state the latest of at least 22 to adopt a "Stand Your Ground" law, allowing the use of deadly force if the owner of a gun feels threatened. He signed the law on the eve of George Zimmerman's trial for the fatal "Stand Your Ground" shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida, and chose to hold the signing ceremony -- with heavy-handed symbolism -- at a shooting range so he could, Alaska Public Media reported, "send a message."

And the day before we arrived in Las Vegas, Nevada's Governor Brian Sandoval vetoed a bill authorizing universal background checks for gun purchases in the state. According to the website ThinkProgress,"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.'"

In fact, an April poll found that 87 percent of Nevada voters favored the background check, 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."

There's the real power of the NRA and the gun lobby for you. Not just the money they throw at media buys and at officeholders and candidates -- in fact, last year only three of the sixteen U.S. Senate candidates endorsed by the NRA won. No, it's the sheer stridency and lungpower of their opposition to any perceived threat to gun ownership. (Add to this the deep and usually unexpressed anxiety that hey, these folks have weapons. As John Oliver recently proclaimed on The Daily Show, "The Second Amendment has won the Bill of Rights. It has defeated all the other amendments, which of course it did when you think about it -- it's the only amendment with a #$@&* gun.")

The success of this fierce outspokenness and the corresponding failure of the majority are known, Alec MacGillis wrote in the New Republic magazine, as "the intensity gap: While plenty of people support stricter gun laws, few advocated for them or voted on the issue unless they had been personally affected by gun violence."

Andy Kroll in Mother Jones magazine quotes political scientist Jonathan Bernstein: "Action works. 'Public opinion' is barely real; most of the time, on most issues, change the wording of the question and you'll get entirely different answers. At best, 'public opinion' as such is passive. And in politics, passive doesn't get results."

Kroll also cites a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll that one in five gun owners had "called, written, or emailed a public official; only 1 in 10 people without a gun in the household had done the same. In the same poll, 1 in 5 gun owners said they'd given money to a group involved in the gun control debate; just 4 percent of people without a gun in the home previously gave money."

In just the six months since the Newtown killings there have been more Americans murdered by guns than the 4,409 United States armed forces killed in the Iraq war. Despites its failure in April, reports are that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid may bring a background check bill back to the floor between the Fourth of July and August recesses.

So now is the moment for outrage and action to join hands, to swivel the intensity gap in the other direction, to join with such groups as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, the Brady Campaign to prevent Gun Violence, Sandy Hook Promise, Americans for Responsible Solutions (Gabby Giffords' group), Moms Demand Action, Mayors against Illegal Guns and others; to speak out in force, make the phone calls and send the e-mails, to pressure your representatives. Do that, and this time, as they say in Vegas, I wouldn't bet against you.

Daniel Musso, a New Hampshire man who was hit with a stun gun and then arrested by police last week at a gun control rally, returned home Saturday to find his house had caught on fire, the New Hampshire Union Leader reported.

The chimney of Musso's home reportedly caught fire while he was away on a fishing trip, causing $150,000 in damage, according to the Union Leader.

Musso was subdued with a stun gun on Tuesday shortly after confronting John Cantin of Manchester, N.H., during a speech at a "No More Names" anti-gun violence rally sponsored by Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Cantin was in the middle of a speech about his efforts to persuade Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) to change her "no" vote on expanding gun background checks when Musso approached him on stage. Cantin's daughter, Melissa Charbonneau, was shot and killed by her husband in 2009.

The YouTube video of Musso's altercation with police at the rally also shows a man kicking an officer's keys after they fall to the ground. That man, Ralph Demicco, is the owner of one of New Hampshire's largest gun stores, the Concord Monitor reported. He apologized to officers in a letter on Wendesday, according to the Concord Monitor.

The events of Musso's difficult week are seemingly coincidental: Police told the Union Leader that the fire was ruled an accident.

In March, The Huffington Post began talking to teens and adults throughout the U.S. about their experiences with gun violence. This is one individual's story. You can read others here.

Jhonetta Nagle, 18, is a high school senior from Stockton, Calif. After attending a birthday party with her friends in 2012, Nagle was shot three times in a drive-by shooting. She was wounded twice in the leg and once in the face. Nagle is still struggling to recover from her injuries, but hopes to attend college and work in the medical field:

I still have no teeth, so it's hard for people to understand me and I'm more self-conscious. I don't see my friends as much. I'm home schooled now, so that's different. And I think by now, I would have a car and a job, but I don't.

I was just a regular high school student.

We were just hanging out with my friends at the park one day last summer, and we got invited to a birthday party. We would go to parties, but not a lot.

The party was fun, it was cool, we had a good time.

When we decided to leave with my friends, we got in my friend's green Honda -- I don't what type, it was a Honda. We're driving home and the tire popped. We pulled into a gas station.

I went to see if they had a bathroom. They didn't so I came back. A silver Mustang pulled up with some guys in it. I wasn't talking to them but my friends were -- my friends were asking them for help. There was another car that drove up behind them, a red car, and they just started shooting.

I don't remember hearing gunshots. I just went away, I just blacked out completely. I remember being on the ground and I can see my hand, and I'm looking at all the blood all over it, I can feel the blood on the ground.

There was people around me, I could hear my friends yelling and crying, and just telling me to 'lay there, to lay down!'

I didn't feel nothing until I got in the ambulance and I couldn't breathe anymore. They were strapping me in, and telling me 'don't move, don't move, don't move.' And I was like, 'I can't breathe, I can't breathe.' And that's all, I didn't wake up 'til 2 weeks later.

I got shot twice in my right leg and once in my face. A bullet went through my nose, like my nostril in a way. It's kind of hard to explain, but it went down there and messed up the whole entire side of my face. It broke all the bones in it, and I still have missing teeth. My eye is kind of messed up -- I was supposed to be blind and deaf and everything. It was horrible.

I just remember when I woke up and I moved my head, I looked over and there was my Mom sitting there. I went to say, 'Mom!' But I couldn't talk. I just busted out crying and she told me what happened. That's when I started feeling all the pain and everything. It just really really hurt. My mouth was wired shut and my leg was huge.

I was there for a month and a day. I cried every day. The only part I liked about it was my friends coming up and seeing me and taking me shopping in the gift shop. But other than that it was pretty miserable.

It's still very sensitive in some parts. The scars are very itchy. I just got to take it easy, the nerves are still connecting and everything.

The face is very, very, very sensitive. I can touch it, but say I tap it, it will definitely hurt. It's like a stinging feeling. My eye, my whole entire cheek, part of my nose -- it's so itchy.

I can only chew on one side. My mouth is barely getting used to flavors again. It's like being a baby again, your mouth has to get used to certain flavors again and everything. Cold stuff, hot stuff, sour stuff -- everything like that.

I can get angry easily, my temper is shorter. I have breakdowns sometimes. Now when I have a bad day, or something goes wrong, the first thing that pops in my head is the shooting.

As told to Preston Maddock.