JFK assassination sowed seeds of failure for gun-control efforts


CHICAGO _ When a couple armed with assault rifles slaughtered 14 people at a holiday gathering in San Bernardino, California, this month, U.S. gun control advocates saw an opportunity. President Barack Obama lamented that "in America it's way too easy for dangerous people to get their hands on a gun" and said making it harder was the only right response.

Within a day, the Republican-controlled Senate rejected an expansion of background checks for gun buyers and defeated a law barring individuals on the terror watch list from purchasing firearms. Before the Christmas break, an effort to lift a 17- year-old ban on nearly all government research into gun violence was also defeated.

The origins of this familiar impasse lie in a congressional battle nearly five decades ago following some of the most traumatic political assassinations in the country's history: a president, his brother and two civil rights leaders. The White House pushed -- and failed -- to require that guns be licensed and gun owners registered right after the killings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy in 1968.

"The template was established in the 1960s," said Joseph Califano, chief domestic affairs adviser to President Lyndon Johnson. "With all the clout we had, we couldn't do it."

Threats, harassment, vandalism at mosques reach record high



(CNN)Gunshots fired into a mosque in Connecticut. Armed men protesting the "Islamization of America" outside Islamic centers in Texas. Death threats called in to mosques in Florida, Maryland and Virginia.

Anecdotal evidence suggests 2015, a year bookended by murderous attacks carried out in the name of Islam, has been one of the most intensely anti-Muslim periods in American history. A new study shared with CNN puts statistical heft behind that suspicion.

Through December 8, American mosques and Islamic centers have been the victims of vandalism, harassment and anti-Muslim bigotry at least 63 times this year, the Council on American-Islamic Relations says in the study. That's the highest number since the Muslim civil rights group began keeping track in 2009 and a threefold increase over last year.

The previous high was 53 incidents in 2010, during the controversy over the "ground zero mosque" near the site of the 9/11 attack in New York. But many of those incidents concerned bias at zoning hearings for new mosques. This year's hostilities have a sharper edge.

Connecticut to limit access to guns for people on watch lists: governor

Connecticut would become the first U.S. state to ban the sale of guns to people on government watch lists under an executive order that Governor Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, said on Thursday he will sign.

The measure, which Malloy said needs federal approval, would require state police to review whether a potential gun buyer was on the federal no-fly list or on a watchlist for people suspected of ties to terrorism.

It would also revoke existing gun permits issued to people whose names were found on such a list.

St. Paul teachers threaten strike over school violence

To the president of the St. Paul Federation of Teachers — and the union’s 3,800 members — the issue of school safety is important enough to call a strike.

“Ask yourself this,” said Denise Rodriguez, who has led the union for the past year and a half. “Do students and staff deserve to come to work every day and not expect to be assaulted? … Teachers want to know who has our back with this violence.”

The assault last week of a beloved teacher at St. Paul Central has shocked parents, galvanized the union, rattled administrators and is raising troubling questions about student discipline and safety in the St. Paul Public Schools — questions that have plagued the district for the past couple of years.

But, while teachers increasingly talk about being shoved, punched and threatened by students in what they call an escalating hostile environment, no one seems to be able to quantify just how often teachers in the metro area, or elsewhere in Minnesota, are assaulted by those they teach.