The New Republic

Expanded background checks may have been defeated last month in the Senate, but one area of bipartisan gun-control consensus is gathering steam in American cities: tougher sentences, including mandatory minimums, for illegal firearm possession. READ MORE >>

About 35 politically engaged people, almost entirely African-American women, sat in booths at Beggars Pizza on E. 147th, a long street lined with fast food outlets and boarded-up barbecue rib shacks in Harvey, one of the economically depressed suburbs ringing the Southeast Side of Chicago. READ MORE >>

In the month since the Newtown massacre, there has been an onslaught of state legislation related to guns—both to broaden, and restrict, owners’ rights. With Vice President Joe Biden scheduled to present his gun-violence task force’s recommendations on Tuesday, and New York state reportedly poised to vote on comprehensive gun legislation, here’s a roundup of ten measures being pushed around the country. South Carolina Less than a week after Sandy Hook, a Republican delegate introduced legislation that would allow school employees with concealed-weapons permits to bring their guns to work. Each employee seeking to bring his or her weapon onto school grounds would need approval from the school board and could not have a history of violence. But even in the state’s Republican-controlled legislature, such a bill is far from a sure bet. After the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, a representative tried to pass a similar bill that would have allowed concealed carry on public school grounds, but the bill died on the House floor. New Jersey Members of the New Jersey Legislature introduced 18 bills related to gun control at the start of the 2013 session. One of the more controversial ones: a bill that would require people seeking a gun permit to undergo a psychological evaluation. Under the proposal introduced by Democratic Assemblywoman Angelica Jimenez, prospective gun owners would submit to the same kind of evaluation performed on police officers. Her bill would also call for police officers to inspect prospective gun owners’ homes to determine if the weapon would be properly kept away from children and the mentally ill. If it passes, the law would rank among the strictest in the country.IllinoisAfter the Illinois General Assembly failed to act on gun control during its recent lame-duck session, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel took matters into his own hands.  The former White House chief of staff is drafting a Chicago-only gun ordinance that he hopes will push state legislators to ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips, according to the Chicago-Sun Times.  It is unclear exactly what his ordinance will entail, but the mayor’s team expects—and is ready—for whatever Emanuel passes to be challenged in court. READ MORE >>

Post-Newtown, our "national conversation" on guns has taken two strikingly divergent paths. On the one hand, much of the punditry and Washington political establishment is already lapsing into the resigned assumption that yet again, nothing much will come of our initial outrage over the horror of children being cut down by big guns with big clips, even before Joe Biden announces the administration's gun-control proposal this week. The gun lobby is just too strong, and the popular resistance to major new firearms restrictions just too ingrained, for reform to happen. At the same time, though, several high-profile Democrats who've been mentioned as 2016 presidential contenders are betting on a different read of the situation. As they see it, Newtown has truly changed things, making it not just politically feasible to broach new constraints, but perhaps even politically imperative.Last week, there was New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, tapping some of his father's moral fervor in a rip-roaring call to make his state a pioneer in gun control: "No one hunts with an assault rifle. End the madness now." He has since reached a deal with state legislators to further restrict assault weapons in the state, limit magazine clips to seven rounds and toughen background checks. Not to be outdone, Cuomo's potential 2016 primary foe, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, who made his name running against gun violence in Baltimore, let slip that he, too, will be announcing a major package of new regulations, including the nation's strictest gun-licensing requirements and a ban on assault weapons. And don't forget Colorado's John Hickenlooper, another Democratic prospect who, in the more hostile political terrain of the West, is now calling for instituting background checks on all gun sales, including private person-to-person ones.What are we to make of this? Are we back to the Democratic Party circa 1984, with candidates trying to outflank each other to the left to win the affections of the liberal base, with ominous consequences for the eventual general election? Wasn't that what happened to the Democrats in 2000, when Bill Bradley, an ardent gun control proponent, helped drag Al Gore to the left on the issue during the primaries, which helped lead to Gore's loss in Tennessee, Arkansas and West Virginia, any one of which would have put him over the top in the Electoral College?  READ MORE >>

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There is a longstanding American political tradition, going back to Horace Mann, that sees the reformation of American schools as the key to reforming American society and the American economy. It can be found in the current education reform movement, led by groups like Stand for Children, and was on display in the pitched battle between Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who has styled himself as a reformer, and Chicago’s teachers’ union. READ MORE >>

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Sometimes if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. READ MORE >>

When President Obama announced that Bill Daley would no longer serve as White House chief of staff, he pronounced himself chagrined by the move but explained that Daley had an understandable desire to return to Chicago. “In the end,” the president told reporters in the State Dining Room, “the pull of the hometown we both love—a city that’s been synonymous with the Daley family for generations—was too great.” READ MORE >>