From _The New York Times_ January 3, 2015
Groups Take Gun Control to the States
WASHINGTON — The gun control movement, blocked in Congress and facing mounting losses in federal elections, is tweaking its name, refining its goals and using the same-sex marriage movement as a model to take the fight to voters on the state level.
After a victory in November on a Washington State ballot measure that will require broader background checks on gun buyers, groups that promote gun regulations have turned away from Washington and the political races that have been largely futile. Instead, they are turning their attention — and their growing wallets — to other states that allow ballot measures.
An initiative seeking stricter background checks for certain buyers has qualified for the 2016 ballot in Nevada, where such a law was passed last year by the Legislature and then vetoed by the governor. Advocates of gun safety — the term many now use instead of "gun control" — are seeking lines on ballots in Arizona, Maine and Oregon as well.
"I can't recall ballot initiatives focused on gun policy," said Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. "There wasn't the money." Colorado and Oregon approved ballot measures on background checks at gun shows after the Columbine school massacre in 1999, but the movement stalled after that.
The National Rifle Association, which raises millions of dollars a year largely from small donors and has one of the most muscular state lobbying apparatuses in the country, is well attuned to its foes' shift in focus. "We will be wherever they are to challenge them," said Andrew Arulanandam, the group's spokesman.
The new focus on ballot initiatives comes after setbacks in Congress and in statehouses. After the 2012 mass shooting of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., President Obama's effort to pass a background-check measure never got out of the Senate. Although 10 states have passed major gun control legislation, including Connecticut, New York and Colorado, more states have loosened gun restrictions.
Candidates who backed gun control mostly lost in the midterm elections, even after groups spent millions on their behalf. The last setback came in December when Martha McSally, a Republican, prevailed in a recount over Rep. Ron Barber, D-Ariz. Barber was wounded in the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, and lost even though Giffords's PAC, Americans for Responsible Solutions, spent more than $2 million in the race.
Gun control groups say that although they are still dwarfed by the N.R.A., they have more money and are involved in more grass-roots activism than ever before. The N.R.A. was even heavily outspent in the Washington State referendum.
"Things that people feel are most doable politically right now are connected to domestic violence," Webster said. "There is a lot of uptick on that issue even in red states and states with a lot of guns." In the past two years, 11 states have passed such legislation. JENNIFER STEINHAUER
The Obama administration doubled down on Friday on its allegation that North Korea's leadership was behind the hacking of Sony Pictures, announcing new, if largely symbolic, economic sanctions against 10 senior North Korean officials and the intelligence agency it said was the source of "many of North Korea's major cyber operations."
The actions were based on an executive order President Obama signed as part of what he had promised would be a "proportional response" against the country. But in briefings for reporters, officials said they could not establish that any of the 10 officials had been directly involved in the destruction of much of the studio's computing infrastructure.
Most seemed linked to the North's missile and weapons sales. Two are senior North Korean representatives in Iran, a major buyer of North Korean military technology, and five others are representatives in Syria, Russia, China and Namibia.
The sanctions were part of the public element of the response to the Sony incident, but the administration has said there would be a covert element as well. Officials sidestepped questions about whether the United States was involved in bringing down North Korea's Internet connectivity to the outside world over the past two weeks.
Several cyber security firms have argued that when Obama took the unusual step of naming the North's leadership — on Dec. 19 he declared that "North Korea engaged in this attack" — he had been misled by intelligence agencies who were too eager to blame a longtime adversary and let themselves be duped by hackers skilled at hiding their tracks.
But Obama's critics do not have a consistent explanation of who might have been culpable. The F.B.I. and Obama's aides argue that the critics have no access to the classified evidence that led to the conclusion. "We remain very confident in the attribution," said a senior administration official. DAVID E. SANGER and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
Groups Take Gun Control to the States
WASHINGTON — The gun control movement, blocked in Congress and facing mounting losses in federal elections, is tweaking its name, refining its goals and using the same-sex marriage movement as a model to take the fight to voters on the state level.
After a victory in November on a Washington State ballot measure that will require broader background checks on gun buyers, groups that promote gun regulations have turned away from Washington and the political races that have been largely futile. Instead, they are turning their attention — and their growing wallets — to other states that allow ballot measures.
An initiative seeking stricter background checks for certain buyers has qualified for the 2016 ballot in Nevada, where such a law was passed last year by the Legislature and then vetoed by the governor. Advocates of gun safety — the term many now use instead of "gun control" — are seeking lines on ballots in Arizona, Maine and Oregon as well.
"I can't recall ballot initiatives focused on gun policy," said Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. "There wasn't the money." Colorado and Oregon approved ballot measures on background checks at gun shows after the Columbine school massacre in 1999, but the movement stalled after that.
The National Rifle Association, which raises millions of dollars a year largely from small donors and has one of the most muscular state lobbying apparatuses in the country, is well attuned to its foes' shift in focus. "We will be wherever they are to challenge them," said Andrew Arulanandam, the group's spokesman.
The new focus on ballot initiatives comes after setbacks in Congress and in statehouses. After the 2012 mass shooting of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., President Obama's effort to pass a background-check measure never got out of the Senate. Although 10 states have passed major gun control legislation, including Connecticut, New York and Colorado, more states have loosened gun restrictions.
Candidates who backed gun control mostly lost in the midterm elections, even after groups spent millions on their behalf. The last setback came in December when Martha McSally, a Republican, prevailed in a recount over Rep. Ron Barber, D-Ariz. Barber was wounded in the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, and lost even though Giffords's PAC, Americans for Responsible Solutions, spent more than $2 million in the race.
Gun control groups say that although they are still dwarfed by the N.R.A., they have more money and are involved in more grass-roots activism than ever before. The N.R.A. was even heavily outspent in the Washington State referendum.
"Things that people feel are most doable politically right now are connected to domestic violence," Webster said. "There is a lot of uptick on that issue even in red states and states with a lot of guns." In the past two years, 11 states have passed such legislation. JENNIFER STEINHAUER
The Obama administration doubled down on Friday on its allegation that North Korea's leadership was behind the hacking of Sony Pictures, announcing new, if largely symbolic, economic sanctions against 10 senior North Korean officials and the intelligence agency it said was the source of "many of North Korea's major cyber operations."
The actions were based on an executive order President Obama signed as part of what he had promised would be a "proportional response" against the country. But in briefings for reporters, officials said they could not establish that any of the 10 officials had been directly involved in the destruction of much of the studio's computing infrastructure.
Most seemed linked to the North's missile and weapons sales. Two are senior North Korean representatives in Iran, a major buyer of North Korean military technology, and five others are representatives in Syria, Russia, China and Namibia.
The sanctions were part of the public element of the response to the Sony incident, but the administration has said there would be a covert element as well. Officials sidestepped questions about whether the United States was involved in bringing down North Korea's Internet connectivity to the outside world over the past two weeks.
Several cyber security firms have argued that when Obama took the unusual step of naming the North's leadership — on Dec. 19 he declared that "North Korea engaged in this attack" — he had been misled by intelligence agencies who were too eager to blame a longtime adversary and let themselves be duped by hackers skilled at hiding their tracks.
But Obama's critics do not have a consistent explanation of who might have been culpable. The F.B.I. and Obama's aides argue that the critics have no access to the classified evidence that led to the conclusion. "We remain very confident in the attribution," said a senior administration official. DAVID E. SANGER and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
