Gun Control

Brett Kavanaugh is a Supreme Court justice. That much is certain after senators narrowly approved his controversial nomination Saturday, putting an end to his bitter confirmation battle with a slim vote in his favor.

But even as one phase of Kavanaugh's story ends, another is beginning: His lifetime tenure on the highest court in the U.S. And this story promises to last much longer.

Security companies spent years pushing schools to buy more products — from "ballistic attack-resistant" doors to smoke cannons that spew haze from ceilings to confuse a shooter. But sales were slow, and industry's campaign to free up taxpayer money for upgrades had stalled.

Experienced gun hobbyists recognized the sound right away.

"I knew for a fact it was a bump stock as soon as I heard the video," says Jeff LaCroix. He's a recreational shooter in Louisiana. He says the rapid, uneven sound of the gunfire at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas last Oct. 1 made it clear to him a bump stock was involved.

Andrew Gillum called for "common sense gun reform" and deflected questions about fundraising with Broward County's embattled sheriff at a campaign stop on Friday in Plantation. 

The Democratic nominee for governor received an endorsement from the gun control group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America after fundraising with Broward commissioners and county sheriff Scott Israel earlier in the morning. 

It’s been seven months since the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that killed 17 people. 

Democrat Jeff Greene’s campaign bus pulled up to Jacksonville’s Northwestern Middle School a few weeks ahead of the start of school. The Palm Beach billionaire came to the low-income area to give backpacks to kids.

When Dorothy Paugh was 9, her father bought a pistol and started talking openly about ending his life. Her mother was terrified but didn't know what to do.

"She called our priest and called his best friend," Paugh recalled. "They came and talked to him, and they didn't ask to take his gun away."

Her father was 51 when he shot himself to death.

In the battle over the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, the usual suspects are lining up in support and opposition. At the grass roots, however, there is one new entry nervously eyeing the Kavanaugh nomination. It is March For Our Lives, started by high school students in Parkland, Fla., after the shooting there, and aimed ultimately at enacting more effective gun regulations.

A major change that aims to keep more weapons out of the wrong hands is in the works for the FBI's gun background check process.

Examiners will be given access to a large, previously untapped database of more than 400 million records as they determine when gun purchases can go through nationwide. But for the survivors and victims' families of the 2015 church massacre in Charleston, S.C., the change did not come soon enough.

Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office this week urged a circuit judge to dismiss a challenge to a law that imposes strict penalties on local governments and officials who violate a restriction on regulating guns and ammunition. 

It’s now been two years after the Pulse nightclub mass shooting that left 49 people dead in Orlando. U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) says it’s time Congress acts on bipartisan gun reform legislation.

With frustration mounting over lawmakers' inaction on gun control, the American Medical Association on Tuesday pressed for a ban on assault weapons and came out against arming teachers as a way to fight what it calls a public health crisis.

Republicans running to replace Attorney General Pam Bondi disagree with her legal stand against a 19-year-old Alachua County woman who wants to remain anonymous in a National Rifle Association challenge to a new state gun restriction.

With schools almost out for summer, some school districts aren’t waiting to ramp up security. Brevard Schools said even before the Texas school shooting last week it’s adding security fencing, cameras and remote-controlled entry locks.

The National Rifle Association is appealing a federal judge’s refusal to keep the identity of a 19-year-old Alachua County woman secret in a challenge to a state law that raised the age to purchase rifles and other long guns.

A bold proposal written by a committee formed by the Florida Bar is pitching new laws for the state that would broaden the number of individuals who could be banned from not only purchasing, but also from possessing firearms.

Two months after it passed the state legislature, Florida’s latest gun reform law is still under scrutiny from gun control and pro-gun advocates alike.

Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office is asking a Leon County circuit judge to dismiss a lawsuit that alleges a recently approved ban on firearm “bump stocks” is an unconstitutional taking of property. 

In a move prompted by the Parkland high school shooting, the waiting period to purchase a firearm in Hillsborough County is now five days.

Three former state lawmakers are part of a committee that will try to get voters in 2020 to pass a constitutional amendment that would ban “assault” weapons in Florida. 

Updated at 2:39 p.m. ET

"I'm not a hero. I'm just a regular person," said James Shaw Jr., who police say saved lives by disarming a man who opened fire Sunday at a Waffle House in Tennessee. Shaw insists he acted only to save himself — but many others are calling him a hero for stopping the violence.

"I think anybody could've did what I did if they're just pushed in that kind of cage," Shaw said, "and you have to either react or you're going to, you know, fold."

Dozens of students, parents and school staff members lined up at two microphones in the auditorium at Plantation High School on Wednesday night to share their fear and anger with Broward school district leaders.

Parents of students who died in the Parkland, Florida, school shooting are calling for a range of steps to prevent gun violence, including measures to "harden" schools to minimize attacks and to identify potential shooters before they act.

A teenager who took five bullets in the Florida school mass shooting has become the first victim of the Valentine's Day rampage to file a lawsuit.

Dick's Sporting Goods is destroying all the guns and accessories that it stopped selling earlier this year after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

Before her brother took his own life, Mary Miller-Strobel said she and her father begged every store in town that sold firearms to turn him away.