GUN VIOLENCE IS DOWN – LOSE CITIZENSHIP IF TERRORIST

National rates of gun homicide and other violent gun crimes are strikingly lower now than during their peak in the mid-1990s, paralleling a general decline in violent crime, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data. Beneath the long-term trend, though, are big differences by decade: Violence plunged through the 1990s, but has declined less dramatically since 2000.
Compared with 1993, the peak of U.S. gun homicides, the firearm homicide rate was 49% lower in 2010, and there were fewer deaths, even though the nation’s population grew. The victimization rate for other violent crimes with a firearm—assaults, robberies and sex crimes—was 75% lower in 2011 than in 1993. Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall (with or without a firearm) also is down markedly (72%) over two decades. http://bit.ly/15A2Gtx

OTTAWA — The effort to strip Canadian terrorists of their citizenship will have to wait while the NDP ties up a parliamentary committee in procedural wrangling.
“We are not supportive of the minister gutting the entire content of a private member’s bill and replacing it with his own legislation,” NDP immigration critic Jinny Sims said Thursday. The government is trying to amend Conservative MP Devinder Shory’s private member’s bill so Canadians would automatically renounce their citizenship after being convicted of a terrorist act, instead of an act of war as the bill originally stated.
So the Tories have asked for more time in committee in order to get Commons approval to introduce the amendments, but NDP members of the immigration committee have filibustered for days to block the government’s effort. http://bit.ly/11YYlI4