Two reports confirm one set of facts: Gun violence has dropped dramatically nationwide over the past two decades, but the impression people get from the mainstream media and anti-gun lobbyists is "gun crime" is out of control.
               
The Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics on May 7 released a report documenting a 39 percent decline in firearms-related homicides between 1993 and 2011, as well as a 69 percent drop-off in non-fatal crimes with firearms.
               
Another interesting stat from the Justice Department study: Less than 1 percent of state prison inmates who possessed a gun when they committed their offense obtained the firearm at a gun show.

David Lewis, 35, is a college librarian who lives in Amherst, N.Y., not far from Buffalo. He is a licensed pistol-owner who enjoys target-shooting. He has no criminal record and has never issued threats or done anything that would cause concern about his access to a firearm.
               
Although there is no evidence of any mental instability, for a short time, Lewis was taking anti-anxiety medicine. And that, apparently, was enough for anti-gun zealots in Erie County to use New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s newly adopted SAFE Act to pull his pistol permit and demand his firearms be confiscated.
               
New York's gun control measure adopted in January includes a provision requiring mental health professionals to alert authorities when a gun owner might be a danger to himself/herself and others.

Test protocol includes three distinct, but overlapping, phases. Before a single shell or cartridge is loaded, each firearm is inspected, measured, weighed, cleaned if necessary, and in the case of the rifles, scoped up. This time-consuming process is what we use to build the data sheets provided to each tester, which list all the vital statistics about the firearm. We’re so picky during this process that we even assign number grades to reflect the quality of the machining on the bore and rifling, for instance. Suffice it to say there’s no nook or cranny on these rifles and shotguns, all of which are field-stripped and disassembled, that isn’t inspected.

According to a poll published on April 29, five senators -- including four Republicans -- who voted against the Manchin/Toomey compromise background check bill on April 17 could face a backlash by voters back in their home states in 2014 elections.
                 
Public Policy Polling, a Democrat-leaning consulting firm based in Raleigh, N.C., surveyed constituents of five senators who opposed the measure: Republicans Jeff Flake of Arizona, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rob Portman of Ohio, and Dean Heller of Nevada, and Democrat Mark Begich of Alaska.
               
The PPP says its surveys found 60 to 72 percent public support in each state for expanding background checks to require them in sales at gun shows and on the Internet.