Remember, guns begin their lives in the legal market and get diverted into the illegal market.

How? According to ATF, 1.2% of Federally licensed gun dealers account for almost 60% of crime guns in America.

Another example from AP today:

A Freeport gun dealer will be arraigned this week on charges of illegally selling handguns to a convicted felon.

Prosecutors say 36-year-old Wade Collett sold 11 handguns to customers he knew were not the real buyers, who then turned the weapons over to 22-year-old Durrell Williams of New York City.

Collett runs Red Wheel Enterprises gun shop, located in the same building as Red Wheel Antiques. Williams was prohibited from buying the guns because of a previous drug conviction.

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More of the weekly examples of children paying the cost of easy access to guns in America.

From the Press-Enterprise:

Banning police arrested a 15-year-old boy accused of accidentally shooting his 12-year-old relative in the head Sunday night.

Police said the boy had accidentally fired a gun in the home in the 1500 block of East Jacinto Avenue shortly before 10 p.m., Banning police Lt. Mike West said.

The boy was holding the gun when it went off and the bullet shot through a wall, hitting the 12-year-old girl in the head, West said. When police arrived, the girl was still conscious and was able to tell police she had been shot.

“All indications show it was an accidental shooting,” West said.

The bullet lodged in the girl’s brain, and surgery will be performed at Riverside County Regional Medical Center in Moreno Valley. Surgeons have to wait for swelling to subside on her brain before they can operate.

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Facts about kids and guns in the United States are here.

Solutions about how to keep our children and families safe are here and here.

In the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Opinion Talk blog today:

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to soon issue a ruling in the Washington, D.C. gun case and Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin worries that cities may be hampered in their crime-fighting efforts if the justices strike down the D.C. gun control laws.

“If the justices agree with the lower court’s ruling, cities and states throughout the country may face challenge after challenge to the constitutionality of firearm regulations enacted to protect the public and prosecute criminals. And city attorneys may find themselves spending as much time fighting lawsuits as they do fighting crime,� writes Franklin, in an opinion column signed by several other mayors.

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Roxane Kolar, executive director of North Carolinians Against Gun Violence, talks about how a Supreme Court decision that finds an individual right to own a gun for private purposes could have a positive effect on gun control in America.

Read why In today’s Charlotte Observer:

… Kolar is hoping that, if the Supreme Court does overrule D.C.’s handgun ban, it “will also maintain there are state and federal rights to have sensible gun legislation.â€�

She even sees a potential silver lining in a ruling that upholds an individual’s right to bear arms.

Kolar contends that groups such as the National Rifle Association have been so afraid of losing that right that they have resisted what she called “common-sense regulations.�

If the Supreme Court erases that fear, she said, perhaps organizations on both sides of the issue could collaborate on legislative and educational efforts to “make sure that those who have firearms are safe and legal gun owners, and those that shouldn’t have firearms, don’t.â€�

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In Pennsylvania, per the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader:

BUTLER TWP. – Township police arrested a 45-year-old McAdoo man while he was attempting to purchase a firearm on Saturday, according to a police news release.

Christopher Fabiani, of South Kennedy Drive, was at a Drums firearms dealer trying to purchase a gun, township police said. During the purchase, police said Fabiani was checked through a state computer system to determine if he was eligible to buy the gun.

The computer check found that Fabiani was wanted, and township police were notified, police said. Officers responded to the scene and apprehended Fabiani leaving the gun dealer.

Fabiani was wanted by Schuylkill Haven police for resisting arrest, police said.

Township police are continuing the investigation to determine if Fabiani lied while preparing the paperwork to purchase the firearm.

An example of the 1.5 million felons, fugitives, dangerously mentally ill, domestic abusers and others rejected at the point of sale by Brady criminal background checks since 1994.

This also helps illustrate the recent finding from the Medical College of Wisconsin that state and local-level background checks are “more effective in reducing firearm homicide and suicide rates than states that rely only on a federal-level background check.”  (Pennsylvania is a Point of Contact state.)