“You know, until you’re standing in front of someone with a gun pointed at you you don’t realize how helpless you really are.”

“We had a policy discussion. He was interested in how it all worked, how it had been received,” explained Ardern.

“My hunger is for the killing to stop. My thirst is for the United States to take its rightful place among other nations that have virtually eradicated mass shootings,” Stephenson wrote on her Facebook page.

“Well, there’s a lot of things I could list. I would love to see a ban on semiautomatic weapons, and the ammunition that goes with them but right now we’re working on background checks,” she says with an air of confidence.

Business leaders from around the country signed a letter this week urging Congress to pass new gun-control legislation.

The House Judiciary Committee advanced three anti-gun bills this week to the delight of the gun prohibition lobby.

“When they use phrases like, ‘I’ll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands’ on bumper stickers, they are saying reasoned debate about public safety should be met with violence,” Stefani explained.

The truth of the matter, as Lott points out, is that 94 percent of all mass public shootings occur in places where law-abiding citizens are explicitly prohibited from bearing arms.

The homeowner who fatally shot an intoxicated partygoer in Woodbine, Maryland last month will not face criminal charges, a state attorney announced this week.