By Maggie Shepard / Journal Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2015 at 12:05am
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Despite three years of unsuccessful efforts, proponents of tighter gun sale requirements in New Mexico are trying again to require background checks for sales at gun shows.

Current state law does not require background checks for some gun sales at gun shows or in person-to-person sales elsewhere.

The bill would require checks only at gun shows on customers who have not obtained concealed carry permits, a process that requires a background check.

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By NAOMI MARTIN nmartin@dallasnews.com Staff Writer
Published: 23 December 2015 11:32 PM
Updated: 26 December 2015 11:30 AM
Police across Texas are bracing for a spike in 911 calls when the state’s open carry law takes effect Jan. 1 and panicked citizens start seeing handguns on people’s hips.

“For a while we’ll be in a transition period, but it’s something everyone’s going to have to get used to,” said Lt. Pedro Barineau, a Garland police spokesman.

Police will have to contend with the law’s gray areas that experts say will have to be settled in court. The law is unclear, for example, on when officers can demand to see a gun owner’s license or whether they can arrest people who refuse to show the license.

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Washington (CNN)New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Wednesday pardoned a Marine sergeant with New Hampshire ties over a gun charge.

Sgt. Joshua Velez, a Massachusetts resident who works as recruiter in New England — including in the first-in-the-nation primary state — was arrested over Labor Day weekend after a traffic stop in the Garden State turned up an unloaded handgun in his vehicle’s glove compartment.

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Nicole Sizemore, Christie’s deputy press secretary, said Velez is licensed to carry the handgun in Massachusetts, but was charged in New Jersey with unlawful possession of a handgun and hollow point bullets.

Following a written application from Velez for a pardon over the criminal charges, Christie — a Republican presidential candidate — granted it. Christie this year has granted several pardons to non-New Jersey residents caught with weapons in violations of the Garden State’s strict gun laws.

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New Jersey state flag

By Claude Brodesser-Akner | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
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on December 22, 2015 at 8:05 AM, updated December 22, 2015 at 5:04 PM

TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie is taking heat from both Democratic lawmakers and Second Amendment rights activists over a plan to broaden access to concealed carry permits in New Jersey.

Christie, a 2016 Republican candidate for president, said that he would “wholeheartedly embrace” the recommendations of the New Jersey Firearm Purchase and Permitting Study Commission, which included broadening access to concealed carry permits for those who could prove they’d received threats against their lives.

However, Democrats in the Senate dismissed both the hand-picked commission as a group of the governor’s cronies, and pooh-poohed its findings as merely tailored to buttress Christie’s standing in the early-voting state of New Hampshire, where the governor trails Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

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By Jenna Portnoy December 23
RICHMOND — When Attorney General Mark R. Herring (D) incensed the gun rights community Tuesday by announcing that Virginia will no longer recognize out-of-state concealed-handgun permits, the state Republican Party moved fast.

It sent out a fundraising blast, remade the party home page and tagged social media with #HerringHates2A. Nearly 1,200 people signed an online petition declaring, “Tell Democrats like Mark Herring, Terry McAuliffe and Hillary Clinton that we won’t let them take away our constitutional rights!”

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