All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

At a town meeting hosted by Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania resident stood up to say that the health care debate has "awakened the sleeping giant."

Not exactly.

What's it's done, it seems, is stirred a hornets nest, and uncovered disturbing attitudes and emotions that have nothing to do with policy.

Are we really still debating health care when a man brings a handgun to a church where the President is speaking?

How does a swastika spray-painted on a Congressman's office further a discussion about Medicare?

These are tough and challenging times and lots of people are scared about their jobs and the economy. But we can't let fear and frankly ignorance - drown out the serious debate that needs to take place - about an issue that affects the lives of millions of people.

It's time for everyone to take a deep breath and to focus on the task at hand before this sideshow drowns out the main event.

That's a page from my notebook.

I'm Katie Couric, CBS News.

Thirteen people shot dead in Binghamton, New York.

Eight killed at a North Carolina nursing home.

Ten murdered across several towns in southern Alabama.

In the last month, seven mass shootings have claimed the lives of 53 people.

The enormity of these tragedies makes them front page news. But, on average, 32 people die every day in gun-related violence.

Gun control advocates say it is too easy for the wrong people to get their hands on a weapon.

Background checks are meant to keep criminals from owning guns. But just about anyone can walk into a gun show and buy a weapon from a private dealer, no questions asked.

The Brady Campaign to prevent gun violence reports that 83% of Americans favor background checks on all gun sales.

Legislators have an obligation to protect the Constitution.

They also have a responsibility to protect citizens from more of the tragedies that keep replaying themselves in communities all across America.

That's a page from my notebook.

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Here's something you don't find everyday: the earliest gunshot victim in the Americas. They found his skull in Peru:

Archaeologists sensed they had unearthed an important find, but it wasn't until months later that a powerful electron microscope scan confirmed it by finding traces of lead in the skull. The victim, who was between 18 and 22 years old when he died, had been shot by a Spanish conquistador.

Given the age of the remains, as well as the age of other remains buried nearby, the archaeologists came to the conclusion that they had identified the earliest victim of a gunshot wound ever found in the Americas.

"There may have been Incas and other native people killed by Europeans before him, but this is our oldest example so far," said Peruvian archaeologist Guillermo Cock, who has excavated in the area for more than 20 years. "This happened at the beginning of a long and difficult history."

Conclusion? Guns don't kill people. Conquistadors kill people.

Last week’s killings at Virginia Tech are still on all of our minds—and it may be too soon to talk about a public policy response. But the fact is, national activists and politicians already are. For last week's "10 Questions," just days after the VT assault, we spoke with a leading proponent of gun control.

This week, we hear from the other side of the debate. We posed some questions to Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig, a longtime NRA board member and gun control opponent. We talked with him about assault weapons, background checks, and the Second Amendment.

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1. Senator Craig, do you want any changes in America’s gun laws?

In the past, I supported a proposal with Senators McCain, Schumer, and others to improve the National Instant Check System (NICS), which helps enforce current gun laws. Part of the bill addresses the lack of mental health data in NICS. Federal firearms law does not permit individuals with mental disabilities to purchase firearms, and NICS should be able to stop those sales. While privacy concerns have made it difficult to populate the database with accurate information, this bill takes steps to close that information gap while respecting those concerns.

2. You’ve served on the board of the NRA since 1982 and have talked tough about Democrats wanting to take away people’s guns. Were you surprised that the leaders of the new Democratic Congress didn’t speak out for more gun control last week?

Not one bit. A lot of anti-gun advocates have lost their Congressional seats because of their support for more gun control. That fact was not lost on either party in the last election. Democrats realize that gun control is a losing issue with much of the electorate, particularly with the union and blue collar workers they claim as their political base. They even went so far as to recruit pro-gun candidates who are now part of their caucuses in the House and Senate and resistant to flip-flopping on this issue...

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In the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy, gun control has again become the subject of national debate.

Is there a way for us to find common ground on this controversial issue?

Click the monitor to watch.

Almost invariably, America can't suffer a gun tragedy--like this week's massacre at Virginia Tech--without a gun debate immediately following it. The basic question is this: Should government impose restrictions on what kind of guns can be sold, and to whom? Would those restrictions make us any safer?

For one side's perspective on this issue, we turned to Paul Helmke, a Republican who is the former mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana, former president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a pro-gun control group.

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1.Mr. Helmke, it almost seems too early to discuss a policy response to the tragedy at Virginia Tech. And yet, people are already lining up behind various ideas including more gun control-which your group obviously supports. Are there any measures that could have been taken to prevent this tragedy?

We’ll never know for sure if this horrific shooting could have been prevented, but it seems quite clear that what we’re doing now is not working and that this individual should not have been allowed to get his guns and ammunition so easily. It’s still unclear whether his mental health history legally disqualified him from purchasing weapons. If so, this information apparently didn’t get to the state and federal authorities who should have disapproved these sales. In approving gun sales, the focus should be on completeness, not quickness. If his documented history wasn’t a disqualifier, it should have been. Requiring references could have made it obvious that guns shouldn’t be sold to this person. A stronger, more extensive system of real background checks might have made a difference. In addition, ballistics microstamping technology might have allowed the police to determine more quickly after the first two killings who the shooter was.

2.What do you say to those who argue that Virginia Tech had already implemented several gun safety measures on campus-banning guns in classrooms and dorms-that apparently did nothing to help?

Partial restrictions by a university or a city are going to be of limited effectiveness when an individual can go off-campus or out of the city or to the next state and easily acquire these weapons – in this case, not once but twice. We need effective, enforceable, national, common-sense restrictions to prevent such easy, quick access to so much deadly firepower.

3. A leading Virginia gun rights group said that if one of the victims were carrying a concealed weapon, this massacre might have been averted. What's wrong with that argument?...

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Lawyer Andrew Cohen analyzes legal affairs for CBS News and CBSNews.com.

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Before the sun even set Monday on Virginia Tech’s devastated campus, the eternally discordant voices in the debate over gun control already were sounding across the country.

Gun control advocates told us yesterday afternoon that they are not necessarily shocked that gun violence would rock another one of our centers of learning with such chilling brutality. They say that gun control on our nation’s campuses didn’t even get measurably better after the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, which occurred nearly eight years ago to the day. In fact, they added, gun control across the country has become more lax thanks to a “lack of leadership” on the part of the White House.

Gun rights advocates, meanwhile, were quick to remind us, as CBS News’ Armen Keteyian reported, that Virginia Tech officials had implemented reasonable gun safety measures on campus—guns were prohibited in dormitories and in classrooms-- and still were unable to protect the students and faculty. No doubt in the coming days these opponents of gun control will say to anyone who will listen that the massacre at Virginia Tech falls solely upon the shoulders of the killer, Cho Seung-Hui, and not upon the Commonwealth of Virginia’s long-held policy of recognizing broad gun rights for individuals.

It seems too early to engage in earnest in this worthwhile debate...

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