The Legal Community Against Violence, a public-interest law firm that supports tighter restrictions on guns, says that 22 states in the last three years have weakened or eliminated laws regulating the possession of concealed weapons.

The Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News reports that the trend reflects a shift in both the tactics and strategy of the gun lobby, which include “a growing emphasis on policy skirmishes outside the Beltway.” Since 2003, the National Rifle Association has contributed $2.5 million to state political candidates, according to the non-partisan National Institute on Money in State Politics.

Some of the examples of the eased restrictions cited by iWatch adopted over the past eight years:

• Wisconsin this month began allowing weapons on parts of college campuses and in government buildings.
• Arizona last year decided to allow citizens to carry concealed weapons without a permit. Three other states now have similar laws.
• Louisiana last year approved letting houses of worship have armed security guards with concealed weapons.
• Kansas in 2006 cleared the way for gun permit holders to drink while carrying a concealed weapon, as long as they are not legally intoxicated.
• Utah amended its concealed-carry laws in 2003 to clarify that permit holders can bring guns into public schools.

The iWatch report particularly focused on Ohio, which only seven years ago started allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons

Since then, amid strong lobbying by gun activists, the state has, among other things: given homeowners and motorists new rights to use deadly force against burglars and other assailants; repealed a restriction making it a crime to have a concealed gun in a privately owned parking garage; approved letting parents possess a gun while picking up and dropping off their kids in a school zone; prohibited landlords from banning tenants with guns; and repealed a measure that prohibited applicants with a sealed or expunged criminal record from having a permit.

STUART SILVERSTEIN

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But an investigation by The New York Times found that, every year, states restore gun rights for thousands of felons, often with little or no legal review.

The practice became commonplace, The Times said, in the late 1980s — after Congress, prodded by the National Rifle Association, began allowing states to dictate how gun rights are reinstated.

In some states, restoration is automatic for nonviolent felons as soon as they complete their sentences. In a handful of states, even violent felons face few barriers. In other cases, judges make the decisions, but the standards are vague.

State law enforcement agencies have scant statistics on the practice. But the Times cited a researcher who concluded that “in more than half the states felons have a reasonable chance of getting back their gun rights.”

The newspaper’s examination of hundreds of restoration cases in several states uncovered tragic instances of felons who regained their gun rights and went on to commit violent crimes.

One case involved Erik Zettergren, a convicted felon who shot to death a man in the small southeastern Washington town of Endicott in 2005. Zettergren fired a shot to the victim’s temple at point blank range after discovering him in bed with Zettergren’s girlfriend.

Two months earlier, Zettergren’s gun rights were restored without a hearing, under a state law that gave the judge no leeway to deny the application as long as certain requirements were met.

That reinstatement came even though Zettergren had two previous felony convictions and a history of mental health problems.

Since 1995 in Washington, a Times analysis found, “more than 3,300 felons and people convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors have regained their gun rights…— 430 in 2010 alone.” And among those felons, more than 200 went on to commit new felonies, “including murder,  assault in the first and second degree, child rape and drive-by shooting.”

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The new law, which takes effect Jan. 1, will make it a misdemeanor to carry an exposed and unloaded handgun in public or in vehicles. Violators face up to a year in prison and a fine of as much as $1,000.

As the Los Angeles Times reports, Gov. Jerry Brown, who owns three guns, said he signed the measure at the urging of California police chiefs. A key concern among law enforcement authorities is the tension created, potentially escalating into violence, when someone sees another person carrying a gun without knowing whether it is loaded or unloaded.

The Associated Press noted, however, that the new law could have the unintended effect of prompting gun rights activists to protest by openly carrying rifles. The law does not bar the public carrying of unloaded rifles or other long-barrel weapons. As a political statement, activists previously have shown up at coffee shops and other public places with unloaded handguns.

The new law also provides exemptions for hunters and people going to gun shows or shooting ranges. Likewise, it doesn’t apply to people who have permits to carry concealed weapons.

Brown signed other gun control measures, too, including one requiring the state Justice Department to keep records on rifle sales to help law enforcement authorities solve crimes.

California is now one of only five states to ban the public display of handguns. Elsewhere around the country, laws relaxing controls on guns has been the general rule, with the support of the wave of Republican governors who swept into office last year.

As the Times pointed out, four states recently passed laws allowing guns to be carried anywhere, including churches, bars and government buildings.

STUART SILVERSTEIN

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The Obama administration has reassigned Kenneth E. Melson, acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, to a lower-level position as a senior advisor in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy. In addition, the U.S. Attorney in Phoenix, Dennis K. Burke, has resigned.

As the Los Angeles Times reports, Operation Fast and Furious was launched under Melson’s leadership. In the investigation, ATF agents watched — and in some cases recorded on video — illegal gun sales and then used surveillance teams and electronic eavesdropping to follow the guns and learn how the weapons were moved. The goal was to arrest cartel leaders overseeing gun smuggling on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico.

The pursuit of the guns and cartel leaders soon hit a dead end and the ATF lost track of many of the weapons. Some later turned up at crime scenes in Mexico, and two were recovered at an Arizona site where a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed. That prompted a continuing Congressional investigation into the operation.

As the Center for Public Integrity reports, 200 of the nearly 2,000 firearms bought by suspects during the 15-month operation were later recovered at crime scenes.

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As the Associated Press reports, the new regulation approved by the Obama administration follows a botched federal investigation into major arms-trafficking syndicates along the Arizona border with Mexico.

During the investigation, called Operation Fast and Furious, several agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives say they were ordered by superiors not to intervene when they learned of low-level buyers purchasing large numbers of weapons apparently on behalf of Mexican drug cartels. The aim was to monitor the guns to track down the cartels.

But, in December, two assault rifles purchased in Arizona by a small-time buyer turned up at a shootout that killed Brian Terry, an agent of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In recent congressional testimony, ATF agent John Dodson estimated that 1,800 guns in Fast and Furious were unaccounted for and that about two-thirds are probably in Mexico.

Under the new policy, federally licensed gun dealers in the four border states must report when a person buys two or more rifles of a certain type within a five-day period. The requirement applies to purchases of semi-automatic rifles that have detachable magazines and a caliber of greater than .22. They would include, for example, AK-47s.

ATF estimates the policy will generate 18,000 reports a year.

Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the measure will improve the ATF’s ability to disrupt networks that supply firearms to criminal organizations.

U.S. Rep. Elijah Cumming of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, praised the new policy, saying it squares with what ATF agents told Congress — that reporting multiple sales of military-grade assault weapons is crucial to identifying and disrupting gun trafficking by Mexican drug cartels

But House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, accused the Obama administration of restricting the gun rights of border-state citizens.

ATF estimates the requirement will cover nearly 8,500 gun store operators across the four states, though fewer than 30 percent of those operators are expected to have multiple sales to report.

As The New York Times reports, dealers nationwide already are required to report bulk sales of handguns. The ATF initiated the move to add the newly approved regulation late last year to help detect bulk “straw buyers” who say they are buying weapons for themselves but then transfer them to criminals.

CHRISTINE YOUNG

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As The New York Times reports, the current scandal over a gun-trafficking investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has refocused attention on the failings of the agency.

That investigation, known as Fast and Furious, has triggered enormous controversy because of the disclosure that bureau agents let weapons slip across the Mexican border – including two guns that later turned up in Arizona, where a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed in a shootout.

The bureau, part of the Justice Department, has been tarnished before by botched operations, including the deadly 1993 raid on the compound of the Branch Davidian cult near Waco, Tex.

It regularly clashes with the National Rifle Association, one of Washington’s strongest lobbying powers, whose leader has called the bureau a “rogue” agency.

Even the bureau’s defenders concede that it is ineffective, and they say that’s why it has resorted to operations such as Fast and Furious, which was intended to lead agents to bigger criminal targets.

These critics say the NRA is the source of the problems, maintaining that the gun lobby for years has coaxed Congress to limit the government’s gun control powers.

As the Times notes, the bureau is barred from conducting more than one unannounced inspection of a gun dealer per year and is restricted in its ability to revoke the licenses of dealers who break the law. The bureau also has been blocked from keeping a centralized computer database of gun transactions, which advocates say would make it easier to trace weapons.

Ideas about how to make improvements vary widely and range from beefing the agency’s powers to merging it into the FBI.

Meanwhile, amid the long-running debate and controversy, the agency hasn’t had a permanent director in five years, and the current acting director, Kenneth E. Melson, is at risk of losing his job over the Fast and Furious scandal.

STUART SILVERSTEIN

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