photo via Rightwing Watch

The fact that there are a lot of people out there trying to make this guy a hero, says a lot.

In an attempt to outdo Sean Hannity’s efforts to turn George Zimmerman into a hero, WorldNetDaily’s Jack Cashill is now writing a book that paints the killer as a conservative idol.

Cashill even blames two recent allegations of domestic abuse, including claims of violence from Zimmerman’s estranged wife and girlfriend, on the media.

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From the Washington Post:

Virginia state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds (D-Bath) was seriously injured early Tuesday in an assault at his house in Bath County, west of Charlottesville. A second person inside the home was found dead, according to Virginia State Police.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that Deeds was stabbed and critically injured and that the dead person is his son, Gus, who suffered a gunshot wound. The Washington Post could not confirm that Deeds’s son was the deceased victim.

Creigh Deeds was a gubernatorial Democratic candidate in 2009.

And an update:

BREAKING NEWS update, 12:14 p.m.: Virginia State Police said Sen. R. Creigh Deeds was stabbed multiple times and seriously injured at his home early Tuesday morning. His son, 24-year-old Gus Deeds, was fatally shot. Police are not searching for any suspects. This story will update shortly.

Let’s hope that “not searching for any suspects” is a typo.

Kenneth Allen Keith, 48, a Pulaski County, Ky., minister has been charged with the murder of three people in Danville, Ky.

It seems Keith, who was having money problems, was trying to get money from Daniel Smith, 60, while Smith was visiting a pawn shop owned by Michael Hockensmith, 35, and his wife, Angela, 38. All three were shot dead while the Hockensmith’s two children watched.

The shooter fled the scene, and the older child called police.

Police secured the children and began processing the scene. Peel’s affidavit said the “investigation also revealed that a metal briefcase belonging to Daniel Smith was missing from the scene. This briefcase was believed to have contained an estimated $40,000 in cash.”

More: Warrants Provide More Details in Danville Triple Homicide

According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, Keith had a prior history with all three victims. An anonymous tipster called police after speaking with Keith on the phone.

Friends of Keith, the pastor of Main Street Baptist Church in Burnside, Ky., said violence was against his nature.

Keith was due to be arraigned Wednesday in Boyle District Court.

DANVILLE — Police learned about a triple homicide Friday morning when a 9-year-old boy called 911 shortly after 9 a.m. from the ABC Gold, Games and More pawn shop, Danville police Chief Tony Gray said.

Gray identified two of the victims as Michael Hockensmith, 35, and his wife Angela Hockensmith, 38, both of Lincoln County. Michael Hockensmith was a co-owner of the pawn shop and ran it on a day-to-day basis, and his wife often helped out, friends said.

The third victim was a customer, according to police.

The Hockensmiths’ children were in the store at the time of the shooting. The older child called the police after the shooter ran away. That’s one level-headed kid! He and his baby sister are with their grandparents.

Police suspect it was a robbery gone bad, and are still looking for the shooter, described as a middle-aged white male.

Danville is home to Centre College, my daughter’s alma mater, and has a population of about 16,000. It rarely has any violent crime.

More: Victims Identified in Triple Homicide at Danville Pawn Shop

Tuesday morning, abortion opponents went before the Wichita City Council seeking to shut down the South Wind Women’s Center, a clinic that provides abortions. Among their complaints: The clinic draws gun violence.

This struck some, including the clinic’s director, Julie Burkhart, as ironic. After all, South Wind opened in April in the same building that housed George Tiller’s clinic. Before Tiller was murdered in church by an anti-abortion extremist in 2009, there was indeed documented gun violence in front of the clinic—by Shelley Shannon, an abortion opponent who shot Tiller.

“That’s the only gun violence that I’m aware of,” Burkhart, who has been fielding attempts to shut down the clinic since before it even opened, told MSNBC. “We talk to law enforcement regularly and I’ve never had any complaints of gun violence.”

Reached by phone, Mark S. Gietzen, chairman of the Kansas Coalition for Life and one of the petitioners, had a rather different account. He said he and his fellow volunteers had counted 18 incidents involving guns — none actually discharged — between 2004 and 2009, two of which were security staff employed by the clinic pulling guns out of a holster, Gietzen said.

More: Kansas Clinic Under Fire From Anti-Abortion Activists — MSNBC

After getting the cold shoulder from the federal government for 17 years, U.S. scientists who study the public health impact of gun-related violence are finally getting a warm embrace. A report issued today by the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) lays out a national strategy for firearms research that identifies more than a dozen possible topics.

The report comes 5 months after President Barack Obama announced an end to the ban on public health research on gun violence by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that had been in place since 1996. The White House also asked NRC and IOM to organize a blue ribbon committee of firearms experts, criminologists, and public health scientists, which was charged with surveying the existing literature and coming up with recommendations for future research.

One key need, it says, is simply more and better information on how many guns are in the United States and how often they cause death or injury. “The problem is there just aren’t any data,” committee Chair Alan Leshner told ScienceInsider in a telephone interview. (Leshner is CEO of AAAS, publisher of ScienceInsider.) “Others on the committee may not have been surprised, but I was.”

The best available estimates put firearm-related deaths in the United States at more than 30,000 per year, with twice as many nonfatal injuries. That is the highest rate among industrialized nations. But details about the circumstances of the deaths and injuries, let alone their causes, are often lacking. And the number of guns across the country—both legally and illegally owned—is simply unknown. Political lobbying groups such as the National Rifle Association have vigorously fought to prevent such data from being collected by the federal government.

More: Expert Panel Offers Ideas for U.S. Gun Violence Research - ScienceInsider

When it comes to reducing gun violence in America, nobody else in the country has anything close to the experience-based perspective from which cops can speak

PoliceOne has scored a major scoop in police journalism by conducting a survey of more than 15,000 law enforcers regarding their thoughts on gun control in America.

These men and women — most of whom actually work the street — have a front row seat to see gun violence in America. They put their lives at risk when they do their jobs, actually coming face-to-face with violent encounters involving firearms.

And when it comes to finding ways to reduce gun violence and large scale shootings, most cops say a federal ban on so-called “assault weapons” isn’t the answer.

More than 91 percent of respondents say it would either have no effect or a negative effect in reducing violent crime. This is an overwhelming response by those whose job it is to actually deal with this issue on the front lines.

Instead, it is interesting to note that armed citizens show up frequently as a deciding factor in reducing the carnage from a mass murder situation; proactive choices dominate over gun and magazine restrictions and bans.

More than 91 percent of respondents support the concealed carry of firearms by civilians who have not been convicted of a felony and/or not been deemed psychologically/medically incapable.

More: Police Gun Control Survey: Are Legally-Armed Citizens the Best Solution to Gun Violence?

The commercial is an unambiguous appeal to gun owners: A middle-aged hunter, rifle in hand, vows that he will fight to protect the Second Amendment. But in a sensible, father-of-the house tone, he also urges voters to support comprehensive background checks, ”so criminals and the dangerously mentally ill can’t buy guns.”

The man behind the advertisement is not known for his kinship with the gun crowd: New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the nation’s fiercest advocate of restrictions on firearms since the December rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Determined to persuade Congress to act in response to that shooting, Bloomberg on Monday will begin bankrolling a $12 million national advertising campaign that focuses on senators who he believes might be persuaded to support a pending package of federal regulations to curb gun violence. The ads, in a dozen states, will blanket those senators’ districts during an Easter congressional recess that is to be followed by debate over the legislation.

In a telling sign of how much the white-hot demands for gun control have been tempered by political reality, Bloomberg’s commercials make no mention of an assault weapons ban once sought by the White House and its allies, instead focusing on the more achievable goal of universal background checks.

”You don’t want to lose everything in the interest of getting the perfect,” Bloomberg said in an interview, acknowledging his disappointment over the apparent unlikelihood of an assault weapons ban, but insisting he is resolved to push the legislation through at a time when its prospects are uncertain.

More: Bloomberg Behind $12m Ad Campaign for Gun Regulations - Politics - the Boston Globe

“Physicians are interested in [keeping] our patients alive and allowing them to live longer, and part of that has to do with gun violence,” says Dr. William Begg, an emergency room physician in Danbury, Connecticut, who treated victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. Rather than encouraging doctors to tell their patients about the well-documented health risks of owning guns, Begg warns that legislation like Putnam’s “makes it easier for health care providers to remain silent for fear of reprisal.”

In the three months since Newtown, state lawmakers around the country have already introduced nine bills aimed at blocking the sharing of gun information in a medical context, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Unlike the controversial legislation that was introduced in Florida last year, known as “docs vs. Glocks,” Putnam’s law would not mete out financial and licensing penalties if a doctor asks about guns. But a recent report from the American College of Surgeons argues that this kind of legislation nonetheless amounts to a gag order. “It is important that the relationship between a physician and a patient not be compromised,” wrote author Alexis Macias.

Columbia pediatrician Deborah Greenhouse suggested in The State that supporters of such legislation were being hypocritical. “They are trying to get Big Government to come in and dictate what we can and cannot say, while at the same time, they are trying to tell Big Government to stay out of their right to own guns,” said Greenhouse, who is president of the S.C. Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

More: Now Pro-Gun Politicians Want to Tell Your Doctor What to Do