President Donald Trump says arming teachers as a deterrent against school shootings is "up to States".

Parents, teachers and students affected by school shootings over the past two decades have met President Donald Trump as the White House sought to show resolve against gun violence.

President Donald Trump has directed the US Justice Department to ban gun modifications such as the bump stocks used in the Las Vegas massacre.

President Donald Trump has said that he "supportive of efforts to improve the federal background check system" for the purchase of guns.

Donald Trump has said he is travelling to Florida "to meet with some of the bravest people on earth".

"It doesn't seem to matter to our government that children are being shot to death day after day in schools."

From marksmanship classes following the Civil War, the NRA has grown into a beast that decries any talk of gun control, writes Bette Browne.

Investigators still have not found a motive for the Las Vegas shooting rampage that killed 58 people, Undersheriff Kevin McMahill has said.

Latest: A US coroner has released the names of all 58 victims of the Las Vegas shooting last week.

Senior Republicans are open to considering legislation banning "bump stocks" like the gunman in Las Vegas apparently used to effectively convert semi-automatic rifles into fully automated weapons.

A bill to ease laws on the purchase of gun silencers is gaining momentum even as the US reels from the horror of one of the deadliest killings in its history, writes Bette Browne.

HIS presidency is barely eight months old but in that short time some of Donald Trump’s performances have been so bizarre, so unhinged, that many of those who care for democracy have decided to look away, to hope that this strange episode will pass quickly and that America will, at the first opportunity, elect a competent, sane leader, be they Republican or Democrat.

The Republican National Convention is taking place this week in Cleveland, Ohio.

It would take almost 14 days of eyes glued to the television to watch all the feel-good Hillary Clinton ads that have aired since the general election campaign began last month.

MY SISTER is in Dallas at the moment. She WhatsApps to say that it’s not all stetsons and steers. I wouldn’t know, having ever only seen it on the telly when it was shiny skyscrapers and melodramatic family breakfasts on windswept verandahs with JR and Sue Ellen.

HARDLY a summer goes by without riots erupting on the streets of American cities over the killing of black people by white policemen. 

John Lewis was a disciple of Martin Luther King and marched on Washington in 1963. Last week, he led a sit-down protest in Congress, says Peniel Joseph

Growing number of politicians from both parties believe action needed to prevent more massacres.

A divided US senate blocked rival election-year plans to curb guns, only a week after Orlando’s mass shooting intensified pressure on lawmakers to act but knotted them in gridlock anyway — even over restricting firearms for terrorists.

Democrats may win seats with their hardline stance on gun control, but compromise is vital or things are destined to remain deadlocked in this polarised politics, writes Adam Skaggs

Killer said he had explosive vests and car rigged with bombs

No state can always protect its people from acts of evil mania. But the US chooses to put the means of perpetration within easy reach, writes Gerard Howlin

Disgruntled forces in US society will coalesce around Trump, says Theda Skocpol

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are courting voters on opposite sides of the gun debate in events that will highlight the United States’ deep divide on the topic.

In their final debate before the Iowa caucuses, the gloves came off between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

US President Barack Obama has accused the nation’s largest gun lobby of peddling an “imaginary fiction” that has distorted the debate about firearms violence.

AMERICA is in the deadly grip of a self-inflicted epidemic. Already this year, in just nine months, 9,940 people — more or less the population of Dungarvan — have been killed in assault incidents involving guns. Of those, 550 were children, and 1,962 were teenagers. This drip, drip of terrible violence can hardly be surprising as almost half of all guns in civilian ownership on the planet are held by Americans.

The family of US school gunman Chris Harper-Mercer have described their shock after the 26-year-old killed at least nine people before being fatally shot.

The father of Virginia shooting victim Alison Parker has urged Congress to defy the gun lobby and pass laws to strengthen background checks for firearm purchasers.

Hundreds of people packed a sweltering Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston yesterday as it re-opened to worshippers just days after a 21-year-old white gunman shot dead nine black church members.

Hundreds of people marched across the Brooklyn Bridge demanding stricter gun laws and offering a litany of violent stories to show why they are needed.

Every time someone runs amok in an American school or university campus, or even an idyllic Norwegian holiday island or a quiet Scottish border town, killing at random but for no obvious purpose, one simple truth is underlined:

The father of one of the victims of British-born gunman Elliot Rodger has pleaded with politicians to take action on gun control as the dead were honoured at a memorial service.

US lawmaker John Morse explains how he lost his job fighting for gun control — and why he’d do it again.

“Gather me into the artifice of eternity,” pleads the narrator of WB Yeats’ ‘Sailing to Byzantium’, but Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) and Clara (Gemma Arterton) are struggling to cope with the reality of a rather prosaic immortality in Byzantium (15A).

Two threatening letters sent to New York City’s mayor and his group that advocates for gun control contained traces of the deadly poison ricin, police have said.

The public face of the National Rifle Association is imploring members to never surrender their weapons in the wake of recent gun control efforts in Congress that he said will “destroy us and every ounce of our freedom”.

The incoming leader of the National Rifle Association told its grass-roots organisers yesterday they are the front line of a “culture war” that goes beyond gun rights.

The US Senate blocked bipartisan legislation yesterday aimed at tightening restrictions on the sale of firearms.

Gun control supporters in the US Senate have won the first showdown over how to respond to the December school shootings in Connecticut, defeating an effort by conservatives to derail firearms restrictions before debate could even start.

The US senate cleared the way yesterday for a weeks-long debate on proposals to curb gun violence, rejecting an effort by Republicans to block consideration of gun-control legislation prompted by December’s Newtown school massacre.