Gun rights supporters stage rallies across U.S.
DOVER, Del. — Gun rights supporters — many carrying rifles and ammunition — gathered at state capitols across the U.S. on Saturday to push back against efforts to pass stricter gun control laws that they fear threaten their constitutional right to bear arms.
From Delaware to Wyoming, hundreds staged peaceful protests to listen to speakers who warned that any restrictions on gun ownership or use eventually could lead to a ban on gun ownership, which is guaranteed under the Second Amendment.
The rallies come less than three weeks after hundreds of thousands marched in Washington, New York and elsewhere to demand tougher gun laws after the February school shooting in Parkland, Fla., that killed 17.
Winter storm in spring
MINNEAPOLIS — A storm system stretching from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes buffeted the central U.S. with heavy winds, rain, hail and snow, forcing flight cancellations, creating treacherous road conditions and killing at least three people, including a sleeping 2-year-old Louisiana girl.
In the Upper Midwest, the early spring storm brought snow to a region pining for sunshine and warmth. More than 200 flights were canceled Saturday at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and blizzard conditions forced the airport in South Dakota’s biggest city, Sioux Falls, to remain closed for a second straight day.
Authorities closed several highways in southwestern Minnesota, where no travel was advised, and driving conditions were difficult across the entire southern half of the state. The National Weather Service predicted that a large swath of southern Minnesota, including the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, would get 9 to 15 inches of snow by the time the storm blows through on Sunday.
Tech office comeback?
WASHINGTON — Congress had an agency designed to help senators avoid the sort of embarrassment they faced when trying to understand Facebook — but lawmakers stopped funding it 23 years ago and have resisted reviving it.
Now there’s talk the Office of Technology Assessment could make a comeback. A subcommittee will hear Tuesday from interest groups advocating its return.
Since the office wasn’t technically abolished but only defunded, bringing the agency back is as simple as attaching an amendment to a budget bill. Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., has tried to do that for years; his latest attempt failed in July, 236191, mostly on partisan lines.
Earthquake film screened
A small crowd filled a 120seat theater in Fremont, Calif., Saturday night to watch a movie unlike any other on the big screen, one that offers a fresh look at a tragic chapter in American history.
The nine-minute silent film, much of it previously thought to be lost, shows the ruins left by the earthquake that ravaged San Francisco 112 years ago, according to David Kiehn, a film historian who helped to identify and restore the footage, which he said was originally shot by the pioneering Miles Brothers film studio in San Francisco.
The rediscovered work is a fitting follow-up to the famous Miles Brothers production “A trip down Market Street before the fire,” which shows the bustling city just days before the earthquake, its inhabitants unaware of the disaster to come on April 18, 1906.