AC360°

New York’s Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, unveiled the results of a 4 month investigation into illegal practices at gun shows. It may shock you to know how many sellers ignore the questionable backgrounds of interested buyers. The investigation also highlights a dangerous loophole that could potentially put guns in the hands of criminals.

The investigation took place in Nevada, Ohio and Tennessee. Do you know the gun laws in your state? What about neighboring states?

Tonight Randi Kaye digs deeper. Tune in at 10pm ET to hear her report.

Check out this chart for trends in crimes committed with firearms from 1973 – 2006.

Shooter George Sodini visited the LA Fitness gym three times Tuesday, police say.

Daniel Gross
PAX Co-founder and CEO

On Tuesday evening, 48-year-old George Sodini opened fire at a local health club in Pittsburgh and killed three innocent bystanders before eventually turning the gun on himself. FBI agents are reporting that Sodini kept an online diary of his intended actions and even listed Tuesday’s date as the day he would carry out the shooting. Local law enforcement believes that “nobody could have stopped him.” Still, as details continue to emerge, we must at least ask ourselves what we can learn from this tragedy to prevent others.

Sodini began keeping a diary in November 2008. His Monday entry foreshadows Tuesday’s nightmare: “I took off today, Monday, and tomorrow to practice my routine and make sure it is well polished.”

While it is rare for adults to give such vivid warning of violent acts, the opposite could be said about youth violence and school shootings. According to a joint study between the Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education, in over 80 percent of school shootings, the attackers tell other students about their plans beforehand.

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Ismael Estrada
AC360° Producer

I’ll never forget a story I was working on about five years ago in Chicago.

It was a story on housing scams on the south and west areas of the city. I was snooping around an abandoned building that had been purchased for an incredible amount of money. I went around back and two pit bulls were about ready to attack each other. I realized they were getting trained to fight and I knew there was trouble around the corner. I tried to quietly walk away, but I was spotted.

Three guys started coming after me, so I ran as fast as I could back to my car. I don’t think they would have done anything to me, I probably could have told them what I was doing and been just fine, but as I was starting the car, one guy was raising his hands and I noticed a gun in the front of his pants. They let me drive away and that was that.

But ask any kid around here in the tough neighborhoods and they’ll tell you how to get a gun. I’m not arguing for or against gun control. It’s just a fact: guns are easy to get here, even when it’s illegal to have them in Chicago. Another fact, they are using them at an alarming rate. According the police department, in the first five months of this year close to 700 people have been shot. This school year, 36 Chicago Public School children have been killed, most of them by gun shots.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta and I were in the emergency room of Advocate Christ Medical Center near Chicago last week. We watched as people who were shot were rushed to the hospital and taken to the operating room. Tonight we bring you the story that you don’t see. It’s the story that doctors see here on a daily basis, people fighting for their lives after being shot on Chicago’s streets.

The gun used by the alleged Holocaust Museum shooter James von Brunn is too old to be traced, according to sources.

Carol Cratty
CNN

A law enforcement source says it was not possible to trace the rifle used in the Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting to the original purchaser.

The source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation, said the weapon is a Winchester Model 6, .22 caliber rifle, and those were manufactured between 1908 and 1928– - long before records were kept on this sort of stuff.

Law enforcement was also checking to see if the weapon had been used in any other crime. No word on any results on that.

Editor's Note: A security guard shot by a lone gunman at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has died of his wounds, sources tell CNN. The gunman also was wounded and reported to be in critical condition. The suspect is James von Brunn, an 88-year-old white supremacist, two law enforcement officials said. Take a look at the suspect's website – here are some images taken from his site.

Dr. George Tiller was one of the few U.S. physicians who performed late-term abortions.

Judy L. Thomas
Kansas City Star

The suspect in custody in connection with the slaying of abortion doctor George Tiller was a member of an anti-government group in the 1990s and a staunch opponent of abortion.

Johnson County sheriff's officials said Scott P. Roeder, 51, of Merriam, was arrested on I-35 near Gardner about three hours after the shooting.

In the rear window of the 1993 blue Ford Taurus that he was driving was a red rose, a symbol often used by abortion opponents.

Those who know Roeder said he believed that killing abortion doctors was an act of justifiable homicide.

"I know that he believed in justifiable homicide," said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City abortion opponent who made headlines in 1995 when she was ordered by a federal judge to stop using a bullhorn within 500 feet of any abortion clinic. "I know he very strongly believed that abortion was murder and that you ought to defend the little ones, both born and unborn."

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Eric P. Newcomer and June Q. Wu
The Harvard Crimson

Chanequa N. Campbell ’09—one of two Harvard students linked to last Monday’s shooting in Kirkland House—denied any involvement with the incident Tuesday and accused Harvard administrators of unjustly barring her from graduating next month because of her background.

Campbell—who lived in the Kirkland Annex where the shooting took place—received two letters last Friday from Harvard administrators informing her that she must leave campus and prohibiting her from attending all graduation activities, according to her lawyer, Jeffrey T. Karp. Campbell has denied any connection to the incident or involvement in dealing drugs to Harvard students, Karp said.

Two female Harvard students allowed the victim, 21-year-old Cambridge resident Justin Cosby, and three others involved in the incident to enter Kirkland, according to Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone, Jr. ’85.

Last Friday, New York songwriter Jabrai J. Copney, 20, pled not guilty to charges of first-degree murder for the May 18 shooting in Kirkland J-entryway that led to Cosby’s death early the next morning.

Copney, along with two unidentified individuals from New York, planned to scam Cosby out of drugs and money in his possession, Leone said, adding that police recovered a pound of marijuana and approximately $1,000 on or near Cosby after he had been shot.

Cosby has been linked to drug sales to Harvard students, The Crimson reported last Wednesday, citing multiple text messages sent to Harvard students from a phone registered to Cosby’s mother mentioning marijuana and suggesting that Cosby was engaged in its sale.

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Police Superintendent Jody Weis says there are too many gangs, guns and drugs on the streets of Chicago.

Andre C. Willis
The Root

Recently, longtime Catholic priest and freedom fighter Father Michael Pfleger and members of his parish—the Faith Community of St. Sabina in the South Side of Chicago—made an eloquent plea for justice by flying the American flag upside down in front of his church. Hoisting a flag with the union down is done very rarely and usually only as a call of deep distress. Pfleger and St. Sabina’s are trying to call attention to the “dire emergency” of unprecedented levels of gun violence in their community: Over 36 teens and children, mostly black and Latino, have been murdered so far in 2009.

The flag hanging immediately attracted more media attention than the 36 dead youngsters. National media outlets came calling. Some veterans were offended. Critics speculated that this was another one of Pfleger’s stunts intended to generate more notoriety for Pfleger than solutions to the problem. Mayor Richard M. Daley, Chicago police superintendent Jody Weis and Chicago’s former superintendent of schools Arne Duncan were sympathetic but are confused by the problem.

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Tricia Bishop
Baltimore Sun

They called themselves "Special" and ran their Northeast Baltimore drug operation with the precision of a Swiss watch, according to a federal prosecutor, who outlined the group's "absolutely unrelenting violence" Wednesday during opening statements in the trial of three city men accused of drug conspiracy and multiple murders – including that of a government witness.

"Special doesn't tolerate snitches," Assistant U.S. Attorney Debra Dwyer said, then she promised to bring down the alleged gang by the very thing they supposedly hate: cooperators.

To prove their case, the government will rely largely on the testimony of Baltimore criminals, including Van Sneed, a convicted Bloods gang member who once appeared in the infamous underground DVD Stop Snitchin'. In the video, he calls snitches "cowards." He's facing life in prison for participating in a "racketeering enterprise," though his sentence could be reduced if he provides substantial cooperation.

Defense attorneys for the three defendants – Melvin Gilbert, 34; James Dinkins, 37; and Darron Goods, 24 – one by one pointed out the credibility issues with that kind of witness and what they said was a simple fact: There is no physical evidence linking the men to the crimes in the case.

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