The gun control measures a tearful President Barack Obama announced Tuesday would not have prevented the slaughters of 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, or 14 county workers at a holiday party in San Bernardino, California.
Obama's executive action expands mandatory background checks to gun shows, flea markets and online sales, adds more than 230 examiners and staff to help process them and calls on states to submit accurate and updated criminal history data.
STATE HOUSE — More Massachusetts residents committed suicide in 2013 than died as a result of car crashes and homicides combined, and yet the state has one of the lowest suicide rates in the country, according to the latest data from the Department of Public Health.
The 585 suicides in Massachusetts during 2013 was a decrease from the previous year, but was still higher than in almost every year since at least 2003. The total also put the state at a rate of 8.7 suicides for every 100,000 people, a rate that has increased by an average of 3.6 percent each year since the state began using a sophisticated system to collect suicide data in 2003, DPH said in a report ordered by legislators and filed last week.
