Second Amendment advocates celebrated a victory on Wednesday when the Senate defeated an amendment to expand background checks for gun sales. The amendment's defeat was seen as a significant setback for the congressional gun-control agenda. After the vote, President Obama delivered a statement from the Rose Garden berating opponents while flanked by family members of Newtown, Connecticut, shooting victims.

Though the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) managed to be defeated in Congress last year, it has been reintroduced and scheduled for a vote in the House of Representatives this week. The authors of the bill, Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), introduced a revised version of the bill in February despite opposition from privacy advocates.

A federal judge blocked the closure of the only abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi on Monday. U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III extended an injunction that he had issued several months ago that blocks the state from closing the clinic while a 2012 state law that requires all OB-GYNs who perform abortions at Jackson Women’s Health Organization to have privileges to admit patients to a local hospital is being challenged.

A mass stabbing that took place earlier this week at Lone Star College Cy-Fair in Harris County near Houston, Texas, does not help advance the gun control agenda that has pervaded media reports. Fifteen students were wounded in the stabbing, with four believed to be in critical condition. Police have the suspect, 20-year old Dylan Quick, in custody. Quick is reportedly a student at Lone Star College who told authorities that he had fantasized about stabbing people since he was eight years old.

Despite his humiliating resignation in 2011 as a U.S. congressman from New York following the revelation of several online affairs, Anthony Weiner has indicated that he is considering a run for mayor of New York City. During an lengthy, sympathetic interview with the New York Times Magazine, he stated that he would like to ask voters for a “second chance.”

Fox News reporter Jana Winter is so committed to keeping secret the identity of her sources of information in the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater shootings that she is willing to face jail time rather than expose the unnamed persons. Though both a Colorado judge and a New York judge have ordered her to turn over her notes related to the killings — that likely contain the names of her law-enforcement sources — Winter has so far refused.

Senator Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) gun control bill, which includes provisions to perform required universal background checks, has piqued the American Civil Liberties Union. The bill, which includes language from earlier bills introduced by Senators Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), has been the subject of criticism from pro-gun advocates, but is also drawing fire from civil liberties groups who recognize the potential for privacy and civil liberties violations.

Liberal Democrats in Congress are proposing mandatory liability insurance for gun owners, and a hefty fine for those who do not comply. The legislation was introduced by New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney last month, who emphasized that it is “the first bill to require liability insurance of gun buyers nationwide.”

Reports of a chemical weapon attack in Syria’s Aleppo Province last week provoked leaders and politicians to advocate more fiercely for the overthrow of the Assad regime, despite the vague details surrounding the attack. Current data seem to suggest, however, that it was not government forces behind the attack, but rebel forces.