According to the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman:

Before traveling to Alaska, Christy said he verified with law enforcement and legal authorities in Pennsylvania that his trip to Anchorage would not violate the protective orders.

Earlier: The FBI has reportedly detained Shawn Christy, a 19-year-old man who sent Sarah Palin threatening letters and receipts for a gun he had purchased. An Alaska judge granted Palin a restraining order against Christy last September. According to a report:

[Palin's family has] revealed that Christy was held in Anchorage, just 50 miles from her home in Wasilla. FBI officers have ordered him to return to Pennsylvania, 3,500 miles away.

The BBC interviewed Palin’s parents, who spoke about Christy’s threats and his apprehension.

Read more about the arrest at The Daily Mirror

Supporters of the legislation argue that gun violence on campuses, such as the mass shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Northern Illinois in 2008, show that the best defense against a gunman is students who can shoot back.

“It’s strictly a matter of self-defense,” said state Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio. “I don’t ever want to see repeated on a Texas college campus what happened at Virginia Tech, where some deranged, suicidal madman goes into a building and is able to pick off totally defenseless kids like sitting ducks.”

Until the Virginia Tech incident, the worst college shooting in U.S. history occurred at the University of Texas, when sniper Charles Whitman went to the top of the administration tower in 1966 and killed 16 people and wounded dozens. Last September, a University of Texas student fired several shots from an assault rifle before killing himself.

Similar firearms measures have been proposed in about a dozen other states, but all face strong opposition, especially from college leaders. In Oklahoma, all 25 public college and university presidents declared their opposition to a concealed carry proposal.

“There is no scenario where allowing concealed weapons on college campuses will do anything other than create a more dangerous environment for students, faculty, staff and visitors,” Oklahoma Chancellor of Higher Education Glen Johnson said in January.

University of Texas President William Powers has opposed concealed handguns on campus, saying the mix of students, guns and campus parties is too volatile.

Guns occupy a special place in Texas culture. Politicians often tout owning a gun as essential to being Texan. Concealed handgun license holders are allowed to skip the metal detectors that scan Capitol visitors for guns, knives and other contraband.

Guns on campus bills have been rejected in 23 states since 2007, but gun control activists acknowledge it will be difficult to stop the Texas bill from passing this year. “Things do look bleak,” said Colin Goddard, assistant director of federal legislation for the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence, who was in Austin recently to lobby against the Texas bills.

Goddard was a student at Virginia Tech when he was shot four times in his French class. Student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people, including 10 in Goddard’s classroom, before shooting himself. Goddard dismisses the idea that another student with a gun could have stopped the killer.

“People tell me that if they would have been there, they would have shot that guy. That offends me,” Goddard said. “People want to be the hero, I understand that. They play video games and they think they understand the reality. It’s nothing like that.”

But Derek Titus, a senior at Texas A&M who has a state license to carry a concealed handgun, said someone with a gun that day could have improved the chances of survival.

“Gun-free zones are shooting galleries for the mass murderers,” Titus said. “We do not feel that we must rely on the police or security forces to defend our lives.”

Texas enacted its concealed handgun law in 1995, allowing people 21 or older to carry weapons if they pass a training course and a background check. The state had 461,724 license holders as of Dec. 31, according to the state Department of Public Safety.

Businesses, schools and churches can set rules banning guns on their premises. On college campuses, guns are prohibited in buildings, dorms and certain grounds around them.

Opponents of campus gun rights say students and faculty would live in fear of their classmates and colleagues, not knowing who might pull a gun over a poor grade, a broken romance or a drunken fraternity argument.

Frankie Shulkin, a first-year law student at the University of Texas, said he doesn’t think he’d feel safer if other students in his classes had guns.

“If I was taking an exam and knew the person next to me had one, I don’t know how comfortable I would feel,” Shulkin said. “I am in favor of guns rights and your typical conservative guy, but the classroom thing bugs me.”

Wentworth said he heard the “blood on the streets” warnings when Texas first passed the concealed handgun law. “They said we’d have shootouts at every intersection,” he said. “None of that has happened.”

Officials blame privacy laws, antiquated record-keeping and a severe lack of funding for the gap the AP found through public records requests.

Eleven states have provided more than 1,000 records apiece to the federal database, yet gun-control groups have estimated more than 1 million files are missing nationwide.

“If the mental health records are not current from our sister states, the quality of our background check is going to be compromised,” said Sean Byrne, acting commissioner of the Division of Criminal Justice Services in New York, a state that has submitted more than 100,000 records.

Congress has doled out only a fraction of the $1.3 billion it promised between 2009 to 2013 to help states and courts cover the costs of the 2008 law.

For some states, the amount of federal grant money they could be penalized for not complying is less than what it would cost them to get their records-sharing systems up to speed.

The Jan. 8 shooting rampage in Tucson, Ariz., that killed six people and left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords grievously wounded has put more emphasis on the struggle to disarm the mentally ill, even though the man arrested in the attack wouldn’t have been on the no-purchase list. Jared Loughner was considered so mentally unstable that he was kicked out of community college, yet because he was never deemed mentally ill by a judge or committed to an institution, he was able to legally buy the gun police said he used.

Since 1968, federal law has banned certain mentally ill people from buying guns, including those who have been deemed a danger to themselves or others, involuntarily committed or judged not guilty by reason of insanity or incompetent to stand trial. The nationwide background-check system — which is also used to prevent convicted felons from buying guns — was established under the 1993 Brady Bill.

A few state agencies shared mental health records voluntarily for years, but the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007 spurred passage of legislation that required states to submit the records or risk losing up to 5 percent of the federal funding they receive to fight crime.

In the Virginia Tech rampage, student Seung-Hui Cho shot 32 people to death and committed suicide. He was able to buy two guns, even though he had been ruled a danger to himself during a court hearing in 2005 and was ordered to undergo outpatient mental health treatment.

Federal officials said that Cho should have been barred from buying weapons but that the records were never forwarded to the background-check system. Virginia officials, however, said state law required the names of only those committed to mental hospitals. The loophole has since been closed by state law, and people in Virginia who undergo outpatient treatment are now entered into the database.

California has shared records of more than 250,000 people, Virginia more than 100,000, according to records AP obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request in late 2010.

The states that have failed to submit any mental health records are: Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and South Dakota.

Seventeen states submitted very few records: Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Any penalties for failing to comply with the 2008 law are probably years away — they don’t become mandatory until 2018, and federal authorities can forgive states in the meantime.

If the penalties are imposed, some states could lose hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. But in several states, sharing the records could require millions of dollars in upgrades.

In fiscal year 2009, the U.S. government dispensed about $10 million to the states to comply, not the $187.5 million pledged, according to the Justice Department. A year later, $20 million was provided.

“Unfortunately, our Congress talked the talk but did not walk the walk,” said Abby Spangler, founder of ProtestEasyGuns.com, a gun-control group.

Several states have also struggled to amend their privacy laws that restrict the release of health information, and others have had to create an appeals process for those who say they have been wrongly barred for mental health reasons from buying a gun.

Gerard Ramker, deputy director of the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, said the department is aware that states are struggling to comply with the law.

“There may be technological barriers between local and state agencies that keep record systems from communicating with each other,” Ramker said. “Also, state laws or regulations could prohibit agencies from sharing mental health information with law enforcement authorities.”

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., who ran for Congress after her husband was killed and her son paralyzed in a 1993 shooting rampage on a Long Island Rail Road train, introduced the measure.

“When we started talking to states, we learned that some of these records are kept in boxes down in some basements, so this is labor-intensive at the very least,” she said. “It’s going forward. I sure would like to see more states implementing this, but we’re fighting for the money.”

The bill, which would take effect Jan. 1, 2012, would give people six months to acquire a firearm after turning 21. The provision does not apply to people who are barred from owning a firearm.

Nor does the measure specify what type of firearm. Instead, residents would pick one “suitable to their temperament, physical capacity, and preference.”

No one expects the bill to become a law, but these guys are just trying to make a point, and that point is that they don’t even understand conservative talking points about the individual mandate. The argument against the individual mandate is that the federal government doesn’t have the power to compel people to purchase private insurance. It is not about what states can and can’t do. That’s kind of the fundamental issue, actually. The role and powers of the federal government.

One sponsor says:

“Do I or the other cosponsors believe that the State of South Dakota can require citizens to buy firearms? Of course not.”

Ok, sir, but I am actually pretty sure that South Dakota does have the power to do that, if you guys actually pass that law. Unless there’s something about it in the South Dakota Constitution, I can’t really see what would be unconstitutional about this awful idea. Sometimes awful ideas aren’t unconstitutional! The Tea Parties should learn this: Just because I don’t like it, doesn’t mean it’s not allowed under the Constitution.

Also, for the record, the Federal Government used to make everyone join militias — and buy guns! — back when the actual literal Founders were in charge, so I think this has to qualify as completely unsuccessful trolling on the part of some South Dakota state legislators. Step up your game, crazy state legislators.

(The other flaw in this plan is that everyone in South Dakota already has a gun.)

Gun control advocates have been frustrated by Obama’s reticence on gun control in the wake of Tucson, including his conspicuous silence in the State of the Union address. The administration may well have made a pragmatic decision not to pursue major gun control legislation right now. After all, Republicans who control the House have shown zero interest in proposals that have been floated since Tucson. Even leading gun control advocate Rep. Carolyn McCarthy acknowledged in a recent interview that, facing a pro-gun House and a pro-gun Senate, Obama is “picking his battles.”

But it turns out Obama can make meaningful policy changes without Congress.

“There are a lot of things that he could do administratively,” Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, tells Salon.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the group founded by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, actually produced a 57-page report outlining the administration’s options back in 2009. Almost all of the specific steps outlined in the report are still relevant. While these ideas can get into the regulatory weeds and don’t attract the same attention as sweeping legislative proposals, gun control groups say they would make a real difference. Many of the ideas have to do with how the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms enforces laws that are already on the books.

Here are three relatively simple but important steps the Obama administration could take right away:

• Crack down on gun shows: Long a source of concern for police as a loosely regulated source of firearms, gun shows should be targeted by undercover ATF operations if there is evidence that guns used in crimes are originating from a particular show, the mayors group argues. The ATF does not have a formal gun show enforcement program, according to a 2007 Justice Department report.
• Block AK-47 imports: A significant percentage of guns used in crimes in the U.S. and Mexico were imported into the U.S., despite a ban on imports of “non-sporting purpose” firearms such as AK-47s that was instituted by George H.W. Bush in 1989. That ban is still on the books but has not been enforced by the federal government since 2001, according to the mayors group. The group argues the ban should be enforced again.
• Make sure dealers follow the law: According to the mayors group, the ATF no longer conducts undercover operations to determine if gun dealers are complying with laws on background checks and the like. The report suggests: “ATF should develop an undercover administrative enforcement program focusing on the handful of dealers that are problematic sources of crime guns. These undercover investigations should simulate straw purchases but could also involve other scenarios, such as customers seeking to make ‘off-the-books’ purchases.”

Is Obama up for changing any of these policies? Only time will tell. But if Axelrod and Plouffe are serious about the president wading into this issue, these are a few obvious places he could start.