" 
 ::Replying to Scolaire: 
 :::*""self-defense, hunting, and sporting activities"": hunting is sometimes a sport, and it is sometimes simply a means of obtaining sustenance.  The terms ""hunting"" and ""sporting"" thus overlap, and I don't see any purpose in deleting either one.  Follow the cited source: ""They [the NRA] promote the use of firearms for self-defense, hunting, and sporting activities....""  Is sport as big an issue as self-defense?  If people have no guns, then they can do neither; I don't see any need to get into details about this in the lead. 

 :::*""A further motivation is fear of tyranny"". If people are in fear of tyranny, the reasons why can be mentioned later, not in the lead.  (People also fear getting wet if there were no bridges; the fear of tyranny is similarly hypothetical, i.e. if people had no guns then there would be a danger of tyranny.) 

 :::*Sandy Hook: this happened over a year ago, and it motivated considerable pressure by gun control supporters such as President Obama.  Yes, there were previous tragedies, such as Columbine, but mentioning Sandy Hook is hardly a breaking news event. 

 :::*""Steps to prevent dangerous people who are not allowed to have a gun from slipping through the cracks"": This is somewhat vague, but it can be fleshed out in the body of the article. The source says Obama directed ""the attorney general to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks.""  Obviously, the implication is that the guy responsible for the Sandy Hook massacre and other tragedies slipped through the cracks and should not have been allowed to have a gun under present law.   

 :::*""U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 2008 and 2010"".  You say that we need to state briefly in the lead what the decisions were.  And yet when this was previously done, you objected that it was a POV problem for the lead to ""remind us... where the right to bear arms is to be found.""  Catch-22?  The SCOTUS decision can be briefly mentioned in the lead, and explained in the body of the article. 

 :::*""There remains an unresolved debate regarding the relationship between gun control, violence and other crimes"".  There is a sentence in the body of the article that says: ""There is an open debate regarding the relationship between gun control and violence and other crimes.""  The article then elaborates ""The numbers of lives saved or lost by gun ownership is debated by criminologists. Research difficulties include the difficulty of accounting accurately for confrontations in which no shots are fired and jurisdictional differences in the definition of 'crime'.""  This seems like a perfectly valid approach: summarize in the lead, elaborate in the body.  The sentence is especially useful in the draft lead because it clarifies that the landmark decision of SCOTUS did not resolve everything. 

 :::*""The debate regarding both the restriction and availability of firearms"".  Thus is verbose and redundant, and I have no bjection to fixing it. 
 :::*""...has been characterized by a stalemate""; not only could that be better worded, but it wrong implies that the right to keep and bear arms is necessarily at odds with reducing crime.  "