Michael Patrick / AP file

People crowd a gun show in Knoxville, Tenn., on Dec. 28.

Attempted illegal gun purchases occur 30,000 to 40,000 times each year among U.S. firearms retailers, according to a first-of-its-kind survey of gun sellers published Monday.

Would-be patrons seek to sway sellers to keep  transactions off the books or, more commonly, use stand-ins — often girlfriends or wives — to fill out required legal forms and undergo federal criminal background checks necessary to purchase firearms, according to the survey by the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California-Davis.

Perhaps the most alarming finding in the study — the first to attempt to quantify the frequency of unlawful attempts to buy guns and retailer corruption — is that some firearms dealers are "bad guy magnets," who even though they deny the most attempted “straw-man” and undocumented purchases tend to suffer the most gun thefts and appear to receive the most visits from federal agents tracing guns used in crimes.

 “They have a high-risk clientele (which may in part be) because the retailers themselves are known to look the other way," said Dr. Garen J. Wintemute, author of the study published in "Injury Prevention," a peer-reviewed health journal, and director of the Violence Prevention Research Program. "But it all goes together: The retailers who had the most denied sales were also the ones most likely to sell guns that were used in crimes.”

"The (responsible) retailers consider this a very serious problem that deserves stiff punishment," he added. 

Cutting down so-called "straw" purchases of guns is among the measures being pushed by gun-control advocates in the wake of the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, which left 20 children, six school employees and gunman Adam Lanza and his mother dead.

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill that seeks to make it a federal crime to purchase a firearm for someone who is not legally allowed to own a weapon, such as a convicted felon. President Barack Obama has urged the full Senate to approve the measure.

Wintemute’s team mailed surveys to 1,600 gun dealers, pawnbrokers and gunsmiths who sell 50 or more firearms each year and received back 591 completed questionnaires. Participating retailers reported that would-be clients tried to make 2,051 straw purchases and 2,254 undocumented buys during the previous year.

The researchers extrapolated those rates across the nearly 10,000 U.S. gun dealers and estimated that about 34,000 straw purchases and about 37,000 attempted undocumented purchases were attempted nationally during that span. (Those figures only reflect the instances where the retailers realized they were dealing with straw buyers, so the actual number of bogus buyers is likely higher.)

'Flashpoint': NBC News special report on guns in America

“The key word there is ‘attempt’ " said Andy Molchan, director of the National Association of Federally Licensed Firearms Dealers, which has about 1,000 members. “You know, 10 16-year-olds probably go into one liquor store during each year and attempt to buy a bottle of whiskey. But if they only attempted (and were denied), they didn’t buy it.”

Still, Molchan acknowledged that "straw-man buying for people is a problem. There are two big sources for criminal guns —  No. 1 is theft from private homes and the other is straw-man purchases: they buy a gun for somebody who is a felon and they sell it to the other person for a mark up. It’s been a problem for a long time.”

For that reason, he said, members of the firearm dealers association all receive forms that they fill out during each sale — and ask the buyers to sign — attesting that the weapon is solely for that buyer and will not be re-sold in a secondary market to a felon or any other person who is restricted by state law from owning a gun. The forms have been in use for about 30 years.

“Our association is not against increased laws and increased penalties for people who are buying guns for people who are felons or shouldn’t have guns,” Molchan said. “We don’t have any objections to that.”

Many illicit, stand-in gun buyers are women, Wintemute said, citing firearms-trafficking statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Partly for that reason, he argues that reports indicating that women make up a rising share of the gun market "are a myth." 

According to ATF, in nearly 20 percent of straw purchases, the buyer “is an intimate partner — the girlfriend or the spouse — of the real purchaser,” Wintemute said. “In (ATF) training materials, and just in common knowledge around the industry, one of the markers of a straw purchase is a woman who is purchasing when a guy is just standing around nearby in the store.” 

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Department of Justice

Richard Schmidt

FBI agents recently warned community leaders in the Detroit area about a possible racist plot by a convicted felon and alleged neo-Nazi sympathizer who was arrested after he was discovered with an arsenal of assault rifles  and other weapons, a law enforcement official tells NBC News.

“The FBI averted a catastrophe in this case, there’s no doubt about it,” Steven M. Dettelbach, the U.S. attorney in Cleveland, said in an interview.  

New details about the case of Richard Schmidt, the owner of a sporting goods store in Bowling Green, Ohio,  dramatically highlight what law enforcement officials say are major loopholes in the nation’s gun laws. Schmidt, 47, is a convicted felon who spent 13 years in Ohio state prison for a homicide after being convicted of killing a man and wounding two others in a shooting during a traffic stop, according to state prison records.  Under federal law, Schmidt, who was released on parole in 2003, is barred from possessing any firearms.

Yet when FBI agents last December searched his home and store, they discovered a cache of 18 weapons that included AR-15 assault rifles, 9 mm Ruger and Sig Sauer pistols, shotguns, high-capacity magazines and more than 40,000 rounds of ammunition. Schmidt was originally reported to have been arrested on charges of trafficking in counterfeit goods, but was indicted last month on four federal charges —including possessing illegal weapons, body armor and ammunition. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

“As a matter of policy, I don’t comment on pending cases,” his lawyer,  Andy Hart, a federal public defender in Toledo, said when reached by telephone.

Dettelbach, who is overseeing the case,  said that federal agents have been unable to determine how and where Schmidt obtained  his weapons, prompting officials to conclude he likely acquired them at gun shows or through private sales --  where under federal law no background checks are required. . 

“It’s scary,” he said about Schmidt’s arsenal of weapons. “It’s not … that I won’t say” where Schmidt got his guns. “It’s that sitting here today as a senior federal law enforcement official in northern Ohio, I can’t say.” 

The investigation into Schmidt was conducted by a  FBI Joint terrorism Task Force whose agents said they discovered he was tracking African American and Jewish leaders in the Detroit area.  When agents conducted their search, they said they found  evidence suggesting Schmidt harbored neo-Nazi sympathies, including a video of the 2005 national meeting of the National Socialist Movement — in which speakers  wore  black swastika  arm bands and gave the Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute. “This is a war! This is a battle for our survival!” one speaker shouts on a video of the meeting obtained by NBC News.  Other seized items, according to federal search warrants, included a  list of national Jewish-owned businesses and paraphernalia from the “Waffen SS,” Adolph  Hitler’s military force in Germany.

'Very unsettling, very disturbing'
Two community leaders briefed on the case tell NBC News that agents also found a notebook in which Schmidt had listed the names, addresses and other personal information of Detroit area community leaders. Although Schmidt was already in custody, and remains in jail pending trial, the evidence in the notebook prompted agents to warn the leaders about what they had found.

Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit NAACP, said that FBI agents showed him a page of one of Schmidt’s notebooks which included information about members of Anthony’s  family as well as distances between his home, office and his church. They also told him they were concerned about “a possible threat against the NAACP and me in particular,” he said.

“It was mind blowing,” Anthony said. “Very unsettling, very disturbing, and it really kind of made me angry.”  When he was told about Schmidt’s weapons, Anthony said, “I made the comment that this guy is a one man army and they said, ‘Yes, looks like it.’” 

 The FBI gave a similar briefing to Scott Kaufman, the executive director of the Jewish Federation of  Metropolitan Detroit. He said agents also showed him a page of Schmidt’s notebook showing his name and the names of others in leadership positions in his organization, as well as the names of tenants in his building and driving directions to his office.

“When I saw my name on a piece of paper along with information about our organization and our building written by an alleged neo-Nazi, it was certainly unnerving,” he said.

Anthony and Kaufman said the FBI asked them not to share copies of the notebook pages with NBC News because Schmidt’s case is ongoing. They also said agents had no specific evidence of what Schmidt might have been planning  –  or whether he was working with anybody else.  An FBI spokeswoman declined comment.

Read previous story:

Feds investigate how suspected white supremacist -- a felon -- obtained arsenal

Federal law does not require such checks for private sales or gun show purchases. Seventeen states have mandated them for handgun purchases at gun shows, though Ohio is not among them. Only six states require background checks for all firearms purchases.  

A new study by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research has found that 80 percent of those convicted of gun crimes acquire their weapons through private sales – making it virtually impossible for federal agents to trace where they come from or who is providing them. 

“There’s no documentation required for private transactions. So whatever occurs in that zone is invisible to us,” Charles Houser, the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms National Tracing Center in Martinsburg, W.Va., said in an interview.

Related coverage: 'Flashpoint: Guns in America,' an NBC News special report

Dettelbach echoed those concerns. “Our current set of laws for how guns get out the community has a lot of holes,”  he said. “It’s almost like Swiss cheese.” 

(Federal prosecutors recently filed court papers showing that reputed Boston mob figure  James “Whitey” Bulger was able to buy at least 15 handguns and a shotgun while he was on the run as one of the FBI’s "Most Wanted" fugitives. Officials believe he acquired them at gun shows or from private sellers. 

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Theirs are the faces behind the numbers. A hard-working college student shot in her prized car. A fun-loving 2-year-old accidentally shot by his brother. An aging rocker killed for a thousand bucks.

As part of a special NBC News report, “Flashpoint: Guns in America,” NBCNews.com catalogued 91 shooting deaths across the country between Jan. 19 and 21, the weekend the nation marked the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. and ushered a president into his second term. While not a statistically valid sample, the snapshot of gun violence in America is intended to illuminate both the magnitude of the problem and the personal toll such violence inflicts at a time of national debate about gun rights and gun control in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting.

The victims we found died during robberies, after arguments, in moments of despair. They were killed by loved ones, by strangers, by their own hand. Each story, in its own way, is heartbreaking. As the country awaits President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, we share a handful of them here:

Rebecca Foley worked as a babysitter, office clerk and cater-waiter to put herself through college, and she scraped and saved to make her first big purchase: a 2006 cherry-red Volkswagen Beetle. The 21-year-old business student adored tooling around Savannah, Ga., with the windows down.

Courtesy Sarah Shoup

Rebecca Foley, left, leans against her VW Beetle with friend Sarah Shoup in this undated photo.

On the evening of Jan. 21, she was driving home with her boyfriend of a year following behind in his own car after getting his nails painted because he lost a bet with her, police said. He got caught up in traffic and so she was alone as she piloted the car into her apartment complex’s parking lot, past the live oak trees and hanging moss, toward her tidy garden-level unit.

What happened next is a mystery, but the boyfriend told police that when he finally caught up, he found the little red car stopped at a bizarre angle and Foley slumped over the steering wheel. She had been shot, apparently while the car was still moving, and would be dead within minutes. The rear, driver-side window was shattered by a single bullet that left a hole the size of a 50-cent piece. No arrests have been made, despite a $6,000 reward, and the motive is unknown.

To family and friends, Foley’s violent end still seems unreal.

“She never was around anybody who would put her in a bad situation. She never had any enemies,” said Alixandra Scalia, 20, a former roommate.

Interactive map: A long weekend of gun deaths. Click to enlarge.

Friends and family members use almost identical language to describe Foley, calling her a beautiful, hard-working young woman who was determined to put old family troubles behind her and realize her goal of a degree, grad school and a good job in the risk-management industry.

Born in Charlotte, N.C., and raised in rural Virginia and Georgia by her divorced mom, Foley played the violin at 4 but didn’t read until second grade, after she was diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder. She had a rocky relationship with her mother, Jennifer, and moved out when she was 17.

“She said, ‘I can’t live under your roof and I won’t.’ But she graduated high school, which doesn’t always happen in these cases, and she went on to college,” her mother told NBC News.

She bounced between several colleges and overcame academic setbacks before enrolling full-time at Savannah State University, where she hit her stride. Her mother said she “worked her butt off” to stay on track, and one of her professors wrote that she was a “joy to work with.”

She would rise at 4:30 some mornings to fit in work in a local insurance office before school. She kept her credit score on a Post-it note and cooked dinner with a friend every night to save money.

At Christmas, she splurged a little on her “very first cruise” to the Bahamas, said one of her bosses, insurance agent Mitchell Bush. She dreamed of buying a fixer-upper on Tybee Island, an island town near Savannah.

“We had just talked about that on Sunday -- and Monday she was dead,” said her grandmother, Lois Fowler.

The night of the shooting, Foley’s two roommates were in the apartment when they heard her boyfriend banging on the door.

“He was just saying, ‘Rebecca’s been shot and just kept repeating that,’” said Abbey Bernal, 22. “Medics tried to resuscitate her, and it was too late. I just saw them pull the sheet over her head.”

Friends and family said they can’t believe they won’t see Foley’s flashing blue eyes and big smile again. They remember how she loved cream of potato soup, wore SpongeBob slippers and doted on her Shih-Tzu named Zoe.

Jim Seida / NBC News

Jennifer Foley holds a portrait of her daughter, Rebecca, inside her Calhoun, Ga. home.

Foley’s mother said she and her daughter had grown closer in recent months and that Rebecca had called the day she was killed to ask what dishes would go well with a pork roast.

And there was another conversation she remembered.

“She called me not six months ago and said she had a dream that she was going to die young,” her mother said. “I told her, ‘I don’t think that’s true. I hope that’s not true.’”

******

Family members say they’ll remember 2-year-old Travin Varise for how his chubby face would break into the sweetest smile, how excited he got every time “Finding Nemo” came on, how he went after a drumstick with gusto.

And how he loved his big brother, Terrance.

Family photo

Travin Varise, 2, was fatally shot at his Baton Rouge, La., home on Jan. 21.

“Terrance growed his little brother up,” his aunt, Juanita, said. “Before my sister knew who the baby’s father was, he raised him up like it was his son.”

That’s why, the family says, it’s tragic that Terrance, 18, is now locked up, charged with accidentally killing the toddler while playing with a friend’s .357 Magnum at their Baton Rouge, La., home. He has not yet entered a plea.

“It’s so hard,” said the boys’ mother, Yarnell.

She was crying, but her voice took on an edge as she complained she had not been able to visit her eldest child because the jail is too far away. “I want him to know it’s going to be all right. I know he didn’t do it on purpose,” she said.

Terrance was on probation after pleading guilty to burglary in May, but his mother said he was a “good dude” who had matured since then. His aunt said he didn’t carry a weapon – “We don’t allow guns in the house” – but had been hanging out with “the wrong crowd.”

Terrance’s Facebook page, however, suggests an interest in guns. There’s a photo of a small arsenal laid out on a plaid bedspread, another where he is holding a silver revolver at his side, a third where he appears to be dangling a shotgun from one finger.

East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore says he sees pictures like that all the time after a young person is arrested for a violent crime.

“Do you know where your guns are? Because young kids play with guns and bad things happen sometimes,” he said. “I think it’s video games and stuff – no one really dies and everyone wakes up the next morning. There’s a whole culture of kids not knowing it’s real.”

Read Part 1: Death takes no holiday: Tracking gun violence over one long January weekend

Terrance Varise is getting his fill of reality now. He’s being held on charges of negligent homicide, cruelty to a minor and weapons possession along with a probation violation. He was not allowed to attend Travin’s funeral.

“He feels the pain and he’s going to live with this for the rest of his life,” his aunt said.

His mother said she feels like she’s lost two children.

“My father Jesus does things for a reason, but I don’t know what the reason is,” she said. “It’s a hurting feeling. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.”

******

“There are two dead people.”

Those chilling words on a 911 call just after midnight on Jan. 21 were the last that anyone heard retired fire inspector William Liebrich utter. He hung up and then, police believe, shot his wife of 30 years, Colleen, before turning the 12-gauge shotgun on himself.

When cops arrived at the Warwick, R.I., home they found a note on the front door saying it was safe to enter and that the couple’s two sons, Bill, 24, and Jeff, 21, should not be allowed in. There were also letters for the boys, unsigned but typed by William, police say.

Before that, the sons said, it had been just like any other day. When Bill left for soccer practice, his dad told him, “Have fun. Be safe, bud.” Jeff watched TV with his dad before meeting friends.

Family photo

Colleen and William Liebrich, in an undated family photo.

“The thing that was so shocking about the whole thing is that life was moving along as normal. There wasn’t a single red flag, there wasn’t anything to show that anything like this could possibly happen. … It still feels like a nightmare,” said Jeff, an information technology student.

But life hadn’t been easy for Colleen. The once-active soccer and karate mom was mostly bedridden in recent months by a range of ailments: pancreatitis, osteoporosis, schizophrenia. She had suffered a seizure, memory loss, confusion and falls.

Warwick Police Capt. Robert Nelson said her condition was not terminal, but Bill recalled his mother hitting “an all-time low, physically and mentally,” on Christmas.

The brothers believe their parents decided together to end their lives. They said their father had never owned a gun and they assume he bought one to carry out a pact.

“It wasn’t just the fact that, you know, she wasn’t getting better,” Bill said. “It was the fact that she was progressively getting worse.”

The police are continuing their investigation into what they have tentatively ruled a murder-suicide and waiting for a trace on where the shotgun came from.

Bill and Jeff are treasuring the good memories of their parents -- their dad playing secret Santa and giving money to families in need, the couple's love of animals, the launch of their mother's salon business, which she eventually gave up because of her health – while coping with sadness and anger.

“I can see where my dad was coming from and I hate to say it like that because I don’t agree with what he did or how he did it,” said Jeff. “But I know what he was doing and the whole point was to put her out of pain, and he did that and she’s not in pain. So there’s a bittersweetness to it. “

Asked if they felt the need to forgive their father, Jeff said, “Obviously our primary focus is that we don’t have our parents anymore. … And so as far as forgiveness, there’s no one there to forgive.”

*****

Her “baby” was turning 7 and Lydia Bradford wanted it to be a day she would remember. She had ordered the cake and was getting the house ready. Soon, the cousins would start arriving for the party.

Her three daughters, including the birthday girl, were playing in the front of her Cocoa, Fla., house with another kid when a man with a ski mask burst in, police said. The terrified children fled as the intruder stalked to the rear of the small house and opened fire on Bradford, 24, and her mother Equaller, 58.

The young mom was killed and Equaller Bradford, shot in the chest and head, is still clinging to life. The motive is unknown and there have been no arrests, though family members suggest the women may have been victims of mistaken identity.

At Lydia Bradford’s funeral, relatives remembered her as a bubbly, carefree single mother devoted to her kids.

Cocoa Police Dept.

Lydia Bradford, 24, was shot dead by a masked gunman who burst into the Cocoa, Fla., home she shared with her mother on Jan. 21.

“Lydia didn’t sweat the small stuff,” said her aunt, Yvonne Smith. “You could hate her, but she loved you back. She was as pretty on the inside as she was on the outside.”

She supported her kids by working as a private-duty nurse. She had recently moved in with her mother and they were looking for a bigger place. Her weekends were full of cookouts and card games with family.

When her uncle Melvin was feeling low after chemotherapy, Bradford’s smile would cheer him up, Smith said. She chuckled as she remembered her niece’s sweet tooth, how she tucked into the homemade sweet-potato pie, lemon meringue pie, banana pudding and cake at Thanksgiving – then complained she had eaten too much.

Because she was a working mother, Bradford tried to make sure that holidays and birthdays were special for her girls. She was planning a Feb. 7 party at Chuck E. Cheese for all the cousins with January birthdays.

“Instead, we were all at her funeral that day,” Smith said, her voice cracking. “I know things like this happen every day, but it’s just sad that someone don’t care no more for life and took my baby away from her girls.”

She worries in particular for the 7-year-old.

“That was her birthday and now she’ll associate that for the rest of her life with the day her mama was killed,” she said.

******

The chain of events that led to Christopher Best’s death began when a big maple tree fell on the corner of his house in the Detroit suburb of Redford, Mich., in early January.

Best, 61, a computer whiz who had done sound and lights for countless rock-and-roll shows in Motor City, hired an old buddy from the music scene, carpenter Chris O’Brien, to repair the roof.

A few weeks later, on the evening of Jan. 21, Best drove to O’Brien’s Detroit home, with his dog Maxi in tow, to pay him $1,000. It was considered a relatively safe neighborhood, a historic district of Victorian homes, and Best had visited many times.

Photo provided by friend

Chris Best, a Detroit music engineer, was slain on Jan. 21 while delivering money to the home of a friend who had done some construction work for him. Police believe the motive was robbery.

But this time, as Best got out of his car, he was “apparently ambushed” by robbers, police say. The sound of gunfire – O’Brien says police told him it was an AK-47 assault rifle-- shattered the dinnertime quiet on the tree-lined street.

“A dozen shots came into my house,” O’Brien recalled. “They were going by both sides of my head. If I would have taken one more step, my head would have been blown clear off.”

When the shooting stopped, he stepped outside and saw his friend of 30 years lying on his lawn. “It was cold that night,” O’Brien said. “I got down and put my arm under his head. He was gasping for air.”

Best, he said, died in the ambulance. No arrests have been made, but police say the motive was robbery.

An IT worker by day, Best’s passion was music. He played the guitar and keyboard and had a reputation as a reliable sound man in Detroit’s music joints. His obituary photo showed him mugging with Alice Cooper.

“He was a good guy, a pretty wholesome guy,” O’Brien. “He wasn’t into drugs, which is amazing for the rock and roll business. He didn’t even drink anymore.”

Best came from a large family; he was one of nine kids. And for years, the bachelor had been a foster parent, opening his home to young people in crisis and mentoring others, friend Sergio Sanchez said.

“He had a big heart,” Sanchez said. “That’s why it’s so hard to believe they shot him down because if they had given him the chance, I’m sure he would have just given them the money.”

******

It was just a fistfight.

Steven Rosalez, 16, got into a scuffle with an ex-con, Julius Short, 23, as he left a store with his friends in Pittsburg, Calif., his family says. It’s not known what prompted the fisticuffs, but when the fight  was over, the teen and the older man, who was on probation, went their separate ways.

The Rosalez Family

Steven Rosalez, 16, was killed by gunfire on Jan. 21 after an altercation outside a store in Pittsburg, Calif., allegedly by an ex-con he'd fought with earlier in the day.

That could have been the end of it. But according to police, Short wasn’t one to let it go. He got a gun, found Rosalez and shot him in the back and another 16-year-old in the leg, they said. The other boy survived, but Rosalez died.

“It’s devastated the whole family,” his mother, Wynette, said last Wednesday as Short was arraigned on charges of murder, attempted murder and weapons possession. He has not entered a plea.

She said her son was a happy boy growing up, always surrounded by friends and active in sports until he decided to give up football and baseball in the 10th grade. He was “kind of going through a little rough patch” and had run away from home once but had never been in trouble with the police, she said.

He spent most of his free time with his girlfriend of four years and playing Xbox. He had two brothers and a cousin he treated like a third. He was finishing high school in an independent study program and taking classes at a local college.

“He was loved,” she said, crying.

Short has a 2009 conviction for assault with a deadly weapon and he was on probation at the time of the slaying, which made Rosalez’s mother angry.

Complete coverage of "Flashpoint: Guns in America," an NBC News special report

“I grew up around guns and nobody did this when I was a kid and now here are these people who are felons and on probation and they get guns,” she said. “It’s not right.”

Also contributing to this story and map for NBC News: Daniel Arkin, Meredith Birkett, John Brecher, Bill Dedman, David Friedman, Kriss Chaumont, Polly DeFrank, Shezad Morani, Lisa Riordan Seville, Jonathan Sweeney and Lisa Wilkins.

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Interactive map: A long weekend of gun deaths. Click to enlarge.

It was after midnight, early on a Saturday in the college town of Moscow, Idaho, and student Jason "Cowboy" Monson was at the police station to get back his Desert Eagle .45-caliber handgun.

In McDonough, Ga., about the same time, two teenage brothers were still awake. A friend was sleeping over, and their mother had let the boys handle her .38-caliber revolver, which was unloaded. She'd gone to bed.

In South Valley, N.M., it was quiet at the Griego household as 15-year-old Nehemiah waited for his father to come home from the night shift at a homeless shelter. The son was holding his father's AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

In the next few hours, the freshman in Idaho, one of the brothers in Georgia, and most of the Griego family would be dead, victims of three forms of gun violence — suicide, accident and murder — that are everyday occurrences in the United States.

Their deaths, and scores of others, occurred over a holiday weekend, the third weekend in January, when America celebrated the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a victim of gun violence. It also was the weekend the nation swore in a re-elected president whose inaugural address referred to guns, though he didn’t actually say the word: "Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm."

San Antonio Express-News via Zuma Press

One of 91 deaths identified by guns across America on a long holiday weekend: Officers with the Bexar County, Texas, Sheriff's Office investigate the shooting death of Jesse Rosas, whose bullet-riddled body was found on the side of a road near San Antonio on Jan. 21. Police have not identified any suspects.

By the end of the long weekend — after President Barack Obama had spoken and the red, white and blue confetti strewn along Pennsylvania Avenue had been cleaned up — at least 91 people across America had been killed by guns. That's more than three times the number of caskets needed in Connecticut after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. These 91 people died, not in a single burst of violence over a few minutes, but spread over a three-day weekend, like an autoworker stealing an entire convertible one part at a time to escape notice.

In the aftermath of the Dec. 14 Newtown shooting, during a renewed national debate about gun rights and gun control, NBC News picked the weekend of Jan. 19-21 to examine gun deaths across America. Today and on Monday and Tuesday, we'll tell you what we found and introduce you to some of the victims and their families. We also invite you to look at our online map and to draw your own impressions from the stories of violence.

We don't pretend to have found all the gun deaths over that weekend. There is no official census of gun deaths, and it takes the federal government many months to compile national crime and suicide statistics. We drew our list from the deaths that were reported in the press, and confirmed the details with authorities in all but a few cases. If you only want to know how many people are killed by guns on an average day in America, simply divide the annual figure, about 31,300, by 365 days, and there's your average: about 86 people a day.

Why did we find “only” 91 in three days? The main reason is that hardly any suicides get reported in the media. Suicides by gun are twice as common as gun homicides. Some homicides don't get any publicity either. Unless a killer chooses a public place, annihilates an entire family or shoots up a Wal-Mart, he might not even get on a website, in the newspaper or on TV, not on a holiday weekend competing with the festivities in the nation's capital and the Ravens-Patriots and Falcons-Seahawks games. The Griego family massacre in New Mexico was the only incident that long weekend to get significant national news attention. It also could be that holiday weekends with NFL championships are safer, with so many young men – who are statistically far more likely to shoot someone — inside instead, watching the games.

Guns by the numbers: how violence adds up

Our goal was not, however, merely to count the deaths, but to share the stories of the people who died, to see what lessons one might learn from those whose deaths usually go unnoticed, that don't prompt the president to order the White House flag to half-staff.

#####

It's an inescapable conclusion, even from our small sample, that there are many ways to get killed with a gun in America.

Based on interviews with police, prosecutors and family members in all but a few of the cases, we tallied 53 homicides where one person killed another. There were another three homicides where multiple people were killed. There were six murder-suicides, and six suicides. Five accidental shootings. Three shootings by police, and at least two by civilians in self-defense. That's 78 horrors with 91 dead. On a different randomly chosen weekend, the count might shake out differently.

You can get killed throwing your daughter a 17th birthday party, if your angry estranged husband shows up. Without a gun, you might have an angry confrontation and maybe some tears. With a handgun, the birthday girl in Grapevine, Texas, lost her mother and father in a murder-suicide, police said.

Or you can get killed buying a taco from a vendor on the street in Los Angeles, if you get into an argument with the wrong person, and that person has a gun.

Or catching a train: A bystander was killed at a Bay Area Rapid Transit station in San Leandro, Calif., when a couple of gangs started trading shots.

You can get killed spending an afternoon with grandma. Just as the president was beginning his inaugural address and talking about making children safe, a gunman in Cocoa, Fla., burst into a home before a children's birthday party, shooting to death the mother of several of the children and seriously wounding their grandmother.

Or visiting a strip club. A U.S. Army soldier from Oklahoma's Fort Sill was killed outside a strip club during a dispute over a woman.

Manatee County Sheriff's Office

James Brady, 26, was shot and killed in Bradenton, Fla., Jan. 20, as he and two other masked men attempted to rob a resident in his carport, police said.  One alleged robber, Jared Lee, has been charged with felony murder in Brady's death. Authorities are seeking a third man, Charles Jones.

You can get killed for what may seem like like a pretty good reason, if, as the National Rifle Association’s Wayne LaPierre put it after the Newtown shooting, you're a “bad guy with a gun” who happens to run into a “good guy with a gun.” There were two shootings by citizens that apparently were justified over the long weekend, including one by a man in Bradenton, Fla., who was ready with his own handgun and a concealed weapons permit when three armed robbers wearing masks confronted him and his roommate in their carport, according to police. He killed one of them, and authorities determined it was in self-defense. There also were three shootings by police officers that have tentatively been ruled as justified, including one in which an ex-con was shot dead after he threatened to kill his hostage following an armed robbery.

Las Vegas Police

Las Vegas Police Lt. Hans Walters, 52, killed his wife, former police officer Kathryn Michelle Walters, and their 5-year-old son, Maximilian, called 911 to confess and then set his house on fire on Jan. 21, according to police. Walters killed himself with the handgun as police moved in.

But as we saw last week when a former Los Angeles police officer allegedly went on a murderous rampage against fellow law enforcement officers, the “good guys” aren’t immune to the demons that trigger gun violence. Over the inaugural weekend, a Las Vegas police lieutenant used a handgun to kill his wife, herself a former police officer, and their 5-year-old son, before killing himself, according to police, just as the president was taking his seat on the West Front terrace of the U.S. Capitol on Monday morning.

You can get killed when your fists are outgunned, like the 22-year-old man who his family said was standing up for his friends in a brawl, when someone else pulled a gun and shot him dead, according to police. They were in Torrance, Calif., attending a punk rock festival headlined by a band called "Aggression."

You can become an ironic headline, like the 20-year-old man in Lafayette, La., who was shot dead about 60 yards from the Martin Luther King Jr. recreation center, on Monday, the day when Dr. King's legacy of nonviolence was being celebrated. That shooting occurred about the time the Obamas left the White House for their inaugural ball.

Or you can be ignored as just another victim of a street crime or a drug deal, barely making the local newspapers if you're killed in a "confrontation at a mobile home park" or "shot and killed in an argument in a parking lot."

#####

One of the surprises in our snapshot of gun violence was how young many of the victims were.

Oregon State Police

Kayla Ann Hendrickson, 16, was killed alongside an Oregon highway on Jan. 19, by her boyfriend, Jacob Allen Green, 24, after an argument, according to police. Green committed suicide near the California border, they said.

Twenty of the 91 were too young to buy a beer at a baseball game. There's the 16-year-girl in Oregon named Kayla, who was shot to death by the highway, apparently by her 24-year-old boyfriend, who then shot and killed himself with the handgun, according to police. The 6-year-old girl in Cleveland —  her name was Navaeh, and her family called her "Nae Nae" — who somehow got her hands on what police said was the illegal handgun of her felon father, and shot herself in the face. The 18-year-old in Baton Rouge, Terrance, who was playing with a .357 Magnum; when it went off, the bullet missed him, and hit his 2-year-old brother, Travin, in the chest.

It's hard to miss how male the victims are: Out of 91 dead, 75 were men or boys. And the men were even more likely to be the ones pulling the trigger.

There's no way to count them all, but the press accounts of these deaths are sprinkled with deadly encounters fueled by drugs and alcohol. We didn't trace the race or ethnicity of victims or shooters for this project; though research indicates that blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be involved in gun violence. But the cases over this weekend were not limited to "urban" violence, with the deaths happening in cities and small towns and suburbs across many class and ethnic groups.

Looking through the deaths from just that one weekend, one wonders how many of these deaths could have been prevented by the gun-control and gun-safety changes that are being discussed in Washington. There are no easy answers, but one can draw an overall conclusion: Because the types of gun deaths vary greatly, so the solutions would have to vary as well.

David Hemenway, a professor of health policy and management at the Harvard School of Public Health, says it will require a national mindset shift to make big inroads into the number of gun deaths, similar to the change that occurred in how child abuse – a condition once considered so endemic that it couldn’t be addressed – was viewed after new laws against it were passed in the 19th and 20th centuries.

"If it was in your safety to have a gun in the home, people in public health would try to get you to own a gun," he said last month at a forum on gun violence sponsored by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Reuters news agency. "But what evidence we have is that it's against your self interest."

Improvement in mental health efforts, as proposed by the president, might make a difference, particularly in the 12 suicides and murder-suicides. But many of the cases will forever remain a mystery.

Warwick, R.I., Police Capt. Robert Nelson, who is investigating the murder-suicide of a longtime married couple on the MLK Day weekend, said the law enforcement system is set up to find and punish wrongdoers, not determine root causes: “We don’t have clear motive, and you know, you rarely do,” he told NBC News. “… As seen around the country, when someone kills somebody else then kills themselves as a result of that, you very rarely have any clear motive.”

In the Griego family massacre in New Mexico, as in the Newtown school shooting, there still is no clear understanding of what may have driven a young man to commit mass murder. Nehemiah Griego, 15, is facing murder charges in adult court. Police say the minister's son shot his mother and three younger siblings with a .22-caliber rifle as they lay in their beds early on that Saturday, then waited to shoot his father with the father's military-style AR-15 rifle.

What about the proposal to take "weapons of war" — or assault-type weapons —  off the streets, as Obama put it? Police are reluctant to give out details of the type of weapon used in a crime, because that's the sort of fact that they can use when interrogating witnesses and suspects. You'll see a lot of "unknown" for gun type on our map, and we don't have reliable information in most deaths about whether a gun was purchased or owned legally. There are several cases in which guns were not possessed legally.

The weekend of gun violence does leave an impression that few crimes are committed with the assault weapons whose legality is being debated in Washington. We saw one Detroit homicide where a witness said the gun was an AK-47, but police won't say one way or another. And Nehemiah Griego is said to have used a .22-caliber rifle, then a .223-caliber military-style AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

Most of the killing, however, is done with handguns that are not on the political radar, one or two victims at a time, not crimes that depend on high-capacity magazines with more than 10 bullets.

“Certainly I’m not naive enough to say that if we were to ban military-style assault rifles and if we were to ban high-capacity magazines, that we’re not going to have killings or murders," said George Gascón, the San Francisco district attorney, an advocate of banning those weapons and high-capacity magazines. He was discussing the death of Daniel Colon, 44, who was killed with an unknown weapon on the morning of the inauguration, as he was walking home with his cousin from a bar where he had celebrated the football victory by the 49ers. "All we’re saying is that we can reduce the mayhem, and we can have greater control to make sure that the people that own weapons do so in a lawful fashion.”

Accidental shootings of children may be the most preventable, when children get their hands on guns that adults have not secured.

In McDonough, Ga., where the mother was asleep, the sheriff's office says the mother had let the children handle her .38-caliber revolver earlier in the evening, when it was unloaded. Sometime in the night, one of the boys loaded the gun.

The mother was awakened around 2:30 a.m. by a gunshot.

The mother's 14-year-old son had pointed the gun at his 15-year-old brother's chest and squeezed the trigger, the sheriff’s office said. The sheriff and the district attorney haven't released the names of the boys, and say they haven't decided whether to charge the brother with a crime. The sheriff's office said it didn't consider charging the grieving mother, because her gun was legally owned.

Many gun owners say they need their guns to be at hand and ready in case of an intruder breaking in during the night. "You try to look at the science," Hemenway, the Harvard professor, said at the gun violence forum. "There's no evidence at all suggesting that having the gun that you can get within two seconds matters more than the gun you can get within 10 seconds. ... There is a huge amount of evidence that having an unsecured gun leads to all sorts of death in the family."

#####

Looking at the gun deaths across the land, on just one weekend, is a reminder how ingrained the gun culture is in America, a large part of the story the country tells about itself, especially in the way its young men find identity.

Consider Jason "Cowboy" Monson, the freshman from the University of Idaho who went down to the police station to get his gun back.

On Friday, just before our weekend clock began, Jason's roommate spoke with his resident adviser in the dorm, saying he was afraid because Jason was keeping his Desert Eagle handgun under his pillow.

Jason was raised on a small horse farm in Middleton, Idaho, hunting and fishing, playing football for a Christian school. He was raised around guns. Jason's father is a county sheriff's patrol sergeant, and his mother is a former Boise police officer. (His parents did not respond to a request from NBC News for an interview.) Jason won a national speech competition with 4H, and was studying communications. He was also in the Air Force ROTC and hoped to serve his country. He had a new girlfriend and a sense of humor, and posted a lot of funny stuff on his Facebook page.

His online summary of himself was unassuming: "im a total cowboy. I hunt cowboy mounted shoot and drive an old ford diesel. Ive broken several bones and most recently chainsawed my foot, that was a great two months, insert sarcasm. I own several guns and will be in the ROTC at the u of I this fall. any questions message me."

Family photo

Jason Monson aims a blank pistol at the camera. Jason, who grew up on a small horse farm in Idaho, was active in Cowboy Mounted Shooting, which uses blanks.

Cowboy Mounted Shooting looks like a lot of fun. (Watch a primer on YouTube.) The riders train skilled horses and compete on an obstacle course, wearing a Western long-sleeved shirt and a cowboy hat and shooting guns loaded with powder cartridges--blanks--at ballooons. Jason had already won a couple of belt buckles. One of his fellow competitors described him as "very nice, respectful, personable and outgoing." It's a great sport for someone who likes people, horses, and guns.

When the roommate reported the gun, Jason was not at the dorm. The school called the city police, and an officer came and took the gun away. The police chief in Moscow (for non-Idahoans: that's "MOS-ko"), David Duke, said there was no hint that Jason had made any threat against anyone, and Jason wasn't in a whole lot of trouble.

After all, this is Idaho, where guns are freely allowed with no registration, and one can openly carry a gun without any permit. Jason had violated no criminal law by bringing his handgun to his dorm room, the police chief said. It was against the school rules to have it there — students have to keep their guns in the central gun locker provided by the school. Jason could have faced student judicial charges, but it wasn't a criminal matter.

When Jason got back to the dorm, his roommate had been moved to another room, and Jason was told that his gun had been confiscated. He called the Moscow police about 10 p.m. to get his gun back, and the officer asked him to come down to the station. He came down about 1 a.m., and the officer said he could have his gun, but not until Tuesday, after the MLK holiday, so he'd have a chance to lock it up at school.

At 8:46 a.m. local time Sunday morning, just as the Obama family was participating in a day of service by fixing up an elementary school in the nation's capital, Moscow police got another call from the University of Idaho, from the same dorm.

One of Jason's suitemates had found him, shot in the head, next to notes he'd written to his family.

Idaho has one of the highest rates of suicides in the country, mostly from guns. It also was the only state in the union without its own certified hotline with counselors trained in suicide prevention; a hotline opened in November, but it's open  only Monday through Thursday, 9 to 5. Chief Duke says he gets a call about suicide on campus every couple of years or so.

It turned out that the Desert Eagle .45 was not Jason's only gun. Sometime in the night, he'd gone out to his pickup truck for his Smith and Wesson Model 66 .357-caliber revolver.

'Flashpoint: Guns in America,' an NBC News special report 

In his obituary, his parents took the opportunity to plead against gun control: "Let us drag the evil hiding in the darkness of the most dangerous places on earth: Gun free zones."

Jason's photo with his obituary shows Cowboy Monson with a big grin, wearing a black hat and astride a reddish-brown horse at a canter. Jason is looking directly at the camera, where he is pointing his blank pistol.

That image is the profile photo atop his Facebook page, too, now and perhaps forever, along with the cover image of two semi-automatic rifles criss-crossed over the U.S. Constitution.

Read Part 2: The faces behind the numbers: Six victims of long weekend's violence

 Also contributing to this story and map for NBC News: Daniel Arkin, Meredith Birkett, John Brecher, David Friedman, Kriss Chaumont, Tracy Connor, Polly DeFrank, Matthew DeLuca, Miranda Leitsinger, Shezad Morani, Lisa Riordan Seville, Jonathan Sweeney and Lisa Wilkins.

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Mel Evans / AP

Officers from the Mercer County Prosecutor's Office work at a two-day gun buyback event in Trenton, N.J., on Jan. 26. People were allowed to drop off weapons with no questions asked.

On average, about 86 people a day are killed by firearms in America, or 31,672 per year, according to the Centers for Disease Control tally for 2010, the latest year available.

That year, the CDC counted 19,392 gun deaths by suicide, 11,078 homicides with firearms, 606 deaths by accidental shootings and 596 with other or undetermined cause. (Read the full report.)

A child aged 5 through 14 in America is about 13 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than children in Japan, Italy or other industrial countries, according to the Harvard School of Public Health. (Watch the Harvard forum on gun violence.)

Larry W. Smith / EPA

Guns lie in a chair at the First Presbyterian Church parking garage in Dallas during a gun buyback program on Jan. 19, 2013. Across the street, gun-rights advocates were offering to auction off guns at higher prices.

Guns are used in about seven out of 10 murders in the U.S., according to FBI statistics. The weapons of choice are guns, 68 percent; knives, 13 percent; fists or feet, 6 percent; other, 6 percent; and unknown, 7 percent. (See other statistics in a chart from The Dallas Morning News.)

The crime rate has been declining steadily for firearm crimes. In 1993 and 1994, for example, the rate was above seven firearm crimes for every 1,000 people age 12 or older. It has fallen pretty consistently to 1.8 in 2011, the most recent year for which statistics have been tallied, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Even in Chicago, which has a strict gun control law and received a lot of publicity in recent months for a spike in homicides, the number of killings has declined sharply over the past 20 years. The number was consistently above 800 in the early 1990s, but fell to the 700s, to the 600s in the early 2000s, and near 500 or below for every year since 2004, according to a report by the Chicago Police Department.

There is considerable disagreement among researchers, however, on whether the high-rate of U.S. gun ownership has a direct correlation to violent crimes and, if so, what it's impact might be. Here's a recent analysis by FactCheck.org that does a good job covering that terrain.

Related story

A look at some nations' gun ownership rates.

Death takes no holiday: Tracking gun violence over one long January weekend

Thirty-three percent of American households have a gun. That rate varies from Georgia's 41 percent down to New Jersey's 11 percent, according to a 2002 federal survey.

Here are some civilian firearm ownership percentages for selected countries, according to The Small Arms Survey: Germany, 30 per 100 residents; Iceland, 30; Austria, 30; Canada, 31; Iraq, 34; Saudi Arabia, 35; Switzerland, 46; Yemen, 55; United States, 89.

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WXIA / NBC via Reuters

A 14-year-old pupil and a teacher were shot Thursday, Jan. 31, at Price Middle School in Atlanta. Another student at the school was arrested.

The case of a Virginia second-grader caught with a gun on his school bus this week may be shocking but it's by no means uncommon.

Across the country, children are being suspended or arrested for having weapons on campus or buses on a daily basis.

Police in Henrico, Va., were waiting at school for the little boy Monday morning after he allegedly threatened another pupil on their ride to Ratcliffe Elementary School. They found a handgun in his backpack, NBC station WWBT of Richmond, Va. reported.

The incident made national headlines Monday, as did a similar incident when a loaded gun was found in a pupil's book bag last month at P.S. 215 in Queens, N.Y.

However, these incidents aren't as isolated as they may appear. An NBC News survey of crime dockets and news reports across all 50 states reveals that, since Jan. 1, there have been at least 48 incidents in which guns have been discovered on students, in their bags or in their lockers.

There were at least five last Thursday alone: in Atlanta; Augusta, Kan.; Chicago; Raleigh, N.C.; and Winston-Salem, N.C.

There have been 23 class days since some districts resumed school Jan. 2 — not including Jan. 21, the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. That works out to more than two gun reports a day this school year. (The survey excluded incidents in which pupils were caught with toy guns; all of the weapons were handguns, rifles, BB guns or air rifles.)

And those are just the cases that have been made public: Juveniles' police records are generally protected, so an untold number of other such incidents are likely to have occurred.

While it's impossible to determine whether such potentially deadly show-and-tells are happening more frequently, the public data do indicate just how hard it is to clamp down on guns on campus since the issue became a national concern in December in the wake of the fatal shootings of 20 pupils at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Most of the time, the weapons are brought along for protection or as items of curiosity, with the pupil more interested in showing off than in shooting. And usually, they're intercepted before anyone can get hurt, with the student's being suspended or charged for a weapons violation, depending on his or her age. Often, a parent or guardian is charged with failing to secure the weapon.

But when they're not intercepted, tragedy is often the result.

Last week, a 14-year-old boy was shot and wounded by a student at Price Middle School in Atlanta, police said.

"Gun violence in and around our schools is simply unconscionable and must end," Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said. "Too many young people are being harmed and too many families are suffering from unimaginable and unnecessary grief."

And on Jan. 10, a student was wounded by a classmate who shot him at Taft Union High School in Taft, Calif., police said The boy targeted a second classmate but missed, authorities said.

While many lawmakers have introduced legislation that would put armed police or security guards in schools, that may not be the answer, according to a state task force reviewing campus safety in Virginia.

The task force last week stressed the need to fund anti-bullying programs and school resource officers, but it stopped short of calling for more officers in schools.

"If we were to put 1,000 new police officers in our schools, those police officers would have to come from somewhere, and we might inadvertently make things less safe in our communities," Dewey G. Cornell, a law professor at the University of Virginia who's a member of the task force, told WWBT.

The boy who opened fire last week in California was one of those who carried a weapon because he said he had been bullied, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said.

But that's not a good enough excuse, parents say.

"That just doesn't make sense," said Jeremy Massey, the parent of a student at Daly Elementary School in Inskter, Mich., near Detroit, where a third-grader was found to have taken a loaded gun to class two days in a row last month. The boy told police he carried the gun for his own protection.

"If you are 10 years old, the only protection you need is to go tell an adult," Massey told NBC station WDIV of Detroit.

Related:

Full list of student gun incidents this year

Obama on guns: 'We're not going to wait until the next Newtown'

Guns already allowed in schools with little restriction in many states

Watch US News crime videos on NBCNews.com

Department of Justice

Richard Schmidt

Federal agents are trying to determine how a suspected Ohio white supremacist with a felony conviction for manslaughter acquired a cache of 18 assault weapons and other firearms, along with high-capacity magazines and more than 40,000 rounds of ammunition, according to federal law enforcement officials and court documents reviewed by NBC News.

The storehouse of weapons was discovered late last  month when FBI agents arrested Richard Schmidt,  47, the owner of a Bowling Green sporting goods store called Spindletop Sports Zone,  on charges of  marketing counterfeit goods -- such as football jerseys with NFL logos -- from China.

Although initially portrayed as a probe into the thriving international market for counterfeit clothing, the case took a surprising turn this week when the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Cleveland unsealed search warrants and an indictment also charging Schmidt with illegal possession of firearms.

According to the documents, FBI agents who searched Schmidt’s sporting goods store and four trailers behind it, found a  stash of weapons that included AR-15 assault rifles, Ruger and Sig Sauer semi-automatic pistols,  bulletproof  body armor and high-capacity magazines as well as ammunition.

The agents also discovered evidence of Schmidt’s ties to the neo-Nazi movement, documents show. Among the evidence seized, according to search warrants, was a video of a national convention of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement; bumper stickers of the National Alliance party, another neo-Nazi group; a “Jewish 500” list -- a supposed roster of Jewish-owned businesses -- and paraphernalia from the “Waffen SS,” Adolph Hitler’s Nazi military force in Germany from the early 1930s through World War II, according to the search warrants.

A federal law enforcement official, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said that FBI counterterrorism agents involved in the  case  had picked up evidence that Schmidt  may have been planning attacks against Jewish and civil rights groups in the Detroit area. “This is an active investigation,” said another federal law enforcement official when asked if Schmidt was believed to have been working with any others in the neo-Nazi movement.

In the indictment unsealed this week, Schmidt was charged with three counts of illegal possession of firearms, ammunition and body armor and one count of trafficking in counterfeit goods.

Schmidt’s lawyer, federal public defender Andy Hart, did not respond to a request for comment. 

The law enforcement officials said the case appears to illustrate some of the gaps in current  background checks for gun purchasers that President Barack Obama has proposed closing as part of his package of executive actions and legislative proposals released this week aimed at curbing gun violence. Schmidt was charged with murder and felonious assault in 1989 after killing a Hispanic man  and shooting two others with a semi-automatic pistol during a traffic dispute. He later pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison. Federal officials were not immediately able to provide information on when he was released from prison.  

Despite a federal law that prohibits convicted felons from buying firearms, Schmidt was still able to acquire his stockpile – though authorities don’t yet know how he acquired them. Federal agents have been trying for weeks to trace the weapons, but officials said they have so far made little progress. This could indicate that Schmidt purchased his weapons from private dealers or gun shows, where background checks are currently not required, one official said. But he also could have obtained them on the black market.

“It is deeply troubling that law enforcement found this man, with a prior homicide conviction, in possession of an arsenal,” said Steven M. Dettelbach, the U.S. attorney for Cleveland.

NBC/WSJ poll: Public lowers expectation for Obama's second term

Mark Potok, who tracks hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the group had found an entry that appeared to be from Schmidt on a neo-Nazi website several years ago, using the Yahoo profile of “Vinlander 101” and declaring his plans to set up a “historical preservation” group. (One of the trailers behind Schmidt’s sporting goods store was registered to the “Vinland Preservation League” -- a now defunct nonprofit.) He noted that the use of the word “Vinland” was likely inspired by the “Vinland Social Club,” a now largely dormant neo-Nazi skinhead group that emphasized the early Vikings role in colonizing the American continent. 

“The sad reality is there are people around this country who are building up enormous arsenals of  weapons because they think the end is coming -- either  a race war, or the new world order … or some other form of apocalypse,” he said. 

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With the debate over gun violence reshaped by the shooting deaths of 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school last month, lawmakers across the country are pushing proposals to arm teachers in the classroom. But many of them may be wasting their time.

More than a third of the states already allow teachers and other adults to carry guns to school. In most cases, all you need is the equivalent of a note from the principal — you usually don't even need law enforcement approval.

NBC News reviewed the firearms and education laws in all 50 states and found that 18 of them allow adults to have a loaded gun on school grounds, usually as long as they have written permission.

That's for pretty much any reason; the list doesn't include states that generally ban guns but carve out narrow exceptions for specific activities like safety demonstrations or military formations and parades.

During a Tea Party forum in Fort Worth, Texas Gov. Rick Perry became one of the first prominent officials after the Dec. 14 shootings to call for teachers to be allowed to carry firearms to work — even though Texas already allows any qualified adult to do so as long as the principal OKs it.

Since then, lawmakers in several states have jumped on board with proposals that mirror laws already on the books.

In Alabama, for example, state Rep. Kerry Rich, a Republican representing DeKalb and Marshall counties, has proposed legislation that would give schools the option of letting their teachers or administrators carry guns.

They already have that option.

In Kentucky, lawmakers said last week they're contemplating  legislation that would let teachers and administrators pack a weapon after completing safety training.

Kentucky school boards already have the authority to allow that.

Oregon state Rep. Dennis Richardson, a Republican representing Central Point, said in an e-mail to schools superintendents in his district that, he too, supported allowing teachers to carry weapons at school.

Oregon school boards can already give that permission.

Self defense
The real debate is over proposals to create exemptions from gun bans in states that don't have them. Such measures have been introduced or proposed in Alaska, Florida, Indiana, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee. (The Michigan Legislature passed a bill last year, but Gov. Rick Snyder vetoed it.)

"Parents will not let politicians stand and do nothing," said Tennessee state Rep. Eric Watson, a Republican representing Bradley County who is one of several Tennessee lawmakers planning to introduce legislation to allow properly certified school district employees to arm themselves.

Bradley County already has armed deputies, known as school resource officers, or SROs, in all 17 of its schools. But Watson said that's not enough.

"I'm not trying to take the position of an SRO. This is in support of an SRO," Watson, a former sheriff's captain, told NBC station WRCB of Chattanooga.

The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association have both campaigned against such measures, but not all local school administrators share their position.

In Tennessee, the membership of Professional Educators of Tennessee is "split about 50-50," on proposals like Watson's, said J.C. Bowman, a spokesman for the organization.

"Some don't want the responsibility, and they worry about liability," Bowman said. "But this doesn't prohibit it and it doesn't require it, so that's something we can work with."

Jim Rigano, a member of the Springboro, Ohio, school board, said he hoped to craft a policy to allow school employees with proper state permits to carry guns.

"I think it's about giving employees the opportunity to defend themselves," he told NBC station WDTN of Dayton.

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• Newtown police chief adds voice to call for assault weapons ban
• Gun-rights groups: Our 'backs are against the wall'
• Gun group trains 200 Utah teachers to use weapons in school 

President Barack Obama called for more, not less, gun control after last month's Connecticut massacre. But there's little the federal government can do in states that pass measures relaxing school regulations.

The Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 prohibits anyone from having a firearm in a school zone. But that law includes the same exception recognized by the states identified in NBC News' survey: It doesn't apply if the weapons are "approved by a school in the school zone."

And in any event, Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Steve Stockman, R-Texas, have introduced measures in the new Congress that would repeal the federal law altogether.

Here are the 18 states that allow adults to carry loaded weapons onto school grounds with few or minor conditions:

• Alabama (which bans possessing a weapon on school grounds only if the carrier has "intent to do bodily harm")
• California (with approval of the superintendent)
• Connecticut (with approval of "school officials")
• Hawaii (no specific law)
• Idaho (with school trustees' approval)
• Iowa (with "authorization")
• Kentucky (with school board approval)
• Massachusetts (with approval of the school board or principal)
• Mississippi (with school board approval)
• Montana (with school trustees' permission)
• New Hampshire (ban applies only to pupils, not adults)
• New Jersey (with approval from the school's "governing officer")
• New York (with the school's approval)
• Oregon (with school board approval)
• Rhode Island (with a state concealed weapons permit)
• Texas (with the school's permission)
• Utah (with approval of the "responsible school administrator")
• Wyoming (as long as it's not concealed)

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Joe Raedle / Getty Images file

A Bushmaster XM-15 .223-caliber rifle, the type of weapon that authorities say Sandy Hook Elementary School gunman Adam Lanza used to inflict most of the fatalities.

NEWTOWN, Conn. -- The three guns carried by the gunman in the bloody Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting were all purchased by his mother since 2010, law enforcement sources told NBC News on Tuesday.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Nancy Lanza, who friends described as a gun enthusiast, purchased the weapons legally over a three-year period, beginning in 2010 with a Bushmaster XM-15  .223-caliber semi-automatic assault-style rifle -- the weapon that authorities say 20-year-old Adam Lanza used to mow down the victims in Friday’s rampage. She then bought a 9 mm Sig Sauer pistol in 2011, followed by a 10 mm Glock pistol in January 2012. Both weapons also were in Adam Lanza’s possession during his attack on the school, and he used the latter to kill himself when police arrived on the scene, authorities say.

Adam Lanza killed his 52-year-old mother at the home they shared before driving to the school and forcing his way in. Once inside, he killed 20 children and six adults before committing suicide, authorities say.

In addition to the weapons recovered at the crime scene, including a shotgun recovered from the trunk of the car the gunman drove to the school, the Associated Press reported that authorities investigating the shooting recovered three other weapons -- a Henry repeating rifle, an Enfield rifle and a shotgun. It was not clear where those weapons were found.

Meantime, the sources said investigators have found no evidence that Adam Lanza visited area shooting ranges in the last six months.

Federal agents have been examining records at the ranges to see if Adam Lanza had been practicing his marksmanship in the months leading up to the attack, which could indicate that he had planned the massacre well in advance of carrying it out.   

Michael Isikoff is NBC News national investigative correspondent; NBC News’ Justice Correspondent Pete Williams also contributed to this report.

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Nancy Lanza, in a 2012 photo that a relative saved from Facebook.

NEWTOWN, Conn. -- The mother of the suspected Sandy Hook Elementary School gunman, herself slain at the outset of the murderous rampage, was an avid gun enthusiast who liked to take her sons to the shooting range to practice their marksmanship, a friend tells NBC News.

Dan Holmes, a local landscaper and a friend of Nancy Lanza, mother of 20-year-old suspected gunman Adam Lanza, said she also was a collector.

 “She had a pretty extensive gun collection,” Holmes said. “She was a collector, she was pretty proud of that. She always mentioned that she really loved the act of shooting.”

Holmes recalled that she said she was able to “focus in” while shooting.

Federal officials tell NBC News that Adam Lanza took three weapons with him to the school – two pistols, a Glock and a Sig Sauer, and a Bushmaster .223-caliber semi-automatic assault-style rifle – all of which were registered to Nancy Lanza.

It is unclear whether all the guns were used in the attack. At a news briefing on Saturday, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. H. Wayne Carver II, who led the team that autopsied the victims, said, “All the (injuries) … I know of were caused by the rifle.”

The Associated Press reported that authorities investigating the school shooting later recovered additional weapons -- a Henry repeating rifle, an Enfield rifle and a shotgun. It was not clear where those weapons were found.

Holmes, Nancy Lanza’s friend, said the 52-year-old single mother also frequently talked about how she was worried about Adam.

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She talked about “how he was an unstable kid,” he said. “She would talk about that. “She was very protective of him. I don’t … think she ever got major help for him. She just tried to handle it on her own. It was something she was definitely disturbed about.”

Meantime, federal agents visited a gun shooting range near Newtown, Conn., in an effort determine if Adam Lanza visited in the months before the attack, which could indicate he was planning or practicing for the bloodbath he carried out early Friday.

Dean Price, director of the Wooster Mountain Shooting Range near Newtown, told NBC News that he was visited by agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol ,Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on Friday night and that they searched through his records for any evidence that the younger Lanza had signed in there in 2012. They also checked to see if he had used the name of his older brother, Ryan, Price said.

There was no indication that Adam Lanza had used the shooting range, which requires customers to sign in and show identification prior to using the facility, Price said.

Agents also have been checking local firearms dealers to see if Adam Lanza purchased or attempted to purchase weapons or ammunition prior to the shooting.

Law enforcement officials said members of the public reported they thought they saw Adam Lanza trying to buy a rifle at a Dick’s Sporting Good store in Danbury, but investigators have yet to confirm that.   

NBC News' Senior Investigative Correspondent Lisa Myers and Justice Correspondent Pete Williams contributed to this report.

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