Thursday’s announcement by North Korea that it could launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack against the United States in the face of new U.N. sanctions is a predictable escalation of the isolated nation’s increasingly aggressive stance toward Washington over the past year. But experts note that Pyongyang’s recent advances in its nuclear weapons and missile programs mean that such bellicose rhetoric cannot be taken lightly.

The escalation of the North’s oratory began not long after the country’s 28-year-old leader, Kim Jong Un,  took over from his late father, Kim Jong Il, on Dec. 28, 2011. It has been accompanied by two space launches – one successful – and a third nuclear weapons test.

 It is not unusual for the North to make threats against the U.S., Japan or South Korea. And on occasion -- as in the case of the 2010 artillery barrage of Yeonpyeong Island and an earlier attack on a South Korean gunboat -- it has carried out these threats.  It has never taken any military action after threatening the United States, however.

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Some analysts have suggested that the latest round of threats is intended to show that the young Kim will continue his father’s legacy of hostility toward the U.S.

To what end?

North Korea has long wanted the U.S. to sit down with its negotiators to hammer out an agreement to end the Korean War, which ended in 1953 not in a peace treaty but in a truce.

The North would like to gain concessions from the U.S. in such a negotiation, but its escalating threats and rhetoric have the opposite effect:  The Obama administration, like preceding administrations, has steadfastly refused to negotiate with Pyongyang.

The problem is that North Korea, which has long taken a backseat in U.S. councils to the Middle East, does have military capabilities that could at the very least threaten U.S. interests in North Asia.

According to a recent analysis, North Korea has a weapon stockpile that could threaten both Japan and South Korea and, in longer term, the United States. Some of the weapons have already been deployed, say U.S. officials, who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity. Moreover, the North has begun research into more advanced and dangerous weapons, possibly even thermonuclear weapons, they say. 

At the high end of the stockpile range, U.S. officials and other researchers said North Korea may already have up to "a few dozen" nuclear weapons that could be fitted atop its vast fleet of ballistic missiles. Those missiles are limited to an intermediate range, capable of hitting targets in Japan, South Korea or elsewhere in the northern Pacific, including U.S. military bases as far south as Guam, the officials believe.

Related story: UN passes sanctions despite North Korea threat of 'pre-emptive nuclear attack'

The U.S. believes the space launch tests are part of a development plan for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the continental United States with a payload of several hundred kilotons — 10 to 20 times the size of the bombs that destroyed the Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

U.S. officials publicly express confidence that the national missile defense system based in Alaska would be able to shoot down any incoming North Korean ICBM.

“I can tell you that the United States is fully capable of defending against any North Korean ballistic missile attack,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday in response to a question about the North Korean threat.

 He also said the U.N. sanctions will make it harder for Pyongyang to continue to make progress on its weapons and missiles. 

“North Korea … will now face new barriers to developing its banned nuclear and ballistic missile programs,” he said. “Resolution 2094 increases North Korea's isolation and demonstrates to North Korea's leaders the increasing costs they pay for defying the international community.” 

For the past several years, the U.S. also has been monitoring North Korean research into thermonuclear weapons — hydrogen bombs and bombs known as boosted-fission weapons, in which plutonium and uranium are combined for a higher energy yield. (The problem is that if the North conducted a test and claimed that it was thermonuclear, the U.S. would have difficulty determining if the North was telling the truth. The test site at Kilchu is far enough inland that the U.S. would not have access to the particulate matter needed to make an accurate determination, experts say. )

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, or ISIS, a nonpartisan nuclear arms research group, said last year that any tests in the future may also be about ensuring the reliability of North Korea's current weapons design.

"Once you get beyond a dozen, it makes sense to test type and reliability of your weapons," he said. Albright said then that his group's estimate of North Korea's weapons stockpile is a bit less than those provided by the U.S. officials, but that ISIS, too, believes Pyongyang has "missile-deliverable weapons."

The design of the weapons is believed to be based on Chinese models (as were the first generation Pakistani nuclear weapons). The design is basic, and was developed in the 1960s with help from the Soviet Union, which used it to produce a whole line of nuclear warheads.

While some analysts suggested that the North planned its December rocket launch to gain attention ahead of the presidential election in South Korea , some in the U.S. non-proliferation community think otherwise. They expect that once the North feels comfortable with its ICBM technology, it will deploy the missiles.  They point to the Musudan intermediate range missile which was tested in middle of the last decade, then deployed — presumably with nuclear warheads — and aimed at Japan.

Once the North has confidence in the long-range missile based on the space rocket, U.S. officials believe they will deploy it as well, making North Korea the third nation to have nuclear weapons targeted at the United States, after Russia and China.

Many in the Obama administration see that as a more frightening prospect than Iran gaining nuclear weapons, believing that Tehran is a rational actor that will serve its own national interest and preserve the regime, compared to successive generations of North Korean leaders who have shown that they are unpredictable and erratic.

But would it force the U.S. to conduct face-to-face talks with the North? State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in December that the North has a better option.

Referring to Kim Jong Un, Nuland said: "He can plot a way forward that ends the isolation, that brings relief and a different way of life and progress to his people, or he can further isolate them with steps like this. He can spend his time and his money shooting off missiles, or he can feed his people, but he can't have both."

NBC News' Shawna Thomas contributed to this report; this piece is an updated version of a post originally published on Dec. 13, 2012.

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In post-Newtown America, those with power say they must act to prevent another massacre of innocents.

The Obama administration wants stiffer gun control, and $150 million to help schools hire up to 1,000 more on-campus police or counselors, or purchase security technology. State legislators are considering shifting millions of dollars around to help schools hire more police. Some locals aren’t waiting: The 5,500-resident town of Jordan, Minn., has moved its entire eight-officer police force into schools.

“The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun,” National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said after a young man shot his way into his former grammar school on Dec. 14 in Newtown, Conn., and killed 20 first-graders and six educators.

With the new year, the NRA has been flexing its political muscle, lobbying states not just to hire more school police — under the group’s National School Shield project — but also to pass laws allowing teachers or other staff to bring licensed guns to school to defend their students and themselves. 

After Newtown, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, was an early supporter of federal aid to hire more school police.“If a school district wants to have a community policing presence, I think it’s very important they have it,” Boxer told the Washington Post.

Beyond the headlines, though, the push for more cops or other armed security personnel in schools is running headlong into another movement that’s been quietly growing in states as diverse as Mississippi, New York, Utah, Texas and California.

It’s a push to get police out of schools, or at least to end their involvement in routine discipline matters that principals and parents used to address without involvement from law enforcement officers. 

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Civil-rights groups and juvenile court judges — and even some officials within the Obama administration — argue that because the ranks of police began growing in schools in the late 1990s, the criminal justice system’s  involvement in student discipline has gotten entirely out of hand in some communities. That has put students, especially ethnic minorities, on a path to failure, they say — the so-called school-to-prison pipeline. 

In Los Angeles, for example, scores of students, most Latino or black and many just 11 or 12 years old, have been ticketed by school officers for minor infractions often categorized as disturbing the peace. In Austin, Texas, a 12-year-old was forced to court for spraying on perfume in class. In DeSoto County, Miss. officers and a school district were sued after a bus surveillance video — seen in part by a reporter — revealed officers unjustifiably arresting black students, the suit alleged, and threatening others with a “a bullet between the eyes.”

Optimists — Education Secretary Arne Duncan among them — say cops in schools are not an either/or proposition: Careful training, they say, will ensure that school police deployed in the wake of Newtown protect, rather than intimidate, students. 

But many civil-rights advocates are worried. They say plenty of cities and states are only beginning to come to grips with allegations that schools, and school-based police, have unjustifiably sent students into the criminal-justice system.

A push for security
Police presence in schools has been growing for years. The number of full-time city police officers assigned to schools increased nearly 40 percent from 1997 to 2007, according to the U.S. Justice Department. One infamous incident fueling that rise was the 1999 massacre of 12 students and a teacher by two students at Columbine High School in suburban Denver.  

After Newtown, though, an intense new round of calls for more cops in schools has echoed through small towns and big cities nationwide.

The state legislative delegation of Broward County, Fla., for example, quickly approved a proposal in January — it must now be approved by state legislators — that could allow increases in property taxes in Broward to pay for more school police, at an annual cost of up to $130,000 per officer.

The National Conference of State Legislatures, a nonpartisan research group, told the Center for Public Integrity that in February it began tracking a flurry of school-security legislation in more than 20 states.

Since January, two school-security bills in Mississippi, publicly backed by NRA representatives, have been moving fast through the Statehouse.

One bill would set up a $7.5 million school-security fund to offer Mississippi schools $10,000 matching grants to hire police. The other bill, which Mississippi’s House of Representatives approved  Feb. 13, would allow districts to designate teachers or other school staff to act as a secret defense force in the event of an attack. Volunteers would take their own licensed, concealed weapons to school. The House rejected a proposal to require psychological evaluations of those designated by districts.

Alabama legislators are considering creating a lottery to pay for a $20 million plan to put police officers in every school. Indiana lawmakers are weighing a proposal to set aside $10 million to offer grants to schools to hire local police to post in schools. States where legislators have introduced proposals to allow designated teachers or other school staff to be armed include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Oklahoma and South Carolina. Texas and Utah already allow licensed gun owners to take weapons onto campuses under certain circumstances. Legislators in those states are discussing ideas for supporting school staff who want to have weapons at school for defense.

The NRA isn’t alone in trying to influence the debate. The Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers, or NASRO, is pushing for more law enforcement in schools. NASRO opposes arming teachers. 

Stung by criticism of resource officers, the nonprofit NASRO vigorously disputes the idea that a school-to-prison pipeline is pervasive. In “To Protect and Educate,” a report issued last October, NASRO said: “Attacks against the school resource officer are superficial and polemical.”

On a Facebook page, NASRO has posted multiple news reports about school resource officers foiling violent acts by students.

Kevin Quinn, president of NASRO, said in an interview that NASRO regards cases of abuses by school police to be isolated. “The No. 1 way to combat that is training,” said Quinn, a school resource officer in the Phoenix area.

Quinn agreed with civil rights advocates that some school districts have become too reliant on police to enforce discipline. Over the last decade, more schools have adopted “zero tolerance” polices, not just for guns or other weapons or drugs, but for behavior that’s seen as disorderly or defiant.

“The problem,” Quinn said, “is the school at times says, ‘Oh, we’ve got a cop. Let him take care of things.’”

Out of hand?
Chief Juvenile Court Judge Steven Teske, of Clayton County, Ga., is not against police in schools, but firmly believes that a school-to-prison pipeline exists.

When Teske took the bench in 1999 in his Atlanta suburb, which is 66 percent black, one-third of the cases in his court were kids referred from schools. By 2004, he said, 92 percent of the 1,400 cases in his court came from schools, mostly for alleged disruption and disorderly conduct.

Lt. Francisco Romero, Clayton’s school resource officer at the time, told the Center for Public Integrity that he was disturbed to discover that one year he arrested more people — students — than any other officer in Clayton.

Fed up, Teske called together school and police leaders and hammered out a protocol requiring counseling and clear warnings before students were sent to court. Teske credits the protocol with improving relationships between students and police, and driving down juvenile felonies by 51 percent and increasing graduation rates by 24 percent.

“If police are placed on campus without written protocols defining their role, the results will be disastrous — just as removing existing police from campus can have unintended consequences,” Teske wrote in the publication Youth Today after the Newtown killings.

Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project, a national civil-rights group urging discipline reforms, said that after the 1999 Columbine shootings, police citations of students in the city of Denver skyrocketed. Student referrals to police increased by 71 percent between 2000 and 2004. Only 7 percent of referrals to law enforcement from Denver’s schools, whose students are mostly nonwhite, were for serious offenses such as carrying a weapon.

In February, Denver school and police officials signed an agreement that obliges school police to “de-escalate” conflicts, attend training sessions on child psychology and embrace “restorative justice,” which requires students to sit down and resolve problems outside the criminal court system.

Dianis, whose group collaborated on the Denver agreement, hopes Denver’s decision influences other jurisdictions as they weigh putting more police in schools.

In Los Angeles — home to the country’s largest school police force — school leaders, judges, police and civil-rights activists have been holding a series of meetings to work toward a protocol for student citations and arrests.

The Center for Public Integrity analyzed Los Angeles Unified School District Police records and found that from 2009 through 2011, officers issued about 10,000 tickets a year to students, mostly in low-income neighborhoods.

More than 40 percent of citations, the Center also found, went to students 14 or younger in schools that parents said were more heavily policed. Juvenile court judges complained about a parade of children in court for infractions better dealt with at school.

Reconciling such findings with current security concerns is difficult, concedes Dennis Parker, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Program. Parker said it sounds “callous” to protest placing more police in schools after Newtown, a town that immediately after the December massacre assigned officers to guard schools.

But one of the ACLU’s high-profile lawsuits involving schools right now accuses New York City police — whose ranks have grown in schools by 73 percent since 1998 — of violating students’ rights by using excessive force, handcuffing and arrests in response to infractions such as drawing on a desk.

“It’s very likely that officers dealing with children in Newtown will deal with them differently than children in Harlem,” Parker said. “It is likely to be more of an ‘Officer Joe, your friend,’ who is there than someone who tells you to stand up against a wall and spread your legs.”

New York City police administrators insist that officers have lowered crime in schools and say that the ACLU “talks about arrests in schools but, conveniently, not crimes.” 

On Dec. 13, the day before the Newtown killings, Parker’s Racial Justice Program filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of ethnic-minority students allegedly rounded up by police in December 2010 at West High School in Salt Lake City.

The school district and the Salt Lake City police said they could not comment, because of a policy not to discuss pending litigation. 

The ACLU suit alleges that plaintiff Kevin Winston’s son, Kaleb, was 14 when two plainclothes officers ushered the student, who is half-black, into a room and falsely accused him of gang membership and graffiti, or “tagging.”

An officer allegedly grabbed Kaleb’s arm, told him, “Quit acting tough,” and searched his backpack. The suit claims that officers forced Kaleb, who has no juvenile record, to pose for a photo — to put in a gang database — holding a sign with his name and the word “tagger” on it.

After he was released, the lawsuit alleges, Kaleb was shaken, called his parents and asked to go home. The suit alleges that when Lisa Winston, his mother, protested what had happened officers told her the sweep was done because of “a problem with the Mexicans.”

On March 1, the Salt Lake defendants filed a court document admitting that police had entered the school and questioned students. But in the documents, they denied the officers "acted unconstitutionally" or were targeting “Mexicans.”

In February, a similar suit filed by the ACLU of Southern California in 2011 was partially settled on behalf of 56 students at Hoover High School in Glendale, Calif., near Los Angeles. The agreement does not contain an admission of wrongdoing, the Associated Press reported. 

The suit said that school administrators and Glendale police interrogated Latino and other minority students, and made them pose for mock mug shots.

Glendale police Sgt. Thomas Lorenz told the AP that the actions were an attempt to educate students on the peril of gangs. He denied that officers’ methods amounted to racial profiling.

“I’ve never been in trouble, and it was confusing, terrifying and humiliating,” Ashley Flores, who was 16 when the incident happened.

The settlement requires Glendale police and school officials to notify parents if students are to be questioned on campus. To ensure that officers uphold students’ rights, they will be trained to avoid racial profiling.

Walking the line
Michael Nash, presiding juvenile court judge in Los Angeles County, said in an interview that it’s hard to argue against placing police in schools — if they stay out of discipline matters.

As president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, Nash sent a strongly worded letter to the Obama administration on Jan. 15, responding to the administration’s call for ideas on school safety.

“Research shows that aggressive security measures produce alienation and mistrust among students, which, in turn, can disrupt the learning environment,” the letter said. “Such restrictive environments may actually lead to violence, thus jeopardizing, instead of promoting, school safety.”

A student’s odds of dropping out of high school quadruple with a first-time court appearance, Nash wrote. Last summer, the judges’ council began a national campaign “to support school engagement and reduce school expulsion.” Putting more armed personnel into schools, Nash said, could prove “counterproductive” to this effort. 

On Jan. 16, the White House announced it would seek congressional authorization for a $385 million school violence prevention package for fiscal year 2014.

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the president’s proposals would go to appropriate committees. A Washington Post poll in January suggested that the recommendation for hiring more school police would face little opposition. The poll found that 55 percent of the public would even support a law to put an armed guard in every school.

A centerpiece of the White House proposal is the request for $150 million to help schools hire up to 1,000 new police. But in nod to concerns like Nash’s, schools could also use grants to hire counselors and school psychologists.

The administration also proposes $50 million to help 8,000 schools create safer and more “nurturing” atmospheres at schools. Another $25 million would be used to help schools struggling with “pervasive violence,” and $30 million would be for one-time grants for states to help schools develop emergency plans.

A total of $130 million would be for helping schools adopt conflict-resolution programs and improving early detection of student mental health problems.

In a January media call, Education secretary Duncan was asked to respond to concerns that more police would lead to misguided crackdowns on students.

“There’s no reason why additional school resources have to drive up the schoolhouse-to-jailhouse pipeline,” Duncan said. “Execution is really important — taking time train people in a really thoughtful way.” The Department of Justice, he said, will be in on that training.

Duncan is no stranger to controversy over school discipline.

Between 2009 and 2012, the Department of Education launched more than 20 investigations into allegations in school districts that minority students were punished more harshly than white pupils for the same violations of school rules. Duncan’s department aims to amicably reach agreements with districts to change discipline practices. Last year, the department also released an unprecedented analysis of national school data showing that black students, 18 percent of the sample, represented 42 percent of students referred to law enforcement.

These issues have been aired in two Congressional hearings since December.  

In a February appearance before the House Education and the Workforce Committee, NASRO’s executive director, Mo Canady said the role of school resource officers is as “a trusted adult that a student can come to for information, for guidance.” He also said officers should leave “formal discipline” to educators.

Searching for balance
In Texas, police involvement in routine school discipline is a hot topic.

On Feb. 20, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the National Youth Law Center filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The complaint is based on citation records showing that black students in the Bryan Independent School District, 100 miles north of Houston, are given municipal court summonses in numbers far greater than the proportion of school enrollment they represent. 

Black students represent almost 22 percent of the 15,500-pupil Bryan district but were given more than half of all Class C misdemeanor tickets issued to students for “disruption of class” and “disorderly conduct,” according to the complaint. The complaint also says that staff of Texas Appleseed, a public-interest law group, observed Bryan students in court, including a 13-year-old whose teacher overheard him use profanity before class started and sent him to the principal, who, in turn, asked an officer to issue a ticket.

In a statement, the Bryan district said it would welcome “a dialogue” with federal education investigators. The citation numbers alleged in the complaint “were certainly no surprise to us, and we have been proactive in taking measures to address the issue,” the district said. “We hope the measures we are taking to support our minority students will result in a more positive outcome.”

Texas state Democratic Sen. John Whitmire, chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee, says it’s time to stop these tickets, which can cost families hundreds of dollars and end up creating a criminal record for the student.

He said legislators will have to search for a balance between security and smart use of school police. The Houston Democrat hopes to pass a bill this year to stop ticketing for basic misbehavior, and require alternatives for students before schools send them to court.

It used to be a “comforting” to see a police officer at school, Whitmire said. Then cash-strapped schools shed counselors, police stepped in as enforcers, and Texas courts, he said, began to expect revenue from student tickets.

“These police departments have grown and grown, and they have to justify their budgets,” Whitmire added. “They’ve even asked for legislation to be able to go (do enforcement) outside schools.”

But in response to Newtown, Whitmire is co-sponsoring another proposal with state Sen. Tommy Williams, a Republican from The Woodlands, to allow districts to try to raise taxes or other revenue to hire more school police or buy security technology.

He’d prefer adding police to arming teachers, Whitmire said, but he’ll “make damn sure,” he said, that more police doesn’t lead to more tickets. 

Mississippi state Democratic Rep. John Hines Sr. is concerned about safety, too. But he’s also trying to get fellow legislators more interested in allegations of a school-to-prison pipeline in his state.

In January, Hines, who chairs the House Youth and Family Affairs Committee, held a state public hearing to discuss the “Handcuffs on Success” report issued that month by the Advancement Project, the ACLU of Mississippi, the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP and the Mississippi Coalition for the Prevention of Schoolhouse to Jailhouse.

The report notes that the Jackson Public Schools District was sued in 2011 in connection to allegations that its students were handcuffed to railings for dress-code violations or refusing to do their schoolwork. Without admitting wrongdoing, the district settled the suit last May with an agreement to stop handcuffing children younger than 13, and to only handcuff older students when they are accused of a crime. A review of Jackson police records shows, according to “Handcuffs on Success,” that 96 percent of student arrests at schools in 2010-11 were for misdemeanors, most for disorderly conduct. Only 4 percent were for suspected felonies.

Hines said he’s also troubled by a lawsuit the U.S. Department of Justice filed last October against Meridian, Miss, alleging that students there “are regularly and repeatedly handcuffed and arrested in school and incarcerated for days at a time without a probable cause hearing.” 

“I want kids safe,” Hines said. “I don’t want people coming off the street or an enraged child shooting people. But I don’t want lots of people all strapped up with guns at our schools either.”

The Meridian Public School District is among the defendants in the DOJ suit, which was filed against the city, the county of Lauderdale and judicial officials as well as the state of Mississippi. School Superintendent Alvin Taylor has said he's working cooperatively with federal investigators but has declined to elaborate. 

In its lawsuit, the Department of Justice noted that Meridian officials sent a letter in September, before the lawsuit was filed, claiming that allegations of violations were "moot" because the city had changed how police officers were to respond to requests from schools for assistance in dealing with a student. The Department of Justice's lawsuit asserts that such changes are not a "permanent" remedy to the allegations of violations of student rights.  

Also in Mississippi, police officers, the school district and employees named in a lawsuit triggered by the bus surveillance video showing officers arresting and threatening black students either denied wrongdoing or knowledge of some of the alleged events. By August the defendants had reached an undisclosed settlement with the plaintiffs, who were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Republican Lester “Bubba” Carpenter, who also serves in Mississippi’s House, is sponsoring the proposal to allow districts to designate teachers or employees as a secret “marshals” with permission to bring their own licensed, concealed weapons to school.

Mississippi is a “pretty poor state,” Carpenter said, so the idea is cost-effective. He’s not worried that teachers will panic and shoot in haste. 

“I think they’re smart enough individuals,” Carpenter said. “We trust them with our children every day.”

But Carpenter also supports the proposal to set aside $7.5 million so that schools can apply for $10,000 matching grants to hire police officers. 

“I’ll vote for both of them,” Carpenter said of the proposals. “You can’t get enough security at schools.”

Carpenter said he wasn’t that familiar with the allegations of police excesses alleged in the ACLU and U.S Justice Department lawsuits, or the “Handcuffs on Success” report.

“You’re always going to have a bad apple,” he said.  

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, independent investigative news outlet. For more of its stories on this topic go to publicintegrity.org.

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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.

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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.

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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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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.

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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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• New details emerge on private lives of school gunman and his mother
• Mom of suspected school shooter, first to die, was avid gun enthusiast
• Rossen Reports: Furniture, TV tipovers threaten children
• North Korean progress on nuclear arms, missiles rattles US, allies
• How outside money was poured into governors' races
• Dental chain accused of hurting kids, bilking taxpayers
• American contractor's jailing in Cuba 'arbitrary,' UN panel finds
• 'Jane's' jihad: Confession jail and unwavering faith

 

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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.”

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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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North Korea does not appear to be making preparations for a nuclear weapons test following Tuesday’s test of a space launch vehicle, which was believed to be cover for a long-range missile test, U.S. intelligence analysts told NBC News.

South Korean and Japanese officials had feared that a nuclear weapons test — its third after previous detonations in in October 2006 and May 2009 — would quickly follow the launch.

But word that the North isn’t thought to be preparing for a test is providing little solace for Seoul or Tokyo, mainly because recent intelligence suggests that the North has made significant advances in its nuclear weapons program.

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According to a recent analysis, North Korea has a weapon stockpile that could threaten both countries and, in longer term, the United States. Some of the weapons have already been deployed, say U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. Moreover, the North has begun research into more advanced and dangerous weapons, possibly even thermonuclear weapons, they say.  

 

At the high end of the stockpile range, U.S. officials and other researchers said North Korea may already have up to "a few dozen" nuclear weapons that could be fitted atop its vast fleet of ballistic missiles. Those missiles are limited to an intermediate range, capable of hitting targets in Japan, South Korea or elsewhere in the northern Pacific, including U.S. military bases as far south as Guam, the officials believe.

'Highly provocative'
The U.S. believes the space launch test is part of a development plan for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the continental United States with a payload of several hundred kilotons — 10 to 20 times the size of the bombs that destroyed the Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland hinted about that Wednesday, calling the launch "highly provocative" and a "threat" to regional security. The U.S. is "concerned that all of this launching is about a weapons program and is not about peaceful uses of space," she added.

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For the past several years, the U.S. also has been monitoring North Korean research into thermonuclear weapons — hydrogen bombs and bombs known as boosted fission weapons, in which plutonium and uranium are combined for a higher energy yield. (The problem is that if the North conducted a test and claimed that it was thermonuclear, the U.S. would have difficulty determining if the North was telling the truth. The test site at Kilchu is far enough inland that the U.S. would not have access to the particulate matter needed to make an accurate determination, experts say. )

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, or ISIS, a nonpartisan nuclear arms research group, said earlier this year that any tests in the future may also be about ensuring the reliability of North Korea's current weapons design.

"Once you get beyond a dozen, it makes sense to test type and reliability of your weapons," he said. Albright said then that his group's estimate of North Korea's weapons stockpile is a bit less than those provided by the U.S. officials, but that ISIS, too, believes Pyongyang has "missile-deliverable weapons."

The design of the weapons is believed to be based on Chinese models (as were the first generation Pakistani nuclear weapons). The design is basic, and was developed in the 1960s with help from the Soviet Union, which used it to produce a whole line of nuclear warheads.

ANALYSIS: 'Spoiled child' North Korea snubs key ally China with rocket test

While some analysts suggest that the North is using its space rocket launch to gain attention ahead of next week’s presidential election in South Korea -- and possibly to force talks with the U.S. — some in the U.S. non-proliferation community think otherwise. They expect that once the North feels comfortable with its ICBM technology, it will deploy the missiles.  They point to the Musudan intermediate range missile which was tested in middle of the last decade, then deployed — presumably with nuclear warheads — and aimed at Japan. 

Once the North has confidence in the long-range missile based on the space rocket, U.S. officials believe they will deploy it as well, making North Korea the third nation to have nuclear weapons targeted at the United States, after Russia and China.

Many in the Obama administration see that as a more frightening prospect than Iran gaining nuclear weapons, believing that Tehran is a rational actor that will serve its own national interest and preserve the regime, compared to successive generations of North Korean leaders who have shown that they are unpredictable and erratic.

But would it force the U.S. turn to conduct face-to-face talks with the North? Nuland said Wednesday that the North has a better option.

Speaking of the North’s 27-year-old leader Kim Jong Un, Nuland said: "He can plot a way forward that ends the isolation, that brings relief and a different way of life and progress to his people, or he can further isolate them with steps like this. He can spend his time and his money shooting off missiles, or he can feed his people, but he can't have both."

Robert Windrem is a senior investigative producer for NBC News.

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By Pete Williams, NBC News chief justice correspondent

The assault rifle used in the deadly shooting at a Nevada IHOP restaurant came from a Chinese company whose weapons imports have been banned since 1994, authorities say, but it’s unclear how the gunman acquired the AK-47 rifle.

Law enforcement officials say the man who fired the shots Tuesday in Carson City, Eduardo Sencion, had three weapons: two AK-47-style rifles and a handgun.

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The officials say the actual shooting was committed with a Norinco Arms AK-47. Norinco, the Chinese company, is a global supplier of firearms and military weapons.

Since 1994, the United States has banned all imports of Norinco weapons into the United States (other than shotguns), but dealers were allowed to sell any stock they acquired before the import ban went into effect.

An attempt to trace where and how Sencion acquired the weapon has not come up with an answer. The dealer who originally sold the weapon has since gone out of business, which complicates the tracing effort.

Nevada IHOP shooter was 'gentle, kind man'

The gun could have been legally purchased. It could have been imported before the Norinco ban. The Clinton-era assault weapons ban applied to weapons like it, but the law expired in 2004. When Barack Obama first came into office, the administration suggested it would ask Congress to reimpose the ban, but that idea was quickly abandoned. 

Officials say Sencion had two other weapons with him, apparently in the van he drove to the restaurant — a handgun and a second AK-47. The other AK-47 was a Romarm Cugir, made by a Romanian weapons company. The handgun was a Colt .38 revolver.