After Shootings, a Flood of Ideas and Proposals for Curbing Gun Violence

The flurry of proposals for responding to the massacre in Newtown, Conn., have come from all quarters: the White House, members of Congress, advocacy organizations, religious leaders, governors and state and county legislators.

Specifics are hard to come by in some cases. But taken together, the suggestions for legislative and executive action foreshadow a broad political debate about assault weapons, ammunition, violent video games, shoot-em-up movies, gun shows, mental health services, and permits for concealed firearms. Much of the national discussion this week has focused on a comprehensive approach, rather than just new gun controls.

Proposals to regulate, limit or evaluate the current state of affairs in all of those areas have quickly been brought forth in the days since the shooting that killed 20 young children and six adults, along with the gunman and his mother. Some proposals have received broad support, while others could prove divisive.

President Obama has now signaled that he supports a renewed effort to ban assault weapons and might back efforts to limit high-capacity ammunition clips for semiautomatic pistols and rifles. Jay Carney, Mr. Obama's spokesman, said that the president also was “actively supportive” of closing the gun-show loophole tha t allows the purchase of guns without background checks.

“And there are other elements of gun law, gun legislation that he could support,” Mr. Carney told reporters on Tuesday. “People have talked about high-capacity gun ammunition clips, for example, and that is something certainly that he would be interested in looking at.”

But Mr. Obama, who will announce on Wednesday that Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will head the administration's efforts to develop a response to the shootings, is just one of the newly revved-up sources of ideas for trying to prevent future mass killings.

Local, state and federal lawmakers from around the country are vowing to take action in the new year. In some cases, they have already proposed legislation that they say will make it less likely that someone will have the means to kill so many people at once.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, has said she will introduce an assault-weapon ban on “the first day” of the next Congress, and it will include limits on high-capacity ammunition clips as well.

“It will ban the sale, the transfer, the importation, and the possession” of assault weapons, she said on NBC's “Meet the Press” program on Sunday. “Not retroactively, but prospectively. It will ban the same for big clips, drums or strips of more than 10 bullets.”

Even the National Rifle Association, which had been largely silent since the attacks on Friday, issued a statement late Tuesday saying that it was “prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.”

In the statement, officials with the group did not say what those proposals would be, but said they would be holding a news conference on Friday.

Here are some of the other ideas that have been proposed:

- Improvements to behavioral health services. Gov. Jan Brewer, Repub lican of Arizona, questioned the need for new gun-control measures but said that improving “behavioral health services” and the mental health system could “address those issues before they get out of control.”

- Improved communication of mental health records to law enforcement. Records of people who are committed to mental institutions would be transferred in real time to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for use in background checks, under a proposal by John W. Hickenlooper, the state's Democratic governor.

- Strengthen the national background check system. A group of the countr y's mayors, including Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, proposed eliminating loopholes in the background check system in an open letter to Mr. Obama. Senator Richard J. Durban, Democrat of Illinois, also backs a proposal to make the background check system more robust.

- Increase penalties for straw purchases of guns. The mayors group includes this suggestion in its list of what it calls “reasonable changes” in gun laws and regulations.

- Require background c heck and $50 permit for ammunition purchases. State Senator Kevin de León, a Democratic lawmaker in California, said he would introduce legislation that would impose the requirements on people buying ammunition. It would also ban the sale of ammunition by mail.

- Arm teachers. Virginia's Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, urged people not to overreact in the wake of the shootings, but also said that the country should have a discussion about letting teachers have weapons in the schools. “If someone had been armed, there would have been an opportunity to stop the person from coming into the school,” he said.

- Develop a commission on video games and culture. Many people in the last several days have suggested a serious look at violent video games. Among those raising the issue is David Axelrod, one the president's top advisers. Mr. Axelrod said in an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday that he does not envision legislation or regulation, but that “there's no doubt that if you spend hours a day winning a game by killing as many people as you can, that has to have some impact.” Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, also want a commission to examine violent video games.

- Require a psychological evaluation to carry a concealed weapon. Several state lawmakers in Wisconsin proposed that people who want to carry a concealed weapon in the state would have to undergo training that would include a psychological evaluation.

- Ban hollow-point bullets. The Wisconsin lawmakers, who all come from Milwaukee, also suggested bans on what they called “high-velocity, maximum-damage bullets.

- Prevent people from buying more than one gun per month. Gov. Deval Patrick, Democrat of Massachusetts, urged lawmakers to approve his previously submitted legislation that would prevent people from buying more than one gun every month. Mr. McDonnell, Virginia's governor, signed legislation repealing his state's one-gun-a-month law earlier this year.

- Study mental health issues. Mr. Grassley called for a “blue ribbon task force” to investigate the wide range of issues surrounding the provision of mental health services and any connection to violent episodes like the one in Connecticut. “There must also be a serious and thoughtful discussion on mental health issues. And, I think you have to look at the culture of the United States which t ends to be less civil now than it has been for a long period of time,” he said on Fox News.

- Require identification when buying ammunition. In Florida, several Miami-Dade County commissioners proposed resolutions calling for gun-control measures to be adopted in the state and nationally, including one that would require people to present a driver's license or other identification to buy ammunition.

- Increase minimum penalties for committing felonies with assault weapons. The Miami-Dade commissioners also proposed increasing penalties for using banned weapons and said that privately owned guns should be registered.

- Ban high-capacity magazines. In addition to Ms. Feinstein, others have also said they want to ban high-capacity magazines. Among them is Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey. Mr. Lautenberg proposed legislation would outlaw magazines that carry dozens, or even 100, rounds of ammunition.

- Increase access to mental health services. Several religious groups have issued statements urging new laws or regulations, and some have been specific. B'nai B'rith International, a major Jewish organization, on Monday called for a new assault weapons ban. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs said in a petition that it wants, among other things, better access to quality mental health care.

Follow Michael D. Shear on Twitter at @shearm.

Obama Chosen as Time Magazine\'s Person of the Year

In a choice likely to surprise few, Time magazine has named the newly re-elected President Obama as its Person of the Year for building through his winning coalition a presidency that “spells the end of the Reagan realignment that had defined American politics for 30 years.”

“We are in the midst of historic cultural and demographic changes, and Obama is both the symbol and in some ways the architect of this new America,” wrote Time's editor, Rick Stengel, in the new issue. He concluded: “For finding and forging a new majority, for turning weakness into opportunity and for seeking, amid great adversity, to create a more perfect union, Barack Obama is Time's 2012 Person of the Year.”

Mr. Stengel noted also that Mr. Obama was the first Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win more than 50 percent of the vote in consecutive elections and the first president of either party since 1940 to win re-election with an unemployment rate above 7.5 percent.

“He has stitched together a winning coalition and perhaps a governing one as well,” Mr. Stengel wrote. But that theory is being tested even now, a month before Mr. Obama is to be sworn in for his second terms, on issues of the budget and gun control.

Right now the president is engaged in what has to be the final days of negotiations with Speaker John A. Boehner, the Republican House leader, toward a compromise deficit-reduction deal that could bring tax revenues and spending closer into alignment for decades to come - if they succeed - and could usher in a truce in the deficit wars that have divided the parties since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. Yet success is hardly assured, and given a looming year-end deadline, many people in both parties are predicting the two sides will retreat to some minimalist fallback, and continuing fighting next year.

Also on Wednesday morning, Mr. Obama is to make an announcement about the pr ocess that his administration will follow to devise policy responses to the kind of mass murders that occurred horrifically last Friday in Newtown, Conn. One of the exclusive photos in the magazine shows Mr. Obama attending his daughter Sasha's ballet rehearsal on Sunday but writing the speech he delivered to the Newtown community that night.

The cover photo portrait shows a pensive president in a sidelong view, the shot taken so close that every hard-earned crease in his face is clear and the gray hairs accentuated after four eventful, often stressful years in what has been called the hardest job on the planet.

In an interview, Mr. Obama told Time that, “2012 may have been more satisfying a win than 2008.”

“I think it was easy to think that maybe 2008 was the anomaly, and I think 2012 was an indication that, no, this is not an anomaly. We've gone through a very difficult time. The American people have rightly been frustrated at the pace of change, an d the economy is still struggling, and this president we elected is imperfect, and yet, despite all that, this is who we want to be. That's a good thing.”

Mr. Obama said his winning coalition reflected “the much-noted demographic shift in this society,” and that one of his points of pride of the first term is, “I think I've helped to solidify this incredibly rapid transformation in people's attitudes around L.G.B.T. issues - how we think about gays and lesbians and transgender persons.”

Though Mr. Obama presumably is just at his presidency's halfway point, he said of his legacy, “What I'd want people to say is that having come in at a time when our economy was on the brink of collapse, when we had gone through a decade in which middle-class families were doing worse and worse, and the ladders of opportunity into the middle class for people who were willing to work hard had begun to deteriorate; at a time when, internation ally, we were embroiled in two wars but our leadership around the world was being questioned, that we had steered this ship of state so that we once again had an economy that worked for everybody; that we had laid the foundation for broad-based prosperity; and that internationally we had created the framework for continued American leadership in the world throughout the 21st century.”

When asked why he keeps a diary, Mr. Obama turned to the example of Abraham Lincoln, another writer-president. He said that in his own life, like Mr. Lincoln's apparently, “writing has been an important exercise to clarify what I believe, what I see, what I care about, what my deepest values are.”

House Democrats Call on Boehner to Take Up Gun-Control Issue

Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesRepresentative Nancy Pelosi left a news conference about banning high-capacity ammunition clips with Representatives Bobby L. Rush, left, and Ron Barber, who was wounded in the same shooting as his former boss, Gabrielle Giffords.

House Democrats, coming out in force in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shooting massacre, called on House Speaker John A. Boehner to bring a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines to a vote by Saturday as a first step in a broader effort to rein in guns next year.

“What we need are not more words. We need action,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader.

Congressional Democrats are moving ahead of President Obama, who said Wednesday that he would submit broad new gun-control proposals to Congress no later than January. A raft of legislation has either already been introduced or is in the works, including a ban on high-capacity magazines, an assault weapons ban, tougher background checks, mandated background checks for purchasers at gun shows, and new rules to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill. Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, proposed a Save Our Schools bill that, among other things, would authorize Washington to reimburse state governments that use the National Guard to protect schools.

“This Christmas there will be unopened presents in Newtown,” Representative Carolyn McCarthy, Democrat of New York, said at an emotional news conference, backed by 30 other Democrats, including Ms. Pelosi and Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House.

Congressional Democrats have a powerful, emotional fuel behind their push to put gun control back on the national agenda: personal experience. Ms. McCarthy recounted the death of her husband at the hands of a gunman on the Long Island Rail Road, and her experience watching her son fight for life in an intensive care unit on Ch ristmas Day. Representative Ron Barber, Democrat of Arizona, who was shot by the gunman who gravely injured his predecessor, Gabrielle Giffords, recalled living through the 45 seconds it took for the gunman who shot him to fire 30 rounds, taking down 19 and killing 6.

Representative Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, denounced the fantasies of “testosterone-laden individuals” like Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, who have said the response to the massa cre in his state should be to arm more people. Such people, Mr.Himes said, “have blood on their hands.”

Representative Bobby L. Rush, Democrat of Illinois, told the story of his son, gunned down on the South Side of Chicago and pronounced dead with his family by his side. He told of the “primal scream” from his son's mother and sister when he died.

“I can't get that scream out of my consciousness,” he said.

Follow Jonathan Weisman on Twitter at @jonathanweisman.

I.R.S. Leader Says Inaction on Tax Will Affect Returns of Millions

The acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service said Wednesday that if Congress fails to act this year to prevent the alternative minimum tax from expanding, as many as 100 million households - of the 150 million total taxpayers - will be unable to file their taxes on time as the I.R.S. scrambles to reprogram its computers. Some 30 million tax-filers will see an unexpected tax hit.

In a letter to the chairmen and ranking members of Congress's tax-writing committees, the acting commissioner, Steven T. Miller, indicated that Congress's inaction would lead to chaos.

The alternative minimum tax was enacted in 1969 to make sure that rich households could not avoid taxation through the creative use of deductions, credits and loopholes, but because Congress failed to say that the threshold where the tax kicked in would rise with inflation, its reach has ex panded into the middle class. Each year, Congress has enacted temporary legislation raising that threshold for a year to prevent the A.M.T. from socking middle-class families.

But lawmakers have failed to do so this year.

I.R.S. computers now assume such a patch will be passed, but if nothing is done before Jan. 1, the agency will face a Herculean task of reprogramming its system.

“I want to reiterate that most taxpayers may not be able to file their 2012 tax returns until late in March 2013, or even later,” Mr. Miller wrote. “This situation would create two significant problems: Lengthy delays of tax refunds and unexpectedly higher taxes for many taxpayers, who will be unaware that they are newly subject to AMT liability.”

Mr. Miller had previously estimated that failure to act on the A.M.T. would keep 60 million taxpayers from filing their returns while I.R.S. computers were being reprogrammed.

“As we consider the impact of the curr ent policy uncertainty on the upcoming tax filing season, it is becoming apparent that an even larger number of taxpayers - 80 to 100 million of the 150 million total returns expected to be filed - may be unable to file,” he wrote Wednesday.

Both President Obama and Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio have proposed a permanent fix to the problem of “A.M.T. creep” in a “grand bargain” on deficit reduction, but the cost to the Treasury would be large. The speaker's “Plan B” tax legislation, scheduled for a vote Thursday, includes a permanent A.M.T. solution, and it is by far the most costly piece of the bill. Measured against doing nothing and allowing all expiring tax provisions to disappear, the House tax bill's A.M.T. fix would cost the Treasury $1.9 trillion over the next decade. In contrast, extending all the Bush-era income tax rates for incomes below $1 million would cost the Treasury $913 billion.

Mikulski to Take Top Job on Appropriations Committee

Senator Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland will become the first woman to head the Senate Appropriations Committee, after Senator Patrick D. Leahy of Vermont decided to pass up the chairman's job, their offices announced on Wednesday.

Ms. Mikulski, 76, said in a statement that it was “an honor and a privilege” to take the helm of the Appropriations Committee, a spot that opened up when Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii died on Monday. She said it was “especially gratifying to be the first woman to lead” the committee.

Ms. Mikulski is expected to win the approval of her Democratic colleagues to lead the committee, which has jurisdiction over the government's discretionary spending, in a vote on Thursday.

Her rise to the chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee reflects the growing influence of women in Congress. With the addition of Ms. Mikulski, women will lead 6 of the Senate's 20 committees. And record numbers of women will be part of the 113t h Congress - 81 in the House and 20 in the Senate.

Mr. Leahy's decision to pass up the chairmanship highlights another change: the diminished appeal of leading the panel. While Republicans' majority in the House has enabled them to pass several budgets, the divisions between the two parties in the Senate has prevented lawmakers from reaching a budget compromise. Instead over the past three years, the government has hobbled along on a series of short-term spending bills, known as continuing resolutions.

Mr. Leahy, 72, said in a statement that he would stay on as chairman of the Judiciary Committee while maintaining his seniority on the Appropriations Committee. The dual roles will “will allow me to protect both the Constitution and Vermont,” he said.

Mr. Leahy, the most senior s enator in the Democratic majority, was sworn in as president pro tempore on Tuesday, taking third place in the line of presidential succession. The position became vacant when Mr. Inouye died.

Both Sides Stand Firm on Details: You First

WASHINGTON - As part of a deal being negotiated by President Obama and Speaker John A. Boehner to avert the worst of the year-end tax increases and spending cuts, Social Security payments might be lower in the future for millions of Americans.

On Tuesday, Democrats and Republicans were examining a multitrillion-dollar deficit reduction package put forward by the president, though the two sides were trading barbed remarks and aides were emphasizing that nothing was final until the whole deal was done.

But the White House seemed willing to make a concession to Republicans with a switch in the formula that ensures that Social Security payments keep up with the pace of inflation - an idea that immediately proved unpopular with its liberal base.

“Any talk of shrinking the program to save money is flawed from the start because Social Security is not part of the national budget in the same way as military spending,” Representative Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona said in a statement. “It's paid for through a dedicated payroll tax separate from general budgeting.”

Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York was among many on the left who echoed that sentiment. “Everyone has a grandparent, a friend or a neighbor who relies on the Social Security benefits they earned to pay for medical care, food and housing,” he said in a statement. “A move towards chained Consumer Price Index would be a long-term benefit cut for every single person who receives a Social Security check.”

Democrats and Republicans are considering switching Social Security payment adjustments to a “chained” Consumer Price Index. The Consumer Price Index tracks the price of a basket of commonly purchased household goods. A chained index accounts for consumers' tendency to substitute similar items for one another as prices fluctuate. A consumer might buy more apples when the price of oranges increases, for instance.

Though it sounds like nothing more than a technical fix, adopting a chained index would squeeze benefits over time. The chained index ends up, in a given year, about 0.3 percentage points lower than the unchained index. That difference accumulates, so after five years, it might be 1.5 percentage points lower. Using a chained index would cut Social Security spending by about $112 billion over a decade, according to an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office.

AARP, the lobbying and research group for older Americans, immediately criticized the proposal. “We would rather see a broader discussion addressing retirement security,” said Debra Whitman, an executive vice president at AARP. “We object to the context in which it's being discussed, which is a few weeks before Christmas, without people understanding what the change really means.”

Because the payment reductions would accumulate over time, AARP and other groups argue that they would hit the oldest Americans disproportionately hard. They might also unduly burden women, who tend to live longer than men, and the lowest-income older people, who are most dependent on Social Security checks, the groups warned.

Some economists and policy experts have also argued that both the current and the chained indexes underestimate the inflation that older Americans experience. The government produces an experimental “elderly index,” for instance, that tries to capture the consumption habits of people over 62 more accurately than other measures. For instance, older people buy more health care and less education than the average family, so the elderly index puts more weight on the former and less on the latter.

In no small part because of spiraling health care costs, inflation as measured by the elderly index has grown faster than inflation as calculated by the standard index that Social Security uses. That implies that the purchasing power of Social Security payments linked to a chained index would erode more over time, given what older Americans buy.

Still, other economists and policy experts from across the political spectrum have argued that a chained index is a more accurate measure of the inflation that households actually experience, and therefore is a better policy tool. They note that the elderly index is still experimental, and that not just older people receive or spend Social Security payments.

“We know that the current measure of inflation is not adequately measuring experienced inflation, and we should hence go with the better measure,” said Christian E. Weller, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research group based in Washington, and the author of a plan to modernize Social Security.

Both liberals and conservatives have at times argued against making changes to Social Security outside the context of a broader overhaul. Many analysts - particularly Democrats - argue that Social Security does not contribute to long-term deficits because it has its own financing stream in payroll taxes. But it does have a long-term fiscal challenge, as payouts would eventually overwhelm its trust fund and revenues.

“Back when the system started, the demographics were really favorable,” said Andrew G. Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning research group in Washington. “You could provide decent benefits for the rich and poor alike at low cost. You can't do that anymore, mathematically. We could provide decent benefits for the rich and the poor by raising taxes a lot, but we need to raise taxes for other things.”

Mr. Biggs said Social Security changes that provided more ample benefits to vulnerable low-income older people and less to the well-off might prove to be a better path forward.

“We oppose chained C.P.I.,” Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, said in an interview. “But I think all of us are waiting to see the details in the final package, and we'll make our determination then.”

Correction: December 19, 2012
An earlier version of a caption in this post misstated Representative Raúl M. Grijalva's affiliation. He is not affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute.

An Undersea Grotto to Soothe Restless Children

The Tranquil Turtle's unique feature is the underwater effect it creates with tiny lights that revolve beneath its opaque shell.

It's a struggle faced by many bleary-eyed parents: getting their children to sleep at night. The Tranquil Turtle from Cloud B is here to lend a helping flipper by combining three sleep aids in one: a plush toy, a night light and a music box.

The turtle's unique feature is the underwater effect it creates with tiny lights that shine beneath its opaque shell. The lights revolve slowly, casting a shimmery, aquamarine scene across the ceiling.

The turtle also plays a tune or, for parents who p refer ambient sounds, the soft rumble of distant ocean waves.

To save battery power, the turtle shuts off automatically after 23 minutes. If your child wakes up after that, it's up to you to turn the turtle back on, because there is no option for continuous play. It would be nice if the turtle included a timer that could run for at least an hour or two, because children often wake up the moment their music shuts off.

On a recent trip to Boston to visit my brother, I tried out the turtle with my 3-year-old niece, whose nighttime routine typically includes 30 minutes of storytelling, followed by a similar amount of cajoling. The turtle's undersea light show provided a soothing distraction, while the soft music helped create a calming atmosphere.

The Tranquil Turtle lists for $55, but it can be found at retailers like Amazon.com and Bed, Bath and Beyond for around $40.

Polymers Make These Gloves Hot

Electrically heated gloves can save your fingers in extreme cold, but there are two challenges in making them. One is getting the heat evenly distributed. The other is preserving battery power so they stay hot as long you need.

The glove company Chaval claims to have solved those problems by using a polymer film instead of wires. The polymer delivers power specifically to the coldest spots to preserve battery power. The company claims the gloves will stay warm up to three times longer than conventional gloves that use electrical wires for heating elements and are set to a similar temperature.

The problem with conventional electric heating elements is they heat uniformly. That sounds good, but if part of your hand is exposed to wind â€" say you are on a snowmobile â€" one section of the glove can get cold, while the parts tucked around the grips and out of the wind get too warm. All the while, the gloves draw power steadily.

The polymer in the Chaval Response XRT gloves becomes denser when it gets cold. The denser it gets, the more conductive it gets. The more conductive spots then automatically draw more power and get hotter. That also lets the battery dole out power at a variable rate, which is more miserly than the consistent draw of conventional battery-powered gloves.

In a test, I wore the Chaval gloves while motorcycling in 40 degree weather. The warmth was more uneven than I would have liked. My fingertips were chilled while my knuckles were overheated. That may be in part to the way the glove pulls tight across the knuckles when gripping the handle bar. I got used to it. The company said it was looking into a design improvement that would provide more heat to the fingertips .

The gloves do seem to deliver on the extended battery life. I have ridden with the gloves twice, totaling more than two hours of saddle time, without recharging. In theory, I have about four more hours coming to me.

Though the gloves are a bit bulky, I could still operate turn signals and smaller controls with some effort. The gloves are constructed of weather-treated leather outers with a microfiber fleece liner. The power source is a built-in lithium ion-battery. You can send them back for new batteries (for a fee) when needed, usually after a few years.

The Response XRT gloves are available for $390 direct from Chaval online only.

Q&A: Tablet Typing on Real Keys

Q.

I have a Nexus 7 tablet. How do I use it with a wireless keyboard?

A.

Several companies make lightweight Bluetooth keyboards designed to travel with tablets and smartphones; the Gotta Be Mobile site has reviews of several of them if you want to get an idea of what is available. Once you find a model you like, you just need to pair it up with the Nexus 7 so the tablet accepts input from the external keyboard.

When you have your keyboard, turn it on and make sure it has fresh batteries or a full charge. On the Nexus 7 running Android 4.1 and later, go to the Settings area from the Home screen. On the Setting screen, tap “Wireless & networks” and turn on the tablet's Bluetooth radio.

In the Bluetooth settings area, you should see a list of compatible Bluetooth devices within range of the Nexus 7. Tap the name of the keyboard and follow the instructions on the tablet screen. You may be asked to enter a passcode to link the tablet with the keyboard; check the keyboard's manual for the code if needed.

Once you have paired the devices, you should be able to use the keyboard for typing in Android apps that accept text input. Google has additional information on pairing Bluetooth devices on its site.

Tip of the Week: Clean Up Your Web Mail Address Book

Got a bunch of duplicate entries in the address book of your Web-based mail service, especially for people who use more than one e-mail address? Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail all include tools that let you weed out or merge the dupes.

To merge duplicate contacts in Gmail, log into your account on the Web and open the Gmail contact manager by clicking on the arrow next to Gmail on the left side and selecting Contacts. Click the More drop-down menu and select the “Find and merge duplicates” option. After you check to make sure the duplicates really are duplicates, click the Merge button at the top. Google has more information - including steps for manually merging selected contacts - on its site.

Yahoo Mail can also merge duplicates on the contact list. Click the Contacts tab, click the Actions menu and select “Fix Duplicates” from the menu. Yahoo rounds up the double entries and presents a list of names. You can choose to merge all exact duplicates, or e dit ones that are slightly different into one entry. Yahoo has more details in its own Help pages.

You can weed out dupes in Microsoft's Hotmail too. When logged into Hotmail, click the link for the Contacts list. Under the Manage menu on the Contacts screen, choose Clean Up Contacts. After a box pops up to explain how duplicate contacts are made, click the “Clean up duplicate contacts button” to have Hotmail find and pair up duplicate entries. If you are using Microsoft's newer Outlook.com service, click the arrow next to Outlook in the top left corner, click the People icon and then click the Manage menu to get to the “Clean up contacts” command.” Microsoft has more on managing contacts here.

Q&A: Finding a Specific Font

Q.

Is there a way to find out the name of a certain typeface used in a logo on a Web page?

A.

If you can download a sample of the logo or take a screen shot of the typeface on the page, you can upload it to a site that specializes in font identification. The MyFonts.com WhatTheFont page is once such site.

If you have no luck there, try uploading the type sample and asking human experts in the forums at Typofile or The Font Shop. If you cannot upload a sample, working through the identification questions at Identifont might also lead you to the font you seek.

The Early Word: Guns

Today's Times

• The first concrete responses to the massacre in Newtown, Conn., began to take shape on Tuesday, Adam Nagourney reports. State leaders proposed measures to curb gun violence, corporations distanced themselves from the shootings and the White House pointed to gun control measures that President Obama would champion in the months ahead.

• The deaths of the Connecticut schoolchildren have upended standard political calculations for Mr. Obama and presented a choice that goes to the heart of his approach to governance, Peter Baker writes. With the election over, the president's core supporters believe that this is a moment that will define his second term.

• With Chuck Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, emerging as a front-runner to be the president's next secretary of defense, critics are taking aim at his record on Israel, saying some of his comments have drawn the ire of Jewish leaders, Mark Landler reports.

• Republican leaders in the House struggled to persuade their caucus to rally around Speaker John A. Boehner's “Plan B,” a proposal that would allow tax rates to rise only on incomes over $1 million and leave in place spending cuts to military and domestic programs, Jonathan Weisman reports. Representative John Fleming, a conservative Republican from Louisiana, dismissed the speaker's plan as a poi ntless “messaging exercise.”

Around the Web

• Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, was sworn in as president pro tempore of the Senate. The appointment makes him the third in line of succession to the presidency, Politico reports.

• It is now up to Mr. Obama whether former presidents George Bush and George W. Bush get a United States courthouse named after them, The Washington Post reports.

Happenings in Washington

• Mr. Obama will deliver remarks at the diplomatic corps holiday reception at the State Department.

 

Biden to Lead Administration Effort to Develop Response to Shootings

President Obama has ordered Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to lead an interagency group to develop a multifaceted response to last week's mass shooting at a Connecticut school, a White House official said.

Mr. Obama will appear in the White House briefing room alongside Mr. Biden on Wednesday morning to announce the assignment but an aide said they will not announce any major policy decisions. Instead, the aide said the president will lay out a process for developing new policies.

The president promised during a speech at a memorial service in Newtown, Conn., on Sunday to “use whatever power this office holds” to prevent more tragedies like the one in which a gunman killed 27 people last Friday, including 20 children. He offered no specific prescriptions; aides have since said that he is looking at tighter gun regulations including a ban on assault weapons and possibly on high-capacity ammunition clips.

But they said he also wants to examine other factors, including the mental health system, education and possibly cultural dynamics, not just gun legislation. “He wants to expand the conversation beyond those specific areas of legislation to look at other ways we can address this problem,” Jay Carney, the White House press sec retary, said on Tuesday.

As a senator, Mr. Biden was one of the leading advocates of crime legislation in 1994 that included a ban on assault weapons. The ban generated a furious backlash among gun rights advocates who helped bring down the Democratic Congress in midterm elections later that year. The ban then expired in 2004 with barely a protest as Democrats remained skittish about the issue.

While Mr. Biden has often boasted of his role in passing the original assault weapon ban, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, recalled that he was initially skeptical that it was even possible when she tried to attach it to his crime bill back in the ear ly 1990s.

“When I told Joe Biden, who was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, that I was going to move this as an amendment on the crime bill, he laughed at me,” she recalled on NBC's “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “He said, ‘You're new here. Wait till you learn.'” In the end, she passed the bill despite Mr. Biden's doubts and it was signed by President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Obama met Monday with Mr. Biden and three cabinet officials, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., Arne Duncan, the education secretary, and Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, to discuss possible responses to the Newtown killings.

White House officials have cautioned against expecting immediate action, saying it may take weeks to develop a plan. Rather than trickle out a series of small proposals, the officials said they were leaning toward putting together a holistic approach that would address multiple factors involved in mass shootings.

Follow Peter Baker on Twitter at @pete rbakernyt.