There’s no sense in hiding it—gun control has been a divisive topic across the United States, and we’ve felt the aftershocks here in New York.

Before the sun set on 2012, The Nation’s George Zornick recounted the 16 mass killings in the United States that marked the calendar year and left 88 or more people dead. Concerns over the stringency of gun laws, the constitutional right to bear arms and policies regarding the mentally ill have shuffled to the spotlight after the Sandy Hook and Newtown tragedies in particular.

While some counties have fought Governor Andrew Cuomo’s NY SAFE Act—which limits magazines to seven rounds and demands the renewal of hand gun permits every five years—Brooklyn Democrat assemblyman Felix Ortiz introduced a bill to the New York State Assembly that would force gun owners to spend nearly $2,000 annually for $1 million worth of gun liability insurance, the Washington Times reports.

Several gun companies are already refusing to sell to New York State—to the police departments and government agencies, at least—as a stiff response to the state’s anti-gun stance, and both our Twitter feed and Facebook timeline are cluttered with folks angrily sharing the article about the $1 million insurance.

To the right is a useful image by the Christian Science Monitor that tracks a number of recent statistics regarding gun control, gun use and public opinion. It’s an easy diagram to reference and understand, so click on the photo if you want to zoom in on the image.

Ortiz’s proposed bill may fall on deaf ears and not make it beyond the Assembly’s Insurance Committee, but the bill and the ensuing furor remind us that gun control is an issue that won’t go lightly.

Where do you stand on the issue? Is targeting guns not even the appropriate response for addressing these mass murders?

(Header photo courtesy of Flickr / Vectorportal).