Hundreds of guns are being swapped for gift cards in Phoenix, where two anonymous donors have given $100,000 apiece to help fund what some say may be the city’s last series of gun buybacks.

It’s the third buyback the city has held in May, racing to take unwanted guns off the hands of residents before a new state law goes into effect that would require police to resell any lost, forfeited or abandoned firearms they receive.

“Recently I received a phone call from an individual who was motivated by the success of the Phoenix gun buyback program,” city Mayor Greg Stanton said on Tuesday. “That donor has made a donation also in the amount of $100,000.”

“These are people that are motivated by Newtown that wanted to do something positive for the community,” Stanton said of the anonymous donors, referring to the December shooting that left 26 people, most of them children, dead in a Connecticut elementary school.

Residents who want to get rid of their guns are asked to bring unloaded firearms to one of three neighborhood churches on Saturday, according to the Phoenix Police Department. Handguns, shotguns and rifles can be exchanged for a $100 grocery store gift card. Assault weapons get a $200 gift card.

The buybacks were organized in conjunction with Arizonans for Gun Safety and the Phoenix Police Department. Police say they collected 803 guns on the first weekend, and bought back 176 more a week later before running out of money.

That first round of buybacks held on May 5 also was funded by an anonymous donation to Arizonans for Gun Safety.

“That first day that we did it was unbelievably successful, we almost exhausted our gift cards on the first day,” city police spokesman Sgt. Steve Martos told NBC News.

While critics have said the buybacks will do little to reduce gun crimes in the city, the mayor has said the program is intended to be just one step toward preventing violence on Phoenix’s streets.

“I respect the Second Amendment,” Stanton said when he announced the buybacks in his State of the City address in February. “This buyback will take steps to make Phoenix safer without curtailing the rights of responsible gun owners.”

Guns collected will be assessed for historical value and to determine whether they were lost or stolen, according to Phoenix police. After that, the guns will be turned over to a company that melts them down, said Martos.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, signed the law in April requiring police to resell any firearms they collect to a federally licensed firearms dealer. That law will go into effect 90 days after the current legislative session ends, Martos said, and would make it “counterproductive” for the city to carry out buybacks in the future.

“The whole intent is to take unwanted guns off the street, process them, and then ultimately destroy them,” Martos said.

The law was supported by pro-gun groups.

The National Rifle Association said in a letter to Brewer before the bill was signed that reselling seized guns “would maintain their value, and their sale to the public would help recover public funds,” the Associated Press reported.

“However, this measure would ensure that taxpayer resources are not utilized to pursue a political agenda of destroying firearms,” the NRA’s Brent Gardner said in the letter supporting the bill, according to the AP.

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By Omar Villafranca, NBCDFW.com

Mix Governor Rick Perry, a Ted Nugent song, a military style rifle and an egg exploding during target practice, and you get the most talked about introduction video at this week’s National Rifle Association meeting in Houston.

The short video played just before Perry took the stage to a welcome applause from the crowd. It shows Perry taking aim at an egg from about 100 yards out with a LaRue Tactical rifle, which is made by a company that recently opened up shop in Texas. The video then shows Perry hitting metal targets like a marksman. 

For more, visit NBCDFW.com

The video got quite a reaction online, and not all of it was good. The responses on Twitter ranged from folks saying Perry’s video did nothing but “promote and excite the already gun-thirsty and violent society” to others saying “I love Rick Perry! He should be President...great guy.” 

Several media outlets, from the Washington Examiner to the Huffington Post splashed the video on their websites. Some political pundits accused Perry of shooting the same type of weapon used in the Newtown, Conn. school shooting -- an AR-15. 

Perry's office said he was shooting a LaRue PredatOBR 7.62. Tom Mannewitz with Target Master Indoor Shooting center, a Garland gun shop and range, said the gun looks like an AR-15 and has the same frame, but is different and shoots a different caliber bullet. You can see the YouTube video of Perry below.

In a fiery speech Saturday before cheering supporters, the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre took on advocates for new gun laws and said a national background check bill “got the defeat that it deserved."

“We will never surrender our guns, never,” LaPierre, the organization's executive vice president, said on the second day of the gun-rights group’s convention in Houston, Texas.

He argued that recent mass shootings, including the killing of 26 people at a Connecticut elementary school in December, have been used “to blame us, to shame us, to compromise our freedom for their agenda.”

The gun rights lobby’s convention was part victory celebration, part pep rally as the NRA’s leaders cheered the defeat of a background check bill and said they would oppose any new attempts to pass national legislation on guns.

“Our feet are planted firmly in the foundation of freedom, unswayed by the winds of political and media insanity,” LaPierre said. “To the political and media elites who scorn us, we say let them be damned.”

A bill supported by President Barack Obama that would have expanded background checks on gun purchases would have done nothing to stop recent mass shootings, LaPierre said. That bill was defeated in the Senate last month.

“The bill wouldn’t have prevented Newtown or Aurora,” LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice president, said in his speech to several thousand attendees. “It won’t prevent the next tragedy. None of it has anything to do with keeping our children safer in any school anywhere.”

Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania, co-sponsored the background check bill. Toomey has said the bill failed to pass because members of the GOP did not want to hand the White House a policy victory.

LaPierre also referenced the Boston Marathon bombings and subsequent manhunt as an argument for putting guns in the hands of more Americans.

“How many Bostonians wished they had a gun two weeks ago?” LaPierre said. “Boston proves it. When brave law enforcement officers did their jobs in that city so courageously, good guys with guns stopped terrorists with guns.”

NRA officials confirmed to NBC News that LaPierre’s remarks were the first time the organization had brought up the Boston Marathon bombings in connection with their political fight against new restrictions on guns.

The annual convention was expected to draw about 70,000 people over three days. As many as 550 exhibitors were packed into the George R. Brown Convention Center, bringing with them racks and display cases filled with handguns, rifles, and other firearms.

LaPierre claimed that the NRA’s membership stood at 5 million and said the organization aimed to amass 10 million members.

A lifetime membership in the NRA costs $1,000, and the organization was able to claim that both its youngest and its oldest lifetime members were in attendance on Saturday.

Wayne Burd of Arkansas was born in 1917, and was recognized for the second year running as the rifle association’s oldest lifetime member. Among the freshest faces present was the group’s youngest lifetime member, Elaih Wagan, a 3-year-old from Austin, Texas. Wagan's grandfather purchased a lifetime membership as a gift for the little girl.

NBC News’ Kasie Hunt and Gabe Gutierrez and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Johnny Hanson / AP

Barry Bailey and his wife Judy, of DeRidder, La., walk out hand-in-hand, after having their 1873 Winchester shotgun appraised at the NRA's Antiques Guns and Gold Showcase during the National Rifle Association's 142 Annual Meetings and Exhibits at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston. The 2013 NRA Annual Meetings and Exhibits runs from Friday through Sunday, with more than 70,000 people expected to attend.

HOUSTON – A thousand miles couldn’t keep them away.

Bob Kittredge, 73, and his wife drove from Port St. Lucie, Fla., this week to attend the National Rifle Association’s annual convention. They are just two of the more than 70,000 people expected at the event, which opens Friday and runs through Sunday.

“We meet a lot of people who think the same way we do,” Kittredge said.

It will be a nine-acre gun show in the middle of a national gun fight.

About 550 exhibitors have packed the sprawling George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston.

"NRA members vote and their friends vote,” said Drew Kelley, who said he’s been an NRA member for most of his life. “That is what's driving all this."

Kelley works for ProMag Industries, a firearm magazine manufacturer in the Los Angeles area that’s been in business for about 35 years and employs about 150 people.

Kelley said he values the Second Amendment – and that recent attempts at tighter gun control measures are misguided.

“The whole idea was to keep people who should not have guns from acquiring them,” he said. “But the people who they're talking about don't go through the normal commercial processes anyway.”

'Stand and Fight'

 After the mass shootings in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn., the NRA’s opponents seemed to have momentum. But two weeks ago, a bipartisan compromise on expanded background checks for commercial gun sales was shot down in the Senate.

“We don't mistake battles for wars,” outgoing NRA president David Keene told NBC News. “It was a victory in a battle, but the war continues.”

Keene’s two-year term concludes at the convention. Starting Monday, Keene will be replaced as president by Alabama attorney Jim Porter, although Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre will continue to be the organization’s main spokesman.

In his letter to convention attendees, LaPierre writes: “For months, our enemies have laid siege to the rights we cherish…But we are proving to be stronger than ever.”

This year’s convention slogan: “Stand and Fight.”

“My concern as an NRA member is that any legislation needs to be targeted towards criminals and not law-abiding people,” said Bill Dermody, who works for Savage Arms, the Massachusetts-based firearm manufacturer that is one of the largest in the country and one of the convention’s 550 exhibitors.

On Friday afternoon, scheduled speakers include Sarah Palin, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

The opposition

 Outside the convention hall, several gun control advocates are planning to protest. At least one relative of a Newtown victim will attend. Another group plans to set up across the street and read 4,000 names of victims of gun violence.

The NRA’s opponents are launching a coordinated effort ahead of the 2014 midterm elections. The groups claim they finally have the financial clout to challenge the NRA thanks to Super PACs backed by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

"We're simply losing too many loved ones to this epidemic and it's time for change," said Ladd Everitt, the spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “And if people won't do the right thing, then we are going to work tirelessly to make sure their political careers come to an end.”

Gun control advocates argue that the NRA’s leadership cares more about the gun industry – and profit – than the rights of gun owners.

“I think the NRA leadership is wildly out of step with their own members on the issue of expanding background checks,” Everitt said.

Philip Kamrass / AP

Gun enthusiasts gather during the annual New York State Arms Collectors Association Albany Gun Show in this Jan. 26, 2013, photo.

Key measures of New York's new gun law are set to kick in, with owners of guns now classified as assault weapons required to register the firearms and new limits on the number of bullets allowed in magazines.

As the new provisions take effect today, New York's affiliate of the National Rifle Association said it plans to head to court to seek an immediate halt to the magazine limit.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo calls those and other provisions in the state's new gun law common sense while dismissing criticisms he says come from "extreme fringe conservatives" who claim the government has no right to regulate guns.

"Yes, they are against it, but they are the extremists and the extremists shouldn't win, especially on this issue when it is so important to the majority," Cuomo said in a radio interview last week. "In politics, we have to be willing to take on the extremists, otherwise you will see paralysis."

New York's new gun restrictions, the first in the nation passed following December's massacre at a Connecticut elementary school, limit state gun owners to no more than seven bullets in magazines, except at competitions or firing ranges.

The new regulations in New York commence as the U.S. Senate prepares to debate expanded gun legislation and weeks after Connecticut joined Colorado in signing into law tougher new gun restrictions.

The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, the state's NRA affiliate, has a pending federal lawsuit against the new provisions. It plans to ask a judge Monday for an immediate halt to the magazine limit. The new registrations, required over the next year, will be the group's focus later.

The law violates the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens "to keep commonly possessed firearms" at home for self-defense and for other lawful purposes, the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association said in court papers. It is advising members to obey the law in the meantime.

"We are lawful and legal citizens of New York state and we always obey the law," association President Tom King said. "It's as simple as that."

State Police planned to post forms on their website for registration starting Monday. Owners of those guns, now banned from in-state sales, are required within a year to register them. Alternatively, they can legally sell them to a licensed dealer or out of state by next Jan. 15.

Rich Davenport, recording secretary of the Erie County Federation of Sportsmen's Clubs, said their nearly 11,000 members are united in opposition to the law, which he considers a hasty, illogical and emotional response to the Newtown, Conn., school shooting. He also questioned likely compliance with the registration requirement.

"I'm guessing it'll be pretty low," said Davenport, a longtime hunter. He said that even though he's not personally affected by the registration provision, "I'm offended as an American."

The toughest part of the new statute — banning in-state sales of those guns newly classified as "assault weapons" — immediately took effect Jan. 15. The new classification related to a single military-style feature, such as a pistol grip on semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines. Other listed features include a folding or thumbhole stock, bayonet mount, flash suppressor, or second protruding grip held by the non-trigger hand.

It requires owners to register an estimated 1 million guns previously not classified as assault weapons by April 15, 2014, though law enforcement officials acknowledge they don't know exactly how many such guns New Yorkers have.

The assault weapon definition also applies to some shotguns and handguns. They include shotguns that are semi-automatic, or self-loading, and have another feature, such as a folding stock, a second handgrip held by the non-shooting hand or the ability to accept a detachable magazine.

Also covered are semi-automatic pistols that can take detachable magazines and have another feature, such as a folding or thumbhole stock, a second handgrip and a threaded barrel that can accept a silencer.

Many county boards in New York have passed resolutions urging at least partial repeal of the law while warning that new registration requirements would be a costly burden on them.

Herkimer County Clerk Sylvia Rowan said Thursday she had received no registration forms for those guns. "There's a lot of confusion on this," she said.

Rowan noted that she had received few formal requests filed from the holders of the county's 12,000 pistol permits to exempt their information from public disclosure, something else authorized under the new law.

Passed Jan. 15, a month after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., the statute originally banned magazines with more than seven bullets effective April 15. Connecticut officials said that shooter Adam Lanza used a semi-automatic Bushmaster AR-15 and five 30-round magazines to kill 20 children and six adults in minutes.

However, acknowledging that manufacturers don't make seven-bullet magazines, the Cuomo administration and New York lawmakers amended their law on March 29, keeping 10-bullet magazines legal but generally illegal to load them with more than seven bullets.

The new Colorado bill, signed into law last month, bans ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds.

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Months after the National Rifle Association first floated the idea of getting more armed staffers in schools to prevent another Sandy Hook massacre, the idea is slowly gaining traction in some states and districts.

On Tuesday, the NRA fleshed-out leader Wayne LaPierre’s initial response to the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. The report included a model program on how to train and arm school personnel to respond in the event of an active shooter.

The goal is to “give the schools more tools to respond quickly and reduce the loss of lives,” former Republican congressman Asa Hutchinson said while presenting the report.

LaPierre's idea was mocked by some political leaders when it was first proposed in Decmeber -- “What’s next? Armed guards at Starbucks and Little League games?” asked California Senate leader Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat.

But polling suggests Americans are open to armed guards or staffers, and some lawmakers and school leaders are moving forward.

The Florida House Education Subcommittee approved a bill at the end of March that would arm employees by allowing principals or district superintendents to select individuals to be exempted from prohibitions on carrying firearms on school property.

Tennessee school districts would be allowed to hire additional security personnel or arm a staff member under new legislation.

“This is just an option for those schools who don’t have school resource officers,” Tennessee Rep. Eric Watson, a Republican, told a local newspaper. “This gives schools an option to hire their own security or want staff members willing to serve in that security capacity. Of course, they have to go through a lot of series of training to get to that point.”

Watson’s bill would require that applicants pass an 8-hour handgun safety course. Critics of bills like the one in Tennessee have questioned how much training should be required before someone is allowed to carry a gun in a building full of children.

“Is it a good idea to have private citizens who have had a few hours of training bringing guns into schools? Probably not,” said Arkadi Gerney, a Center for American Progress fellow who works on gun policy. “That may end up creating risks instead of reducing risks.”

The Connecticut towns of North Branford and Enfield have already approved the placement of armed guards in all of their public schools.

“We want to throw as many hurdles as we can before an armed gunman can get into a building,” Enfield police Chief Carl Sferrazza said in March, The Associated Press reported. A job listing for a part-time armed school security officer is now posted on the department’s website. A section listing “Tools & Equipment Used” names one item: “Handgun.”

Guards began patrolling the schools in Marlboro, N.J., barely two weeks after the Newtown, the first school in the state to bring in armed officers after the shooting.

The measure drew skepticism from Republican Governor Chris Christie, who said placing guards among students risked turning school buildings into “an armed camp for kids.”

“I don’t think that’s a positive example for children,” Christie said. “We should be able to figure out some other ways to enhance safety, it seems to me.”

For the most part, critics say, there's been something less than a national movement to embrace arming school staffers.

“It doesn’t look like a serious effort, certainly not a serious national effort to address the real problem,” said Jon Vernick, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. “There really isn’t any evidence that that sort of thing is effective.”

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio caused a stir in February when he recruited action film star Steven Seagal to train a group of volunteers in what the self-proclaimed “America’s Toughest Sheriff” said were exercises in how to protect against school shooters.

“I am here to try to teach the posse firearms and martial arts to try to help them learn how to respond quicker and help protect our children,” Seagal said, according to Reuters.

As lawmakers continue to debate tighter federal regulations on firearms, the rifle association’s decision to focus on school guards steers attention from other gun bills that could do more to curb gun violence, Gerney said.

“To think of that as the only answer is a distraction and an effort to shift the debate away from the measures that are going to shift the debate from measures that would really make a difference,” Gerney said. “The best way to make our kids safer whether they’re in school or not in school is to make it harder for bad guys to get guns in the first place.”

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He was a "shut-in," a young man with a twisted murder obsession holed up in a suburban house with guns, Samurai swords and a mother who searched self-help books for solutions to his social disorder.

That's the picture that emerged Thursday of Adam Lanza as search warrants carried out after his Dec. 14 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School were made public.

The documents provide no clear motive for the two-part rampage that left 20 children, six school staffers, Lanza's mother Nancy and the gunman dead, but they hint at the activities that consumed his days behind dark-green shutters on Yogananda St. in Newtown, Conn.

One piece of paper seized from the home is particularly chilling in hindsight: a 2008 New York Times clipping about a shooting at Northern Illinois University, where a gunman murdered five people, wounded another 21 and then killed himself.

Although it's not spelled out in the warrants, a law-enforcement source told NBC News that police also found a spreadsheet that Lanza toiled over, cataloging the details of mass murders through the years.

Police also discovered Lanza's journals, though the warrants don't divulge if they contained any clues about why the 20-year-old slaughtered defenseless first-graders or how long he had planned the shooting spree.

There was a large assortment of computer equipment, including a custom-built desktop unit — not surprising since Lanza reportedly earned an A in computers as a 16-year-old freshman at Western Connecticut State University and worked for a time at a computer store.

Don Emmert / AFP - Getty Images file

Search warrants executed at the Lanza home in Newtown, Conn., detailed the weaponry found inside, along with books about autism and a newspaper clipping about a 2008 mass shooting.

More notable were missing and damaged hard drives, which law-enforcement experts saw as a sign that Lanza didn't want police to examine his computing history after he joined the nation's growing roster of mass killers.

The electronics seized included a Xbox system, and the warrants quoted an anonymous tipster who told the FBI that Lanza was "an avid gamer who plays Call of Duty."

Full documents: Read the Sandy Hook search warrants

Most startling was the array of weapons found at the Lanza home and at the school: a half-dozen handguns and rifles, a BB gun, a starter pistol, hundreds of rounds of ammunition scattered about, high-capacity magazines, three Samurai swords, a bayonet and smaller knives in sheaths.

"It's a stunning amount of ammunition and weaponry," said Mary Ellen O'Toole, a former FBI profiler.

"If the family dynamic is gun-oriented, that's fine. But how do they treat it? Are their weapons locked up? Is the ammunition kept in the same place? These documents tell us this is not the case. You've got this stuff laying all around and it's not stored properly."

The warrants also reveal that bullets were kept in a Planters nut canister and plastic baggies, in a bedroom gun safe, on closet shelves, in a shoe box, a duffel bag, and a filing cabinet drawer.

Family friends and acquaintances have said that Nancy Lanza, who grew up in rural New Hampshire, saw recreational shooting as something she could do to bond with Adam and his older brother, Ryan.

New details about Sandy Hook massacre gunman Adam Lanza were revealed in search warrants released Thursday.

A holiday card found in the house underscores that connection: it contained a check that Nancy wrote to Adam for the purchase of a firearm, according to the warrants.

Mother and son both had documents described as National Rifle Association certificates, though it was unclear what that signified, along with files of gun-related receipts, manuals and other paperwork.

Had the guns and ammunition been kept in a safe place and had Adam Lanza been a well-adjusted person with friends and outside interests, the arsenal might not have raised any eyebrows, O'Toole said.

But Lanza didn't fit that description.

The FBI tipster told agents the suspect "rarely leaves his home and considers him to be a shut-in," according to the warrants.

An extensive profile of the shooter in the Hartford Courant last month chronicled how Lanza cut himself off from others in the last two years of his life — following his parents' divorce and an abrupt end to his education, which had been a patchwork quilt of mainstream and special-education classes and home-schooling.

The FBI's source said school had been Lanza's "life" and that he once attended Sandy Hook. After moving from New Hampshire to Newtown, Lanza entered the first grade there. A report card from Sandy Hook was found in the home.

Over the next decade, Lanza was shuttled in and out of classrooms by his mother, who believed he had sensory integration disorder and needed independent study at home, the Courant reported.

Lanza hated to be touched, had few friends and was easily freaked out by changes in routine, the newspaper said. In middle school, he was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a condition on the autism spectrum marked by social awkwardness and obsessive interests.

Phil Simpson via Reuters file

A former FBI profiler says Adam Lanza's mother, Nancy, seen here on a 2008 cruise, may not have acted on warning signs that her son could turn violent.

Proof that Nancy Lanza was still looking for insight into her son's behavior years after that diagnosis could be found on her home's bookshelves. Among the titles seized by police were a primer on Asperger's and another on autistic savants.

A third book, "Train Your Brain to Get Happy," had pages tabbed off, though it was unknown if mother or son had been looking for the "joy, optimism and serenity" promised in the subtitle.

Those feelings appeared to be elusive at the two-story yellow Colonial, where investigators found three gruesome pictures of a blood-spattered body under plastic. The origin of the photos was not specified.

O'Toole said the warrants reveal there was no shortage of warning signs for Nancy Lanza that her younger son was headed down a dark path.

"But it takes a big step for a lot of people who love their children to go from, 'I think i have a problem' to 'I think this person could commit homicide,'" she said. "It's not unusual for people to ignore behavior, explain it away or to normalize it or to rationalize it."

Not unusual — but in this case, fateful.

Among the other items ticked off in the warrants were two bloody sheets, apparently from the bed where Nancy Lanza was killed with a .22-caliber round to the forehead while sleeping, just before her son loaded her Honda Civil with handguns, rifles and bullets and, police say, went hunting for innocent children.

NBC News' Michael Isikoff contributed to this report

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Guns, ammo, Samurai swords: Adam Lanza's arsenal

Search warrants released Thursday laid bare the extent of Newtown school massacre suspect Adam Lanza's arsenal. Here is a catalog of the weaponry found at the school where 20 children and six staffers were killed and at the home he shared with his mother, who was also murdered:

At the school:

1 Bushmaster .223 caliber model XM15 rifle with a 30-round magazine

1 Glock 10mm handgun

1 9mm Sig Sauer P226 handgun

1 Saiga 12 shotgun with two magazines containing 70 rounds

6 30-round magazines, three of them emptied

At the home:

Guns:

1 Enfield bolt-action .323 rifle

1 Savage Mark II .22 caliber rifle with magazine, 3 live rounds, 1 spent cartridge

1 black marksman BB gun

Ammunition:

5 Winchester 12-gauge shotgun shells cut open, with buckshot

1 white plastic bag with 30 Winchester 12-gauge shotgun shells

1 can with .22 caliber and .45 caliber bullets

8 boxes of Winchester Windcat .22 caliber bullets, 50 rounds per box

20 "Estate" 12-gauge shotgun shells

4 boxes of SB buckshot 12-gauge, 10 round per box

1 box of Lightfield 12-gauge slugs

1 box of 20 Prvi Partizan 303 British rifle cartridges

1 box of 20 Federal 303 British rifle cartridges

2 boxes of .22 long rifle Blazer rounds, 50 each box

1 box with numerous rounds of Winchester .45 caliber bullets

2 boxes of 50 rounds of PPU .45 caliber automatic

1 box of 20 rounds for Remington .223 caliber

3 boxes of Blazer 40 S&W, 50 rounds each

2 boxes of Winchester 5.56 mm, 20 rounds each

1 box of Magtech 45ACP with 30 rounds

1 empty Box of SSA 5.56 mm

1 box of Fiocchi .45 auto with 48 rounds

80 rounds of CCI .22 long rifle

6 boxes of PMC .223 rem, 20 rounds each

6 Winchester 9 pellet buckshot shells, 12-gauge

2 Remington 12-gauge slugs

3 Winchester .223 rifle rounds

31 .22 caliber rounds

2 boxes of Underwood 10 mm auto, each with 50 rounds

130 rounds of Lawman 9mm Luger

2 spent shell casings for Glock 10mm

1 empty box of Gold Dot 9mm Luger

2 empty boxes of Winchester 9mm Luger

1 box of Underwood 10mm auto with 34 rounds

1 box of 29 miscellaneous 9mm rounds

1 spent .22 shell casing

1 small plastic bag containing numerous .22 caliber bullets

1 tan bag with numerous Blazer .45 caliber bullets

1 box of Blazer .22 long rifle with 50 rounds

1 box PPU 303 British cartridges with 9 rounds

2 Winchester 9mm rounds

2 brass-colored shell casings

1 small caliber bullet (live round) labeled C

Magazines:

1 Promag 20-round 12-gauge drum magazine

1 MD Arms 20-round 12 gauge drum magazine

3 AGP Arms 12-gauge shotgun magazines

1 Surefire GunMag magazine with 8 rounds of Winchester 12-gauge, 9-pellet buckshot

2 AGP Arms 12-gauge shotgun magazines, taped together, each with 10 rounds of Winchester 9-pellet buckshot

2 empty Ram Line magazines for Ruger 10-22

1 AGP Arms Gen 2 12-gauge shotgun magazine with 10 rounds of Winchester 12-gauge, 9-pellet buckshot

1 clear plastic Ramline magazine for an AR 15

1 magazine with 10 rounds of .223 bullets

Knives:

Metal bayonet

1 6-foot-10-inch wood-handled two-sided pole with a blade on one side and a spear on the other

1 Samurai sword with a 28-inch blade and sheath

1 Samurai sword with a 21-inch blade and a sheath

1 Samurai sword with a 13-inch blade and sheath

1 knife with a 12-inch blade and sheath

1 wooden-handle knife with a 7.5-inch blade and sheath

1 wooden-handle knife with a 10-inch blade

1 knife with a 5.5-inch blade and sheath

1 black-handled knife with a 7-inch blade and sheath

1 black rubber-handled knife with 9.5-inch blade and sheath

1 white and brown-handled knife with 5-inch blade and sheath

1 brown wood-handled knife with a 10.25-inch blade

1 Panther brown-handled folding knife with a 3.75 inch blade

1 small blue folding knife

Gear:

1 Volcanic .22 starter pistol wth 5 live rounds and 1 expended round

Leightning L3 ear protection

Peltor ear plugs

Simmons binoculars

Uncle Mike's Sidekick nylon holster

Box for vest accessories

Leather dual magazine holder

Black leather handgun holster

High Sierra fanny pack

Numerous paper targets

1 cardboard targets

1 Bushnell sport view rifle scope

Plastic bag of miscellaneous parts

Safariland holster paperwork

Glock handgun manual

MD-20 20-round shotgun magazine manual

MD Arms V-Plug guide

Bushmaster XM15 and C15 instruction manual

Savage Arms bolt-action rifle manual

Glock paperwork

Miscellaneous:

Adam Lanza's National Rifle Association certificate

Nancy Lanza's NRA certificate

Three photographs with images of what appears to be a deceased human covered with plastic and what appears to be blood

Holiday card with a check from Nancy Lanza to Adam Lanza for purchase of C183 firearm

1 digital print of a child and various firearms

1 military-style uniform

Handwritten notes with addresses of local gun shops

Receipts and emails documenting firearm and ammunition supplies

Blue folder labeled “guns” with receipts and paperwork

Paperwork titled "Connecticut Gun Exchange Glock 20SF 10mm" dated 12-21-11

Sandy Hook report card for Adam Lanza

New York Times article on a 2008 shooting at Northern Illinois Unversity

Books: “Look me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s;” “Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Mind of an Autistic Savant;” “NRA Guide to Basics of Pistol Shooting;” “Train Your Brain to Get Happy”

1 Seagate Barracuda 500gb hard drive, damaged

1 custom-built desktop computer, no hard drive

1 Microsoft Xbox with partially obliterated serial number

One cotton swab of blood-like substance

1 tan sheet with blood-like substance

1 tan fitted sheet with blood-like substance

1 striped towel with blood-like substance

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This story was originally published on Thu Mar 28, 2013 11:19 AM EDT

The National Rifle Association’s CEO on Thursday accused President Barack Obama of orchestrating a “charade” to dismantle gun rights in his State of the Union address this week.

Wayne LaPierre, the gun lobby group’s executive vice president and CEO, used a speech at a National Wild Turkey Federation conference in Nashville to decry the push for stricter gun laws made by Obama at the conclusion of his annual policy address on Tuesday.

“For our Second Amendment freedoms, Mr. President, we will stand and fight throughout this country as Americans for our freedoms,” LaPierre said to applause. “We promise you that.”

The gun rights advocate complained that “the words ‘school safety’ were nowhere to be found” in Obama’s address and renewed his call for funding to put an armed guard in every school in America. (Obama did speak of the need to “protect our most precious resource:  our children.”)

“It was only a few weeks ago that they were marketing their anti-gun agenda as a way of protecting schoolchildren from harm,” LaPierre said.  “That charade ended at the State of the Union, when the president himself exposed their fraudulent intentions. It’s not about keeping kids safe in school.… They only care about their decades-long, decades-old gun control agenda.”

Obama closed the speech by referencing victims of gun violence and victims’ families in attendance at his speech, forcefully repeating that those victims at least “deserve a vote” on the gun control measures proposed by the administration in the wake of the deadly December shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

"Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote," Obama said to sustained applause. "The families of Oak Creek and Tucson and Blacksburg and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence –- they deserve a simple vote."

LaPierre has been as dogged as ever, though, in resisting those proposals, taking to conservative media in recent days to make his point. Writing Wednesday for the Daily Caller, LaPierre evoked a dystopian vision of a world without guns in the aftermath of last year’s Hurricane Sandy in New York.

“After Hurricane Sandy, we saw the hellish world that the gun prohibitionists see as their utopia,” LaPierre wrote. “Looters ran wild in south Brooklyn. There was no food, water or electricity. And if you wanted to walk several miles to get supplies, you better get back before dark, or you might not get home at all.”

However, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at the time there were no murders committed during the storm or its very immediate aftermath.

Mike Groll / AP

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signs New York's Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act into law.

If there’s one thing Republicans and Democrats can agree on, it’s that mentally ill people should not have access to firearms.

But as lawmakers rush to restrict that access in the wake of recent mass shootings, mental health experts warn of unintended consequences: from gun owners avoiding mental health treatment to therapists feeling compelled to report every patient who expresses a violent thought.

“Many patients express some idea of harm to other people, everything from, ‘I wish I could rip my boss limb from limb,’ to, ‘I have a gun and want to blow that guy away,’” said Paul Applebaum, director of the Division of Law, Ethics, and Psychiatry at Columbia University.

Therapists usually interpret this sort of talk as part of the treatment process, experts say. But under a new law in New York, one of the strongest to be passed to date, therapists may feel compelled to report every instance of violent talk, lest they face legal consequences if something happens. And some say ordinary patients may wind up suffering the most.

“There’s one group of people who are gun owners who may reasonably or unreasonably think, ‘I’m not going anywhere near a mental health person, because if they misinterpret something I say as an indication I’m going to hurt myself or someone else, they’re going to report me and take away my guns,’” Applebaum said.

Several polls conducted since the shooting in Newtown, Conn., have found widespread support for new legislation that would restrict the possession of firearms by the mentally ill, as well as for increased government spending on mental health.

Federal law already bars the sale or transfer of firearms to a person who is known or thought to have been “adjudicated as a mental defective.” In addition, at least 44 states currently have their own laws regulating possession of firearm by mentally ill individuals, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But not enough states report their mental health data to the federal government, rendering the federal law largely toothless.

'Not taking any chances'
New York’s expanded gun law signed by Cuomo on January 15 goes further than most state laws in that it requires mental health professionals to report any person considered “likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to self or others” to local health officials. Those officials would be authorized to report that person to law enforcement, which could seize the person’s firearms.

Previously, New York judges could compel seriously mentally ill people thought to be dangerous to receive involuntary outpatient treatment.

“I see it very frequently,” Steven Dubovsky, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Buffalo, said of patients expressing violent fantasies. “You see people who struggle with anger or have violent thoughts, and if I thought they were going to act on it right away, I would stop them.”

“Now if you’re mistaken, you’re wrong about this, and you don’t report it, you could face criminal sanctions. I’m not taking any chances at that point,” Dubovsky said. That could encourage therapists to over-report, he said.

There have been cases where better enforcement of laws already on the books might have helped avoid bloodshed, said Richard J. Bonnie, a professor at University of Virginia’s law school. Bonnie headed a state commission on mental health law in the wake of the mass shooting at Virginia Tech.

Shooter Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 people and then himself at the university in 2007, should have been adjudicated as mentally defective following a special justice’s order issued two years before the shooting, Bonnie said. Such a designation, properly reported, would have disqualified him from owning a gun under existing federal law.

But that message never got passed on to the feds or Virginia Tech, Bonnie said.

Shoring up the flaws in mental health reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System – something Obama addressed in his proposals – would help prevent future mistakes, Bonnie said. Obama also called for background checks to be required on all firearm purchases – currently only 7 states account for 98 percent of the names prohibited for reasons of mental illness in the NICS database, according to Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

According to DJ Jaffe, executive director of the Mental Illness Policy Org, which advocates on behalf of the seriously mentally ill, all the talk of mental health and gun violence obscures a bigger issue – a nationwide struggle with how to care for the mentally ill.

“Most of the things they’re discussing are totally irrelevant to helping people with serious mental illness,” Jaffe said. “No one wants responsibility for the seriously mentally ill.”