Pursuit

Gun control policies should focus on restricting access to firearms for dangerous individuals or repeat offenders rather than making guns illegal, a prominent gun policy scholar told a group of public health students on Tuesday. Daniel W. Webster, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, touched on Baltimore police tactics and the Jan. 8 mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz., where six people were killed and 13 wounded, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

In London, motorists shouted profanities at photographers outside Buckingham Palace. At the Paris hospital where Princess Diana died early Sunday, the epithets were worse: "Murderers," medical staff shouted at the men and women with cameras outside. And at the tunnel where the fatal car crash occurred, angry mourners scrawled red graffiti labeling paparazzi cowards.What had seemed a sort of game -- though an increasingly aggressive one -- changed early Sunday when probably the world's most photographed woman died after trying to elude paparazzi on motorcycles.

In an instant, Ravens return specialist Jacoby Jones lost his grip on the football and his job security. During the AFC divisional playoff game between the Houston Texans and the Ravens in January, things went awry for Jones in what became his final game with the Texans. Jones became a relative pariah in Houston after he muffed a first-quarter punt that led to a Ravens touchdown. He later fumbled another punt in that game, which ended in a Texans loss. Fans took their frustrations with Jones to message boards and Twitter, demanding the Texans get rid of him. They got their wish in May, when the Texans cut Jones after trade rumors surrounded him during the NFL draft.

Chris Haley, great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Kunta Kinte, sat at Annapolis City Dock yesterday afternoon, read aloud from his late uncle's acclaimed book "Roots" and extolled the significance of genealogy and family history in the pursuit of self-awareness.But first, he had to clear one hurdle: explain who Kunta Kinte was to his rambunctious audience of 16 Annapolis Elementary School third-graders who yelled, "He played in a movie" when Haley mentioned his ancestor's name."Well, actually, an actor played his part in a movie," Haley said, smiling.

ARLINGTON, Va. -- "Greed is the universal motive, sincerity is a pose, honesty is for chumps, altruism is selfishness with a neurotic twist, and morality is for kids and fools." That was Walt Harrington writing in The Washington Post on Dec. 27, 1987, in response to the financial and sexual scandals of that period. Then, the ethical violations were committed by men named Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. Their means to immoral ends were junk bonds and insider trading. The most prominent (though by no means only)

The case for democracy is "self-evident," as someone once put it. The case for the world's most powerful democracy to take as its mission the spreading of democracy around the world is pretty self-evident, too: What's good for us is good for others. Those others will be grateful. A world full of democracies created or protected with our help ought to be more peaceful and prosperous and favorably disposed toward us. There is no valid case against democracy. You used to hear a lot that democracy is not suitable for some classes of foreigners: simply incompatible with the cultures of East Asia (because deference to authority is too ingrained there)

THE LAST SENTRY: THE TRUE STORY THAT INSPIRED THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER By Gregory D. Young and Nate Braden. Naval Institute Press. 250 pages. Tom Clancy, an obscure Maryland insurance agent neglecting business because he wanted to write, was nosing about in the basement of the Naval Academy library when he stumbled on a postgraduate thesis by a young U.S. Navy officer that described a mutiny on a Soviet warship called the Storozhevoy -- in English, the...

Alice C. Steinbach, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for The Baltimore Sun, whose work captured the wonder and grace of people and places around the world, died Tuesday of cancer at her Roland Park Place home. She was 78. In her more than two-decade career with The Baltimore Sun, Ms. Steinbach took readers into close communion with her detailed profiles of the rich and famous from the world of entertainment, literature, politics, society and the arts. In a later career as a travel writer, her work took readers on strolls through places like the colorful back streets of Paris' Left Bank or, as she wrote, "the impossibly crowded Uffizi art gallery" in Florence.

The Ravens wouldn't be the leading candidate to sign soon-to-be released Daunte Culpepper, but they have not eliminated the possibility of adding the three-time Pro Bowl quarterback, a league source said. Because the Ravens are committed to Steve McNair as their starter, it's unsure whether Culpepper would want to come here since he might have an opportunity to compete for a starting job elsewhere, the source added. Culpepper, who is expected to be cut by the Miami Dolphins, has been linked to the Ravens because McNair is 34 and backup Kyle Boller is only signed through this season.

With tales of the world's woes grabbing too many headlines this summer, it might be remedial to consider the subject of happiness. We might not agree on how to define it, but we want it. Even our Declaration of Independence asserts that pursuing happiness is an unalienable right. And so off we go, chasing that subjective and capricious state of being that teases us into thinking it can be ours through chance and circumstance. Apparently, plenty of people have achieved a high level of happiness, if you believe studies that claim to have examined the subject closely.