On July 20, 2012, a 24-year-old male entered a theater in Aurora, CO, and perpetrated what has been described as one of the worst mass shootings in modern U.S. history. James Holmes allegedly shot to death 12 people and wounded another 58 people, seven of them critically. He was armed with an M16 variant semiautomatic rifle equipped with a drum magazine, a 12-gauge pump shotgun, and at least one, possibly two .40-caliber handguns. He reportedly bought these firearms legally from federally licensed gun dealers in Colorado. He also reportedly purchased over 6,000 rounds of ammunition through Internet-based transactions. Sixteen days later, on August 5, 2012, a 40-year-old U.S. Army veteran entered a Sikh temple and committed a mass-casualty shooting in the Oak Creek suburb of Milwaukee, WI. In this attack, Wade Michael Page allegedly shot to death six worshipers and critically wounded another three people. One of the wounded victims was a police officer, whom Page allegedly shot numerous times as the officer administered first aid to another victim. Then, Page shot himself to death, after being wounded by a responding police officer. Page was armed with a 9mm semiautomatic pistol that he had acquired legally, when he resided in North Carolina. Press accounts describe Page as a neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and it is widely thought that he mistook the Sikh temple for a Muslim mosque. These and other mass-casualty shootings prompted some Members of the 112 th Congress to reconsider proposals to reinstate a 1994 ban on semiautomatic assault weapons and large capacity ammunition feeding devices, which expired in September 2004. There were similar calls to ban such feeding devices (see H.R. 308 and S. 32 ) following the January 8, 2011, Tucson, AZ, shooting, in which 6 people were killed and 14 wounded, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was grievously wounded. Similarly, the Aurora, CO, shootings led some Members to call for greater regulation of interstate, Internet-based ammunition transfers ( S. 3458 / H.R. 6241 ). Since March 2011, much of the gun control debate in the 112 th Congress has swirled around allegations that the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) mishandled a Phoenix, AZ-based gun trafficking investigation known as "Operation Fast and Furious." In December 2010, two suspect firearms linked to that investigation were found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. In January 2010, ATF whistleblowers contacted Senator Charles Grassley with assertions that suspected gun traffickers had not been arrested in a timely fashion and, as a result, a large number of suspect firearms had not been interdicted and have reportedly passed into the hands of drug traffickers and other criminals. The whistleblowers referred to this investigative tactic as "gun walking." According to one source, 665 of these firearms have been recovered by law enforcement at crime scenes on both sides of the border. Another 1,355 suspect firearms reportedly remain unaccounted for. Senator Grassley, ranking minority Member on the Committee on the Judiciary, and Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, have issued four joint staff reports on Operation Fast and Furious, and the House committee has held several related hearings. Representative Elijah Cummings, the committee's ranking minority Member, has also issued two reports related to this controversial operation. On November 1, 2011, a high-ranking DOJ official testified before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary's Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee that he had identified "gun walking" as a potentially risk laden investigative technique in April 2010 but failed to inform the Attorney General about the potential risks. On November 8, 2011, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary held a DOJ oversight hearing, and Attorney General Eric Holder fielded questions about Operation Fast and Furious. The Attorney General conceded that a February 4, 2011, letter from DOJ to congressional investigators contained "inaccurate" information regarding the depth of knowledge that departmental officials had of ATF's use of the "gun walking" tactic. On December 8, 2011, the House Committee held a hearing to explore, among other things, whether senior departmental officials knew more about Operation Fast and Furious than what was previously indicated in a May 3, 2011, hearing before that committee. On November 18, 2011, the President signed into law the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012 ( H.R. 2112 ; P.L. 112-55 ), following House and Senate passage on the previous day. This act provides ATF with $1.152 billion for FY2012. In response to Operation Fast and Furious, Congress included in that act a provision (§219) that reflects a Senate-passed amendment sponsored by Senator John Cornyn to prevent the expenditure of any funding provided under it to be used by a federal law enforcement officer to facilitate the transfer of an operable firearm to a person known to be or suspected of being connected to a drug cartel without that firearm being continuously monitored or controlled. The act, however, does not include an amendment that was sponsored by Representative Denny Rehberg and adopted in House full committee markup that would have prevented ATF from collecting multiple long gun sales reports from federally licensed gun dealers in Southwest Border states. In addition, two ATF funding provisos and one Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) funding proviso were made permanent with the inclusion of "futurity" language, as opposed to temporary, annual appropriations restrictions. These provisos essentially prohibit the consolidation or centralization of firearm acquisition and disposition records. In its FY2013 DOJ budget submission, the Administration proposed dropping the Cornyn language prohibiting "gun walking," arguing that the prohibition is unnecessary. The Administration also proposed stripping the futurity language out of the ATF and FBI funding provisions noted above, which were made permanent in the FY2012 appropriations cycle. In addition, the Administration proposed stripping futurity language out of a long-standing but controversial provision known as the Tiahrt amendment, which prohibits ATF from releasing firearms trace data under a range of circumstances. Besides including futurity language, Congress has altered the language of the Tiahrt amendment several times in recent years to clarify under which circumstances and at what level of detail it is proper to release firearms trace data to law enforcement and other governmental officials, as well as to researchers, the media, and the general public. Other legislative developments in the 112 th Congress include the following: On October 29, 2012, Representative Issa and Senator Grassley released Part II of their three-part, final joint staff report entitled Fast and Furious: The Anatomy of a Failed Operation . The second of three parts, Part II examines the interaction of senior DOJ officials in the Criminal Division and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General with ATF headquarters, the Phoenix Field Division, and the Arizona U.S. Attorney's Office. On September 22, 2012, the Senate voted to invoke cloture on the Sportsmen's Act of 2012 ( S. 3525 ), clearing the way for the Senate to consider this bill, possibly, when it reconvenes. Like the Sportsmen's Heritage Act of 2102 ( H.R. 4089 ), the Senate bill includes provisions designed to promote access to federal lands for hunting and other sporting activities. On September 20, 2012, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on a report by the DOJ Office of Inspector General (OIG) entitled A Review of ATF's Operation Fast and Furious and Related Matters . The OIG testified to the report's findings that high-ranking, supervisory officials within ATF headquarters and the Phoenix Field Division, as well as the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona and Main Justice (DOJ headquarters), were responsible for misguided strategies and tactics, errors in judgment, and management failures related to Operation Fast and Furious. On July 31, 2012, Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Senator Charles Grassley, ranking minority Member of the Committee on the Judiciary, released a report entitled Fast and Furious: The Anatomy of a Failed Operation . The first of three, this report essentially chronicles how the ATF Phoenix Division and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Arizona District ran a gun trafficking investigation from October 2009 through January 2010, during which controversial "gun walking" tactics were employed that—in Representative Issa and Senator Grassley's estimation—seriously compromised public safety and contributed to violent crime and death on both sides of the international border. On June 28, 2012, the House passed a resolution ( H.Res. 711 ) citing Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for his failure to produce additional, subpoenaed documents related to Operation Fast and Furious by a roll call vote of 255-67 (Roll no. 441). The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform had previously approved a report ( H.Rept. 112-546 ) that accompanied this resolution by a vote of 23-17. Shortly before the committee took up the resolution, President Barack Obama asserted executive privilege, rather than disclose subpoenaed documents related to ATF's Operation Fast and Furious. The House also passed a related resolution ( H.Res. 706 ) that authorizes the committee to initiate or intervene in judicial proceedings to enforce certain subpoenas. On May 18, 2012, the House passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2013 ( H.R. 4310 ).