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One month after the Newtown, Conn., school shootings, gun control is on the national agenda. The White House will outline its proposals this week, and national surveys find a majority of Americans support options such as requiring background checks for both private and gun-show sales.

As NPR's Richard Gonzales found when he visited a large traveling gun show this past weekend, it seemed that the momentum behind new gun control proposals had brought a spike in business for gun sellers.

The San Francisco Gun Show was held at the Cow Palace, where Richard reported seeing "a line of a couple thousand people winding through the parking lot. And the line of cars to get into the parking lot is six blocks long."

He spoke to an attendee about the show's draw this year.

"Everybody is freaked out right now. So who knows?" hunter Robert Gonzales tells Richard with a sigh. Asked to explain, Gonzales answers, "They're freaked out that they're not going to be able to buy weapons I guess, you know. Cuz I been coming to this Cow Palace for years and I've never seen it this bad."

President Obama said Monday that he will unveil the White House's plan later this week; he was to meet with Vice President Biden today, to discuss the options Biden's gun control task force is recommending to the president.

"Some of them will require legislation," Obama said. "Some of them I can accomplish through executive action."

According to two national surveys released today, a majority of Americans support creating a federal database to track gun sales, requiring background checks for gun-show sales, and increasing the number of armed guards at schools.

Background supports drew the most support in the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press survey, with 85 percent in favor. The survey also found that 64 percent supported putting more armed guards or police in schools.

Another study, from The Washington Post and ABC, found similar result, with 52 percent of those responding said the Newtown shootings made them more likely to to support gun control. And both surveys found that more than 50 percent of Americans support banning assault style weapons.

On today's All Things Considered, Pew Director Michael Dimock tells Audie Cornish that despite the broad support, some of the options spur deep partisan divides. For instance, "among Republicans, you get fewer than half who would favor a federal government database on guns," he says. By contrast, 84 percent of Democrats are in favor.

And 44 percent of Republicans support a ban on assault weapons, while 69 percent of Democrats say they would support such a ban. Similar divides exist on the issues of banning semi-automatic weapons and ending the sale of ammunition online.

In Metairie, La., where Mike Mayer owns the Jefferson Gun Outlet, Mayer tells Richard that many of his customers are looking for the semi-automatic AR-15 rifle, like the one used in the Newtown shootings.

"For a standard AR, something that we would sell normally for $899 is selling right now for $1850," Mayer tells Richard.

"What it really showed was because different cultures — the military, civilian, whatnot — all have their own lexicon, you can be having a conversation where you think you're communicating effectively ... but you're not," he says.

He says it's the responsibility of the military to explain to civilian leaders what its strategic goals are and what resources are needed to achieve them.

The Article That Ended His Career

McChrystal resigned after comments that he and his staff made about members of the Obama administration in what he believed to be an off-the-record setting to a Rolling Stone reporter. The magazine published the comments in an article titled "The Runaway General" in the summer of 2010.

Related NPR Stories

McChrystal Piece Stirs Debate On Covering Military July 2, 2010

Retail sales rose 0.5 percent in December from November, the Census Bureau says. That may be a sign that as 2012 ended consumers were still in a shopping mood even as lawmakers in Washington struggled to keep the federal government from going over the so-called fiscal cliff.

Bloomberg News says the better-than-expected sales figure, which is adjusted to hopefully smooth out the effects of the holidays and show the "real" growth, is a sign that consumers were looking "beyond the year-end budget battle among U.S. lawmakers."

"Consumers continue to spend at a decent pace," Russell Price, senior economist at Ameriprise Financial Inc. in Detroit, told Bloomberg.

Such spending is critical: Consumers purchase about 70 percent of the goods and services companies produce.

For the year, retail sales were up 5.2 percent.

Also this morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that wholesale prices declined 0.2 percent in December from November and were up just 1.3 percent for the year.

On this fourth day of French military operations aimed at routing Islamist militants in Mali, the al-Qaida-linked rebels are "vowing to drag France into a long and brutal ground war," Reuters reports.

"France has opened the gates of hell for all the French. She has fallen into a trap which is much more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia," a spokesman for the MUJWA Islamist group told Europe 1 radio, the wire service writes.

Another militant spokesman, France 24 reports, told Agence France Presse that "France has attacked Islam. We will strike at the heart of France." On where the attacks might take place, he said, "everywhere. In Bamako, in Africa and in Europe."

According to Reuters: "Launching a counter-attack far to the southwest of recent fighting, the Islamists clashed fiercely with government forces on Monday in the central town of Diabaly, residents and Malian military sources said."

The news service quotes French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian as saying the insurgents have taken control of the town, but that French and Malian forces were hoping to push the rebels out again.

Sunday, as we reported, French officials said military operations had stopped the militants' advance. Islamists have been pushing to take control of Mali for more than a year and it's feared they will use the African nation as a base to launch terrorist operations elsewhere. They have also been destroying centuries-old historical sites.

France has, The New York Times adds, "called a meeting of the United Nations Security Council for Monday."

NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, who is monitoring the story from Senegal, tells our Newscast Desk that as the French airstrikes and other actions continue, "Mali awaits the arrival of an African force to help try to dislodge the insurgents."