Guns. That single word evokes a strong reaction, no matter what side of the debate you fall on. Certainly, the massacre of innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a national tipping point, but one that seems only to have brought back into the public consciousness, a long-simmering debate. A debate for which there is no resolution at the moment. Congress is still proposing and voting, states are taking independent action. Individuals rally and protest and fight, expressing their beliefs. This post is a collection of images - supporters of gun control, those against; victims and families of victims, gun enthusiasts. -- Paula Nelson( 53 photos total)

Another refugee camp opened today in Mrajeeb al-Fhood, Jordan, to accommodate the reported 1,500 to 2,000 Syrians fleeing to Jordan daily. Just over a year ago the Big Picture posted an entry of the growing number of people displaced due to the conflict that now has lasted over two years. The United Nations recently said a total of around 7,000 to 8,000 Syrians are leaving their country daily; there are 1.3 million Syrian refugees and almost 4 million more have been displaced inside Syria since the start of the conflict. Posted here is another glimpse of daily life for those displaced since the beginning of this year. -- Lloyd Young ( 37 photos total)

San Pedro Sula, Honduras, has been given the unfortunate title of the most dangerous city in the world. The data was compiled by Citizen Council for Public Security, Justice, and Peace, a Mexican think tank focusing on crime statistics from the Western Hemisphere. The city tops the list for the second year in a row. Photographers Jorge Cabrera of Reuters and Esteban Felix of Associated Press spent time with with local police and in emergency rooms documenting the violence at the end of March 2013. They captured arresting scenes of death, fear, pain, and grief. San Pedro Sula has a homicide rate of 169 per 100,000 people. Laws allow civilians to own up to five personal guns. Arms trafficking has flooded the country with nearly 70 percent illegal firearms; 83.4 percent of homicides are by firearms, compared to 60 percent in the United States. (Information gathered from Reuters and Associated Press)- Leanne Burden Seidel(26 photos total)

Reuters photographer, Dylan Martinez, recently spent a few days in the once-busy fishing port of Whitby. Now just 200 people are employed in fishing; the fleet is down to only a few boats. Things aren't looking good for Locker - one of the last remaining trawler men in the area. A combination of crippling fishing quotas, climate change and overfishing has all but crushed the local fishing industry. Global warming has expanded fish habitats northward, causing fish stocks to sometimes disappear for weeks on end. Boats return from sea with largely empty nets, and the atmosphere, dour. Often schools of fish then reappear unpredictably, resulting in bumper catches and jubilation - then E.U. quotas take effect and force fishermen to dump excess catch in the sea to avoid hefty E.U. fines. This scenario is echoed in other historic fishing areas across the globe, including New England. -- Paula Nelson( 30 photos total)

For this edition of our look at daily life we share images from India, Nigeria, Spain, Venezuela, Italy, Nepal, South Africa and a few others from around the world. -- Lloyd Young ( 39 photos total)

The Hindu festival of Holi celebrates the beginning of spring. As a festival of colors that marks events in Hindu mythology, it provides photographers with a visual feast. Holi falls on the last full moon day of the lunar month Phalguna, which was on March 27 this year. It is a joyous ritual when intense colors, light, emotion, and energy combine in a surreal vision of spirituality. Enjoy! -Leanne Burden Seidel (36 photos total)

The Associated Press recently re-transmitted a collection of images from the Syrian conflict. It remains an incredibly dangerous situation for working journalists who document the ongoing conflict and the conditions of those living in constant danger and with constant risk. Many continue to die for their beliefs, hoping that peace will come to their country eventually. The images that follow are storytelling, intimate and worth seeing again and again. -- Paula Nelson ( 32 photos total)

Scientists in both the United States and Morocco are studying what it would be like for human beings to live on Mars. Reuters photographer Jim Urquhart spent time in the Utah desert at the Mars Desert Research Station observing a crew simulate what conditions would be like on the red planet. Researchers with the Austrian Space Forum in partnership with the Ibn Battuta Center spent time in the northern Sahara conducting experiments in engineering, planetary surface operations, astrobiology, and geophysics. -- Lloyd Young ( 27 photos total)

Charlie Haughey was drafted into the US Army in October of 1967. He was 24, and had been in college in Michigan before running out of money and quitting school to work in a sheet metal factory. The draft notice meant that he was to serve a tour of duty in Vietnam, designated a rifleman, the basic field position in the Army. After 63 days in Vietnam, he was made a photographer, shooting photographs for the Army and US newspapers, with these instructions from the Colonel: “You are not a combat photographer. This is a morale operation. If I see pictures of my guys in papers, doing their jobs with honor, then you can do what you like in Vietnam.” He shot nearly 2,000 images between March 1968 and May 1969 before taking the negatives home. And there they sat, out of sight, but not out of mind, for 45 years, until a chance meeting brought them out of dormancy and into a digital scanner. At first, it was very difficult for Haughey to view the images and talk about them, especially not knowing the fates of many of the subjects of his photos. When the digitization hit 1,700 negative scans, Haughey put them on a slideshow and viewed them all at once, and didn’t sleep for three days after. He’s slowly getting better at dealing with the emotional impact of seeing the images for the first time in decades. A team of volunteers has worked with Haughey to plan a 28-image show, titled A Weather Walked In, which opens April 5th in the ADX art gallery in Portland, Oregon. The difficulty of keeping notes in a war zone along with the passage of decades has faded the details behind many of the images, and the captions reflect this fact, with many shots of unknown people in forgotten locations at unspecified times. It is hoped that publication of the pictures can yield more information. More images from the collection will be released as the project progresses. You can follow the progress on facebook and Tumblr. Thanks to Chieu Hoi project volunteer Kris Regentin for preparing much of this introduction and the accompanying captions. -- Lane Turner (46 photos total)

The Smithsonian magazine's 10th annual photo contest's 50 finalists have been chosen, but there's still time for you to vote for the Readers Choice winner! This year's competition has drawn over 37,600 entries from photographers in 112 countries around the world. Editors will choose a Grand Prize Winner and the winners in each of five categories which include The Natural World, Americana, People, Travel and Altered Images. Voting will be open through March 29, 2013. -- Paula Nelson ( 22 photos total)