Free Republic

A New York Times examination of mass shootings since the Virginia Tech attack in 2007 reveals how credit cards have become a crucial part of the planning of these massacres. There have been 13 shootings that killed 10 or more people in the last decade, and in at least eight of them, the killers financed their attacks using credit cards. Some used credit to acquire firearms they could not otherwise have afforded. Those eight shootings killed 217 people. The investigations undertaken in their aftermath uncovered a rich trove of information about the killers’ spending. There were plenty of red flags,...

Sheryl Sandberg's comments come on the same day the NAACP is launching a week-long boycott of the service, and amid growing calls to clean up the platform. Facebook releases the findings of a civil rights audit, highlighting particular areas of concern on the platform. Facebook has acknowledged and addressed many of the civil rights abuses outlined in the audit report. But as bad actors get increasingly clever and find new ways to manipulate Facebook users, the company faces new challenges and changing calls for action.

Liberal opinion writer E.J. Dionne, Jr. of the Washington Post thinks so. He writes that the power and influence of the National Rifle Association has been broken. What he serves up as proof is the 2018 election, the one where the Republicans under the inept leadership of Paul Ryan lost the House of Representatives. It is worth considering Dionne's argument if for no other reason than to gain insight into the liberal mind. After all, he speaks for many on the Left, and to defeat the enemy it is necessary to know them. Before he makes his case that the...

Hollywood despises President Donald Trump for dozens of reasons, but one stands out. He’s too crude and rude to be our commander in chief. Tinsel Town has a point. While Trump’s admirers relish his pugnacious spirit, only the most ardent Trump Train passengers cheer his worst rhetoric. So why can’t Hollywood stop upping the ante on it? How can we forget Robert De Niro, one of the greatest actors of his generation, crying “F-word Trump” at the last Tony Awards? It doesn’t get more crude than that. Even Hollywood’s “activists” embrace profanity to smite the commander in chief. Kathy Griffin...

Barack Obama pushed gun control for “Trayvon” and “those congregants in Thousand Oaks,” among others, during a December 13 acceptance speech for the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award. Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in self-defense on February 26, 2012, after attacking a neighborhood watchman, and 12 people were killed in Thousand Oaks’ Borderline Bar & Grill on November 7, 2018. During his acceptance speech, IJR magazine quoted Obama saying: “The horror of gun violence continues to plague our nation, a pain that many in this room know too well,” he said. “The bullets that took Bobby, JFK,...

“I think they showed that in the fact that voters sent a message at the midterms to their elected leaders, and the message boils down to: Pass laws to keep us safe,” he added. By far the biggest success of the year for the group was turning over the House to the dark side, replacing as many as 15 NRA-“A”-rated Republicans with anti-gun Democrats, as the Wall Street Journal reported. “The NRA lobbyists are like cockroaches. Just when you think you’ve gotten rid of all of them, you shine a flashlight and there they are,” Shannon Watts, the founder of...

On Wednesday's Full Frontal show on TBS, liberal comedienne Samantha Bee displayed the latest example of liberals throwing around accusations of racism as she not only suggested that Fox News viewers are Nazi sympathizers, but a segment about alleged voter suppression hinted that most whites are racist because they refuse to vote for Democrats. Early in tne show, Bee took aim at Fox News over the recent launch of FoxNation.com as she suggested that eldery men who write racist comments on Facebook might be interested in the new Fox News platform. Bee: "It's like television, Grandpa, but you get it...

The "independent fact checkers" at PolitiFact displayed their liberal stripes again this week by hailing the liberal student activists of Parkland High School as the victimized heroes of their 2018 "Lie of the Year." The "online smear machine" that tried to "take down Parkland students" was singled out as the very worst. The PolitiFact online ballot for their liberal audience consisted of five Trump statements, one by Trump adviser Larry Kudlow, the Parkland "smear machine"....and then one each by socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Proud conservative country music singer John Rich posed a challenge this week to those of his peers in the industry who believe gun bans are the only solution to gun violence: He asked them to think outside of the box and come up with a real solution that’d satisfy everybody. In a video for Fox News, he explained that the problem with simply banning certain guns is that it’d leave families — including his own — less prepared to protect themselves from actual criminals.

Libertarian TV personality and former ABC reporter John Stossel says Youtube placed age restrictions on a video he published about socialism. The restrictions were later removed, but the fact they occurred is part of a trend that concerns conservatives and free speech advocates. Stossel wrote at Townhall on Dec. 5, that Google informed that morning via email that it wouldn’t allow his "Socialism Leads to Violence" video to be viewed by young people. In his column, Stossel wondered whether this video restriction was the case of oversensitive algorithms or of big tech bias. Both are possible. His video, hosted by...

BARF ALERT!!!! This is the event's description: A survivor of the largest school shooting in American school history at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, David Hogg turned his anger into action by co-founding the March For Our Lives Movement against gun violence. His grassroots activism and social media mastery have mobilized millions of young people to find their voice, speak out and engage in change. Now speaking to audiences across the nation, David brings an inspiring message of active citizenship and an urgent call to action. Declaring that "the sun shines on a new day, and it...

No wonder the noise-makers are drowning out the authentic claims-makers in society. Against the sainted noise-makers on the border all laws appear to be null and void or tantamount to torture. The left is creating reality on the ground, all right. But the prime real estate liberals hope to colonize is in every American’s head. Ruffians are breaching the U.S. border near Tijuana, demanding access to the American Welfare State. That’s the reality! Helped by the American left’s monopoly over the intellectual means of production – the average American is being encouraged to look at this aberrant apparition and “think”:...

ABC’s comedy Blackish is known for taking on the issue of racism, but Tuesday’s episode was particularly heavy on the topic, celebrating controversial former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick as a hero and painting white men as ignorant racists who need to be saved from themselves. In the episode, “Stand up, Fall Down,” main character Dre (Anthony Anderson) decides to take his teenage son Andre "Junior" (Marcus Scribner) to work with him as an intern. While there, Andre witnesses Dre’s white coworkers and boss, who are usually painted as racially insensitive, suggesting racist ideas for a restaurant ad campaign they’re working...

There seemingly is no end to gun violence; and at the end of each incident, there are the usual cries for “more gun control.” It doesn’t seem to matter whether it is a one-on-one killing or a massacre; the solution in the minds of many Americans is that stricter laws governing who can own what weapon – and under what circumstances – is the answer for prevention. The mass shooting at the Thousand Oaks country music bar in California on Nov. 7 ended with 13 dead, including the gunman. Authorities say he killed himself as officers closed in. Without missing...

TOMS shoe company plans to donate $5 million to various gun control groups. The company also launched a campaign to mobilize their customers to support the gun control agenda. One of TOMS' campaigns includes a postcard campaign. Customers can input their name and address on their website and the company will send a postcard to their representative. Here's what the postcards say: Dear (representative), More than 90% of Americans support universal background checks. And I'm one of them. As your constituent, I urge you to stand with me and pass this life-saving legislation. Let's end gun violence together. Sincerely, (your...

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday accused President Donald Trump of fomenting hate and division, citing an increase in hate crimes through the state of New York. “I think we are in a moment in time where our country and our morality as a country is literally on knife’s edge. We have a president who has blurred, even destroyed the lines between right vs. wrong. He has demonized immigrants. He has created division and hate throughout society,” she said during a speech at the National Action Network Conference. “In New York State, we have more hate crimes than we have...

With NBA commissioner Adam Silver in the stands and supporting the cause, the Los Angeles Lakers and Atlanta Hawks honored the victims of the Thousand Oaks shooting by wearing black T-shirts with the message "Enough" on the front. The Lakers and Hawks followed what the Clippers and Milwaukee Bucks did on Saturday when players from both teams first wore the T-shirts. "As I've always said, our players aren't just ballplayers, they're citizens," Silver told ESPN after watching the Lakers beat the Hawks 107-106 on Sunday. "They have strong feelings about what's happening in society and they react to them. I...

Perhaps annoyed that “jingoistic” country music is not yet as infested with left-wing promotional politics as other musical and entertainment fields, a major newspaper again used the annual Country Music Association Awards to push gun-control politics onto the industry, Reporter Elizabeth Harris garnered the front page of the New York Times Arts section for her Saturday piece “Singing About Pain, But Not Its Source -- A country awards show may discuss its slain fans, but guns and politics are unlikely topics”: The Country Music Association Awards are supposed to be a celebration of one of America’s enduring art forms, a...

Actor Ashton Kutcher responded to Wednesday’s shooting in Borderline Bar & Grill by begging Ivanka Trump to convince her father to push “gun control now.” Kutcher used Twitter to explain that he celebrated his most recent birthday party at Borderline, tweeting, “My wife threw me a birthday party this year at the Borderline. Only reason we are alive is the shooter chose a different night. My heart goes out to the victims. I’ll say it again… Gun Reform Now! Politicians need to stop standing behind the dollar & Protect the people!”

During the November 4 airing of CBS News’s 60 Minutes, they inaccurately described the AR-15 as mass shooters’ “weapon of choice.” The claim that the AR-15 is the “weapon of choice” is widely reported and it is Fake New 101. In fact, to make the claim even nominally palatable, 60 Minutes host Scott Pelley only referenced five mass shooting events, all of which happened in the last six years and all which involved an AR-15 or an AR-15 and various handguns. Those five shootings were the Tree of Life Synagogue (October 27, 2018), the church in Sutherland Springs, Texas (November...