Free Republic

The FBI says that the federal background check system for guns should have stopped Dylann Roof, the racist who killed nine black parishioners at a church in Charleston. “This rips all of our hearts out,” says FBI Director James Comey, who blamed the mistake at least partially on improperly labeled paperwork. But the truth is more complicated. First, even a perfectly functioning background check system very likely wouldn’t have stopped Roof from getting a gun. Second, the current background check system is a much worse mess than Comey recognizes. With Roof planning his attack for at least six months, it...

In her standard stump speech, Hillary Rodham Clinton talks about fighting income inequality, celebrating court rulings on gay marriage and health care, and, since the Emanuel AME Church massacre, toughening the nation’s gun laws. That last component marks an important evolution in presidential politics. For at least the past several decades, Democrats seeking national office have often been timid on the issue of guns for fear of alienating firearms owners. In 2008, after Barack Obama took heat for his gaffe about people who “cling to guns or religion,” he rarely mentioned guns again — neither that year nor in his...

In a move that’s prompting questions about the stockpiling of weapons by the federal government’s nonmilitary agencies, the Bureau of Reclamation wants to buy 52,000 rounds of ammunition for use in law enforcement at Hoover Dam and Lake Mead. After learning about the purchase request, Nevada Rep. Mark Amodei vowed to inquire with the bureau about its operations, number of officers carrying firearms and how much ammunition it uses, according Brian Baluta, a spokesman for Amodei.

This is where racism leads. Father Pfleger of Chicago and other disarmists have filed a lawsuit against three municipalities outside of Chicago. In essence, that lawsuit says that black people cannot stop themselves from murdering and stealing, so people outside of Chicago have to keep strict controls on the sale of guns. Too understand the lawsuit, it claims that lack of strict gun controls has a disproportionate effect on black people.

Last week during a road trip out west, former CNN journalists  Chuck de Caro and Lynne Russell had a brush with death after an armed man pushed his way into their New Mexico motel room. Luckily, the recently married couple was armed and their assailant ended up dead. Here are the details: Ex-reporter Chuck de Caro killed the alleged gunman after he accosted de Caro's wife, Lynne Russell, in the parking lot of an Albuquerque motel and forced his way inside their room, Russell told local outlet KOB-TV. Russell, a retired CNN Headline News anchor, said she slipped a handgun into...

San Francisco (CNN)The gun used in the killing of a San Francisco woman in a case that gave new political prominence to the issue of illegal immigration was stolen from a vehicle belonging to a federal Bureau of Land Management agent, a source familiar with the investigation said Wednesday. Kate Steinle was shot to death on July 1 on one of San Francisco's busiest piers. The .40-caliber pistol was a personal weapon, not an official firearm, the source said. Investigators still are trying to determine how Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, the man accused in Steinle's killing, allegedly obtained the weapon, according...

I can easily forgive President Barack Obama for not understanding American culture, especially gun culture. Growing up in the exclusive Menteng district of Jakarta, Indonesia, before moving to Honolulu, Hawaii to attend a private school, Obama knew nothing of the continental United States until he moved to California as a young adult to attend Occidental College in Los Angeles. From Los Angeles, Obama moved to New York City to attend Columbia. He then moved to Chicago and his first job as a community organizer, before going to Harvard. After Harvard, he returned to Chicago, and lived there until he moved...

The “investigation” focused mostly on the Facebook group Sheepdog Mama, a community for pro-gun moms that currently has nearly 5,000 members. Instead of explosive debate on the divisive issue of guns, the page features thousands of mothers who are concerned with mostly one thing: protecting their families. However, the article also cites a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health who claimed there is “no good evidence that having a gun is going to make you any safer.” In fact, citing a study regularly used by anti-gun advocates, he claimed owning a gun makes households more unsafe.

Lynne Russell, a former CNN anchor who worked for the cable network between 1983 and 2001 – and who was attacked by an armed felon during a trip with her husband – issued a sharp rebuke against those who want to control Americans’ access to guns: “Shut the f— up,” she said, to a local television station. “If you don’t want to carry, please don’t,” Russell said to Fox 411. “Then, shut the f— up about it. Make your own decisions.”

As we continue to mourn the latest mass murder and the president has expressed the anger and frustration that most of us feel, we all can just settle back to wait for the next atrocity and the resulting worthless disingenuous rhetoric about changing the nation’s barbaric gun culture. Between now and then, this is certain: Nothing will alter the status quo and the victims will just be more martyred to the cause delivering us from the evil of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. If that seems unrelentingly cynical, it is justified by the refusal of American political and judicial...

At least eight people have died and 41 others were wounded in shootings across Chicago this Fourth of July weekend.

TAMPA — Most of the 21 homicides and more than two dozen shootings Tampa police have investigated this year have several factors in common. The violence primarily is a result of neighborhood feuds among groups of mostly young black men, police say. All of the shootings took place in East and West Tampa. And investigators are struggling to get information from witnesses and victims about who committed the crimes. Another pattern has emerged that has Tampa police and federal authorities working together to put a stop to it: Most of the bullets are being fired from stolen guns. “We believe...

Gun owners across the U.S. continued their unprecedented spending spree in 2014, buying firearms and ammunition at a record clip and, whether they knew it or not, pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into wildlife conservation programs. Advertisement The federal excise tax on new firearms, ammunition and archery gear — collected at the manufacturer’s level — jumped to $824 million in 2014, up from the all-time high of $812 million in 2013 and more than triple the amount from a decade ago, according to recent federal data.

Some time after I bought my first gun, I got a robocall from the National Rifle Association, asking me to join. After the customary “Please stay on the line …” from a pleasant but earnest voice, I recoiled from the barkings of an angry-sounding man: “Did I know that Barack Hussein Obama and European leaders are meeting on American soil right now, at this very moment, to plot the confiscation of my guns?” The caller continued with his insinuations of an imminent United Nations plot against America, but before I could be handed off to a live operator, I hung...

TTAG reader MK contacted U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein to ask her support for national concealed carry reciprocity. (I know, right?) The email he received from the California Democrat – who never met a gun control law she didn’t like – was less than enthusiastic . . .

We’re glad this criminal is off the streets, but we’ll also be honest. We were hoping this one would go to trial because an anti-2nd Amendment Democrat who also happens to be an international gun-runner is just too much fun to pass up. Have fun in the slammer, Mr. Yee.

Other countries don't have America's gun problem. Here, we take a look at the data that shows why America is so unlike the rest of the world when it comes to the popularity and the abuse of guns. We'll look at the role that policymakers play in the gun-control debate, and we'll look at what can be done (if anything). It isn't pretty, but it's important. Hundreds of thousands of American lives hang in the balance.

In a Suffolk University/USA TODAY survey released on Tuesday, Americans said they do not want gun control to be a “significant subject” in the 2016 elections, by a margin of 52 to 43. The survey was conducted from June 25 to June 29, just over a week after the heinous attack in Charleston by alleged gunman Dylann Roof. According to Suffolk University, in addition to not wanting to hear about gun control in 2016, a majority of Americans do not believe increasing gun control via expanded background checks will curb mass violence. Fifty-six percent of respondents said it would not,...

It is apparent that this case was filed to pursue the political purposes of the Brady Center, and, given the failure to present any cognizable legal claim, bringing these defendants into the Colorado court where the prosecution of James Holmes was proceeding appears to be more of an opportunity to propagandize the public and stigmatize the defendants than to obtain a court order which counsel should have known would be outside the authority of this court.

Finally, the celebrities of America have come together to put aside their impulse to be politically correct and to call out gunmen and Gunmanism. To be specific, it's radical, extreme Gunmanism that we are talking about here. Most gunmen are peaceful, law abiding people who just want to eat sandwiches and raise their kids.