Free Republic

Dr. Ben Carson’s brilliance is beyond debate. However, there is a definite reason why I would trust the famed neurosurgeon to operate on my child’s brain and not entrust him with the Oval Office. Now, the former presidential candidate has declared that it is time to “put on the table” a discussion on whether or not we actually need the Second Amendment.

A brave 13-year-old Ladson (SC) boy fended off two hardened felons who were attempting to break into his house by using his mother’s gun to protect himself while home alone. The boy saw the men breaking into the back of his home, “at which time he feared for his safety” and grabbed his mother’s gun, the document states. He began firing at them, and the Sheriff’s office reported that they returned fire. In a heated shootout, he shot Brown three times, and Bennett drove him to the hospital where he later died. The gray Chevy Sonic they were driving had...

House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday reacted to the Democratic sit-in on the floor of the House of Representatives over gun control by saying: “I don’t think this should be a very proud moment for democracy or the people who staged these stunts.” In his weekly press conference at the Capitol, Ryan said: “This is the people’s house. This is Congress, the House of Representatives, the oldest democracy in the world, and they’re descending it into chaos.”

In the wake of the horrific attack on an Orlando nightclub by a man espousing allegiance to ISIS, it didn’t take long for the Big Three networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) to advance the preferred political line of the Democrats, in this election year, to push for more gun control. Beginning on the evening following the shooting, NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt on June 12, sounded the clarion call for gun control: “Today’s terror attack brings national security and the debate over gun control to forefront of the presidential campaigns once again.” And for the next week, an MRC study...

In the wake of the Orlando attack, gun sales are spiking across the country. Hunter’s Warehouse, a Pennsylvania-based online gun store, has sold 30,000 AR-15 rifles since the shooting. In Oklahoma, gun sales have spiked due to security concerns, with locals buying firearms to protect themselves and their families (via The Oklahoman):

But those who constantly appeal to that sentence in the Constitution as an obstacle to reasonable gun regulation are ignorant about the Founders’ own views about gun regulation. Any honest historian of the early Republic will tell you that lax gun laws are not in fact pro-Second Amendment; they are anti-Second Amendment. -snip Pennsylvania, in its 1776 Constitution, was the first state to include an express provision affirming the right to bear arms. It also passed a stringent loyalty oath that disarmed a large proportion of its population. Similar oaths were in force in most of the other states. When...

A father of one of the Orlando victims penned a letter expressing the wish that his son had been armed at the gay nightclub where 49 people were killed and another 53 were injured last week. In a letter published by The Detroit News, Mark Bando decried gun control policies for disarming people like his son, Christopher Andrew Leinonen, who was shot and killed by a terrorist last week at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. “The killer was armed and his helpless victims were not,” Bando wrote. “Yet the anti gun politicians still want to disarm the populace, enabling these...

Senior Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett told reporters on a Monday conference call that the way to stop mass shootings is to “drown out” the voice of the NRA.

President Barack Obama again failed to push through additional gun control efforts in Congress — even after blaming the terrorist attack in Florida on Republicans and supporters of the Second Amendment. White House press secretary Josh Earnest revealed that Obama was “profoundly frustrated” after Senate Republicans again blocked anti-gun legislation. Earnest suggested that the president would again turn to executive authority to try and enact gun control policies on his own.

Beware liberal media propagandists trying to sell you a liberal as “just regular people....folding the kids’ laundry...who had never done anything political before.” Baloney. On Friday’s Morning Edition, NPR was the latest outlet who presented this fakery for one Shannon Watts, who founded the group One Million Moms for Gun Control after the Sandy Hook mass murder in December of 2012. CHRIS ARNOLD: Much of the groundswell behind this crusade comes from just regular people pulled into it for their own reasons. For a woman named Shannon Watts -- she was drawn in by another mass shooting, the murder of...

James Kallstrom, a former FBI assistant director, recently spoke with Megyn Kelly on her Fox News show. Kallstrom told Kelly that orders have come down from the White House that the bureau cannot investigate 'anything to do with Muslims' and agents are "petrified" of losing their jobs if they do. Islamists could not have a better friend in the White House had they put one of their own there.

Here’s another reason why you – and your friends and family – should prep: Guns are icky: NY Daily News writer gets temporary PTSD from the horrors of shooting an AR. There isn’t much point in piling on the Delta male reporter mentioned, since above-linked article does such a good job of it. And there really isn’t any good reason to try to Greek-alphabetize President Obama in regards to the whole AR-15 hammer-of-doom, autonomous-baby-killer smoke screen, mainly because his goals have nothing to do with the personal safety of the herd members. But facts are facts. Click on the table...

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA – The United States Supreme Court declined on Monday to review a lower court’s ruling refusing to strike down on Second Amendment grounds Connecticut’s ban on certain semi-automatic firearms including the most popular rifles in the Nation. The Connecticut Citizens’ Defense League (CCDL) and other plaintiffs challenged Connecticut’s ban in 2013, arguing that the ban openly flouts the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which held that law-abiding citizens have an individual right to keep commonly owned firearms in their homes for self-defense.

The Senate plans to take four procedural votes Monday on amendments that would improve or expand background checks and make it harder for suspected terrorists to purchase guns. None is expected to get the 60 votes required for further action. Democrats were expected to block two Republican amendments, arguing that they fall short in controlling the sales of guns. Republicans were expected to block two Democratic amendments, contending that they threaten the constitutional rights of gun owners.

Before we start, let's just get one thing straight: A renewal of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban will not crumble under fire from the "lobbying" power of the NRA. For sure, the National Rifle Association has a lot of political power—which is, of course, derived from its 4.5 million members and not from the gun industry, as the anti-gun movement would have you believe. No. Any call to ban AR-15 rifles (what the left likes to incorrectly call "assault weapons") will likely fall flat on Capitol Hill simply because that firearm is by any objective measure the most popular long...

This article covered assault weapons specifically, but I still believe wholeheartedly that the much broader problem with gun violence requires us to heavily fund mental healthcare in this country, and with deep pockets. A majority of all gun deaths are still suicides, or murder-suicides. While we must do something to prevent the string of massacres we’ve seen with assault rifles over the past few years, we’d be sorely mistaken not to address the grave mental health problem in our country. This is a separate issue from domestic terrorism, but is definitely where this discussion needs to go.

On Monday, June 20 at 1:00 p.m. ET, we want you to join us for a special call on civilian ownership of the AR-15 with Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement. On the call, we'll talk about the need to renew the assault weapons ban and the different gun safety measures the Senate is set to vote on in the coming week. If you want to participate in this conference call, please sign up here and let us know what questions you'd like us to answer. The call will be streamed...

Sunday on NBC’s meet the Press,” in commenting on the gun control push in the wake of the Orlando, FL mass shooting terror attack last weekend, Attorney General Loretta Lynch argued to have the “tools” to stop those from obtaining guns “who should not have them.”

The U.S. Supreme Court may weigh in this week on gun control, an issue smoldering again following the June 12 Orlando massacre, with the justices due to decide whether to hear a challenge by gun rights advocates to assault weapon bans in two states. The Connecticut and New York laws prohibit semiautomatic weapons like the one used by the gunman who fatally shot 49 people at a gay night club in Orlando in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The Supreme Court will announce as soon as Monday whether it will hear the challenge brought by gun rights...

Of all the details investigators have uncovered about Orlando terrorist Omar Mateen, perhaps the most infuriating is the fact that he spent 10 months on a government watch list, yet had no trouble buying an assault rifle and a handgun. Authorities placed Mateen on a watch list in May 2013 after coworkers at the Florida courthouse where he was a security guard told authorities he boasted of connections to al Qaeda and other terrorists organizations. He remained on the list for 10 months, and FBI Director James Comey told reporters this week that during that time the agency placed Mateen...