Free Republic

I still wasn't sold on the whole thing, but slowly my knee-jerk emotional fear gave way to genuine inquisitiveness. I wanted answers. Why would our founders put the Second Amendment right after the one that protected our right to speech and religion? Why would someone want more than one gun? What's the danger in gun registration? The process lasted nearly two years, a grueling amount of time, but I wasn't going to let go of my "rational" distrust of guns, or the seeming ease of being able to get them, easily. After all, facts have no use in an emotional...

Simeon D. Mokhiber, 42, of upstate New York had a close call in court last week. Mokhiber is an Iraq combat veteran who served in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division as well as the National Guard. Following his active duty service he worked private security details protecting U.S. officials in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But last year he was pulled over in Niagra County and charged with driving under the influence. (A charge which was dismissed.) The police found three 17-round Glock magazines in a container in his vehicle. There was no firearm in the car… just the magazines.

Nicholas Kristof stepped on a rake last night—and it wasn’t pretty. The New York Times columnist decided to go there on gun control when it was wholly unnecessary to do so. On Tuesday, 29-year-old Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov drove a rented Home Depot pickup truck through a bike path in lower Manhattan and plowed through bystanders and cyclists. Eight people are dead, close to dozen more injured and you’re going to give New York a pat on the back for having strict gun laws. This was possibly in response to Saipov exiting his truck holding fake guns. He was obviously trying...

LaGrange College professor John A. Tures cross-examined various figures on gun crime and found that homicide rates are not markedly different for states with gun control for private sales versus states without. He did this as a project with his students, wherein they examined a study that provided an overview of findings from a wide spectrum of angles and political persuasions, including findings that are considered nonpartisan. These findings included figures from The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the NRA-ILA, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Following the Las Vegas Massacre, Dr. Faren Wintemute, the Director of UC Davis' Violence Prevention Center, has called on physicians across the nation to play a role in curbing gun violence. According to Wintemute, his colleagues should make a pledge to ask patients about firearms in the home and gun safety, as he detailed in the Annals of Internal Medicine Medical Journal. One thing Wintemute doesn't take into account? How truthful people are.

In September of 1774, Dr. Joseph Warren wrote the Suffolk Resolves.British statesman Edmund Burke cited the Suffolk Resolves as a major development in colonial animosity, which eventually led to the Declaration of Independence. The Suffolk Resolves stated: “That it is an indispensable duty which we owe to God, our country, ourselves and posterity, by all lawful ways and means in our power to maintain, defend and preserve those civil and religious rights and liberties, for which many of our fathers fought, bled and died, and to hand them down entire to future generations … and that the inhabitants of those...

On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, former CEO of NPR Ken Stern came on the show to promote his new book, Republican Like Me. Most of the segment with Stern focused on the book’s themes of political polarization in the U.S. being a distortion of Americans’ true unity as a “moderate country” and Stern’s experiences speaking to Trump voters about their beliefs. However, at the end of the discussion, Stern oddly made the case that while ‘most’ ‘gun control measures’ would not have a ‘major effect’ on gun homicides, he was still ‘fine’ with those very same restrictions on Americans’ Second Amendment...

Steven Crowder is one of the more interesting personalities on YouTube, mostly because he’s funny while also providing some pretty smart commentary. He recently tried something new. He set up a table at Texas University and challenged students to change his mind. In the process, he challenges their points of view. Oh, let’s see, a trans woman who believes that there is a police brutality problem in this country, but then only wants the police to be walking around armed all the time. Of course, she also believes the police have a legal responsibility to protect people. (Narrator voice: They...

Because Nevada is one of the states in which Michael Bloomberg-funded Everytown for Gun Safety campaigned relentlessly for universal background checks in 2016, it is important to note that such checks would have done absolutely nothing to prevent the October 1 Las Vegas attack. This is because Vegas attacker Stephen Paddock passed background checks for his guns. Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt (R) made this very point in the Las Vegas Review-Journal on October 21 when he wrote: Many, including U.S. Sen.Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., have said, no law could have stopped the attacker. It should be crystal clear to anybody...

A group behind a ballot initiative that Nevada voters approved last year expanding gun background checks to unlicensed dealers is suing the governor and attorney general to try to make them enforce it. The measure mandating FBI background checks on private-party gun sales passed by less than 1 percentage point in November after Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval vetoed a similar measure in 2013. Attorney General Adam Laxalt has maintained that the new law can’t be enforced after the FBI informed the state in December it wants Nevada’s Department of Public Safety to conduct the checks itself in the same way...

Objectives. To determine the frequency of loaded handgun carrying among US adult handgun owners, characterize those who carry, and examine concealed carrying by state concealed carry laws. Methods. Using a nationally representative survey of US adults in 2015, we asked handgun owners (n = 1444) about their past-30-day carrying behavior. Results. Among surveyed handgun owners, 24% (95% confidence interval[CI] = 21%, 26%) carried loaded handguns monthly, of whom 35% (95% CI = 29%, 41%) did so daily; 82% (95% CI = 77%, 86%) carried primarily for protection. The proportion of handgun owners who carried concealed loaded handguns in the past 30 days was 21% (95% CI = 12%, 35%) in...

A poll by the Associated Press found that while a majority of Americans still support stricter gun control, a result found in several previous polls, that support slipped slightly (down 3%) compared to the same poll last year. However, the 3% decline is within the poll’s margin of error meaning it may not be significant. In any case, the AP headlines the fact that just weeks after the worst shooting in modern American history, the numbers remain basically unchanged. The Associated Press story is titled “Vegas shooting doesn’t change opinions on guns.”

After the horrific shooting in Las Vegas, many people ask why is gun ownership so high in the U.S.? That's an honest question. Maybe you've asked that of yourself or have had it pose to you by a liberal friend as I have. There are many reasons, and I'd like to touch of a few of the less mentioned ones. And no, they have nothing to do with hunting and target shooting.

Actor Alec Baldwin and California lieutenant governor Gavin Newsom have helped launch a crusade to win an Oscar for the documentary Making A Killing: Guns, Greed And the NRA. Their reasons in this case may go beyond the predictable liberal virtue-signaling. When a sex scandal erupted against producer Harvey Weinstein, his first response was to pledge that he would "channel anger" in a campaign against the National Rifle Association, one of the most reliable devil-dolls liberals stick pins in to prove their bona fides. Weinstein must have been shocked when this gesture did not gain him instant forgiveness for his...

The state Supreme Court will hear arguments on Nov. 14 in the closely watched case involving the families of victims of the Sandy Hook massacre who are suing the gun manufacturer that makes the weapon used in the shootings. The families of 10 victims filed the lawsuit in January 2015, seeking to hold the Remington Outdoor Co. liable for the massacre because it marketed a gun to the public it knew was made for military use. Adam Lanza shot his way into the Newtown school on Dec. 14, 2012, and fired 154 bullets in about five minutes from a Bushmaster...

After the Massachusetts Legislature sped restrictions on bump stocks, a tool to increase the firing rate of guns, through the legislative process, senators opened the issue up to a public hearing. No members of the public showed up. "I was not going to ask most of our people to take a day off and come to the Statehouse to talk about something that already happened," said Jim Wallace, executive director of Gun Owners' Action League of Massachusetts.

In the wake of the Vegas shooting, Hollywood actors are urging people to “call Congress” and ask them to oppose any gun measures backed by the National Rifle Association. In a video for Everytown for Gun Safety, Emma Stone, Bill Hader, Melissa McCarthy, and others voice support for gun control legislation and ask viewers to text Everytown for Gun Safety so that they can be connected with their congressmen. “The mass shooting in Las Vegas has all of us grieving, scared, and angry,” Stone begins in the video. “Knowing what to do about it can be confusing,” Bill Hader continues....

In a letter dated October 12, the ATF Association informed lawmakers that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) approved bump stocks because they do not turn a semiautomatic rifle into “a machine gun.” The letter contains explanations of basic points for lawmakers–like the fact that a semiautomatic only shoots one round each time the trigger is pulled and bump stocks to not change this basic action. And it also seeks to defend the integrity of the ATF by explaining that the body of laws governing machine guns has been in place since 1934 and that body of...

Much of the ground for advocating Second Amendment freedoms has been covered in the media, but at times like this, when a major tragedy places the second amendment under intense scrutiny, the basic point bears repeating. The Second Amendment to the Constitution is not about granting rights to citizens to carry guns; it is about denying to government the exclusive monopoly on the use of force and ensuring the preservation of our freedom. Though much-debated, the Constitutional text is simple. "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and...

In the aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting massacre, the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks wasted little time in exploiting the tragedy to advance their anti-gun rights agenda. In just six days of (October 2 through October 8) coverage, the networks filled their evening and morning show programs with statements favoring gun control over gun rights by a ratio of roughly 5 to 1. MRC analysts reviewed all statements that took a position on overall gun policy by anchors, reporters, guests and soundbites, beginning with the morning of October 2 through the morning of October 8, and found time...