Free Republic

In reading about the horrific attack by the Tunisian mass shooter, on the beach on Friday, the 26th of June, 2015, it appears that he used two weapons systems.  An AKM rifle, commonly referred to as an AK47, almost certainly in 7.62x39 caliber, with several standard 30 round magazines, was used for most of the killing.  The rifle is seen above.  It has wooden furniture, the AKM muzzle brake, and a web sling.  It is missing the standard cleaning rod from under the barrel. Update: from a colleague on freerepublic: Appears to be an Egyptian Maadi [or MISR] AKM....

The Supreme Court decision allowing gay “marriage” in the United States has upset all right minded Christians, and rightly so.It is pretty clear that the Supreme Court has rubber stamped a widespread rejection of Christian morality by a large segment of the American people.Not only has the Supreme Court ratified same sex “marriage” but they have overturned majority opinions of the people, set themselves up as arbiters of human morality, trampled on states’ rights, ignored not only historic Christian teaching, but the understanding of marriage held by all people at all times and in all cultures down through history.We’re right...

Al Jazeera’s digital media platform AJ+ posted a Fourth of July-themed video mocking Americans as fat, cheese-eating, gun-toting, pill-popping, racist porn watchers. While some on social media applauded the creation, others slammed the Qatar-owned network for using the holiday “to dump” on America. Social media users got particularly riled up by the criticism coming from the channel owned by Qatar — a country where stoning is a legal punishment under Shariah law, women have second class legal status, writers can be imprisoned for criticizing the emir and abuse of foreign laborers has been repeatedly criticized by human rights groups. The...

Church ‘obsessions’ As the culture pushes abortion and sex outside of marriage, the Church is called to respond with truth Msgr. Charles Pope OSV Newsweekly 7/1/2015 Question: My sister-law is hostile to the Church and says that we are obsessed by sex and abortion and don’t care about the same things Jesus did, like the poor. Is there an effective answer to this charge? Name withheld, Newark, New Jersey Answer: The charge that the Church is “obsessed” with sex and abortion — and many today add homosexuality — is not sustainable. Any look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church...

When Francisco Sanchez allegedly gunned down Kathryn Steinle at San Francisco’s Pier 14 on July 1, Breitbart News discovered that Sanchez had been deported from the country five times. We also discovered another interesting tidbit–Sanchez has seven felonies, which means he faces 100 percent gun control 100 percent of the time. He is completely barred from gun possession and prohibited from having the gun with which he allegedly shot and killed Steinle.

Back when he was still on the air, I would often perform an act of charity in doubling Piers Morgan’s ratings by tuning in to his show. When the topic of gun control would come up, and it did often, there was one argument that Piers would often bring up: that America has lax gun laws and plenty of gun homicides, while England and Wales have strong gun control and very few gun homicides. The argument at face value appears to have some validity – the U.S. has around 8,000 gun-related homicides, while England and Wales have about 60 combined.

LD 652/SP 245, known as the constitutional carry bill, has been passed out of the special appropriations table, been  approved of in the Senate (again) by a 23 to 12 vote, and will now go to Governor Paul Le Page for signature or veto.   It does not appear that the legislature will be in session for three consecutive days in July, so if Governor Le Page does not sign the bill, it will not become law. Governor Le Page said that he would not sign the bill if it required Maine residents under the age of 21, on active...

While dissenting from the recent Supreme Court decision rubber-stamping same-sex “marriage,” Justice Antonin Scalia warned his colleagues that with “each decision ... unabashedly based not on law” the Court moves “one step closer to being reminded of [its] impotence.” And a new poll shows that another such step has in fact been taken, with more Americans supporting the idea that states should have the right to ignore federal court rulings. Writes Rasmussen Reports, “A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 33% of Likely U.S. Voters now believe that states should have the right to ignore federal court rulings...

If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge? We shouldn't marginalise people for this. They must be integrated into society. Pope Francis Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/slideshow/authors/top_10_pope_francis_quotes.html#QDU6y5fekEMZIW9l.99

David Frum, in an article published in the Atlantic on 23 May, takes considerable liberties with the facts and truth.   The article is under the "politics" section, so it should be a bit more concerned with facts than a typical opinion piece.  But disarmists seldom let reality interfere with their fantasies.  Frum makes a number of assertions as fact that are not true.  He selectively ignores other facts that invalidate his thesis.  Here are some of the more egregious errors. He claims that mass killing with firearms is a distinctly American phenomena.  That is simply false, an echoing of...

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.

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 . . .

Comedian Jim Jefferies has been making a bit of a splash in the United States by putting together a misleading rant against the right to bear arms in the U.S.  Jefferies does not want women to have guns.  He says that he does not want anyone to have guns, but then he is much bigger and stronger than most women, so perhaps he does not mind being disarmed, as long as women are disarmed as well.  A general prohibition on guns always favors those who are bigger, stronger and younger. Jefferies does not just rant about guns, he rants...

Home invasion survivor: I was against guns, now I carry

A Lafayette woman is working to raise awareness about gun safety after an accidental shooting claimed the life of her friend and star Northside High basketball player Jo'Nathan Delacroix. "He was like a little brother to me, especially when we were growing up." Morgane Prejean said. Lafayette police have said Delacroix and another Northside High student, Anthony Beloney, were handling what they thought was an unloaded gun last weekend, when it went off, fatally wounding Delacroix. Beloney has been arrested on a count of negligent homicide. News of Delacroix's death devastated Prejean. She has decided to use the tragedy as...

It was a difficult marriage from the beginning. Its success was largely regional and state by state. But where it worked, it worked well, mainly the South and parts of the West. They papered over their differences for years. Now they've grown apart and a messy divorce looms. It wasn't exactly a shotgun marriage. The Wall Street/Koch Brothers crowd gleefully accepted the support of Tea Party and evangelical leaders, as long as austerity, high-end tax cuts and deregulation were part of the agenda. The cultural right needed money and legitimacy. Everybody got along. No more. The split was thrust into...

Last week’s Supreme Court ruling forcing every state to recognize same-sex marriage has inspired a New York Times post by David Leonhardt and Alicia Parlapiano, exploring why increasing public acceptance of homosexuality hasn’t been accompanied by increasing acceptance of abortion. This is a question we’ve explored here before too, and they come to basically the same conclusion: while the case against same-sex marriage is somewhat abstract and gay causes tend to have an edge with Americans’ live-and-let-live sensibilities, the fact that abortion has a specific victim means an “unavoidable tension between a mother’s rights and a fetus’s” can never be...

The vocal pivot from such traditional social issues marks the first time U.S. Catholic bishops have publicly asked those seeking the White House to heed the admonitions of Francis' June encyclical, said Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines. In Francis' major teaching document, the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics called for a "sweeping revolution" to correct a "structurally perverse" economic system that allows the rich to exploit the poor and has turned the Earth into an "immense pile of filth."

With Governor ChristieÂ’s splash in the pool, the population pining to be POTUS is now large enough to hold a special Republican Primary: only the declared wannabes would participate, each egotist getting three votes. Naturally, weÂ’d eliminate all their first choices and zero in on the next two, thereby distilling a much tighter cluster of potential electables.Seriously, we now have a candidate for almost every splinter view imaginable, and good people though each of them are, they collectively exemplify a party in confusion and dysfunction. As one wag pointed out, the last time there were this many declared candidates, a...

Last year, Democrat Senator Ed Markey (NY) and Democrat Rep. Carolyn Maloney (Mass) introduced legislation suggesting Barack Obama’s Centers for Disease Control (CDC) be paid $10 million/year to fund “…research on gun violence prevention and firearm safety.” According to the far left Markey, “it is time we study the issue of gun violence like the public health crisis that it is. If we want to prevent injury and deaths from guns, we need to know what can be done to prevent it.” Truth be told, Markey and Maloney believe the best way to prevent gun violence is by making it...