Free Republic

Randall and Vicki Weaver and their children wanted nothing more than to be left to live an isolated life in peace in their cabin enclave on a northern Idaho mountain top called Ruby Ridge. Untrusting of the federal government and of the belief society had taken an insurmountable turn for the worse, the Weavers — as many residents in the remote and breathtaking area — taught their children to be self-sufficient and defend themselves with firearms from unwanted intrusions onto the family’s property. But the Weaver’s seemingly idyllic life came to an appallingly violent end over several hours from August...

The Federal Government spends a billion dollars a year on on federal gun laws.  Most of that money is for enforcement of federal gun laws, but some of it is to push state and local governments toward infringing on the Second Amendment. From FY 2015 Budget Fact Sheets U.S DOJ(pdf): In 2013, the Administration proposed a range of legislative remedies – along with 23 executive actions – to address mass shootings and reduce gun violence. The Justice Department is working to implement a number of these actions and requests a total of $1.1 billion in FY 2015 to address...

An ATF spokesman who was intimately involved in the Fast and Furious cover up has been promoting a national gun registry on CBS.  On Sunday, 31 July, Deputy Director Thomas E. Brandon appeared on Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood. Brandon was the ATF official who oversaw the discipline or more accurately the lack thereof, in the Fast and Furious operation. His role has been detailed in the americanthinker.com: According to outgoing Director Jones's sworn testimony of April 2, 2014 before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Mr. Brandon was the person who determined disciplinary punishments for all of...

Patriotic and resolute until the very end, Sipsey Street Irregulars' Mike Vanderboegh died on Wednesday, August 10, 2016 at the age of 64. He wrote this back in January: I beat the odds of my first cancer diagnosis for five years through the grace of God, who evidently wasn't done with me yet. In those five years, we broke the Fast and Furious scandal story ... and generally became a thorn in the side of the empire[.] In December 2010, the Obama-controlled media complex desperately wanted to ignore an illegal government-sponsored gun-walking operation known as Fast and Furious. And it...

A government report discovered the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) illegally stockpiles gun owners’ personal information. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the go-to federal oversight agency, conducted an audit of ATF and found it does not remove certain identifiable information, despite the law explicitly mandating it do so. GAO conducted reviews for four data systems, and concluded at least two of ATF’s systems violated official protocols.

Deputy Director Thomas Brandon (shown on right), head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) appeared on CBS’s Sunday Morning television show, complaining that his agency is “a small agency with a big job” and that he really needs more agents and more money to do that job. What he would really like, however, is a computerized database of all gun purchases made by every buyer and seller in the country: There’s a lot of things that don’t make sense.… Would [having such a database at the ATF] be efficient and effective? Absolutely. Would the taxpayers benefit...

At a campaign event in Springfield, Illinois Wednesday afternoon presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton warned Donald Trump would use the military and IRS "to go after his critics and opponents."

One of the guns used in the November 13, 2015 Paris terrorist attacks came from Phoenix, Arizona where the Obama administration allowed criminals to buy thousands of weapons illegally in a deadly and futile “gun-walking” operation known as “Fast and Furious.”A Report of Investigation (ROI) filed by a case agent in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) tracked the gun used in the Paris attacks to a Phoenix gun owner who sold it illegally, “off book,” Judicial Watch’s law enforcement sources confirm. Federal agents tracing the firearm also found the Phoenix gun owner to be in possession...

CBS News, in an anti-Second Amendment story warning about how easy it is to get dangerous weapons, on Thursday broke federal law with an undercover sting. That’s the claim from a gun store in Alexandria, Virginia. The Washington Free Beacon on Friday reported that SpecDive Tactical “has filed a report with the Virginia State Police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives over concerns the purchase was unlawful.”  In the CBS report, journalist Kris Van Cleave narrated the hidden camera efforts of This Morning: “We sent a CBS News producer into a gun store in Alexandria just outside of...

TAMPA, FLORIDA — President Barack Obama’s immediate leveraging of the atrocious Islamic terror attack in Orlando toward new gun control reforms may be predictable — yet the circumstances involving the professional background of Omar S. Mateen could prove a breaking point for his fellow anti-gun activists. As the debate eventually moves toward the Second Amendment, activists must answer how the most prevalent mass shooter in American history cleared background checks, medical examination, registration and dozens of hours of mandated training.

On 19 May, 2016, a member of the ATF, or at least someone driving one of their vehicles at a time that it was supposed to be in service, may have engaged in abusive behavior on the Glenn Highway in Alaska.  From ktuu.com: Police say that at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, a driver on the Glenn Highway said he pulled over for an unmarked white Ford SUV. The SUV flashed red and blue interior dash lights. When the motorist stopped, police wrote that the driver, “sped past him, laughed, and flipped him the middle finger.” The man called 911, and...

Judicial Watch: Justice Department Documents Reveal Widespread Use of Fast and Furious Weapons by Major Mexican Drug Cartels – Linked to at least 69 Killings From December 2012 to March 2016, 94 Fast and Furious weapons were seized; Fast and Furious weapon found in “Chapo” Guzman hideout (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today released Justice Department documents showing that weapons sent from the U.S. into Mexico as part of the Obama administration’s Operation Fast and Furious gunrunning program have been widely used by major Mexican drug cartels. According to the new records, over the past three years, a total...

The brother of a slain Border Patrol agent says Donald Trump has promised answers about the Operation Fast and Furious “gunwalking” program leading to Brian Terry’s death. Kent Terry met with Trump, and says the presumptive Republican nominee will use his authority to act if he’s elected president, Terry said in a Twitter post Tuesday.“Mr. Trump said ‘It’s a shame Fast and Furious started and shame on them for what they are doing about it,” Terry explained to this column, referring to an event at a community college in Michigan (see photo).  “When I become president I will open the books...

First Deposition Testimony from Clinton Email Discovery Released State Department Office of Inspector General Slams Clinton Email Practices Justice Department Documents Reveal the Widespread Use of Fast and Furious Weapons by Major Mexican Drug Cartels – Linked to at Least 69 Killings Memorial Day: Why We Fight First Deposition Testimony from Clinton Email Discovery Released The court-ordered discovery to uncover details about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email system has produced the first testimony from her top aides. This week we released the deposition transcript of Ambassador Lewis Lukens, former deputy assistant secretary of state and executive director...

Full title: Judicial Watch: Justice Department Documents Reveal Widespread Use of Fast and Furious Weapons by Major Mexican Drug Cartels – Linked to at least 69 Killings From December 2012 to March 2016, 94 Fast and Furious weapons were seized; Fast and Furious weapon found in “Chapo” Guzman hideout(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today released Justice Department documents showing that weapons sent from the U.S. into Mexico as part of the Obama administration’s Operation Fast and Furious gunrunning program have been widely used by major Mexican drug cartels. According to the new records, over the past three years, a...

The lid may finally blow off the Fast and Furious cover-up by the Obama administration, as a federal judge ordered the release of thousands of emails showing how then-attorney general Eric Holder obstructed, stonewalled, and misdirected congressional investigators looking into the program. People in the Nixon administration went to jail for less. ... The documents reveal how senior Justice Department officials — including Attorney General Holder — intensely followed and managed an effort to carefully limit and obstruct the information produced to Congress,” he asserted. They also indict Holder deputy Lanny Breuer, an old Clinton hand, who had to step...

In November, Maine’s public will be asked to decide whether lawful owners of firearms should be required to go to a gun dealer, pay a “reasonable fee” and be required to fill out a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Form 4473 to buy or sell a firearm. The referendum’s proponents claim that these requirements are easy, will make us safer, and that this will not be gun registration. Such claims are misleading. Who will determine the amount of this “reasonable fee”? Why should the owner of lawful property, which he or she may have owned for decades, be...

BELTSVILLE, Md. – A man fatally shot his estranged wife while she was waiting to pick up their children outside a suburban Washington high school Thursday afternoon and wounded a man who tried to intervene, police said.

“Fast and Furious” is back in the news. The reason? In January, Judge Amy Berman, an Obama appointee, ordered the Department of Justice to produce documents relating to the “gun walking” scandal that Congress had been seeking for four years. DOJ finally produced them, some 20,000 pages worth, this month. For anyone who has forgotten about Fast and Furious, here’s the short version. In 2010, a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Agent was killed while on patrol near the Mexican border. The only two firearms found at the scene were semi-automatic rifles the Obama-Holder Justice Department allowed to “walk”. That...

It’s hard to believe, but five years after Fast and Furious, Congress is still in a pitched battle with the Obama administration over subpoenaed documents. What does the latest production of material under a federal judge’s order reveal? Justice Department emails formerly withheld under the President’s assertion of executive privilege containing quotes like these: •“We would suggest that you pull the sentence that notes how many weapons we’ve recovered. It squares poorly with how many we haven’t.” •“I think people will accuse us of playing with semantics when we say that you did not authorize Fast and Furious, but they...