Free Republic

The New Mexico Legislature will not send legislation aimed at curbing gun violence to Gov. Susana Martinez’s desk, after a last-minute effort to approve a bill aimed at closing the state’s “gun show loophole” for background checks was thwarted in the Senate. Repeated attempts to amend the bill by Sen. George Munoz, D-Gallup, led to several Republican senators speaking until the session’s noon adjournment time arrived.

With just a day left in this year’s regular session, a high-profile bill aimed at curbing gun violence is still alive in the Legislature. Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 6-4 late Thursday to approve House Bill 77, sending it on to the Senate floor. The vote broke down along party lines, with all six Democratic committee members voting in favor and all four Republican committee members voting in opposition. However, even if the bill gains full Senate approval by noon Saturday, it would still face one more obstacle in order to move on to Gov. Susana Martinez’s desk...

While lawmakers in Olympia wrestle with a state universal background check measure, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee today adopted on a 10-8 party line vote a similar measure that faces an uncertain future before the entire Senate. But Sen. Charles Grassley (R- Iowa) warned that this measure could ultimately lead to registration and even confiscation when anti-gunners realize background checks do not prevent violent crimes. In California, guns are already being confiscated from people who may live with someone who has been disqualified under a state law, according to a published report. His warning fell on the deaf ears of...

<p>In April 2007, a mentally disturbed student showed up at the campus of his school, Virginia Tech, brandishing two semi-automatic pistols. He murdered 32 students, teachers and school employees and wounded 17 others before taking his own life.</p> <p>It was the one of deadliest mass shooting incidents in American history.</p>

The Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) mismanagement of a program responsible for issuing security badges to aviation employees resulted in at least 11 individuals with criminal backgrounds obtaining badges that allowed access to secure areas of U.S. airports. An aviation employee is anyone who is allowed unescorted access to secured areas of airports. This includes airport employees in addition to TSA Officers. According to a Feb. 22 report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), the TSA’s mishandling of the program caused a backlog of security badges that had yet to be issued. As a result,...

For the fourth month in a row the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, processed more than 2 million background checks in February and broke a handful of records. These statistics represent the number of background checks performed before a patron can actually buy a gun, but it doesn’t actually translate into final sales or number of guns sold. However, it does give the public an estimate. In February the FBI reported 2,309,393 background checks making it the third biggest month for checks since NICS was implemented in 1998, and February 2013 also holds three of the...

Gun talks hit a snag in Senate over universal background checks By Alexander Bolton - 03/05/13 The centerpiece of President Obama’s gun violence agenda is in peril amid a deadlock among Senate negotiators over how to implement and enforce a proposal requiring background checks for private gun sales. With time running out for talks, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) remains optimistic about reaching an agreement. But gun control proponents have grown skeptical about whether Schumer’s main Republican counterpart, Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.), is acting in good faith. Schumer argues — and gun control groups agree — that records must be kept...

Registration by any other name is still unconstitutional The focus in Washington is slowly shifting from legislation banning certain semi-auto firearms and standard capacity magazines to proposals for “universal background checks” – just as we had warned it would. Politicians know that America’s gun owners are beside themselves in opposition to gun and magazine bans. They’ve watched as fearful shoppers have cleared the nation’s entire supply of AR and AK type rifles in just a couple of weeks, leaving manufacturers and importers 8 to 12 months deep in backorders. The politicians remember what happened after the ban was passed in...

Would really like to know which site to subscribe to for getting the inside scoop on a certain person. This person really needs looking into. Thanks ahead of time for any insights!

Freshman Senator from Arizona, Jeff Flake, appears to be bending from pressure in the media to "do something" to infringe on Second Amendment Rights. Given the rumors about Senator John McCain, one wonders if John may be giving his younger colleague advice. On Sunday, 20 January, this was published in the Arizona Republic: Echoing many of his lower-chamber colleagues on Friday, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said he likely would have a hard time supporting a new federal ban on “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines but suggested there may be common ground on universal background checks. “I’ve always said we’ve got...

Of all the gun-control measures touted by President Obama on Wednesday, the one that got top billing was a dramatic tightening of background checks on gun purchasers. Obama himself said the need was urgent because “40 percent of all gun purchases are conducted without a background check.” But before we make the most sweeping changes in federal firearms law since the 1960s, shouldn’t we at least examine the validity of that figure? It’s about as dubious as they come.The administration is focusing on background checks in an attempt to drive a wedge between staunch anti-gun-control absolutists such as the...

The latest liberal code is to push for "universal background checks". I will set aside the fact that the whole idea of preventing criminals from buying guns, rather than preventing them from possessing guns, is a failed paradigm that should be abandoned. Let us examine what is being proposed as "universal background checks". It sounds as if, when you want to sell a gun, you go to the internet, put in the person who wants to buy the gun's drivers license to see if they are on a prohibited list. If they are not, sell them the gun. Of course,...

Those who believe that Barack Obama is an idealist first and a politician second are sorely mistaken. The Justice Department of the Obama administration decided one year ago, as his reelection effort was getting underway, to ignore proposals that would have allowed the background–check system for gun procurement to be more comprehensive. Some of these proposals made in a Justice Department study were: allowing the FBI access to other federal agencies’ information, as that would have enabled the FBI to make sure those who are banned from buying guns such as felons, drug users, mentally “defective” persons, domestic violence criminals,...

Here is an amusing story from Colorado; state officials are working hard to help relocate longtime employees who didn’t pass background checks but got hired anyways, evidently by public agencies with low standards. The state agencies that originally hired them recently folded and the Department of Public Safety was set to absorb them. Evidently, that agency is pickier and requires employees to have clean backgrounds and pass a polygraph test, which as the Denver newspaper reporting the story says, wasn’t the threshold at the other state agencies where the workers were first hired. So far, Colorado officials are “scrambling” to...

WASHINGTON — Pepsi Beverages Co. will pay $3.1 million to settle federal charges of race discrimination for using criminal background checks to screen out job applicants — even if they weren’t convicted of a crime. The settlement announced Wednesday with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is part of a national government crackdown on hiring policies that can hurt blacks and Hispanics. EEOC officials said the company’s policy of not hiring workers with arrest records disproportionately excluded more than 300 black applicants. The policy barred applicants who had been arrested, but not convicted of a crime, and denied employment to others...

I have 2 friends who need to do background checks on perspective tenants for their 2-family homes, one friend is a single mother and doesn't want a criminal living in her house. They want to check both criminal and financial records before they let a tenant in their home. There are many internet sites out there and am not sure which ones are the better. Any help would be appreciated. thank you.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton inspired a former intern to do big things ... really BIG things ... because that young woman is now a hardcore porn star ... TMZ has learned. Adult film star Sammie Spades tells TMZ she was going to community college in Buffalo, NY back in 2006 when she met then Senator Clinton at a banquet ... and expressed interest in a summer internship. Sammie says she was accepted as a 2006 summer intern at Clinton's Buffalo office ... where she did miscellaneous office work, but dreamed of sporting her own power pantsuits just like Hillary....

The Obama administration reportedly is considering former Clinton administration official Jamie Gorelick, among others, to become the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Perez first reported the news last week, citing “U.S. officials” familiar with the situation. Gorelick served as vice chairman of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) when the government-sponsored enterprise began bundling subprime loans into securitized financial instruments. Prior to that, she served as deputy attorney general in the Clinton Justice Department under then-Attorney General Janet Reno from 1994 to 1997. ... But Gorelick is perhaps best known...

The Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously upheld the federal government's ability to conduct background security checks of contracted employees, ruling against a group of NASA-contracted scientists and engineers who had challenged the agencies drug-screening process on privacy grounds. Two justices went so far as to say that such a privacy right does not exist. "Like many other desirable things not included in the Constitution, 'informational privacy' seems like a good idea — wherefore the people have enacted laws at the federal level and in the states restricting the government's collection and use of information," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in a...

The other day President Golden Calf made a real a-hole statement at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner: “We all know what happens in Arizona when you don’t have ID: ‘Adios, amigos!’”This outrageous disrespectful swipe at the law-abiding Arizona not only makes Obama look even more unpresidential than he already is, but also exposes him as the third member of his administration (after Napolitano and Holder) who has clearly not read the freaking 10-page bill. [UPDATE: Make that fourth] In light of this issue is this latest case of blatant sanctimonious liberal hypocrisy: Before greeting President Hope&Change at their graduation, seniors...