Free Republic

Archie Andrews will die taking a bullet for his gay best friend. The famous freckle-faced comic book icon is meeting his demise in Wednesday’s installment of “Life with Archie” when he intervenes in an assassination attempt on Kevin Keller, Archie Comics’ first openly gay character. Andrews’ death, which was first announced in April, will mark the conclusion of the series that focuses on grown-up renditions of Andrews and his Riverdale pals. […] “We wanted to do something that was impactful that would really resonate with the world and bring home just how important Archie is to everyone,” said [Jon] Goldwater,...

Fact check: The triceratops became extinct 66 million years ago. The director of Jurassic Park has never shot one for sport. Internet humourist Jay Branscomb posted it on Facebook with the caption: “Disgraceful photo of recreational hunter happily posing next to a triceratops he just slaughtered. Please share so the world can name and shame this despicable man.” A lot of people didn’t get the joke, and thought Spielberg really had shot a dinosaur. This person called him an “inhumane prick”... “Steven Spielberg, I’m disappointed in you. I’m not watching any of your movies again ANIMAL KILLER.” “Disgraceful. No wonder...

Beginning in September, Google plans to block firearm, ammunition, and gun accessory ads. According to Google Support's "Dangerous Products or Services" page, the company "[wants] to keep people safe both online and offline, so [they] won't allow the promotion of some products or services that cause damage, harm, or injury." Included in the dangerous products for which ads will be blocked are "Guns & Parts." This covers "functional devices that appear to discharge a projectile at high velocity, whether for sport, self-defense, or combat."

A news item that emerged a few days ago seemed to encapsulate the increasing helplessness that has gripped America as gun violence reaches new heights. An Oklahoma company reported that sales of its new product, bullet-proof blankets to protect school children during mass shootings, have “far exceeded our wildest expectations.” Some school officials have determined that the best response to the potential threat of a deranged gunman is to spend $1,000 each on Bodyguard Blankets. Under normal circumstances, the nation would be engaged in a soul-searching debate about guns, based on the most recent shooting incident. Which shooting? Santa Barbara?...

On street corners and in rallies, the Texas gun rights crowd aims to accustom the public to guns. DALLAS — “One of them said, ‘You’re going to wish you had a gun, boy, when I fill you full of holes.’ ” A 35-year-old former Marine, Henry was fresh from an encounter with an increasingly common phenomenon in North Texas: an Open Carry rally, where advocates gather in public places with semi-automatic rifles. Henry said he simply wanted to make a video of the Memorial Day demonstration by the small but well-armed crowd. Then tempers rose and some curses flew. He...

On Tuesday morning a 15-year-old killer murdered fellow student Emilio Hoffman, age 14, and wounded a teacher at Reynolds High School in Troutdale, Oregon. The killer brought an AR-15 type rifle, a semi-automatic pistol and enough ammunition to do far more harm – but he was stopped before he could by police. The police were aided by a brave teacher and by a well-practiced school lockdown. After being confronted and exchanging gunfire with police, the killer committed suicide. Police also found the killer had brought a large knife. Within hours, politicians were already attempting to exploit the tragedy – including...

Australians pride themselves on telling it like it is, but when it comes to gun laws, straight-shooting often takes a back seat to a determined effort at silencing debate. In 1996, Australia passed some of the most restrictive gun laws in the western world. They included bans on self-loading rifles and self-loading and pump-action shotguns, universal gun registration and a taxpayer-funded gun confiscation program costing over half a billion dollars. The ongoing costs of running the firearms registration systems are unknown but have been estimated at around $28 million per year, or $75,000 per day. That’s more than what the...

President Obama said Tuesday that that the ”biggest frustration” of his presidency so far is the fact that the country hasn’t taken steps to keep guns out of the hands of mass shooters. The President  has been vocal the past couple of days in the wake of the Oregon shooting and the new press secretary says he is always looking for a “unilateral” way to install some gun control.“We’re the only developed country on Earth where this happens,” Obama said during a question-and-answer session organized through Tumblr. “And it happens now once a week. And it’s a one-day story. There’s no place else...

Within hours of Tuesday's shooting at Reynolds High School, a startling statistic began circulating on Twitter and other social media sites: The incident was the 74th school shooting in the U.S. since the December 2012 shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. That works out to nearly one school shooting a week since Newtown, when 20 students and six staff members were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School. But is it true? A lot, it turns out, depends on how "school shooting" is defined. The statistic comes from Everytown for Gun Safety, a group based in New York and started by former...

After Tuesday’s shooting at an Oregon high school, many media outlets, including CNN, reported that there have been 74 school shootings in the past 18 months. That’s the time period since the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and six adults were shot to death. The statistic came from a group called Everytown for Gun Safety, an umbrella group started by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a passionate and public advocate of gun control. Without a doubt, that number is startling. So on Wednesday, CNN took a closer look at the...

BELLEVUE, Wash., June 12, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today congratulated CNN for helping to expose what now appears to be a deliberate deception by Michael Bloomberg's "Everytown for Gun Safety" that claims there have been 74 school shootings since the December 2012 Sandy Hook tragedy. That figure is also being questioned by other news outlets after one curious journalist looked at the list of shootings released by the Everytown group, along with a map, and discovered that many didn't happen on school campuses, and others were gang-related events after school...

It's only natural, faced with atrocities like those that took place in Aurora or Sandy Hook or Isla Vista, to sink into a "What the hell is wrong with the world?" attitude. And based on the conversations that often follow these tragedies, it would be easy to think that life in the United States is as dangerous as ever, that the country is an increasingly violent, brutal place. Luckily, the statistics tell a different story.James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University and frequent commentator on criminal justice issues, has kept a close eye on the numbers, tracking mass-shooting incidents...

Inside the municipal garage of this small lakefront city, parked next to the hefty orange snowplow, sits an even larger truck, this one painted in desert khaki. Weighing 30 tons and built to withstand land mines, the armored combat vehicle is one of hundreds showing up across the country, in police departments big and small. The 9-foot-tall armored truck was intended for an overseas battlefield. But as President Obama ushers in the end of what he called America’s “long season of war,” the former tools of combat — M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers and more — are ending up in...

Elliot Rodger's story is not one of an untreated, mentally ill, white mass-killer who illegally acquired fully automatic "assault weapons." This mixed white and Asian 22-year-old bought his firearms legally, did not use a long-arm or "high-capacity" weapon and had been in therapy since the age of 8. Half his murder victims were killed by knife. Several of the injured were run over by Rodger's car. None of the mental health professionals apparently felt that Rodger was a danger to himself or others. The police had recently conducted a welfare check on him at the request of his family. Rodger...

WASHINGTON, May 29, 2014 — There are many people looking for someone to blame in the wake of the UCSB shootings last week. It is understandable that with the actual perpetrator being dead, the public is looking for someone to chastise, or to place responsibility upon. For Senator Dianne Feinstein, that someone is the NRA and the entire gun lobby. In a speech made Sunday shortly following the tragic events in California, the longtime anti-gun senator made a few interesting remarks that bear some analysis. The Senator had some questions for the public. “We must ask ourselves if an individual...

Santa Barbara shooting shows need for federal version of SAFE Act, says New Yorkers Against Gun Violence Following the shooting rampage in Santa Barbara that took the lives of seven people including the shooter, the group New Yorkers Against Gun Violence is calling for federal laws modeled on New York's own gun control measure, The SAFE Act. On Friday May 23, 22 year-old Elliot Rodger killed six students in the California city of Santa Barbara, citing a lifetime of rejection and loneliness. His victims included his two roommates and their visiting friend, two sorority girls, and a male student inside...

Straight away let’s address an issue that is very important in what follows: Eyewitness evidence is often very unreliable and hearsay evidence is often very unreliable. Numerous biological, psychological, and sociological processes can distort both perception and its verbal translation. There are individual differences among persons that affect their ability to accurately gather and report information, and circumstances, such as stress and alarm, can operate either alone or in conjunction with those differences to compromise the validity of witness statements. And yet, there is no gainsaying the fact that even broken clocks are right twice a day. Furthermore, there is...

A Republican challenging Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.) apologized Monday for saying a vast majority of the perpetrators of mass shootings are Democrats. At a candidate forum on Saturday, rancher Gary Kiehne said, "If you look at all the fiascos that have occurred, 99 percent of them have been by Democrats pulling their guns out and shooting people," The Arizona Daily Star reported. "So I don't think you have a problem with the Republicans," Kiehne added, according to the paper.

Not only has the Obama administration waged war on our veterans through the VA Scandal, now there is whole new front of attack on our veterans we have to worry about. In a terrifying news report on the militarization of our police forces – watch as a veteran officer of the Indiana police remarks that police are having to prepare for returning veterans with the ability to make IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices). That’s right. One of the reasons our police forces are giving for having to become more like military forces is the soldiers returning home from the front. It’s...

A federal judge on Thursday upheld the District’s tough gun registration laws, finding that new regulations crafted by city officials in response to a Supreme Court decision “pass constitutional scrutiny.” “The people of this city, acting through their elected representatives, have sought to combat gun violence and promote public safety. The court finds that they have done so in a constitutionally permissible manner,” U.S. District Judge James Boasberg wrote in an opinion likely to be appealed by gun-rights advocates.