Free Republic

GOP establishment hacks from TrumpQuestions.com sent out thousands of Anti-Trump flyers this week attacking the Republican frontrunner in New Hampshire. TrumpQuestions.com is an offshoot of Our Principles PAC.Our Principles PAC is an anti-Donald Trump super PAC founded by Katie Packer, a former aide to Mitt Romney‘s 2012 presidential campaign. The super PAC has sent mailers and aired television ads in Iowa criticizing Trump’s policies. The super PAC operates OurPinciples.com and TrumpQuestions.com.The GOP hacks are trying to smear Trump as anti-gun in their most recent flyers.** Donald Trump is a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment. The anti-Trump PAC is hoping...

Tech entrepreneur Scott Banister has long been an ally to the liberty movement. The angel investor, IronPort founder, and PayPal board member donated $3 million to a Rand Paul supporting Super PAC, and has been a vocal supporter of the libertarian Republican. Now that Rand Paul is out of the presidential race, Banister has thrown his support behind Ted Cruz. Cruz is a self-described constitutional conservative who earned the endorsements of both Rand and Ron Paul in his 2012 Texas Senate race. Scott Banister Our best chance for a constitutional presidency is now @tedcruz. #LibertariansForCruz Cruz's relationship with the Pauls...

In a major victory for gun rights advocates, a federal appeals court on Thursday sided with a broad coalition of gun owners, businesses and organizations that challenged the constitutionality of a Maryland ban on assault weapons and other laws aimed at curbing gun violence. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit said the state's prohibition on what the court called "the vast majority of semi-automatic rifles commonly kept by several million American citizens" amounted to a violation of their rights under the Constitution. "In our view, Maryland law implicates the core protection of the...

For the 1st time in American history, the leading candidate for the Democrat party is running on a platform that would prohibit the private ownership of firearms. How can this be? It was Kennedy and McGovern who blunted Nixon's desire to ban handguns. Bush 41 banned more guns that Bill Clinton. Where before the 2nd Amendment was a bi-partisan issue with nuanced degrees of interpretation now one of the political party's wants it destroyed!

While it's not a done deal yet, there's a good chance that we may finally be receiving a final decision from the Supreme Court on the question of so called "assault weapons" bans. Back in December, gun rights activists were largely disappointed when SCOTUS decided they would not hear an appeal to Illinois' assault weapons ban, allowing a lower court ruling in favor of the law to stand. At the time, I speculated that they were waiting for more lower courts to weigh in on similar challenges around the country to see if there was some sort of consensus or...

Nearly all states have some sort of law preempting local gun laws.  Preemption means that the State preserves to itself certain areas of the law.  Firearms are a natural for this protection; most   Most are comprehensive; a few are minimal.   Massachusetts has very limited state pre-emption.  From dovekopel.com: Massachusetts preempts all gun licensing (Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 140 sect. 129B), and the state constitution forbids local laws inconsistent with state law; for this reason, Boston's Dec. 1989 ban on "assault weapons" was not allowed to go into effect until the state legislature later passed a bill authorizing...

RICHMOND — A package of bills in the gun deal Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) struck with Republican lawmakers advanced Friday, putting the agreement on a path to final passage next week despite a continued outcry from gun control advocates. The deal would expand the rights of concealed carry handgun permit holders in Virginia and around the country in exchange for tighter restrictions on domestic abusers and voluntary background checks at gun shows. A House panel joined the full Senate in passing all three bills as of Friday. A floor vote in the House could come as early as Tuesday.

Hillary Clinton has made gun control a major part of her presidential campaign, at least in New Hampshire. Over the last month, a quarter of all of her campaign ads in New Hampshire have focused on gun control. In rural areas of Iowa, by contrast, she did not run a single ad related to gun control. In all of Iowa, just six percent of her ads discussed guns. Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, recently wrote in the Union Leader attacking Bernie Sanders. He recycles Clinton’s rhetoric on the issue. Gross asserts: “Brady background checks...

Gunmen disguised as police opened fire on boxing fans at a Dublin hotel Friday, killing one man and wounding two others in an attack that could reflect tensions within Ireland's top cocaine-smuggling gang. Fans attending the weigh-in ceremonies for a Dublin boxing event fled in terror as two gunmen wearing police uniforms opened fire inside the lobby of the Regency Hotel. Witnesses inside the ballroom hosting the ceremony saw two other men in the crowd, including one disguised as a woman, running away holding handguns. It wasn't clear whether they opened fire, were working as scouts for the other gunmen,...

A Connecticut town located just 45 minutes by car from Newtown, the site of the third-deadliest school shooting in US history, is considering arming its school teachers. Elected officials in Kent, Connecticut voted 2-1 Wednesday to present information about a program called 'FASTER Saves Lives' to the town's Board of Education. 'FASTER' is an acronym that stands for Faculty/Administrator Safety Training and Emergency Response. The Kent Center School is the town of Kent's only school. Elected officials in the town are proposing to arm teachers ... Only one of three officials who voted on Wednesday is against the program. 'I...

The newly posted signs in front of public schools in Okay, Oklahoma, aim to scare off all those who assume walking on campus and doing harm to students will be an easy task. The signs read: ”Please be aware that certain staff members at Okay Public Schools can be legally armed and may use whatever force is necessary to protect our students.”

A small but important Second Amendment victory was handed to one aspiring cop in New Jersey last week.A former private security guard, Josey-Davis had his firearms privileges restored on January 29, 2016, after a being arrested in September 2013 and subsequently charged with a felony. Josey-Davis is one of many people whose lives have been adversely affected by draconian anti-gun laws in deep-blue states. His miraculous victory—which has been largely ignored by civil rights groups and the media—is a repudiation of gun control policies that criminalize legal gun owners like him. Then a private security guard, Josey-Davis was charged with...

Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) 79% is taking a hard position against President Obama’s current gun control push, but various reports on Rubio’s time in the Florida house of representatives and U.S. Senate show a past marked by a fluctuating relationship between Rubio and gun rights. In one such report, published in 2010, former NRA president Marion Hammer said Rubio “has not been a friend to gun owners.” Hammer was reflecting on the difficultly that attended the passage of a bill guaranteeing employees the ability to keep guns in their cars at work for self-defense. According to Politico,...

"Abe Lincoln may have freed all men, but Sam Colt made them equal." It's an interesting idea to ponder. President Lincoln is praised universally today, across the aisle, and around the world, but what of Samuel Colt? Who is Samuel Colt? ...The region reminds me of New York's former boomtowns like Kingston and Binghamton, and Connecticut's Waterbury and Hartford. These once vibrant communities and buildings were gutted by the twin blades of time and politicians, their facades decaying and cadaverous, lining streets and throughways like architectural tombstones. Where is everyone? Kingston and Binghamton were home to IBM and Singer Link....

Police have an eight-year-old Florida boy in custody after he allegedly stole his mother’s gun and tried to rob a store with it. Eboni Alls said her 8-year-old wanted to go to the park Wednesday night, but after she told him to go, she later learned he was up to no good. One employee said he wasn’t sure if the gun was real or fake in the moment, but that he took the threat seriously. Several workers reacted quickly, and one reached Jaden, twisted his wrist, and took the weapon away. An employee attempted to take the child to an...

In a major victory for gun rights advocates, a federal appeals court on Thursday sided with a broad coalition of gun owners, businesses and organizations that challenged the constitutionality of a Maryland ban on assault weapons and other laws aimed at curbing gun violence. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit said the state's prohibition on what the court called "the vast majority of semi-automatic rifles commonly kept by several million American citizens" amounted to a violation of their rights under the Constitution.

In October, 2014, a 76-year-old New Jersey resident shot three problem bears on his property.  One was an adult sow that was on his deck and looking in through his sliding glass door.  The location of the two juvenile bears when they were shot, is disputed, but was either on the deck or close to it.  Bears are more dangerous as they are larding up for the winter hibernation.Bears that display this level of familiarity with humans, who associate humans with food, are a severe problems waiting to happen.  It is why the conservation community has come up with...

<p>MADISON -- Wisconsin deer hunters will now be able to wear blaze pink instead of blaze orange after Gov. Scott Walker signed a bill into law Thursday morning.</p> <p>Walker's office says the governor signed 21 bills. Most of the legislation was passed by the Assembly and Senate with bipartisan support.</p>

In what has to be viewed as a major victory for gun owners, the United States Court of Appeals for 4th Circuit ruled that lower court judge in Kolbe V. Maryland must apply the standard of strict scrutiny in reviewing the case about Maryland’s “assault weapon” ban, duplicitously called the Firearms Safety Act (FSA). Laws banning “assault weapons” in Maryland and in other states with “anti-gun” legislatures have typically been upheld when lower court judges—almost universally gun-hating activist liberals—have cheated We, The People by applying the much lower standard of intermediate scrutiny. ... Chris W. Cox, the executive director of...

The House of Representatives concluded a tense debate Thursday by voting 250-169 to end a controversial Obama administration program called Operation Choke Point. Critics say the secretive program, run by the Department of Justice, has been used to target politically unpopular industries such as gun sellers. "We're elated," Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., one of the bill's co-sponsors, told The Daily Signal after the vote. "We've been working on this for two and a half years--we've been lied to, put off and dissed by the different regulatory agencies, and we've prevailed."Operation Choke Point was designed by the Justice Department in...