Free Republic

Teenage killer Morgan Leppert laughs in disturbing police tapes as she admits to murdering disabled elderly manViewers heard the chilling laughter of child murderer Morgan Leppert in police interview tapes from ITV documentary Children Who Kill. The show saw presenter Susanna Reid meet Leppert, who was labelled the ‘blue eyed devil’ aged 15 when she was convicted of the murder of an elderly disabled man back in 2008. The 62-year-old man named James Stewart, was stabbed multiple times in his Florida home with metal rods and a knife, before being suffocated with a plastic bag by the teenager and her...

Brandon Minoff, a student at a Florida high school shooting on Wednesday, was interviewed by MSNBC's Brian Williams from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Williams asked the kid what he would do about school shooting if he were a lawmaker. Minoff instantly replied, "gun-wise, I don't think there's any way to prevent it. You outlaw guns, just creates higher demand for it." "So what was your reaction when you heard that it was him?" Williams asked. "I wasn't surprised, but it was kind of unfortunate to hear," the high school senior answered. "If you were a lawmaker,...

In a laughable demonstration of bias, the political news world -- from the NY Times to The Hill are just ablaze trying to turn one disgruntled, old fart into a "worrisome trend" for the Republican: Al Hoffman, Jr. is threatening to quit donating to Republicans if they don't stop supporting gun rights. Is that a threat or a promise? Hoffman's chief donations have been to super-PACs supporting Jeb Bush, attacking McCain's primary- and general-election opponents. Oh, yeah... And he's already a never-Trumper... apparently he'll only give to Republicans who help thwart Trump's legislative agenda, or something like that. He even...

FORT LAUDERDALE — President Donald Trump, first lady Melania Trump, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi met with Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel and law enforcement officers and first responders.... A transcript of the meeting with first responders as provided by the White House: I just got back from the hospital. A young woman was shot — four bullets, two in her lungs. And they got her over to the hospital in less than 21 minutes. She had no chance, and, between the first responders, your people who got her — you...

Not surprisingly, liberal media quickly blamed the National Rifle Association for the deaths of 17 innocent people shot by Nikolas Cruz earlier this week in Parkland, Florida.  But today, the left-wing website Think Progress and the New York Daily News ramped up their misguided condemnation by blaming the NRA specifically for supposedly teaching Cruz how to shoot the weapon. Their reasoning was that since the NRA donated $10,000 to a club at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that instructed proper firearm use, the gun lobby earned the blame for the shooter's actions. The club in question was the high school’s...

The Gun-Free School Zones Act (GFSZA) is an act of the U.S. Congress signed into law by President George H.W. Bush that prohibits any unauthorized individual from knowingly possessing a firearm at a place that the individual knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, is a school zone as defined by. It was introduced in the U.S. Senate in October 1990 by Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware.

A top GOP donor in Florida is threatening to withhold contributions to candidates and political groups that do not get behind a ban on assault weapons, The New York Times reported. In an email to half a dozen Republican leaders on Saturday, Florida-based real estate developer Al Hoffman Jr. decried the rash of mass shootings that has roiled the U.S. for years, and demanded that GOP politicians take action. "I will not write another check unless they all support a ban on assault weapons," Hoffman wrote in the email, according to the Times. "Enough is enough!"

In 2017, 771,556,886 passengers traveled through 440 federally secured airports. Of those, only 3,957 forget that a firearm was in their carry-on baggage. There are over 400 million private firearms in the United States, 16 million people with permits to carry firearms, and 13 states where no permit is required to carry a concealed weapon.  That less than 4,000 forgot a firearm in their carry-on is amazingly low. That is one for every 200,000 passengers. Just a little over 1/3 or 34.8% of the firearms had a round in the chamber. They could not have been accidentally discharged in...

Wednesday's horrific shooting in Florida has reignited the gun rights debate in the United States... In the past, proponents of limiting civilian access to firearms have extolled Israel as having the proper approach to limiting mass shootings, pointing to the numerous legal hoops Israelis must jump through in order to be granted a gun license. ... In reality, Israel's gun policy is living proof of the arguments the American gun lobby has been making for years. Gun rights advocates contend that the way to stop mass shootings is by ensuring that there are always well-armed citizens present who can neutralize...

Brings rules for rifle sales in line with handguns, which already requires minimum 21 years of ageWashington—Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today announced she will introduce legislation to raise the age requirement for purchasing rifles from gun dealers, including assault weapons like the AR-15, to 21 years.“Under current law, licensed gun dealers cannot sell a handgun to anyone under 21, but they are allowed to sell assault rifles like the AR-15 to anyone over 18. This policy is dangerous and makes absolutely no sense.“I plan to introduce a bill to require all firearms purchases from gun dealers be restricted to individuals...

--Chapman occasionally gets it mostly right-- --from the article-- "A 2013 study of the 1994 law for the National Institute of Justice said, “We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.” It also said, “Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.” Even if the law had any positive effect then, it would be far less likely to help today because there are far more of these guns now. In 1994, Americans owned about 1.5 million...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said on Friday that she will introduce legislation to raise the minimum legal age to buy rifles in the wake of a school shooting in Florida. Feinstein said the legislation would require anyone buying a firearm from a gun dealer to be at least 21 years old. “Under current law, licensed gun dealers cannot sell a handgun to anyone under 21, but they are allowed to sell assault rifles like the AR-15 to anyone over 18. This policy is dangerous and makes absolutely no sense," Feinstein said. She added that "if you can’t buy a handgun...

Following accused school shooter Nikolas Cruz’s first appearance in court on Thursday, his attorney for the hearing, public defender Melisa McNeill told reporters that Cruz is sad, remorseful, and aware of the impact of the shooting on the community. These statements were empathetic and well-intentioned, but a prosecutor may try to use them against Cruz himself, whose defense options are diminishing as more information emerges about the shooting and his past. Despite its depiction in popular culture, insanity is not an easy option in criminal cases. It is a huge gamble: It requires admitting to the underlying crime, and then...

Hard-left social media users have spent the day viciously attacking the father of one of the victims of the horrific Florida school mass shooting over the fact that he wore a Trump 2020 t-shirt during an interview with a local news outlet. That’s right, in the new America it is apparently perfectly acceptable to attack and even blame the parent of a teenager who was murdered, all because his political beliefs do not line up with the leftist orthodoxy. Both Andrew Pollack and his wife were interviewed outside of Broward Health North hospital, hoping to hear from their daughter hours...

Had Wednesday’s massacre of 17 people at a Florida high school been different in one respect — that is, had alleged perpetrator Nikolas Cruz shouted “Allahu akbar” during the course of his rampage — conservatives would be demanding another round of get-tough measures. Tougher immigration laws. Tougher domestic surveillance. A rollback of Miranda rights for the accused. Possibly even a Muslim registry. Constitutional protections and American ideals, goes the argument, must sometimes yield to urgent public safety concerns. But Cruz, like Las Vegas’s Stephen Paddock or Newtown’s Adam Lanza and so many other mass murderers before them, is just another...

Gun control advocates are only too sure that they occupy the moral high ground. In the aftermath of the Parkland, Florida high school shooting that left 17 dead, they are accusing their opponents of having “blood on their hands.” It’s no longer just activists such as Chelsea Handler who are spewing such vitriol. Even mainstream liberals such as political scientist Norm Ornstein use the phrase. Gun control advocates’ new hot number is that there have been 18 school shootings so far this year, but this is a gross exaggeration. To get 18, one has to count all instances from kindergarten...

CNN)Russia-linked bots are promoting pro-gun messages on Twitter in an attempt to sow discord in the aftermath of the Florida school shooting, monitoring groups say. Hashtags, topics, and URLs related to the shooting overwhelmingly feature in the tweets pushed by these automated Twitter accounts in the past 48 hours, according to Hamilton 68, a tool launched by the Alliance for Securing Democracy to track what it describes as "Russian propaganda and disinformation efforts online." The Alliance is a group housed at The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) think tank to "defend against, deter, and raise the costs...

Todd Orr is the survivor of a double mauling by a grizzly bear on 1 October, 2016.  When the bear charged him, he used bear spray in an attempt to stop the attack. It did not work. Todd was taught that bear spray was superior to pistols for stopping charging bears. He took the use of bear spray seriously, kept an up to date can of spray in a holster, and had practiced quick drawing the spray and using it. He had used bear spray on a black bear twelve years previously. In that instance he surprised the sleeping...

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is ordering a review into the FBI and Justice Department's procedures after the bureau revealed it had failed to act on a tip about the teenager accused of carrying out a deadly mass shooting in Florida. “It is now clear that the warning signs were there and tips to the FBI were missed. We see the tragic consequences of those failures," Sessions said in a statement Friday. “The FBI in conjunction with our state and local partners must act flawlessly to prevent all attacks. This is imperative, and we must do better." Deputy Attorney General Rod...

With 17 people murdered Wednesday at a Florida high school in yet another mass shooting at a public place, the immediate reaction in the media and the left has been predictable. The go-to phrase from comedian Chelsea Handler, newspaper columnist Jessica Valenti and SiriusXM Radio executive Norm Ornstein — and now thousands of others — is that Republicans and Second Amendment defenders “have blood on their hands.” This is a despicable response, of course, but par for about everything from the left nowadays. Worse, it does nothing to actually limit future atrocities. There is no compassion in that. But there...