Free Republic

By now, it is clear that many officials either willfully ignored or missed warning signs that the mass murderer who killed 17 innocent Americans in last month's shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida needed severe mental help. But, until today, it was never clear that anybody who had recommended Nikolas Cruz for involuntary institutionalization. The Associated Press now reports that school officials and a sheriff's deputy recommended that Cruz should be "forcibly committed." "From the Associated Press: ...documents in the criminal case against Nikolas Cruz and obtained by The Associated Press show school officials and a...

'He was such a terrible human being, you have no idea,' he told an interviewer for the American magazine Rolling Stone with tears running down his face. 'My dad will have a carefully thought-out plan of evil. He will plan evil. Almost every crime you can possibly think of, he has done. Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done. It's so terrible, you can't believe it.'

Image from cjonline.com Topeka Kansas had 30 homicides in 2017. That is a record setting number. Of the 30 homicides, four have been ruled as justified so far.  The Topeka Capitol-Journal published that nine of the homicide investigations were still open at the end of the year.  Presumably, the Cazee-Watkins case was one of those. From cjonline.com: Cazee-Watkins was arrested Thursday in connection with criminal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and interference with a law enforcement officer (conceal/alter/destroy evidence). He is being held on a $20,000 bond. “The death of Kenneth Vetaw was investigated simultaneously with the...

The police officer who designed Warrior 12's "Gun Control" shirt has been getting backlash over the design. Martinsburg, WV - A police officer who owns Warrior 12 Apparel has been the target of anti-gun voices after his latest design launched this week. Warrior 12 makes law enforcement and patriotic apparel, including our Blue Lives Matter shirts. The owner's newest design shows a rifle next to the words, "I'll control my guns, you control your kids." After the shirt launched, it was shared over 30,000 times in the first couple of days on social media. "This is saying what everyone...

Before President Trump took office, The People of the Gun were giddy at the prospect of gun rights restoration. At the very least, we expected suppressors to be removed from the National Firearms Act, so they could be purchased with a simple background check at an FFL. Nope. All we get in that regard . . . is some additional funding for the notoriously some might say infamously anti-gun rights ATF to process suppressor applications more quickly. National reciprocity? Fuhgeddaboutit.In fact, President Trump (and the NRA) supports new gun regulation: “fixing NICs” and so-called Extreme Risk Protection Orders — a...

Scientific American continues on its activist leftward path, diluting its scientific brand by transmitting biased anti-gun propaganda under the cover of academic sociology. The latest entry was posted Wednesday and has become a popular post: “Why Are White Men Stockpiling Guns? -- Research suggests it's largely because they're anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market and beset by racial fears.” If that headline wasn’t a giveaway, writer Jeremy Adam Smith's bio left little hope for an objective take: “....author or co-editor of four books, including The Compassionate Instinct and Are We...

A woman who fatally shot a man on a shoulder of Interstate 5 during a road-rage incident last month will not be charged, the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office said Friday. The 23-year-old woman acted in self defense, prosecutors said. The News Tribune has chosen not to publish her name because she was never arrested or charged with a crime. Witnesses said the man, 60-year-old Bruce W. Jones, was upset with how the woman was driving her motorcycle Feb. 8 on the southbound freeway near the King-Pierce County line in Milton. He tried to box the woman in with his 2016...

A Republican running for the Maine state legislature is dropping out of the race following criticism for calling one of the survivors of last month's mass shooting at a Florida high school a "skinhead lesbian." Leslie Gibson announced on Friday that he was ending his campaign for the Maine House of Representatives, the Portland Press Herald reported. The former candidate said he made the decision after talking it over with friends and family, calling it "the best thing for everybody." "I am not walking away with my head hung low. I am walking away with my head held high," Gibson...

Mike Spies recently spent a year investigating Marion Hammer, the legendary NRA board member and Second Amendment proponent in Florida. Michael Spies is no novice. He is a professional writer who was on the editorial board of the New Yorker for over three years. He has a Bachelors in English from the University of Vermont, and a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Non-Fiction from Columbia University in the City of New York. He spent nearly two years at Vocativ, leaving in June of 2015 to join The Trace, the hard-core anti-Second Amendment blog financed by Michael Bloomberg.Bloomberg's paid...

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. (AP) — Shoppers at a Southern California mall ran into stores and out the exits Saturday after authorities said a gunman shot and killed one person and then turned the gun on himself. The shooter was wounded and taken to a hospital, according to Ventura County fire Capt. Steve Swindle. He said there was no threat to the public. Shoppers had been locked down at The Oaks mall in the city of Thousand Oaks, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) west of Los Angeles.

It happened on 15 September, 2017. An Illinois Judge, Patrick O'Shea, 67, accidentally fired a short barreled Smith & Wesson five-shot in his apartment in Wheaton, Illinois. The bullet went through a mirror, the wall, and into the next apartment. No one was hit, and there was little property damage. He checked to see if anyone was in the apartment. There was not. He may have thought “No harm, no foul”, and proceeded to attempt to lie his way out of the problem. Big mistake. It changed his life. From dailyherald.com: On Sept. 24, the neighbors told police they...

On his national radio show, Mark Levin mentions the CPRC research universal background checks wouldn’t have stopped one of the mass public shootings this century.

Fact checkers are out of control, and on the issue of guns they no longer even try to pretend impartiality. Especially on social media, this is becoming a serious problem. Facebook has been working with organizations such as PolitiFact, Snopes and Factcheck.org to filter news. Stories deemed “false” by these organization are labeled as false and are much more difficult to spread virally.

The 16 members of the Interior Department's new Wildlife Conservation Council — many of whom have ties to pro-hunting organizations — met for the first time Friday and found little cause for disagreement. Members agreed that hunting is necessary for conserving endangered species and impoverished communities in Africa; that illegal hunting — largely done by organized crime communities — should not to be mistaken with legal paid hunting; and that the council needed to act fast. “I believe that everyone here today has a shared interest in wildlife conservation, both in America and around the world,” U.S. Fish and Wildlife...

It was supposed to be 17 minutes of silent protest in honor of the 17 people killed last week in Parkland, Florida, in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. But on the south side of Chicago Wednesday morning, there was no silence as students who walked out of nearby Simeon Career Academy trashed a Walmart during their walkout protest. Dozens of student walked out of Simeon at the appointed time of the protest, only to enter Walmart and knock over store displays and rip products off the shelves. Video of the aftermath shows aisles trashed and there...

The Progressive left loves to assign "rights" to poor people who have no constitutional basis (the "right" to medical care, for instance) but is strangely reticent when it comes to your Second Amendment rights. Apparently, if you live in a housing project in East St. Louis, you had best surrender your guns at the door. From the Belleville News Democrat: The woman, who was identified in the lawsuit only as N. Doe, out of fear that her abusive ex-husband could find her if she was identified, has a valid Illinois FOID license and has been trained in firearm safety, according...

ere's an outrageous story to end the week. A pair of students in New Jersey were reportedly suspended, one for an entire school week, after officials saw they went to the gun range with family and posted a photo of the outing on social media. From NJ.com: A New Jersey school district that allegedly suspended two high school students this week over a gun photo taken during a family visit to a private shooting range is facing community backlash and the threat of a lawsuit over district policies. The photo of four rifles, ammunition clips and a gun duffel bag...

“About 1,400 students wearing orange shirts gathered on a hill at East Chapel Hill High School in North Carolina to listen as student organizers read the names of each of the Parkland victims…students gathered in discussion circles to talk about gun violence in America. [...]”It’s really scary to me how in America we seem to have this constant, or this prevailing, notion that we should fight violence with violence,” said senior Frances O’Grady, 18, “and that’s never, ever the solution…I think that’s just a very dangerous idea.”"On the classroom wall behind O’Grady hung a banner with the image of Che...

A Broward County judge on Friday issued the state’s first order temporarily removing guns from a person under Florida’s new gun-control laws. Four firearms and 267 rounds of ammunition were ordered removed...under the state’s new “risk protection” law... The man was also taken to a hospital for involuntary psychiatric treatment under the state’s Baker Act. But the civil ruling removing his access to guns and ammunition was granted under the new legislation — which permits confiscating guns from people who have not been committed but are deemed a potential risk to themselves or others, according to the order signed by...

On February 2nd, 2018, just before 2 p.m., a man knocked down a Springville, Utah police officer and was viciously punching him. The suspect had fractured the officer's eye socket when an armed good Samaritan, Derek Myer, saw the situation, did a quick U-turn, pulled his gun and stopped the attack. From fox2now.com: SPRINGVILLE, Utah — A man with a concealed handgun is credited with stopping a brutal attack on a Utah police officer on Friday, according to KSTU.A Utah police officer approached the suspect, Paul Douglas Anderson, after he saw him stealing items from a charity's donation bin....