Free Republic

Second Amendment: Chicago is deciding whether to prosecute a great-grandfather and Korean War veteran under its handgun ban. He refused to be a victim, and now there's one less armed thug roaming the streets. What's the problem? If the 80-year-old vet living on the city's West Side didn't have the gun the city said he shouldn't have, he and his 83-year-old wife and 12-year-old great-grandson might have joined those victims of gun violence about whom gun-control advocates constantly chirp. The vet obtained the gun in violation of the city's handgun ban after a prior incident in which the couple was...

Gun Rights: Not happy with interfering in our internal affairs by savaging Arizona's new immigration law, the president of Mexico wants to shred our Second Amendment too. And the mayor of Chicago wants to help. There stood Mexican President Felipe Calderon before Congress, blaming America for the violence on his side of the border and, among other things, the guns that fuel the Mexican drug war that has claimed more than 23,000 Mexican lives since he took office in 2006. Rather than taking responsibility himself, he shoved the blame on America. It would all stop, he implied, if America would...

Otis McDonald, 76, stands before the Supreme Court, which Tuesday heard arguments in his suit to overturn Chicago's handgun ban Gun Rights: Otis McDonald, 76, an Army vet who lives in a high-crime area of Chicago, thinks the Constitution gives him the right to bear arms to protect himself and his wife as he protected his country. We think so too. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments on behalf of four Chicago residents led by homeowner McDonald, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Illinois State Rifle Association to overturn Chicago's three-decade-old ban on owning handguns. In a 5-4...

Gun Rights: A decade after Congress forbade the CDC from studying the health consequences of gun ownership, the National Institutes of Health has started funding such research. Will reform pry the guns from our cold, sick hands? More than a decade ago Congress, seeing it as a backdoor assault on the 2nd Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms, voted to cut funding for firearms research by the Centers for Disease Control. Such research was viewed as one-sided and based on flawed assumptions that all gun use was bad, even that which saved lives and deterred crime. --...

Gun Rights: A decade after Congress forbade the CDC from studying the health consequences of gun ownership, the National Institutes of Health has started funding such research. Will reform pry the guns from our cold, sick hands? More than a decade ago Congress, seeing it as a backdoor assault on the 2nd Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms, voted to cut funding for firearms research by the Centers for Disease Control. Such research was viewed as one-sided and based on flawed assumptions that all gun use was bad, even that which saved lives and deterred crime. The...

Gun Control: The Supreme Court agrees to decide if the Second Amendment applies to all of us, or just Washington, D.C. Why would the Founders put in the Bill of Rights something applying only to a federal enclave? In a 5-4 decision last year written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court overturned a draconian District of Columbia gun ban enacted 32 years ago that barred private ownership of handguns at all. Scalia wrote that an individual's right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted. The court ruled that...

(Corrected) Gun Control: In a case headed for the Supreme Court, a three-judge panel rules Chicago's gun ban constitutional since the 2nd Amendment doesn't apply to states and cities. High court nominee Sonia Sotomayor concurs.Those Pennsylvania townsfolk bitterly clinging to their guns may have been premature in celebrating the decision in D.C. v. Heller that the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does indeed guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms.

People on the government’s terrorist watch list tried to buy guns nearly 1,000 times in the last five years, and federal authorities cleared the purchases 9 times out of 10 because they had no legal way to stop them, according to a new government report. In one case, a person on the list was able to buy more than 50 pounds of explosives. The new statistics, compiled in a report from the Government Accountability Office that is scheduled for public release next week, draw attention to an odd divergence in federal law: people placed on the government’s terrorist watch list...

Subject: Have you seen this ?? This guy's video on youtube has been so popular that Obama called him personally. He said that he was very disturbed with the video and invited him to the White House.. Obama also said he wanted the White House to handle the Press and not to talk about the video or the White House visit. That's interesting. Watch it now. This may be the best six minutes invested in your future You may have to turn your Sound Control up some. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeYscnFpEyA

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683   New York: Micro-Stamping Bill To Be Heard In Senate Codes Committee Tomorrow!   Monday, June 01, 2009   Contact Your State Senator Immediately!Senate Bill 4397, sponsored by State Senator Eric Schneiderman (D-31), is a bill that would ban the sale of all semi-automatic handguns not equipped with micro-stamping technology.Micro-stamping is an unproven technology that would require unique identifying information from the firearm, including the make, model, and serial number to be etched into the firing pin and breech face in such a manner that those identifiers are imprinted on the cartridge...

AUSTIN - The Texas Senate passed Senate Concurrent Resolution 54 by State Senator Craig Estes (R-Wichita Falls) to express opposition to federal legislation infringing on the individual right to keep and bear arms. “I filed this resolution to reassert our constitutional right to keep and bear arms,” said Estes. “The Second Amendment is fundamental to the founding of our republic and a cornerstone to our personal freedoms.” The resolution reasserts our “right to keep and bear arms to protect oneself, one’s family, and one’s possessions from either the lawlessness of other persons or the tyranny of the government.” Senate Concurrent...

'No Fly, No Buy' for Guns Bill Proposed by Rep. McCarthy User Rating: / 19 PoorBest Politics - Capitol Hill Written by Timothy Robertson Wednesday, 13 May 2009 13:32 Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) is co-sponsoring a House of Representatives bill preventing people on the government's no-fly list from purchasing guns. House representatives will introcude a bill Wednesday that would ban anyone on the controversial no-fly list from purchasing a gun in the U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), a strong gun control advocate, is co-sponsoring the legislation that would apply to the nearly 1 million people that make up the government’s no-fly...

Bill awaits Senate action to help trace pistols; opponents question cost, effectiveness ALBANY — As the state Assembly passes a number of gun control measures, members of the newly Democratic state Senate joined gun control advocates to push for a proposal to mandate "microstamping" on semiautomatic pistols sold in the state. "This is a tough-on-crime, smart-on-crime proposal," said Sen. Eric Schneiderman, D-New York City, who is shepherding the measure through the Senate. The plan, originally put forth by Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel, D-Great Neck, already passed in the lower house, where Democrats hold a 109-to-41 majority. But with the Senate this...

With growing violence on the U.S.-Mexico border fueled by powerful drug cartels, officials from both countries have been repeating a shocking statistic to suggest this isn't just a Mexican problem. But Obama, Clinton and others have left out important qualifiers when citing the 90 percent statistic, which originates from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The agency doesn't have statistics for all weapons in Mexico, where gun sales are largely prohibited; it is based on only guns that the Mexican government sent to the ATF for tracing and that the ATF found were traceable.

On Tuesday, April 28, the Senate Public Safety Committee will hear Senate Bill 697. SB697, authored by State Senator Mark DeSaulnier (D-7), would prohibit the sale of handguns other than "owner-authorized (or ‘smart’) handguns" -- that is, handguns with a permanent, programmable biometric feature that renders the firearm useless unless activated by the authorized user. No proven, viable handgun of this type has ever been developed. The bill would require the California Attorney General to report to the Governor and Legislature on the availability of owner-authorized handguns; once the Attorney General finds that these guns are available, only “owner-authorized” handguns...

Obama Repeats '90 Percent' Stat for U.S. Guns Recovered in Mexico The White House stands by the president's use of the word "recovered" in describing the role firearms smuggled from the U.S. play in Mexico's drug war. By Major Garrett FOXNews.com Sunday, April 19, 2009 PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago -- What's the difference between "recovered" and "traceable" when it comes to firearms seized in Mexico's bloody war against drug cartels? The White House says none. But that's a distinction with a difference, even if President Obama used the words interchangeably last week to talk about the role firearms smuggled from...

Last week, Barack Obama’s message to the world was: “the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.” This week, Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security’s message to conservatives was: the United States may soon be at war with you. According to a new report emanating from DHS, it’s no longer Islamic terrorism -- or “man-caused terrorism” in the new DHS parlance -- that we have to fear most, but small government, anti-tax, pro-life, pro-gun, anti-illegal immigration, pro-military conservatives. In other words, most of the country. The DHS report’s title is, “Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and...

Yesterday, Roger Hedgecock and the Liberty Papers posted an unclassified DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis report titled:Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.The “report” was one of the most embarrassingly shoddy pieces of propaganda I’d ever read out of DHS. I couldn’t believe it was real.I spent the day chasing down DHS spokespeople, who have been tied up preparing for a very important homeland security event later today: The First Lady is coming to visit their Washington office. Priorities, you know.Well, the press office got back to me and verified that the document...

As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons," Holder told reporters. I think closing the gun show loophole, the banning of cop-killer bullets and I also think that making the assault weapons ban permanent, would be something that would be permitted under Heller," Holder said, referring to the Supreme Court ruling in Washington, D.C. v. Heller, which asserted the Second Amendment as an individual's right to own a weapon.

It is time for many South Floridians to get a grip. Not on their weapons, but on their senses. First, there was the big run on guns, both locally and nationally, when it was feared the Obama administration would quickly enact tougher gun legislation that would make it difficult to own guns. Didn't happen. And doesn't figure to happen, particularly since the Supreme Court has reinforced the right of an individual to bear arms. But that hasn't deterred some South Floridians, who are storming gun shops for ammunition - particularly rounds for military-style assault weapons.