Free Republic

People across the political spectrum, from left to right and back again, seem to revel in perverse delight when comparing the policies of a political foe to those of the Nazis. Sometimes, they will skip the group comparisons and head straight into drawing personal parallels between the individual in question and Adolf Hitler. The practice is so onerous that, in the Dark Ages of the internet (1990), an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation named Mike Godwin coined what has become known as Godwin's Law. It states that, the longer and more involved an argument becomes, the more likely a...

Rule Of Law: Markets tumbled after Cyprus and the EU said they might tax private bank accounts to pay for a bailout. Arbitrary property grabs are a new low and a bad precedent in this crisis. Worse still, it can happen here. As bad as tumbling markets around the world are, they seem to be the only signal strong enough to catch the attention of Europe's otherwise unaccountable bureaucrats who have long since learned to ignore street riots. As stocks fell from Tokyo to New York, Europe's leaders are scrambling to say they had nothing to do with the cause...

An innocent photograph posted on Facebook of a beaming, spectacled boy proudly displaying a birthday present from his father prompted a police raid befitting an al-Qaida terrorist. New Jersey resident Shawn Moore, a National Rifle Association firearms instructor, range safety officer and New Jersey hunter education instructor, gave his son a .22-caliber rifle for his 11th birthday.

Paymar has enough votes to get the diminished gun control bill out of his committee. One of two Democrats who were opposed to his original bill -- Rep. Debra Hilstrom of Brooklyn Center -- said she will support the new proposal. Also stripped from Paymar's bill is a provision that would have restored some discretion to law enforcement in approving gun purchase permits. The NRA and gun rights advocates vowed to fight the newest version as well, saying it still doesn't accomplish the end goal of keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. They also argued Paymar's delaying tactics...

Would You Agree to a Tax on Your Savings for a State Bailout? Yes No Don't Know/Can't Say

In the wee hours of the night, the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers agreed to bail out Cyprus, after a year of negotiations. Cyprus needed a 17 billion euro bailout loan for its banking system, but the Eurogroup was only willing to come up with about 10 billion euros, so the difference had to be made up by penalizing depositors: 9.9% on deposits above 100,000 euros, and 6.75% on smaller deposits.

Colorado -–(Ammoland.com)- The most dangerous phase in the fight to defeat the gun grabbers’ all-out assault on our Second Amendment freedoms is upon us. I’m talking about the gun grabbers’ “Plan B” alternative – a triple threat designed to sound more “reasonable” to the public than a total gun ban. After I explain why this “Plan B” triple threat is so dangerous, I need you to take IMMEDIATE action and forward this article to every pro-gun person you know and ask them to help fight back as well. The “Plan B” alternative has three components: Fictitious “gun trafficking” legislation, so-called...

"The question that I would pose to the senior senator from California is," said Cruz to Feinstein, "Would she deem it consistent with the Bill of Rights for Congress to engage in the same endeavor that we are contemplating doing with the Second Amendment in the context of the First or Fourth Amendment, namely, would she consider it constitutional for Congress to specify that the First Amendment shall apply only to the following books and shall not apply to the books that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights?

Wearing bulletproof vests and carrying 40-caliber Glock pistols, nine California Justice Department agents assembled outside a ranch-style house in a suburb east of Los Angeles. They were looking for a gun owner who’d recently spent two days in a mental hospital. They knocked on the door and asked to come in. About 45 minutes later, they came away peacefully with three firearms. California is the only state that tracks and disarms people with legally registered guns who have lost the right to own them, according to Attorney General Kamala Harris. Almost 20,000 gun owners in the state are prohibited from...

The Bill of Rights is comprised of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, and the town of Newfield, N.J., appears hell-bent on repealing every single one of them. Newfield homeowner Eileen Hart attended an informal meeting Saturday to discuss property “revaluations” in light of the findings by Appraisal System’s Inc., a firm hired by New Jersey to assess the fair market value of properties in each county.

Need? We need not justify. When asked what I do for a living I reply: I teach people how to shoot people. I teach people how to shoot people because some people need to be shot – and they need to be shot NOW. I have found that in the long run sugarcoating reality rarely produces good results. Yes, it might make some people “feel” better, but feelings and reality are often polar opposites. Pretending something is what it is not only postpones judgment day, and the longer it’s ignored, the higher the price. Twenty-six years ago I began my...

WASHINGTON—Despite signs of stepped-up White House involvement, a bipartisan compromise over expanded background checks for gun buyers remained elusive Tuesday as a Senate committee prepared for votes this week on curbing firearms. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has been the lead Republican negotiating with Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other Democrats over a compromise background-check measure. They've been stuck over Democrats' insistence that records be kept on sales between private individuals. Coburn spoke at the White House last week with Vice President Joe Biden on guns and other issues, and received a phone call Monday from President Barack Obama in which...

SYDNEY, Australia -- In the country that has some of the most restrictive firearms legislation in the world, law-abiding citizens must obtain police permission before purchasing a gun and subject themselves to public ridicule, surprise searches without warrants, arbitrary confiscation and burdensome government regulations. It's a fate that could befall America, some warn, if citizens willingly surrender their firearms -- and with those guns, an entire nation's hard-won freedom.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has obtained an internal Justice Department memo that it says shows President Obama's gun-control measures would not be effective without firearms seizures and national gun registration, the Associated Press reports. The gun lobby is citing the nine-page memo in ads running in 15 states, including several swing states with Senate elections next year. In the ad, the NRA says the memo proves that the administration “believes that a gun ban will not work without mandatory gun confiscation” and thinks universal background checks “won't work without requiring national gun registration,” according to the AP. Obama has...

The National Rifle Association is using a Justice Department memo it obtained to argue in ads that the Obama administration believes its gun control plans won’t work unless the government seizes firearms and requires national gun registration—ideas the White House has not proposed and does not support. … The memo says requiring background checks for more gun purchases could help, but also could lead to more illicit weapons sales. It says banning assault weapons and high capacity ammunition magazines produced in the future but exempting those already owned by the public, as Obama has proposed, would have limited impact because...

We need you to once again show the Minnesota Legislature that real Minnesotans oppose infringements on Second Amendment rights! Senate Judiciary Committee chair Ron Latz, a consistent voice against gun rights, has scheduled three hearings next week to discuss the numerous gun control bills introduced this session.  They hearing times are: · Thursday, Feb. 21, Noon to 2:30 p.m. · Thursday, Feb. 21, 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. · Friday, Feb. 22, Noon to 6:00 p.m. While Senator Latz delayed public announcement of these hearings until Wednesday night, he apparently tipped off anti-rights groups early Wednesday morning!   We don't know yet which bills will be heard when, but...

My friends, there is hope. Law enforcement officers at the local level are making their stand and they want you to be a part of that. While I’ve written on various sheriffs that have made their own stance to protect their citizens from anyone attempting to confiscate guns, I recently ran across Police Chief Mark Kessler of the Gilberton Borough Police Department in Pennsylvania. He wants citizens to join with his police department in building a “reserve force” that will aid his police force should the need arise to resist Federal authorities when it comes to the Second Amendment. (VIDEO...

<p>In the divisive debates over gun control, here is something all factions should agree on: Deadly weapons should be taken out of the hands of those who have been deemed a risk because of felony convictions or episodes of domestic violence, mental health conditions or drug addictions.</p>

I am a certified firearms instructor who has taught CCW classes in Arizona since the beginning of the CCW program there in 1994. As we are on the border with California, I watch the developments there with some interest. Unfortunately, nearly everything that I have read and heard about the LAPD and guns has lead me to distrust them. I had numerous students who had dealings with the LAPD. I started hearing stories about how guns were seized, even if there were no crime involved. If an officer came across a gun, it was seized, and it would not be...

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