Free Republic

CNN anchor Don Lemon abruptly ended a segment with Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy after a tense back-and-forth about gun rights and black Americans. What happened? During an interview on "CNN This Morning," co-host Poppy Harlow asked Ramaswamy about his speech last week at the NRA convention. In that speech, Ramaswamy connected gun control laws and the campaign to oppress black Americans after the Civil War. We fought a civil war in this country to give black Americans the equal protection under the law that we failed to secure them in 1776. But then, you want to know what happened?...

The History of Bans on Types of Arms Before 1900, by David Kopel and Joseph Greenlee, Law review article, 165 pages, 2021. The Supreme Court, in the seminal Bruen decision, held: once the clear text of the Second Amendment is implicated, the burden falls on the government to prove there were widespread and accepted statutory restraints in history which are very similar to the restraints the government is defending.The law review article by Kopel and Greenlee is the most comprehensive compilation of the laws on ownership and regulation of arms from medieval England through 1900, especially on weapons bans, yet...

Over at The Faculty Lounge, there are some pictures of sit-ins from the early 1960s. Regarding a 1963 sit-in in Jackson, Mississippi, TFL writes: “By one account, members of the all-White Jackson police force stood guard outside, while several FBI agents (the guys in back wearing shades) ‘observed’ from inside. That White guy at the counter, that’s Tougaloo professor and community activist Hunter Gray (John R. Salter) who helped organize the Jackson sit-ins. And that’s blood on his shirt. All of the protesters had been covered in slop, and some were beaten with brass knuckles and broken bottles.” The non-violent...

New York Giants star receiver Plaxico Burress is facing a mandatory 3½ years in prison and the end of his football career. His crime? Not having a license, which New York City never would have issued him, for the exercise of his constitutional right to bear arms. ...And then there is the issue of the permitting process for residents. In 40 states, including Connecticut, law-abiding adults are issued permits once they pass a fingerprint-based background check and a safety class. In New Jersey, carry permits are virtually never issued. In New York City, carry permits are issued, but to applicants...

The Phony "Right of Return" Under international law, there is no such thing as a right of return. If your ancestors left France, or Russia, or anywhere else (regardless of whether they were forced out, or they just wanted to live somewhere else), then you have no right of return to France or Russia. Nor do your grandchildren. Nevertheless, UNRWA tells the "refugees" that they have a "right of return"” to Israel—that the grandchild of someone who moved to Tel Aviv to work as a janitor from 1946 to 1948 has a right to live in Israel, and to take...

WASHINGTON – Coalition to Stop Gun Violence Executive Director Josh Horwitz today accused a pair of Texas lawmakers of “playing cheap political games” with the District of Columbia’s gun laws at the expense of democracy in the nation’s capital. Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, both Texas Republicans, held a news conference to announce the introduction of the District of Columbia Personal Protection Act of 2005, which would repeal the city’s gun laws, in the Senate. “The citizens of the District of Columbia should have the power to decide by democratic means whether and how firearms will be regulated...

(CNSNews.com) - Seven states do not have clauses in their constitutions allowing citizens the right to keep and bear arms, an attorney and research director of the Colorado based Independence Institute warned Friday at the opening of the National Rifle Association's annual convention in Reno, Nev. Those seven states are Maryland, Iowa, New Jersey, California, Minnesota, Delaware and Massachusetts, according to attorney David Kopel, who in addressing an NRA firearms law seminar, called on members in those states to write their legislators to get such clauses enacted. The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution does contain the following language....