Free Republic

Richard Mack is well known as the first of eventually six sheriffs to take on the Brady Law. And, much to the delight of pro-gunners around the country, the Supreme Court agreed with Mack in 1995 that the federal government did not have constitutional authority to force state officials to conduct background checks. Mack is no longer in office, but that has not stopped him from staying involved in promoting constitutional issues. He is now taking the lead in informing sheriffs of the authority they have as the chief law enforcement officer in their counties. While this has come as...

The Supreme Court yesterday unanimously sided with Gun Owners of America in finding that the placement of a Global Positioning Device on an automobile constitutes a “search” for purposes of the Fourth Amendment. The majority opinion in U.S. v. Jones was written by Justice Antonin Scalia and follows GOA’s reasoning to throw out the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test which has been thought to be the dominant Fourth Amendment standard in recent years. The Obama Administration argued that because the police could theoretically follow Antoine Jones’ car, he had no “reasonable expectation of privacy,” and thus, placing a GPS device...

At a campaign stop this weekend, in-the-spotlight GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum said he supports increased Internet regulation. According to Santorum, our rights aren’t “absolute” and stop at whatever point their exercise begins to infringe on the rights of others. Piracy represents an abuse of intellectual property rights — and that abuse should have consequences, Santorum says.So far, so good. Everybody agrees that piracy is a problem.But Santorum seems too ready to look to regulation for the solution to the piracy problem, suggesting that government interference might be an effective way to thwart piraters. That, to me, seems short-sighted, given...

Newt Gingrich has ramped up his attacks on Mitt Romney as a heartless leveraged buyout executive for his years at Bain Capital, asking reporters in Manchester on Monday, “Is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and walk off with the money? Or is that, somehow, a little bit of a flawed system?” But Mr. Gingrich was himself on an advisory board for a major investment firm that had a similar business model, Forstmann Little, a pioneering private equity firm co-founded in 1978 by Theodore J. Forstmann...

In a press release this afternoon, Club for Growth criticized Newt Gingrich for his attacks on Mitt Romney’s career at Bain Capital, calling them unbecoming a “Reagan Conservative.” Club for Growth’s statement: Yesterday, Gingrich said “Those of us who believe in free markets and those of us who believe that in fact the whole goal of investment is entrepreneurship and job creation…we find it pretty hard to justify rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company, leaving behind 1,700 families without a job.” Gingrich’s attack was echoed that same day that by the Democratic National Committee, which...

Mitt Romney: 36 Newt Gingrich: 25 Rick Santorum: 17 Ron Paul: 7 Other: 5 Undecided 10 Other: 5

Sarah Palin’s husband is endorsing Newt Gingrich for president, Todd Palin told ABC News today. But Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and John McCain’s 2008 Republican running mate, has yet to decide “who is best able to go up against Barack Obama,” Todd Palin said. Palin said he has not spoken to Gingrich or anyone from the former House speaker’s campaign. But he said he respects Gingrich for what he went through in the 1990s and compared that scrutiny in public life to what Sarah Palin went through during her run for the vice presidency.

GOP New Hampshire primary debate tonight on ABC at 9pm ET By Nate, on January 7th, 2012 Tonight will mark the first of two debates this weekend focused on the New Hampshire Republican primary. This evening's debate will take place at Saint Anselm College and is sponsored by ABC News, Yahoo! and WMUR. Sunday morning will feature a GOP debate broadcast on NBC at 9am ET (yes, am) but look for more details on that later today. Air Time: Saturday, January 7th at 9pm ET / 6pm PT on ABC Live Stream: WMUR and Yahoo! News Participants: Santorum, Romney, Paul,...

Ready, aim fire. That’s apparently Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s idea of relaxation before returning to the campaign trail this weekend. Ahead of Saturday night’s ABC News-Yahoo-WMUR debate in New Hampshire Perry took a few moments to himself at an Austin-area shooting range. “Just relaxing a bit @ Red’s Range before we leave for New Hampshire!” @governorperry tweeted Friday along with a photo of himself wearing a green sweatshirt and a baseball cap with a firearm in hand. On the campaign trail, Perry, a staunch defender of second amendment rights, has not been shy about talking about his “long love affair”...

"It has recently come to our attention that your station has either been asked to run, or may soon be asked to run, various advertising spots produced by the Mitt Romney aligned SuperPAC “Restore Our Future” or Romney for President, the principal campaign committee of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Included among the Romney advertisements submitted to your station for broadcast are likely to be various advertisements which specifically mention Speaker Gingrich and purport to quote or reference the findings of a 1997 report issued by the House Select Committee on Ethics (the “Report”). The content of these advertisements state...

As the results of the Iowa caucus dribbled in, Americans got to see how the GOP candidates greeted victory and defeat. Top vote-getter Mitt Romney was gracious toward Rick Santorum, who came in second by eight thin votes, but uninspiring as he pledged to get America back to work. Santorum pronounced, "Game on," then hailed his Italian grandfather's decision to leave Italy to dig coal, if that's what it took to bring his family to the United States. Ron Paul, who came in third, saluted the work of his enthusiastic volunteers and credited his success to his role as a...

Perry is nearly perfect with regards to his gun record.

BILL WHITE: GUN GROUPS SEE STEADY BLEED INTO MILITIAS; DOMESTIC UNREST STILL GROWING IN UNITED STATES When agents of America’s US Marshals surrounded the Indiana Baptist Temple, accusing the church and its parishioners of violating US tax laws by refusing to pay social security taxes on non-clergical employees, they didn’t charge in with guns blazing, as they did at Waco. Concern about bad publicity was there, but there was a more serious concern just under the surface – the Southern Indiana Regional Militia, a 250-man “unorganized” citizen’s militia unit, had pledged to defend the church – and their threats were...

In the recent Presidential debate, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann said America’s voters did not need to “settle” for the moderate candidate. Amen to that. And gun owners do NOT want candidates who talk out of both sides of their mouths. As the Gun Owners of America’s Board of Directors looks at the Republican candidates running to unseat radical anti-gun President Obama, we see several who have strong pro-gun backgrounds. Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Michelle Bachman all have solid pro-gun records and deserve a hard look from pro-gunners. At least one frontrunner candidate stands in contrast with a decidedly mixed record on...

As Wisconsin heads toward lifting a ban on carrying concealed weapons, researchers at the University of California-Davis have turned up some unsettling information about those who may take advantage of the law. In a study using 15-year-old data -- the most recent available -- published online in the journal Injury Prevention, the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program says those who carried concealed weapons or who had confronted someone with a gun were twice as likely to be heavy drinkers than non-gun owners. Gun owners who drove with loaded weapons were four times more likely to hop behind the wheel...

Gun Owners of America worked with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on legislation to exempt 4473’s (the form all buyers fill out when a gun is purchased from a licensed dealer) from that statute’s broad provisions. Sen. Paul will offer that amendment this week, assuming Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is not able to block the amendment from being offered. Here’s a major concern: Assume the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) goes to the “secret court” (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or “FISA” court) and argues, without anyone else in the room, that ALL 4473’s should be seized...

(February 23, 2011) “Two months after the shooting death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office remain silent. But family members, and others, are speaking out.” -- William Lajeunesse, “America’s Third War: Agent Brian Terry, A Policy of Silence?,” Fox News (February 22, 2011) at www.foxnews.com/us/2011/02/22/agent-brian-terry-policy-silence/ Summary According to recent press reports -- such as Fox News -- the ATF has enabled gun smuggling by telling gun dealers in the southwest to sell weapons to known straw purchasers (people who buy guns for others). Even worse, one of those guns became the murder weapon...

Remember day before yesterday when Larry Pratt came out swinging on the Gunwalker scandal? Last night, just before the CBS piece ran, Chris Brown at the collectivist "analysis" chop shop Media Matters slammed Larry Pratt as a conspiracy theorist. On February 22, Gun Owners of America (GOA) president Larry Pratt appeared on America Live and presented a variety of misleading reasons for his opposition to Andrew Traver, President Obama's nominee to head up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Pratt's objections during the segment were political in nature, wholly ignored Traver's distinguished record as a law enforcement...

Eric Holder to Lanny Breuer, pointing at the 800 pound gorilla sitting on its ass: "What about him?" Breuer: "Don't worry, that's the NRA, he's tame." As previously reported, FOX had two pieces on the Project Gunwalker scandal today. The better of the two was Larry Pratt's commentary on the Traver nomination which of course is intimately intertwined now with the Gunwalker scandal. Larry came out swinging, and apparently the ATF had declined to provide anyone to defend Traver, for it was Larry vs. Megyn Kelly, who was spinning out the administration meme as best she could. I want to...

As discussed in an earlier Gun Rights Examiner report today, Larry Pratt, the Executive Director of Gun Owners of America, appeared on the Fox News’ “America Live” program with Megyn Kelly today to discuss the nomination of Andrew Traver for Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Believing it relevant to the discussion, Pratt introduced key points involving “Project Gunwalker,” allegations about gun monitoring operations by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) gone awry. Host Kelly quickly tried to steer away from that, claiming it unfair to talk about because ATF was not there to...