Free Republic

MSNBC’s Joy Reid told her fans Monday that the National Rifle Association has machinations of building an America where “packs of warlords” can kill at will. The host of “AM Joy” reacted to Sunday’s church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, by claiming NRA members — over 5 million Second Amendment advocates — seek the creation of “private armies” operating outside the rule of law. The comments came one day after 26-year-old Devin Kelley killed 26 churchgoers and wounded another 20 in a rampage reportedly linked to a domestic dispute. “Americans are living like packs of warlords, with heavily armed people...

Devin Kelley, the man accused of killing 26 people in Texas Sunday, was court-martialed in 2012... the Air Force confirmed to the Daily News Sunday night. In 2012, he was court-martialed after being accused of assaulting his spouse and child, spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said. Kelley was confined for 12 months and was reduced to E-1 rank, airman basic, which is the lowest rank possible.

With the unfortunate aftermath of the church shooting in Texas, the liberal left and their media has yet again taken this as a "crisis" not wasted. But there was a particular posting from October 4th that came across the radar that peaked attention because despite the carnage that happens daily in Democrat, gun-controlled meccas like Chicago (which mainly involves politically insignificant black people), the BBC highlighted the fact that most "mass" shootings are mostly carried out by "white" men.

With Islamic State-inspired animals bringing their holy war to our cities – ramming trucks into pedestrians and bicyclists and slaughtering dozens in a nightclub and elsewhere – we are reminded of how important it is to protect our right to bear arms, which is enshrined in the Second Amendment. If it weren’t for the hero cop who happened to be at the horrific scene and shot the Islamic extremist killer inflicting mayhem on New York’s West Side Highway – just blocks away from a high school – more innocents could have been harmed, including children. We know that law enforcement...

What are we to do when madness overtakes the country?First, it must be named.‘insanity’ might do President Donald Trump says the mass shooting at a Texas church is the result of a "mental health problem at the highest level." Unless we’re just talking about pure evil, because it could be that too. Either way, It just doesn’t help to call it something that it is not.And try to fix something that isn’t the problem. Dems renew calls for gun control in wake of Texas church shooting So let’s stop winking at it, calling it something other than what it isand...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Sunday slammed Republicans for offering their condolences in the wake of the Texas church shooting while failing to take concrete steps to curb gun violence. "Thoughts & prayers are not enough, GOP. We must end this violence. We must stop these tragedies. People are dying while you wait," Warren wrote in one tweet. Warren took to Twitter to express her anger and heartbreak after a gunman opened fire at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, killing at least 26 people and injuring about 20 others. She took aim at the National Rifle Association (NRA), asking...

Gunman Stephen Paddock lost a large amount of wealth in the two years before the Oct. 1 shooting on the Strip, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said in an interview with a local television station. Lombardo told KLAS-TV, Channel 8, that Paddock’s wealth fluctuated because of gambling, real estate transactions and “everything else that he chose to do.” Paddock lost a large amount of money after September 2015, the sheriff said. Lombardo speculated that the financial losses might have contributed to Paddock’s decision to spray a country music festival with bullets, killing 58 people and injuring more than 500 others....

On terrorism, we often are fighting the last war. And sometimes the supposed solutions have nothing to do with preventing future attacks. They just give the appearance that politicians are doing something. The terror attack on Tuesday in New York City left eight dead and eleven injured after a rental truck was used to plow down people on a bike path. We are just fortunate that the killer ran into a school bus and was unable to continue his plan to hit more pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge. The NYPD immediately pointed out that it had repeatedly instructed the 148...

The Second Amendment cannot physically pertain to the United States military or to a government centralized organised militia, such as mercenaries. It can only apply to private citizens, because at the time it was penned in 1791, there was no standing military force in the United States. At the time, there were some mercenaries and defectors that had been hired to fight alongside farmers, masons, carpenters, lumberjacks, and sailors. Even private civilian fishing boats were equipped with cannons in order to go to war; demonstrating the strength of non-military factions within the country.

I still wasn't sold on the whole thing, but slowly my knee-jerk emotional fear gave way to genuine inquisitiveness. I wanted answers. Why would our founders put the Second Amendment right after the one that protected our right to speech and religion? Why would someone want more than one gun? What's the danger in gun registration? The process lasted nearly two years, a grueling amount of time, but I wasn't going to let go of my "rational" distrust of guns, or the seeming ease of being able to get them, easily. After all, facts have no use in an emotional...

Simeon D. Mokhiber, 42, of upstate New York had a close call in court last week. Mokhiber is an Iraq combat veteran who served in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division as well as the National Guard. Following his active duty service he worked private security details protecting U.S. officials in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But last year he was pulled over in Niagra County and charged with driving under the influence. (A charge which was dismissed.) The police found three 17-round Glock magazines in a container in his vehicle. There was no firearm in the car… just the magazines.

Nicholas Kristof stepped on a rake last night—and it wasn’t pretty. The New York Times columnist decided to go there on gun control when it was wholly unnecessary to do so. On Tuesday, 29-year-old Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov drove a rented Home Depot pickup truck through a bike path in lower Manhattan and plowed through bystanders and cyclists. Eight people are dead, close to dozen more injured and you’re going to give New York a pat on the back for having strict gun laws. This was possibly in response to Saipov exiting his truck holding fake guns. He was obviously trying...

The media frenzy over the mass murder in Las Vegas has died down faster than any other such story I have seen in the last two decades. The push for legislation to ban “bump stocks” has also died down.  It has not stopped. As expected, the enemies of an armed population are using “bump stocks” as a vehicle for much broader bans. In Illinois, the last state to pass a concealed carry permit law, the Democrats are looking to ban as many as half the guns in Illinois with the broadly worded measure.Nearly all semi-automatic firearms would fit under...

The San Francisco 49ers weighed in on the national firearms debate Thursday, announcing their $500,000 donation to push for more gun control and a ban on bump stocks. The team is partnering with local and national law enforcement in an effort to create a “safer America,” by banning silencers and and armor piercing rounds, according to ESPN writer Nick Wagoner.

My first novel, Enemies Foreign and Domestic, published in 2003, begins with a sniper shooting into a packed football stadium. Ninety bullets are fired from long range into an upper deck, precipitating a stadium-wide panic stampede that results in over a thousand deaths. In the book, a combat veteran holding a semi-automatic rifle is quickly located by a SWAT counter-sniper in a helicopter, after a citizen’s tip is phoned to the police. However, the veteran is just a patsy, and the true perpetrators of the massacre are a pair of mid-level federal law enforcement agents who are seeking to increase...

LaGrange College professor John A. Tures cross-examined various figures on gun crime and found that homicide rates are not markedly different for states with gun control for private sales versus states without. He did this as a project with his students, wherein they examined a study that provided an overview of findings from a wide spectrum of angles and political persuasions, including findings that are considered nonpartisan. These findings included figures from The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the NRA-ILA, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The San Francisco 49ers weighed in on the national firearms debate Thursday, announcing their $500,000 donation to push for more gun control and a ban on bump stocks. The team is partnering with local and national law enforcement in an effort to create a “safer America,” by banning silencers and and armor piercing rounds, according to ESPN writer Nick Wagoner. A portion of the donation will also fund public service announcements geared towards police brutality and violence. {..snip..}

The extreme form of gun control pushed onto the Australian electorate after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 will not “work” in America. The reason is simple. It did not “work” in Australia. There have been numerous studies about what happened after extreme restrictions on gun ownership were implemented in Australia in 1996.  The evidence is clear. There was no measurable benefit, and significant cost. The overall homicide rate was not reduced in a measurable way. The suicide rate went up, down, and up, but stayed level as other methods were substituted.This detailed article, with charts, is the best...

On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, former CEO of NPR Ken Stern came on the show to promote his new book, Republican Like Me. Most of the segment with Stern focused on the book’s themes of political polarization in the U.S. being a distortion of Americans’ true unity as a “moderate country” and Stern’s experiences speaking to Trump voters about their beliefs. However, at the end of the discussion, Stern oddly made the case that while ‘most’ ‘gun control measures’ would not have a ‘major effect’ on gun homicides, he was still ‘fine’ with those very same restrictions on Americans’ Second Amendment...

Michael Bloomberg is hoping to ride to the rescue of Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam two weeks ahead of the Virginia governor's race. Everytown for Gun Safety, one the foremost gun control groups in America that is bankrolled by the former New York City mayor, will drop another $400,000 in the election after an earlier $1 million commitment, the Washington Post reports. That makes the race very much a referendum on gun control. October Week 2 | Campfire Watch Full Screen While the Bloomberg cash could rile up the Democratic base and bring Northam victory, it could just as easily backfire...