Free Republic

“When do we say enough is enough?” asked California Senator Kamala Harris after Devon Patrick Kelley murdered 26 churchgoing Texans in cold blood, last Sunday. “When will this end?” prodded Diane Feinstein, California’s other senator. “When will we decide that we can’t accept massacres in our places of worship, schools, or at concerts? When will we actually do something about it?” “As my colleagues go to sleep tonight,” chided Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, “they need to think about whether the political support of the gun industry is worth the blood that flows endlessly onto the floors of American churches, elementary...

Every so often a ridiculous gun bill is introduced. Most of us gun rights activists roll our eyes and sigh. Gun control advocates who write these pieces of legislation know absolutely nothing about firearms yet they’re trying to tell us what kind of guns we should and should not own, what kind of attachments are acceptable and how many rounds are sufficient. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California), along with her clan of Democratic cohorts, on Wednesday introduced the Assault Weapons Ban of 2017 as a means of addressing mass shootings. “This bill won’t stop every mass shooting, but it will begin...

Dr. John Lott with the Crime Prevention Research Center and Alabama Lawyer Eric Guster appeared on Good Morning Britain with Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid the day after the Texas church massacre. As Britain’s Daily Star newspaper headline noted: “Piers Morgan yells at Good Morning Britain guest in heated Texas shooting row.” As usual for Piers’ style, he tried to both ask and answer his questions, monopolizing most of the time. Morgan yelled for Lott to “shut up!” and “Silence!” The lively exchange also got a fair amount of attention in the UK. . . .

The synchronized leftist response to this latest attack on normal Christians was pre-planned, and it didn’t matter that this time it was another militant atheist weirdo instead of an ISIS-loving foreigner. The memes and the lies were all prepped and ready, and the villain was already chosen. No surprise – once again, it was you, the normal American who keeps and bears arms to protect yourself, your family, your community and your Constitution. But this time it didn’t go the way they wanted. Sure, they were giddy at first – the liberals got to trash people of faith for praying,...

You had to know it was coming. In the wake of two deadly mass shootings where a maniac happened to choose an AR-15 style rifle to unleash his mayhem with, you had to know that Sen. Dianne Feinstein would reintroduce an assault weapon ban. Well, folks, it’s here now.

When I was growing up, my parents almost daily rounded up my four siblings and I for family prayer, the seven of us—albeit with differing degrees of attention—reciting out loud the Catholic prayers of the rosary, while meditating on different events in Jesus Christ’s life. At the end of the rosary, after my dad had rattled off the oh, roughly 785 intentions he wanted the Lord to take some action on, it was the kids’ turn to announce to God what we’d like to see happen. And so when one of my brothers was 2, he began to pray for...

Reading the social media posts of liberals following the latest mass shooting tragedy, occurring over the weekend in the small Texan town of Sutherland Springs, one might notice a pious gloating to their collective outrage. Rather than just the reflexive recitation of hatred at the National Rifle Association and congressional Republicans generally, liberals also lashed out against Christians, viciously blaming “prayers” for the lack of gun control efforts in Congress. It was almost as if they wanted to be at the scene of the horrific crime – a church – just to wag their fingers at the dead, for not...

Among the many problems with the Great Gun Debate these days is that the pro-gun crowd wants to make it a culture-war battle and the anti-gun crowd wants to pretend that it isn't. On public policy grounds, the pro-gun people have the better arguments. Firearm homicides have declined since the 1990s despite the loosening of gun laws. Almost none of the remedies proposed in the wake of mass shootings would have actually prevented those crimes (though had so-called bump stocks been banned -- as they should be -- fewer would have died in the Las Vegas shooting last month). Indeed,...

I had a pistol that was destroyed in the Tubbs fire. How do I cancel the registration of a gun that no longer exists? Short answer: With the California Department of Justice. But local law enforcement can help. The wildfires that destroyed thousands of homes in Sonoma County also damaged or destroyed many guns. While a firearm may no longer be functional, local law enforcement asks residents to bring them to the Santa Rosa Police Department or Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office for disposal. If the damaged gun has a visible serial number and its make and model are discernible, local...

After a gunman used an assault weapon to kill more than two dozen parishioners in a Texas church, just weeks after the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, President Donald Trump declared it was too soon to talk about guns. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said it was time for prayers, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., offered condolences. Advocates for stronger gun laws, in turn, urged Congress to find the courage to stand up to the gun lobby. This Congress likely won’t heed that call because the National Rifle Association opposes new gun laws — despite bluffing...

President Trump’s nominee to lead the military health system...Dean Winslow, a professor at Stanford University and retired Air Force colonel, made his remarks..."I may get in trouble with other members of the committee just say how insane it is that in the United States of America a civilian can go out and buy a semi-automatic like an AR-15, which apparently was the weapon that was used," Winslow said...Kelley used a Ruger AR-55 rifle to kill 26 and wound more than a dozen...

This week, a discharged Air Force officer with a criminal record of domestic abuse, including cracking the skull of his infant stepson, stepped into a church in rural Texas and murdered 26 people, at least a dozen of them children. Americans broke out into their usual arguments over gun control and whether "thoughts and prayers" are helpful; we argued over politicizing tragedy and legislating away rights. But each time an evil human being decides to attack innocents, it isn't the Twitter battles that stand between the monsters and children. It's heroes. It's men like Stephen Willeford. In a vacuum, Willeford...

President Trump is in South Korea, which is part of his Asia trip, and NBC News decided it was appropriate to ask him about extreme vetting regarding gun purchases. The question was pitched to Trump by Ali Vitali. The question was spurred by the president demanding we have a more extensive vetting process relating to immigration in the wake of the worst terror attack to hit New York City since 9/11. Sayfullo Saipov of Uzbekistan rented a Home Depot pickup truck and ran down pedestrians and cyclists in lower Manhattan last week, killing eight people and wounding twelve. On Sunday,...

The Bolshevik plague that began in Russia was the greatest catastrophe in human history.Armed Bolsheviks seized the Winter Palace in Petrograd—now St. Petersburg—100 years ago this week and arrested ministers of Russia’s provisional government. They set in motion a chain of events that would kill millions and inflict a near-fatal wound on Western civilization. The revolutionaries’ capture of train stations, post offices and telegraphs took place as the city slept and resembled a changing of the guard. But when residents of the Russian capital awoke, they found they were living in a different universe.Although the Bolsheviks called for the abolition...

Moms Demand Action’s Shannon Watts claims Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) opposition to universal background checks is equivalent to opposing laws to stop the murder of small children. She makes this point based on Cruz’s opposition to expanding background check following the Sandy Hook attack. She does not note that the gunman in that attack stole his firearms and would therefore be unencumbered by any point-of-sale background check requirements. .@tedcruz voted against requiring background checks on every gun sale after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook School. Sutherland Springs https://t.co/T1P8bAomB0 — Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) November 6, 2017 Watts also presents her...

Another horrible shooting has the Left talking about gun control, as if people already in violation of tons of other laws would be dissuaded by one more. So the Right responds by focusing on the Second Amendment, which is certainly legitimate and relevant, as it was intended to protect the American people from all manner of assaults, whether from a mugger in an alley, a street gang in the neighborhood, an enemy abroad, or a tyrant in our own capitol.. ...but we often forget the relevance of another Amendment, the First, which is increasingly under assault, particularly in the context...

It was revealed yesterday that an autopsy of Kelley showed that he did commit suicide by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. For the Left, this is where your road ends. This is where your narrative dies. For all the vicious tweets hurled at people of faith over this incident, for the mockery that ensued, and the tweets hurled at the NRA, it was an NRA member who stopped Kelley. I mean denigrating God is par for the course. It would be liberalism without it, but all of this NRA having blood on it hands etc.; the fact remains that an NRA...

Within hours of the horrendous Texas church shooting, Keith Olbermann called President Donald Trump a “pig” for invoking God instead of gun control. The shooting occurred Sunday morning in Sutherland Springs, Texas, where a 26-year-old man who was reportedly “an atheist” and who thought Christians were “stupid” opened fire on the congregants of First Baptist Church. The attacker killed 26 people. His violence was stopped by a good guy with a gun who “took cover behind a car” and shot at the attacker. President Trump was in Japan when the attack occurred. He tweeted: May God be w/ the people...

Before the Texas church shooter encountered any police officers, he was run off a highway and dead. He had been shot and chased by two private citizens who took it upon themselves to respond to a heinous crime when no one with a badge was anywhere to be found. The church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, is another heart-breaking chapter in the country’s epidemic of mass shootings. Devin Patrick Kelley shot and killed 26 people and wounded another 20, accounting for nearly everyone in the small church. Dressed in black tactical gear, he killed the pastor’s 14-year-old daughter and eight...

When will liberals who claim to oppose illegal guns call for the prosecution of gun criminals Barack Obama and Eric Holder? In Operation Fast and Furious, the Obama administration ordered gun storeowners to illegally sell thousands of guns to criminals.U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered with one of these guns.The murderer was sentenced to 30 years in prison, but his accomplices, Eric Holder and Barack Obama, haven’t even been arrested or charged.In September 2012, Obama falsely said that Fast and Furious had “begun under the previous administration.” In reality, Fast and Furious began in October 2009.In October 2013, the...