Free Republic

New reports reveal a deadly wave of gun violence in Chicago. A 15-year old boy, a young mother, and even a four-year-old girl sitting on her porch have all been shot dead. These are just a few of the nearly 40 people who were gunned down in Chicago over a mere three-day period this week. This level of violence is usually not seen until the middle of summer in Chicago, but as temperatures reached into the 80’s this week criminals were drawn into the streets. On Monday, one person was shot dead and nine others were wounded. A day later,...

The nation’s largest firearms trade association expelled Dick’s Sporting Goods on Friday morning, citing the retailer’s decision to hire multiple gun control lobbyists. The vote to expel Dick’s from the National Shooting Sports Foundation, or NSSF, was unanimous, the group said in a press release issued Friday morning. “The National Shooting Sports Foundation® (NSSF®), the trade association for the firearms, ammunition, hunting and shooting sports industries, Board of Governors today unanimously voted to expel Dick’s Sporting Goods from membership for conduct detrimental to the best interests of the Foundation,” the group announced.

It was an ordinary day in 2011 when I found myself watching a YouTube video of a gun owner making a semiautomatic rifle discharge bullets rapidly, as if it were an automatic weapon. My gun-owning husband watches firearms videos like this one, however, I had never seen one. Intrigued, I sat down on the couch to absorb the imagery. Hooking his thumb through the belt loop of his pants, the YouTuber demonstrated how pushing the gun forward, rather than pulling the trigger, allowed the gun's recoil to "keep the gun going." In other words, he was bump firing his rifle.

Dick’s Sporting Goods has reportedly retained several lobbyists to urge lawmakers to take action on gun control, months after restricting gun sales in its stores. The sporting-goods chain is working with three lobbyists from the Glover Park Group to take on the topic, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing a disclosure form filed late last month. The move comes after Dick’s announced in the wake of the mass shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school in February that it would stop selling assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines. Etc...

Troubles for Wells Fargo & Company (WFC - Free Report) seems to have no end. This time they come from a teacher’s union — The American Federation of Teachers (“AFT”) — demanding the bank to restrain itself from providing finance to gun dealers and the National Rifle Association (“NRA”). After the recent tragic incident at a high school that took lives of innocent students and educators, AFT’s President Randi Weingarten raised concerns over Wells Fargo’s connections with the gunmakers and NRA. In a release issued on Apr 7, the union disclosed plans to discontinue the Wells Fargo mortgage program offering...

For those who may have forgotten, Barack Obama reminded many last week what made him such a polarizing president. In a Time magazine essay commending student gun control activists, Obama resorted to his typical name-calling and false statements. The former President sympathized with students who “see the NRA and its allies—whether mealymouthed [sic] politicians or mendacious commentators peddling conspiracy theories—as mere shills for those who make money selling weapons of war to whoever can pay.” Trump has never used even remotely similar language to attack gun control proponents. Obama complained, “The Parkland, Fla., students don’t have the kind of lobbyists...

Another mass public shooting in another gun-free zone, and yet again the media ignores it. Right at the front of the Waffle House restaurant in Antioch, Tennessee was a sign prohibiting firearms. But none of the news media, neither national nor local, reported that fact. Even having a president who finally emphasizes the dangers of gun-free zones for mass public shootings isn’t enough to get the press to consider this newsworthy. Almost immediately, the media was telling Americans all sorts of other details. We knew what type of gun was used. We learned that the killer had his gun confiscated...

Every time there is a mass shooting we get the same old song and dance from the gun control fanatics. You’re sorry this happened? Then you must institute gun control. Oh, you don’t want to do that? Then it’s your fault that it happened. The NRA is bad. They kill people. We must have gun control. Innocent law-abiding Americans are responsible. Don’t you feel bad for the victims? Then institute our gun control agenda that will do nothing to stop the killings. It’s hamhanded, relentless propaganda peddled by smug, self-righteous anti-gun zealots.Well, here are some things you don’t typically see...

Gary Kleck, a criminologist now retired from Florida State University, was likely astonished to learn that his controversial study, The National Self-Defense Survey, was accurate after all. He and FSU fellow professor Marc Gertz concluded, based on their carefully-crafted surveys conducted in 1993, that there were more than 2.2 million defensive gun uses (DGU) each year in the United States. The results were presented in 1994, published in 1995, and have been incessantly attacked by the anti-gun movement ever since. His conclusions didn’t fit the anti-gun narrative that guns are used in crimes far more than in self-defense and therefore...

Waffle House has continued to have a gun-free zone policy. Here is a statement that Waffle House issued in October 2015 after an attack that was stopped outside their restaurant by a permit holder

"In a surprising move, the popular cooler making company YETI has announced it will be cutting ties with the National Rifle Association" ...Freepers, time to give Yeti a serious lesson. See link below.

As more is becoming known about Travis Reinking, the suspect wanted for murdering four people in a Nashville area Waffle House this morning, we’re hearing a familiar refrain. Reinking was well known to both federal and state authorities. In July 2017, the U.S. Secret Service arrested Reinking for being in a “restricted area” near the White House, according to the Secret Service. After the arrest, his Illinois firearms authorization was revoked and local Illinois police seized four weapons. The firearms were given back to his family. “Among the weapons seized by those authorities was the AR-15 rifle used at the...

Many people who support gun control are angry that the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are not legally allowed to use money from Congress to do research whose purpose is "to advocate or promote gun control." (This is not the same as doing no research into gun violence, though it seems to discourage many potential recipients of CDC money.) But in the 1990s, the CDC itself did look into one of the more controversial questions in gun social science: How often do innocent Americans use guns in self-defense, and how does that compare to the harms guns can cause...

Washington (CNN)On Wednesday, the Republican governor of Missouri asked for a temporary restraining order against the Republican attorney general of Missouri, who is also the leading candidate to represent the GOP against Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) in the fall. The governor, Eric Greitens, made the move to keep the AG, Josh Hawley, from pursuing an investigation into the possibility that he broke the law when he used a fundraising list from a non-profit to collect funds for his political campaigns.

Switzerland has long been one of the safest and well governed countries in the world. Switzerland had historically few firearms restrictions and high rates of gun ownership. Until 1996, the firearms laws in Switzerland were entirely an affair of the local cantons. Gun laws in Switzerland were generally less restrictive than in the United States. Most firearms were not registered. It was easy to purchase handguns and automatic rifles. Cannon required an approximate $5 registration which could be obtained at the local police office. Cannon breech blocks were required to be stored separately from the cannon. Before 1998, pistols...

Sponsors who left Fox News star Laura Ingraham’s show at the behest of teen gun control activist David Hogg are missing out on a 20 percent increase in eyeballs. The conservative author of “Shut up and Sing” lost nearly 30 advertisers since a boycott against her show launched March 29, but those who held firm are benefiting from a ratings windfall. Data compiled by the media watchdog News Busters shows a jump from 2.23 million viewers prior to Mr. Hogg’s campaign to 2.7 million since her return from a vacation.

Democratic lawmakers want to take the state's tight gun control laws and expand them outside of New Jersey's borders. There's new legislation that would ban state-sponsored travel to any states that don't require their residents to obtain a permits before they purchase a firearm. The goal is to send a message to the National Rifle Association, said State Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, the bill's sponsor. "Fighting the NRA on the basis logic and rational thinking has not worked," Weinberg, D-Bergen, said. "So I think the thing that might work is fighting them with their pocketbook."

It was widely reported earlier this month that London experienced a higher number of murders over the first three months of 2018 than did New York City—the first time in modern history that has occurred. The United Kingdom has some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the world, so the increased murder rate in the British capital is largely a result of a sharp rise in knife-related crime. The surge in violence prompted London Mayor Sadiq Khan to announce a massive “knife control” campaign eerily reminiscent of those sometimes proffered in the United States in response to firearms-related...

A person who dies because they did not have a gun is just as dead as a person who is murdered with a gun. In practice, overall unjustified homicides tend to rise a bit when gun are banned or restricted. Those who push for disarmed populations use a logical fallacy when arguing for gun restrictions and gun bans. They only count people who are killed with guns, and ignore people who are killed because they were unarmed or disarmed.This logical fallacy is called an irrelevancy argument. Whenever you see a chart or graph or statistic that uses the terms...

Michigan is one of the few states that require people who buy handguns to register them. The law is ineffective in solving crimes. There is only one case known, in over 90 years of the law's existence, that may have been solved because of pistol registration in Michigan.    Link to video The primary purpose of the legislation, enacted in 1927, is believed t have been to keep black people form legally owning pistols. The law is an artifact of racial discrimination that serves no useful purpose.  The law that requires the pistol license and registration is MCL 28.422,...