Free Republic

Washington • It is not just his stoking of white supremacist sentiment that makes Donald Trump such a dangerously unfit president. It’s also the corruption, the weakness, the ignorance, the incompetence and the stunning lack of empathy — all of which we saw this week on grotesque display. What kind of man visits two grieving communities, shattered by horrific mass shootings, and somehow makes it all about him? I covered the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 and had trouble sleeping for weeks afterward; colleagues of mine have had similar reactions to other massacres. Yet what apparently lingered with President Trump...

USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- Democratic hopefuls squared off in the first primary debate over two days and they had plenty to say about the gun control plans they would enact if elected. Perhaps the most important take away from the two nights is that the candidates advocated or passively supported gun confiscation, rhetorically couched as “gun buybacks.” Not a single one of the 20 candidates spoke in opposition to confiscation or the respect for the Second Amendment. So, the Democrats really are coming for your guns. The other key takeaway is that former Vice President Joe Biden believes the firearm industry...

On December 14, 2012, Shannon Watts was folding laundry in front of the television when she heard the news: Twenty little children had been shot to death inside their elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. Watts, a stay-at-home mother of five, began to cry. But as she continued watching coverage of the tragedy, her emotions flipped from desolate to furious. The prevailing attitude, aired by resigned pundits, was that shootings were inevitable. The next day, she decided to act. Envisioning a group of moms working against gun violence, in the vein of Moms Against Drunk Driving, she created a Facebook...

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced on Tuesday that he’ll recall lawmakers to the state Capitol in the coming weeks to take up a package of gun-control legislation, which he said is urgently needed to prevent killings like Friday’s mass shooting in Virginia Beach. Northam said he plans to convene a special legislative session this summer. The Democrat said in an Associated Press interview ahead of his announcement that he wants the Republican-controlled General Assembly to hear from the public about the need for “common-sense” law related to guns and accessories. Republicans have previously rejected Northam’s gun control bills out of...

Official preliminary results showed that 63.7% of voters gave their backing to new EU gun laws, including tighter controls for semi-automatic weapons. A majority of voters in all but one canton, the Italian-speaking Ticino in southern Switzerland, came out in favor of reforming Swiss gun laws. […] Swiss lawmakers had approved earlier reforms that the EU deemed sufficient to comply with its legislation; however, that prompted a huge pushback by the rightwing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which gathered enough signatures to force Sunday’s vote on the measures. […] Under the new gun law, semi-automatic weapons with high-capacity magazines would be...

“There’s this peace and inner calm that you need when shooting,” Michele Meyenberger says as the sound of gun fire echoes through the clubhouse. A magazine of ammunition for her Sturmgewehr 90, a modified semi-automatic rifle issued by the Swiss army, sits on the table as Meyenberger eyes the clock, knowing that it’s almost her turn on the shooting range. The 30-year-old is one of dozens of local rifle owners who have traveled to the Swiss village of Märwil for a shooting festival — where participants take aim at what seems like an impossibly small target located 300 meters (984...

SALEM, N.H. – They’re both highlighting their ideas to curb gun violence as they run for the Democratic presidential nomination. But Beto O’Rourke says that Sen. Cory Booker’s new proposal to mandate the federal licensing of all gun owners goes too far. Asked by Fox News this week if he agreed with the U.S. senator from New Jersey, O’Rourke answered, “I don’t know that we need to take the additional step of licensing every single firearm to every single owner. I think that may be too far.”

The California Assembly on Monday advanced a bill to add school faculty, employers and co-workers to the list of people who can ask a judge to take away someone’s guns. The measure, AB 61, passed the Assembly in a Democrat-heavy 54-16 vote and now heads to the state Senate. It would greatly expand who can file for a Gun Violence Restraining Order in the state under California’s so-called “red flag law.” Adopted in 2014, the current law allows the seizure of firearms– for up to 21 days– from an otherwise legal gun owner who is believed to pose a “significant...

When it comes to maintaining gun safety, the smaller communities of Nevada simply aren’t playing the same game as Las Vegas. That’s not to knock the rural areas. It’s simply a statement of fact. With 42 million-plus visitors coming to Southern Nevada annually, it’s to the credit of Clark County commissioners that they’re already talking about enhancing gun safety measures for the Las Vegas Strip. That conversation is a bit speculative at this point, due to a state law that prevents local governments from passing gun measures any stricter than those in Nevada statutes. But with the Legislature considering a...

New Jersey Gov. Philip D. Murphy is proposing a plan to punish law-abiding gun owners by making it extremely expensive to own a gun. The New York Times reports: Though New Jersey has strict gun control laws, its firearms fees have not changed since the mid-1960s, making it a bargain for gun owners. A firearm identification card costs $5, while a permit to own a firearm is $2. A permit to carry a gun costs $20. Mr. Murphy, a Democrat, has proposed fees that would be among the highest in the country. An identification card would cost $100, an owner’s...

Democrat presidential hopeful Mayor Pete Buttigieg supported gun controls Barack Obama pushed, as well as the gun control “framework” Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns sought. Buttigieg’s gun control support, documented through the years on his own Twitter account, shows his support of everything from Obama’s push to criminalize private gun sales via universal background checks to Bloomberg’s overarching gun control agenda. When Obama was in office, Buttigieg tweeted: Pete Buttigieg ✔ @PeteButtigieg I'm with the majority of Americans (& gun owners) who agree with @POTUS that we need universal background checks to help #StopGunViolence

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) is one of the people pushing to keep "high capacity" magazines, anything that holds over 10 rounds, illegal in the Golden State. For one week, Californians had the opportunity to get their hands on these magazines because of a court ruling that overturned the state's ban. One week later, the same judge issued a stay , which meant the ban went back into effect while the lawsuit, Duncan v. Becerra, was settled in court. Any magazines obtained during that week-long period were legal. Although it's impossible to know exactly how many "high capacity" magazines...

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris says she owns a gun and called it a “false choice” that the only two gun control options are complete, unrestricted access or a desire to seize everyone’s guns. The senator from California told reporters after a campaign event in Iowa that she is a gun owner. She says, “I own a gun for probably the reason that a lot of people do: for personal safety.” …

The left will never stop in its constant assault on Americans’ right to keep and bear arms. Luckily, there are still patriots able and willing to step up and stop liberals right in their tracks. Oregon lawmakers discovered this firsthand when they were confronted Tuesday with a tsunami of gun rights advocates and Second Amendment enthusiasts who showed up to protest a bill and its decidedly anti-gun amendment. The original bill, SB 978, is less than half a page long. The proposed amendment, however, adds 44 pages of restrictions and regulations, turning the bill into a gargantuan monstrosity of gun...

The Los Angeles Police Department has moved to cancel most of the few remaining concealed weapons permits in civilian hands, according to new filings in a decades-old legal case. Chief Michel Moore said in a sworn declaration he did not believe a group of people who obtained so-called CCWs as the result of a 1994 lawsuit were still entitled to the permits, because it was unlikely the individuals still faced extraordinary physical danger to their lives."I do not believe the continued wholesale allowance for each to possess a CCW license based on circumstances that may have existed 24 years ago...

Is a showdown looming between state and local governments on gun control? (Dave Workman)Amid what appears to be an insurrection of county sheriffs and county governing boards in several states against restrictive gun laws, Pacific Standard magazine has finally asked the proverbial “$64 question,” what happens next? The headline is certainly an eye-catcher: “What Happens if Sheriffs Refuse to Enforce State Gun-Control Laws?” Part of the answer may be found in Washington State, where anti-gun Gov. Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson—both supporters of gun control Initiative 1639 that passed last fall, raising the age of purchase for a...

A ‘BRITISH’ gunman who is believed to have filmed himself slaughtering Muslims in a New Zealand mosque wrote a chilling manifesto before the “terrorist attack”. The white-supremacist shooter, 28, who was born in Australia, said he wanted to take revenge for the "thousands of European lives lost to terror attacks". He boasted that he chose to use firearms so he could influence politics in the US. “Finally, to create conflict between the two ideologies within the United States on the ownership of firearms in order to further the social, cultural, political and racial divide within the United states," he wrote....

(CNSNews.com) -- Democratic Congress members reintroduced the Ammunition Background Check Act on Wednesday, legislation that would require people to undergo an instant, universal background check through the federal NICS databaseeverytime they purchase gun ammunition. The lead sponsors of the bill are Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.). The proposal is known as 'Jaime's Law," in honor of Jaime Guttenberg, one of the 17 victims of the shooting at the Marjory Stonemen Douglas High School in February 2018. "Ammunition sales should be subject to the same legal requirements that should govern firearm sales: universal background checks," said...

Backers of the measure want Congress to clarify the constitutional right to bear arms (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)A group of Hawaii state legislators wants Congress to repeal the right to bear arms — or at least specify that it is not an individual right. The resolution filed Tuesday in the Hawaiian Senate, SCR42, is backed by freshman state Sen. Stanley Chang, best known for defeating the chamber’s last Republican in 2016. Chang’s measure, which has four co-sponsors, would request Washington discuss either scrapping the Second Amendment altogether or clarifying that it only applies to organizations such as state militias. Chang, a...

To end the 8am EST hour, Camerota brought on Parker to talk about his new book addressed to his daughter, Alison, a journalist who was killed on-air in 2015 by a disgruntled former co-worker. The pair talked more about Parker’s left-wing activism than they did about the book. The CNN host began by praising Parker for trying to change the country’s gun laws: “We have talked to you many times. We are always struck by how pretty quickly you swung into action. You were grief-stricken but you swung into action! You decided to try to change things in the country,”...