Free Republic

Despite spending a whopping $2.7 billion on creating and running a long-gun registry, Canadians never reaped any benefits from the project. The legislation to end the program finally passed the Parliament on Wednesday. Even though the country started registering long guns in 1998, the registry never solved a single murder. Instead it has been an enormous waste of police officers’ time, diverting their efforts from patrolling Canadian streets and doing traditional policing activities. Gun-control advocates have long claimed that registration is a safety issue, and their reasoning is straightforward: If a gun has been left at a crime scene and...

Illinois state Sen. Jeff Schoenberg (D-Evanston) has endorsed Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's proposal to create a statewide gun registry in order to decrease gun violence, according to a news release issued Friday. Emanuel proposed requiring gun owners to register each handgun in their possession at a fee of $65 per gun. Currently, Chicago's gun control laws ban weapon sales in the city and prohibit people from taking guns out of their homes. For 28 years Chicago banned gun ownership entirely, until the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that policy in June 2010. Prospective Illinois gun owners must obtain a firearm owner's...

It was a very uncomfortable Thursday for Attorney General Eric Holder on Capitol Hill as he testified before the House Judiciary Committee about Operation Fast and Furious. If it wasn’t clear that Fast and Furious was implemented as a way to push more gun control measures without the consent of Congress, it’s crystal clear now. Continued stonewalling from the Justice Department had Rep. James Sensenbrenner talking about impeachment Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee Democrat John Conyers called for the enforcement of new gun control measures pushed through the Justice Department in July without the approval of Congress, requiring...

(CNSNews.com) – Making a case for national gun registration, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said “perhaps mistakes were made” in the botched gun-walking program known as Fast and Furious, but she said trying to assign blame misses the larger problem. “This is a deep concern for me. I know others disagree, but we have very lax laws when it comes to guns,” Feinstein, an advocate of gun control, said during Tuesday's hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism. “My concern, Mr. Chairman, is that there’s been a lot said about Fast and Furious, and perhaps mistakes were made,”...

California would retain records of rifle sales, as they do now for handguns, under legislation that is headed to Gov. Jerry Brown. Assemblyman Mike Feuer, a Los Angeles Democrat who crafted the bill, said it would allow peace officers responding to a crime at a particular address to check via database whether any long-gun owners live there.

WASHINGTON, Sept 1 (Reuters) - In a setback for gun dealers in four U.S. states bordering Mexico, a federal judge on Thursday refused to temporarily block new rules requiring them to report the sale of multiple semi-automatic rifles. Judge Rosemary Collyer said the dealers, backed by the National Rifle Association, had not sufficiently shown they would suffer irreparable harm without a preliminary injunction. She scheduled an October hearing on a permanent injunction. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) ordered more than 8,000 gun dealers in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California to report the sale within five...

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683   California Legislature Returns to Work on August 15 and Anti-Gun Legislation is on their Schedule   Friday, August 12, 2011   Contact your state Senator and Assemblyman TODAY! The California Legislature returns to work this Monday, August 15. It is imperative that you call AND e-mail your state Senator and Assemblyman TODAY and respectfully urge them to OPPOSE all anti-gun legislation and support the NRA CCW reform legislation.  Don’t forget to forward this alert to your family, friends and fellow gun owners across California urging them to contact their state legislator.Call AND...

The requirement, which the administration intended to back using data from their own "Fast and Furious" gun smuggling, now faces multiple suits. Firearms retailers, a leading industry trade organization, and Americans’ most powerful gun lobby are making good on a threat to challenge the Obama administration’s attempt to assert gun control measures by executive fiat. The legal challenge is being supported by the Second Amendment Task Force, a bipartisan group of congressional legislators that asserts the ATF lacks the authority “to track the purchases of law-abiding Americans.”J&G Sales in Prescott, AZ, and Foothills Firearms in Yuma, AZ, intend to challenge...

Readers of Tuesday’s edition of USA Today were treated to an editorial, a rebuttal by National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre and a “hard news” story that, taken all together, make it appear that the newspaper’s editorial board either doesn’t “get it” about Operation Fast and Furious, or they are feverishly trying to deflect responsibility. It is not likely Pacific Northwest gun rights activists will buy it, judging from conversations on the Northwest Firearms and WaGuns forums. In the story, focusing on the most prolific Fast and Furious suspect, Uriel Patino, the newspaper clearly points to the culpability...

A few days ago, the Blaze reported on the low-key plans of the Obama administration to increase the penalties for certain gun law violations, and add steps to the background checks for legal gun ownership. Today the administration’s plans are beginning to come into effect. Through an Executive Order, the Obama administration is implementing new restrictions on the sale of certain weapons in border states, and increasing the penalties for violating certain firearms laws.

The National Rifle Association plans to sue the Obama administration over its new gun-reporting requirement in four states bordering Mexico. On Monday, the Justice Department said it would require firearms dealers in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas to report multiple sales of certain semi-automatic rifles to the same person within a five-day period. The goal is to stop the illegal flow of weapons to Mexican drug cartels, said Deputy Attorney General James Cole. The new reporting requirement applies to semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines and calibers greater than .22. Such weapons, Cole said, "are highly sought after by dangerous...

The fight over international gun control is unfolding anew this week at the United Nations building in New York, as the stage is being set for next year’s “final negotiations” on a proposed treaty that critics say is a threat to the Second Amendment, and a Washington State-based group is right in the thick of it. Bellevue’s Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, is in the Big Apple this week, attending the third “preparatory committee meeting” for the proposed Arms Trade Treaty, which he says is an elaborate way of saying “international gun control.” He told this column...

Issa “This political maneuver seems designed to protect the careers of political appointees at the Justice Department and not public safety. It’s disconcerting that Justice Department officials who may have known about or tried to cover-up gunwalking in Operation Fast and Furious are continuing attempts to distract attention from clear wrongdoing. In Operation Fast and Furious, gun dealers didn’t need this regulation as they voluntarily provided ATF agents with information about suspected straw purchasers. In return for this voluntary cooperation, the Justice Department betrayed them by offering false assurances that they would closely monitor sales of weapons that dealers otherwise...

WASHINGTON -- In an effort to stem the illicit flow of weapons into Mexico, the Justice Department announced Monday that all gun shops in four Southwest border states will be required to alert the federal government to frequent buyers of high-powered rifles. The new policy comes amid criticism of a failed federal probe aimed at dismantling large-scale arms trafficking networks along the Arizona border with Mexico. In the probe, called Operation Fast and Furious, several agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives say they were inexplicably ordered by superiors to stop tracking some small-time "straw" buyers who...

With the Obama admin and a Washington Post editorial calling for its reinstatement — amidst a tie-in to the Gunwalker scandal — it's worth revisiting the boneheaded law. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, February 26, 2009: As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons. The fabled “assault weapons ban.”Few laws ever passed have been as idolized — and misunderstood — as Title XI of the Federal Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act...

The holy grail of the anti self defense and anti rights special interest groups is gun registration. This is because once your gun is required to be registered, it is in effect, already confiscated. Only a little thought will reveal to you why this is so. The Government will know who has legal possession of each firearm. They will know where the firearm is stored. When physical possession of the gun is desired, they can order you to turn it in. This has happened repeatedly. The historical examples include NAZI Germany, Soviet Russia, Red China, and Cambodia. Recent examples include...

It may not come as surprising news to many of you that the United Nations doesn’t approve of our Second Amendment. Not one bit. And they very much hope to do something about it with help from some powerful American friends. Under the guise of a proposed global “Small Arms Treaty” premised to fight “terrorism”, “insurgency” and “international crime syndicates” you can be quite certain that an even more insidious threat is being targeted – our Constitutional right for law-abiding citizens to own and bear arms. While the terms have yet to be made public, if passed by the U.N....

<p>It may not come as surprising news to many of you that the United Nations doesn’t approve of our Second Amendment. Not one bit. And they very much hope to do something about it with help from some powerful American friends. Under the guise of a proposed global “Small Arms Treaty” premised to fight “terrorism”, “insurgency” and “international crime syndicates” you can be quite certain that an even more insidious threat is being targeted – our Constitutional right for law-abiding citizens to own and bear arms.</p>

California: Anti-Gun Bills to be Heard in the Senate and Assembly Appropriations Committee This Week Sunday, May 01, 2011 Please contact members of the Senate and House Appropriations Committees Today! On May 2 and May 4, the Senate and Assembly Appropriations Committees will be hearing anti-gun bills that will have major implications for California gun owners and sportsmen if passed and enacted. Senate Bill 124 would ban virtually all handgun and rifle ammunition and cartridges. Assembly Bill 144 would ban open carry of firearms. Assembly Bill 809 would require long gun registration. The Senate Appropriations Committee is expected to...

It's good to be king, particularly if you are a president who wants to impose more infringements on that which shall not be infringed, and Congress is disinclined to play along. As President of the United States, that would be (or should be) a problem, because the separation of powers built into the structure of our government splits power among the three branches of government (and no--not Sen. Schumer's "three branches of government"), but for a king who rules by decree, it's as easy as, "Stroke of the pen. Law of the Land. Kinda cool." According to the Huffington Post's...