Free Republic

As your new president, I am grateful to serve with you to preserve America’s unique freedoms. I first encountered the National Rifle Association as an 11-year-old growing up in Ohio. Mentored by the NRA in the 1950s by men who had a passion for owning firearms and shooting, I learned the true meaning of our Second Amendment. Recently, an old friend and I were remembering those remarkably free times: when “gun control” was not even in the lexicon; when a kid could take a shotgun or rifle to school and stow it in the cloakroom for after-school target practice...

From the Sixth Circuit federal court of appeals decision today in Northrup v. Toledo Police Dept.: On a midsummer evening, Shawn and Denise Northrup went for a neighborhood walk with their daughter, grandson, and dog. Apparently in a happy-go-lucky mood, Shawn wore a t-shirt reading, “This Is The Shirt I Wear When I Don’t Care.” Shawn carried a cell phone, which he holstered on his hip — next to a black semiautomatic handgun. A passing motorcyclist stopped to complain about Shawn’s visible firearm. The stranger, Alan Rose, yelled, “[Y]ou can’t walk around with a gun like that!” But “[O]pen carry...

ACTION: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Orrin Hatch may soon give the President authority to write gun control restrictions into a “trade agreement.” So click here to contact your Senators –- whether they are liberal or conservative. Urge them to vote against the anti-gun “fast track” bill (S. 995). Will UN-style gun control be rammed down our throats? Gun import bans ... Microstamping of firearms ... Ammunition bans ... The full implementation of the anti-gun UN Arms Trade Treaty ... Illegal amnesty which locks in millions of new, anti-gun voters.This anti-gun wish list could be part of the...

Ever since the 2012 massacre at the Sandy Hook School in Newtown, Conn., gun-control advocates have worked hard to close so-called “loopholes” in background-check laws. Not all the efforts have been successful; gun-rights advocates say such measures are needlessly burdensome and do little to stop violent crime. But last year, Washington state residents voted to toughen the state’s background-check laws. And now the Oregon legislature has done the same. On Monday, the Oregon House voted 32-28 in support of Senate Bill 941, which requires background checks for all purchasers of guns through private sales. Currently, background checks in Oregon are...

On April 22, a customer at a Kroger in Little Rock, Arkansas, saw an elderly man surrounded by “seven people,” so he drew his gun and intervened to protect the gentleman. The group surrounding the elderly man then turned their attention toward the armed customer and implored him to look the way. ” According to Fox 16, the group kept yelling, “[This] isn’t your fight, you need to walk away and you need to put the gun down.” The armed citizen refused to comply, and instead kept his gun trained on the group as they fled the scene. The armed...

SSI Exclusive: Negotiating Rights Away. Cynical Secret "Deal With The Devil" Confirmed. NRA, ATF& bi-partisan group of politicians agree to save ATF from itself and widen the definition of "sporting purposes." "A hole big enough to drive Diane Feinstein's limousine through." From the press room of the NRA National Meeting, Nashville, TN: Sipsey Street Irregulars can now confirm the broad outlines of a story first disclosed two days ago by National Gun Rights Examiner columnist David Codrea. Last week, a secret deal involving the National Rifle Association lobbying arm and brokered by politicians of both national political parties was struck...

Washington, D.C., will drop its appeal of a federal court ruling that overturned the city’s ban on carrying handguns in public, Attorney General Karl Racine announced Wednesday. City attorneys will instead focus on defending concealed-carry laws adopted by legislators in the months after U.S. District Court Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr. declared the ban was unconstitutional. “We need to focus our energies not on litigating old laws, but defending new ones that our leaders enacted in good faith to comply with court rulings while still protecting public safety,” Mr. Racine said. Up until Judge Scullin’s ruling in July, D.C. residents...

The self-proclaimed champions of women’s rights, the political left, is once again insisting that a woman’s right to protect herself from sexual attackers should be regulated, restricted, and in some cases banned. After all, only American Liberals would believe that a woman being raped is morally superior to a rapist being shot. Arguing that concealed carry on college campuses would actually “reinforce rape culture” on campus, an editorial in the University of North Carolina’s student’s newspaper argued against arming young (law abiding) women.Concealed weapons would not significantly reduce sexual assault and would create inadvertent risks within other forms of interpersonal violence…...

Gun rights groups are making a vigorous push to stop the Senate from confirming Loretta Lynch as President Obama’s next attorney general. Advocates are organizing petitions, drawing up letters and hitting the phones to urge Senate Republicans to oppose Lynch in a floor vote that could take place as early as next week. The National Rifle Association (NRA) has sent an alert to its members warning that Obama’s nominee would put gun rights at risk. "As the nation's top law enforcement officer, Lynch would almost certainly have an impact on our Second Amendment rights,” the NRA’s lobbying arm said in...

un Control: Fifty-two senators, 238 House members and 80,000 public comments have forced the ATF to pull back for "more study" its proposed ban on ammo for the AR-15, the leading gun for hunting and self-defense. The Second Amendment, written in the era of muskets, does not mention what arms we have the right to keep and bear. But we have an idea, based on how they were used: to protect their owners' homes, businesses, farms and families, and to resist the tyranny of government, which during the American Revolution was the British crown.

Mayor Danny Jones of Charleston, WV makes lewd comments in front of children about gun rights groups on election night. video only on link

I was in Brussels last week at a meeting of European fieldsports body, The European Federation of Associations for Hunting & Conservation (FACE), of which the Countryside Alliance is an active member. I am honoured to be FACE’s UK Chairman and to represent British sporting interests at the highest level and I can feed back some interesting points from the meeting.

ecurity: A video by Somalia's al-Qaida-affiliated al-Shabab group warns Minnesota's Mall of America may be a repeat of a 2013 mall attack in Kenya. The Second Amendment may be our best defense against terrorism. The immense Mall of America in Bloomington would indeed make an inviting target for jihadists intent on martyrdom. Its 520 stores, the most of any mall in the world, attracts 40 million people annually and is a global tourist destination. It's as inviting a target and as much of an iconic symbol of Western capitalism and culture as was the World Trade Center on Sept. 11,...

The 16 members of Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy’s Sandy Hook Advisory Commission have completed their report on the December, 2012 murder of 26 children and adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. And as might be expected from a hand-picked group of “healthcare professionals, public safety professionals and academics” their recommendations—offered in a 250 page anti-gun rights treatise—will have little to no effect preventing the next lunatic killing at will in one of Connecticut’s widely publicized Gun Free Zones. “We support the concept of firearm registration,” writes the editorial board of the CT Post, “though that would not...

Now, here’s something you don’t see everyday; a police officer from Ohio doing a routine traffic stop thanked the person he pulled over for having a concealed carry permit. The man, who recorded the traffic stop, was driving 15 miles per hour over the speed limit. According to Ohio law, if you’re approached by law enforcement–and you’re carrying a concealed firearm– you must inform them. “I’m happy to see more people with their CCWs [concealed carry weapons permit], especially with the world becoming the way it is,” said the officer. VIDEO He then issued the man a warning and...

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick was quoted as saying that open carry bills might not come up for a vote this session on Tuesday.  From dallasnews.com:  “Open carry is important, but I don’t think there is support in the Legislature to pass it,” Patrick said. “The votes have not been there.”  Wednesday he reiterated his support for that legislation.  From texastribune.org: After noting that he had referred a bill to committee allowing concealed weapons to be carried on university campuses by those with appropriate licenses, Patrick said in a statement, "Now that [Senate Bill] 11 has support and is moving...

An internal ruling made by the Venezuelan Ministry of Defense, published on Tuesday, January 27, in state newsletter Gaceta Oficial, legalizes the use of lethal weapons by the national armed forces (FANB) against protesters. [snip] Under Venezuelan law, the Defense Ministry does not have the authority to override or ignore the Constitution and the norms contained therein. María Esperanza Hermida, coordinator for enforcement in Venezuelan NGO (Provea) argued that the measure violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), as well as transferring competencies to the military which are the...

Are you starting to forget just how creepy government agencies can be when they decide to spy on average (law abiding) citizens? Well, this should help refocus your distrust of big government. According to AP News:The Drug Enforcement Administration abandoned an internal proposal to use surveillance cameras for photographing vehicle license plates near gun shows in the United States to investigate gun-trafficking, the agency's chief said Wednesday.Um, good… Also: “What the heck?”So the DEA was planning on tracking everyone that went to a gun show? Wow… Nothing like being innocent until proven guilty, right? It might be time to start borrowing...

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, is circulating a petition to have Emily Miller fired, for what they allege is an ethics problem because she’s involved in the gun rights movement. They didn’t like her speech to the Virginia Defense league.

I do not intend to reiterate here just how extraordinarily difficult it is to execute laws that aim to track pieces of unserialized metal. Nor, for that matter, will I attempt to lay out what any earnest attempt to do so would end up doing to privacy rights in the United States. Rather, I want to focus on the grossly unequal manner in which such rules will inevitably be enforced, and to examine also what this does to the notion of equal protection. From my perspective, the startling thing about the Gregory affair is not so much that the powers-that-be...