Free Republic

Editor's note: This column was authored by Christian Barnard. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is under scrutiny once again, this time for allegedly trying to use federal funds to “sneak guns into schools.” These harsh criticisms mainly come from gun control advocates and educators in response to an August 22 New York Times report that said DeVos was considering using federal funds to purchase weapons for school staff. Other reports have characterized the Education Secretary as exploiting a “loophole”—a federal grant program that fails to explicitly prohibit the spending of federal dollars on guns. But this widely-circulated narrative is ignoring key facts....

This race probably won’t draw too much national attention, but New York’s 23rd Congressional District has revealed a rather interesting election strategy by the Democrat who is attempting to unseat Republican Tom Reed. (Disclosure: I campaigned with Reed a couple of times in 2010 and 2012 but never worked for him.) The Dems selected Dr. Tracy Mitrano, a professor of law and communications, in the primary this summer. It was a crowded primary field and everyone had to stake out their progressive bona fides early on. As part of that effort, Mitrano went on record saying that she supported a...

Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc. DKS -2.17% said weaker sales of Under Armour Inc. apparel and a decision to pull back from the hunting business dragged on the retailer’s latest quarterly results. Comparable-store sales fell 4%, Dick’s said. Not adjusting for the 53rd week last year, the company’s same-store sales declined 1.9%. Dick’s said part of the company’s sales problems were a result of Under Armour’s decision to sell in more stores including Kohl’s. Under Armour declined to comment. Also hurting sales was Dick’s decision to tighten its policy on gun sales after 17 people were killed in a February shooting...

Boston Red Sox star J.D. Martinez stood by his controversial Instagram post showing Adolf Hitler, saying Tuesday he was defending the Second Amendment. Martinez, a perennial American League MVP candidate, posted the photo in 2013. The picture featured Hitler along with the quote, “To conquer a nation, first disarm it’s (sic) citizens.” Martinez captioned the post, “This is why I always stay strapped! #thetruth” He was 25 at the time.

A small shop was being used to make illegal pistols in Sussex, England. The police are said to have discovered the shop because of testing the illegal guns inside the shop. It is possible. It is far more common for such shops to be found by use of informants or sting operations. From telegraph.co.uk: A large-scale illegal gun factory has been discovered on a Sussex industrial estate, the National Crime Agency has announced.Investigators responded to what was believed to be gunshots coming from inside what the NCA called a warehouse unit describing itself as a gearbox repair business on an...

Last week, police officers in Paraguay found that at least 42 battle rifles had been stolen from their armory and replaced with toy replicas. It’s unclear if a flag with the word “BANG!” written on it popped out of the barrels. ABC Color first reported the discovery last Friday, saying officials were performing an inspection at the headquarters of the Department of Armaments and Munitions of the National Police when they found the toy rifles. More details emerged over the weekend when Paraguay’s Minister of the Interior Juan Ernesto Villamayor addressed the situation calling it, “a very serious criminal act.”...

The owner of a company that makes blueprints for 3D-printed guns said Tuesday that he has begun selling instructions for making the guns despite a court order barring him from uploading the directions, The Associated Press reported. U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik on Monday extended a previous ruling that barred Cody Wilson and his company, Defense Distributed, from uploading directions for 3D-printed guns to the internet. Wilson said at a news conference that he began selling the instructions in the U.S. on Tuesday morning and has already received almost 400 orders, according to the AP. He indicated he believes he...

Complete Headline: Jacksonville Shooter Was Member of Anti-Trump 'Resistance' - Referred to Trump Supporters at "Trumptards" - Murdered 4 People Sunday afternoon, police responded to a 'mass shooting' at Jacksonville Landing in Florida which left 3 dead and 11 wounded. According to witnesses, the killer, David Katz, began shooting shortly after he lost the Madden NFL gaming tournament. [snip] Killer David Katz was a member of the anti-Trump "resistance." He referred to Trump supporters as "Trumptards" on his Reddit page.

Washington's Supreme Court has cleared the way for a gun-control initiative to appear on the November ballot. The court late Friday afternoon reversed a judge's decision earlier this month that threw out more than 300,000 signatures used to qualify Initiative 1639, saying the petition format did not follow election law. Thurston County Superior Court Judge James Dixon had said the signature petitions did not clearly identify what would change in the law and the font was too small to be readable. He ordered the secretary of state to stop certification of the measure. But the Supreme Court ruling, written by...

The media went berserk recently over Cody Wilson and his Stoic defense of the publication of open-source gun designs suitable for 3D printing. We go beneath the surface and talk social media deplatforming, free speech, and Cody's ideological influences.

Gun control advocates are extremely distressed by President Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.  Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun rights group, Everytown for Gun Safety, fears that “Judge Kavanaugh has applied an extreme and dangerous interpretation of the Second Amendment when determining whether a law is constitutional, one that does not take into account a law’s impact on public safety.”Since 2010, the Supreme Court’s last gun control decision, the Court has turned away at least 15 gun-rights cases, including several challenges to prohibitions on semi-automatic assault rifles and on public carry of firearms. Gun control advocates hoped that the Supreme...

Despite the expectations of many after the 2016 elections, the number of concealed handgun permits has again increased. In 2018, the number of concealed handgun permits soared to over 17.25 million - a 273% increase since 2007. 7.14% of American adults have permits. Unlike surveys that may be affected by people’s unwillingness to answer some personal questions, concealed handgun permit data is the only really "hard data" that we have on gun ownership across the United States. Still, an even larger number of people carry because in 14 states people don’t need a permit to carry in all or...

There were actually many gun inventors/designers of the past. However, only some stood out because of their forward thinking, which propelled them to the top to be remembered in our firearms history. These inventors didn’t just think of creating something that went kaboom, even though that was the fun part. They usually created a firearm to make it better than an existing one. Obviously, when it came to war firearms was used as a better way to fight for territory. Firearms quickly replaced all other weapons of war once the idea became reality. Looking at the progression of bettering the...

08/15/2018 Illinois manufacturer to lay off 150 workers, move to Mexico By Associated Press A storage safe manufacturer is closing two factories in northern Illinois and moving operations to Mexico to counteract the effects of metal tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump’s administration. Stack-on Products will lay off about 150 people at its Wauconda and McHenry plants when they close Oct. 12, the Chicago Tribune reports. Human resources director Al Fletcher said Tuesday the decision to relocate operations to Juarez, Mexico, was made about two months ago. That’s when Trump announced tariffs on numerous goods and materials from China as...

International warfare has created some of the most profound advances in technology and concepts, and the underwater arena is no exception. APS Underwater Rifle The APS or Avtomat Podvodnyj Spetsialnyj Underwater Rifle was developed during the early 1970s by the Soviet Central Institute for Precision Machine Building (TsNIITochMash plant). The inspiration for this was that Russian combat divers only had knives and the SPP-1 underwater pistol as their sole means of weaponry. The APS was meant to provide considerably more firepower to their combat divers. The APS, initially only used by the Russian armed forces, has been available on the...

E-commerce giant Shopify has moved to ban certain firearms and parts on its platform, including some semi-automatic weapons and 3D-printed guns. The Canadian-based company revised its Acceptable Use Policy earlier this week to ban a variety of firearms and gun-related products. Semi-automatic firearms with magazines capable of holding more than 10 bullets, attachments such as bump stocks that can make guns fire more rapidly, firearms without serial numbers and 3D-printed guns are among some of the items that are now considered "restricted." “Solely deferring to the law, in this age of political gridlock, is too idealistic and functionally unworkable on...

On 18 July, 2018, on the Sunshine Coast of Eastern Australia, in the town of Mudjimba, police raided a house and found some 3D printed plastic guns, some printed false identification, and a small amount of drugs. From news.com.au: "They are all polymer and all they needed was a pin and a spring-type assembly pushed into it to make it work. For all intents and purposes they would look like a gun." Police allege that three 3D-printed handguns, along with weapon parts, a knuckle duster, false licences and drugs, were found at a house at Mudjimba on Wednesday. The...

RATON, N.M. - A New Mexico man is sharing his story of survival after he was attacked by a bear while walking his dogs. He killed the bear while its jaw was clamped around his leg, and the jaw stayed that way for a while. ... When he saw me, he pinned his ears down and immediately made a big charge at me," said Petrini. That's when the struggle began. "Down the hill, we went again rolling and he had bit me a time or two but he was never able to get on my upper body, so my legs...

Most guns were made to be a functional piece of firearms as a duty weapon or as part of the everyday carry. However, there are some handguns in the past that never really worked out. Yes, it goes bang but the cosmetic and its purpose was just horrible. Anyways, there’s probably over hundreds of firearms out there from various countries from the past that we haven’t seen yet, but here’s another of our ugly list of guns. The Deer Gun Another war time liberator pistol, this one may be the only 20th century handgun even more ridiculous-looking than the FP-45....

2 Dead, 18 Wounded in Chicago-Area Gun Violence Published at 8:44 AM CDT on Aug 11, 2018 | Updated at 9:15 AM CDT on Aug 11, 2018 Chicago gun violence left two people dead Saturday and at least 18 others wounded, including a woman killed in a domestic dispute with someone. The most recent incident ocurring Saturday morning in the Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side. A 25-year-old man was wounded in a shooting at about 1:55 a.m. in the 4000 block of West Grenshaw, according to Chicago police. Officials say he was standing outside when two people began firing...