Free Republic

Yet another shooting at yet another gun-free zone occurred today. At this moment 5 people were murdered and another 8 injured. The tragedy today at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport is all the more disappointing because just this last year legislators tried to change Florida’s ban on concealed carry at airports to avoid today’s type of event. Florida Sen. Wilton Simpson, R-Trilby warned last year the legislation was needed because airport terminals “could become more of a target” for terrorists and criminals. Florida is one of on six states that ban people being able to carry guns at airports. While...

Miss Sloane, a highly anticipated movie demonizing the NRA and calling for gun control, has bombed. The movie succeeded only in emphasizing the top-down nature of the gun-control campaign and how little intensity there is for more regulations. The movie seemed to have everything going for it. Liberal movie critics loved it, and it was backed by a hefty ad budget along with heaps of favorable news coverage. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has already nominated the movie’s star, Jessica Chastain, for a prestigious Golden Globe, considered a strong predictor of the Oscars. But two weeks after its national release,...

To protect Americans against “fake” news, Facebook will now use filters so that only “reputable” articles can appear at the top of users’ trending news stories. And Facebook is going to media fact checkers for help (initially ABC News, The Associated Press, FactCheck.org, Politifact and Snopes). But guess what? These fact checkers have their own biases — usually the same liberal biases that we see in the rest of the mainstream media. Before the 1990s, the mainstream media had a monopoly on the news. Then came the rise of talk radio, Fox News, and the internet. This was a wonderful...

While attacks on the Second Amendment are all-too common in today’s politically charged climate, advocates fighting for our right to self-defense and the right to bear arms now have a powerful new tool in The War On Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies, the latest book by John R. Lott Jr. Lott, who holds a doctoral degree in economics and has established himself as a peerless investigator on the topics of gun use and gun rights, once again provides decisive analysis and careful research of current studies and government data to prove there really is an effort to limit,...

If it wasn’t for Michael Bloomberg’s billions, there wouldn’t be much of a gun-control movement. This year, Bloomberg got a background check initiative onto the ballots of Maine and Nevada. He lost in Maine by 4 percent, and won in Nevada by just 0.8 percent. Now, Nevadans won’t be able to privately transfer their firearms without going through a background check. Bloomberg’s initiative only eked out the win in Nevada because of the $20 million spent to support it, amounting to an incredible $35.30 per vote. He outspent his opponents by a factor of three – in Maine, by a...

America’s limited experiment with voter-ID laws may come to an end after this election. Democrats keep claiming that voter fraud is a myth. But voter fraud has mattered in plenty of American elections. Take Lyndon Johnson’s election to the U.S. Senate in 1948, when LBJ won by manufacturing enough fake votes to turn a 20,000-vote deficit into an 87-vote win. Others point to voter fraud in Illinois and Texas during the 1960 presidential election; indeed, we may never know whether Kennedy actually “won.” Chicago was infamous for counting the votes of dead people. In 1982, U.S. Attorney Daniel Webb found...

It seems obvious: Restrict gun access and people will be safer. Indeed, in all four presidential debates, Hillary Clinton and running mate Tim Kaine have pushed for background checks on private transfers of guns. Clinton says this will “keep guns out of the hands of those who will do harm.” After each mass public shooting, President Obama has made a similar case for background checks on private transfers of guns. But theory and practice don’t always match. Too often, gun bans or background checks don’t stop criminals and disarm law-abiding citizens, particularly poor minorities. This only makes life easier for...

Believe it or not, this election will determine whether political appointees can prohibit books and movies released during election years that criticize their policies or behavior. It’s well known that Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission concerns the role of money in politics, but it’s less often remarked that the decision centered around a 2008 film called “Hillary: The Movie,” a documentary critical of Mrs. Clinton. Arguing against Citizens United, a conservative non-profit, the Federal Election Commission made the case that because a film, such as “Hillary: The Movie,” was produced or distributed by a corporation (as are all commercial...

http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2016/11/libertarian-vp-nominee-bill-weldmy.html Libertarian VP nominee Bill Weld claims:"my belief is that the libertarian party pulls substantially more from Mr. Trump" @ 2:41 mark (video is available here). I had heard that Weld has been raising money with this message as a way of getting those who want Hillary to win to donate money. Consistent with that, it also just so happens that the big dollars that the libertarians have been spending have apparently been on conservative talk radio. The New York Times also has an op-ed saying that the Libertarians will tilt the election to Hillary Clinton. With just a few...

With Bloomberg's gun control initiative getting very close in the Nevada polls, here is a piece that was published in one of Nevada's bigger newspapers. http://www.rgj.com/story/opinion/voices/2016/11/04/one-view-mistakes-consequences-if-question-1-passes/93279474/ The same initiative is on the ballot in Maine. Read and share with people in Nevada and Maine.

Desperate Democrat Angie Craig is accusing Jason Lewis of justifying rape and slavery. Rarely has an electorate been subject to such a brazen and transparent example of raw political ambition and outright duplicity than those unfortunate souls living in Minnesota’s second congressional district. While the race for the hotly contested open seat, which covers the southern half of the Twin Cities metro region and areas to its southeast, remains a “toss up” between Republican Jason Lewis and Democrat Angie Craig, according to the Cook Political Report — it has been the campaign of Craig and her Democrat surrogates at the...

In their Oct. 23 Sunday Opinion essay, “Guns on campus only invite tragedies,” Daniel Webster and Ronald Daniels claimed that letting college students carry guns for protection is a “recipe for tragedy.” Permit holders commit firearms-related violations at a lower rate than even the very low rate for police officers. The rate is in the thousandths of a percentage point, and data for Michigan, Nevada and Texas show that the rate is just as low for college-age permit holders. But instead of looking at how young permit holders actually behave, Mr. Daniels and Mr. Webster simply point out that “violence, alcohol...

Federal data showing annual accidental gun deaths in Tennessee soared to 105 from just 19 propelled a fierce firearms control campaign, but it turned out the stats were about as accurate as a two-dollar pistol. The numbers, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, seemed to show the Volunteer State led the nation in accidental shooting deaths due to a more than five-fold increase in 2014. But an eagle-eyed Second Amendment advocate's suspicions turned out to be right: The number of accidental deaths had actually dropped, from 19 to just five. “It was a big mistake,” said John Lott,...

In terms of individual rights, there has probably never been so much at stake in a presidential election. If Hillary Clinton wins, Americans will soon lose the right of self-defense in their own homes. Wednesday night in Las Vegas moderator Chris Wallace quickly started off the debate by asking Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton about the Second Amendment. Hillary was asked about her claim: "the Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment.” The 2008 Heller decision struck down Washington, D.C.’s complete ban on handguns. Before the decision, people in the District could own a rifle or a shotgun, it...

John Lott is the most admired and the most vilified of researchers on the effects of laws that restrict gun ownership and being armed in public, and the effects of the reform of laws that restrict gun ownership and bearing arms in public.His research is well accepted among his peers, and vilified by those who disagree with his results. John had to learn the hard way that honest science about guns and gun laws is not welcome in most of academia.Unfortunately, academia has, in large part, been taken over by people who are ignorant of guns and gun legislation,...

At this Sunday’s town-hall style presidential debate the public is able to vote for their favorite questions. The ABC News and CNN moderators plan on using the 30 questions that receive the most votes. Largely because of efforts by gun control organizations, the current top two questions are both on gun control. The first is, “Would you support requiring criminal background checks for all gun sales?” and the second is, "How will you ensure the 2nd amendment is protected?” By Sunday morning at this writing, those questions had received 73,844 and 64,041 votes, respectively, well ahead of the third-place question...

Is Donald Trump's "law and order" campaign just code for racism? The media and Hillary Clinton sure believe so. After Trump's recent talk in Chester, the front page of the New York Times criticized him for supporting the deportation of people who have been charged with crimes and the aggressive profiling of terrorism suspects as racist and counterproductive. The theme is echoed with Clinton attacks that Donald Trump appeals to "xenophobic, racist, misogynistic" people. But who actually cares more about African Americans, in particular poor blacks, who are the most likely victims of violent crime? High crime rates in urban...

St. Cloud is still reeling from the stabbing of nine people on Sept. 17. The terrorist yelled “Allahu akbar!” as he attacked shoppers at the Crossroads Center mall. A bombing in New York City left 29 people wounded. The Cascade Mall in Burlington, Wash., was next, with five people shot to death. While investigations are still ongoing, all of the attacks are likely to be similarly-motivated and perpetrated by Muslim immigrants. Similar deadly attacks have included the Boston Marathon bombings, the Chattanooga and Little Rock military recruiting office attacks, San Bernardino, and earlier this year the Orlando nightclub shooting. Minnesota’s...

Two weeks ago, the PEW Research Center released a survey showing that gun ownership by households is up to 44% — a 7-percentage point increase in the past two years. Another 5% of households won’t reveal whether they own a gun. Yet, not a single mainstream American media headline has announced the increase. In fact, the media goes out of its way to find polls claiming that Americans are turning away from guns. In their War on Guns they want to give the impression that gun owners are a small, fringe group. Maybe they are hoping that this will have...

Shouldn’t journalists who want to tackle the issues related to illegal use of guns in America, and thereby help us find real solutions to violent crime in places like Chicago’s South Side, start by being honest? John Lott thinks so. It is this principled position that caused him to agree, despite his prior experiences, to be interviewed for Katie Couric’s film “Under The Gun.” As an expert on these issues, he hoped to offer some perspective and balance. Although he says he went into the interview like a person readying himself to be grilled by a prosecutor, even he was...