Free Republic

A man who was being let go from his job at a manufacturing business went on a shooting rampage at his workplace in Illinois, leaving five workers dead and five officers injured. Authorities identified the gunman in the mass shooting Friday as 45-year-old Gary Martin. He opened fire at the Henry Pratt Co. in the Chicago suburb of the Aurora, shooting at terrified employees before engaging in a gunbattle with responding officers. All the five employees who died in the shooting were men, police said. The shooter was killed during an exchange of gunfire with law enforcement officials, Aurora Police...

The Palestine Police Department has released graphic body camera footage of a fatal altercation in May between two of its officers and a man accused of stealing beer outside of an Applebee's restaurant. Footage uploaded to YouTube shows Palestine Police Sgt. Gabriel Green and Officer Kaylynn Griffin confronting James D. Bushey, 47, in the Applebee's bathroom on May 31 before leading him outside. The two officers had been alerted that Bushey had allegedly attempted to lift a case of beer from a nearby Walmart. "What do you need?" Bushey asks the officer Green in the videos. Green tells the man...

So L3 Communications, the makers of the PEQ-15, have made a civilian-legal Class 1 version, which they call the ATPIAL-C (“C” for “Commercial”). It’s basically the PEQ-15, made on the same production line out of most of the same parts, just without the high-energy mode. Even side by side they’re hard to tell apart. (Look at the laser safety label — the ATPIAL-C has a triangular warning icon, as befits its lower-energy laser, and the PEQ-2 the red starburst of an eye-unsafe laser). What you give up with the -C model is some range on the laser pointer, a lot...