Free Republic

As left-wing advocacy groups and anti-gun media personalities continue their daily assault on the National Rifle Association, frantically seeking to make them a scapegoat for the Parkland school shooting, it appears their efforts may be backfiring horrendously and have only succeeded in garnering more support for the NRA. Last week leftist organizations and various anti-gun personalities led a social media boycott campaign against the NRA by threatening various companies who offer discounts and benefits for NRA members. Any sane, rational person would realize that the NRA is not responsible in any way for the acts of criminals, yet the objective...

In the wake of a mass murder in Isla Vista, Calif., critics of America’s gun laws have been predictably quick to trot out the classics, advocating the passage of new restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms and blaming the National Rifle Association for opposing what are invariably termed “common sense” reforms. On Sunday, Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut took to Face the Nation to claim that if Congress had passed his preferred measures last year, it would have “finally” put a “stop the madness” and brought an “end the insanity that has killed too many young people.”...

Religious freedom, life, education, reining in Big Government — are these the proper focus of the NRA?In Indianapolis this weekend, tens of thousands of members of the National Rifle Association came, saw, and — well, in truth, they had already conquered. Last year, in Houston, Texas, the outfit was still running its victory lap after the defeat of the Schumer-Toomey-Manchin gun-control bill, celebrating not only the defeat of that proposal but also President Obama’s failure to to reinstate a federal ban on cosmetically interesting weapons and to establish a national limit on the size of magazines. This time, there was...

INDIANAPOLIS — With concealed weapons now legal in all 50 states, the National Rifle Association’s focus at this week’s annual meeting is less about enacting additional state protections than on making sure the permits already issued still apply when the gun owners travel across the country. The nation’s largest gun-rights group, which officially opens its meeting of about 70,000 people Friday in Indianapolis, wants Congress to require that concealed weapons permits issued in one state be recognized everywhere, even when the local requirements differ. Advocates say the effort would eliminate a patchwork of state-specific regulations that lead to carriers unwittingly...

The former New York City mayor is dedicating himself to a new group that will organize voters who support gun control; called Everytown for Gun Safety, it will subsume his existing groups (Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense), and it will focus specifically on expanding background checks. His previous approach was to fund ad campaigns in races where gun control was an issue. Here's how he matches up with his arch-rival. Money Bloomberg says he'll be putting at least $50 million into the project this year -- and according to the New York Times, he...

The Newtown shooting led gun-control advocates to try the same failed strategies again. And once again, they didn't work. After the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, many in the American media insisted that the tragedy should prompt a "conversation about gun control." These articles were written as if there had never been such a conversation. In fact, the issue had been debated for decades. Given the results, I argued, there was no reason to presume that a new conversation would end in more gun control. That conversation has now come and gone. The result? "Perverse as it may sound, the...

The National Rifle Association has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a case in federal court in New York challenging the federal government’s data surveillance techniques, arguing the data collection violates the First Amendment and could undermine federal privacy laws that prohibit the formation of a registry of firearms or gun owners. The gun rights group is supporting a request by the American Civil Liberties Union to reverse a ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that upheld the surveillance policies. The brief filed this month comes as privacy issues and government spying has once...

The The National Rifle Association (NRA) has brought out the big guns to stop the U.S. Senate from confirming President Obama’s nominee for surgeon general. Late Friday, Chris Cox, the executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action released a letter he sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to notify them that his organization “strongly opposes” confirmation of Dr. Vivek Murthy. A spokesman for the NRA told me that the five-million member organization will score the Senate vote, meaning that it counts toward a member’s rating in campaigns. The NRA decision will undoubtedly...

President Obama’s second-term effort to get Americans to hate guns has backfired. Not only did firearm sales in 2013 blow out all records, interest in learning more about Second Amendment issues has risen dramatically. This is evidenced by the news that circulation for the magazine “American Rifleman” has broken into the top 25 magazines in the country, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. The magazine, which is published by the National Rifle Association (NRA), surged 29 percent to 2.2 million readers in the second half of 2013 over the same period the previous year. At the same time, circulation...

Dueling ads on gun rights by the National Rifle Association and a group backed by New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg have joined the onslaught of campaign advertising in Virginia’s elections this year...

Louisiana Supreme Court justices are considering the residual and likely unintended effects of the constitutional amendment that voters overwhelmingly approved last year to make gun ownership a "fundamental" right. The question is whether the amended Constitution now lets convicted felons possess firearms, an act that is forbidden by the state criminal code. Just how far Louisiana's new gun right, one of the strongest in the country, should extend was a central theme of argument that lawyers gave Monday, on the constitutionality of Louisiana's law against felons possessing firearms. As Associate Justice John Weimer of Thibodaux framed it, in weighing a...

The Washington National Cathedral, a symbol of unity among faithful Americans, was the site of a politically divisive event promoting gun control on Sunday. Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund, and the Very Rev. Gary Hall, dean of the cathedral, exited the church service to participate in a event based on a theme of “beating swords into plowshares.” The gun-control leaders donned protective eye gear and took up hammers to bang on the gun parts that blacksmiths had turned red from heat. Before the dramatic performance in Northwest Washington, I interviewed Mrs. Edelman about her...

The National Rifle Association said on Wednesday it supports a lawsuit brought by civil rights groups to strike down the U.S. government's broad telephone surveillance program, citing potential violations of gun owners' privacy rights. In a brief backing the American Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit against senior U.S. government officials, the NRA said the collection of vast communications threatens privacy and could allow the government to create a registry of gun owners. Civil rights groups filed the lawsuit earlier this year after documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed a massive government program to collect and store...

The gun lobby is challenging a law that bans the sale of handguns to those between 18 and 21The National Rifle Association is asking the Supreme Court to overturn a federal law that prevents federally licensed gun owners from selling handguns to people over 18 and under 21.In a court filing(PDF), the NRA and two 19-year olds ask the court to strike down the 1968 law, which a three-judge panel for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld last year.The law prevents licensed gun dealers from selling handguns, shotguns and rifles to anyone under 18, and further prevents the...

JACKSON, MISS. — A posse of state officials and gun advocates has asked the Mississippi Supreme Court to let them file briefs in support of the state's open-carry law. The court had not ruled Tuesday on the requests by Gov. Phil Bryant, about 80 lawmakers, the National Rifle Association and others. Their motions included arguments supporting the law. A brief has not yet been filed with the high court by those who challenged the open-carry law, including Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith. Earlier this month, Hinds County Circuit Judge Winston Kidd declared the law unconstitutionally vague. Attorney General...

The National Rifle Association blasted Eric Holder for using the George Zimmerman case to attack "stand-your-ground" laws, accusing the attorney general of exploiting Trayvon Martin's shooting death for political gain. Holder weighed in on the controversial self-defense laws for the first time on Tuesday during a speech to the annual NAACP convention, calling for a national review of the statutes. "Separate and apart from the case that has drawn the nation's attention, it's time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods," Holder said. Holder has already confirmed that his Justice...

To understand the current state of the gun-ban crowd’s “conversation” about destroying the Second Amendment, it boils down to this: insanity versus sanity. With the horrific series of mass murders culminating in the cold-blooded killing of children and teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., last December, this latest iteration of “gun control” is entirely directed at making the sane pay the price for unthinkable acts committed by the insane. It is the root of the civil disarmament movement in America today.The Sandy Hook rampage was the evil work of an individual who was clearly insane. There...

Illinois State Police say they’re trying to deal with a huge backlog of applications for Firearms Owner Identification cards. The agency received more than 28,000 applications for cards during April alone. That’s on top of an existing backlog of nearly 76,000 applications. The state police say they are dealing with a record number of applications. State police are supposed to approve or deny applications within 30 days. The agency says its understaffed due to budget cuts and is having trouble meeting the deadline. Every month since December has seen a record number of Illinois residents applying for FOID cards. Officials...

The National Rifle Association kicked off its annual convention Friday with a warning from its incoming president that its members are engaged in a "culture war" that stretches beyond gun rights, further ramping up emotions surrounding the gun control debate. NRA First Vice President James Porter, who will take over the top job Monday, issued a full-throated challenge in the opening hours to President Barack Obama after the NRA's major victory on gun control and a call to dig in for a long fight that will stretch into the 2014 elections... --snip-- Debbie and Daniel Ferris of Gun Barrel City,...

National Rifle Association President David Keene said Tuesday that the organization intends to challenge the constitutionality of Maryland's newly passed gun law, as a conservative group readied plans to try to overturn the law through voter referendum. Keene said during a radio interview the group will “absolutely” go to the courts. “We are already in court in New York and we will be in court and aiding those in Maryland — and I am myself a Maryland resident — who want to challenge the constitutionality of this and other provisions here in Maryland,” Keene said to the Washington, D.C., station...