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A Slide Fire bump stock in action. (Photo: Slide Fire/Facebook) The association representing current and former ATF employees has pushed back against critics blaming the agency for approving bump stocks. The ATF Association said the agency “does not have the legal authority to regulate” bump stocks, which allow semi-auto rifles to mimic full-auto fire. “The bump slide, and several other similar after-market accessories that increase the rate at which a shooter can pull the trigger, are engineered to avoid regulation under Federal law,” said Michael Bouchard, ATFA president, in an open letter last week. “The notion that ATF chose not...

National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch announced Sunday on Twitter that her family had been forced to move suddenly after she received multiple death threats from gun control advocates. Loesch, a conservative commentator and syndicated talk radio host, followed the announcement of her family's move by condemning the way politically progressive society has treated not just her, but conservative women as a whole.

A story that should be getting more attention is one out of the Black Hills of South Dakota. It doesn't get much more interesting than a depredating lion, a 14 year old hunter protecting the family livelihood, and a rifle won at an NRA raffle.The story has already been written by Tom Griffith. The article is well done. I do not want to steal the author's thunder. Here is an excerpt to the rapidcityjournal.com: After a long, sad day, Streff’s youngest child, 14-year-old Dalton, who fancies himself a hunter, told his mother he was going to go sit in...

Please join me on a whirlwind superficial but revealing tour of liberal la-la land as we peek at recent headlines. Meanwhile, liberals call conservatives wingnuts. Singer Nancy Sinatra tweeted, "The murderous members of the NRA should face a firing squad." One wonders whether in her rendering, "murderous" is redundant. One might also wonder whether she thinks other murderous people should be exempt from or perhaps face a less humiliating form of execution. Responding to Michelle Obama's claim that people are distrustful of politics because the GOP is "all men, all white," Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, said, "I don't know if...

Since the carnage in Las Vegas, there's been a lot of talk on TV and commentary in print about gun control. Not just any gun control of course, but "reasonable" and "common sense" gun control. But since words matter, it matters how you define "reasonable" and "common sense." And on this, liberals and conservatives might as well be inhabitants of two different planets. As Daniel Henninger succinctly put it in his Wall Street Journal column: "Progressives embrace the benign, while conservatives fear the malign. Liberals say, give peace a chance. Conservatives say, Annie, get your gun." To that I'll add,...

A legislative response to mass killings is elusive on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers cannot settle on a solution. However, there are lots of alternatives when it comes to potentially curbing gun violence. Background checks. Banning so-called “bump stocks.” Regulating bump stocks. Increasing open-carry provisions. Or just leaving things the way they are. But would any fix the problem? Taking action on any plan entails compromise. So far, the sides just aren’t willing to do that. And in a paradoxical twist, the butchery in Las Vegas last week may give Republicans the chance to pass controversial firearm legislation of their own, which...

It's after Stephen Paddock killed 58 and injured hundreds of country music fans when he opened fire at the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas. Traditionally country music and gun culture have had a strong friendship. With the genre even having its own division of the rifle association called NRA Country which sponsors tours and artists. But now platinum-selling duo Florida Georgia Line and chart topper Thomas Rhett both have disappeared from the NRA Country website this week.

In an October 4 report, CBS News claims that Las Vegas attacker Stephen Paddock had AR-15s that fired “automatic rounds.” The report begins with this paragraph: Machine guns— weapons that fire multiple shot with one pull of the trigger—have been technically illegal since the mid-1980s. Yet while the guns that Stephen Paddock used to shoot more than 500 people in Las Vegas fired automatic rounds, they were perfectly legal, according to rules established by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Two comments are necessary on this paragraph. The first point is that machine guns have not “technically...

An old rule of thumb holds that when someone says it's not about the money, it's really about the money. But there are exceptions to almost every rule. The National Rifle Association is a case in point. In the wake of the horror in Las Vegas this week, countless politicians, journalists and commentators are insisting that the National Rifle Association has a "stranglehold" on the Republican Party. Hillary Clinton claimed that the GOP-controlled Congress simply does "whatever they are told to do" by the NRA and the gun lobby. The Washington Post and New York Times laid out splashy reports...

Legendary Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein will channel his anger at himself for allegedly sexually harassing women for the last 40 years into trying to take down the NRA and President Trump. The New York Times reported that the Hollywood mogul has a number of former colleagues, including actress Ashley Judd, claiming that he made unwelcomed advances on them. The producer plans to take a leave of absence from work to "deal with this issue head on." "I am going to need a place to channel that anger so I've decided that I'm going to give the NRA my full attention,"...

The National Rifle Association said Thursday that "bump stock" devices used to fully automate rifles "should be subject to additional regulation" in light of the Las Vegas massacre that killed 58 people and injured 489 others. "In the aftermath of the evil and senseless attack in Las Vegas, the American people are looking for answers as to how future tragedies can be prevented," the NRA said in statement. The National Rifle Association said Thursday that "bump stock" devices used to fully automate rifles "should be subject to additional regulation" in light of the Las Vegas massacre that killed 58 people...

The National Rifle Association, in its first statement on the Las Vegas shooting and in a rare break from its traditional opposition to gun-related regulations, called Thursday for a federal review of so-called bump stocks...On Thursday, the NRA called on the ATF to review that assessment...the National Rifle Association is calling on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) to immediately review whether these devices comply with federal law.”...Even the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, John Cornyn of Texas, opened the door to new restrictions.

Singer Nancy Sinatra on Thursday called for members of the National Rifle Association to be killed by firing squad. Sinatra—the daughter of legendary crooner Frank Sinatra—shared the sentiment on Twitter following the murder of 59 people in Las Vegas by a mass shooter over the weekend. The murderous members of the NRA should face a firing squad. https://t.co/5ceuMvk5Tl — Nancy Sinatra (@NancySinatra) October 3, 2017 In response to criticism, Sinatra clarified that she did not mean all gun owners, just NRA members. I didn't say every one, I said the "murderous members of the NRA" — Nancy Sinatra (@NancySinatra) October...

The powerful National Rifle Association on Thursday backed "additional regulations" on devices that boost semi-automatic weapons' firing rates, like the tools used by the shooter in the Las Vegas massacre. In a statement, the influential gun rights group's Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox urged the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to review the legality of so-called bump stocks. They stopped short of pushing Congress to pass a bill banning or regulating the devices. Still, the NRA's support for more regulation of bump stocks could give Republican lawmakers more breathing room to pass a bill regulating them. The statement...

Singer-actress Nancy Sinatra blasted members of the National Rifle Association (NRA) on Twitter this week, writing that the “murderous” group members should face a “firing squad” for their support of firearm rights. The “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'” singer has called for tougher gun control measures in the wake of the mass shooting at a Las Vegas country music concert this week that claimed the lives of 59 people and left more than 500 others injured. “The murderous members of the NRA should face a firing squad,” Sinatra wrote on Twitter in response to a Daily Kos article posted...

It never fails. Every single time there is a mass shooting in the United States, a huge section of the Left singles out a single political culprit. Yes, they condemn the shooter, but it’s almost as if there’s another murderer out there, lurking in the shadows — the National Rifle Association. The NRA, you see, is to blame for America’s gun culture. It’s to blame for the lack of so-called “common sense” gun regulations. It’s the puppeteer, and GOP politicians are its marionettes. It’s a pop-culture-Left idea — Jimmy Kimmel earlier this week claimed that the NRA had Republican senators’...

There is no real moral philosophy informing it. The philosophy underlying liberalism is at once totalitarian and relativistic. It proposes more government and less morality. It laughs at the mustiness of the Ten Commandments, then demands respect for a flurry of new laws. It scoffs at old codes of self-control, then presses for “gun control” and greater state controls on this or that freedom. From this ethos, regnant for decades in elite circles, has come an out-of-control society in which pols reflexively respond to unspeakable tragedy by advocating more and more laws for a people whose gradual loss of virtue...

Deinstitutionalization: How Does It Affect You Today? What Is the Real Cause of Mass Shootings Today? By Kimberly Amadeo Updated July 11, 2017 Definition: Deinstitutionalization is a government policy that moved mental health patients out of state-run "insane asylums" into federally funded community mental health centers. It began in the 1960s as a way to improve treatment of the mentally ill while also cutting government budgets. In 1955, the number peaked at 558,000 patients or 0.03 percent of the population. If the same percentage of the population were institutionalized today, that would be 750,000 mentally ill people. That's more than...

Radical liberals and others on the far-Left took to Twitter Monday morning to not only send their condolences to those affected by the massive shooting in Las Vegas, but also to use the event as a way to climb on their soapbox and politicize the incident. Among them was failed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, who wasted no time in using the tragedy to her political advantage, tweeting:

Keith Olbermann, probably the only person ever fired from MSNBC for being too radical, cited former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger and claimed that the Second Amendment doesn't guarantee people's right to own guns. He actually argued that, based in part on the amendment's "militia" language, the Framers had intended for it to be a gun-control measure. He said it was meant to limit our access to firearms, not enable it. "The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed..." He says the Framers didn't know that there would be a firearm capable of...