Free Republic

The federal Department of Veterans Affairs says it won’t follow a provision of New York’s gun law which would require them to report the names of patients they believe may be a danger to themselves or others. …

At a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on Thursday, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) opposed an amendment to her Assault Weapons Ban legislation that would allow military veterans to continue to buy the firearms that would be banned. Feinstein says a veteran may be mentally ill and should be prevented from purchasing firearms.

At a Senate judiciary committee hearing on Thursday, California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein shot down a proposed amendment exempting veterans from her “assault weapons” ban, bizarrely arguing that it’s legal to hunt humans with high-capacity magazines. “The time has come, America, to step up and ban these weapons,” Feinstein said. “The other very important part of this bill is to ban large capacity ammunition feeding devices — those that hold more than 10 rounds. We have federal regulations and state laws that prohibit hunting ducks with more than three rounds. And yet it’s legal to hunt humans with 15-round, 30-round,...

Guns: Veterans who bore arms to defend their country are receiving letters that they may be declared mentally incompetent and have their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms stripped from them. Welcome home. The contempt by the Obama administration for our Constitution and our rights has reached a new low with news the Veterans Administration has begun sending letters to veterans telling them they will be declared mentally incompetent and stripped of the Second Amendment rights unless they can prove to unnamed bureaucrats to the contrary. On Thursday, Michael Connelly, executive director of the United States Justice Foundation,...

How would you feel if you received a letter from the U.S. Government informing you that because of a physical or mental condition that the government says you have it is proposing to rule that you are incompetent to handle your own financial affairs? What if that letter also stated: “A determination of incompetency will prohibit you from purchasing, possessing, receiving, or transporting a firearm or ammunition. If you knowingly violate any of these prohibitions, you may be fined, imprisoned, or both pursuant to the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, Pub.L.No. 103-159, as implemented at 18, United States Code 924(a)(2).”?...

Jeff and Paige McDonald and their youngest daughter Brooke stood on the stage of the giant Barrett-Jackson auction in January, watching as bidding began on a custom 1969 Ford Bronco. Funds raised by the auction would help the Armed Forces Foundation, a group that provides services to veterans, particularly those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Paige McDonald recalls the moment as “bittersweet.” She says she was pleased that so many were showing such strong support for America’s veterans. But she says she couldn’t stop thinking of the reason her family had come to Scottsdale, Ariz., for the auction: her...

It’s a little-known fact that about 30% of returning soldiers are diagnosed with PTSD. These brave men and women, mentally scarred from their service to our country, deserve nothing less than our unwavering support. Instead, they are now in the crosshairs of the gun control lobby. With the VA’s existing massive information sharing with NICS, we already have a precedent for large-scale revocation of veteran’s rights. All it takes is for one of Eric Holder’s decrees to include PTSD, and suddenly one of the most passionate, patriotic segments of Americans will be labeled a danger to society. Ask yourself: Do...

MEXICO CITY — As a U.S. Marine, Jon Hammar endured nightmarish tension patrolling the war-ravaged streets of Iraq’s Fallujah. When he came home, the brutality of war still pinging around his brain, mental peace proved elusive. Surfing provided the only respite. “The only time Hammar is not losing his mind is when he’s on the water,” said a fellow Marine veteran, Ian McDonough. snip--- But Mexican prosecutors who looked at the disassembled relic in the 1972 Winnebago motor home dismissed the U.S. registration papers Hammar had filled out. They charged him with a serious crime: possession of a weapon restricted...

CALLAWAY — Libby Busbee pounded on the window of her son’s maroon Dodge Charger as he sat in the driveway of their home earlier this year. Locked inside his car, U.S. Army Spc. William Busbee sat with a .45-caliber gun pointed to the side of his head. “Look at me,” his mother cried out as she tried to get her son’s attention. “Look at me.” He wouldn’t look. He stared out the front windshield, distant, Busbee said, relating the story from an apartment complex in Callaway. “I kept yelling, ‘Don’t you do this. Don’t do it.’ He wouldn’t turn his...

Thanks to my fellow veterans: I remember the day I found out I got into West Point. My mom actually showed up in the hallway of my high school and waited for me to get out of class. She was bawling her eyes out and apologizing that she had opened up my admission letter. She wasn't crying because it had been her dream for me to go there. She was crying because she knew how hard I'd worked to get in, how much I wanted to attend, and how much I wanted to be an infantry officer. I was going...

I have received the letter below a couple times now, and checking with Snoops they can only dispute it to the extent it originated with Nick Palmisciano co-owner and co-founder of Ranger Up and not General David Petraeus. The Army was excited enough about Palmisciano’s work that they published it on their Facebook. I verified the substance of its truthfulness as you can do also by looking at the links I checked. The article points out the severe disconnect now existing between veterans and the general citizenry. At the end of World War II, when 11 out of every 100...

We appreciate all that you veterans have done to help us remain America. If anyone needs any free assistance with being free of stress and or, ptsd....please go to www.copingstrategies.com! For all vets!

Metro Police, under pressure from media outlets, have released a video message from Sheriff Douglas Gillespie detailing to Metro employees his objection to a Clark County grand jury review of a deadly officer-involved shooting. In the Oct. 3 video, which department officials previously said was for internal use only and refused to release to the public, Gillespie informs his employees of District Attorney Steve Wolfson’s decision to convene a grand jury to review the Dec. 11, 2011, fatal shooting of Stanley Gibson.

On a chilly, January night in 1986, Elizabeth Ebaugh carried a bag of groceries across the quiet car park of a shopping plaza in the suburbs of Washington DC. She got into her car and tossed the bag onto the empty passenger seat. But as she tried to close the door, she found it blocked... --snip-- The most talked-about biological marker of resilience is neuropeptide Y (NPY), a hormone released in the brain during stress. Unlike the stress hormones that put the body on high alert in response to trauma, NPY acts at receptors in several parts of the brain...

Constitutional Attorney John Whitehead, who represented wrongly-incarcerated marine Brandon J. Raub for free, appeared on Glenn Beck’s program to talk about how Brandon is unfortunately not alone in many ways.

Going to the movies was the worst: the crowds, the dark, the whispering. “I would constantly be scanning for who was going to come stab me from behind,” says Robert Soliz, a 31-year-old former Army Specialist from San Joaquin, California. He was discharged in 2005 after serving in a heavy artillery quick-reaction force in South Baghdad. But fear, anxiety, depression and substance abuse swept into his life, and Soliz became one of 300,000 U.S. veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. Isolated, his family deteriorating—“I couldn’t show affection, couldn’t hug my kids”—Soliz...

Aurora's mass murderer James Holmes, would appear was working with this program that turns out was linked to a Government contract investigating and mitigating the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder via the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Neuroscience Graduate Program, University of Colorado at Anshutz Medical Center, Aurora, Colorado. Link to the book Nerve Growth Factors: Advances in Research and Application: 2011 Edition that makes direct referrence to the contract.

Here is the link to http://youtu.be/Pvr8SBu0dLg Army Staff Sgt. Joshua Eisenhauer is a two-tour veteran of combat in Afghanistan and an airborne trooper with the distinctive red beret of the 82nd Airborne Division. The 1999 graduate of Fossil Ridge High School is also a criminal defendant, housed in a maximum-security prison in Raleigh, N.C., facing a raft of serious felonies and, according to the Army and his family, suffering from severe symptoms of post-traumatic stress. What happened Jan. 13 in Eisenhauer's apartment outside the gates of Fort Bragg seems inexplicable to those who know him. Authorities say Eisenhauer opened fire...

"The commanding general of the 18th Airborne Corps, Lt. Gen. Frank Helmick, has agreed to take jurisdiction of Eisenhauer's criminal case, but only if Cumberland County District Attorney William West asks. "We worked very hard to convince the military that the fair and appropriate thing for them to do was request prosecutorial jurisdiction, and they have agreed to do that," said Mark Waple, Eisenhauer's attorney and a West Point-educated former Army attorney. "Now the ball is in the court of the Cumberland County district attorney's office. We hope to have a response from them within the next few days. What...

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- A former FBI employee who retired due to post-traumatic stress disorder linked to time spent as a liaison between law enforcement and families of United Airlines Flight 93 victims has written a book about seeing legions of angels guarding the site after the hijacked airliner crashed on Sept. 11, 2001. Lillie Leonardi was a Pittsburgh-area police officer before working for the FBI.