Free Republic

Gun control advocates are learning the downside of getting their way. Recently, a federal judge struck down the District of Columbia's ban on the carrying of concealed handguns. Anti-gun forces have been losing in legislatures for a long time. Now they are finding that even where they win, they lose. Washington used to have the strictest gun laws in America. Besides the prohibition of concealed guns, all firearms had to be registered and handgun ownership was forbidden. Graphic: Legal restrictions of Illinois' concealed carry law Graphic: Legal restrictions of Illinois' concealed carry law READ THE STORY The restrictions had no...

“In light of Heller, McDonald, and their progeny, there is no longer any basis on which this Court can conclude that the District of Columbia's total ban on the public carrying of ready-to-use handguns outside the home is constitutional under any level of scrutiny. Therefore, the Court finds that the District of Columbia's complete ban on the carrying of handguns in public is unconstitutional.” “Accordingly, the Court grants Plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment and enjoins Defendants from enforcing the home limitations of D.C. Code § 72502.02(a)(4) and enforcing D.C. Code § 22-4504(a) unless and until such time as the District...

MOBILE, Alabama -- On Friday afternoon a tense scene played out in front of the Rouses Supermarket on Theodore Dawes Road. Three people drew their guns after a reported theft, a Mobile Police Department spokesman said. Donnie James Moore, 60 had shoplifted steaks from the grocery store before officers arrived at 12:20 p.m., according to MPD. When a loss prevention officer tried to stop him, Moore shoved past him. Moore made it to his car, where he grabbed a gun. He pulled it on the officer, MPD spokesman Officer Terence Perkins said. The loss prevention officer stepped back and pulled...

A proposed gun shop/shooting range that has generated controversy because of its location near several neighborhood schools will be coming to Niles. The Niles Village Board of Trustees voted 4-1 on Tuesday to approve a special use permit to allow firearms sales, firearms safety training and an indoor firing range at the proposed location, at 6143 Howard St. About 200 supporters and critics of the plan packed the Village of Niles Municipal Building to make their voices heard on the gun shop, to be called Sportsman’s Club and Firearms Training Academy. Dozens wore green shirts and ribbons to honor victims...

Missouri will have a strengthened Right to Keep and Bear Arms provision on the August 5th ballot.  Yesterday the Supreme Court upheld rulings against foes of the amendment , who tried to keep it off the ballot.   The constitutional amendment was passed by overwhelming margins in the legislature, assuming that it would be on the November Ballot.   Governor Nixon (D) decided to put the measure on the August primary ballot instead.   A few days ago, Governor Nixon vetoed a popular gun law reform that was passed with veto proof margins in the house, and potentially veto proof margins...

For the first time this entire election cycle The New York Times Senate forecast at The Upshot predicts Udall has a greater chance of losing reelection than winning (53%-47%). This is a huge deal, as The Upshot tries to go beyond just the polls and factor in other intangibles about a race, such as, incumbency, fundraising, a state’s past election history among others, who the liberals at the NYT want to win. All those factors in The Upshot model lean heavily Udall’s way. Yet, despite this inherent, built-in advantage, Udall can’t overcome one thing: the people of Colorado feel he...

This is a personal snapshot of inner city gun violence from a man who knows what it feels like: Claude Motley dropped off a friend late at night on W. Capitol Drive and paused to check his cellphone for emails. Motley, 43, was in Milwaukee for the class reunion of Milwaukee Tech High School from his current hometown of Charlotte, N.C., where he and his wife moved five years ago from Milwaukee to pursue business opportunities. They wanted to live somewhere else for various reasons, including their concern about rising violence in the city. Born and raised on the north...

Two weeks after Chicago's rampant gun violence shot back into the national spotlight with a bloody Fourth of July weekend, federal authorities are scheduled to announce Thursday that seven new ATF agents are being deployed to the city to try to help stem the violence. By year end, the move will boost to 52 the number of agents in the Chicago office of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which traditionally has worked closely with Chicago police on tracing the flow of guns into the city and tracking guns used in crimes. In a separate action, the...

Is “Operation Choke Point” about to get choked by Congress? Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., sure hopes so. Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is calling for the dismantling of what he calls a secretive initiative launched by the Obama administration in early 2013. Critics say that Operation Choke Point, so dubbed by Department of Justice officials under Attorney General Eric Holder, seeks to weed out businesses from the marketplace that the Obama administration considers objectionable. According to The Wall Street Journal, it was an outgrowth of the Financial Fraud Task Force, established by President Obama’s executive...

We could throw up our hands after a brazen gunman killed a photographer and then kept shooting at other people on a Saturday afternoon on a busy street in a neighborhood where shootings aren’t common. The shooting added to a ceaseless toll of horror that seems to flow like a river of blood. Three others died and 29 were hurt by gunfire over the weekend. The Independence Day weekend before: 16 dead, more than 60 wounded. Tragedy compounding tragedy. Families burying their loved ones, children gunned down, all after a concerted effort by Chicago police to reduce the bloodshed. The...

Sierra Guyton put up a long fight, but on Sunday her young body finally succumbed to her injuries. It was two months ago that a dispute between two men ended in gunfire and 10-year-old Sierra was shot in the head as she played at the Clarke Street Elementary School playground. Sierra died about 1:35 a.m. Sunday at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. She was taken off life support June 25, but survived another 2 1/2 weeks. If an effort ever was needed to get young black men to put down their guns and settle their disputes in a sensible manner, this...

A proposal to eliminate the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is drawing opposition from groups that typically sit on opposite sides of the gun debate. The idea, advanced last week by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and a left-leaning think tank, also is drawing support from powerful Republicans, and some Democrats are indicating a willingness to at least discuss the idea. A longtime former top ATF supervisor said his former employer is hobbled by a lack of supervision and leadership and folding it into the FBI and other agencies has merit. "I am not surprised by the proposed...

Days after Chicago marked a violent Fourth of July weekend, Gov. Pat Quinn and U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly reiterated their support for tighter gun laws. “I’ve seen firsthand the devastation caused by this violence,” Quinn said at a news conference Sunday, a block from where Tonya Gunn, 44, was shot to death last week in the Morgan Park neighborhood. The latest push comes on the heels of an especially bloody weekend, in which 13 people were killed and at least 58 wounded in shootings across the city. Quinn and Kelly urged the passage of a bill in the Illinois General...

Rand Paul Offers Amendment to Stop Eric Holder’s Operation Choke Point Thursday, 19 June 2014 19:56 Written by Gun Owners Excellent news! A few weeks ago, we told you about “Operation Choke Point” -- an effort by Attorney General Eric Holder to put gun stores out of business. Basically, it works like this: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), at the behest of Barack Obama, has declared that gun stores are “high risk” businesses. “High risk” businesses have been, up until now, a small category of supposedly disreputable businesses, which have included pornographers, sellers of drug paraphernalia, and payday lenders....

“Gun Owners of America [has] blasted the bill as a ‘fake pro-gun bill designed to re-elect endangered anti-gun [Senators] up in 2014 in pro-gun states.’” -- Roll Call, July 9, 2014 Earlier today, the “Harry Reid Preservation Act,” S. 2363, went down to defeat, as pro-gun Senators successfully filibustered the bill by a vote of 56-41. As you know, S. 2363 was a “nothing-burger bill” which existed solely to elect anti-gun Democrats in Red States. This includes Senators like sponsor Kay Hagan (D-NC) -- pluscosponsors such as Mark Begich (D-AK), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Mark Udall (D-CO), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Al...

If there is any doubt about the hatred that Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats hold for the Second Amendment, that hatred was made apparent last week. To review the bidding: The Senate was slated, last week, to consider amendments to the giant appropriations bill funding the Justice and Commerce Departments. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) had submitted an amendment to prohibit Attorney General Eric Holder from continuing Operation Choke Point -- a program designed to shut down gun stores by forcing banks to dry up their credit and to stop processing their credit card purchases. alt You will remember that...

In what may come as a surprise to residents of Colorado Springs and Pueblo, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn’t think those cities have roads. Bloomberg told Rolling Stone that he was “sorry” about the recalls of two state senators last year over the Democratic state legislature’s gun-control laws, but added that their districts were so “rural” that, “I don’t think there’s roads.” “In Colorado, we got a law passed. The NRA went after two or three state senators in a part of Colorado where I don’t think there’s roads,” said Bloomberg in the interview published online Wednesday....

When a major American city such as Chicago reports 82 people shot and 14 killed over a violent holiday weekend, it's time to take notice. Describing some parts of the inner city as "the Wild, Wild West" or "an urban war zone" to make a point about lawlessness just doesn't cut it anymore. It's time to call it what it is: an epidemic of gun violence as deadly as any infectious disease or plague that any health professional can imagine. When Mallory O'Brien, executive director of the Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission, looks at the levels of gun violence in cities...

The creation and implementation of Illinois' law permitting licensed owners to carry concealed firearms has not been a graceful process. It was forced on the state, the last to forbid conceal carry, by a federal appeals court in 2012. The General Assembly dawdled before finally reaching a compromise that left no one particularly pleased. Now comes the next tricky part: making the system work in such a way as to protect the constitutional rights of gun owners without creating new dangers to public safety. Most states have "shall-issue" laws, which spell out the conditions for getting a concealed carry permit...

It's time to dissolve the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In fact, it should have been dissolved years ago. It has disparate missions that overlap with other agencies' responsibilities. It has been micromanaged by Congress and mismanaged by its leaders. It serves no useful purpose that can't be met by other government bodies. It needs to go. U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) is working on a bill that would do just that, and we hope this effort is successful. "By absorbing the ATF into existing law enforcement entities, we can preserve the areas where the ATF adds...