Free Republic

Just like he did with far-left CNN, President Trump has just forced the phony, left-wing fact check site Snopes to throw out every standard of professional journalism. In a stunning admission (of what we already knew), Snopes announced Thursday that Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson are such a unique threat to world that “experts must find new ways to reach people.” Which means that — get this — Trump and Johnson must be “countered by the shared stories, experiences and emotions of real people and how they are affected by the big global issues.” “Public austerity measures, for...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a law that will make the state the first to allow employers, co-workers and teachers to seek gun violence restraining orders against other people. The bill was vetoed twice by former governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, and goes beyond a measure that he signed allowing only law enforcement officers and immediate family members to ask judges to temporarily take away peoples' guns when they are deemed a danger to themselves or others. They were among 15 gun-related laws Newsom approved as the state strengthens what the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence calls...

In 2004, Vermont implemented a medical marijuana registry, promising patient confidentiality on its state website. Then, in 2018, Vermont legalized recreational marijuana use and imposed a universal background check on gun-purchasers. Here's the rub: the federal government was not consulted, and the ATF maintains that anyone using marijuana will be denied clearance to purchase any gun. This was already the case prior to Vermont's recreational cannabis legalization — those who were on the state's marijuana registry were not allowed to buy guns from federally licensed dealers, as the state of Vermont provided the list of registrants surreptitiously to the federal...

The Supreme Court has deferred making a decision on the issue of mootness in the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. New York City yesterday morning, 7 October, 2019. The Court will hear oral arguments on 2 December, 2019, eight weeks from now. From supremecourt.gov: The Respondent's Suggestion of Mootness is denied. The question of mootness will be subject to further consideration at oral argument, and the parties should be prepared to discuss it. The NYSR&P case is the first major Second Amendment case the Court has agreed to hear in nine years. There have been a...

Not content with micro-stamping, background checks for ammo, and outright bans on handguns that aren’t individually tested to be “safe”, California is back on the gun control warpath. If state Sen. Anthony Portantino’s bill passes in a final vote in the Legislature this week, California residents will soon be barred from buying more than one semiautomatic rifle a month. Purchases of any semiautomatic rifles will also be off-limits to anyone under the age of 21. Portantino’s bill originally called for limiting monthly purchases on all long guns – shotguns and bolt-action rifles included – but he decided to exclude those...

On 1 October, 2019, the Supreme Court held a conference. One of the items to be decided was whether the Court would hear the Second Amendment case of NY STATE RIFLE & PISTOL V. NEW YORK, NY. The Supreme Court had already granted Cert (agreed to hear the case). But the City of New York, fearing a poor outcome, had minimally changed the regulation, and lobbied the State of New York legislature to minimally change the law. Then the counsel for the City filed a petition with the Supreme Court, claiming the case was moot, there was no longer...

Dick’s Sporting Goods CEO Ed Stack told CBS News that his company destroyed $5 million worth of “assault-style rifles” to keep them out of private hands. Ed Stack told CBS News during an interview that the millions of dollars worth of inventory was turned into scrap metal. “I said, ‘You know what? If we really think these things should be off the street, we need to destroy them.” The Hill: The CEO of Dick’s Sporting Goods says that after the company made the decision to no longer sell assault-style rifles, more than $5 million worth of the weapons were destroyed....

Each year brings a new record increase in the number of concealed handgun permits. The rate of growth in permits among women and minorities has far outpaced growth among white men. The data paint a picture of incredibly law-abiding permit holders, the vast majority living outside America’s insular media capitals. A new report from the Crime Prevention Research Center shows that there are now 18.7 million concealed handgun permits in the U.S., up 1.4 million since last August. Far more people carry guns today than in 2007, when there were only 4.6 million permits. Sixteen states now no longer require...

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Violent Crime Drops, Trump Gets No Credit On September 30, the FBI released its annual report on crime for 2018. It showed that violent crime declined over 2017 in every category except rape, where a revised definition was applied. The number of homicides declined by 6.1%; the rate went down by even more than that, to 5.0 per 100,000.The FBI’s good news about crime got very little publicity, and I can’t find a single publication that gave the Trump administration any credit for the trend. Why should they, you might ask, since homicide and other violent crimes have been declining...

Frustrated liberals have been asking for the last four years what it’s going to take for President Trump’s supporters to abandon him. Because, like, don’t they know he’s about to be impeached!? New York Times columnist David Brooks attempted to answer the question last week by imagining a conversation with someone he simply referred to as “Flyover Man,” because apparently he didn’t know a single real Trump supporter. It never seems to occur to liberals that perhaps the real problem isn’t that a lot of people continue supporting the president even though he can be strange, vulgar, and sometimes even...

[Catholic Caucus] Opening Amazon synod, Francis warns against being 'smothered by ashes' defending status quo Vatican City — Opening a monthlong gathering of Catholic bishops expected to consider controversial issues such as the ordaining of married priests on a regional basis, Pope Francis Oct. 6 warned the 185 prelates taking part against being "smothered by the ashes of fear and concern" in defense of the church's status quo. In a homily for the opening Mass of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon region, which will continue through Oct. 27, the pontiff said that while Catholic prelates are called to...

Democratic candidates gathered in Sin City and went all in on gun control. Granted, it wasn’t hard to do when the event was sponsored by gun control groups Giffords and March for Our Lives and the table dealer was a left wing cable news network that didn’t even gamble their own ratings by putting it on their network. They live-streamed on the web instead.If you missed it, I don’t blame you. Still, there’s some big election-year ideas they’re betting on.BansThe field split on outright confiscation. They must have noticed that U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) isn’t at the table anymore...

Governor Cuomo Advances First-in-the-Nation Domestic Terrorism Law to Include Mass Violence Motivated By Hate New York State "Hate Crimes Domestic Terrorism Act" To Define Hate-Fueled Murder with the Intent to Cause Mass Casualties as an Act of Domestic Terrorism with Penalty Equivalent to Other Acts of Terrorism Cuomo Also Calls on Congress to Enact a Federal Domestic Terrorism Law, Including Banning Weapons Used to Perpetrate These Crimes: Military Style Assault Weapons and High Capacity Magazines, and Enacting Universal Background Checks Cuomo: "White supremacists, anti-Semites, anti-LGBTQ white nationalists - these are Americans committing mass hate crimes against other Americans and it...

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill on Wednesday that bans teachers from being armed while they are on school property.

Gov. Cuomo said the panic that erupted in Times Square after a backfiring motorcycle mistaken for gunshots sent people fleeing from the area shows just how “terrified” the nation is in the wake of the mass shootings over the weekend. SEE ALSO Panic in Times Square after motorcycle backfire mistaken for gunshots ​”That’s where we are. You hear a noise, you run. That’s the state of this nation. We’re petrified,” he said Wednesday during an interview on WCBS 880 radio. The governor also railed about the “impotence of government” for its failure to respond with any substantial gun control legislation,...

When it comes to bad ideas, there’s always room at the bottom. Conservatives used to exasperatedly observe of gun-grabbing Democrats, “Imagine how they’d complain if someone tried to treat the First Amendment the way they treat the Second Amendment!” Hold my cappuccino, says Andrew Marantz of The New Yorker. Writing in the New York Times under the headline “Free Speech Is Killing Us” — and Marantz argues that is literally true — he argues that the gun-control program should be taken as a template for a speech-control program. He has come to this conclusion, he writes, after “having spent the...

A Heritage Foundation expert, Amy Swearer, left Congress members speechless after she presented them with gun facts they don't want to hear.

Hobby Lobby, the arts-and-crafts giant whose evangelical Christian owners won a landmark religious-freedom ruling in U.S. Supreme Court several years back, is now under fire for selling signs that a customer alleges “glorify and encourage gun violence,” with some calling for a boycott of the chain. Shopper Leslie Ruffing, 39, was at her local Hobby Lobby in Aurora, Ill. when she came across two gun-themed wall decorations. One of the metal signs read “We don’t call 911,” framed by two opposing pistols with their barrels crossed, and with bullets embedded in the number “1.” The other yellow metal placard says...