Free Republic

In "The Godfather," a Mafioso prepping young Michael Corleone to assassinate some rivals gives him a pistol for the job. After firing a bullet into the cellar wall, Michael complains, "Ow! My ears!" His friend says, "Yeah, I left it noisy. That way, it scares any pain-in-the-ass innocent bystanders away." The Corleones would have had little interest in a bill that would allow gun owners to obtain silencers without the federal permits required since 1934. Some people like the deafening boom of a gunshot. Most shooters don't, and the National Rifle Association is pressing for enactment of the proposed Hearing...

America's progressive chatter on guns has been shifting noticeably from the abstract language of "control" to the concrete language of "confiscation." Hillary Clinton is just the latest leading voice to serve notice that the forced disarmament of law-abiding Americans is not the dystopian fantasy of paranoids, but a matter of current policy discussion -- and action. During an October 16 Town Hall in New Hampshire, a voter asked Hillary Clinton about Australia's national gun "buyback" program -- more accurately dubbed "confiscation" -- in which large numbers of firearms were outlawed, and owners compelled to surrender them (for financial compensation). Here...

ATF Adding More NFA Branch Staff, Reducing Backlog, Re-Designing eForms System. Again.By Nick Leghorn on April 17, 2014 The Truth About Guns TTAG has just received the following email from the ATF about the current status of the National Firearms Act branch, the group responsible for approving the paperwork needed to own fun stuff like silencers and short barreled firearms in the United States. The long and the short of it is that they’ve hired yet more staff and they are finally making a dent in the backlog of paperwork, but it’s going to be a long slog ahead until...

In the movies, silencers afford guns that ominous "thwip, thwip" sound that makes spies and assassins so stealthy and efficient. In real-life Wisconsin, however, possession of a silencer makes you a lawbreaker unless you're a police officer or soldier on duty, or have completed extensive federal paperwork to register the item. But now a Wauwatosa lawyer charged with having a silencer has challenged the state's law against them as an unconstitutional infringement on the right to bear arms. "Tens of thousands of Americans each year use suppressors for perfectly harmless activities," like target shooting and animal control, according to Thomas...