Free Republic

HEBER CITY Utah (ABC 4 News) - Utah's sheriffs are prepared to take on the president when it comes to guns. Last week they sent him a letter stating they would not enforce any new gun laws they believe are unconstitional. "We are prepared to trade our lives in defense of the constitution of the United States," says Summit County Sheriff David Edmunds. 28 of Utah's 29 sheriffs signed off on the letter. Edmunds says it's meant as a preemptive strike in case the president enacts tougher gun laws like limiting assault rifles or restricting the amount of ammo in...

The Utah Sheriffs’ Association has sent a letter to President Barack Obama warning him its members will not allow guns to be taken from the state’s residents. No government jurisdiction has made such a threat, however, the association acted in response to Obama’s recent proposals about ways to reduce gun violence in the nation, said Grand County Sheriff Steve White, one of 28 sheriffs who support the Jan. 17 letter. White said the association wants to send the message that any changes in gun laws should be done through legislation, not by executive order. Approving the letter is an example...

OGDEN, Utah -- Emilie Parker, a 6-year-old victim of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, was laid to rest next to her grandfather Saturday in the town where she was born. Burial at Evergreen Memorial Park followed a private funeral for family and close friends at a Mormon church across the street from Ben Lomond High School, where Emilie's parents, Robbie and Alissa Parker, met.

RIVERDALE — Pictures of a man carrying a rifle inside a big box store in Riverdale are raising a lot of eyebrows. The woman who took them tells KSL the man had no business bringing the gun where he did. It was supposed to be just a regular trip to the JC Penney. Wednesday night, Cindy Yorgason was in line to return something when she saw a man with some pretty heavy fire power. "He had the assault rifle over his shoulder," Yorgason said. "He had a handgun on the right side of his belt along with at least one...

SALT LAKE CITY - A book about a lesbian couple raising children has returned to a Utah school district's library shelves, amid a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union. Officials with the ACLU of Utah say they were informed of the district's decision Monday, two months after the suit was filed.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ... has proposed designating 1.7 million acres in southwest Colorado and southeast Utah as critical habitat for the bird ... The designation sometimes, but not always, means restrictions on human activities on that land. The public and the scientific community have until March 12 to comment before the agency makes a final decision on whether to list the Gunnison sage grouse as endangered.

Embattled St. George businessman Jeremy Johnson says new Utah Attorney General John Swallow helped broker a deal in 2010 in which Johnson believed he was to pay Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid $600,000 to make a federal investigation into Johnson’s company go away. But when the federal government filed a lawsuit Johnson thought he had paid to quash, he demanded Swallow return some of the $250,000 initial payment. Then, just days before the Nov. 6 election, Johnson engaged in a frenetic but unsuccessful effort to get Swallow to drop out of the race, saying information about what Johnson called a...

A Utah businessman accused of running a fraudulent $350 million software scheme says the state attorney general arranged a deal to pay Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to make a federal investigation into the software business disappear. ... Johnson says be believed that Reid, a Nevada senator, might intervene in the Federal Trade Commission's investigation.

Officials in a small Utah town want to make sure every head of household has a firearm and knows how to use it, and they want to give school teachers training with guns too.

State troopers put their lives on the line every day. And the act of pulling someone over on a highway can be a deadly experience for any cop not following the best protocols. But police are also under great pressure to generate ticket revenue for their cities, counties and states, and their zeal to hit revenue targets can lead them to do the wrong thing. So says a class action suit filed against the State of Utah and a specific state trooper who is accused of writing "driving under the influence" tickets when they weren't impaired. State trooper Lisa Steed...

VERNAL — A man says Vernal police disrupted an intimate moment of mourning with his deceased wife of 58 years when they searched his house for her prescription medication without a warrant within minutes of her death. -snip- Ben D. Mahaffey, 80, said he was distraught and trying to make sure his wife's body would be taken to the funeral home with dignity, when he says officers insisted he help them look for the drugs. "I was holding her hand saying goodbye when all the intrusion happened," he told the Deseret News. -snip- Mahaffey said he was treated as if...

SALT LAKE CITY — Ten years after her kidnapping, Elizabeth Smart is preparing her story of being held captive by a homeless street preacher, her improbable rescue after nine months, and how she advocated for children after the ordeal. St. Martin's Press bought the rights to the memoir from the now 25-year-old senior at Brigham Young University. Smart married a fellow Mormon missionary, Matthew Gilmour, in February. The account is being written by Utah Congressman-elect Chris Stewart, who has authored books with religious and patriotic themes. He was elected in November to serve in the 2nd Congressional District, replacing Jim...

Demographics buffs get a special Christmas present every year courtesy of the Census Bureau: its annual estimates of the populations of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. This gives demographers a chance to see where the nation is growing and where it is not, and to get an idea of the destination of immigrants and of the flow of people into one set of states and out of another. Nationally the Census Bureau estimates that the United States has grown from 308 million people when the census was conducted in April 2010 and to almost 313 million in...

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah has had one of the nation's highest birth rates for quite a while, but over the last four years couples have chosen to have fewer children. One big reason for that: money, and the lack thereof. Most any parent will tell you having a child is their greatest blessing ⁸ the more than 51,000 infants born in Utah this past year are living proof of that. But the number of Utah births is decreasing. "We have seen a decline since 2006, 2007 — those were our biggest years. Those years we had about 60,000 babies...

President Barack Obama will eventually raise taxes on the entire middle class because he has no plans to stop spending, the GOP’s soon-to-be senior senator tells Newsmax. And the success or failure of the president’s bid to increase tax rates for the top two percent of earners is irrelevant in the matter, said Sen. Orrin Hatch in an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV. The Utah senator—who will become the senior Republican in the new Congress set to convene next week—said that Republicans are leery of increasing taxes on Americans in any income bracket because they believe Obama will spend the money...

MORE than 200 Utah teachers are expected to head to a meeting tomorrow to undergo six hours of concealed-weapons training as organisers seek to arm more educators in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Connecticut school shooting. Utah Shooting Sports Council said it normally has a dozen teachers annually for instruction required to legally carry a concealed weapon in public places. The state's leading gun lobby decided to offer teachers the training at no charge to encourage turnout after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. Organisers who initially capped attendance at 200 were exceeding that number by today and scrambling...

An Orem pastor who held an intoxicated man at bay with a gun says the man is welcome to get help at his church anytime. Robert Brooks says he woke up Friday to the sound of someone banging on the doors of Victory Baptist Church. Brooks lives in the basement of the building with his wife and children. Brooks says he could tell the man outside was drunk, so he announced he had a gun and pointed its laser sights at him until police arrived.

<p>A Utah sixth-grader, who told classmates he was encouraged by his parents to bring a gun to school after the Connecticut school shooting, was apprehended by teachers after he was found with an unloaded .22-caliber handgun, Fox13Now.com reported.</p> <p>The unidentified student, described in the report as an 11-year-old boy, reportedly pulled the gun from his backpack during recess Monday at West Kearns Elementary School, which is in a suburb of Salt Lake City.</p>

Grand County companies whose owners signed a letter to President Obama supporting federal protection for 1.4 million acres surrounding Canyonlands National Park are facing an economic boycott that some say has been spurred by the locally-based Sagebrush Coalition. The coalition’s Facebook page includes a list of local and national companies that signed the Nov. 13 letter from the Outdoor Industry Association urging Obama to create the Greater Canyonlands National Monument. ... Sagebrush Coalition president James Tibbetts ... opposes monument status for land around Canyonlands National Park because it isn’t necessary. “We’ve used it all these years and we haven’t ruined...

WEST JORDAN — What appeared to be a fight between a couple turned into a much more serious shooting after an armed neighbor apparently tried to intervene. Police say a they were called to the shooting at about 1 a.m. A man was arguing with his girlfriend in a car just outside the Woodgate apartment complex at 3581 W. Cobble Ridge Drive. As the argument got more heated, a man walking his dog passed by, saw the argument, and asked the female if she needed help, according to West Jordan officer J.C. Holt. An ensuing argument between the two men...