Free Republic

In the incident Monday a man who returned home and found two intruders shot and killed one with a shotgun. The homeowner also fired at the second suspect as he fled in the stolen SUV, shooting out a window.

Anti-gun New York Sen. Charles Schumer went so far overboard with remarks about an alternative measure to his background check bill during a weekend interview that it appears he is trying to demonize the package because it presents a more palatable option to his colleagues in the Senate. It is Schumer’s “background check” bill that the alternative measure introduced by Senators Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey could derail this week, and the New Yorker clearly isn’t liking it. In a report broadcast by Westchester County’s News 12 and Newsday, Schumer alleged, “This legislation could change Times Square into the OK...

A Seattle police official quickly scotched a suggestion earlier this year that citizens with concealed pistol licenses be monitored; just one revelation about how Mayor Mike McGinn’s staff feels toward gun owners that has emerged from e-mails obtained by the Second Amendment Foundation under a Public Records Act request. In addition one e-mail expressed the opinion that the National Rifle Association is an organization that does “dirty work” for the firearms industry, and another suggested that inquiries from Second Amendment activists should be ignored. SAF had asked for all records related to the recently-launched Gun Safety Initiative and the Jan....

Liberal anti-gun readers of the Seattle Times and Seattle P-I.com are having fits over the announcement that the State Republican Party will auction an AR-15 during this weekend’s annual fund raising banquet. The event kicks off with a silent auction beginning at 5:30 p.m. Saturday at the Bellevue Hilton, followed by the live auction and dinner beginning at 7 o’clock, according to State GOP Chairman Kirby Wilbur. He was filling in all week on KVI for vacationing John Carlson. This was like an old home week for Wilbur, who used to occupy the morning drive slot on KVI before a...

Sandra Mize confronted an intruder breaking into her north Spokane home early Wednesday morning. She fired one shot in his direction and held him at gunpoint until officers arrived. Police arrested the man and said they do not believe it was his first burglary of the night. Sandra Mize has a motto: "You don't get do-overs." That's why the 63-year-old grandmother of 10 keeps a gun by her bed, a canister of mace in her living room, and reinforces the doors in her north Spokane home with deadbolt locks and metal jambs before she goes to sleep every night. Her...

It begins.There is no question that rank-and-file gay couples of all political stripes are sincere in their desire to enjoy the benefits and status that come with marriage. There is no sinister agenda at work in the issue of same-sex marriage among the masses. But the same cannot be said of the organized left who have always intended to use the issue of gay marriage as a vehicle to destroy the Christian Church and marginalize Christians. Faithfulness to the Bible and the Christian faith will very soon be declared bigotry by the media and a de facto civil rights violation...

The Attorney General of Washington has filed suit against a florist who refused to provide an arrangement for a gay wedding, saying that doing so is in violation of the Consumer Protection Act...

A lively discussion about justice, self-defense, property rights and the use of lethal force has erupted in Spokane this week in the wake of a fatal Monday morning shooting in which a recidivist car thief was fatally shot by his latest victim as he drove away in the shooter’s Chevy Suburban. The debate is on-going on this morning's Spokane Spokesman-Review's web page below a story that says police may turn over the results of their investigation to prosecutors today. Should car thieves risk getting shot dead? When Washington achieved statehood in November 1889, there were still places in the West...

Sunday’s Seattle Times has an analysis on the failure of House Bill 1588 — the controversial “universal background check” measure — that gun owners have quickly seen is lacking some key perspectives. The piece, written by Danny Westneat, looks at the switched vote of Walla Walla Rep. Maureen Walsh, a Republican who initially supported the measure. Westneat’s take is that she changed her vote because of pressure from the National Rifle Association, and that it is this sort of effort by the gun lobby that will prevent doing “anything about guns.” According to Westneat, background checks work. He writes: “Last...

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — Supporters of a proposal to expand background checks to private gun sales struggled Monday to secure a final batch of votes that would ensure the bill's passage.

LINCOLN COUNTY, Wash. -- Authorities confirm a military plane from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island crashed in Lincoln County, Wash. A volunteer firefighter in Davenport tells KREM.com the plane crashed between Harrington and Odessa, near the intersection of Coffee Pot Rd. and Duck Lake Lamona Rd. Witnesses told KREM 2 they heard a large plane followed by a loud "boom" seconds later, and saw a large cloud of smoke billowing from the ground, with the first reports coming in around 9 a.m. Monday morning. KREM 2 has a crew on the way to the scene.

Days after it appeared that a proposed expansion of the background check had hit a major speed bump in Olympia, a similar proposal before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has also run into trouble as Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has refused to make a deal on the measure because it contains a record-keeping provision. Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Bellevue-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, had agreed to negotiate with state lawmakers over so-called “universal background check” legislation, but his conditions included no record-keeping, and more importantly, the state pistol registry would have to be...

A controversial bill aimed at expanding background checks in exchange for major concessions to gun owners in Washington State could be in trouble, not because of opposition from gun rights groups, or legislative liberals, but because of resistance from the law enforcement administrators' lobby to one of the key provisions. Alan Gottlieb with the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, both pilloried and praised within the firearms community recently, told Examiner late Friday that the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC) is opposed to a tenet of the proposed substitute House Bill 1588 that...

BREMERTON, Wash. — A homeowner opened fire at a man who was demanding to be let into her home Wednesday, police said. Around midnight, Terry Brumage’s family was asleep when they heard an angry voice at the front door of their home. A man was demanding to be let in. Brumage said she did not know who the man was so she armed herself with a .38 caliber handgun.

CHEHALIS, Wash - A man who broke into an occupied home early Sunday in Chehalis was shot by the home's owner, the Lewis County Sheriff's Office says. Deputies arrived at the home shortly before 5 a.m. to find one man with a gunshot wound. Deputies say a 51-year-old man broke into the home where a 24-year-old man and his wife were sleeping. The owner called 911, then armed himself with a pistol while waiting for deputies to arrive. At one point, the suspect charged down a hallway toward the homeowner, who fired a shot, hitting the suspect. The two men...

Seattle’s KIRO news is advertising a report to air Thursday during the 5 p.m. broadcast that seems to suggest the recent gun buyback may have been all flash and no substance; in the vernacular it was “all Hollywood.” The promotional for this report features Alex Tabbarok, identified as a “gun buyback expert,” observing that “People who want guns for crime, they’re not going to give up their tools.” It is essentially the same argument posed by this column during the recent Seattle channel broadcast of Jan. 25 with former Seattle Mayor Wes Uhlman. The report, by veteran KIRO reporter Amy...

Congressman Jim McDermott (D-Washington) warns the U.S. could turn into a scene from Les Misérables without a 'we' mentality in an interview with C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" on Tuesday.

Seattle's police department made headlines last month when it held a gun buyback event where citizens surrendered more than 700 firearms in exchange for Amazon.com gift cards. SPD's policy is to destroy the guns it collects through the program, removing unwanted weapons from the hands of private citizens where they might otherwise be stolen, lost, used in a crime, or accidentally discharged. But not all police agencies destroy guns seized by police or turned in by private citizens. A KING 5 investigation of records filed with the State Treasurer’s Office showed that police departments in Hoquiam, Fife and Auburn sold...

Amid the fireworks following Seattle’s circus-like gun buyback and the antics in Oak Harbor over guns in parks, another front in the cultural war against firearms is being reopened next Monday evening when Town Hall holds a forum on “Gun Violence as a Public Health Crisis.” Already, Seattle-area gun activists are planning to attend the gathering, which begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Great Hall on Eighth Avenue in downtown Seattle. It’s a joint effort by Town Hall and the University of Washington School of Public Health. There is perhaps no surprise in the firearms community that none of the...

A Democrat precinct volunteer in Oak Harbor has acknowledged to Examiner that opponents of guns in city parks are trying to pack the city council meeting next Tuesday specifically to keep gun rights activists out. Gun rights activists and gun control proponents are expected to square off over the right to bear arms under the state constitution and state preemption statute. The situation in Oak Harbor has gotten national attention because of this video, in which a city councilman left the last council meeting because a citizen in the audience was armed. Pam Fick, a 20-year Oak Harbor resident and...