Free Republic

Attorneys General Forum held at the 2026 SHOT Show The Attorneys General Forum was held at the 2026 SHOT Show on January 21, 2026. Eight Attorneys General were present. From left to right, they were: Montana AG Austin Knudsen (wearing cowboy hat); Missouri AG Catherine L. Hanaway; Iowa AG Brenna Bird; West Virginia AG John B. McCuskey; Kansas AG Kris Kobach; Louisiana AG Liz Murrill; Arkansas AG Tim Griffin; and Florida AG James Uthmeier.The discussion started with a question about the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, the PLCAA.Montana’s AG, Austin Knudsen, answered: Yes, the Supreme Court had made...

A man has registered a potato as a silencer with the ATF.

A court ruled on Thursday that a Harrisburg city ordinance allowing the mayor to place restrictions on firearm use and possession during a state of emergency can be challenged even if those parts of the ordinance have never been enforced. Joshua First, Howard Bullock and Michelle Stolfer, who either lived in or visited Harrisburg during any of the city’s four most recent emergency declarations, have grounds to challenge the ordinance in court, per the order signed by the Commonwealth Court. The emergency ordinance in question allowed the mayor to declare a state of emergency and choose whether to implement a...

This Thursday, January 08, at night, the Sectorial Vice President for Politics, Citizen Security and Peace, Diosdado Cabello Rondón, during a tour of the streets of Caracas, stressed that Venezuela is in peace He argued that Venezuela is at peace, “and one of the fundamental reasons that Venezuela is at peace, and peace is guaranteed, is that the Venezuelan State has a monopoly on weapons.” In this regard, on a broadcast of Venezolana de Televisión, he highlighted that he was meeting a group of officials from the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence (DGCIM) and the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN)....

A federal appeals court ruled Friday that California's ban on openly carrying guns in most parts of the state is unconstitutional. A panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided 2-1 with a gun owner in ruling ‍that the state's prohibition against open carry in counties with more than 200,000 people violated the ‍Constitution's Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. About 95% of California residents live ⁠in counties of that size. The state has had some of the nation's strictest gun control laws. U.S. Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke said the Democrat-led state's law could...

Albanese said he would propose new restrictions, including limiting the number of guns a licensed owner can obtain.Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Monday proposed tougher national gun laws after a mass shooting targeted a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney's Bondi Beach, leaving at least 15 people dead. Albanese said he would propose new restrictions, including limiting the number of guns a licensed owner can obtain. His proposals were announced after the authorities revealed that the older of the two gunmen — who were a father and son — had held a gun license for a decade and amassed his six...

Since January 2025, over 250 attorneys—roughly 70%—have left, been reassigned, or accepted deferred resignation offers from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, signaling an unprecedented weakening of the agency responsible for enforcing federal civil rights law. This mass exodus follows the appointment of Trump ally Harmeet Dhillon, who has refocused the division’s priorities toward conservative causes such as voter fraud investigations and curbing transgender rights, while sidelining traditional civil rights enforcement in areas like housing discrimination, education, and police oversight. Entire sections, including Voting Rights and Title VI enforcement, have been reduced to fewer than five attorneys—or none...

Legal conservatives find themselves in an unusual position: originalism has reached unprecedented acceptance within the judiciary and the bar. A majority of Supreme Court justices—including at least one appointed by a Democratic president—identify as originalists, or at least strive toward originalism. Guided by the original understanding of those who ratified the Constitution and the Reconstruction Amendments, the High Court has overruled Roe v. Wade, ended the use of race in higher education, and recognized the individual right to own firearms. But some find these successes disorienting. Originalism’s victories have triggered an important debate among conservatives. Some wonder if originalism is...

Licenses Delayed, Rights Denied is a scholarly article that informs readers of the means six outlier states use to deny ordinary citizens their rights to keep and bear arms. The article is another excellent example of scholarship by Mark Smith, member of the Supreme Court Bar, distinguished Second Amendment scholar, and host of the Four Boxes Diner on YouTube. He is also a contributor at AmmoLand.com. The article has been published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy: Per Curiam, Fall of 2025, No. 23. The six states that are actively working to undermine the Bruen methodology are...

Amale entered a 7-Eleven in Oklahoma City just before midnight Thursday and tried to buy burritos, beef sticks, and ice cream with a counterfeit $100 bill, according to a KOKH-TV news video. But the female clerk wasn't buying the con. What's more, the clerk said she was calling police, KWTV-DT reported — and she refused the male's demand that she give him back the counterfeit bill, Gary Knight of the Oklahoma City Police Department added to the station. Then the thug reportedly got violent. .....he grabbed his hands around my neck, and pushed me out of the counter space." Knight...

1. The Tax Law That Now Finds Itself Without a TaxIn the recent discourse around the potential removal of suppressors and short barrel rifles from the provisions of the National Firearms Act (NFA) and its tax and registration requirements, a point made repeatedly was that if the tax was repealed but the registration stayed, the latter would be illegal as it was only ever justified by the former.This is indeed correct, as from its inception, the NFA was justified as a tax, with the registration being incidental to that tax and only existing ostensibly to ensure the tax was properly...

Breitbart News noted that Walz began pushing for a special gun control session shortly after a transgender male attacked Minneapolis’ Annunciation Catholic school on August 27, 2025. After mentioning a special session, Walz attempted to pressure Republican lawmakers into supporting an “assault weapons” and complained when they would not. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) has dropped his focus on a special gun control session after his push for an “assault weapons” ban fell flat in the legislature. CBS News reported Walz saying, “If we’re going to hold a special session on safety of our children and safety of our streets...

Judge Reed O’Connor, a Chief United States District judge in the Fifth Circuit, has determined the ban on possession and carry of arms in common use in Post Offices and on property owned by the Post Office is an infringement on the rights protected by the Second Amendment. From the decision: The Court determines that both 18 U.S.C. § 930(a) and 39 C.F.R. § 232.1(1) are inconsistent with the principles that underpin this Nation’s regulatory tradition. Thus, they are unconstitutional as-applied to carrying firearms inside a an ordinary post office or on post office property.The decision was published on September...

Mark W Smith with the Defender of Gun Rights of the Year for 2025 award, presented to him at GRPC 2025 in Salt Lake City. The 40th Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC), was held at the Salt Lake City Marriott on September 26-28, 2025. Registration on site started on Friday, with a reception Friday night starting at 7 p.m. These receptions are always interesting. Attendees are able to hobnob with movers and shakers among Second Amendment supporters.On Friday, before the GRPC registration, media was invited to attend a separate but related event, the AMM*Con, a Second Amendment Media Workshop. The...

The federal case against Gabriel Metcalf in Billings, Montana, under the federal Gun Free School Zone Act of 1990 (GFSZ), has been resolved in Metcalf’s favor. In a split decision, the three-judge panel on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ordered the case remanded to the district court and has ordered the case dismissed. From the Summary by Judge VanDyke (purchased on PACER account): The panel reversed the district court’s order denying Gabriel Cowan Metcalf’s motion to dismiss an indictment charging him with possessing firearms within 1,000 feet of a school in violation of the Gun-Free School...

WICHITA COUNTY (KFDX/KJTL) — Six women who were arraigned on federal charges related to the shooting of an Alvarado police officer at an ICE detention center on July 4, 2025, were being held in the Wichita County Jail on Tuesday. Jail records show that the following inmates were booked into the Wichita County Law Enforcement Center on Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025, all of whom are currently in custody on a federal hold: Savanna Batten, of Joshua Joy Gibson, of Dallas Maricela Rueda, of Fort Worth Elizabeth Soto, of Fort Worth Lynette Sharp, of Watauga Rebecca Morgan, of Dallas Federal...

Open carry of handguns as of September 10, 2025 The number of states that ban the open carry of firearms has again been reduced to five. Before 2022, it was four, but New Jersey criminalized open carry, even with a permit, in 2022. New Jersey permit requirements and processes for obtaining a permit are being challenged in the courts. Connecticut banned open carry in 2023, making six states that generally banned open carry. Open carry with a permit is allowed in some rural parts of California. The California ban is being challenged in the Ninth Circuit.On September 10, 2025, Florida’s...

Last week, the city of Sacramento spent $2.6 million to retain the services of controversial AI technology that tracks the location of gunfire, an expense that other cities across the nation have rejected. “We believe that ShotSpotter is a crucial piece of (technology)… and we’re seeing a positive result from the use of these dollars,” said Zachary Bales, deputy chief of the Sacramento Police Department, at the city council meeting where the contract was approved.

Türkiye Today reports that continued excavations at the site of Cavustepe Castle revealed a remarkable cache of projectiles ready for use by Urartian soldiers around 2,700 years ago. The recent investigation focused on a storage facility and area known as the "upper fortress." As the team began removing layers of sediment from within one structure, they uncovered a collection of egg-sized slingshots. Some had been gathered from a nearby riverbed, while others had been made from clay. While individual slingstones have sometimes been discovered at other Urartian sites, Van Yuzuncu Yil University archaeologist Rafet Cavusoglu said, this find is exceptional...

The bill to restore silencers/suppressors to legal status in Guam was introduced by William A. Parkinson on January 15, 2025. Senator Parkinson is a Democrat in Guam. Nine of the fifteen senators in Guam are Republicans. Ten votes are needed in the Guam legislature to override a governor’s veto. If all 9 Republican senators in the Guam legislature vote for the bill with Senator Parkinson, they could override Governor Guerrero’s veto. That is what happened on July 31, 2025. The legislature had previously passed legislation to restore legal status for suppressors/silencers in 2021, but Governor Guerrero had vetoed the bill....