Free Republic

One theory about defending against bear attacks is this: Defenders must be careful not to shoot a bear without immediately killing it, because wounded bears are more likely to attack. The theory has been put forward for many decades. One of those who put the theory up for consideration was Stephen Herrero in his book, “Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance“. On page 241 of the 1985 edition, Herrero writes: Of course, if an aggressive bear actually attacks you or a companion, a firearm may be a lifesaver, or it may cause a wounded bear to intensify its attack. Herrero...

“He walked in the room and he was like, kind of like nervous. He’s like, ‘Is this ROTC or is this seminar?’ I don’t know who it was, but somebody in the front was like, ‘Yeah, that was ROTC.’ And as soon as that person said, ‘Yeah,’ he drew his gun. Yelled allahu akbar and started shooting my professor.” Video Transcript & Summary

At least 11 people are known to have died after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in western Afghanistan. Provincial officials originally said four people had been killed in the attack in the Enjil district of Herat province on Friday, but later said that seven more people who were critically injured had also died. No group has claimed responsibility so far. "Unidentified armed men" riding motorcycles opened fire near the village of Deh Mehri, an interior ministry spokesperson said. The recreational area is usually crowded on Fridays. A Herat doctor told the BBC that the victims - who were...

It's easy to be a 'Doomer' these days, and while the GOP hasn't been exceptional, the choices have never been clearer. Although it's far worse for the left than the right, it's difficult to feel positive about the future given the circumstances of today. While we have a president willing to take chances and look at the big picture, we have other politicians ostensibly on the pro-freedom side that act like risk-averse church mice, afraid of their own shadows and unwilling to implement measures that garner support from most of the electorate. They are contrasted by the cruel and violent...

Judge Roger T. Benitez, also known as “Saint” Benitez by supporters of the Second Amendment, has retired from federal service as of April 2, 2026. Judge Benitez was born in December 1950 in Havana, Cuba. He fled the Castro regime in Cuba in 1960 with his brother, speaking only Spanish at the time. His family was reunited and eventually settled in the Imperial Valley of California. Judge Benitez graduated from the Central Union High School in El Centro, California, then obtained an Associate’s degree from Imperial Valley Community College in 1971, a Bachelor of Arts degree from San Diego State...

A North Carolina woman played a prank on her convicted felon boyfriend that made him believe she cheated on him - but it backfired horribly after he took her seriously. Shyhied Ivey, 20, shot at a packed car with five people inside on April 5 in Charlotte after his girlfriend, Nevaeh Covington, decided to pretend that she was romantically involved with another man, according to an affidavit reviewed by the Daily Mail. Officers with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department responded to Columbus Circle after being dispatched over a report of assault with a deadly weapon just after midnight. Covington told police...

One person has been killed and multiple people injured during a mass shooting at a New Jersey Chick-fil-A. The horror unfolded at the restaurant in Union Township on Saturday night, sending terrified patrons scrambling and the business into lockdown. At least six people were shot after gunfire erupted at around 8.40pm inside the crowded establishment, according to RLS Media. A local living a block away told the Daily Mail that they could hear 'a ruckus' as well as sirens blaring hours after the shooting ended. The father of a Chick-fil-A worker said his son told him multiple armed suspects in...

Approximately 1,350 union workers at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Independence, Missouri, are escalating their strike against Olin Winchester as they demand better wages and stronger contracts. Members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local 778 have been on strike since April 4 after overwhelmingly rejecting a contract offer from company management. ... The IAM Local 778 negotiating committee met with company representatives earlier in the week. The company indicated it would provide future dates to continue discussions. The Lake City Army Ammunition Plant is a critical facility in the U.S. defense industrial base. Workers...

nti-liberty/gun cracktivists find themselves stuck on recycling old, failed narratives because there is really nothing new in the distortions and lies they tell in trying to obliterate the Second Amendment. Among those failed narratives is microstamping, a nonsensical measure about which I last wrote in Microstamping And Zombies, 2024 in June of 2024 at my home blog. Microstamping is laser engraving a unique, identifying code on the tips of firing pins which will “stamp” that code—letters, numbers, etc—on the primers of fired cases. Some microstamping schemes also demand a second stamp elsewhere on a fired case. California has always been...

The National Instant Criminal Background Check System numbers for March 2026 are in, and they show the same pattern gun owners and industry watchers have seen before: the raw FBI total and the NSSF-adjusted figure are telling two different stories.According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the March 2026 adjusted NICS figure came in at 1,412,917, up 1.9 percent from March 2025. At the same time, the unadjusted FBI total fell to 2,212,094, down 10.5 percent from 2,470,705 a year earlier.NICS is being used for more and more background checks, which are not directly related to firearm sales. Chief among...

A maniac slashed three elderly people with a machete in an unprovoked attack and was fatally shot by cops at Grand Central Terminal Saturday morning — causing mayhem that sent commuters fleeing the iconic station, police and witnesses said. An 85-year-old man and a 65-year-old man were slashed in their heads on the 4, 5, 6 subway platform at at 9:50 a.m., police said. A 70-year-old woman was also slashed, but it wasn’t clear where on her body, cops said. Two NYPD detectives confronted the 44-year-old and told him to drop the machete. He ignored their commands and was shot...

On April 2, 2026, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth issued a memo directing installation commanders to respect the Second Amendment rights of our service members on United States Military installations. Hegseth noted the Constitution is there to protect the rights of all Americans, including the rights of service members, which are protected by the Second Amendment. The current policies in place in the United States military made it virtually impossible for service members to be able to carry arms for their own protection unless they were military police or in some training exercises. Installation commanders have had the authority to...

"A man fatally shot a central California sheriff’s deputy Thursday morning as he was being served an eviction notice, prompting a standoff that ended with authorities fatally running him over with a vehicle after he fled the home."

A terrifying attack on an Indianapolis city councilman’s home has ignited fears that mounting opposition to the data centers that power artificial intelligence is taking an increasingly violent turn. Ron Gibson, who is serving his third term on the Indianapolis City-County Council, said someone fired 13 shots into his front door early Monday – and left a handwritten note that said “NO DATA CENTERS”. That was just days after Gibson attended a Metropolitan Development Commission meeting to support a data center project, one the developer said would be used at least in part for AI, in a local neighborhood —...

On June 26, 2025, Governor of Rhode Island (D) Dan McKee signed into law a ban on the manufacture, purchase, sale or transfer of certain firearms. The firearms affected were semi-automatic shotguns with fixed magazine capacity exceeding six rounds, shotguns with revolving cylinders, and semi-automatic rifles with fixed magazine capacity exceeding ten rounds. In addition, the ban covers semi-automatic rifles which can accept a detachable magazine and which have any one or more of the following characteristics:folding or telescoping stockbayonet mountgrenade launchershroud which protects the non-trigger hand, except an extension of the stock on the bottom of the barrelpistol grip...

ICE agents had to take dramatic action this afternoon to save their own lives from an extremely violent illegal alien in California. As KTVU reported, ICE officers shot a person in Paterson who they suspected was an illegal immigrant gang member. This led to a partial closure of the I-5 freeway in Stanislaus County. Per KTVU, the illegal alien was wanted in connection with a murder in the city. Fox News’s Bill Melugin later revealed more information: the illegal alien was a known 18th Street gangster from El Salvador and was shot while ICE agents were trying to arrest him.

"Award him a life-saving award! He saved his own life! And he deserves it…."

A 22-year-old woman and her unborn baby were shot to death in a restaurant parking lot in Kentucky after she honked her horn at a man. Ava Woodcock died at University of Louisville Hospital on Tuesday after she was critically injured during a shooting the day before, which killed her unborn baby, according to the Glasgow Police Department, cited by Fox 10. Brandon Bond, 24, was arrested for allegedly shooting the pregnant woman. He was charged with murder, first-degree fetal homicide, and first-degree fleeing or evading police. Woodcock, who was the mother of a one-year-old, pulled into Annie's Restaurant parking...

National Association for Gun Rights warns the move could derail momentum toward a U.S. Supreme Court challenge to “Assault Weapons” Bans and magazine bans nationwide. A growing controversy is unfolding after the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, signed onto a Department of Justice brief seeking to revisit a major pro-Second Amendment ruling from the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. The case, Benson v. United States, recently resulted in a three-judge panel striking down Washington, D.C.’s magazine ban, marking a significant legal victory for gun owners and a potential stepping stone toward broader challenges to “Assault...

The Trump Administration, via the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), issued a Memorandum Opinion on January 15, 2026, pertaining to the general ban on the mailing of handguns by use of the Postal Service. The Memorandum declared the federal ban on mailing handguns to be unconstitutional. This was a significant step toward restoring rights traditionally protected by the Second Amendment. Our history is full of famous figures ordering firearms by mail, from Bat Masterson to President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1927, a federal law banning the mailing of handguns went into effect. It is widely regarded as the first federal firearms...