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ST PAUL, Minn. — Minnesota sheriffs issued more firearms permits in 2020 than in any other year, a newly-released state report shows. It matches up with a nationwide trend, which some experts attributed to the pandemic and to civil unrest after the killing of George Floyd. A report from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) shows that more than 96,000 permits were issued last year, the most since permits became legal in 2003 and nearly twice as many as were issued in 2019.

Democrats on Tuesday announced plans to re-up their push for new gun control measures, but they face a recently changed landscape of more people than ever, especially black people and women, buying firearms for protection. What’s more, the promoters of the package to expand FBI background checks are facing demands from liberals to do far more, including banning the sale of semi-automatic firearms and registering ammunition. In reintroducing the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Gun Violence Prevention Task Force Chairman Mike Thompson, and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler are hoping for a quick approval. Connecticut Sen. Chris...

The Great Northern Gun Grab is about to begin. The United States’ northern neighbor is bracing for a firearm confiscation. What would seem unthinkable just a couple years ago is now planned to radically shift gun ownership on America’s doorstep in just weeks. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that sweeping new gun control laws would be coming “in months” that would drastically change how firearms are controlled in Canada. The Liberal Party leader made the unilateral announcement that the government would confiscate more than 1,500 makes and models of firearms under an expanded “assault weapon” definition. It’s an estimated 150,000-200,000...

There is currently a lot of attention being paid to new Democrat-proposed gun control laws, particularly House Bill 127, which would require national registration and licensing of all firearms, would ban broad categories of semi-automatic weapons, ban most ammunition magazines, and so on. One of the most frequent replies to these proposed laws is that there are not enough local or federal SWAT Team door-kickers to go house to house on gun confiscation raids, and if they tried, they would 1. soon run out of door-kickers and 2. instigate Civil War Two. But in the modern digital era, I...

So what’s the matter with gun registration?(This is part of “Dear Mr. Security Agent,” written in 2013, and it is now part of “The Bracken Collection: Essays and Short Fiction, 2010 to 2019.”) To say that Turkey did not enjoy a smooth transition from being the seat of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, through World War I and into the modernist Ataturk era, would be a massive understatement. In those turbulent times, ethnic Turks, who were Muslims composing the vast majority of the population, considered their Christian minorities, especially the Armenians, to be disloyal and treacherous. In 1911, a national gun...

Screenshot from WISN, cropped and scaled by Dean Weingarten On Friday evening, 12 February, a group of about a dozen far-left protestors, allied with the DA’s office in Kenosha, called for the removal of Judge Bruce Schroeder, because the Judge followed the rule of law and refused to facilitate the political persecution of Kyle Rittenhouse.Rittenhouse is being tried for the self-defense shooting of three men who attacked him as he fled from mobs during the Kenosha riots. Judge Schroeder required the DA to follow the rule of law.Far Left activist Erica Ness, who is white, made these incendiary claims: From...

With Joe Biden, a strong advocate of strict gun control, in the White House, Democrats are hoping to enact radical gun control legislation that would eviscerate the Second Amendment. On January 4, 2021, the day after the swearing in of the new Congress, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee introduced a bill (H.R. 127) entitled the "Sabika Sheikh Firearm Licensing and Registration Act.” Her bill is named after a Pakistani exchange student who was killed in a mass shooting at a Texas school in 2018. The bill would require the federal licensing of firearm and ammunition possession under the jurisdiction of the...

...as early as next week...Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s (D-TX) H.R. 125 and H.R. 127. Combined, the bills call for licensing of all gun owners, psychological evaluations for gun owners, mandatory liability insurance for gun owners, the registration of all firearms, the registration of all ammunition, and a seven-day waiting period on all semiautomatic firearms purchases, among other things.

While ammunition exploding in the heat of a fire generally poses little to no risk to bystanders or firefighters, loaded firearms do. Case in point…a firearm that cooked off during recent house fire ground in Willard, Wisconsin, critically injured a firefighter. Justin Fredrickson, 35, has undergone multiple surgeries, but is expected to recover from the harrowing experience. From madison.com . . . Justin Fredrickson was extinguishing a house fire near Sheldon on Feb. 19 when he suddenly felt a pain in his stomach, according to Cornell Area Fire Chief Dennis Klass. “He was spraying water and he felt like...

Do we really want an ever more tyrannical government? ___________ For many residents of Amsterdam, the German invasion of May 10, 1940, came as a shock. “We were trapped,” said Lena Herzfeld, “along with one hundred and forty thousand other Dutch Jews.” “Unlike France and Belgium, which were placed under German military control, Hitler decided that the Netherlands would be run by a civilian administration,” writes Daniel Silva in The Rembrandt Affair. “He gave the job to Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart, a fanatical anti-Semite who had presided over Austria after the Anschluss in 1938.” “Within days the decrees began. At first,...

Of course, nothing comes close to the cost of a single shell used for the cannon originally designed for the U.S. Navy’s USS Zumwalt, which came in at an estimated $800,000 each and made the gun too expensive to operate. However, there still some are calibers that are so expensive that shooters may want to think twice before ever squeezing the trigger. When shooting these rounds you can expect that it will be a costly day at the range. (Note: many of the prices below could be much higher due to what seem like regional price increases due to the...

When the Framers put the Bill of Rights into place, they did so assuming that Americans were a fundamentally moral people. John Adams stated that explicitly, saying, "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." One element of this assumption was that the people could be trusted with firearms. Now, though, those in charge of the government presumptively assess Americans as immoral and untrustworthy.Immediately after the Framers created the Union, they passed the ten constitutional amendments that we call the Bill of Rights. The Framers understood these...

Image of Linda Ellis, a family photo from WRAL.com Screenshot, cropped and scaled by Dean Weingarten Between midnight and 1 a.m. on 13 February 2021, two young home invaders came to the door of 402 S. Williams St. in Goldsboro, North Carolina. The address is to a modest apartment complex, home of Linda Ellis, a 73-year-old grandmother.Ellis son, Randolf Bunn, answered the door. As he opened it the two suspects forced their way in. They forced Bunn to the ground. At least one of them had a gun. They barged into the kitchen, where they encountered 73-Year-Old Linda. They shot...

Mayor Jim Kenney (D) is responding to Philadelphia’s surge in gun violence by pushing for more gun control laws. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports “294 people” have already been shot in Philadelphia this year, with 76 individuals dying. Kenney blames the violence on what he views as a lack of gun control. He said, “We must stop the unabated flow of guns into our city.” Kenney is interested in laws requiring stolen guns to be reported within a set period of time, licensing requirements for gun owners, and limits on the number of guns Philadelphia residents can purchase. He claimed such...

Matt Bracken and Host Fernando Aguirre LIVE STREAM NOTIFICATION. The Modern Survivalist with Fernando Aguirre and guest Matt Bracken (Free Republic's Travis McGee) discuss cultural/economic instability, self defense, preparation and survival skills. The show starts live at 3PM EST. The broadcast usually lasts two hours. The show will be archived and can be viewed later at the same link.

On a summer evening inside Suburban Station in 2019, a transit police officer’s gun went off. It was a Sig Sauer P320, a model that SEPTA police started using in 2016 but that had also given rise to reports of misfires and lawsuits claiming the weapon was defective. Officer Craig Jacklyn’s Sig Sauer P320 was in its holster. His hands were not on the weapon when it fired, he says, and authorities would later conclude the gun discharged through no fault of his own.

Locked or looted: Littleton passes new law forcing gun store owners to lock-up inventory after-hours By: Russell HaythornFeb 26, 2021 LITTLETON, Colo. — Frustrated with increasingly brazen smash-and-grab gun shop burglaries, the City of Littleton has said enough’s enough. Littleton is the first city in Colorado to pass an ordinance requiring gun shop owners to lock up their inventory after-hours. The new ordinance is set to take effect this coming summer, but while some say city council hit the bullseye, others argue they are way off target. “It would be hard to believe that a city would want to put...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit yesterday vacated a 2020 decision that blocked California's ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. A federal judge in 2019 concluded that the law, which prohibits possession as well as manufacture and sale, was inconsistent with the Second Amendment. Last year a three-judge 9th Circuit panel agreed. Now the full court will rehear Duncan v. Becerra, raising the possibility that the ban will be upheld after all. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, the defendant in the lawsuit, welcomed that development. "Large-capacity magazines have been used in many horrific mass...

The woman, 25, said that when they were alone in his office, Gov. Andrew Cuomo asked if she “had ever been with an older man.”

City will pay gun-rights group about $150,000 for lawsuit over unconstitutional ordinance A federal court ordered Los Angeles to hand over more than $100,000 to the National Rifle Association after ruling that the city had violated the gun-rights group's First Amendment rights. Federal district court judge Stephen Wilson struck down a city ordinance aimed at punishing prospective contractors with ties to the NRA as an infringement on the right to free speech and association. On Tuesday, he ordered city officials to pay for the Second Amendment group's attorney fees, which totaled nearly $150,000. "In this case, the text of the...