Free Republic

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683   Newspapers Gush Over Bloomberg's Latest Gun Control Escapade   Friday, October 09, 2009   Bathed in camera flashes during a "news conference" on October 7, 2009, New York City's mayor, Michael Bloomberg was in his element in announcing "a wide-ranging undercover investigation by the City of New York into illegal gun sales" that revealed "a willful disregard of the law" by "74% of gun show sellers." Or, so he claimed.  The ego-driven multi-billionaire's publicity stunt was neither "wide-ranging" nor representative of what occurs at gun shows, nor was it intended to be. ...

Stings were conducted at seven gun shows in Tennessee, Ohio and NevadaInvestigators hired by New York City conducted stings at gun shows in states that have not closed the "gun show loophole'' and found some vendors openly selling weapons to buyers who admitted they couldn't pass background checks. The stings, described in a city report released Wednesday, were conducted at seven gun shows in Tennessee, Ohio and Nevada. Those states are among the many that permit private unlicensed dealers, known as "occasional sellers," to sell weapons at gun shows without conducting background checks. Some 30 weapons were sold to NYPD...

Program paid $200 to anyone who turned in a gunNew York City officials say 919 guns were collected during a one-day buy-back program at six Queens churches. Watch Video Nearly 1000 guns were taken off the street in Queens Tuesday. The program paid $200 to anyone who turned in a gun. A pellet or BB gun was worth $20. The officials say they paid a total of $158,880. The weekend buy-back results were announced Tuesday by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. Since last summer, similar programs in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Staten Island...

A federal appeals court panel has ruled that a defamation case brought by gun store owners against New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg should proceed in Georgia's Cobb County Superior Court, not federal court. Finding that the federal courts don't have jurisdiction over the matter, the Dec. 19 ruling by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the lawsuit be sent back to Marietta, where it was filed originally. Jasper lawyer Edwin D. Marger, who represents the gun store and its owners, said his clients "absolutely" have a better chance of prevailing on their defamation suit in Cobb County...

Business owners who leave their doors open while an air-conditioner is running are about to face a fine for the offense. The City Council is poised to approve new legislation on Thursday that would bar stores from keeping their doors open when air-conditioners or central cooling systems are in use. Any store or restaurant in violation of the new rule will first be issued a written warning and charged fines for subsequent violations. The second time within an 18-month period that a business is found to be violating the law, a fine of $200 would be charged by the city...

BELLEVUE, Wash. — Georgia gun dealer Jay Wallace's decision Monday to default on a lawsuit by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and carry his case to an appeals court, was the right move because of genuine concerns he could not get a fair trial before federal judge Jack B. Weinstein, the Second Amendment Foundation said today. SAF has been the largest single contributor to Wallace's defense against the rogue lawsuit filed by Bloomberg, following the anti-gun mayor's infamous vigilante sting operation in 2006. SAF founder Alan Gottlieb concurred with Wallace's attorney, John Renzulli, that "There was no chance for a...

In a surprise turn of events on the eve of opening arguments, New York City prevailed Monday in its public nuisance lawsuit against Georgia gun dealer Adventure Outdoors when Eastern District of New York Judge Jack B. Weinstein granted the city's motion for a default judgment. The ruling gave the city a victory in the most high-profile case in Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's fight against the dealers of guns used in crimes within the city. Of the 27 original defendants, three have now defaulted, 20 settled, three won dismissal and one is scheduled to go to trial in September. The...

When Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg stood at City Hall two years ago to announce that he had just filed suit against several gun shop owners, mainly in the South, it was in a certain fashion the capstone of a signature campaign. Mr. Bloomberg had already bashed the industry in several angry speeches, gone to Washington to pressure congressmen and lobbyists, and made his war against illegal guns a personal crusade. Now, however, Mr. Bloomberg is likely to answer verbally — and literally in person — for his personal crusade. City officials said on Wednesday that he was virtually certain to...

Lawyers for Mayor Bloomberg are asking a judge to ban any reference to the Second Amendment during the upcoming trial of a gun shop owner who was sued by the city. While trials are often tightly choreographed, with lawyers routinely instructed to not tell certain facts to a jury, a gag order on a section of the Constitution would be an oddity. “Apparently Mayor Bloomberg has a problem with both the First and the Second amendments,” Lawrence Keane, the general counsel of a firearms industry association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said. The trial, set to begin May 27, involves...

Wal-Mart recently announced that it will be video-taping its gun sales and creating a computerized log of purchases for reference when a firearm is used in a crime. Wal-Mart clerks would thus be alerted and could refuse to make another sale. The recorded images will also be made available to law enforcement as part of any investigation. The move seems to be an understandable, even commendable a step toward plugging any leaks in the system. And, in fact, it might have been universally heralded if it weren't tied to an organization called Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which was founded and...

Fairfax, VA-The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act proved the basis for today’s dismissal of a lawsuit by the City of New York against the American firearms industry. This lawsuit by the City of New York and Mayor Michael Bloomberg sought to hold manufacturers responsible for the criminal misuse of firearms. “Today’s dismissal of this bogus lawsuit against America’s firearm industry is an important victory,” declared Chris W. Cox, executive director for the National Rifle Association (NRA). “New York City’s lawsuit was a politically motivated attack by an anti-gun mayor to bankrupt a lawful industry.”

A federal appeals court threw out New York City’s longstanding lawsuit against the gun industry on Wednesday, ruling that a relatively new federal law protects gun makers against such suits. The appellate ruling killed perhaps the boldest avenue by which the city has sought to stem the flow of illegal guns into New York: a claim that gun makers and distributors have knowingly flooded illicit, underground markets with their weapons. The city’s suit, filed in 2000, was upheld in December 2005 by Judge Jack B. Weinstein of Federal District Court in Brooklyn. Judge Weinstein allowed it to move forward, despite...

Hartford police officers recovered about 400 illegally acquired firearms last year. Those weapons didn't pop up out of thin air. People who owned or had access to legal firearms either lost them or sold them to convicted criminals, the mentally ill and other people who were unauthorized to own guns. Many violent urban crimes and college campus shootings could be prevented if Congress would pass laws to impose foolproof methods of stopping legal guns from getting into the wrong hands. Unfortunately, efforts to pass such laws are often thwarted by the powerful National Rifle Association gun lobby on grounds that...

On Monday, March 3rd, I was proud to join New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and six other state legislators from around the country to announce a new coalition, State Legislators Against Illegal Guns (SLAIG), at a press conference in Jacksonville, Florida. The six founding members of the new group pledged to enlist their colleagues in state legislatures across the country in an effort to identify common sense policies that will help to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. The lawmakers who joined me for the announcement represent suburban, rural and urban districts from around the country, and...

BALTIMORE (AP) -- In a new tactic against urban crime, the mayors of several East Coast cities, including New York, plan to launch a database that will allow them to share information on known gun offenders. The database, expected to be operational later this year, will pool data from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives with information collected by local agencies, including ballistics information and intelligence gathered from debriefings of gun offenders. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon and other urban leaders said Wednesday that the first-of-its-kind database will make it more difficult for...

A federal judge in Brooklyn ruled on Friday that the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg did not break the law in conducting sting operations meant to catch out-of-state gun dealers making illegal sales. The ruling, by Magistrate Judge Cheryl L. Pollak of Federal District Court, followed lawsuits brought by the city against the dealers in the mayor’s campaign against illegal gun trafficking. In 2006, the city sent teams of private investigators to five states, where they posed as gun buyers. They focused on stores whose guns had been linked to more than 500 crimes in New York City from...

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took a rare, veiled swipe at his predecessor yesterday, challenging Rudolph W. Giuliani’s assertion that a lawsuit Mr. Giuliani filed as mayor against gun manufacturers had changed so much that he may no longer support it. Saying that the case had “not changed at all” since its inception, Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at a news conference at City Hall, “We believe that it’s a good case, and we hope to win it.” Last week, Mr. Giuliani, a Republican candidate for president, told the National Rifle Association that the suit had “taken several turns and several twists...

A NARROWLY divided Congress will vote in the coming days on whether to renew legislation that stops the federal government from sharing with local police departments and prosecutors crucial information about guns used in crimes. The Tiahrt amendment, first passed in 2003, prohibits Washington from releasing crime data about guns that used to be provided to state and local law enforcement. If House members reauthorize the measure, they will harm efforts to curtail gun violence in this country. When a gun is recovered from a crime scene, the police ask the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to...

Last year at the annual conference of the Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA), I caused a little ripple in the Force when I reported on a news event sponsored by the American Hunters & Shooters Association (AHSA), a new group that bills itself as an alternative gun-rights organization with “a real agenda to preserve our Second Amendment.” By ‘alternative,” the group means--and are not shy about saying it--they plan to compete head-on with the four-million-member National Rifle Association (NRA). You can review the articles, here and here, but in brief, the NRA does not welcome the competition, and some...

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683   Continue To Urge Support Of Tiahrt Amendment   Friday, June 01, 2007   For more than five years, cities suing the gun industry and anti-gun organizations have sought access to confidential law enforcement data on firearm traces — records that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) compiles when it traces firearms in response to requests from law enforcement agencies.  Every year since 2003, the U.S. Congress has passed increasingly strong language to keep this information confidential. The legislation—a series of "riders" to the appropriations bill that funds BATFE—is...