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Petition: "Dear Georgia Legislators, I am pleased to be a citizen of Georgia, a consistent voter and a proud firearm owner. Thank you for your overall support of my right to bear arms last year by passing HB 89. I am grateful to have representation like you in the Georgia General Assembly. With my signature on this petition, I pledge support to HB 615, which is a bill that aims to restore my right to bear arms in Georgia. I would be very grateful of your favorable vote on this legislation when you have the opportunity."

18:28 PDT SACRAMENTO -- People buying ammunition in California will soon have to be thumbprinted and dealers will have to keep records of sales, under legislation that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law. More News After vetoing similar bills three times since 2004, Schwarzenegger signed AB962 by Assemblyman Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, on Sunday, saying he now believes it will promote public safety. The measure is California's first statewide regulation of ammunition sales. It survived close votes in both the Assembly and state Senate and strong opposition from gun-rights organizations, which succeeded in stripping a provision that would have...

As we reported in last week's Grassroots Alert, the U.S. Supreme Court will soon hear the landmark Second Amendment case of McDonald v. Chicago. The case will address the application of the Second Amendment to the states through either the Due Process clause or the Privileges or Immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case has major implications for the legality of restrictive gun laws not only in Chicago, but also in other cities and the states across the nation. The decision to hear the case gives hope to Second Amendment advocates across America, that this fundamental freedom will be...

SARASOTA - The city that guards its bayfront against ugly bridges and homeless boaters made way for a gigantic smooching sailor on Tuesday night. Related Links: Sarasota resident Jack Curran, center, salutes those who give him a round of applause at a public hearing on whether to accept his donation to keep the "Unconditional Surrender" statue. STAFF PHOTO / E. SKYLAR LITHERLAND After a spicy two-hour public hearing, commissioners voted 3-2 to accept a World War II veteran's donation of the 26-foot-tall "Unconditional Surrender" statue. Much of the controversy was over one of the strings that the donor, Sarasota resident...

We just received an update on the next step in the battle against the U.S. Customs and their proposal to revoke earlier rulings that assisted opening knives are not switchblades. To recap, the proposal would not only outlaw assisted opening knives, but its overly broad new definition of a switchblade would also include all one-handed opening knives and most other pocket knives! If you have not been keeping up with the news surrounding the legislation, we invite you to read these posts, which will get up to speed. U.S. Representatives will be back in D.C. right after Labor Day and...

"Once upon a time . . . " Sometimes it seems that news reports about guns or gun owners should begin with that phrase. Those four short words would inform readers that while the story to follow will be presented as fact, it is really fiction, or better said, a myth or a fable. Unfortunately, non-truths, through constant repetition, have come to displace facts in the public dialog about guns in America. Some of these fables, as many fables do, started out with a grain of truth, but were later misrepresented and twisted to serve a particular political purpose. Others...

WALLINGFORD - A usually quiet mobile home park was shaken Friday morning when about 15 officers from the U.S. bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and local police descended on one of their neighbor's homes with force. "They had their guns drawn and were surrounding the house," said Jennifer Monroe Lynne Boynton, of 15 Hosford Bridge Road, went to her husband's truck for coffee money at about 6 a.m. and was pushed to the driveway and handcuffed with an officer's knee in her back and a gun to her head. ATF officers surrounded her father-in-law's home at Western Sands...

A principal and an athletic director are facing criminal charges for a lunch-time prayer. Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against Pace High School in Santa Rosa County, Florida. The ACLU claimed some teachers and administrators were endorsing religion, but the school chose to give in to the ACLU's demands rather than fight them in court. According to the settlement, all school employees are banned from engaging in prayer or religious activities before, during, or after school hours. Now two school officials are facing criminal charges for offering meal-time prayers at an appreciation dinner for adults...

INTER-AMERICAN CONVENTION AGAINST THE ILLICIT MANUFACTURING OF AND TRAFFICKING IN FIREARMS, AMMUNITION, EXPLOSIVES, AND OTHER RELATED MATERIALS THE STATES PARTIES, AWARE of the urgent need to prevent, combat, and eradicate the illicit manufacturing of and trafficking in firearms, ammunition, explosives, and other related materials, due to the harmful effects of these activities on the security of each state and the region as a whole, endangering the well-being of peoples, their social and economic development, and their right to live in peace; CONCERNED by the increase, at the international level, in the illicit manufacturing of and trafficking in firearms, ammunition, explosives,...

El Salvador has officially joined the Red regimes of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia. South America is turning Red, dark Red, and little is being said to alert North Americans of the encroaching Red plague. Perhaps that's because North America is moving in the same direction. The President of the United States has surrounded himself with socialists, and some of those closest to him have had a part in turning South America Red. According to the Associated Press (March 17, 2009), Mauricio Funes, the presidential candidate of the Farbundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) is the new head of...

You've got to wonder what Governor Corzine's political handlers are thinking these days. Amidst an epic financial crisis, they've apparently decided that portraying the Governor as a gun banner is a distraction needed to win re-election. But they haven't done their homework and have picked a discredited issue fabricated by the gun ban lobby that's going to badly misfire and embarrass the Governor, not only for what it focuses on, but also for what it ignores. Since winning the Democratic gubernatorial primary on June 2, the Governor has been publicly pressing to ration the Constitutional right of law-abiding citizens to...

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report this week entitled, "Firearms Trafficking: U.S. Efforts to Combat Arms Trafficking to Mexico Face Planning and Coordination Challenges." Among other things, the report asserts that Mexican officials consider illicit firearms the number one crime problem affecting their country's security; that about 87 percent of firearms seized in Mexico and traced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATFE) in the last five years originated in the United States; and that these firearms are increasingly more powerful and lethal, including "high-caliber and high-powered" AK-47 and AR-15 type semi-automatic rifles. The...

Employers Unnerved by Ruling Upholding the Legality of Guns in Workplace Parking Lots A new ruling by a federal appeals court means managers in a growing number of states must accept what, for many, is a troubling reality---their employees have the legal right to keep guns in their cars at work, even with layoffs on the rise and economic tensions running high, said attorney James P. Anelli, an attorney in LeClairRyan's Labor and Employment Group. On February 18, the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, in Ramsey Winch v C. Brad Henry, reversed a District Court ruling, thereby upholding an...

On Wednesday, June 3, the National Rifle Association filed a petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of NRA v. Chicago. The NRA strongly disagrees with yesterday's decision issued by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, holding that the Second Amendment does not apply to state and local governments

General Motors Corp. has struck a deal to sell its Hummer truck unit to a Chinese industrial business, the two companies confirmed Tuesday. Privately owned Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company Ltd., based in China, will acquire the truck brand, which has been part of GM since 1999. Tengzhong said it plans to keep Hummer's management team. "We plan to ... allow Humer to innovate and grow in exciting new ways under the leadership and continuity of its current management team," said Yang Yi, chief executive of Tengzhong. Yang said the deal "will allow Hummer to better meet demand for...

Video of Sotomayor saying that a Latino woman would be a better Justice than a non-Latino man. Also a petition to Obama to withdraw her nomination.

[[Page 6115]] Presidential Determination No. 2009-15 of January 27, 2009 Unexpected Urgent Refugee and Migration Needs Related To Gaza Memorandum for the Secretary of State By the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, including section 2(c)(1) of the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1962 (the ``Act''), as amended (22 U.S.C. 2601), I hereby determine, pursuant to section 2(c)(1) of the Act, that it is important to the national interest to furnish assistance under the Act in an amount not to exceed $20.3 million from the United States Emergency Refugee and Migration...

It's official--Chrysler has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Now the long task of sorting out the good from the bad at the storied automaker, with the added task of joining hand in hand with Italy's Fiat Group to build a new Chrysler with a new range of small cars. You might have questions about shopping for a new Chrysler today, and those are easy to answer. Yes, you're safe to buy--the government says it's going to back your warranty. Yes, Chrysler will be here in its current form for a while; Chapter 11 doesn't mean it will be going...

Iowa's top court legalized same-sex marriage Friday, giving advocates a victory beyond the liberal coastal states into the more conservative American interior. The supreme court justices drew explicit parallels to civil rights struggles by blacks and women, holding that the state's ban on same-sex marriage was a violation of the equality promised in the Iowa constitution. "If a simple showing that discrimination is traditional satisfies equal protection, previous successful equal protection challenges of invidious racial and gender classifications would have failed," the court said in its ruling. This past week, legislators in both Vermont and New Hampshire have passed bills...

Back in the early 1990s the outlook for the nation in general and gun owners in particular seemed rather grim to many people. A few years earlier in 1986, Congress had banned civilians from owning newly manufactured machine guns. There was ever more strident talk of banning semi-automatic weapons or so called assault weapons. Many of us regarded a semi-automatic rifle as the foundation of a home defense battery. Many of us believed that more laws banning ever more types of guns were imminent. About that time I acquired a Ruger Ranch Rifle through a private sale. I decided to...