Free Republic

On July 1, 2025, in the Southern District of California, Federal District Judge, the Hon. Cathy Ann Bencivengo ruled that the State of California must modify their law to allow non-residents to apply for concealed carry permits. The logic is clear. At the time of the founding, there was no requirement banning non-residents from carrying weapons for self-defense. Judge Bencivido stated: The sole issue in this case is whether the Constitution requires California to allow nonresidents to apply for a concealed carry weapons (CCW) license. Plaintiffs, who are not California residents, complain that they are prohibited from carrying a firearm...

A man in the midst of an armed robbery and carjacking spree was shot dead when he confronted a concealed carry license holder in Humboldt Park on Tuesday night. Chicago police have not publicly identified the deceased criminal, but Cook County Medical Examiner records show he was 18 years old. Investigators found a recently carjacked Toyota at the shooting scene, along with robbery proceeds that had just been taken from two women in a nearby armed robbery, leading them to conclude that the concealed carry holder ended a robbery spree in progress. Just 18 minutes before the shooting, around 10:30...

Besides being an unspeakable crime, Thursday’s shootings at Florida State University in Tallahassee reinforced one invaluable lesson: Supposedly well-meaning laws aimed at stopping what leftists prefer to call “gun violence” are about as useful against criminals as cloth masks are against an infinitesimally small and potentially deadly virus. They don’t do the job, but they make ideologues feel good about themselves. ... In the wake of the 2018 Parkland high school shooting that killed 17 (and gifted the nation the perpetually irritating David Hogg), Sunshine State lawmakers passed a measure limiting gun purchases to those 21 years of age or...

On March 1, 2023, Governor Jim Justice of West Virginia signed SB 10, the Campus Carry Act into law. The law goes into effect on July 1, 2024. Governor Justice was enthusiastic about signing the new law. He proudly described his growing up in West Virginia and told a story about hunting grouse with a 20 gauge shotgun, which was repaired by one of the people in attendance at the ceremony. West Virginia is the 12 state to remove bans on the carry of weapons at institutes of post-secondary education. Numerous members of the West Virginia Citizens Defense League (WVCDL)...

President Donald Trump has begun his war against Democrat-dominated, left-wing California, according to the New York Times, enacting six policies against the state in the space of just 24 hours last week.The Trump administration waited to take on Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), initially, because of the devastation of the January 7 wildfires in Los Angeles.However, that did not stop Newsom from spending $50 million to fight Trump, even while asking for federal aid.The Times reports on what happened next — on Thursday, March 26:The U.S. Education Department announced early in the West Coast morning that it would challenge a major...

On January 30, 2025, Governor Albert Bryan Jr. stated a new policy of restoring Second Amendment rights should be attempted in the United States Virgin Islands. If it happens, it will be an extraordinary reversal in policy. The United States Virgin Islands have the most restrictive firearms laws in the United States. They are more restrictive than Hawaii or the District of Columbia. From the viconsortium.com: “I think the Virgin Islands gun policy has totally failed,” said Governor Albert Bryan Jr., speaking during Wednesday’s exclusive interview with the Consortium. He was responding to a question about how the territory could...

The Kenosha County Eye has noted a lawsuit filed by Milwaukee man Kenneth Karwacki in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Division. The lawsuit is against Josh Kaul, the Attorney General of Wisconsin for denial of civil rights, 28 U.S.C.§§ 1331 and 1343. The office of the AG refused to issue a permit to carry a concealed weapon because of a misdemeanor conviction of Karwacki for the delivery of peyote while in the U.S. military. Records published online show a United States Air Force Criminal Court of Appeals convicted Airman First Class Kenneth J....

A look at Bastinelli Knives’ FBag for Cross-Body Carry of a Handgun and a Knife. Story and Photos by P Pawela We first wrote about Bastien Coves and his company Bastinelli Knives back in January 2021. Since then, his popularity as a custom knifemaker has skyrocketed. Coves’s knives have been featured in half a dozen popular action movies, and while that is an intriguing reason to purchase one of his products, I’m more concerned about who uses these knives for real-world purposes. That said, I have confirmation that Bastinelli knives are being used in the intelligence and special operations...

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that a decades-old ban on federally licensed firearms dealers selling handguns to people aged 18, 19 and 20 is unconstitutional. In a unanimous ruling, the three-judge panel on the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals slammed the Biden administration’s attempt to argue that the handgun ban was in line with the “nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” — a test for gun laws set by the Supreme Court’s landmark 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen. ... “Ultimately, the text of the Second Amendment includes eighteen-to-twenty-year-old...

Kostas Moros@MorosKostasAmericans with CCW Permits Almost Never Commit Crime. When the landmark Bruen ruling was first published in June of 2022, politicians in the few remaining holdout states that did not issue concealed carry permits ("CCW permits") to regular citizens had a meltdown. New York Governor Kathy Hochul called it "outrageous", California Governor Gavin Newsom saidit was a "radical decision", and New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin described it as "bad constitutional law and even worse for public safety." Gun control groups were also apoplectic. Giffords claimed the ruling would would "escalate gun violence", "spur unlawful militia activity", "embolden those...

URBANA, Ill. (WAND) — Police said a road rage incident has ended with a driver in intensive care after being shot. Around 4:30 this afternoon, UPD went to the intersection of Busey Ave. and Park St. for a shooting with injuries. Police said they were made aware the shooting stemmed from a road rage incident that happened near Five Points and continued through Busey Avenue and Park St. A female driver and a male passenger engaged in a verbal fight with another man driving by himself. The female driver followed the car into Carle Hospital's emergency department parking lot, then...

No one will ever mistake the Second Circuit Court of Appeals for a gun-friendly bunch of jurists. So that should be a good indicator of just how over the line the violation of one man’s rights was that they have slapped down a cop for conducting a warrantless search of his car simply because he had a concealed carry permit and a gun.A three-judge panel also ruled that the cop in question isn’t entitled to qualified immunity because he so egregiously chose to violate the civil rights of someone without any discernible probable cause.Waterbury, Connecticut Officer Nicholas Andrzejewski conducted a...

Campus carry for self-defense will become illegal in Colorado when SB24-131 takes effect on July 1, 2024. On April 20, 2015, Breitbart News noted that campus carry had been the law of the land in Colorado since 2003. There had been no mass shootings, and, apart from one incident in which a Colorado University employee accidentally discharged a gun, there were zero crimes by permit holders during those first 12 years. A Google search conducted on June 24, 2024, found the story had not changed — there have still been no mass shootings on a Colorado college/university campus, and no...

More good news out of the Northern District of Texas. Judge Reed O’Connor has issued a rulling in Mock v. Garland vacating the ATF’s byzantine rule that effectively bans pistol braces. You know…the same pistol braces the ATF had previously said were perfectly fine. Back before the Biden administration waged a war on gun owners, their rights, and companies that make legal products those people want to buy. This comes the same week the decrepit but still rabidly anti-gun president was trundled out of the White House and propped up behind a podium at Everytown’s “Gun Sense University” meeting of...

Generally, it’s best to go about one’s business as unobtrusively as possible, relying on situational awareness and solid knowledge of use of force law to avoid ever having to draw or fire one’s handgun. Among the perennial controversies in the firearm world is whether concealed or open carry is best. Circa 2024, open carry is widely allowed: State laws regarding open carry fall into several categories: permissive, permissive with restrictions, licensed open carry states, and those in which open carry is prohibited. Permissive states allow non-prohibited citizens to open carry without requiring a permit or license. Most states fall into...

Colorado Democrats are pushing an 11 percent excise tax on gun and ammunition sales, as well as numerous other California-style gun controls. There is a public hearing on the excise tax proposal today, and Colorado Springs firearms instructor Ana Flanell is urging the public to rally against the tax. On Easter Sunday she posted to X: “Join me at the Capitol tomorrow to testify against this “sin” tax. Self-defense is our right and we should not be taxed an outrageous 11% to exercise our Second Amendment rights. I’ve included a screenshot below of what to select when signing up. Let’s...

CHICAGO — Prosecutors say two Chicago men robbed a construction crew, exchanged gunfire with an off-duty sheriff’s deputy at the scene, fled, then returned to fire another shot, only to have one of the victims pull out a gun and open fire on them, too. No injuries were reported. And, according to court records, one of the men was eyed as a suspect in a series of robberies last fall but ended up being charged only with a misdemeanor. He’s also on “first-time weapon offender probation” for a 2022 gun case. The robbery occurred on March 1 in the 11500...

There's only so much outrage left in the tank on a sunny Friday afternoon, but wow this is just insane in the membrane. An independent investigation into the school shooting at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas was commissioned by the city of Uvalde in 2022. Yesterday, the results of the investigation were released to the public during a city council meeting. The gist of the new report is that police on the scene did nothing wrong. Former Austin Police Department detective Jesse Prado examined the actions of each Uvalde police officer as they responded to the deadliest school shooting...

CHICAGO (WLS) -- A would-be robbery victim with a concealed carry license got into a shootout with a suspect on the Far North Side early Tuesday morning. The 23-year-old man was walking in the 5400-block of North Winthrop Avenue in the city's Edgewater neighborhood just after 4:20 a.m., when a white sedan and dark-colored SUV approached, CPD said. A male suspect got out of one of the cars, pulled out a gun and demanded the man give him his belongings, police said. The victim, who has a Firearm Owners Identification card and CCL, also pulled out a gun, and there...

Almost two years after a shooter murdered 21 people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the Department of Justice released a 575-page report on Thursday. The document confirmed what we already knew from Texas’ report last July. The police made serious mistakes and shouldn’t have waited outside the classroom. There is one big difference between the two reports. The Justice Department report starts its executive summary by emphasizing that the attack used “an AR-15 style assault rifle.”