Free Republic

February 24, 2009, 4:00 a.m. Stick to Your Guns, SenatorGiving in to the anti-gun lobby will not help Kirsten Gillibrand stay in office. By Dave Kopel What should Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand do about guns? As a two-term U.S. representative from upstate New York, she had a perfect pro–Second Amendment voting record. A week ago, she admitted to Newsday that she kept two rifles under her bed for family defense. This has not sat well with the gun-prohibition crowd, although when Newsday put the question to a reader vote, 97 percent did not mind her owning guns for this purpose....

October 30, 2008, 7:00 a.m. Gunning for VictorySecond Amendment voter guide. By Dave Kopel In a very tough election climate for Republicans, the good news is that the gun issue is increasingly non-partisan. We can see this every day in the Senate, where Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is friendlier towards the Second Amendment than was Republican Senate majority leader Howard Baker in the 1980s. We can also see this in the potential results. The very worst-case scenario for the Second Amendment is -7 in the Senate, and -26 in the House. This would be a terrible outcome,...

This weekend, I attended and spoke at the Second Amendment Foundation’s annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, which was held at a convention center in northern Kentucky, a few miles away from Cincinnati. What I saw and heard there changed my mind about the viability of Ron Paul’s presidential candidacy; Paul is going to far outperform the expectations laid out for him. First, for some background: twenty years ago, the Second Amendment Foundation (the second-largest pro-Second Amendment group in the U.S.) began sponsoring an annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, in conjunction with other pro-gun groups, including the NRA. For a full...

There are many articles which have pointed out the distortions, falsehoods, and lies in the film Fahrenheit 9/11. This report compiles the Fahrenheit 9/11 deceits which have been identified by a wide variety of reviewers. In addition, I identify some inaccuracies which have not been addressed by other writers. The report follows the approximate order in which the movie covers particular topics: the Bush family, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. This report focuses solely on factual issues, and not on aesthetic criticism of the film. To understand the deceptions, it helps to understand Moore’s ideological position. So let us start...

Fifty-six Deceits in Fahrenheit 911   By Dave Kopel   [This is a preliminary version of an article that will be published on National Review Online.This report was first posted on the web on the morning of July 1. Since then, I've revisedseveral sections in response to reader requests for clarifications, and have added additionaldeceits which have been pointed out by readers or journalists. Astute readers will observethat the number of identified deceits now exceeds 56. I have not retitled the report or re-numbered the original 56 deceits. The final version will update the deceit count.] There are many articles which...

There are many articles which have pointed out the distortions, falsehoods, and lies in the film Fahrenheit 9/11. This report compiles the Fahrenheit 9/11 deceits which have been identified by a wide variety of reviewers. In addition, I identify some inaccuracies which have not been addressed by other writers. The report follows the approximate order in which the movie covers particular topics: the Bush family, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. This report focuses solely on factual issues, and not on aesthetic criticism of the film. To understand the deceptions, it helps to understand Moore’s ideological position. So let us start...

[This is a preliminary version of an article that will be published on National Review Online.] There are many articles which have pointed out the distortions, falsehoods, and lies in the film Fahrenheit 911. This report compiles the Fahrenheit 911 deceits which have been identified by a wide variety of reviewers. In addition, I identify some inaccuracies which have not been addressed by other writers. The report follows the approximate order in which the movie covers particular topics: the Bush family, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. This report focuses solely on factual issues, and not on aesthetic criticism of the...

Kopel: Crown jewels: UK newspapers Aside from a few unworthies, Great Britain's dailies offer some fine reading May 10, 2003 I spent last week in London and Oxford, where I got to see up-close some of the crown jewels of Western civilization: the newspapers of Great Britain, many of which would make an excellent supplement to the newspaper diet of a well-informed Coloradan. The most obvious difference between the leading British newspapers and their U.S. counterparts is that the major British papers are all national (like The Wall Street Journal or USA Today over here). The major British papers offer...

Joyce Malcolm’s, a professor of history at Bentley College, new book, Guns and Violence: The English Experience, details how the English lost their right to bear arms in the 20th century, and how violent crime has spun out of control — far exceeding American levels — as the British government has forbidden the use of weapons for self-defense. For decades, American antigun advocates have pointed to England as their gun-control utopia. Now it appears that the most repressive gun laws in the Western world appear to have created a dystopian crime epidemic abetted by a civic culture of passivity and...

Italians move toward protecting self-defense. Unnoticed by the establishment media in the United States, Italy is taking big steps towards greater protection of fundamental human rights, as it looks to significantly change old laws that have infringed the right of self-defense. In Italy, the Minister of Defense, Antonio Martino, recently announced his support for private gun ownership. “Gun control disarms law-abiding citizens, not criminals,” he said. Martino, who was a professor before becoming defense minister, observed that gun laws only affect the law-abiding, not criminals: When gun-control laws were passed, I neither saw any member of the Mafia giving up...

Unnoticed by the establishment media in the United States, Italy is taking big steps towards greater protection of fundamental human rights, as it looks to significantly change old laws that have infringed the right of self-defense. In Italy, the Minister of Defense, Antonio Martino, recently announced his support for private gun ownership. "Gun control disarms law-abiding citizens, not criminals," he said. Martino, who was a professor before becoming defense minister, observed that gun laws only affect the law-abiding, not criminals: When gun-control laws were passed, I neither saw any member of the Mafia giving up his shotguns, nor any terrorist...

If there's a good chance that your job will kill you, does the Americans with Disabilities Act give you a legal right to the job? The Supreme Court is deciding that question this term, in the case of Chevron v. Echazabal. If the Supreme Court follows Justice Scalia's preferred approach to statutory interpretation, employees are going to have a right to speak literally when they say "This job is killing me." If you don't like the result, blame Congress, not the courts. The case begins in 1972, when Mario Echazabal went to work at a coker unit at a Chevron...