Free Republic

While researching bear-human conflicts, two additional incidents were found in which Slovaks used handguns to successfully defend themselves against European brown bears (Ursus arctos). Slovakia is one of the Central European countries that has adopted statutes allowing people to legally carry handguns for self-defense and the defense of others. The areas of both attacks are located about 20 km north of Banská Bystrica, in central Slovakia. On March 30, 2024, a young man was searching for mushrooms in a dense forest in the Žilina district, near the village of Stráňavy. He was off the hiking trail when a brown bear...

The United States has publicly confirmed for the first time that it has weapons deployed in orbit. The revelation could accelerate spending on missile defense, military satellites and space security, creating opportunities for defense stocks and space ETFs while raising the risk of a costly new arms race. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink delivered the news almost casually during the Air, Space & Cyber Conference in Maryland. “We are increasing readiness against existing threats, and the United States has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action,” Meink said. Then the details stopped. Meink...

Gun owners do not carry firearms only because violent criminals exist. Bears, mountain lions, feral dogs, rabid animals and other four-legged threats do not care about gun-control politics—and they do not wait for police or animal-control officers to arrive.A newly published national firearms survey from Georgetown University professor William English estimates that Americans use firearms defensively against animal threats roughly 180,000 times every year.English’s new 2026 National Firearms Survey is a detailed, 75-page follow-up to his widely cited 2021 work. The survey began with 51,398 American adults and identified 16,688 respondents as gun owners through a two-stage validation process.The paper...

YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CAbZRpy4tQ Excellent interview of Palmer Luckey.

At a conference I attended recently in DC, I had the chance to show a lot of my colleagues around the downtown monuments. For them, many from other countries, seeing the Lincoln, the Washington, the Capitol, was once in a lifetime – for me, it was Tuesday. At one point, a German in the group – fatigue in his voice – asked me, “Tell me… How can Americans keep voting for Trump?” The term Trump was shorthand for Americans’ embracing nationalism and rejecting globalism, which seems oh-so backwards to our European cousins. I think he expected me to dance around...

President Donald Trump's war against Iran is stretching the limits of U.S. aircraft carriers and leaving the western Pacific without one of the key American warships as China shows more signs of aggression. The USS George Washington is departing the Pacific and expected to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East amid growing concerns about mental health and supply issues aboard the long-deployed carrier. *** .*** The administration says that the Pacific is supposed to be the most important behind the Western Hemisphere,” said Greg Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program***. Instead, the U.S. is "doing the...

The shooting was reported at 2:30 p.m. at the In-N-Out in Twin Falls.At least three people were killed, with reports of two injured.The shooter is among the dead. This was a picture of him:One more video:A nearby civilian in a hat was also recorded firing back across the parking lot at the shooter.Zero clue who this champ is or what kind of pistol he was packing. 👇

On April 18, 2026, a mass murderer killed seven people in Kyiv, Ukraine. He took hostages and barricaded himself in a supermarket. Two police officers fled the scene. He killed the victims with a legally registered firearm. The killer was 58 years old. Police attempted to negotiate for an hour before storming the position and killing the murderer.One day later, on April 19, 2026, Ukraine’s Interior Minister, Ihor Klymenko, expressed support for relaxing Ukraine’s controls on firearms, allowing citizens to possess firearms, including handguns, for self-defense. Klymenko promised the mass murder would not be used to conduct mass checks of...

A LinkedIn post shared by George Kollitides, head of the Pentagon’s Economic Defense Unit (EDU), gives it a more troubling meaning. The post by a mining executive described Washington as the “state as limited partner” and declared that “sovereign backing is now a competitive variable.” Companies receiving federal equity investments or debt guarantees, it says, “will have easier access to offtake agreements, permitting support, and follow-on institutional capital.” Meanwhile, “projects without state alignment will face higher hurdles, regardless of grade or jurisdiction.” Those words came from the mining executive, but Kollitides chose to amplify them. Read alongside Feinberg’s warning, they...

After its unmanned vessels recently drew attention in the Iran war, Saronic Technologies, a shipbuilding start-up, announced on Thursday that it would open a new facility in the United States to make both naval and commercial ships. Saronic’s chief executive, Dino Mavrookas, said the company would break ground this year on an 850-acre shipyard in Brownsville, Texas, and begin building vessels there by 2028. Last month, the U.S. military used a Saronic drone boat to rescue the two-person crew of a downed Apache attack helicopter off the coast of Oman. This week, three of its vessels were used to attack...

The United States has taken delivery of 2,000 Ukrainian F10 attack drones after manufacturer F-Drones secured a Pentagon contract during the opening phase of the Drone Dominance program. The shipment follows Ukraine's first official export permit for completed combat drones, marking a notable change from earlier approvals covering mainly technologies, components, or accessories. The delivery also comes as the Pentagon advances the next stage of its broader $1.1 billion Drone Dominance initiative aimed at expanding domestic and allied unmanned capabilities.

Francken just had a bad idea and acted on it. In today’s NATO summit in Turkey, Belgium is one of the lowest-investing countries in the alliance – and now, its Defense Minister has gone on a limb against Donald J. Trump because of his social media spat with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken is aware that Europe needs the U.S. to defend the continent, and he thinks the alliance leaders should be careful not to alienate Trump. While the Trump-Meloni spat escalated on Sunday with the US President posting a photo of Meloni, joking that...

Russia has begun using a new autonomous version of its Molniya strike drone in Ukraine, adapting the cheap fixed-wing attack UAV to hit targets without the control antenna that made earlier models vulnerable to electronic warfare, Defence Blog reported, citing an advisor to the Ukrainian Defense Minister Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov on July 3. The new variant was identified after a Russian Molniya struck a Ukrainian facility and was later found without the usual antenna used for operator control. Ukrainian radio technology specialist Beskrestnov said the drone carried only a camera and an onboard computer, suggesting a different strike profile. Instead...

Victor Davis Hanson’s defense of the Second Amendment is not merely academic. In a Dec. 6, 2025 episode of Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words, the historian and Hoover Institution senior fellow recalled a late-night confrontation at his family farm that he says permanently shaped his view of armed self-defense. The episode was published under the title “Why Alvin Bragg Refuses To Recognize the Awesome Power of the Second Amendment.” Hanson is best known as a classicist, military historian, and conservative public intellectual. The Hoover Institution has described him as the author or editor of 24 books and hundreds...

Luigi Mangione has apparently abruptly scrapped the psychiatric defense he planned to use at his upcoming trial in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. “The defense respectfully withdraws CPL 250.10 notice at this time,” the accused killer’s lawyers wrote to Judge Gregory Carro in Manhattan Supreme Court. The letter — which refers to the specific part of New York’s criminal code — could mean that Mangione no longer plans to claim he was overtaken by an “extreme emotional disturbance” when he gunned down Thompson on a Midtown sidewalk in December 2024. But one experienced Big Apple defense attorney said...

The Pentagon artificial intelligence chief on Monday said Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot is tantamount to national security in a sworn statement that noted xAI’s technology has been used throughout the Iran war. Cameron Stanley, the chief digital and artificial intelligence officer for the Department of Defense, wrote that the chatbot “enabled U.S. forces to deploy over 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours during Operation Epic Fury, a testament to the greatly increased operational efficiency made possible by the Grok Gov Model.”Stanley’s statements were used as evidence in efforts by the Trump administration to preserve the xAi data...

TULSA, Okla. (KOKH) — Authorities say a suspect is recovering after being shot by a store clerk following a threat with a machete. Around 8 a.m. on Thursday, officers with the Tulsa Police Department responded to a shooting call at Naifeh's Food Mart, located in the 200 block of N. Mohawk Blvd. When police arrived, they found 61-year-old Donald Lockridge sitting outside the store. They soon realized he was suffering from a gunshot wound to the hip, and he was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Investigators learned that Lockridge walked into the store with a machete and...

An effort by Tyler Robinson's defense team to keep evidence against their client under wraps failed this week. The judge handling the case refused to restrict cameras from an upcoming hearing. Why does this particular hearing, currently scheduled for next month, matter? Because prosecutors are expected to release a bunch of new evidence against Robinson.Mr. Robinson’s defense has sought to close other hearings in the Utah trial, keep motions and evidence under seal and restrict news coverage of the case, arguing that the intense media attention will lead to negative publicity, prejudicing potential jurors and denying Mr. Robinson’s right to...

Governor Bill Lee has signed Tennessee Bill SB1847 into law on May 22, 2026. The bill reforms the law on restrictions of the use of deadly force, allowing some uses of deadly force to protect property in certain circumstances.Tennessee Bill SB1847 started out as a significant expansion of the legal use of deadly force in Tennessee. The bill would have made the use of deadly force in defense of property legal for a broad swath of issues, including trespass. In the Legislative process the bill was amended to specify the use of deadly force would be legally acceptable in fewer...

As tensions with Iran once again push the US toward the possibility of further involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts, a novel brand of anti-interventionism has swept American politics. After two decades of costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both the populist right and progressive left have grown more willing to question the assumptions underpinning American military engagement abroad. Politicians as ideologically diverse as Thomas Massie and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez now openly criticize interventionist foreign policy, while public fatigue with the post-9/11 wars has become increasingly visible across the political spectrum. Yet even as Americans tire of foreign interventions, cuts to the...