Free Republic

A legal battle that began before the iPhone was invented ended Thursday as the Indiana Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from the city of Gary over a ruling that killed a lawsuit against 11 gun manufacturers. The city initially filed its suit in August 1999 seeking not just money for alleged damages caused by the gun manufacturers’ “negligence,” but also for the court to order the manufacturers, including Smith and Wesson, Glock and Beretta, to take various measures that anti-Second Amendment groups had not been able to achieve via legislation. In a statement released Thursday, Brady United, formerly...

MIAMI – Florida is expanding its school safety playbook to colleges and universities under a new law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, prompted in part by last year’s active‑shooter incident at Florida State University. DeSantis signed HB 757, calling it a continuation of a years-long push to harden campuses and tighten threat response. “We implemented the most far‑reaching school safety program anywhere in the country,” DeSantis said, noting that “just since 2019, we’ve invested $3.1 billion in student safety.” The law requires public colleges and universities to adopt active assailant response plans, establish threat management teams, conduct annual security risk...

New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport is continuing the lawsuit against Glock that her predecessor Matthew Platkin filed last year, and her latest move in the litigation has Second Amendment groups crying foul. As part of the state's discovery process, Davenport has sent subpoenas to FFLs in the Garden State demanding they produce records related to every Glock handgun that's been purchased in their stores over the past decade. In an alert on the NRA-ILA website, the 2A group points out that Davenport already has access to this information, since New Jersey’s pistol permitting system operates as a de facto...

The National Rifle Association is suing Virginia Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger for her signing of a measure to make illegal the buying, selling, importing, manufacturing and/or the transfer of assault weapons in the state. The NRA filed lawsuits in both federal and state courts, arguing the law is unconstitutional. Supporters argue the legislation removes "weapons of war" from the streets, making Virginia safer from violence, but opponents argue the law punishes law-abiding citizens, WRIC reported. “As promised, we are taking Abigail Spanberger to court," the NRA, the Second Amendment rights group said in a statement. "Throughout the legislative session, the...

Capital One, the corporate banking giant, has an advertising tagline that asks, “What’s in your wallet?” For one Maryland gun shop, the answer to that question appears to be a banking giant that ignores a White House executive order and dismisses Treasury Department regulations that forbid banking discrimination. Capital One Financial Corporation has been in business since 1994 and the McLean, Va., international banking giant with over $475 billion in assets boasts that it offers credit cards, auto loans, checking and savings accounts and commercial banking services. That is, unless the customer happens to be a firearm retailer. Just ask...

Gun owners have won a significant victory in Maryland, with the state Supreme Court tossing several gun control ordinances adopted by Montgomery County in the wake of the Bruen decision in 2022. Maryland legislators passed their own Bruen response bill after the state's "may issue" concealed carry permitting system was ruled unconstitutional by SCOTUS, but Montgomery County's measures were even more restrictive. The Maryland Supreme Court opinion is thick with legalese and citations to various sections of code that can make it a little difficult to understand the scope of its decision, but the 2A group Maryland Shall Issue provided...

BELLEVUE, Wash. — April 27, 2026 — Plaintiffs have filed a motion for summary judgment in Roberts v. ATF, one of the Second Amendment Foundation’s (SAF) three supported lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the National Firearms Act’s (NFA) registration requirements for short-barreled firearms and silencers. Until President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the NFA established a $200 tax and registration regime on certain classes of firearms including silencers and short-barreled rifles, purportedly drawing from Congressional authority to levy taxes. After the One Big Beautiful Bill eliminated the $200 tax on those arms, SAF and its partners filed...

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth signed a memorandum directing military installation commanders to allow War Department personnel — namely, uniformed service members — to request to carry privately owned firearms while in their nonofficial duty capacity on DOW property within the United States."Before today, it was virtually impossible … for War Department personnel to get permission to carry and store their own personal weapons aligned with the state laws where we operate our installations. … Well, that's no longer," Hegseth said during a social media video released today."The memo I'm signing today directs installation commanders to allow requests for personal...

FORT WORTH, TX – The Second Amendment Foundation and the Firearms Policy Coalition filed a federal lawsuit on March 27, 2026, challenging the ban on carrying firearms inside buildings operated by the National Park Service, including visitor centers, ranger stations, and fee collection facilities. The lawsuit, Zimmerman v. Bondi, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. It targets 18 U.S.C. Section 930(a), the federal law that prohibits knowingly possessing a firearm in a federal facility, as applied to buildings within national parks. The suit also challenges a regulation that allows individual park superintendents to...

Arizona Senate Bill 1424 has passed the Senate and has passed the House Education Committee and the House Rules Committee. The bill requires school districts and charter schools to provide age-appropriate firearm safety awareness training in all grades, kindergarten through 12th grade. The instruction is to be objective and not promote firearms ownership or any political position. The instruction is to be limited to accident prevention and personal safety awareness. It is to include guidance on safe firearms storage in homes and vehicles. The instruction is to provide guidance on what to do if a firearm is encountered, including not...

In a public statement released Monday, Sturm Ruger said Beretta is attempting to “stealthily” gain control of it through discounted share purchases and strategic board appointments. Ruger further alleged its proposals for a collaborative business relationship with Beretta were rebuffed, and that the company threatened to “go to war” if its takeover demands were not met. “Beretta sought to buy Ruger stock at a 15% discount from Ruger in a private placement and to obtain disproportionate board representation and voting power that would give it near-veto power over important matters,” the company said. “Ruger’s board will continue to protect Ruger’s...

Russia has sentenced an American man to five years in prison for illegally transporting weapons, a court said Monday, noting that a rifle was found on his yacht after it docked in the port city of Sochi last June. Russian media said he smuggle the weapons on his private yacht from July 2024 — June 2025. Dozens of Westerners, including Americans, have been imprisoned in Russia, especially after the start of the Ukraine war in 2022, with many of them later swapped in prisoner exchanges. "A U.S. citizen was found guilty of illegally transporting and moving firearms," the regional court's'...

A federal appeals court on Friday struck down California’s ban on openly carrying firearms in most parts of the state, ruling the restriction violates the Second Amendment. In a 2-1 decision, a panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with gun owner Mark Baird, finding that the state’s prohibition on open carry in counties with more than 200,000 residents is unconstitutional. About 95% of Californians live in those counties, which have been subject to some of the nation’s strictest gun-control laws. Why It Matters The ruling partially reverses a lower court’s 2023 decision that upheld...

An Oklahoma man who was doing target practice with a recently purchased handgun in his backyard on Christmas Day is accused of shooting and killing a woman seated on a front porch blocks away as she held a child in her arms, authorities said. The woman, identified as Sandra Phelps, was sitting with family members under a covered front porch at a home in Comanche, about 90 miles southwest of Oklahoma City, on Thursday afternoon when she was struck in her right arm by what appeared to be a single bullet, an affidavit said. Phelps was holding a child in...

The New Zealand government is working to reform its complex and draconian firearms law.In 2019, a far-left ideologue mass murdered dozens of Muslims in New Zealand. One of his goals was to promote draconian gun laws in New Zealand and in the United States. He succeeded in New Zealand. Many extreme restrictions on firearms and ownership were piled onto already restrictive laws.Far Left PM Jacinda Ardern was successful in pushing through the draconian law on a wave of media maximized emotion. As part of the pushback to these draconian exercises of power, the Hon. Nicole McKee was elected as a...

A federal appeals court has overturned the gun conviction of a man who had failed to pay child support, saying that sort of crime shouldn’t have cost him his gun rights for the rest of his life. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday in a 2-1 decision that as long as he was current in his payments, his past felony conviction doesn’t automatically make him too dangerous to society to possess a firearm. “So there’s no historical justification to disarm him at that moment — never mind for the rest of his life,” Judge James Ho, a...

Police say the 53-year-old man was cleaning his shotgun when his dog accidentally set it off, shooting him in the lower back.SHILLINGTON, Pa. — A 53-year-old man shot in the lower back by one of his dogs is expected to survive, police say. The shooting happened Tuesday, Nov. 11 around 11 p.m. in Shillington, Pennsylvania. Shillington Police Department Captain Michael Schoone said the man was cleaning his shotgun when one of his dogs jumped on the bed and the gun went off."He's not sure what stage of cleaning he was in at the time, so it's unsure if the dog's...

1. The Tax Law That Now Finds Itself Without a TaxIn the recent discourse around the potential removal of suppressors and short barrel rifles from the provisions of the National Firearms Act (NFA) and its tax and registration requirements, a point made repeatedly was that if the tax was repealed but the registration stayed, the latter would be illegal as it was only ever justified by the former.This is indeed correct, as from its inception, the NFA was justified as a tax, with the registration being incidental to that tax and only existing ostensibly to ensure the tax was properly...

ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents in Laredo, Texas, arrested a father and son accused of smuggling hundreds of firearms, including rifles, magazines and ammunition into Mexico after Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers discovered hidden compartments in two trailers at the U.S.-Mexico border. On Oct. 23, CBP officers working at the Laredo Bridge 2 Port of Entry stopped two southbound vehicles towing box trailers for inspection. Agents said they noticed irregularities in the trailer walls. A secondary inspection revealed false compartments packed with an arsenal: roughly 400 firearms of various calibers, high-capacity magazines, and thousands of rounds of ammunition....

ICE has arrested an illegal immigrant in the Chicago area who was serving as a local police officer. Radule Bojovic was taken into custody as part of the ongoing Operation Midway Blitz. Per Real America’s Voice’s Ben Bergquam, Bojovic, an illegal immigrant from Montenegro, was arrested on October 15 in the Chicago suburb of Hanover Park. Bojovic reportedly overstayed his B-2 visitor visa and had been required to leave the country by March 31, 2015, but did not. Bojovic provided his employment identification card to authorities upon his arrest, which confirmed that he was a member of the Hanover Park...