Free Republic

A DW investigation has found that protest groups in various US states against recent coronavirus lockdown measures were set up by conservative gun lobbyists. The coordinated effort seems to be driven by the apparent long-term aim of building a larger base of support for gun law relaxation. This comes after thousands of people across the US organized online and started to demand an end to stay-at-home orders. Protest organizers claim on their Facebook pages that the lockdown restrictions are a result of “politicians on a power trip,” who they allege are “destroying our businesses, passing laws behind the cover of...

Every Democrat in the Virginia state legislature voted against a pay raise for members of Sheriff’s Departments apparently as payback for their defense of the Second Amendment. Virginia State Senator Bill Stanley slammed the “hypocrisy” of Democratic legislators after his attempt to amend the state budget last week to include the pay raise failed and told WTVR he was “absolutely shocked.”

(...) Following the on-air shooting of two television reporters in Roanoke, Virginia, she declared: “I feel just great heartache at what happened. I want to reiterate how important it is [that] we not let yet another terrible instance go by without trying to do something more to prevent this terrible killing that is stalking our country.” She added: "We have got to do something about gun violence in America — and I will take it on." She said the same thing back in July, in an obvious shift away from avoiding Second Amendment issues during the presidential campaign to avoid...

A day after President Barack Obama visited the Washington Naval Yard, site of the nation's latest mass shooting, local and federal officials called on citizens across the country to form a coalition large enough to battle the powerful gun lobby. At a roundtable discussion at the Margaret Morton Government Center in Bridgeport on Monday, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said he and other senators will only be able to take on the gun lobby and pass stronger gun laws if people throughout the nation speak up. "What makes the NRA strong is that they can mobilize tens of thousands of...

At an organising breakfast for National Rifle Association (NRA) grassroots activists, Samuel Richardson, a man with whom I have not exchanged a word, passes me a note. "Please read the book Injustice by Adams," it reads. "He was [sic] lawyer for US Justice Department who prosecuted Black Panther Case." Quite why Richardson thinks this book is for me is not clear. There are six other people at the table, a couple of them journalists. The fact I am the only black person in a room of around 200 may have something to do with it. J Christian Adams, a former...

EDITORIAL OBSERVER For devoted foes of gun control, September was a banner month. It opened with Congress ignoring pleas from every major national police group to let the hard-won 1994 ban on assault weapons expire, and ended last week with the House approving a loony measure repealing Washington's strict gun laws. And that's not all. In between reinstating every hunter's sacred Second Amendment right to nail Bambi with an AK-47, and mischievously meddling in local affairs to pass a one-chamber bill to weaken public safety in the nation's capital, the National Rifle Association and its busy-beaver allies quietly scored another...

The National Rifle Association is basking in the glow of a series of legislative victories in the General Assembly this year, including a bill that prosecutors fear would alert gun traffickers about investigations into weapons they have owned. The NRA and Illinois State Rifle Association have successfully lobbied to shoot down gun-control measures Mayor Daley pushed this year. But they especially riled police and prosecutors with the passage of House Bill 515. Under the bill awaiting Gov. Blagojevich's signature, an agency requesting a firearms trace must notify the subject of the check when criminal proceedings begin or in 60 days...