Free Republic

Just a piece of cold steel I am a gun. I was designed primarily as a weapon of defense. I have been reviled, hated, feared and declared unlawful. Many have spoken out against me and have slandered my name and maligned my actions. Yet, I am but a cold piece of steel - I have no will or volition. I cannot aim or cause harm to anyone. While within me there lies awful potential, it requires an outside agency for it to come to completion. I have never killed, murdered or maimed anyone intentionally. But I have been used by...

Video shows aftermath of store owner shooting 2 robbery suspects The Associated Press PHILADELPHIA - A store owner shot two men who tried to rob him, killing one of them, in a confrontation that was partly recorded by a neighbor with a cell phone, police said. The two men entered the North Philadelphia store at about 6:40 a.m. Thursday and announced a robbery, after which the owner and one of the men exchanged gunshots, said city police Sgt. Ron McClane. A cell phone video shot by a nearby resident shows the aftermath outside the store, where the owner confronted one...

It is really beyond belief what is happening in New Orleans! < http://media.putfile.com/NewOrleansGunConfiscationSmall > US Second Amendmend, states: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." We need to restore and enforce adherence to the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights as the supreme protective law for firearms of law-abiding people. I can't stand this kind of gross breach of Constitutional Law, presently in New Orleans.

My fellow international writers and I, gathered here at the University of Iowa, are to take part in a public panel, each making a brief presentation and then all of us discussing the "Images of America" we will take away from our stay in the United States. Tricky business for me. I've been coming here fairly regularly for 30 years and right now the US seems to me to be more deeply in trouble as a society than at any time since the McCarthyism days of the 1950s. Even during the Vietnam War, a sense that young people would redeem...