Free Republic

In Twitter debates, people have no problem pointing to articles such as Newsweek’s: “White Supremacists Killed More Americans Than Muslim Extremists in Recent Years.” The article explains, “The mass shootings at a shopping center in El Paso, Texas, last August and at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand last March are just two high-profile examples [motivated by white supremacy].” But if you try to explain that this isn’t the whole story, you will get a warning from Twitter. On Saturday, after someone pointed to the Newsweek article, I responded that the El Paso and Christchurch murderers were both environmentalists/socialists who...

President Biden keeps telling Americans that gunmakers are “exempt from being sued. … This is the only outfit that is exempt from being sued.” Apparently, someone forgot to tell the Mexican government about that. Last week, the Mexican government sued several U.S.- gun makers, seeking $10 billion in damages. They claim that the companies are “conscious of the fact that their products are trafficked and used in illicit activities against the civilian population and authorities of Mexico.” Among those facing the lawsuit are well-known names: Smith & Wesson Brands, Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, Beretta USA, Glock, and Colt. The case was...

President Biden has had little trouble getting even his most controversial nominees confirmed. Democrats, including Montana Senator Jon Tester, have all voted in unison. Only Neera Tanden, Biden’s pick to head his budget office, faced bipartisan opposition. But with David Chipman’s nomination to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) possibly being determined by a single vote, Senator Tester continues to refuse to say how he will vote. Chipman, like Biden’s judicial nominees, is a radical gun control supporter. Yet, Tester appears to not wanting to upset national Democrats and is waiting until his vote no longer...

President Biden has had little trouble getting even the most controversial nominees confirmed. Democrats have voted in unison, with only Neera Tanden, Biden’s pick to head his budget office, facing bipartisan opposition. But the White House is pulling out all the stops to push through David Chipman’s confirmation to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). And Democrats want the vote to take place this week. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki claims that the largely Republican opposition to Chipman “speaks volumes to their complete refusal to tackle this spike in crime we’ve seen over the last...

If there was any doubt that President Biden wants to ban the vast majority of guns in the United States, he again clarified his position last week. “The idea you need a weapon that can have the ability to fire 20, 30, 40, 50, 120 shots from that weapon — whether it’s a — whether it’s a 9-millimeter pistol or whether it’s a rifle — is ridiculous,” Biden said at a televised CNN townhall meeting. “I’m continuing to push to eliminate the sale of those things, but I’m not likely to get that done in the near term.” The president’s...

Lott told me on the Adult in the Room podcast that he’d never heard of a dress rehearsal for a graduation– and he’s spoken at more than a few graduations. He offered to give them his talking points by phone, but they insisted that he be there in person because “there would be thousands of people [at the graduation], it’s just really important that everything go smoothly.” They also wanted him to change his rah, rah graduation speech to take on a decidedly more political tone. They asked him to include a discussion of Madison’s Second Amendment and criminal background...

I recently drove 950 miles to give the keynote commencement address at an online high school based in Las Vegas. Two thousand students were supposedly going to attend, but it turned out that the school didn’t exist. The fake high school and the deceptive editing of my speech weren’t the only falsehoods here. A gun control organization called “Change the Ref” hoodwinked news outlets worldwide to propagate a lie about how extensive gun violence is in the United States. The videos made from this address focus on the “lost class.” Specifically, “they are the 3,044 graduating high school seniors that...

I was honored to deliver a commencement address to a Nevada high school this month. But the school didn’t exist. It was a hoax perpetrated by gun-control activists.

The American media keeps telling us two “facts.” Voter ID laws are “racist,” and election fraud claims are “false” and “baseless.” The New York Times labeled state ID and voting laws as showing “the Republican Party’s growing discomfort with democracy” and “dangerously anti-democratic.” The Washington Post described it as an “anti-democratic virus.” But if these characterizations are correct, all of Europe and virtually all other developed countries must be anti-democratic as they have even stricter anti-fraud provisions than any US state. Democrats are pushing to remove identification requirements for voting, replacing voter ID rules with a sworn statement of self-identification....

Democrats and much of the media are pushing to make permanent the extraordinary, pandemic-driven measures to relax voting rules during the 2020 elections – warning anew of racist voter “suppression” otherwise. Yet democracies in Europe and elsewhere tell a different story – of the benefits of stricter voter ID requirements after hard lessons learned. A database on voting rules worldwide complied by the Crime Prevention Research Center, which I run, shows that election integrity measures are widely accepted globally, and have often been adopted by countries after they've experienced fraud under looser voting regimes. Of 47 nations surveyed in Europe...

For decades, gun control advocates constantly claim that Right-to-Carry laws would lead to disaster. But when disasters don’t occur they move on to the next prediction of disaster. We have to keep track of these predictions if only to judge how much weight to give to their erroneous predictions. Montana is the latest state to let people carry concealed handguns on college campuses, and the state Board of Regents for the university system demanded an emergency stay from the state Supreme Court because “serious harm is threatened” if the law goes into effect on June 1. The Regents took a...

President Biden claimed that Derek Chauvin's conviction on Tuesday "ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism" of police. With the police shooting that same day of 16-year-old girl in Columbus, Ohio, the White House again pushed the racism claim, noting that this was just another example of how "police violence disproportionately impacts Black and Latino people." But where is the evidence for these claims? In Chauvin's trial, the prosecution never once mentioned evidence that the now-former officer is racist. A day after the verdict, the Biden administration announced plans for a pattern-or-practice investigation of...

YouTube Video: Recent mass shootings have once again put guns at the center of national debate, and President Joe Biden has announced new executive orders on gun control. At the center of the discussion is a question: do gun control measures prevent crime or do they actually do the opposite? To understand what the data says, I decided to sit down with John Lott, who has studied the impact of gun control measures for decades. He’s the founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center, and author of a number of books on guns and gun control, including most recently, “Gun...

Montana got to see firsthand how well a mail-in election goes. If the results from Missoula County are any indication, it didn’t go well. Local state Rep. Brad Tschida conducted a review of Missoula votes with the assistance of the Missoula County Elections Office. He found 4,592 out of all 72,491 mail-in ballots did not have envelopes — 6.33% of the total. That is a real problem. It is against the law to count mail-in votes if there is no envelope. There is no way to match up signatures to verify if the vote is from a registered voter or...

As Joe Biden and the Democrats push harder for tighter gun control across the country, many are pushing back on this idea. One America’s John Hines spoke with Dr. John Lott, the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, to find out more.Gun control measures affect law abiding citizens.Informative five minute video.

MISSOULA COUNTY, Mont. — A mountainous, 2,600-square-mile region with a population of approximately 119,600 does not seem like your prototypical setting for machine politics. Yet a recent audit of mail-in ballots cast there found irregularities characteristic of larger urban centers — on a level that could have easily swung local elections in 2020, and statewide elections in cycles past. The Biden administration, the Democrat-controlled Congress, and the Democratic National Committee are collectively pressing to both nationalize, and make permanent, many of the extraordinary pandemic-driven voting measures implemented during the 2020 election —particularly mass mail-in voting.

A mountainous, 2,600-square-mile region with a population of approximately 119,600 does not seem like your prototypical setting for machine politics. Yet a recent audit of mail-in ballots cast there found irregularities characteristic of larger urban centers — on a level that could have easily swung local elections in 2020, and statewide elections in cycles past. The Biden administration, the Democrat-controlled Congress, and the Democratic National Committee are collectively pressing to both nationalize, and make permanent, many of the extraordinary pandemic-driven voting measures implemented during the 2020 election —particularly mass mail-in voting. Political leaders and prominent media outlets have dismissed concerns...

On Thursday, March 11th, 2021, the House of Representatives passed two background check bills: Universal Background Checks (HR 8) and Closing the “Charleston Loophole” (HR 1446). Despite Democrats claims to the contrary, HR 1446 wouldn’t have stopped the Charleston church shooting (June 17, 2015). Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY), the co-chair of the House Second Amendment Caucus, discusses how the background checks discriminate against poor minorities. How exceptions are made only for cases of “imminent” danger. HR 8 is the same as other bills that Michael Bloomberg’s gun control groups have pushed, and the concerns that we raised regarding this legislation...

With House Democrats passing two major gun control bills, the push for gun control moves to the Senate. With all the Senate Democrats and some Republicans supporting more gun control, whether gun control passes Congress depends on if the Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) keeps his promise to maintain the filibuster. But Manchin is wobbling on that promise. While he previously said that he would “never” undo the filibuster, he apparently is willing to change the rules on what constitutes a filibuster.

With a number of states adopting Constitutional Carry laws, one of the issues that is coming up is what should the age limit be for those who carry. Of the 18 Constitutional Carry states, twelve allow people to carry guns at 18 years of age. One other state allows carrying at age 19. We have previously done research showing that 18 to 20 year olds are just as responsible at carrying as those who are 21 and older, though we can’t tell whether the results are similar for those who aren’t required to get a permit. If you count New...