Free Republic

On November 7, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear argument in U.S. v. Rahimi to determine whether laws that prohibit possession of firearms by persons subject to restraining orders are constitutionally permissible. The ruling could lead courts to invalidate “red flag” laws in more than 20 states across the country. While we will not know the outcome until 2024, this court has already made it abundantly clear over the last 15 years that it will take every opportunity to curtail common-sense gun regulations, even as gun deaths skyrocket in the wake of their rulings. Gun reform advocates have been fighting...

It is revered as a modern-day musket. It is reviled as a tool for mass killers. The AR-15 wasn’t supposed to be a bestseller. The rugged, powerful weapon was originally designed as a soldiers’ rifle in the late 1950s. “An outstanding weapon with phenomenal lethality,” an internal Pentagon report raved. It soon became standard issue for U.S. troops in the Vietnam War, where the weapon earned a new name: the M16.

The list of reasons why someone might toss a gun in a river is pretty short. But the list of reasons why Bryce Nachtwey throws magnets tied to rope into America’s waters is even shorter: finding unclaimed property is really cool. If you don’t believe me, take a dive into magnet fishing YouTube and feel the hours disappear. Enthusiastic treasure hunters pace back and forth on bridges and cast shiny hockey puck-sized magnets into murky depths, pulling in bike parts, railroad spikes, jewelry, coins, and, yes, firearms. Nachtwey’s YouTube channel, Outdoors Weekly, features long, energetic videos of his exploits for...

Gun retailers are running ads promoting firearms for sale on Facebook and Instagram, a tech industry watchdog said Wednesday in a report that shows apparent holes in how the apps enforce their own rules against ads that promote the use or sale of weapons. The Tech Transparency Project said in its report that it found 173 ads that it believes violate the apps’ ad policies by searching the apps’ online ad library over two weeks in August. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, prohibits ads that “promote the sale or use of weapons, ammunition or explosives,” according to...

--(snip) As of 2021, the United States had the 32nd-highest rate of deaths from gun violence in the world, according to the latest information culled by NPR using data from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which, according to its website, "tracks lives lost in every country, in every year, by every possible cause of death." In 2019, the latest full year for which information has been made available, the United States saw 3.96 gun-related deaths per 100,000 people. That's 100 times more gun-related deaths than in the United Kingdom, where access to guns by...

Accustomed to relatively strict gun laws, New Yorkers watching mass shootings unfold across other parts of the country in recent years may have felt somewhat invincible to indiscriminate gun violence. April 12 was a wake-up call, when a gunman started shooting at passengers on a subway car in Brooklyn during a morning commute. Now, a landmark Supreme Court case that’s due for a ruling this summer could compound fears of more, similar gun violence in crowded city spaces. The case, the most significant on the Second Amendment in 14 years, puts into jeopardy New York State’s tight restrictions on carrying...

A dangerous debate on gun reform is brewing in Indiana. Despite appeals raised directly by local law enforcement leaders, for the second time in two years the state’s Republican-dominated legislature attempted to advance a controversial proposal that would eliminate permit requirements to carry a handgun in the state. In its original form, this bill would allow tens of thousands of residents who’ve never completed a background check to now be able to openly carry a handgun in public. While I’m pleased to report that a state Senate panel nixed this controversial permitless measure from the bill in a close vote...

t the time of this writing, COVID-19 is the leading cause of death in the United States. There is ample reason to hope that the vaccines now beginning to arrive will soon knock the coronavirus off that morbid perch. Nothing will bring back the loved ones we’ve lost to the pandemic, but at least we’ll be worrying about our old familiar foes — heart disease, for example, and cancer. And guns. Gun violence remains one of the more potent threats to U.S. public health. Firearms play a role in most of the murders committed in the United States each year,...

Last week, a 25-year-old woman was standing at a bus stop before dawn in the Fernwood neighborhood on Chicago’s Far South Side when she was approached by a teen who attempted to rob her with a gun. Instead, the woman, a concealed carry permit holder, pulled out her own gun and shot and killed the 19-year-old. On its face, this story may seem to make the case for the merits of concealed carry as a method of self-protection, especially for people living in high-crime neighborhoods. But the fact is that this scenario is an outlier. It is extremely rare for...

As the Republican Party holds its national convention in Cleveland, Americans have been shaken by the shootings of police in Dallas and Baton Rouge, La., following the police shootings of black men in Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights, Minn. I spoke at the funeral of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, weeping with his family and friends, as they remembered and mourned their loved one. I spoke later at the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, leaders of the police in different communities, and witnessed their tears as they mourned the deaths of their fellow police officers in Baton Rouge.