Free Republic

Democrats are building a multimillion-dollar machine to focus on winning back state offices and legislatures lost under former President Barack Obama. Some of the Democratic Party's wealthiest backers have joined the effort, according to the Associated Press. Billionaires George Soros, Donald Sussman, and Fred Eychaner have together contributed at least $15 million. The Tea Party wave of 2010 installed six new Republican governors, flipped 21 state legislative chambers, and replaced nearly 700 Democratic state legislators with members of the GOP. The sweep gave Republicans an advantage in state politics and, even more importantly, greater control over the once-a-decade redistricting process...

Yeah, yeah, I know: “They had two Democratic senators when McCain and Flake were there.” Har dee har. The dirty little secret about Maverick and Flake is that they almost always voted with Trump and McConnell. There was one enormous exception to that rule, when McCain voted no on ObamaCare repeal, but on most legislative matters and judicial confirmations they were on the team. Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly won’t be. And if you believe this new poll from OH Predictive Insights, those are the two people who’ll be representing Arizona in the Senate in 2021. Retired astronaut Mark Kelly...

NBC over the weekend pushed gun control repeatedly, casually dismissing calls for focusing culpability on the perpetrators of mass shooters as simply a talking point of “gun control opponents.” The Today show also touted using children to promote the gun control agenda. On Sunday, reporter Mike Viqueira sounded annoyed that Donald Trump would blame the shooters: “At his New Hampshire rally, Thursday, no mention of checks on criminal records, only for mental health history. The President echoing a familiar argument of gun control opponents.” He then played a clip of Trump noting, “It’s not the gun that pulls the trigger....

A man has been arrested in Florida over allegations he was planning to kill elementary schoolchildren because their school is painted to look like an American flag.Authorities say 22-year-old Andrew Ivan Aman was plotting to stab "as many children as possible" at Bellamy Elementary School in Tampa, Florida.The suspect reportedly told police that he has a dislike for the United States and its citizens' "obnoxious pride in America."

So-called “Gun Safety” advocates don’t really care about public safety, and it’s easy to prove that all they really fear is an armed populace who opposes their political agenda.  Here’s the deal: They could have the “Universal Background Checks” (UBC) they’re fighting for, if they made just one small compromise.Now, Second Amendment supporters understandably cringe at the word “compromise” because for generations the GOP dictionary has defined it as: “Giving the Democrats half of their ridiculous demands and then hoping they say nice things about us on TV for a few days.”   But that’s not real compromise, it’s capitulation.An...

WASHINGTON — Days after a pair of deadly mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, President Trump said he was prepared to endorse what he described as “very meaningful background checks” that would be possible because of his “greater influence now over the Senate and over the House.” But after discussions with gun rights advocates during his two-week working vacation in Bedminster, N.J. — including talks with Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive of the National Rifle Association — Mr. Trump’s resolve appears to have substantially softened, and he has reverted to reiterating the conservative positions on the gun issue he has...

Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPOs), commonly referred to as "red flag laws," have been at the forefront of the gun control debate. The idea is simple: if a person is deemed mentally unstable, and a risk to themselves or others, he or she can be stripped of their firearms. Typically, family members, doctors and law enforcement have the power to petition a judge to deem the gun owner mentally unfit to own a firearm, at least for the time being. Some states, like Florida, have already implemented these laws. While they sound great on paper, they have a number of...

From Cincinnati, the Associated Press reported that 24-year-old Connor Betts [the young man responsible for the mass shooting] “opened fire with an assault-style rifle.” (See: “The Latest: Dayton Shooters’ Friend Will Stay In Jail,” apnews.com, Aug. 15.) My question is: “So freaking what?” Would it have made a difference if he had cut loose with baked-bean farts and rotten eggs that resulted in the asphyxiation of the nine murdered and 27 wounded? Would it have made a difference if he had used a six-shot revolver that fired .22 bullets? I don’t know who wrote the Associated Press piece, but it’s...

You may have noticed that all advocates of federal gun control are arguing for the same end result, which is federal limitations upon the individual right to own firearms. But the underlying arguments as to why they believe that the federal government should be allowed to do so can vary, and often pretty wildly. There are some who argue, for example, that the Second Amendment was never meant to guarantee any individual right, as CNN’s Chris Cuomo recently argued. Some others may argue that the Second Amendment only protects guns owned for the purposes of hunting or sport. That’s all...

Rep. Pete King (N.Y.) is the first House Republican to back a bill in the chamber seeking to ban assault weapons. "They are weapons of mass slaughter," King told the New York Daily News on Monday shortly after his support for the Assault Weapons Ban of 2019 as a co-sponsor became public on Congress's website. “I don’t see any need for them in everyday society,” he added.

Rep. Pete King is the first Republican to sign on to the assault weapons ban WASHINGTON — An assault weapons ban that Democratic leaders have been reluctant to advance despite strong support among their rank-and-file members in the House just got its first Republican backer — Long Island Rep. Pete King. “They are weapons of mass slaughter,” King said shortly after his backing became public on Congress’ website Monday. “I don’t see any need for them in everyday society,” King said. The Assault Weapons Ban of 2019 was rolled out in February by Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), with 190 other...

Fake Science: Where did it come from? Well as they say, follow the money:Also contributing to the emergence of Fake Science is the use of science as a cudgel in policy wars, a primary tactic of what is known as Post-Normal Science. Think of it as sociology on steroids, identifying as science.And there will be no more questions because the science is settled.Ooh ooh ooh! Do Fake News next MOTUS!Posted from: MOTUS A.D.

President Trump came to terms with an important constitutional realization: Gun confiscation laws, commonly called Red Flag laws, won’t work to reduce gun violence. The President is now backing away from his earlier statements supporting more gun control at the federal level – for now, at least. When asked how he’s handling expanded gun control, Trump responded with a suddenly pro-gun tone: "So, Congress is working on that. They have bipartisan committees working on background checks and various other things. And we'll see. I don't want people to forget that this is a mental health problem. I don't want them...

Senators Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Richard Durbin of Illinois and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York have filed an amicus curiae brief to have the Supreme Court dismiss the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., v. City of New York. The brief is an amazing example of chutzpah and comes very close to being a direct threat to the Court. A little history is in order. It has been Progressives that have blatantly politicized the Court for most of a century. It was Progressives that claimed the...

Sen. Cory Booker wants Democrats to go bolder on guns — and says they’re playing into the hands of the National Rifle Association and the corporate gun lobby by rejecting bolder ideas. “For Democrats to play into the hands of the corporate gun lobby, and just letting them define what the realm of possible is, it’s so defeatist to me,” the New Jersey senator told me during an interview this week. “At a time with the levels of carnage in our country, we don’t need people who are defeatist in their thinking about what’s possible.” Booker, who is running for...

Listen up, Trumpophobes. It’s not so hard to understand the president’s appeal. Try going to one of his rallies and, instead of turning up your nose at the Walmart people, listen and learn. The abuse of President Trump and his supporters that passes for analysis from his opponents is a strategic error. The more abuse, the more Trump’s base is energized to turn out on Election Day. At his Thursday-night rally to launch his 2020 New Hampshire campaign, he broke Elton John’s all-time attendance record with a crowd of 11,500 inside the Southern New Hampshire University Arena. It wasn’t just...

The deaths of 22 people in the El Paso shooting earlier this month made clear “the real consequence and cost of Donald Trump”, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said on Sunday. “From the outset of this campaign,” the Texan told NBC’s Meet the Press, “even before this campaign, I talked about how dangerous President Trump’s open racism is”. The former congressman cited remarks about Mexicans and Muslims and the burning of a mosque in Victoria, Texas “the day after he signs his executive order attempting to ban Muslim travel”. But he added: “It wasn’t until someone, inspired by Donald Trump,...

President Donald Trump on Sunday emphasized a need for the country to focus on "a very big mental health problem" in the wake of two mass shootings in one weekend that left 32 people dead earlier this month as he appeared to defend current US gun control measures, stating "we do have a lot of background checks right now." "It's the people that pull the trigger, not the gun that pulls the trigger so we have a very, very big mental health problem and Congress is working on various things and I will be looking at it," Trump told reporters...

Sunday on MSNBC’s “AM Joy,” The Beat DC managing editor Tiffany Cross said if you are not “a person of color,” it’s not “your place” to determine if President Donald Trump is a racist.

National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch has seen Anthony Scaramucci‘s previous comments about guns, and it would seem she’s not very impressed.Shortly after Scaramucci was confirmed as the new White house Communications Director, he went on a Twitter-deletion spree where he erased some of the critical comments he previously made about President Trump. Scaramucci said he was doing this out of “full transparency,” though he also deleted other tweets where he contradicted Trump and mainstream conservatives when it comes to topics like climate change and abortion. On Saturday, the day after he became Trump’s communications director, he announced on Twitter...