Free Republic

Democratic presidential candidates Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, moderates who project themselves as pragmatic collaborators, are taking a no-compromise approach on the overhaul of the nation’s gun laws after the latest mass shooting. Campaigning separately in eastern Iowa on Monday, the former vice president and the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, say the minimum provisions include universal background checks, a ban on military-style weapons and high-capacity ammunition, and red flag laws to allow officials to confiscate firearms from dangerous people. Biden told reporters before a Labor Day picnic in Cedar Rapids that inaction from President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans...

A gunman who opened fire inside a Walmart in Washington state and injured at least two people during carjacking attempts was fatally shot by one of two armed civilians on Sunday evening, according to police. The Thurston County coroner identified the dead suspect as Tim O. Day, 44, though police said they were still piecing together the full story of what happened at the Tumwater, Wash. Walmart. About 5 p.m. Pacific Time, authorities received a call about a possibly drunk driver heading the wrong way on a main road near a local high school, said Laura Wohl, Tumwater police public...

FBI special agent Christopher Combs said Ator called the agency’s tip line...making “rambling statements about some of the atrocities that he felt that he had gone through.” “He was on a long spiral of going down,” Combs said. “He didn’t wake up Saturday morning and walk into his company and then it happened. He went to that company in trouble.” ...Ator had previously failed a federal background check for a firearm, said John Wester, an agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Wester did not say when Ator failed the background check or why.

The Supreme Court as we once knew it—as a national institution that could at least sometimes stand apart from partisanship—died last year. The ongoing fight over its corpse spilled into public view last week. On Thursday, 53 United States senators—every member of the Republican caucus—wrote a “letter” to the clerk of the Supreme Court assuring the justices that the Republican Party has their back. The Democrats, the senators told the Court, pose “a direct, immediate threat to the independence of the judiciary.” The spat is about guns. The Court has granted review in a Second Amendment case entitled New York...

President Trump deserves enormous credit for his exceptional commitment to free speech at the G7 summit in Biarritz, France. Foreign leaders, like our own illiberal, liberal activists, are chomping at the bit to introduce ever more online censorship. At the G7, European leaders introduced a measure that would have drafted tech companies into the role of government censors, forcing them to police online content and remove anything that bureaucrats deem to be insensitive. Emmanuel Macron struggled in vain to conceal his disappointment as he announced that the United States had refused to sign on to his pet G7 compact, which...

A mischaracterization of the Tueller Drill — the so-called 21 foot rule — deprived Michael Drejka of a potentially effective defense. On Friday, August 23 , 2019, a Florida jury convicted Michael Drejka, the handicap parking spot shooter who killed Markeis McGlockton, of manslaughter. As a result, at his September 10 sentencing hearing the 48-year-old Drejka will likely be sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 25 years to life in prison, without possibility of early release. My problem with this outcome has nothing to do with the fact that Michael Drejka was found guilty—maybe he was guilty. My problem with...

“Seinfeld” actor John O’Hurley sounded off on Hollywood for suppressing “diversity of thought” in the wake of Debra Messing and Eric McCormack calling for supporters of President Trump to be outed. Trump plans to attend a Sept. 17 fundraiser in Beverly Hills during a trip to California that will also include visits to the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego, officials said. The “Will & Grace” co-stars took issue with a Trump fundraiser happening in their city and called for donors to be doxxed. “I think they have the bully pulpit right now to say it out loud. I don’t...

The Department of Justice has drafted legislation that would expedite capital punishment for those found guilty of mass killings, according to a top Trump administration official. Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short told reporters Monday that the veep’s policy team has been working with Attorney General William Barr on the death penalty bill, which will likely be part of a larger gun control package the White House will try to sell to Congress amid a wave of shooting massacres, including the latest rampage in Texas that killed seven people.eVice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short...

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, took actress and liberal activist Alyssa Milano to task over her faith-based question about the Bible and the Second Amendment. On Sunday, Milano responded to Republican Texas state Rep. Matt Schaefer's tweet that he was "NOT going to use the evil acts of a handful of people to diminish the God-given rights of my fellow Texans. Period. None of these so-called gun-control solutions will work to stop a person with evil intent" following a shooting rampage in Odessa that killed seven and injured at least 22. "Can someone cite which passage of the Bible God states...

The whole country saw last Friday’s awe inspiring events taking place in the little tourist mountain town of Granby, Colorado, broadcast by local Denver television affiliates through their network news organizations. Local resident and former muffler shop owner Marvin Heemeyer had finally had enough of being pushed around and told to go to hell by local politicians and public servants, who refer to themselves as "public officials" — the people in charge! The politically correct spin is being applied quite liberally by most of the news media, maligning Heemeyer as a "madman" and Granby town mayor Edward Wang calling him...

The man who killed seven people in Odessa, Texas, over the weekend had been fired from his trucking job hours before the mass shooting, according to multiple reports. The gunman, identified Sunday as Seth Aaron Ator, lead officials on a high speed chase during which he indiscriminately fired on motorists and police officers. Ator was killed after being chased by officers. The New York Times first reported that Ator had been fired from his trucking job in Odessa. ADVERTISEMENT He was pulled over Saturday by state troopers for failing to use a turn single before beginning firing, according to police....

As you'll see in the screencap, MSNBC continues to pass Susan Del Percio off as a "Republican strategist." In fact, her last strategery gig was as an adviser to Andrew Cuomo, the liberal Democrat governor of New York. In any case, when it comes to strategy, Del Percio's specialty seems to be recommending personal attacks on Republicans and other opponents. In July, our Gregory Price caught Del Percio recommending that constituents "attack" and "scare" their Republican congressmen for purposes of forcing them to support a piece of Democrat legislation. Appearing on MSNBC today to discuss Saturday's West Texas shootings, Del...

2020 Democrat hopeful Robert “Beto” O’Rourke announced he will enact “red flag laws” and forcefully confiscate AK-47’s and AR-15’s if he’s elected president of the United States. “And more importantly and politically difficult to say, buy those weapons of war back — mandate that — not voluntarily. Let’s be clear with our fellow Americans. No place for an AK-47 or an AR-15 on the streets of our communities,” Beto said during an appearance on MSNBC on Sunday.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, said that U.S. Constitution does not allow "anyone" to own a weapon and does not give citizens the right to buy "any kind of weapon" they want because every amendment has limitations.

Planned Parenthood’s decision to withdraw Monday from a federal grant program aimed at family planning services is the result of a ruling from an unlikely source: the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The historically liberal court allowed a Trump administration rule blocking federal funding from organizations that refer patients for abortions to move forward, and Planned Parenthood chose to lose the money rather than stop the referrals. The case is one signal that President Donald Trump’s judicial nominations may be shifting one of the nation’s most liberal courts further to the right, blunting what many consider his opponents’ most effective...

A neighbor of the Odessa mass shooter says she reported him to police last month — after he threatened her with a rifle for leaving trash near his property — but cops couldn’t find his house on account of it having no GPS address or electricity. The woman told CNN that Seth Ator, 36, would often sit on top of his home and shoot animals at night, which he would then go and retrieve afterwards. SNIP Ator would often sit and sleep inside his Toyota Camry with the heat on when the weather would get to cold, the woman said....

---- The question of what exactly we are meant to do now – other than get rich and have fun – was going to have to be answered by something. The answer that has presented itself in recent years has been to live in a permanent state of outrage. To find meaning by waging constant war against anybody who seems to be on the wrong side of a question to which the answer has only just been altered. ---- The interpretation of the world through the lens of ‘social justice’ and ‘identity group politics’ is probably the most audacious and...

Sunday on MSNBC’s “AM Joy,” host Joy Reid called the Republican Party who “beholden and obedient to the gun dealers,” and said that was not causing Americans to feel “constantly terrified.” Reid said, “America is a nation that is full of guns and where one political party is beholden and obedient to the gun dealers. But we do not have to be. At some point we have to decide, which we love more: the guns or our lives. The guns or our freedom to be in public or in school or at church or at a synagogue or at...

A Washington state police chief who took a stand in refusing to enforce elements of the state’s widely encompassing new gun control package is now running for Governor of the state. He’s making a pledge to restore the gun rights of Washingtonians a central message of his campaign. Loren Culp is the police chief of Republic, Washington. He was praised by gun owners and vilified by liberal prosecutors for his constitutional refusal to enforce parts of a massive gun control law enacted in 2018.

The Trump administration is considering a proposal that would use Google, Amazon and Apple to collect data on users who exhibit characteristics of mental illness that could lead to violent behavior, The Washington Post reported Thursday. The proposal is part of an initiative to create a Health Advanced Research Projects Agency (HARPA), which would be located inside the Health and Human Services Department, the report notes, citing sources inside the administration. The new agency would have a separate budget and the president would be responsible for appointing its director. HARPA would take after Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA,...