Free Republic

The failed state is to post-modernity what the nation-state was to modernity. It’s a recent development that is a hallmark of our age – like a state, but incapable of exercising sovereignty over all of its nominal territory. And while it might sound a little far-fetched, the failed state isn’t just coming to the West. It might already be here.

The National Rifle Association’s former second-in-command is breaking with the group’s orthodoxy and calling for universal background checks and so-called red flag laws in a new book assailing the organization as more focused on money and internal intrigue than the Second Amendment, while thwarting constructive dialogue on gun violence. The former executive, Joshua L. Powell, who was fired by the N.R.A. in January, reinforces the kind of criticism made of the organization by gun control groups and state regulators, but it is the first critical look at its recent history by such a high-ranking insider. He describes the N.R.A.’s longtime...

Every time guns come up, there is studious avoidence of the fact that this is the most tightly regulated period in human history. Super elites have their targets about micromanaging regular people's lives, set on a little black object middle classes mostly keep locked away and poor people sleep with under the pillow. Progressive political drones in powerful European countries like where Angela Merkel has been returned to power multiple times, are resolutely fixated on extracting your guns from your house. You're not paying attention if you imagine there aren't truck mounted, wall penetrating machines that can zero in on...

On 28 August 2020, Attorney General Becerra of California petitioned the Ninth Circuit to review the case of Duncan v. Becerra. The review would be of the three-judge panel which held the California ban on magazines that hold over 10 rounds of ammunition to be unconstitutional. From the Petition for En Banc: 1 INTRODUCTION AND RULE 35 STATEMENTCalifornia respectfully petitions for rehearing en banc of the panel’s decision, which invalidates a state law restricting large-capacity magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition (LCMs). California voters adopted the current LCM law in response to a spate of mass...

The one-two punch of the Wuhan Coronavirus explosion, and the civil unrest of early 2020, led to an unprecedented growth in firearms ownership in America. All told, there were about two million firearms sold in the month of March 2020 alone. Between March and July, an additional three million were sold, with about half of those happening in the month of June. Ammunition sales have similarly spiked, with record sales occurring on this website. However, gun owners don’t need a report to know that there has been a massive surge in demand for ammunition. They need only go down to...

The Astorian reports voters will decide whether to prohibit local, state and federal law or regulation that restricts the right to keep and bear firearms, accessories or ammunition... to include any tax, levy or fee on the purchase or ownership of firearms, tracking requirements, background checks, confiscation orders or any restriction on the open or concealed carrying of firearms.

Civil unrest is everywhere and lawmakers are being pressured to restrict guns. But what we are seeing today is not a gun problem; it’s a moral problem called sin. We are witnessing the rapid deterioration of a nation. We have lost our moral compass…we have lost the fear of the Lord. When the fear of the Lord decreases, evil increases. “A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both” (Dwight D. Eisenhower).Photo: Shane IdlemanOne of the Scriptures often used to support banning weapons is found in Proverbs 20:22, “Do not say, ‘I will recompense evil’; wait for...

The Vatican Goes to Bat for Biden FrancisChurch provides him with cover. In 2016, the Vatican was pulling for Hillary Clinton. Just days before the presidential election, Pope Francis renewed his criticism of politicians who speak about erecting “walls.” This led Slate and other publications to run such headlines as “It Sure Sounds Like Pope Francis Doesn’t Think Americans Should Vote for Trump.” Several Francis-friendly prelates ran interference for Hillary Clinton. San Jose’s bishop, Patrick McGrath, wrote a letter to his flock in which he said that Donald Trump’s complaint of a rigged system “borders on the seditious.” According to...

By now the majority of you will have seen or heard of the pair of engagements in Kenosha, Wisconsin (hereinafter the "Engagements") between one Kyle Rittenhouse and a number of other individuals, some recently departed, others now unfortunately unable to operate a keyboard with any efficiency, particularly when proper capitalization is required of their typewritten text. In the wake of these encounters it is quite something to see the degree of bad information, misinformation, and disinformation that has showered the socialinterwebsitetubes, particularly from a tactical and legal perspective. On the tactical side, it is surprising that matters seem so distorted,...

Dismissed by some critics as a needless origin story, HBO's 'Perry Mason' reboot is exactly the type of high-minded storytelling we need today. This article contains spoilers. The man from the country has not expected such difficulties: the law should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, his large pointed nose and his long, thin, black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside. — Franz Kafka, “Before The Law” Franz Kafka hated the draconian bureaucracies...

The well-polished ringleaders of our media circus are losing control of this election, and we can see the desperation behind their eyes. We can almost smell it through the screen, almost read it in their phony little chyrons. They are throwing everything they’ve got at this election—trying to cancel Tucker Carlson (using embarrassing boomer memes) for defending Kyle Rittenhouse. Trying to paint Rittenhouse himself as the latest in a line of disaffected white men. Trying to tell us not to see what we plainly see. It’s not working. The American people—real Americans, patriotic Americans of every race—are fed up with...

The killings in Kenosha, Wisconsin, represent an alarming escalation of the fight over police violence that has consumed the country this summer: It wasn’t an agent of the state who shot two Americans dead this week. Instead, an American man turned his weapon on other civilians during a protest—and law enforcement let him walk right by them and out of town.

Gun Owners of America (GOA) Senior Vice President Erich Pratt released the following statement on Kyle Rittenhouse’s citizen-involved shooting: “Based upon publicly available video evidence, it appears that Kyle Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense. And despite fake news media reports, it is clear that Kyle was not firing indiscriminately into a crowd. “GOA has reached out to Rittenhouse’s attorneys and the Lake County Public Defender’s office, and we have our own attorneys use of force experts looking into this case, as well. In the meantime, we demand fair treatment from the media, because up till now, their coverage has been...

Kyle Rittenhouse should not have been patrolling the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, Tuesday night. Whatever failures might have existed on the part of state and local government (and there appear to have been many), the idea of a 17-year-old with a loaded rifle being dropped into that powder keg can only happen when some horribly bad judgment has occurred. I say this as a gun owner and Second Amendment supporter who took his son to the shooting range at that same age and taught him how to properly handle a firearm. However, two narratives about the situation are emerging, neither...

Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was brutally murdered in the Parkland school massacre put this election in the proper perspective as one between Joe Biden who would pot the safety of our kids and our country at risk for the sake of ideology and political correctness and Donald Trump who would protect both with law and order and armed protection. Pollack rightly condemned liberal Democratic policies in general for putting the students at Parkland and elsewhere in danger by pursuing social justice and social engineering policies that protected those who would do us harm and not allow us to protect...

Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old suspected of fatally shooting at least two people and injuring another during protests in Kenosha over the shooting of Jacob Blake, has been arrested, according to local media reports. Rittenhouse, 17, was arrested in Illinois and has been reportedly charged with first-degree intentional homicide.

Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was brutally murdered in the Parkland school massacre, put this election in the proper perspective as one between Joe Biden, who would put the safety of our kids and our country at risk for the sake of ideology, and Donald Trump, who would protect both. Pollack rightly condemned liberal Democratic policies in general for putting the students at Parkland and elsewhere in danger by pursuing social justice and social engineering policies that protect those who would do us harm and not allow us to protect ourselves. It is the same mindset of those who today...

Violent riots by Black Lives Matter and Antifa extremists in Kenosha, Wisconsin late Tuesday evening reportedly came to a preemptive halt when armed vigilantes who may have possibly been militia members opened fire on the extremists, killing two and injuring at least one. “Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth [said] that one [extremist] had been shot in the head and another in the chest late Tuesday, just before midnight. Beth didn’t know where the other person was shot, but video posted on social media showed someone had been shot in the arm,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Video footage of the latter altercation showed the extremists...

Warning: Graphic but a good analysis of the shooting.

The American Journal of Medicine recently published a paper about deaths associated with firearms. The paper misleads in the first sentence of the abstract. The lie is in the unstated, false assumption. It is a subtle but important shift in causation. The first sentence in the abstract is: News media and policy makers frequently discuss deaths from firearms, drug overdoses, and motor vehicle accidents. The shift in causation is done when the author inserts the word from before firearms and associates firearms with drug overdoses and motor vehicle accidents. The correct word would be with. The correct usage would differ...