Free Republic

San Jose’s city council passed a measure last month requiring gun owners to pay a $25 “harm reduction” fee and liability insurance or relinquish their firearms to the government, making the city the first in the nation to impose an annual fee on law-abiding, firearm owning citizens. The city’s Democrat mayor, Sam Liccardo insists the new ordinance, allowing law enforcement officials to seize firearms from those who refuse to pay the fees, will ultimately reduce crime and establish “a new kind of framework for gun safety, Slate reports. Allowing law enforcement to seize firearms from those who refuse to pay...

New York Democrats are going big on gerrymandering as they seize control of redistricting. But they may get bitten by their assumption that they have a permanent lock on non-white voters. Consider the two new state Senate seats in the city, one in heavily Hispanic parts of Queens and Brooklyn, another in heavily Asian parts of Brooklyn. Dems clearly think those minority votes belong to them by default. But do they? Perhaps the biggest political story of the past four years has been the realignment of Hispanic and Asian voters across America with the GOP.

KYIV, Ukraine — While the mood on the streets is calm and collected, behind the veil of composure, Ukrainians are in training for the fight of their lives. Tens of thousands of ordinary people across the Eastern European nation are learning to handle weapons, render first aid and perform other combat-related skills, as the threat of Russian invasion grows each day. Citizens are turning to experts in firearms, and even just family members, in hopes of surviving an attack and facing down their belligerent neighbor. “My daughter, now 23, taught me how to shoot,” Vlad Horbovetz, a surgeon and volunteer...

Joe Biden immediately attacked law-abiding gun owners and used the debunked claim that the 2nd Amendment banned cannon ownership.“There’s no Amendment that’s absolute,” Biden said on Thursday, attacking the 2nd Amendment.

Mayor Eric Adams said early Thursday that he will be asking President Biden for enough money to bring a “9/11 response” to the “pandemic” of gun crime on city streets. In a series of TV and radio appearances, Adams previewed what he hopes to address during his scheduled meeting with the commander-in-chief later Thursday, as the the White House also unveiled new plans to crack down on “ghost guns.”

See video at link. Great quotes from this man's speech: "What I want to know is this, 'When are you all going to start standing up for the majority?' And here's who the majority is: 'I'm the majority. I'm a law-abiding citizen.'" He continues: "Every time we have one of these shootings, no one wants to put the blame where it goes, which is at the shooter's feet. You want to put it at my feet. You want to turn around and restrict my right, constitutional right . . . to buy a firearm and protect myself from some of...

An upstairs neighbor, a veteran with PTSD problems, smashes through the door of his downstairs neighbor with a machete in hand, with an intent to kill. The downstairs neighbor uses a gun to defend himself. The upstairs neighbor survived. This wasn't their first confrontation. Sometime earlier the guy upstairs had physically assaulted the guy downstairs for which he was sentenced to probation. This second incident occured in 2013 and the veteran was sentenced in 2015 to 15 years.

A Ukrainian mother-of-three has armed herself with a powerful hunting rifle, vowing to “fight for Kiev” amid fears of a Russian invasion. “As a mother I do not want my children to inherit Ukraine’s problems, or have these threats passed on to them. It is better that I deal with this now,” Mariana Zhaglo, 52, told the Times of London in her Kiev kitchen, where she posed with the high-caliber weapon.

As a rule, few things are less likely to be the source of humor than court decisions. Sometimes there are excellent puns or low-key snark, but you don’t find belly-laugh material. Usually. Last Friday, a panel of the Ninth Circuit published a decision on a complaint arising from Ventura, California, that covered both the COVID panic and the Second Amendment. During the height of the COVID panic, that county ordered firing ranges, and gun shops closed. Presumably, this is because the Wuhan virus has a particular affinity for recreational venues. Several groups and individuals sued to overturn the order as...

In one opinion published last week, 9th Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke said Ventura County, California, violated the Second Amendment when it shut down gun stores early in the COVID-19 pandemic. In another opinion the same day, VanDyke said the county's policy was perfectly consistent with the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. That second, tongue-in-cheek opinion was meant to illustrate the disrespect that the 9th Circuit and other federal appeals courts have shown for the Second Amendment since 2008, when the Supreme Court explicitly recognized that the provision guarantees an individual right to armed self-defense. The Court may finally...

(CNN)San Jose, California, is getting closer to adopting a first-in-the-nation law to address gun violence by requiring all gun owners to pay a fee and carry liability insurance. The Silicon Valley city's council is due to vote Tuesday on the ordinance, whose dual-pronged approach aims to reduce the risk of gun harm by incentivizing safer behavior and to ease taxpayers of the financial burden of gun violence. "Certainly the Second Amendment protects every citizen's right to own a gun. It does not require taxpayers to subsidize that right," Democratic Mayor Sam Liccardo said Monday at a news conference, estimating that...

New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul said the ambush shooting of two New York City police officers Friday signaled the need for congressional action in Washington, D.C. to help "fight the scourge of illegal guns on our streets."

President Joe Biden complained about the number of guns sold in the United States after an armed terrorist suspect took four hostages at a Texas synagogue on Sunday. “There’s so many guns that have been sold of late; it’s just ridiculous,” Biden said when asked by reporters on Sunday about gun control after the incident.

President Joe Biden took questions on Saturday’s Texas synagogue attack and suggested more gun control would not have stopped the attacker. Reuters reports the attacker, 44-year-old Malik Faisal Akram, was a citizen of the United Kingdom

The armorer for doomed western 'Rust' - where a cinematographer was shot dead by a live bullet in October - is laying part of the blame on gunman Alec Baldwin for failing to attend a training session. Hannah Gutierrez-Reed filed a lawsuit in a Bernalillo County, New Mexico court on Wednesday that claims Baldwin, 63, ignored a request to attend a 'cross draw' session about a week before the tragedy. The rookie armorer also faulted assistant director David Halls for failing to follow set protocol when he allegedly handed Baldwin the weapon without first calling on her to inspect it,...

While the elite flock to Beverly Hill’s only gun shop looking for guns for self-defense, poor California minorities are finding it difficult to get through the state’s many gun control laws and acquire a firearm to use to keep themselves and their families safe. On December 30, 2021, Breitbart News noted that the rich and famous were flocking to Beverly Hill Guns for protection from the craziness that has overtaken day-to-day life in Los Angeles. FOX News now reports that other Californians, particularly minorities, are finding the acquisition of a firearm difficult. Geneva Solomon, owner of Los Angeles County’s Redstone...

Billionaire George Soros said he is working to “bend” the arc of history “in the right direction.” In Soros’ case, that direction is far to the left. To do it, he donated over $32 billion to his Open Society Foundations since 1984, to further leftist ideology and activism well beyond his own lifetime. Soros has committed a combined sum of more than $2.3 billion to create a global university network to push his extreme ideology. At 91, Soros hasn’t slowed down his radical agenda to inundate the American people — and the world — with propaganda involving leftist academia and...

After decades of blaming gun on the streets for violent crime, and elections of district attorneys who actually believe that crap, Hollywood's elites are finally getting religion on gun ownership.They're arming up. According to the Daily Mail:As Long Angeles crime spirals out of control, even some of the city's wealthiest residents have flocked to Beverly Hills' only gun store to buy firearms to protect themselves and their belongings.Beverly Hills Guns first opened by appointment only in July 2020, and has seen upscale residents from Santa Monica to the Hollywood Hills increasingly in a panic following some high-profile smash and grabs...

The Battle at Wounded Knee is a significant battle in American history, as it put an end to the Indian Wars and is marked as the last official defeat of the Native Americans. But what’s not taught in history lessons is that Wounded Knee was one of the first federally backed gun confiscations in the history of the United States, and it ended in the massacre of nearly 300 unarmed people. During the late 19th century, American Indians were allowed to purchase and carry firearms, just as white men were. The colonial gun laws did not bar Native Americans from...

Yes, it’s Throwback Thursday. When you are as old as I am 2004 doesn’t sound like much of a throwback at first…until you consider it was nearly 18 years ago. That’s the year Boston Legal debuted. I had already sworn off network TV at that point so I missed it, although friends kept telling me it was really good. I stumbled across a few episodes somewhere a couple years back and mentally put it on my watch list and finally got around to it last summer when it popped up on Prime. Disappointingly it included commercials that can’t be skipped...