Free Republic

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is off his rocker. This weekend residents of Los Angeles waited with bated breath to hear the State of the City Speech from the mayor. Most Angelenos looked forward to seeing the Mayor once again since it had been while: in the wake of a sex scandal he had all but permanently relocated to the Hillary Clinton campaign bus for the last year and a half. Most residents already knew the State of the City: the City of Angels had become a much harder, more violent place what with the recent murder of Jamiel Shaw...

Victor Aster is a Belarusian firearms concept designer. He goes over one of his CAD designs of a personal defense weapon (PDW) called Humble-Bee. The idea is to have a compact firearm for law enforcement and military needs which would be very simple, lightweight and easy to use. Initially, Victor was considering the Humble-Bee to be a less-lethal gun firing rubber bullets and dedicated for police use. Later he rethought the idea and now it is designed to be chambered in 9x19mm. The receiver of this firearm is supposed to be completely made of polymer. The overall design concept is...

Australia has one of the strictest firearms regulatory schemes in Western Civilization. It has not appreciably changed their overall murder or suicide or accidental death rates, which were already low and falling when the scheme was implemented.As Australia is a continent considerably separated from the rest of the industrialized world, it is a near ideal test case for the efficacy of gun control schemes. A figure from an Australian government report on sources of illegal guns shows that when guns are tightly regulated, criminals find ways around the regulation.Guns are basically 14th-century technology. A first world country, with access...

With the extreme restrictions put in Australian firearms law in 1996, those seeking firearms illegally have many avenues of obtaining them.First, the number of guns that was *not registered* provides a vast pool of factory made arms that can enter the black market. Second, the number of legal firearms offer a pool of firearms to be stolen. But of most interest is the third option: Firearms that are made in small shops, converted from existing guns, or are homemade by individuals.The above pistol was converted from a simple single shot bolt action .22 rifle. It is simple and straightforward...

Richard Cunningham was homeless. But he wasn’t gun-less, police allege. Deputies found a cache of weapons at his Harbor City encampment, including: two fully operational submachine guns, four handguns, two makeshift silencers and numerous rounds of ammunition, It is unclear how Cunningham came to possess the arsenal.

At 2:23 p.m. on Nov. 1, 1950, news suddenly arrived at the Secret Service office in the East Wing of the White House that across the street, men were trying to shoot their way into Blair House, where Harry Truman was taking a nap. James Rowley, agent in charge of the White House detail, responded with four words, spoken, one imagines, rather forcefully: "WHERE'S MY TOMMY GUN?" You have to admit: He had a point. Fortunately, Rowley didn't have to pull the trigger that day, and the agents at Blair handled their emergency with dispatch and heroism. But Rowley's cry...

NEW YORK — The United Nations, under pressure from the Bush administration, has decided to move a stash of submachine guns out of the organization's New York City headquarters. The MP5s, made by Heckler and Koch of Germany, are to be moved to U.N. peacekeeping operations overseas, State Department sources said. The United Nations purchased the restricted weapons for the personal protection of Secretary-General Kofi Annan in his travels around the New York metropolitan area.

<p>NEW YORK &#8212; The United Nations, under pressure from the Bush administration, has decided to move a stash of submachine guns out of the organization's New York City headquarters.</p> <p>The MP5s, made by Heckler and Koch of Germany, are to be moved to U.N. peacekeeping operations overseas, State Department sources said.</p>

<p>Submachine guns, long a common sight in many European airports, made their debut yesterday at Logan Airport, which has spent more than 11/2 years bolstering its security and image after becoming the takeoff point for two of the planes hijacked by terrorists in the Sept. 11 attacks.</p>