Free Republic

Residents are up in arms over a push by the Education Department to open a school next door to a popular Bay Ridge shooting range. The school, proposed inside the recently shuttered Fortway Theater on Fort Hamilton Parkway, would bring about 440 students within earshot of the 40-year-old Alpine Arms shooting range - an FBI and NYPD favorite. "We're trying to get children away from guns, not near them," said Donna Sbordone, a mother of three who lives three blocks from the 67th St. site. "It's just not a good place for a school."

Last week, two state legislators finally introduced the controversial Personal Protection Act, a proposal that would allow citizens to bear a gun, knife or — as ridiculous as it sounds — a billy club in public. The bill’s drafters include every gun-lover’s hero, Sen. Dave Zien, R-Eau Claire, a man with more rifles and shotguns on his office walls than the Madison police, and Rep. Scott Gunderson, R-Waterford, the Assembly’s alleged hunting expert. Undercutting progressive gun-control initiatives, state politicians around the country have bowed to the NRA-rabid right and their backward “more guns, less crime” rhetoric in their absurd belief...