Free Republic

With the solid crack of a crowbar, the hooded burglar sent the showcase glass showering onto the gun shop’s floor and quickly swept several pistols into his shoulder bag. Among the cache that New Year’s morning at a northern Wisconsin gun shop was a lightweight 9mm handgun with a black polymer grip, a black steel slide and a 4½ inch barrel. On one side was the stamp of the handgun’s unique serial number: YZC020. On the other, the logo of one of the most profitable and ubiquitous firearms companies in the world: Glock. The Austrian handgun, a model 17, had...

Four years after a Smith & Wesson .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun was used to kill an off-duty Chicago police officer, the Mississippi pawnshop owner who sold the gun in a straw purchase has agreed to concessions that authorities hope will curb similar illegal gun deals. The concession to alert authorities about customers who buy multiple handguns, beyond what is required by law, was reached in a federal lawsuit in Mississippi over the slaying of Officer Thomas Wortham IV, attorneys for the Wortham family said. He was an Army National Guard member who had served in Iraq and who — just days...