Free Republic

NRA members, keep an eye out for your copy of American Rifleman, if it hasn't already arrived. According to the latest edition of the magazine, Bob Reynolds, owner of Templar Consulting LLC, will make a special presentation at the NRA Foundation Banquet on May 14. It's a modified AR-15 (civilian version of the milspec M16 rifle), specially customized in honor of Gov. Sarah Palin. Chambered for .50 Beowulf instead of the standard 5.56mm cartridge, this special AR features several custom engravings. The Big Dipper is on the magazine well, an outline of the state of Alaska is on the stock,...

MEXICO CITY – An escalating arms race among Mexico's drug cartels casts doubt on whether Mexico or the U.S. can stop the flow of weaponry, despite renewed vows last week from presidents of both countries. Stockpiles captured by Mexican soldiers show that warring traffickers are now obtaining military-grade weaponry such as grenades, launchers, machine guns, mortars and anti-tank rockets.

Having backed off--for now--from the politically difficult push for a ban of so-called "assault weapons," President Obama hopes to assuage Mexican President Felipe Calderón's disappointment with a promise to push the Senate to ratify the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives and other Related Materials, a treaty signed in 1997, but never ratified in the U.S. President Obama announced in a visit here today that he will push the U.S. Senate to ratify an inter-American arms trafficking treaty designed to curb the flow of guns and ammunition to drug cartels and other armed...

There are four Somali pirates holding a U.S. merchant captain hostage. I have followed the story a bit, but I have not heard any coverage of what the pirates are armed with. I would like to know what they used to hijack the ship. I suggest that people make predictions about what they are armed with. I will make mine first. They were and are armed with edged weapons, knives, perhaps fairly large ones such as machetes or pangas. This is based on the lack of coverage of the weapons used, perhaps because the media knows that a great many...

by Jack Lee How does a concealed weapons permit dovetail with the Constitutional [right] to, keep and bear arms? One might think the CCW is a mere bureaucratic extension of that right, something that allows the issuing county to make a few dollars charging citizens a permit fee. However, in actual practice the CCW permit has been issued rather arbitrarily. The Kern County Sheriff issued over 3000 permits in a 3 year period, only 12 had been handed out in San Francisco and only 3 in Los Angeles County. In a number of California counties your odds of getting a...

More Than $1 billion In Private-Sector Weapons Exports Approved For Mexico Since 2004 Mainstream media and Beltway pundits and politicians in recent months have unleashed a wave of panic in the nation linking the escalading violence in Mexico, and its projected spread into the U.S., to illegal weapons smuggling. The smokescreen being spread by these official mouthpieces of manufactured consensus is that a host of criminal operators are engaging in straw (or fraudulent) gun purchases, making clandestine purchases at U.S. gun shows or otherwise assembling small caches of weapons here in the states in order to smuggle them south of...

WASHINGTON — President Obama plans to begin negotiations on Wednesday to draft a new arms control treaty that could slash the American and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals by about a third and possibly lead to even deeper reductions, according to administration officials.

SHE may have the most talked-about forearms in US political history, but Michelle Obama revealed yesterday that she has a weakness for hamburgers and chips and is more concerned about her hips. After a national discussion about her taste for sleeveless dresses - and the consequent exposure of her toned biceps – the wife of President Barack Obama appears to be having a little more trouble keeping other parts of her anatomy in trim.

So you're an arms dealer, you want to win a contract in India, and you rather liked the look of those dancing scenes in Slumdog Millionaire. What do you do next? Well, if you're the Israeli firm Rafael, the obvious (but no less excruciating) answer is to make a Bollywood movie promoting your military hardware. Doesn't sound like it has any of the ingredients for one of those classically romantic Indian films does it? Trust me. You truly have no idea how bad, or hilarious, this could be until you see it. The first thing watchers will notice is that...

Russia is working on anti-satellite weapons to match technologies developed by other nations and will speed up modernization of its nuclear forces, a deputy defense minister was quoted as saying Thursday.

MOSCOW (AP) — Modernization of Russia's strategic nuclear forces is a top priority for the government, a senior Cabinet official said Wednesday. Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said that upgrading ground, sea and air components of the nation's strategic forces is costly but necessary. "It's expensive, it's very expensive, but there is no other way," Ivanov told lawmakers in the lower house of parliament. "We will develop and modernize our strategic deterrent forces." The Kremlin has welcomed Washington's stated intention to intensify arms control talks to negotiate a successor to the pivotal 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START I,...

Gaza-based Hamas strongman Mahmoud Zahar declared Tuesday that his Islamist militant group reserves the right to bring arms into Gaza. "It's our right to bring in everything - money and arms. We will not give anyone any commitment on this subject," Zahar told Reuters in an interview in the Egyptian town of Ismailia. O Advertisement ne the goals of Israel's recent offensive against Hamas in Gaza was to stem the flow of weaponry into the coastal strip.

A West Allis municipal judge today ruled in favor of a local man arrested for disorderly conduct after a neighbor complained that he was carrying a gun while planting a tree. Judge Paul Murphy found Brad Krause not guilty of disorderly conduct in a case that drew to a hearing numerous gun rights advocates to witness what may be the first open carry gun case heard in a Wisconsin courtroom. For Krause, however, the significance of the case extended beyond gun rights: It was an infringement on civil liberties, he said after today's decision. "The reason people are upset about...

The U.S. Navy is conducting covert operations aimed at intercepting Iranian ships carrying weapons to rearm Hamas in the Gaza Strip, informed defense officials told WND. The setup, which has already halted a vessel carrying Iranian munitions in recent days, acts on intelligence information provided by Israel, Egypt and Cyprus, the defense officials said. The U.S. Navy refused to comment, but informed sources said the U.S. last week intercepted an Iranian-owned vessel found to be carrying weapons, including rockets, mortar and artillery shells. It is suspected the ship was attempting to reach the Egyptian Sinai area. If successful, the delivery...

Gun manufacturing in the Pakistan boondocks. In the clip below you'll see an amazing 'industry' in Pakistan turning out 1000 weapons a day and have done so for seventy years. That is over 25 million firearms...and we think they can be subdued...maybe after killing them all. Mr. Obama has a tall job in front of him, espescially if he believes that he can overcome Islam and their arms to achieve their end... Have a look...

U.S. defense officials say a Navy vessel that is part of the new piracy task force intercepted and searched an Iranian-owned ship that officials feared was carrying arms to Hamas. It's unclear whether those suspicions were founded. Two defense officials say the Cypriot-flagged commercial vessel was tracked by a U.S. Navy ship in the Red Sea over the weekend. One official says it was boarded with the consent of the vessel's crew on Monday and Tuesday. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record. The search turned up ammunition that included artillery...

The most significant deficiency of the Iraqi Security Forces is its missing artillery. Artillery is called the "King of the Battlefield" because it is the single largest casualty maker in conventional war. Currently, The Iraqi Army's largest indirect fires is its company's 60mm mortar sections. While the current emphasis has been on fielding more infantry to the detriment of supporting elements, the Iraqi Army plans to fill out the artillery component from 2009 through 2011. Until that is complete, US forces will have to remain to provide support and training to Iraqi forces.

The Russian military will commission 70 strategic nuclear missiles over the next three years, a senior government official said Monday, according to Russian news agencies. The statement by Vladislav Putilin, a deputy head of the Cabinet's military-industrial commission in charge of weapons industries, indicates the government's intention to significantly increase the tempo of rearming Russia's Strategic Missile Forces. Putilin, who spoke after a government session chaired by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that discussed the weapons purchases, said the Cabinet has decided to spend about 4 trillion rubles, or $141 billion, on new weapons over the next three years, Interfax and...

Happy Holidays: Now dispose of all of your ammunition! Every last round! From now on, you will be able to buy only overpriced ammunition that will be registered to you in a government database. Not yet--at least for now. A small company, Ammunition Accountability--which wants to help anti-gunners price and regulate the Second Amendment out of existence, profit at the expense of our rights, or both--has found radical anti-gun legislators in 18 states willing to introduce bills pushing such nonsense. But few anti-gun proposals are so overtly aimed at destroying the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. As we began...

What makes a terrorist choose one target over another when planning to machine gun and grenade attack innocent people in a crowded public place? Is the target selection based on some perceived geopolitical transgressions against the terrorists’ demented cause? The terrorist would like the world to think so, but if that was the case, why didn’t the latest attack happen in a place like Israel? Why Mumbai, India? Here is a letter I received from someone who knows the real reason why terrorists would strike Mumbai, India over Tel Aviv, Israel or even Houston, Texas. You won’t see this talked...