Free Republic

Last Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to answer questions about his role in the deadly “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal. However, instead of answers, Congress got more defiance, more arrogance, and more wasted time with an attorney general who clearly feels no sense of obligation to the American people or our rule of law. But for all the stonewalling, there was at least one telling moment at this hearing, and it should concern law-abiding gun owners and all Americans who expect accountability from our government. In a rash attempt to...

A deadly shooting rampage at a Carson City IHOP restaurant last month has prompted a call for a review of Nevada's gun laws. Assembly Judiciary Committee Chairman William Horne said it would be appropriate for lawmakers to consider changes to the state's gun regulations after a man with a history of mental illness shot 11 people with an assault weapon at the restaurant, killing three Nevada National Guard members and a civilian before killing himself. Horne, D-Las Vegas, told the Reno Gazette-Journal that while he's a gun owner who supports gun rights, he questions why citizens need to own an...

With the Obama admin and a Washington Post editorial calling for its reinstatement — amidst a tie-in to the Gunwalker scandal — it's worth revisiting the boneheaded law. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, February 26, 2009: As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons. The fabled “assault weapons ban.”Few laws ever passed have been as idolized — and misunderstood — as Title XI of the Federal Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act...

Will seek weapons ban at city council meeting ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - There is no room for assault rifles in St. Petersburg, city council member Steve Kornell said. He wants the semi-automatic and automatic weapons banned. Kornell will ask fellow city council members at a meeting this week to ban assault weapons in the city. Kornell also wants a resolution asking the state and federal government to follow suit. "I think it's an issue whose time has come," said Kornell. "I think most people get why you can't have military assault weapons." The proposal comes after three St. Petersburg police...

This is related to a previous post From January 30th. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2666031/posts I have a type 07 FFL (manufacturing and dealer), and one of the hottest selling items lately has been converted Saiga 12 shotguns. Due to a recent "study", Russian American Arms is no longer importing Saiga shotguns (according to my distributors). We have three distributors who deal directly with RAA, they're all on hold pending the outcome of the ATF paper recently released. ATF is accepting "comments" through May 1st, but the distributors are already pulling the product line. According to Ellet Brothers and RSR group, they're prepared to...

From: pmmchugh@comcast.net Subject: Urgent Action Alert Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2011 11:01:39 -0500 I've just received word from inside sources in the U.S. Senate. Senate Democrats are planning to execute a sneak attack on gun rights as soon as TODAY! Their plan is to sneak Carolyn McCarthy's Magazine Ban into law as an amendment to the Federal Aviation Administration Bill, a routine piece of generally non-controversial legislation. And they hope YOU won't notice. That's why you and I need to make our voices heard RIGHT NOW! We need to let them know we're watching them like a hawk! Please call...

Obama intentionally did not mention gun control in his State of the Union, but aides say that in the next two weeks the administration will unveil a campaign to get Congress to toughen existing laws. At the beginning of his State of the Union address, President Obama tipped his hat to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who’s now recuperating in a Houston medical facility. But throughout the hourlong speech, he never addressed the issue at the core of the Giffords tragedy—gun control—and what lawmakers would, or should, do to reform American firearm-access laws. That was intentional, according to the White House. An...

A wounded survivor of the Tucson shooting that critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is blaming Sarah Palin, House Speaker John Boehner, Fox TV host Glenn Beck, and former Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle for the tragedy. “It looks like Palin, Beck, Sharron Angle and the rest got their first target,” Eric Fuller said in an interview with Democracy NOW. “Their wish for Second Amendment activism has been fulfilled — senseless hatred leading to murder, lunatic fringe anarchism, subscribed to by John Boehner, mainstream rebels with vengeance for all, even 9-year-old girls,” he added, referring to the death of Christina...

Dem Strategy: Obama Will Call For Assault Weapons Ban Friday 01-14-2011 9:55am CT MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan and Democratic strategist Mark Penn join Hardball's Chris Matthews to discuss President Barack Obama's address in Arizona. (VIDEO AT LINK) Mark Penn also made this little prediction about Obama's need for another Oklahoma City bombing...

Assault Weapons and the TruthThe Obama administration has nominated an anti-gun zealot as the U.S.'s top gun cop. The Obama administration is moving into high gear in putting gun-control advocates into important government positions. The administration’s nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), Andrew Traver, should be of particular concern. His attacks on the civilian use of so-called assault weapons raise real questions about his willingness to distort the truth for political purposes. The person nominated to be the nation’s top gun cop shouldn’t use inaccurate descriptions to scare people into supporting gun control. Mr....

Second Amendment: In the "living Constitution" era, the Supreme Court rediscovers original intent and rightly rules that the right to bear arms applies to all Americans just as the rest of the Bill of Rights does. It's hard to conceive how the justices could have decided otherwise. But by the narrowest of margins — 5-4 — they have reaffirmed that keeping and bearing arms is an inalienable and individual right like speech and religion, and that it applies to all individuals as the Founding Fathers intended. Why anyone thinks the Second Amendment does not apply to all Americans is a...

Second Amendment: Chicago is deciding whether to prosecute a great-grandfather and Korean War veteran under its handgun ban. He refused to be a victim, and now there's one less armed thug roaming the streets. What's the problem? If the 80-year-old vet living on the city's West Side didn't have the gun the city said he shouldn't have, he and his 83-year-old wife and 12-year-old great-grandson might have joined those victims of gun violence about whom gun-control advocates constantly chirp. The vet obtained the gun in violation of the city's handgun ban after a prior incident in which the couple was...

Days before Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon arrogantly addressed a joint session of Congress on how we ought to run this country, members of the National Rifle Association gathered in Charlotte, N.C., to celebrate their victories in Congress and the courts, discuss their passion for guns, hunting, the shooting sports and plan for the future. The largest turnout for an NRA Annual Meeting since the association’s founding in 1871, the more than 72,000 members in attendance served as a boisterous reminder to politicians of both parties that the nation’s gun owners remain a potent political force that no one should take...

Gun Rights: Not happy with interfering in our internal affairs by savaging Arizona's new immigration law, the president of Mexico wants to shred our Second Amendment too. And the mayor of Chicago wants to help. There stood Mexican President Felipe Calderon before Congress, blaming America for the violence on his side of the border and, among other things, the guns that fuel the Mexican drug war that has claimed more than 23,000 Mexican lives since he took office in 2006. Rather than taking responsibility himself, he shoved the blame on America. It would all stop, he implied, if America would...

President Calderon’s assertion that Mexico has seized around 75,000 guns and assault weapons in the last three years — and that more than 80 percent of them came from the United States — is a bald-faced lie. It simply is not remotely connected to the truth.....

Felipe Calderon received liberal plaudits for falsely claiming Arizona's new immigration law uses racial profiling, but that wasn't the only baloney the Mexican president peddled during his state visit. Over four minutes of his Thursday address to Congress was spent lecturing Americans to renew the federal Assault Weapons Ban that sunset in September 2004. His justifications for the ban were all garbage. Mr. Calderon claimed that guns covered by the federal ban were particularly "powerful weapons." While the term "assault weapons" may conjure up visions of military hardware, the inside guts of these feared guns are essentially the same as...

During his trip to the United States Mexico's President Felipe Calderón received a lot of attention for falsely claiming that Arizona's new immigration law uses "racial profiling." Calderon's attacks on U.S. policies continued during his address to Congress on Thursday. Immigration wasn’t his only topic. He spent over four minutes of his address lecturing Americans and calling them on to renew the Federal Assault Weapons Ban that sunset in September 2004. Calderon's message was simple: the reason that Mexicans are losing the drug war is because the U.S. assault weapons ban expired. Yet, Calderon's understanding of what the Federal Assault...

In a speech to a joint session of Congress, Calderon described efforts to fight organized crime in Mexico, where 23,000 people have been killed in drug violence since he came to power in late 2006 and launched an army offensive. Washington is also aiding Mexico's battle against drug gangs with a 2007 pledge of $1.4 billion for equipment and police training to help fight the cartels that ship some $40 billion worth of illegal drugs north each year. "There is one issue where Mexico needs your cooperation. And that is stopping the flow of assault weapons and other deadly arms...

MEXICAN PRESIDENT Felipe Calderón has shown courage in leading his government to take on the violent drug gangs that have claimed thousands of Mexican lives. On Thursday, he displayed a different kind of fortitude: standing before a joint meeting of Congress and asking for a revival of the U.S. assault weapons ban. The Obama administration, which has been largely absent in the fight against the illegal gun trade, should have such backbone. Mr. Calderón, who has been in Washington for a state visit, made a powerful case. Over the past three years, Mexican authorities have seized some 75,000 weapons used...

Mexico's president, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, talked with Wall Street Journal correspondents David Luhnow and Nicholas Casey. Read an edited transcript of their conversation. --snip-- Mr. Calderón:...In fact, I would suggest ... the relationship between the increase in violence in Mexico and the repeal or non-ratification of the assault weapons ban. Ultimately violence, or the growth and the presence of cartels, their dominance in certain communities … begins about one or two years before I enter the administration, and the year the ban was cancelled was in 2004. Since I became president we have seized more than 75,000 weapons, of which...

H/T Mike at SipseyStreetIrregulars Terrorists and Guns: The Nature of the Threat and Proposed Reforms Wednesday, May 5, 2010 10:00 AM Dirksen Senate Office Building, room 342 Add To My Calendar (vCal) Witnesses Panel 1 The Honorable Frank R. Lautenberg U.S. Senate The Honorable Peter T. King U.S. House of Representatives The Honorable Michael R. Bloomberg Mayor City of New York The Honorable Raymond W. Kelly Police Commissioner City of New York Panel 2 Daniel D. Roberts Assistant Director, Criminal Justice Information Services Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation U.S. Department of Justice Eileen R. Larence Director, Homeland Security and Justice...

South African white far-right leader Eugene Terre'blanche, who fought to preserve apartheid in the early 1990s, was beaten and hacked to death at his farm on Saturday. "He was hacked to death while he was taking a nap," one family friend, a member of Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), told Reuters, requesting anonymity.

The F.B.I.’s raids against members of a Michigan-based Christian militia over the weekend added to concerns about rising far-right activity across the country. Nine members of the group, called the Hutaree, face sedition and weapons charges in a scheme to kill law enforcement officers to incite an antigovernment revolt. As the government deals with the re-emerging militia movement, what did it learn from the experiences of the 1990s, from the disastrous sieges in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992 and at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Tex., in 1993 to its handling of Oklahoma City bombing case? Jess Walter, author,...

(GunReports.com)--A report from a national coalition of mayors urges President Obama to adopt dozens of gun registration and confiscation measures, including the creation of a federal interstate firearms trafficking unit. After months of waiting in vain for gun control supporters in Congress to take aggressive action against semi-automatic firearms, gun shows and NRA-supported restrictions on the abuse of instant background check records and firearm trace information, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is urging President Obama to make 40 changes to federal gun law interpretation and enforcement on his own-without congressional approval. Bloomberg conveyed his recommendations to the president through...

Just this week a militia group and the tea party movement intersected. Mike Vanderboegh, former leader of the Alabama Constitutional Militia, recently called for hundreds of thousands of gun owners to “point their muzzles at the hearts of tyrants” when discussing ways to oppose recent congressional legislation. He also encouraged breaking of Democratic Party leaders windows to get their attention. He said “To all modern Sons of Liberty: THIS is your time. Break their windows. Break them NOW.” After this, there was a rash of such incidents. And, today 7 militia members were arrested in FBI raids in the midwest...

Otis McDonald, 76, stands before the Supreme Court, which Tuesday heard arguments in his suit to overturn Chicago's handgun ban Gun Rights: Otis McDonald, 76, an Army vet who lives in a high-crime area of Chicago, thinks the Constitution gives him the right to bear arms to protect himself and his wife as he protected his country. We think so too. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments on behalf of four Chicago residents led by homeowner McDonald, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Illinois State Rifle Association to overturn Chicago's three-decade-old ban on owning handguns. In a 5-4...

The Obama administration will seek to reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 during the Bush administration, Attorney General Eric Holder said today. "As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons," Holder told reporters.

Well folks, just when you thought that there might be some hope that the anti-gun faithful members of the Maryland State Senate had learned their lesson about proposing nonsense bills like bans on so-called assault weapons, they prove otherwise. Senator Mike Lennett (D), District 19, Montgomery County, has introduced SB516, the Maryland Assault Weapons Ban of 2010. His co-sponsors are a veritable Who's Who of the anti-gun wing of the Senate. Now's the time to head this thing off before the hearing is even scheduled and let the members of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee know that Maryland citizens will...

Gun Rights: A decade after Congress forbade the CDC from studying the health consequences of gun ownership, the National Institutes of Health has started funding such research. Will reform pry the guns from our cold, sick hands? More than a decade ago Congress, seeing it as a backdoor assault on the 2nd Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms, voted to cut funding for firearms research by the Centers for Disease Control. Such research was viewed as one-sided and based on flawed assumptions that all gun use was bad, even that which saved lives and deterred crime. --...

Gun Rights: A decade after Congress forbade the CDC from studying the health consequences of gun ownership, the National Institutes of Health has started funding such research. Will reform pry the guns from our cold, sick hands? More than a decade ago Congress, seeing it as a backdoor assault on the 2nd Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms, voted to cut funding for firearms research by the Centers for Disease Control. Such research was viewed as one-sided and based on flawed assumptions that all gun use was bad, even that which saved lives and deterred crime. The...

MEXICO CITY — The United States should reinstate a Clinton-era ban on assault weapons to prevent such guns from reaching Mexican drug cartels, former officials from both countries said in a report released Tuesday. The group, which includes two former U.S. ambassadors to Mexico, also said the U.S. should do more to stop the smuggling of firearms and ammunition into Mexico by stepping up investigations of gun dealers and more strictly regulating gun shows. The Binational Task Force on the United States-Mexico Border listed the assault weapons ban as a step the U.S. should take immediately to improve security in...

Gun Control: The Supreme Court agrees to decide if the Second Amendment applies to all of us, or just Washington, D.C. Why would the Founders put in the Bill of Rights something applying only to a federal enclave? In a 5-4 decision last year written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court overturned a draconian District of Columbia gun ban enacted 32 years ago that barred private ownership of handguns at all. Scalia wrote that an individual's right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted. The court ruled that...

(Corrected) Gun Control: In a case headed for the Supreme Court, a three-judge panel rules Chicago's gun ban constitutional since the 2nd Amendment doesn't apply to states and cities. High court nominee Sonia Sotomayor concurs.Those Pennsylvania townsfolk bitterly clinging to their guns may have been premature in celebrating the decision in D.C. v. Heller that the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does indeed guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms.

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683   Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh Attacking the Second Amendment in Preparation of Next Month’s G-20 Summit!   Tuesday, September 08, 2009   Please Contact Your Local Officials!  Tomorrow at 10:00 a.m., the Pittsburgh City Council will consider an ordinance that attempts to undermine our Second Amendment rights by targeting so-called “assault weapons.”   This poorly written and misguided proposal is being labeled as an effort to help create a secure environment for next month’s G-20 Summit, even though the City Council has allocated $16 million for security and accepted $14.3 million in federal and...

A senior Mexican official spoke with reporters today, in advance of the North American Leaders summit this weekend. The official, speaking on background, explain that this summit is basically laying the ground work for future endeavors, and advised not expect to see any obvious deliverables – that developing the relationship is essentially the goal. “No two countries are more important to each other’s security, prosperity, and well being than these two countries – simply by virtue of having a 2,000 mile border,” the official said. President Obama will meet with President Filipe Calderon and Prime Minister Harper – in bi-lats...

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683   23 State Attorneys General To Attorney General Holder: "No Semi-Auto Ban"   Friday, June 12, 2009   On June 11, the top law enforcement officials of nearly half the states signed a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, expressing their opposition to reinstatement of the federal ban on semi-automatic firearms. "We share the Obama Administration's commitment to reducing illegal drugs and violent crime within the United States. We also share your deep concern about drug cartel violence in Mexico. However, we do not believe that restricting law-abiding Americans' access to certain...

The National Rifle Association meeting last weekend in Phoenix was billed as a "celebration." The organization does not seem to have much to celebrate. A Democrat who has been a supporter of gun control is now president. And while he was winning the White House, his party was increasing its majorities in Congress. Gun control advocates are the ones who should be celebrating, but they're not. "At this point, I guess the right term is that we are frustrated," said Dennis Henigan, vice president for law and policy at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Last week, the Senate...

* National Rifle Association targets Obama over gun curbs * Activists fired up for 2010 congressional elections * Political risk to Democrats wanes as Americans moderate PHOENIX, May 15 (Reuters) - Thousands of U.S. gun owners gathering in Phoenix for the National Rifle Association's convention have one target firmly in their sights: any attempt to curb gun rights by the new guys in Washington. "We as an association, but more importantly America's 80 million gun owners, are very concerned about what may be coming down the pike through the Obama administration," Glen Caroline, grassroots director for the NRA's lobbying arm....

Obama's newly nominated "drug czar" is Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske. And just like a real czar, the drug czar, whose formal title is director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, can destroy rights instantly, and he can set the stage for additional harm. Before the dark days of the Clinton administration, few federal government officials had done more to damage Second Amendment rights than William Bennett, the so-called "drug czar" under President George H.W. Bush. In March 1989, Bennett set off a national panic by pushing the first Bush administration to ban the import of so-called "assault...

An April 7 report from the Department of Homeland Security branding some conservative groups as “rightwing extremists” is enough reason to revive former President Bill Clinton’s idea of an assault-weapons ban, according to an executive of a gun-control group--the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. "I think it certainly helps to make that case because what that report suggests is that there is a rise in the kind of paramilitary activity that we saw actually in years before the Oklahoma City bombing,” Dennis Henigan, the vice president for law and policy at the Brady Center, told CNSNews.com Wednesday Henigan talked...

They can kill from more than four football fields away, shred police officers' vests, fire up to 75 bullets at a time - and they're increasingly showing up in criminals' hands. Last year, Fort Wayne Police seized 31 semiautomatic rifles, compared with two in 2003, the last year of the federal assault weapons ban that limited the sale of the rifles. The seizure increase and more reports of criminals using the rifles concerns Fort Wayne Police Chief Rusty York. “The fact that we have these relatively cheap, assault weapon-type firearms out there, it's not only a hazard to the public,...

WASHINGTON — Amid a wave of publicity about drug-related gun violence along the Mexican border and police killings in U.S. cities, an increasing number of Americans oppose new government efforts to regulate guns. Recent nonpartisan polls show shrinking support for new gun-control measures and strong public sentiment for enforcing existing laws instead. So strong is the shift in public opinion that a proposed assault-weapons ban — once backed by 3 in 4 Americans — now rates barely 1 in 2. Frank Newport, the editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll, told reporters Tuesday that "every bit of data is showing us that...

NORTH FORT MYERS — Tom Brennan finally found his bullets on Saturday. After waiting 20 minutes in line at a gun show, he handed over nearly $210 for 10 boxes of 9 mm ammunition. The price was almost twice what he’d normally pay at a retail store. Problem is, those retail stores can’t keep boxes of 9 mm ammunition in stock. When a shipment arrives, the boxes are snatched up immediately. “I’ve been going every day,” Brennan, 45, said. “I can’t get it by the time I get there.” His odds improved the moment he stepped inside the Suncoast Gun...

WASHINGTON - Campaigning before a church congregation on Chicago’s South Side one Sunday in July 2007, Barack Obama said an epidemic of big city violence was “sickening the soul of this nation.” Among the potential cures, he said, was permanently reinstating a ban on assault weapons. One-hundred days into his presidency, President Obama says it remains a goal. But it is one the White House has been forced to abandon.

Americans don't need the NRA to tell them that the Barack Obama-Joe Biden administration could spell oblivion for their freedoms: Americans are telling us! Even during the poorest holiday spending season in almost 40 years, with consumer confidence in a freefall, Americans bought guns like they were going out of style —or going to be banned. The month Obama was elected, FBI background checks for firearm purchases increased by 42 percent over 2007, setting an all-time record for purchases in a month. Right-to-carry permit applications soared from coast to coast. It's easy to see why. After spending millions of dollars...

WASHINGTON — The last time a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress banned civilian sales of military-style assault weapons, it took American voters just seven weeks to rebel. They handed Republicans control of the House and the Senate for the first time in 40 years. One of the casualties in the backlash was Rep. Jack Brooks, D-Beaumont, who sponsored the ban and then promptly lost his seat in Congress in 1994 after 42 years of service. The lesson wasn’t lost on President Obama when Mexican President Felipe Calderon suggested reviving the defunct weapons’ ban to help combat drug cartel violence...

Taking his campaign for stronger gun control measures to the national stage, Gov. Rendell squared off with a top National Rifle Association official on national television today over the federal ban on assault weapons. Speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation, Rendell said there was no “rational reason” to allow the sale of assault weapons. “They are used for only one reason…to kill and maim people,” he said. Rendell, who has fought unsuccessfully for years in the state Legislature for tougher gun control, revived his efforts following the slayings this month of three Pittsburgh police officers, killed by a man armed...

Meeting face-to-face with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, President Obama on Thursday said the U.S. is to blame for much of Mexico's drug violence, and he set up a major congressional gun-control battle by calling on the Senate to ratify a treaty designed to track and cut the flow of guns to other countries. Mr. Obama said he wants to renew a ban on some semiautomatic weapons but that it is not likely to pass Congress. Instead, he called for the Senate to ratify a decade-old hemispherewide treaty that would require nations to mark all weapons produced in the country and...

Obama, joined by Mexican President Felipe Calderon at a press conference in Mexico City, said he and Calderon discussed the ban "extensively" during their meeting earlier in the day. Mexican officials have said in recent days that they would like to see the ban reinstated, noting that more than 90 percent of guns recovered in Mexico come from the U.S. The White House was quick to blunt comments Attorney General Eric Holder made earlier this year supportive of pursuing a reinstatement, but Obama said Thursday that he has not changed his position. "I have not backed off at all from...

Interview of Gov. Ed Rendel saying civilians only need revolvers and have no use for "assault weapons". He is also stating there is no slippery slope. He is also demanding the banning of high capacity clips.