Free Republic

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In 1934, the Franklin Roosevelt administration was able to pass omnibus gun control legislation, with massive infringements on the Second Amendment.  It was the National Firearms Act.  The law was primarily designed to eliminate the private ownership of handguns. That was too much of a direct assault on the Second Amendment for Congress, which removed handguns from the bill. The remainder of the act passed, creating a bizarre law with unintended consequences. For obscure and unknown reasons, gun mufflers, also known as silencers, or suppressors, were included in the act. Silencers immediately changed from being a $10 accessory, available...

Conservative businesses you have enormous power to help change the culture by doing one simple thing: Forego requiring college degrees for any job that historically never required a degree. Use instead, SAT and ACT scores and internships to identify bright and eager workers. For those areas of work that do require technical training be bold! Hire people who have taken courses only in the technical areas needed or who have passed privately administered and certifiable qualifying exams. The longer our nation's youth remain in school the longer they are subjected to Marx-o-liberal indoctrination. Conservative businesses could easily help disrupt this...

This isn’t really the same as prying the W’s off the keyboards in the Oval Office, but Barack Obama seems determined to leave some unpleasant going away presents for his successor on the domestic energy front. Before leaving office, the President has modified the agreement for future oil exploration leases to eliminate nearly all Arctic sites. Needless to say, the energy industry isn’t exactly ecstatic over this. (Politico) President Barack Obama is throwing up roadblocks to Donald Trump’s pledges to expand offshore drilling, with a new plan that will declare parts of the Arctic off-limits. Obama’s Interior Department on Friday...

The energy industry and labor movement don’t often agree on much, but after one of the most contentious elections in memory, a group of experts from both sides found that they can unify around one thing: infrastructure. Throughout the 2016 campaign, infrastructure expansion was perhaps the only policy issue with bipartisan support. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump proposed plans in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Now, with Trump’s election and Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, large amounts of private and government funds may flow into public works projects to upgrade the nation’s crumbling roads, bridges...

If New Yorkers are trying to make a case for ignoring them, they’re doing a great job. Tonight theater-goers were treated to a night of booing and free style political rants at the highly acclaimed play, “Hamilton”. Vice President-elect Mike Pence was in attendance which apparently triggered the cast and crew. Some of the audience cheered while others loudly booed when he arrived, according to reports from people in attendance. But the show-stopper, literally, was the statement the cast read to him after the performance (and apparently after he already left the room.) After social media lit up with stories...

In the run up to the 2016 election, the price of .22 ammunition has been fluctuating up and down around 6 cents a cartridge for baseline bulk ammunition.  The reasons are clear.  Production of .22 ammunition is up by about two billion rounds a year, responding to over the top demand for the last four years. Part of the demand is structural.  Many new gun owners and shooters have been created.  Many of the younger members were raised on first person shooter games like Doom, Golden Eye, Battlefield, and Call of Duty. People in the industry have reported that...

Character actor Michael Shannon recently did an interview with the website Metro News about his new film that's coming out soon, but the interview is getting attention for a different reason. Shannon apparently thinks all Trump supporters should die -- especially the old ones. During the interview, the focus turned to the recent presidential election in which Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton. Shannon could not believe the outcome of the election and told Prigge that he “could use some vengeance right now.” But then, the interview turned into a mutual Trump-bashing party, during which Prigge asked Shannon, “How...

Some on the British Right see Donald Trump's election victory – following a campaign steeped in an appeal to white nativism – as heralding a transatlantic Anglo-Saxon resurgence. But, if anything, it indicates that America's destiny, and thus the world's, will continue to grow entwined with Asia's – and, in Trump's own estimation, with India's in particular. “Abki baar, Trump sarkaar!” (“This time, Trump government!”), the candidate announced in Hindi in his televised Diwali greeting to Indian-Americans, borrowing from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's own campaign slogan. He also gave a fifteen-minute address before thousands at a Hindu-American rally, in...

The first week since the Trump/Pence ticket’s solid electoral victory (winning 3084 of the USA’s 3141 counties) has been odd indeed, causing many pundits, both great and small to admit having gotten it wrong. (I, for example, always knew that between Hillary and Trump, one of them had to win, but my prediction was that if he headed the GOP ticket, the GOP would suffer devastation downballot, which blessedly turned out to be completely wrong). But the attention from coast to coast this week has not been directed at errant predictions. Rather, the focus has been turned to groups –...

In this episode, I debunk liberal, media-driven myths about the Reagan and GW Bush tax cuts. I also address the potential effects of a Federal Reserve interest rate hike on the economy.

On Thursday evening, President-elect Donald Trump tweeted that he received a call from Ford chairman Bill Ford indicating that the automaker had chosen not to move an entire plant from Kentucky to Mexico. As many reports rightly indicated, that’s not entirely true. Ford never intended to close and move its Louisville Assembly Plant — to which Trump is referring — to Mexico. The plant currently employs a little more than 4,700 workers. The Detroit-based automaker was only considering moving its Lincoln MKC production — only one of the vehicles manufactured at that plant — to its factory in Cuautitlan, Mexico,...

Full twitter text from Donald Trump today: Just got a call from my friend Bill Ford, Chairman of Ford, who advised me that he will be keeping the Lincoln plant in Kentucky - no Mexico

Pensions for having held elected office were never a part of the vision for America and President-elect Trump is emblematic of a return to the American citizen-servant Demonstrating a lack of understanding of America’s founding principles, a murder (that’s a bunch of cackling crows, for those who don’t know) of philosophizing academics are recommending that President-elect Donald Trump divest himself of his fortune before taking office. Only ignorance of this nation’s founding could prompt individuals, who call themselves ethics experts, to make such a call. Institutionalized politics has managed to destroy the original intent of anyone seeking to serve, and...

Some OPEC members are saying OPEC will do whatever it takes to make all members join the production cut agreement that’s been chewed over since late September—willing or unwilling. According to a statement by Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, “There is sufficient will among OPEC countries to take the step we need to take in the month of November, (to reach) a forceful agreement to reduce production and construct new mechanisms to stabilize the market.” Maduro was speaking in a televised broadcast, following his meeting with OPEC secretary-general Mohammed Barkindo in Venezuela. Barkindo, for his part, was quoted by media as...

Democrats fear Trump will create jobs and help urban communities causing union workers and blacks to abandon the Democrat party. Without union workers and blacks, Democrats will face huge obstacles in future elections especially in the swing states. This is why George Soros, Al Sharpton, and Van Jones are playing their roles to undermine Trump’s presidency. Democrats will do anything for power — including undermining a president even before he is sworn into office.

Hillary Clinton didn’t win the presidential election, but your wallet can still “win” thanks to this amazing clearance sale on Hillary campaign merchandise. The Clinton campaign, which presumably has some debt it would like to retire, sent out an email Wednesday notifying supporters of this hot opportunity to “stand with Democrats” by purchasing some “deeply discounted items” from the campaign shop.

Prominent digital journalist Tim Pool published a video Wednesday in which he explained why the recent crackdown on fake news and banning of alt-right Twitter accounts has him worried for the future of media. “I am terrified of a future where people will not share their opinions because people are being banned or ostracized,” Pool said. Pool explained at the outset of the 13-minute video that prior to the golden age of the internet, the media “was basically just this big top-down approach.” “You had the broadcast tower and it determined what the story was going to be for the...

Gene Sperling, chief economic advisor for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, talks with WSJ Editor-In-Chief Gerard Baker at the CEO Council conference about how the 2008 financial crisis undid the Democrats in 2016. GENE SPERLING: They [Republicans] won the electoral college, and that is how you win the presidency. But they're going to have a respectable popular vote loss, and they lost seats in the Senate and the House... What I really feel in my heart is that Barack Obama coming in to a terrible financial crisis was no doubt a mixed blessing. It made it easier for a Democrat to...

The simple stroke of a pen is all that's needed. Remember how the Obama Administration slow-walked its so-called review of the Keystone XL pipeline? How it languished in the State Department for seven years while first Hillary and then John Kerry pretended to weigh the pros and cons of the project, only to have Obama formally reject it - which everyone knew all along he would do? The whole thing, of course, was a complete joke. The Obama Administration had no serious rationale for denying the project, but Obama’s supporters in the environmental extremist set would have gone apoplectic if...