Free Republic

RIVERSIDE COUNTY, Calif. (WFLA) — A gun enthusiast from southern California says he is taking a step to help destroy gun violence. One of Chad Vachter’s prized possessions was a thousand-dollar AR-15 assault rifle. After seeing the growing number of mass shootings in the country, Vachter said he was fed up and decided to take a hammer to his gun, destroying it. “I can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t have something in my house that so easily could become a part of another situation like that, and I’m not going to be desensitized to it. I refuse to.” Last...

A gun control group founded by former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords asked two web hosting companies on Friday to shut down websites selling parts and machines that help make untraceable homemade firearms known as “ghost guns.” The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence asked the providers that host GhostGunner.net and GhostGuns.com to disable the websites for violating the hosting companies’ terms of service. The sites sell kits, components and machines that help create homemade semi-automatic weapons. It’s legal to build a gun in a home or a workshop, and advances in 3-D printing and milling have made it easier...

People in England and Wales have two weeks to hand in guns, other weapons and ammunition to police stations without being punished for possession. People who surrender firearms will not automatically be charged, but will be if they are later connected to a crime. Police say many firearms are held in ignorance of their illegality. The parents of 18-year-old Yusuf Sonko, who was shot dead in Liverpool on 2 June, have called on people to hand in any firearms. Papa and Kajdijah Sonko spoke to BBC Breakfast about finding out that their son had been killed. Mr Sonko said he...

One of the obstacles to rational discussion of guns in America is the profound ignorance about guns on the part of many pushing for tighter controls. Take Al Sharpton on his MSNBC show this morning. Debating the subject with Liberty University Professor Daniel Howell in the context of the Sutherland Springs church massacre, Sharpton decried the availability of automatic and “semi-automatic weapons.” A bit later, Sharpton suggested that “we should outlaw automatic weapons, semi-automatic weapons.” Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Senate Democrats pushed nine different gun controls during the past six weeks, and ABC News has now emerged with a tenth gun law which they suggest may be the ringer. That law would legalize firearm confiscation orders like those in Washington state. Such orders allow a judge to issue an ex parte order for the confiscation of an American’s firearms. This means the order can be issued without the firearm owner even being present for the process. His or her first knowledge of the order would come when police knocked on their door to sweep the house for firearms. According...

Within hours of the slaughter of 26 people at the church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, Democrats were calling for expanded background checks to cover the private transfers of guns. If they had waited a few hours, they would have learned that such a law wouldn't have stopped the attack in Texas. Nor would it have stopped any of the other mass public shootings since at least 2000.

In a sane and decent world there would be a respectful period of time before individuals began using the bodies of those slain in mass-shooting as pawns or political bargaining chips in the ongoing debate about guns. Unfortunately we no longer live in a society where the rules of simple decency apply. Within minutes of news of the church shooting in Texas, progressives were metaphorically scrambling atop of the bodies to take the moral high ground and demand action on guns. Conservative like myself are then forced, however unwillingly, into the position of having to counter their narratives even...

Legislation to set a mandatory three-day waiting period for handgun transfers and establish licensing and registration guidelines on the sale of binary target markers have been introduced. The bills — HR.4018 and HR.4064 — were introduced by House Democrats last week and join a growing number of gun control proposals filed in the days immediately after a mass shooting in Las Vegas that left 59 dead. U.S. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., debuted his handgun waiting period bill Thursday to mandate that three business days elapse from the time a handgun transfer was initiated between a federal firearms licensed dealer and...

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) says the federal “assault weapons” ban that lapsed in 2004 would have prevented the Las Vegas attack, had that ban still been in force today. This claim shows a deep misunderstanding of the “assault weapons” ban, which did not ban the possession or purchase of “assault weapons.” Rather, it limited importation and mandated types that could be manufactured in the U.S., thus driving up prices. For a man of means like Stephen Paddock, paying the higher price for an “assault weapon” would have been no problem.

It is time for civility to reign — and madness to be snuffed out. That is why I am for conditional access to military grade firearms. More complete background checks, for example, including medical records. Limits on stockpiling ammunition. Mandatory courses in safe usage. And more broadly, we need to have a dialogue about the place of guns in our society. I am not for banning guns. I do support the right to bear arms. But when a right becomes an acute threat to the general welfare it is time for re-evaluation.

Anti-Second Amendment crusader Senator Dianne Feinstein admitted on a Sunday spin show that no law could have stopped the maniac who massacred 58 people and injured almost 500 in Las Vegas last week. “No, he passed background checks registering for handguns and other weapons on multiple occasions,” Feinstein told CBS’s “Face the Nation.” But there is one law he definitely broke, which is the law against murder. Criminals don't follow the law. Nevertheless, she persisted. “Regulations aren’t going to do it,” Feinstein said on the need for a law over an ATF rule. “We need a law. It can’t be...

A legislative response to mass killings is elusive on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers cannot settle on a solution. However, there are lots of alternatives when it comes to potentially curbing gun violence. Background checks. Banning so-called “bump stocks.” Regulating bump stocks. Increasing open-carry provisions. Or just leaving things the way they are. But would any fix the problem? Taking action on any plan entails compromise. So far, the sides just aren’t willing to do that. And in a paradoxical twist, the butchery in Las Vegas last week may give Republicans the chance to pass controversial firearm legislation of their own, which...

Critics of this column will quickly point out the sheer amount of destruction caused by Stephen Paddock would not have been possible had Paddock not had access to the cadre of high-powered, fast-shooting weaponry he did. They are undeniably correct. Some terrorism is beyond the scope of individual defense. But is this a reason to trash the Second Amendment? Of course not. Progressives have never, ever answered one simple question when it comes to the notion of gun control or gun bans, to wit: How do you keep firearms out of the hands of criminals and madmen? Whatever sick motivation...

On Sunday some people on my Facebook feed were claiming that the biggest challenge facing America was NFL players deciding to kneel during the National Anthem, but on Monday the mayhem in Las Vegas brought them some much-needed perspective. After news of the massacre, the worst in modern American history, broke, a crowd of commentators stepped forward to warn us all not to debate or politicize it. “Show some restraint, they scolded us. Show some class. It’s too soon.” Too soon? Do you remember similar calls for restraint after 9/11? Do you recall conservative commentators warning us that now was...

Not so with guns. The Second Amendment, as applied in the last 30 years or so, has become so perverted, twisted and misused that you have to see it now as the second original sin in the founding of this country, after slavery. It wasn’t meant to be the instrument for the worst kind of American exceptionalism — setting up the United States as the most violent of developed nations. But it is now. The more we stand out for random mass killings daily, the more the leading cause becomes clear: the warped interpretation of the freedom to own lethal...

Hillary Clinton said she’ll “keep speaking out” for gun control Wednesday on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Clinton lamented Congressional inaction on gun control, saying, “I can’t believe that one whole political party in the greatest country on Earth is totally sold to the gun lobby and will do whatever they are ordered to do, despite the loss of life.” advertisement The former Democratic presidential candidate criticized the fact that one of President Trump’s first actions on guns was to repeal Barack Obama’s Social Security gun ban and she claimed that the repeal allows people with mental problems to...

This photo, taken from a video posted on the Slide Fire website, shows the after-market bump stock device, which uses the gun's recoil to cause rapid discharge of bullets. (CNSNews.com) - On June 7, 2010 -- about a year and a half into the Barack Obama administration -- the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives issued an opinion letter, giving the go-ahead to an after-market accessory that allows the user to “bump fire” a semi-automatic rifle. A company called Slide Fire had earlier sent its patented replacement shoulder stock to ATF’s Firearms Technology Branch, asking for an evaluation of...

Bump-fire or slide-fire stocks use the rifle’s recoil to help simulate full-auto fire. (Photo: Slide Fire Solutions) In the wake of Sunday’s mass shooting in Las Vegas, Washington’s chief executive wants action to prevent what he termed “machine gun massacres” by banning a specific type of firearm accessory. Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, in a statement released Tuesday, argued the time to act to prevent gun violence is now and gave lawmakers marching orders for directed legislation. “This session the legislature needs to ban bump-stocks and other devices that turn legal semi-automatic firearms into lethal fully-automatic machine guns,” said Inslee....

Was it a jihadist or just a guy?” So the seventeen-year-old girl asks, on hearing the news, landing at once on the central black-comedy question as the annals of American mass murder expand this morning. If the author of the at least fifty dead and more wounded—the word “wounded,” of course, fails to capture the extent of the maiming, just as the blank word “dead” fails to capture the dawning of grief for so many families—was someone who had, even once, communicated with or been radicalized by ISIS, no matter how remote or long-distance that radicalization, or if he was...

After the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas, the impulse of politicians will be to lower flags, offer moments of silence, and lead a national mourning. Yet what we need most of all isn’t mourning, but action to lower the toll of guns in America. We don’t need to simply acquiesce to this kind of slaughter. When Australia suffered a mass shooting in 1996, the country united behind tougher laws on firearms. As a result, the gun homicide rate was almost halved, and the gun suicide rate dropped by half, according to the Journal of Public Health Policy. Skeptics will...