Free Republic

The National Rifle Association is putting the election-year squeeze on conservative Democrats, demanding that they buck their leadership to support a bill to erase more of the District of Columbia’s gun laws. Democratic gun rights supporters will risk losing their A-plus rating if they don’t sign a discharge petition to be filed Wednesday bringing the gun-rights bill directly to the floor. It will be the first time in more than 20 years that the NRA has “scored” a discharge petition in determining the grades it gives lawmakers before the November election, said spokesman Andrew Arulanandam. “We’re making this a priority....

Where on this great earth of ours could King Kong’s descendant survive an attack from an army of zoo workers carrying guns and tranquilizing darts? If you said Skull Island you’re right, but you’re also living in a fantasy world. Those living in the real world know the only logical place would be Japan, and sure enough, that’s where this latest ape-human drama played out. (Ichiro the chimp, a 42-year-old resident of Ishikawa Zoo in Japan, managed to escape to the roof in order to cool down during a heatwave. But it took a lot of work from the zoo...

Interesting read over at the Volokh Conspiracy concerning the UN's disdain for our 2nd Amendment. I've got just two quotes from the article here. I love the arrogance of this first one (we don't have to bow down to the UN? We're still free to make our own laws? Oh, Thank you, Mr. UN Poobah!) “States remain free to have their own national legislation,” said Daniel Prins, chief of the Conventional Arms Branch of the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs.Here's another goodie. Stalin himself couldn't have said it better: Citizens should only be allowed to own guns if...

A Mississippi congressman (Rep Thompson, D) wants to create even more defensless victim zones. Thompson is displeased with a recent Georgia State law that removes infringements on the right of Georia citizens to bear arms on public transportation. While there is no history of problems in this area, Thompson wishes to ban guns from unspecified zones around airports, far beyond the traditional security zones established to prevent terrorists from smuggling arms onto airliners. Most airports around the country respect the second amendment rights of citizens to bear arms outside the designated security zones.

Manager Of Business Shot Robber, Police Say MANHEIM, Pa. -- A would-be robber picked on the wrong victim in Manheim early Tuesday, according to police. Kevin Smith, 19, of Lancaster City was shot twice in the chest and died hours later at a local hospital. The botched holdup occurred just after 5 a.m. when two men followed the operations manager of Power Pro Battery into his office. Police said knowing he was about to be robbed, the manager pulled out his own handgun, turned and fired twice, hitting one of the robbers. The other man got away. Police are now...

Survey: Alabama gung-ho for guns Sunday, July 20, 2008By BRIAN LYMAN Capital Bureau Next time you walk into your favorite Alabama restaurant, look around. Chances are that two-thirds of the customers will own a gun and nearly half will have a permit to carry a concealed weapon into the establishment. That's according to the results of a new Press-Register/University of South Alabama poll. Sixty-six percent of respondents said they own a gun and 46 percent have a permit to carry a concealed weapon. The telephone survey of 424 Alabama residents was conducted Monday through Thursday, with a 5-percentage-point margin of...

Dangerous Brady States July 19, 2008 at 3:14 am · The lamestream media told you: The Brady Center gun-control group has issued its list of the states with the best gun laws, and we give them prominent coverage of this each year without checking for accuracy, the net effect of their custom ratings, or what they consider the “best” gun laws to be. We’re just “finding truth and reporting it,” since the Bradys did say what we said they said. The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: Barre Bollinger, a GeorgiaCarry.Org member, looked into the Brady Center’s state ratings. (A score...

WASHINGTON -- A 13-year-old boy was killed, seven people shot and a person stabbed within minutes of each other in a spate of violence in the Trinidad section of NE shortly after midnight Saturday. Police said between midnight and four in the morning a person was also stabbed and another shot citywide. DC Police Inspector Rodney Parks says the shootings appear to have taken place in connection with three attempted robberies. Police are looking for a gold or metallic colored car, possibly a Dodge Intrepid, spotted at each crime scene. The police have no suspects in custody at this time....

Orin's and David Kopel's posts below discuss whether Heller recognized a constitutional right to self-defense. I'm inclined to say the answer is yes, for the following reasons: 1. Heller recognized a right to keep and bear arms in self-defense, which logically presupposes some legal right to self-defense. Why would the Constitution let you keep an object for a certain purpose, when all use of the object for that purpose could be outlawed? 2. Heller often talks of a "right to self-defense" in contexts that suggest it is of constitutional statute, e.g., "That of the nine state constitutional protections for the...

If your child came across a gun, what do you think they would do with it? Tell an adult? Pick it up? Pull the trigger? We wanted to try something. With a Northside ISD police officer's help, we put a group of children in a room with a real, unloaded gun to see what they would do when they thought no one was watching... ...During our experiment, several of the children picked up the gun and played with it. At least one boy walked up to another child and pointed it at the child's face. In the second group, comprised...

"Is gun regulation a public health issue?" http://broadcaster.medpagetoday.com/t?r=2&c=1898&l=15&ctl=CA06:5D21AFF7DD791D1C59086A13CA638538

Governor Patrick Files Bill to Drastically Increase License Fees! On Sunday July, 13, 2008 Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick filed a special appropriations bill for fiscal year 2008. (As of the filing of this report, the bill had not yet received a number.) Within this bill sections 24 - 27 drastically increase certain firearm licenses. Sections 24 & 25 attack lawfully licensed firearm dealers by increasing their license fees from $100 for three years to $250. Then it adds a $100 inspection fee in years two and three of the license. This tactic would now turn a $100 three year dealer's...

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07162008/news/regionalnews/officials_offering_200_for_illegal_guns_120186.htm OFFICIALS OFFERING $200 FOR ILLEGAL GUNS Rules:link only

The D.C. Council on Tuesday night approved emergency legislation that will repeal the District's 32-year-old ban on handguns while setting stiff regulations for registering and storing guns inside homes. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, a Democrat, is expected to sign the bill as early as Wednesday, which would allow residents to begin registering guns Thursday. The bill passed unanimously in the 13-member council with minimal discussion, though several council members acknowledged that more work should be done on the legislation, which as an emergency bill will only be in effect for 90 days. "There will be more work to be done,"...

Obama has always been in favor of banning handguns. In his answers to the 1998 Illinois State Legislative National Political Awareness Test, Obama said he favored a ban on “the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons.” The problem with that position is that Justice Scalia's opinion stated that handguns, not just revolvers, not just semi-automatics, but handguns generally, are protected under the 2nd Amendment: The handgun ban amounts to a prohibition of an entire class of “arms” that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose. Under any of the standards of scrutiny that we...

We may be able to measure the life of the District of Columbia's newly proposed handgun law with a stopwatch. Unveiled today by Mayor Adrian Fenty and D.C. Council members, this measure is lawsuit bait that makes a mockery of the Supreme Court's landmark District of Columbia v. Heller (PDF file) on June 26 by imposing maximum inconvenience on law-abiding D.C. residents who want to own firearms. In striking down the District's previous handgun ban, the Court ruled that "the District's ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful...

WASHINGTON — The District of Columbia Council planned to vote Tuesday on emergency legislation to allow handguns, but only if they are used for self-defense in the home and carry fewer than 12 rounds of ammunition. (snip) The nation's capital would still require all legal firearms — including handguns, rifles and shotguns — to be kept in the home unloaded and disassembled, or equipped with trigger locks.

District residents will be able to keep a handgun in the home for self-defense but that right would be limited to the home and not outside it, city leaders said today, announcing new gun regulations in response to the Supreme Court's recent ruling striking down the city's handgun ban. Gun owners will have to pass vision and written tests, provide a photo with their application to register a gun, and submit their weapon for ballistics testing. Guns will also still require trigger locks. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) and interim Attorney General Peter J. Nickles announced the regulations alongside D.C....

The Government will announce further measures to tackle knife crime on Monday following several knife-related deaths this week. Speaking in a Downing Street statement, the PM said that he had been in contact with Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair and asked to be kept up to date on investigations. Mr Brown said the stabbings are "shocking and tragic" and offered his condolences to the friends and families of those hurt. He then revealed that the Government will be publishing the first ever cross-government youth crime plan later next week. The plan will contain new enforcement measures, improvements to sentencing,...

By Leah HopeCHICAGO (WLS) -- Proponents of gun rights gathered in the Loop Friday to push legislation legalizing concealed weapons in Illinois. Among the speakers at the rally was a Texas state representative whose parents were among 23 people gunned down at Luby's cafeteria in 1991. Recent rallies at the Thompson Center have been demands for gun control laws following fatal shootings of Chicago children. Thursday, the plaza was full again, but the message was from those demanding the right to bear arms.

A Westmoreland County jury acquitted Sen. Robert Regola of Hempfield on all counts in his perjury case. Regola was found not guilty of perjury, possession of a firearm by a minor, false swearing, and recklessly endangering another person. Regola was charged with lying during a coroner's inquest about the whereabouts of a 9 mm Taurus handgun his family owned. The weapon was found beside the body of his next-door neighbor, 14-year-old Louis Farrell, on the morning of July 22, 2006. Farrell died of a self-inflicted wound to the head from that gun, Coroner Kenneth Bacha ruled. The senator allegedly...

We just got back from the Heller rally in downtown Chicago and let me say these are some happy people. I’d estimate the crowd at between 200-300 (and I suck at estimating crowds!) Folks of every size, shape, color and religion were jubilant with the recent Heller decision and looking forward to being able to carry a handgun as a law abiding citizen of Chicago. Here are some photos… The crowd! The NRA folks were disappointed at the turn out, all I can say is for Chicago, on a Friday afternoon a crowd of this size was damn near miraculous!...

WEB VOTE Should Disney be able to stop employees from bringing guns to work? Yes. No.

Department of the Interior Extends Deadline for Comments Regarding Right-to-Carry in National Parks and Wildlife Refuges Until August 8. Like a quarterback taking a knee in the fourth quarter, two of Congress’s most ardent opponents of our Right to Keep and Bear Arms are trying to run out the clock on efforts to enhance your right to self-defense in our national parks and wildlife refuges. For two months, we have been asking NRA members and gun owners to submit comments in support of allowing law-abiding citizens to carry their legally-owned firearms in national parks and wildlife refuges -- and tens...

THE U.S. Supreme Court last month announced its landmark Second Amendment ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, declaring unconstitutional the D.C. handgun ban and prohibition against having a functional, unlocked firearm in the home for possible immediate self-defense need. The 5-4 ruling saw Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito in the majority, with liberal Justices Stevens, Bryer, Ginsburg and Souter dissenting. Thus were vindicated the many years of dedicated efforts by millions of American gun owners, under the determined leadership of the National Rifle Association, Second Amendment Foundation, Gun Owners of America, and countless state...

he list of issues on which Barack Obama has flipped now that the primaries are over is long and growing rapidly. He says he believes in a Second Amendment right to bear arms. He now opposes late-term abortion. He suddenly is a devotee of using faith-based institutions to deliver public services. He now says that he won’t raise Social Security taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. In the primary, he said he’d eliminate the threshold entirely, including on people making as little as $100,000. He recently opposed the Fairness Doctrine for talk radio. Now he says he’s...

Guns and Health Jeffrey M. Drazen, M.D., Stephen Morrissey, Ph.D., and Gregory D. Curfman, M.D. The Supreme Court has launched the country on a risky epidemiologic experiment. The announcement by the Court last month of its decision in District of Columbia v. Heller,1 which struck down a ban on handgun ownership in the nation's capital, has set the stage for legal challenges to gun regulation in other major American cities. Such challenges have already been introduced in Chicago and San Francisco. If there is a widespread loosening of gun regulations, we will learn over the next few years — in...

VANCOUVER -- Americans cherish their constitutional right to keep and bear arms, even when they come to Canada. Canada Border Services Agency officers regularly discover smuggled guns destined for the Canadian criminal underworld, but most firearms they turn up belong to otherwise law-abiding Americans, according to agency intelligence summaries. "Most of the firearms seized by CBSA at the land ports of entry are the personal firearms of legitimate U.S. travellers who neglected - intentionally or not - to declare their personal firearms," says the agency's strategic intelligence analysis division in an undated report covering the period from 2004 to 2006....

Alarming numbers of children feel safer in the street when carrying knives or guns, Government inspectors warned today. A top-level report found that many children were still "very worried" about being bullied and were afraid of being on their own in public areas.

I’ve noted the phenomenon of Big Nanny pediatricians quizzing parents about whether they own guns before. The AMA, of course, is notoriously filled with gun-grabbing activists. Read Shawn shares another example via the Raleigh News and Observer. He e-mails: “No longer satisfied with just making sure the kids are in good health, the doctors now see fit to pry into your personal life to see if you have guns in the home.”

Walt Disney World fired a security guard on Monday after he protested the company's decision not to allow people with concealed weapons permits to keep guns in their cars on Disney property. Disney terminated Edwin Sotomayor, 36, of Orlando for violating three Disney employee policies, essentially for failing to cooperate with an internal investigation, said spokeswoman Zoraya Suarez. Sotomayor vowed to continue his fight. At issue is Florida's new law that allows people with concealed weapons permits to keep firearms in their vehicles in employee parking lots. Disney advised its employees late last month that the theme-park resort is exempt...

UK: CONSERVATIVE LEADER David Cameron called for "a presumption to prison" for people found carrying knives yesterday as he launched his party's campaign in what he called Britain's "broken society by-election" in Glasgow East. FRANK MILLAR , London Editor reports Scottish first minister Alex Salmond claimed a political earthquake could see his Scottish National Party win the previously "safe" Labour seat, amid speculation that failure to hold his Scottish stronghold could finally precipitate a challenge to prime minister Gordon Brown's leadership.

ROBINSON TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) -- A frustrated gun shop owner in Ottawa County has been robbed again - the third time in three years. On the evening of the Fourth of July, or sometime the next morning, Felix's Gun Shop in Robinson Township was broken into, say authorities. Eighty-two guns were stolen - including handguns, antiques, military style rifles, and pellet guns.

Bobby Jindal signs bill giving employees the right to have firearms in their automobiles "on company property".

Those looking to buy firearms after the Supreme Court ruling against the District of Columbia's gun ban are out of luck. Purchasing regulations have yet to be written. Days after the Supreme Court ruled that residents of the nation's capital can keep handguns at home for self-defense, George Harley walked out of a Maryland gun shop disheartened, his goal of legally having a gun to protect his family put on hold. Since before Harley, 30, was born, the District of Columbia has restricted its residents' ownership of handguns. After the high court's ruling was handed down late last month, Harley...

1 shot to death, 1 injured in South Side drive-by Tribune staff report 7:54 AM CDT, July 5, 2008 A second man shot as he sat in a vehicle on Chicago's South Side late Thursday has died. Martin Hoard, 29, of the 6000 block of South Indiana Ave., died at Stroger Hospital following the shooting. He was parked in the 6700 block of South State Street when a car pulled up about 10:50 p.m. and fired shots into their vehicle, said Officer Amina Greer, a police spokeswoman. John Duncan, 22, of the 8000 block of South Paulina Street, was pronounced...

Beirut, July 2: At "Buns and Guns" you can order a "Kalashnikov" sandwich from a bullet-shaped menu, prepared by chefs in military fatigues with the roar of explosions as background music. This new fast food restaurant in Beirut's southern suburbs, where the Hezbollah movement holds sway, was the brainchild of co-owner Ali Hammoud. He said the war theme was a novel concept that had nothing to do with Lebanon's bloody recent history. "It's just an idea I had, nothing more, nothing less. I could have put toys in place of the sandbags and teddy bears instead of guns. But it...

A few minutes after ten on the morning of June 26, the Supreme Court gave every conservative a reason to get excited, charged up, fired up, yes, even, if need be, a little wild-eyed about the coming election. Yes, with its decision in District of Columbia et al. v. Heller, the Court has completely and irreversibly extinguished the hope burning in the hearts of Democrats and their Liberal allies that Right of Center voters won’t overcome the malaise affecting them.

Scalia's selective historyBy Jack RakoveAppeals to the evidence of history figured prominently in last week's Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia vs. Heller, striking down a sweeping ban on handguns and affirming that the 2nd Amendment protects a fundamentally individual right "to keep and bear arms." Yet read the two main opinions by Justices Antonin Scalia (for the conservative majority) and John Paul Stevens (in dissent), and you will see that different ways of defining and reading what counts as historical evidence expose a fault line between them.One would have to be terribly naive to think that how these...

About 45 minutes ago, Fox News DC broadcast a live interview with morning anchor Bob Sellers and a DC councilman whose name I didn't get. During the 2 or 3 minute discussion, the councilman asserted several times that last week's SCOTUS ruling somehow reinforced or supported the city law requiring that gun in the home be "disabled" and equipped with gun locks. To which Fox's Sellers (who lives in Virginia) kind of shook his head and repeated that assertion as if to ask for clarification. I'm guessing that - like most of us - Sellers understood the SCOTUS ruling to...

Homeowners: 'Someone Is Going To Get Hurt'SANFORD, Fla. -- Families in a crime-ridden Central Florida neighborhood are arming themselves with shotguns and talking about adding electric barbed wire to stop thieves targeting their homes. "Somebody is going to end up getting hurt," resident Andrea Fine said. "The homeowners are tense. We are all on edge. For the first time in my life I'm really scared to live in my home."

A Right Without Principle is No Right There has naturally been a lot of discussion about the recent Supreme Court ruling in the "District of Columbia versus Heller" case that is believed to clearly uphold the view that the Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right of individual's to keep and bear arms. While those who understand the importance of that right are celebrating this decision, it is unfortunately not as unambiguous as it might at first seem. That ambiguity is obvious in many of the comments that have been made by various commentators about the decision, and their...

Obama's problem is that he's been for radical gun control and supported extreme restrictions against gun ownership. "In 1999, Mr. Obama urged enactment of a federal law prohibiting the operation of any gun store within five miles of a school or park. This would eliminate gun stores from almost the entire inhabited portion of the United States.

For 30 years D.C. was ruled by liberals who thought they were better and smarter than the Founding Fathers. Justice Scalia told them otherwise, and D.C. residents are heading to the gun shops for some shiny new pistols. D.C. Officials are panicking.

The Supreme Court ruling on gun laws last Thursday created media frenzy. Editorials, columnists, anchors and pundits predicted it would result in an American Armageddon. According to the major media outlets in the nation, innocent lives will be lost, the Supreme Court justices have joined forces with city criminals and life as we’ve known it is over. Who knew upholding the Constitution would have such disastrous effects?

Liberals, who hate guns almost as much as they hate cars, got a well-deserved lesson in Second Amendment rights when the Supreme Court spit in their face by ruling that the Constitution really does guarantee the right of Americans to own guns. The ruling, which struck down the District of Columbia’s laws almost totally restricting handgun ownership, affirmed the traditional view that the Second Amendment means exactly what it says when it guarantees “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a 5-4 ruling upholding the clear meaning of the Second Amendment – a ruling it should never have been necessary to issue at all. In D.C. v. Heller, the Court struck down Washington D.C.'s handgun ban, correctly determining that the District is still in fact part of America and therefore subject to the Constitution's guarantee that individuals can keep and bear arms. That it even got to this point, much less that four black-robed idiots still can't comprehend plain English – or, more likely, perfectly well can but simply don't want and thus...

French marines shoot children in bungled hostage display By Our Foreign Staff Last Updated: 11:39PM BST 29/06/2008 Seventeen people have been injured, including a child left in a critical condition, after French soldiers fired live bullets instead of blanks during an open day display. Troops stand outside the barracks near Carcassone Fifteen civilians and two soldiers were injured in the incident which involved a demonstration by members of a marines parachute regiment of hostage liberation exercises. Four of the 17 were seriously injured, with two described as critical, following "incomprehensible" scenes at the barracks near Carcassone, in the country's south-west....

After a lone arson investigator was shot early Sunday while investigating a blaze in an alley, the Chicago Fire department changed its policy so investigators must now work in pairs. The 18-year department veteran was in an alley behind a home in the 2900 block of E. 80th Place about 4:35 a.m. when he was shot in the side and called for help on his radio.