Free Republic

The media always get this wrong, AR's is not "assault rifle". AR stands for ArmaLite, but do a google search on “AR-15-style assault rifle” and you pull up thousands of results where the mainstream media combines the two, when it should only be referring to AR-15s.

Up until this week, Starbucks had been neutral when it came to its gun policy, which meant that the coffee giant respected local laws regarding firearms. This policy was widely respected among gun-rights advocates—a Starbucks Appreciation Day has even been organized at stores throughout the country for the past few years—but it also drew the ire of anti-gun groups and lawmakers who have been pressuring Starbucks to change its ways. Although the coffee chain didn’t reverse its policy toward guns, on Wednesday the CEO issued a statement essentially saying firearms are unwelcome (but not banned). Even though this wasn't...

At least 24 people have been shot, five of them fatally, in Chicago since Friday, police said. The weekend violence began just one day after 13 people were injured in a Chicago park. The victims from Thursday's shooting included 10 males and three females, including 3-year-old Deonta Howard -- known as "Tay-man" -- who was shot in the jaw and listed in critical condition. Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said an assault style rifle with a high capacity magazine was used in the park shooting. McCarthy added that based on witness interviews, the attack appears to be gang-related, as...

The U.S. and Russia have been taking lots of jabs at each other.Russian President Vladimir Putin criticized President Obama's plan for a military strike in Syria, and the Russian leader then denounced American "exceptionalism" in a biting op-ed in The New York Times.Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., fired back Thursday with his own op-ed in the Russian paper Pravda, entitled, "Russia Deserves Better Than Putin."Even Monday's shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington, in which a gunmen killed 12 people, has become part of the feud.Alexei Pushkov, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Russia's parliament, used the shooting to...

Many today don't realize that we are facing the same sort of tactics by our own Federal government that our forefathers faced from the British just prior to the War for Independence. In fact, I'll venture to guess that most people never were taught in school what follows in this article. That's right, gun control is nothing new now, nor was it even new in the twentieth century. It was very much alive in the eighteenth century. So when someone comes along telling you "the founding fathers wouldn't have envisioned this or that" with regards to arms, just remind them...

Newsmax Obama Renews Push for Gun Control Legislation Sunday, September 22, 2013 07:13 AM Days after mass shootings in both of his hometowns, President Barack Obama urged his most ardent supporters Saturday "to get back up and go back at it" and help push stalled legislation out of Congress so "dangerous people" won't get their hands on guns." "We can't rest until all of our children can go to school or walk down the street free from the fear that they will be struck down by a stray bullet," Obama said in a keynote speech to the Congressional Black Caucus...

GUN-FREE ZONES' MEAN MORE BODY BAGS Here we go again. Another mass shooting in a gun-free zone where company policy mandates the employees must be unarmed and defenseless. In this case the employer is the Department of Defense (DOD), the very institution whose charter it is protect and defend America and Americans from all enemies, foreign and domestic. The slaughter at the Navy facility is the second slaughter carried out on a military installation in recent memory. Back in November 2009, Maj. Allahu Akbar Voodoo Hasan murdered 13 U.S. military heroes and wounded 30 more during his great Muhammad-inspired terrorist...

The kind of violence that typically plagues Chicago does not handily fit the terms of the national debate on assault weapons and mass shootings. While tragedies in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., and other cities have made the nation stop and take notice, the nearly daily killings in Chicago more often make headlines only by the periodic tallying of their collective toll. Most often, the approximately 500 people slain last year in Chicago were shot one at a time, usually with a handgun that could be concealed in a waistband or jacket pocket. The gun violence that unfolded Thursday night at...

Milan gun-maker plans move to Davenport Originally Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2013, 8:07 pm Last Updated: Sept. 19, 2013, 11:37 pm By Stephen Elliott, selliott@qconline.com MOST OF ARTICLE HERE-Source requires registrationDAVENPORT -- A longtime Milan-based gun manufacturer announced plans Thursday to move his 170-employee operation to Davenport. During a city enterprise zone commission meeting, Karl Lewis, owner of Lewis Machine and Tool Co., said he plans to build a 60,000-square-foot building on Kimmel Drive. The board unanimously approved Mr. Lewis' plans. If those plans come to fruition, Lewis Machine and Tool will be the second gun manufacturer to move across...

After every mass shooting, I write a variant of the same column. Perhaps I'll republish this one when the next attack happens. The increase in mass shootings over the course of the past several decades is not imaginary. In 2000, The New York Times analyzed 100 mass shootings between 1949 and 1999 and found that 73 of them had happened since 1990. Since 2000, according to Mother Jones magazine, there have been 33 more, including the recent massacre at the Navy Yard. The majority of the killers have untreated mental illness. A significant portion of the political and journalistic worlds...

Complete Headline: Shootings up 13% in New York City after federal judge rules police 'stop and frisk' tactics unconstitutional and racist Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled on August 12 policy must be reformed Shootings now up nearly 13 per cent compared to same period last year The number of gunshot victims is now up 9 per cent, NYPD figures show Statistics revealed days after Judge Scheindlin refused to delay decision The recent ruling to reform the New York Police Department's controversial 'stop-and-frisk' tactic has already led to a sharp rise in shootings, new figures reveal. In the month after the policy...

Gun Crime: FBI statistics show Chicago, with one-third the population, passing New York City in the number of murders in 2012. Is it time for a national conversation about gang control vs. gun control? President Obama doesn't often mention his hometown when he talks about gun control. Then he'd have to explain, in arguably the most gun-restricted big city in America in the last state to allow concealed carry of firearms, why Chicago is now officially the murder capital of the United States. In new statistics released Monday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported 500 murders in Chicago in 2012,...

A Superior Court judge in Bristol “expressed his contempt for the right to keep and bear arms’ in a closed door meeting in his chambers, the state gun rights group Connecticut Carry reported last Thursday in a media advisory. Judge Robert C. Brunetti “exposed his bigotry for fundamental civil rights in front of at least three defense attorneys,” the group explained. “No one in this country should have guns,” the judge reportedly stated, adding “I never return guns.”

Aaron Alexis seems to have listened to Joe Biden and taken his advice. Back in February Biden said: "You don't need an AR-15," he said. "Buy a shotgun! Buy a shotgun!" And that's what Aaron Alexis did. Back then Bided added: "I have two shotguns at home. No one is going to come and take my guns." Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHZ7zXLvOkYAaron Alexis did buy a shotgun- legally: Aaron Alexis legally purchased the shotgun he used to kill 12 people, the FBI said Tuesday. FBI Assistant Director Valerie Parlave also told reporters that Alexis only had the shotgun -- not an...

Tennessee Democrat Rep. Steve Cohen blamed opposition to gun control on voters’ affinities for “guns and the Bible” on Wednesday in an MSNBC appearance. “I got the vitriol from on the Twitter from all these people who opposed that cartoon,” said Cohen, who tweeted a cartoon that appeared to blame the National Rifle Association for the Navy Yard shooting spree on Tuesday. ”They are hardcore Republicans. This I think means more to them than — I think their guns are right there next to their Bibles. I’m not sure which they find more important to them.” Cohen’s remarks bear a...

Tony Blair’s daughter Kathryn has been threatened at gunpoint in a botched robbery. The young barrister was walking her dog with her boyfriend and a group of friends when the attackers struck. The pair were in Marylebone, a mile from the £975,000 home her father bought her in 2010, and near his own central London property. Neither 25-year-old Miss Blair nor her boyfriend were harmed in the attack, which took place at around 8pm on Monday. The attempted mugging is thought to be linked to another similar incident in the area on the same night. The two attempted robberies took...

Harry Reid has vowed to continue working on extended background checks for gun owners, but concedes that he doesn't have the votes to pass it. But Vice President Joe Biden claimed that several republicans told him they had changed their mind. Where are they. In the wake of the Washington Naval Yard shootings, many democrats were hopeful to pass new gun legislation.

Let’s be clear: I’m not a real Starbucks fan in the first place. The coffee is horribly expensive and, frankly, you can get a better cup for a quarter of the price at a Quick Trip. Interestingly enough, even McDonald’s has stepped up their coffee quality lately. Dunkin’ Donuts is good also, but I prefer to sweeten my own coffee, thank you, so don’t ask me how many Sweet ‘n Lows I want. Another thing …. I stopped going to Starbucks when they came out and openly supported Obama for a second term. I guess it goes with the territory...

CONTACT GOVERNOR BROWN TODAY!! This year the California Legislature passed the most restrictive collection of anti-gun laws in decades DESIGNED TO END GUN OWNERSHIP IN CALIFORNIA!! Our last chance to stop these laws before having to spend millions to fight them in court for years is for Governor Brown to veto them. Governor Brown needs to be reminded that he has millions of constituents that are law-abiding gun owners, sportsmen and Second Amendment supporters and that Californians do not support outrageous anti-gun and anti-hunting legislation, like those in New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Connecticut or worse. If we do...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday vowed to move forward with legislation to expand background checks for gun buyers but said he doesn't have enough support yet to hold a vote. The Nevada Democrat said in light of the fatal shootings at the Washington Navy Yard Monday that killed 13, including the accused shooter, "we're going to move this [legislation] up as quickly as we can." But he quickly added he only will bring the matter to the Senate floor when he has the 60 votes likely needed to pass the measure, a move he said isn't plausible in...

We can’t have all the freedom we insist on in this country. We can’t have near total access to guns and no way to track people with mental illness—along with a system for treatment so riddled with holes that’s barely a system at all. The combination—our approach to guns crossed with our approach to mental illness—is deadly. And however unlikely it is that the senseless Washington Navy Yard massacre will actually change anything, I have to howl one more time. In hindsight, Aaron Alexis was a walking alarm bell. He called the police to a Rhode Island hotel room where...

“If everybody had arms then there wouldn’t be these problems…my son was at … Navy Yard yesterday (9/16/13) and they had weapons with them, but they didn’t have ammunition. And they said, ‘We were trained and if we had had the ammunition we could have cleared that building. Only three people had been shot at that time and they could have stopped the rest of it.’” No 2nd Amendment for the U.S. military? Only Liberals can take violating our Constitutional rights to beyond the absurd. So, Homeland Security gets a couple billion rounds of ammunition, but the military doesn’t get...

Yes, we must ban those “AR15 shotguns.” I heard about this from a few folks on Twitter tonight. h/t Sharky *Edited to add: We all know that the same network forgot Ft. Hood, whose contributor Charles Blow once used “assault handgun” in a debate with yours truly on 2A, and whose 9 pm eastern host thinks AR stands for “assault rifle” wasn’t talking about the MKA 1919. Just because the sheer style is similar, the platform is not. **I’m told by a handful of folks that there exists audio of this being said. ***Twitter reminds me how their 9pm...

The residents across the Mexican states are organizing into citizen militias in order to fight against the threat of the drug Cartels. Despite federal law restrictions on arming citizens with firearms, resident's continue to arm themselves with old firearms and machetes. One such group are made up of women that forms up as the local self defense force. This program is primarily dominant by males, but women seems to be the biggest supporter and strongly believe in providing safety for their community.

Video at site.

(CNN) -- The one question we all desperately want answered may have gone to the grave with Aaron Alexis: Why? Why did he park at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday, walk into Building 197, perch himself on an overlook above the atrium and open fire? The bullets that rained down killed 12 people and wounded eight others. Why?

(Reuters photo- with article) While many U.S. restaurant chains and retailers do not allow firearms on their properties, Starbucks' policy had been to default to local gun laws, including "open carry" regulations in many U.S. states that allow people to bring guns into stores. In August, this led gun-rights advocates to hold a national "Starbucks Appreciation Day" to thank the firm for its stance, pulling the company deeper into the fierce political fight. Locations for Starbucks Appreciation Day events included Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and six adults were shot dead in an elementary school in December. Starbucks closed that...

Earlier this morning I saw a gun-control propaganda report masquerading as news....the Obama worshiper, masquerading as a journalist, talked about the victims of the murderous liberal Aaron Alexis. I noticed that MOST of the victims were white. Could we have some racism here? I mean, this black man shot UNARMED white people....

On Tuesday night, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz wrote the following open letter asking customers to no longer bring firearms into the stores, even in states where they are legally permissible to carry. He notes that this is not a "ban" on guns, but rather a request. In the letter, Schultz expresses frustration with pro-gun activists who have held "Starbucks Appreciation Day" events at the company's location, ostensibly to laud the coffee shop's policy on open-carry. Schultz does not want these events held at Starbucks any longer. With the letter, he risks incurring the anger of a large segment of the...

Security: As the usual suspects call for stricter gun control, the fact remains that a gunman with two prior gun-crime arrests entered a secure military facility with a stolen ID and found no one able to shoot back. It was Fort Hood all over again. Aaron Alexis, a gunman whose prior behavioral warning signs were ignored, opens fire in an installation belonging to the most powerful military on Earth and those who protect our nation and design our weapons are not allowed to have a weapon to defend themselves. He was more equipped than the 12 people he killed on...

Multiple liberal news outlets use a false narrative of Washington Naval Yard shooter, Aaron Alexis, used an AR-15 in his attacks. Piers Morgan, the New York Daily News, and CNN, among a host of others having been playing up the AR-15 angle in an effort to revive their gun banning laws. Reliable sources have reported that Alexis had a shotgun and two pistols. it is believed he brought the shotgun and removed the two pistols from his victims. The real question is how could someone with a long history of mental problems get access to such a secure area. That...

Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy has just released a study of the relative effects of stringent gun laws. They found that a country like Luxenbourg, which bans all guns has a murder rate that is 9 times higher than Germany, where there are 30,000 guns per 100,000 people. They also cited a study by the U.S.National Academy of Sciences, which studied 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and it failed to find one gun control initiative that worked. In fact, in many cases it found that violence is very often lower, where guns are more readily...

<p>Monday’s deadly shooting at the Washington Navy Yard has renewed interest in why most military personnel are forbidden from carrying firearms on military bases. In the aftermath, some have pointed fingers at former President Bill Clinton, but is he really to blame?</p> <p>Not according to what we found.</p>

Well here we go again… All those on the Left have been chomping at the bit to use the horrific Newtown mass murders of last year to go after our second amendment rights. No doubt these will continue their push as they seek to now exploit the D.C naval yard mass murders for their own lawless agenda. In the lawless reprobate mind it is the “evil” gun that kills people not the psychopaths who use them. The idiotic rational behind the “gun-less” utopian vision is that if we rid the world of all our guns and conservatives who carry guns...

Yet he wants us to judge all gun owners by the acts of a few lunatics ... as he surely will in the aftermath today's Navy Yard shooting. Anybody want to guess how long it will take -with the racial angle closed- for Obama to turn this gruesome event into the fault of guns and manipulate it towards his own Constitution-shredding means? Ah, this workplace violence is really starting to get out of control...

The recent dispatch of EPA storm troopers into tiny little Chicken, Alaska, is just one further bit of proof of what happens when this or any administration places itself above the law and it should concern every single American. This past week, the EPA sent a heavily armed force to the gold mine in Chicken, Alaska, population 17, to conduct a raid. All told there are 73 armed groups within the federal government, including the Library of Congress. Gov Sean Parnell has ordered an investigation into the incident and both senators, Lisa Murkowski, (R) and Mark Begich, (D) have added...

Mayor Bloomberg of New York has made a claim that 7 children are murdered with a gun every day of the year. (2555) For the purpose of determing children, the numbers are usually ages 1 through 14. But according to Center For Disease Control and Prevention's 2011 National Vital Statistics Report, the number of children murdered between the ages of 1 and 4 are 370 for the country. Mursers of children 5 to 14 is 269. And that's all murders, not just gun deaths.Therefore the number of children killed would be less than 1.7 a day.

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper says last week’s victory by gun-rights voters in the state’s recall elections shouldn’t be seen as a litmus test for the rest of the nation — or even the rest of the state. The Democratic governor, appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, said the recalls of two state lawmakers, both Democrats, who supported gun-control legislation he signed earlier this year were more about local politics. “I’m not sure it has a national message or even a statewide message,” he said. “These are very specific districts.” Asked if the recall indicated a broader unease...

Last Tuesday, voters in Colorado ousted Colorado Senate President John Morse (D-Colorado Springs) and state Senator Angela Giron (D-Pueblo) from their seats in the State Legislature. Both were prominent gun control advocates. While Morse took his defeat with some degree of grace, Giron cried “foul.” As Giron sees it, her 56-44 percent trouncing was the result of “voter suppression.” “Thanks to the generosity of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg we outspent the other side by a seven-to-one ratio,” Giron recounted. “How could this not have been a decisive edge? The only logical conclusion is they cheated.” “The need to control...

Since gun sellers call the shots at the NRA, the lobbying group launched an effort to punish Colorado legislators who stood up for public safety over gun seller profits. Now, two thoughtful Colorado legislators have been recalled and the NRA is crowing at having exercised its muscle once again. ..., similar hyperbolic rhetoric after the passage of the federal background check system and the (now elapsed) federal assault weapons ban galvanized the unstable gun zealot Timothy McVeigh forward with his scheme to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City.

COLORADO SPRINGS -- Quick, call the CDC. We've got a Rocky Mountain outbreak of Acute Sore Loser Fever. After failing to stave off two historic recall bids on Tuesday, two delusional state legislators and their national party bosses just can't help but double-down and trash voters as dumb, sick, criminal and profligate. The ululations of gun-grabbing Democrats here in my adopted home state are reverberating far and wide. Appearing on cable TV Thursday to answer the question "What happened?" Pueblo State Sen. Angela Giron sputtered that she lost her seat due to "voter suppression." Giron whined to CNN anchor Brooke...

(Boston) -- A new study from the American Journal of Public Heath shows that U.S. states with higher estimated rates of gun ownership experience a higher number of firearms-related homicides. The study, led by a Boston University School of Public Health researcher, examines the National Rifle Association's (NRA) claim that increased gun ownership does not lead to increased gun violence. It is the largest study conducted to date into the correlation between gun ownership and firearms violence, and the first to comprehensively examine the issue since the tragic shooting last December of 20 children and 7 adults at Sandy Hook...

FLINT, MI – It’s almost hunting season, and Meijer stores across the state are giving youth hunters the opportunity to get licensed for free on Sept. 13 and 14. For the sixth consecutive year, Meijer has teamed up with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources to provide hunters ages 16 and under with free small game, mentored youth and combination licenses for the upcoming hunting seasons. “We hope it’s a nice promotion and it’s a great partnership with Meijer,” said Dennis Fox, the chief of staff for the Department of Natural Resources. “We hope that hunters who may be on...

While most of Washington has moved on, legal scholars expect a decision soon in a potentially landmark case in one of the federal government's most damaging scandals -- Operation Fast and Furious. Republican lawmakers, after holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for failing to turn over records they had subpoenaed, are still waiting for a judge to rule on their case. But they have not forgotten.

"It's worth saying Colorado has maintained people's right to own a gun --- we've maintained the full respect for the Second Amendment," he insisted during a press conference on Wednesday. Hickenlooper repeatedly cited a poll showing that 80 percent of Colorado voters support universal background checks, calling the law "sound and sensible." He admitted, however, that he was never as "fired up" about limits on ammunition magazines. "That was a tough one," he said.

“We may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks....” -- President George Washington, October 3, 1789What a startling upset. The voters of Colorado have done it!Yesterday, Colorado booted two unprincipled, back-stabbing, arrogant legislators from office.This was truly a historic effort and the first time in Colorado history that there has ever been a recall election -- let alone a successful one.Democrat Senators John Morse and Angela Giron lost their bid to hold onto their seats in districts that heavily favored Democrats. (In fact, Giron represented a district where only 23 percent of registered voters are...

The CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration, according to U.S. officials and Syrian figures. The shipments began streaming into the country over the past two weeks, along with separate deliveries by the State Department of vehicles and other gear — a flow of material that marks a major escalation of the U.S. role in Syria’s civil war. The arms shipments, which are limited to light weapons and other munitions that can be tracked, began arriving in Syria at a moment of heightened...

In early June, Liberty County, Fla., Sheriff Nick Finch was arrested for official misconduct and suspended from office by Governor Rick Scott. The sheriff’s offense? He set free a man who’d been arrested for carrying a firearm without a permit during a routine traffic stop.

Rights: Colorado voters on Tuesday ousted two leading supporters of stricter gun control laws, saying "ready, aim, fired" to those who would deny movie patrons and college women the right to armed self-defense. One would think that Colorado, the site of the tragedies at Columbine and the Aurora movie theater, the purple state where President Obama accepted his first nomination amidst faux Greek columns, would be the least receptive of states for the arguments of Second Amendment defenders. Colorado state Senate President John Morse and Sen. Angela Giron found out differently on Tuesday as they were ousted by gun rights...

It was a good day. And hopefully will be just the beginning!