Free Republic

When you have over 400 million guns in a country with a population of over 330 million, one-in-a-million odds do not look too bad. In this case in New Jersey, a teacher ended up in school with a loaded gun in her bag – by accident. In December of 2017, Karen Horen was 70 years old and teaching at a New Jersey school. It is understandable when you consider her annual salary, as a home economics teacher, is $70,339. She came to work at the school and briefly left her bag outside in the hallway, unattended, for a few...

The Evanston, Illinois Police Department held a gun turn-in on Saturday, offering $100 for any gun dropped off, no questions asked. People turning in guns had to identify themselves as being from a limited geographical area. They had to be residents of Skokie, Evanston, or the North side of Chicago. [ED: We have no idea why Evanston would make that a requirement] It’s interesting to note that ID has to be used to turn in guns to the police, but is forbidden as a requirement to cast a vote. The requirement for I.D. was no doubt due to Second...

The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a Washington-based think tank, on Friday released their Action Plan to Reduce Gun Violence following a Thursday meeting with the nation’s big-city police chiefs."The recommendations recognize that solving the gun violence problem is not the responsibility of one entity or one level of government," the recommendation guide said. "There is a role for everyone on the gun issue: individuals (legal gun owners and non-gun owners alike); law enforcement personnel; prosecutors; judges; state governments; the federal government; family and friends of people who may be in crisis; researchers; the philanthropic community; and the community at...

A man has shot dead two police officers and civilian in the eastern Belgian city of Liege. The gunman took a female cleaner hostage at a school before being killed by police. Two other police officers were also injured. The man's motive is not yet clear but the incident is being treated as terrorism. Police sources quoted in local media said the man was heard shouting "Allahu Akhbar"........

<p>The number of unarmed citizens (262,000,000*) slaughtered by tyrannical (mostly leftist, Marxist, fascist) governments during the 20th century would come pretty close to wiping out the entire U.S. population.</p> <p>Our founders understood the danger of runaway government power and tyranny, thus the constitution guaranteeing our God-given liberty and severely restricting the powers of government. And they included the 2nd amendment for good reason. An armed citizenry guarantees it stays that way.</p>

....Teenage survivors of the Parkland shooting helped organize the nationwide marches, which came the same week Congress voted to lift a restriction on federal research into gun violence — a rule that's been in effect for about 22 years. It remains to be seen if lawmakers will fund such research by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after President Donald Trump signed a bill containing the measure into law. Below is some of the core data we do have on gun violence in the US (highlighted in red; suicides and accidents excluded), and how it compares to other...

“About 1,400 students wearing orange shirts gathered on a hill at East Chapel Hill High School in North Carolina to listen as student organizers read the names of each of the Parkland victims…students gathered in discussion circles to talk about gun violence in America. [...]”It’s really scary to me how in America we seem to have this constant, or this prevailing, notion that we should fight violence with violence,” said senior Frances O’Grady, 18, “and that’s never, ever the solution…I think that’s just a very dangerous idea.”"On the classroom wall behind O’Grady hung a banner with the image of Che...

Some politicians in the past have recommended deploying the National Guard to help Chicago quell gun violence, but Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin went even further on Thursday, suggesting the United Nations perhaps send in peacekeepers in the face of what he called a "quiet genocide." Boykin was traveling to New York to meet with Oscar Fernandez-Taranco of Argentina, the U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Support, to seek international help with "horrific levels of shootings" and other violent crime in West Side and South Side communities. "I'm hoping to appeal to the U.N. to actually come to Chicago and meet...

Once again, Democrats are screaming that the ones who must pay the price for a lunatic’s evil are those who had nothing to do with that evil. Knowing that almost all the guns in this country are owned by their political opposition, they see every mass shooting as an opportunity, a gift, if you will, by which they can achieve something truly immoral and unjust: the forcible eradication of the right of self-defense against enemies, foreign and domestic, though mostly domestic. They still haven’t forgotten that they will never fully overthrow this country if its citizens are armed and can...

Let's throw out a few numbers so we can put in perspective the NFL players taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem. Many say they are protesting against police treatment of blacks and racial discrimination. We might ask just how much sense their protest makes. According to The Washington Post, 737 people have been shot and killed by police this year in the United States. Of that number, there were 329 whites, 165 blacks, 112 Hispanics, 24 members of other races and 107 people whose race was unknown. In Illinois, home to one of our most dangerous...

-- Colfax massacre: On Easter Sunday of 1873, in the bloodiest racial attacks during Reconstruction, white Democrats slaughtered as many as 153 African-Americans at the Colfax, La., courthouse and later as other victims were being held prisoner.

“Do it for the children.” It’s one of the most heart-wrenching pleas of our time. After all, we all love our children and want to protect them. That’s likely why the anti-gun “mainstream” media is so willing to deceive their readers, viewers and listeners when it comes to endorsing the passage of more restrictive gun laws. And we’ve recently witnessed again how the media are willing to push off lies, half-truths and bait-and-switch reporting as fact to make guns and gun owners look bad. Consider these disturbing nuggets: “16 U.S. children hospitalized with gunshot wounds each day, study says” —...

Six people have been killed, including a 15-year-old boy, and at least 44 other people have been wounded in Chicago shootings throughout the Memorial Day weekend. The shootings happened between 6 p.m. Friday and 3 a.m. Tuesday, with a late surge of violence leaving 13 people shot in less than four hours Monday night. The most recent fatal shooting happened around 2:45 a.m. Tuesday. A 21-year-old man was inside a vehicle when someone fire shots at the car, striking the man multiple times, once in the back and through his heart, police said. The man was taken to John H....

Companion measures were introduced last week in both chambers of Congress to promote an awareness campaign backed by gun control groups. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, both Illinois Democrats, each introduced proposals in their respective chambers supporting designating June 2 as “National Gun Violence Awareness Day” and the month of June as “National Gun Violence Awareness Month.” The resolutions cite that each year 32,000 people in the U.S. are killed and 80,000 are injured by gunfire, and that in 2016 there were 384 mass shooting incidents — figures mirrored by the controversial Gun Violence Archive...

An unidentified shooter opened fire at a Cincinnati nightclub early Sunday, killing one person and wounding 14 others, officials said. The shooter escaped the melee and remained on the run Sunday. Cincinnati police originally said there were "at least a couple of shooters" who opened fire inside of Cameo nightclub, but later said only one shooter was responsible for the deadly assault.

<p>Shootings and homicides in Chicago are higher than this time last January, a month that marked the deadliest start to a year in the city in nearly two decades.</p> <p>As of early Monday, at least 228 people had been shot in Chicago so far this year, a 5.5 percent increase from the 216 shot in the same period time last year. There have been at least 42 homicides, up 23.5 percent from the 34 homicides from the same period in 2016.</p>

During the live broadcast of the NBC Nightly News, the network aired a report from Morgan Radford that detailed the shooting death of Nykea Aldridge, first cousin of NBA superstar Dwyane Wade, in Chicago. Radford’s report painted a grim picture of the gun violence epidemic in the windy city.

Black Gun Rights Activist Launches ‘Black Guns Matter’Gun rights activist Maj Toure is seeking to educate his fellow black citizens on the importance of the Second Amendment, gun ownership, and gun safety via his new group, “Black Guns Matter” (BGM). The launch of BGM “kicked off a planned 13-city tour, with similar events in cities like Baltimore and Chicago with high rates of gun violence, where he feels gun training could make a difference.

During the last 60 years, the number of guns in private hands in the United States has risen sharply.  During the last two decades, the number of murders and non-negligent homicides have fallen sharply.  More guns do not equal more crime.  In response, opponents of an armed population have shifted their focus and changed the terminology that they use. Instead of gun control, they call restrictive policies "gun safety". Instead of focusing on violent crime, they have created the term "gun violence".  Most people consider gun violence to be "gun crime". The opponents of gun ownership use the term...

<p>At least 33 people have been shot in Chicago so far this Fourth of July weekend, most of them in traditionally violent neighborhoods on the South and West sides despite stepped-up police patrols in those areas.</p> <p>Between Sunday afternoon and early Monday, 13 people were shot over 17 hours in the city. They included a 15-year-old boy shot in the foot, a 16-year-old hit in the elbow, a 17-year-old wounded in the thigh, and a woman hit in the chest by a bullet fired through the window of a home.</p>