Free Republic

With the current attack on personal gun ownership and the Second Amendment, the radical Left has twisted the phrase “assault weapon” to try and take guns away from law-abiding Americans.Real assault rifles are used by modern infantrymen and are capable of firing in a fully-automatic mode. Yes, they are currently available to citizens -- but one must submit to a federal background check (which can take months), be photographed and fingerprinted, pay a tax of $200, and get a sign-off from the local chief of police or sheriff. Moreover, because of their limited supply, machineguns run in the thousands of...

CELINA –– A parent in Celina ISD has been charged with making terroristic threats at his child's school. Police say Ron Miller, who was unarmed, told Celina Elementary School staffers that he had a gun to test the school's security response on Wednesday morning. "Basically, he told one of the greeters, 'I am a gunman. My target is inside of the building. I'm going in the building. You stop me,'" said Celina Independent School District superintendent Donny O'Dell. "They recognized, at that point, that he did not have a weapon and they were able to go ahead and tell him...

SAN DIEGO—Strawberry growers are covering their crops while San Diego zookeepers are turning on heaters for the chimpanzees as Southern California braces for a cold snap expected to drop temperatures to a six-year low. The National Weather Service said Thursday that a low pressure trough sinking over San Diego County and parts of neighboring Orange County could keep nightly temperatures below freezing in coastal areas, the low deserts and inland valleys, threatening orange, avocado orchards and other sensitive plants.

FARMINGTON, N.M., Dec. 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- An energy conference scheduled for March 18 and 19, 2013, will feature a series of presentations about new drilling for shale oil in the Mancos Shale Formation of the Four Corners Region of Northwest New Mexico. The conference will be held at San Juan College in the Henderson Fine Arts Center.

I called my two senators and one congressman today to ask what their understanding of the Second Amendment was. Of the three....only the congressman's office gave the correct reply it gives the People the people the right to defend themselves from government. And I live in a Red state. You would think this would be the automatic reply. To be fair, I only got to speak to staff members, but the two Senate staff members didn't know. So I explained it to them. Not sure how they took it. Call your Senators and Congressman/woman and find out if they know.

A judge suspended the criminal case Monday against a former nursing student accused of murdering seven people at a small Oakland college, ruling that mental illness left him unable to understand the proceedings or assist in his defense. Judge Carrie Panetta made her ruling during a brief hearing in Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland, after receiving reports from two court-appointed psychiatrists who examined 44-year-old One Goh. The psychiatrists found him incompetent to stand trial because of paranoid schizophrenia, Goh's attorney said.

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - A Florida man's ex-wife used a stun gun on him, tied him to a truck bumper and dragged him for half a mile before he escaped, the Volusia County Sheriff's Office reported. Robert Hall, 54, remained in the surgical intensive care unit on Thursday at Halifax Health Medical Center in Daytona Beach, where he was being treated for a broken pelvis, broken facial bones and bleeding in his brain, according to the sheriff's office. The attack took place in a rural part of New Smyrna Beach, a popular Florida resort town, where Hall typically stayed at...

Officials in a small Utah town want to make sure every head of household has a firearm and knows how to use it, and they want to give school teachers training with guns too.

The Piers Morgan deporation petition is going to be addressed because it passed the threshold of 25,000 votes. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2975918/posts There are 13 more days to get the required number of signatures on the petition to establish a gun-free zone around the pResident and send the Secret Service home is in the final stretch. This petition illustrates the insanity of gun-free zones, and the hypocrisy of a politicians surrounding themselves with armed guards while insisting that our children be soft targets. We have to fight the gun-grabbers on every front or they are going to win. This is just another front.

HARTFORD -- While doctors and scientists conduct a battery of toxicological tests and genetic analysis to help determine what turned Adam Lanza into a psychopathic killing machine Dec. 14, the state's chief medical examiner doubts the reports will offer any answers. Already, he said, an examination of what remained of Lanza's brain showed nothing unusual. "It's a fishing expedition," said H. Wayne Carver II, whose autopsy of Lanza is one of nearly 1,000 he has conducted during his 30-plus years of experience. "I don't think we'll find answers. But that doesn't mean you don't look." Lanza murdered 20 students and...

Some of the most common and most powerful prescription painkillers on the market will be restricted sharply in the emergency rooms at New York City’s 11 public hospitals, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said Thursday in an effort to crack down on what he called a citywide and national epidemic of prescription drug abuse.

VALLEJO, Calif. (AP) — A California man once sentenced to death for killing two people in the 1960s was under arrest Thursday after police said he led officers to the body of his 89-year-old mother. -- SNIP -- The California Supreme Court reversed his death sentence in 1969 after finding 12 prospective jurors were dismissed because they said they opposed the death penalty. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled a year earlier that such jurors shouldn't be automatically excluded from a death penalty case unless they make clear they can't impose capital punishment under any circumstance. Stanworth was sentenced to death...

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.WASHINGTON — Full disclosure right upfront: I'm a proud life member of the National Rifle Association. I am on the NRA's board of directors and serve as chairman of the organization's Military and Veterans' Affairs Committee. I have owned and used firearms most of my life, and I can read. Unlike some in Washington, I don't believe that the 27 words above — the Second Amendment of our Constitution — have anything to do...

Republican Governor Bobby Jindal said on Thursday he wants to eliminate all Louisiana personal and corporate income taxes to simplify the state's tax code and make it more friendly to business.

Not long ago I was telling a customer that the product she was testing was from Oregon. The lady, who was probably in her early 70's, shivered when I mentioned Oregon and said she used to live there. I asked her if Oregon was too cold for her. She said, "No I ran away from Oregon to live in Texas." So I said, "Well good. I was reading a news article just this morning about how Texas is thriving with a budget surplus and low unemployment. She replied, "Oh I know, I've lived here for a while now. I ran...

RUSH: "Federal regulators for the first time are laying out rules," this is from the AP, "aimed at making sure that people who borrow money for mortgages can afford to repay them." Do you realize what this means? Do you realize what this means? "Federal regulators for the first time..." It's 2013! For the first time? This is a tantamount admission. Nobody's calling it this, except I, El Rushbo, except me. I'm telling you: It's a tantamount admission that the subprime mortgage mess was exactly what it was. It was people who were given loans that could never pay 'em...

OAKLAND -- Thieves smashed a window of a KTVU news van parked in West Oakland for an assignment Thursday and stole roughly $20,000 worth of laptops and other electronic equipment, the latest in a long string of heists against reporters and photographers. --SNIP-- News photographers and reporters have been robbed and burglarized so many times since last spring that some stations are sending armed guards with media crews doing stories in Oakland.

Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday compared restrictions on guns to auto safety regulations such as air bags, by saying neither the gun nor the auto industries wanted regulations to save lives. “Well they didn’t want to have air bags. Well, guess what? We have air bags. We’re saving lives,” Biden told reporters before a meeting with several stakeholders on the gun-control issue, as he plans to craft a set of proposals for President Barack Obama by Tuesday, Jan. 15. The proposals are expected to include a renewed ban on so-called assault weapons, and beefed-up background checks.

A spike in gun and ammunition sales has caused a nationwide shortage that has delayed police training exercises and is putting a substantial amount of weaponry in civilian hands. Police in Atlanta, Georgia have been forced to delay training exercises due to a shortage of ammunition. The police department has put orders for more bullets on back-order, while officers are being deprived of the training that makes them capable of handling weapons. “When you can’t get ammunition, it is very concerning,” Sandy Springs Police Chief Terry Sult tells WSBTV. “It affects our ability to be prepared. It affects the potential...

"...Officials said there's usually an armed officer on campus, but the person wasn't there because he was snowed in. Taft police officers arrived within 60 seconds of first reports..."