Free Republic

Gun Rights: Not happy with interfering in our internal affairs by savaging Arizona's new immigration law, the president of Mexico wants to shred our Second Amendment too. And the mayor of Chicago wants to help. There stood Mexican President Felipe Calderon before Congress, blaming America for the violence on his side of the border and, among other things, the guns that fuel the Mexican drug war that has claimed more than 23,000 Mexican lives since he took office in 2006. Rather than taking responsibility himself, he shoved the blame on America. It would all stop, he implied, if America would...

On Tuesday, May 11, 2010, Governor Brewer signed HB 2629. HB 2629 is a great example of how a few activists can make a big difference. It resulted from Mohave County being overly broad in interpreting the law requiring the storage of firearms when entering public (i.e., government) buildings. It seems a lot of extra record keeping was in place, in effect registering gun owners and their firearms. Fortunately the process was videotaped by concerned citizens and shared with AzCDL and the legislature. A House bill (HB 2629) was reconstituted by a “strike everything” amendment to address the issue. The...

Past governments of the country were noted a number of times for ordering the deposition of all legally owned firearms with the police or the offices of the district commissioners (DCs) in their bids to control the crime rate. But every time such orders were issued, the same created a great deal of hassle and loss to the legal wielders of firearms. For, it was a short-sighted view in the first place that firearms owners with valid licenses had descended to the level of gangsters to use their weapons for commiting crimes. This is not to say that all persons...

After nearly 20 years, Canada appears poised to end one of its boldest experiments in gun control - the required registration of long guns, or shotguns and hunting rifles. Last November, a bill to abolish the Long-Gun Registry, enacted in 1995 and gradually phased in through 2003, passed a second reading in the Canadian House of Commons by a tally of 164 to 137. It faces a third and final reading in that chamber later this year; prospects are good for passage in the Canadian Senate. The bill would delete from federal law the obligation to register so-called nonrestricted firearms,...

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - The Nebraska attorney general's office says the city of Omaha is violating state law by forcing people who have permits to carry concealed guns to also register their guns with the city. The formal - but not legally binding - opinion issued Friday says Omaha's rule imposes a gun-possession regulation not allowed under a measure passed last year by lawmakers. That law says cities can't have local rules barring people with conceal-carry permits from carrying concealed guns inside city limits. Background checks and training are required to get conceal-carry permits. Sen. Mark Christensen of Imperial introduced...

Five Wisconsin residents, including two who worked for community organizing group ACORN, were charged Monday with election fraud relating to the 2008 presidential election. State Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen announced felony charges against Maria Miles, Kevin Clancy, Michael Henderson, Herbert Gunka and Suzanne Gunka. Miles and Clancy worked for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and are accused of submitting multiple voter registration applications for the same individuals, including each other, to meet voter registration quotes imposed by the community organizing group. Henderson is charged with one count of voting by a disqualified person and providing false...

I have just released our latest map over at OpenCarry.org. It categorizes all 50 states based upon the kinds of firearms registration laws (if any) that the state has implemented. This is a resource that we should have developed long ago because registration is one of the great myths and misconceptions about firearms in America. I have been teaching firearm safety and carry permit classes for almost a decade now and this is a topic that I have to cover in every single class. And it never ceases to amaze me how gun owners who are otherwise incredibly well informed...

The reality is that outside of DC, Chicago, and a few states, gun registration is largely unknown in America, and Canada is moving to abolish their national gun registration system. The few states and cities that do have registration requirements are small, isolated islands in the sea of gun freedom that is America.

Please SUBSCRIBE to this column at http://www.examiner.com/x-2782-DC-Gun-Rights-Examiner And DIGG and REDDIT the article at http://www.examiner.com/x-2782-DC-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2010m1d31-Pennsylvania-state-police-back-down-on-rifle-registration-scheme SNIP In July of 2009, the Pennsylvania State Police mysteriously told federal gun dealers in Pennsylvania that they were required to report to the police all purchasers' identity and item serial number information for transfers of certain long gun "frames" or "receivers" for guns such as the popular AR-15 rifle . . . Some gun dealers said "no way." . . .

On January 13th, 2010 the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”) issued a press release regarding its highly anticipated rule proposal for the regulation of retail forex transactions. The proposal seeks to adopt a new regulatory scheme to implement the CFTC Reauthorization Act of 2008. The following is a summary listing of the major provisions included in the CFTC’s proposal. While reading through these items please note that they are not the only changes to the law which have been proposed. Rather, these items represent what will be the most significant changes to the industry through the eyes of a former...

We will be starting a new idea here at BTC called “From the Rumor Mill.” These will be articles about things we have heard are coming but cannot pin down and cement proof or it will contain articles that hold a prediction of things to come. We hope this idea will catch on and that we will find uses for the Rumor Mill fairly often, two or three times a month would be great. We have heard chatter of a bill that will probably be introduced in the US Senate by Senator Schumer (D NY) that will totally revamp the...

More than 600,000 on Massachusetts Voter Rolls Had Died or Moved, Nonpartisan Analysis Discovered Monday, January 18, 2010 By Fred Lucas, Staff Writer (CNSNews.com) - Massachusetts had 116,483 dead people on its voter registration rolls and another 538,567 people who were no longer living at the addresses on their registrations, according to a study released Oct. 28, by Aristotle International Inc., a nonpartisan political technology and data firm. On Tuesday, Massachusetts will hold a special U.S. Senate election between Democrat Martha Coakley and Republican Scott Brown. Polls show a close race. Alicia Moran, spokeswoman for Aristotle, told CNSNews.com on Monday...

As the President and Democratic Congressional leaders lock themselves away in secret discussions on the increasingly unpopular health care legislation, Chuck Schumer and Barney Frank are preparing to ram another piece of bad legislation down the throats of the American public. This month they plan to unveil their plan for Universal Voter Registration, a government mandated law requiring all states to register their residents to vote. This will not be an option. Chuck and Barney want to make it law that everyone in the country be put on the rolls to vote and naturally they want them to vote Democratic....

Many are puzzled that Democrats persist in ramming unpopular and destructive legislation down our collective throats while seemingly unconcerned by their plummeting poll numbers. A widespread belief is that the Democrats are committing political suicide and will be swept from one or both houses of Congress with unprecedented electoral losses next November. But since Democrat politicians rarely do things that will not ultimately benefit themselves, this column asked two weeks ago: "what do they know that we don't?" We may have found out. It's called universal voter registration. The Wall Street Journal's John Fund described the Democrat plan recently at...

In the last three installments of the Chicago Gun Rights Examiner, we've examined new, more onerous restrictions on military personnel who own "privately-owned firearms" while serving at Fort Hood in Texas. Today, in the final installment of the series, it's time to answer the most relevant question that the criticisms of Fort Hood's restrictive new firearm policies leave unanswered: So registration and regulations won't work? Fine--what measures would stop "the next Hassan"? As many reader comments seem to suggest, targeting specific weapons a terrorist might use is guaranteed to fail over time. Major Hassan's terrorist attack was not made possible...

Manassas, VA, - -(AmmoLand.com)- Anyone who does not hold an FFL and sells a firearm to someone he doesn’t know well is incurring a certain amount of liability. And, a bit of bad judgment could cause trouble not just for the seller, but for the rest of the gun owning community as well. There is no question that individuals have the right to buy, sell, and trade firearms between themselves without government infringement. But there are laws on the books and failing to know and follow them is just asking for trouble. A prudent trader will take into account not...

Back door gun registration is being proposed for Wisconsin by Senators Coggs, Taylor and Lassa; Representatives Richards, Staskunas, Turner, Young, Sinicki, Berceau, Colon, Grigsby, Fields, Pasch, Kessler, Zepnick and Toles. SB 367 is yet another attempt to infringe upon lawful gun owners in Wisconsin by making it a crime not to report a lost or stolen gun within 48 hours of discovering the loss or theft. I am not clear how anyone will know if a stolen gun that shows up at a crime scene just 5 hours after it was stolen is your gun or to whom it belongs....

Holder wants gun registration? So says the Law Enforcement Alliance of America: Holder wants a national, permanent gun registration system administered by law enforcement. A registration of honest citizens that have cleared the federal background check for gun purchases with those records permanently retained by and shared among law enforcement. Holder wants new federal authority to prohibit any person on the federal watch list (reported to be 400,000 names) from buying guns and supports confiscating guns from those on the list who possess them. So, he doesn’t want due process protections for people who want to own guns. Even though...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Before the Senate Judiciary Committee November 18th, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder revealed a stunningly broad and aggressive anti-gun agenda. "The President of the United States asked that politicians not use the Ft. Hood attack to engage in 'political theater.' It appears those committed to attacking gun owners and the Second Amendment simply can't help themselves and are engaged in blaming guns and gun owners on the heels of this terrorist attack. Sadly it looks like 'politics as usual,'" said LEAA's spokesperson, Ted Deeds. After explaining and defending his decision to give enemy combatants constitutional...

OTTAWA — A long-running effort by the Conservatives to kill the long-gun registry has passed an important hurdle in the House of Commons, with a majority voting for the first time in 14 years to study a bill to repeal it. MPs voted 164-137 to give "second reading" — or "approval-in-principle" - to a private member's bill sponsored by MP Candice Hoeppner (Portage-Lisgar) that calls for the repeal of legal requirements to register long-barrelled rifles and shotguns. The stage was set for the vote to pass hours earlier when Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff declared the current long-gun registry faces a...