Free Republic

NDIANAPOLIS -- Reaction online to an Indianapolis Kroger employee who police said fatally shot a man who was trying to rob the store Monday evening was swift and overwhelmingly in support of the worker. Indianapolis police said the worker shot a man who came into the grocery store on West 71st Street and demanded cash. A Facebook page was created in support of the as-yet-unnamed employee. Most posters said they believe the grocer will move to fire the employee and that they are trying to build a groundswell of support for that worker.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Six months after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot, the White House is preparing to propose some new steps on gun safety, though they're likely to fall short of the bold measures activists would like to see. Spokesman Jay Carney said that the new steps would be made public "in the near future." He didn't offer details, but people involved in talks at the Justice Department to craft the new measures said they expected to see something in the next several weeks. Whatever is proposed is not expected to involve legislation or take on major issues, like banning...

Gun Control: Chicago's new police superintendent blames Alaska's ex-governor for inner-city gun violence and crime, and says gun-rights advocates are racist. Disarming victims doesn't prevent crime, sir. Speaking to the choir, literally, about gun control, Garry McCarthy, former police chief of Newark, N.J., told an audience at St. Sabina Church in the Windy City about leaving a homicide scene in Newark, returning home and flipping on the TV to find an episode of "Sarah Palin's Alaska." "She was caribou hunting and talking about the right to bear arms," McCarthy said. "Why wasn't she at the crime scene with me?" We...

Chicago Police Chief Garry McCarthy told parishoners at Saint Sabina Church earlier this month that the easy availability of guns in the United States is the extension of a tradition of "government-sponsored racism" that began with slavery and Jim Crow. McCarthy -— like many urban police officials an advocate of strict gun control -- was speaking at a liberal, activist church whose priest, Father Michael Pfleger, drew national attention for mocking Hillary Clinton in 2008. "This is sensitive. You know, because everybody’s afraid of race. Have you noticed that? Everybody’s afraid of race," McCarthy, a former New York and Newark...

Scandal: Rather than a botched attempt to catch criminals, was the ATF program actually an attempt to advance gun-control efforts by an administration that has blamed Mexican violence on easy access to U.S. weapons? If "Operation Fast and Furious" was merely a botched attempt at law enforcement, why was a supervisor of the operation, David Voth, "jovial, if not, not giddy but just delighted about" marked guns showing up at crime scenes in Mexico, as career Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent John Dodson told Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight Committee? Perhaps because all was going as planned...

Gun Control: Under a program run by the Justice Department, weapons were knowingly sold to criminals suspected of links to Mexican drug cartels, with two guns ending up at the murder scene of a border patrol agent. Considering how this administration has made a cause celebre out of gun control, the revelation of a program run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), in which weapons were transferred on purpose to Mexican drug cartels and criminals and then lost track of, is at best embarrassing and at worst an unconscionable dereliction of duty. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton...

The National Rifle Association has been holding its annual meeting in Pittsburgh for the past few days, heralded with billboards promising "acres of guns and gear." Here's a billboard you didn't see, but would have if the group was honest about its mission to paint even the most sensible gun laws as a step toward tyranny: "The NRA: Because if Richard Poplawski can't have an arsenal, neither can you." Mr. Poplawski, of course, was one of those "law-abiding" citizens whose right to bear arms the NRA claims to be protecting. Unfortunately, he ceased to be law abiding on April 4,...

Gun manufacturers have been responding to a soaring interest from women with female-friendly 'purse pistols' in an array of trend-led colours and designs. Despite the concerns of anti-gun campaigners, there has been an 83 per cent rise in the number of women buying firearms for personal defence, and handbag-sized models are fast becoming a sought-after accessory across the U.S. Most weapon brands now offer a 'female-friendly' range that wouldn't look out of place in a toy shop, with many offering to customise pistols with pink paintwork and Swarovski crystals. The soaring demand for firearms for women follows the endorsement of...

It's been more than two months since the tragedy in Tucson stunned the nation. It was a moment when we came together as one people to mourn and to pray for those we lost. And in the attack's turbulent wake, Americans by and large rightly refrained from finger-pointing, assigning blame or playing politics with other people's pain. But one clear and terrible fact remains. A man our Army rejected as unfit for service; a man one of our colleges deemed too unstable for studies; a man apparently bent on violence, was able to walk into a store and buy a...

Self-Defense: Illinois' attorney general wants to publish the state's list of gun-owners, placing the lives and safety of non-gun-owners at risk. It's a list for criminals of the best potential victims. The anti-gun lobby has sought to impose what it calls "sensible restrictions" on gun ownership ever since Otis McDonald, a 76-year-old Army veteran who lives in a high crime area of Chicago, won his case before the U.S. Supreme Court saying the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution he fought to protect gives him the right to bear arms. These restrictions vary from training and education requirements to waiting...

Last fourth of July, while sitting in the living room of my historic farm house in Lenox, Massachusetts, which was built by Elijah Northrup in 1770 — a fourth-generation American — I thought about the Berkshire regiment and the American Revolution. Since the house was a tavern during the revolutionary war period I imagined that it must have hosted some lively conversation about the oppressive rule of King George the 3rd and the rising sentiment for rebellion, especially in Lenox. In 1774 the Berkshires issued the Lenox Covenant, one of the first formal acts of defiance against the Crown’s taxation...

Sleek, its lines rakishly tilted to boost the ergonomics that index grip placement to barrel, this automatic pistol has but one function: to eliminate human beings easily. That sinister intent is expressed most eloquently in the extended magazine that reaches far beneath the pistol grip, easily tripling the amount of ammunition available to the killer. It's the Colt Super .38 automatic pistol, customized into a machine pistol by an underworld gunsmith so that Babyface Nelson could use it to kill an FBI agent outside Little Bohemia, Wis., in 1934. Maybe you saw the movie. Even if you didn't, you can...

The Daily Beast reports Sarah Palin's speech to the Safari Club International Convention in Reno, Nev., has its members excited about taking on President Barack Obama's coming gun control issue. Palin warned that Obama and liberals will try to take away their guns. "We need to keep tabs on what the White House is telling us. Just think if we had stricter gun control laws! Imagine, though -- imagine making life more miserable for the liberals who want that gun control." Palin was grinning and laughing as she spoke these words. Palin has a very vivid imagination. Imagine the parents...

Before the Tucson shootings are lost forever in the mists of time (which, given this country's attention span, figures to be two weeks from now), we might do well to ponder the various reactions to the outrage. President Barack Obama responded as a president should, with dignity and eloquence. I thought his speech at the memorial service in Arizona was one of his strongest. He set the bar pretty high. "If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let's make sure it's worthy of those we have lost," he said. Amen to that. House Speaker John Boehner, who...

The massacre in Arizona should make every forward-thinking person in America angry. And this anger should give thoughtful people the backbone to tell the NRA that the Wild West show that they sponsor is over. The NRA and its disciples believe that they deserve to own guns at all costs. The costs are very high; people are literally killing us, their fellow Americans, because of their gun obsession. The massacres that happen on a fairly regular basis in our schools, work places, and now at a public gathering of an elected official are almost all committed by a person who...

PHOENIX — Arizona has become a national leader in the gun rights movement in recent years as the state enacted law after law to protect the people's right to bear arms nearly anywhere, at anytime. The shooting rampage that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a former legislative colleague, has done nothing to slow down the Legislature. Gun rights bills were introduced in the days after the shootings last week, and more proposals are to come....

Say one thing for Sarah Palin: She heeds her own advice. Coming only days after Ms. Palin was drawn into the Arizona shooting drama, news that the former Alaska governor and potential presidential aspirant will headline a gun-friendly hunting convention Jan. 29 fits her famous stump phrase: "Don't retreat, reload." It is a philosophy that defines Palin as a political figure and also points to how closely her own public persona echoes that of the American gun culture she promotes. Just as the gun-rights community has prided itself on not backing down from any challenge but rather thriving on adversity...

Searching For Answers: From New York newspaper columnists to an Illinois senator, the liberal left is blaming the Tea Party and conservative stars for the shooting of an Arizona congresswoman. How about blaming the communist and Nazi-loving shooter? It didn't take long for New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to blame the Tea Party and Sarah Palin for the shooting outside a Tucson supermarket that seriously injured Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords and left six others, including a 9-year-old, dead. Writing Saturday, as the shooting was still fresh and little was known of the shooter or the circumstances, Krugman spoke of a...

I loathe Sarah Palin as much as anyone else, but I'm not blaming her for inciting Jared Loughner to go on his shooting spree in Tucson. I'm equally unimpressed with the argument that the nastiness of political debate in America inspired Loughner to pull the trigger. I welcome the discussion of America's toxic political culture – the quality of debate there, especially around health care, has been distressingly low. Time for media reps to do a little soul-searching. But, sorry, FOX news didn't give Loughner the tools to carry out his tragic plan. And I'm amazed at how quickly analysts...

Ja Rule agreed Monday to go to prison for two years in a gun case, becoming the second platinum-selling rapper set to do time after arrests in the aftermath of a star-studded hip-hop concert in July 2007.

I don't spend my fall weekends tramping around the woods in pursuit of a buck, but a lot of my friends and neighbors do. This blogger adds up all the hunters in just a handful of states, and comes to a striking conclusion: The state of Wisconsin has gone an entire deer hunting season without someone getting killed. That's great. There were over 600,000 hunters. Allow me to restate that number. Over the last two months, the eighth largest army in the world - more men under arms than Iran; more than France and Germany combined - deployed to the...

The case of a New Jersey man who is serving seven years in prison for possessing two locked and unloaded handguns he purchased legally in Colorado is a perfect example of how a law-abiding citizen can unwittingly become a criminal due to vastly differing gun laws among the states, gun rights experts say. Brian Aitken, a 27-year-old entrepreneur and media consultant with no prior criminal record, now spends his days "bored and depressed" behind bars at New Jersey's Mid-State Correctional Facility, his father, Larry Aitken, of Mount Laurel, N.J., says.

Self-Protection: Pennsylvania's governor vetoes a bill expanding a citizen's right to protect self and family outside one's residence rather than exercise a "duty to retreat." It is a victory for predators over victims. On Saturday, while people were still sleeping off their turkey feast or celebrating their Black Friday goodies, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell vetoed a bill that would have expanded the state's so-called Castle Doctrine to expand the permissible use of deadly force in self-defense outside of the currently allowed home and workplace. The Castle Doctrine gets its name from the saying that a man's home is his "castle."...

The website ChinaSmack.com is designed to present “translated internet content from the Chinese-language internet.” They found something interesting when Fauna, the site’s founder, posted some pictures of American Wal-Mart’s selling weapons on a Chinese military news site. Fauna then translated the comments on the site and the response…well, lets just say the Tea Party isn’t dead. It appears that they have all just moved to China. Sure, the response was skewed by posting the pictures on Tiexue.net, a site devoted to the military, but there’s something resoundingly inspirational about hearing foreigners’ admiration for America and our way of life (even...

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the Supreme Court opinions in McDonald v. Chicago was the dissenters' assault on District of Columbia v. Heller. Not only did Justice Stephen G. Breyer vote against extending the Second Amendment to state and local governments, he also argued forcefully and at length for overturning Heller and, therefore, for turning the Second Amendment into a practical nullity. Ominously, Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined the Breyer dissent - contradicting what she told the U.S. Senate and the American people last summer. Regarding the key issue in McDonald - whether the 14th Amendment makes the Second Amendment...

Second Amendment: In the "living Constitution" era, the Supreme Court rediscovers original intent and rightly rules that the right to bear arms applies to all Americans just as the rest of the Bill of Rights does. It's hard to conceive how the justices could have decided otherwise. But by the narrowest of margins — 5-4 — they have reaffirmed that keeping and bearing arms is an inalienable and individual right like speech and religion, and that it applies to all individuals as the Founding Fathers intended. Why anyone thinks the Second Amendment does not apply to all Americans is a...

The Supreme Court has now incorporated the Second Amendment against the states. But the impact of that decision may turn out to be fairly limited. In most states, there will be little if any change in the actual extent of gun regulation. The ideologically divided nature of the Court’s decision suggests that the legal status of the Second Amendment isn’t yet completely secure. That said, the decision will have a substantial practical impact in a few areas and it also represents a tremendous symbolic victory for gun rights advocates. I. Limited Practical Impact. On balance, I agree with scholars such...

JUSTICE ALITO announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect toParts I, II–A, II–B, II–D, III–A, and III–B, in which THE CHIEF JUSTICE, JUSTICE SCALIA, JUSTICE KENNEDY, and JUSTICE THOMAS join, and an opinion with respect to Parts II–C, IV, and V, in which THE CHIEF JUSTICE, JUSTICE SCALIA, and JUSTICE KENNEDY join. Two years ago, in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. ___ (2008), we held that the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense, and we struck down a District of...

On the eve of confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan -- and for the second time in two weeks -- the National Rifle Association (NRA) is under fire from conservatives. According to RedState's Erick Erickson, a prominent conservative blogger, "internal Senate emails confirmed by NRA Board Members show that the National Rifle Association's management team has explicitly and directly told the NRA's board they are prohibited from testifying about second amendment issues" during the Kagan hearings.

America's gun control proponents might want to consider shooting (pun intended) this memo to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. "Dear Mayor Daley: Please shut up. You ain't helping us." Is there anyone doing more damage against advocates of gun control than Daley? The man is a walking billboard for right-to-carry laws. Anyone needing proof of that might want to read the statements he made in the wake of an 80-year-old Chicago man fatally shooting a career criminal who invaded his home.

Second Amendment: Chicago is deciding whether to prosecute a great-grandfather and Korean War veteran under its handgun ban. He refused to be a victim, and now there's one less armed thug roaming the streets. What's the problem? If the 80-year-old vet living on the city's West Side didn't have the gun the city said he shouldn't have, he and his 83-year-old wife and 12-year-old great-grandson might have joined those victims of gun violence about whom gun-control advocates constantly chirp. The vet obtained the gun in violation of the city's handgun ban after a prior incident in which the couple was...

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...

While you were distracted by the economy, they fixed your health care system. While you were distracted by your health care system, they worked on cap-and-trade plus immigration "reform." Under the continued distraction of the last two items above, surely you will never see the pre-planning to remove guns from your home. Surely the man whose agenda has become a substitute for the United States Constitution will not think twice about a nation safer from firearms. "It's for your own good" will be the rallying cry, but where have we heard that one before? Notice the man in the Oval...

Washington DC is accustomed to seeing all sorts of aggrieved Americans gather in the capital to exercise their constitutional right to petition their government. Yet the people who assembled there on Monday were demonstrating for a cause that is currently faring better than it has in many years. Their cause is the right to carry firearms, practically anywhere they choose, whether concealed or plainly visible. It is a right they see as guaranteed by the nation's constitution, dating back more than two centuries. Yet each time the US experiences a shooting outrage, like a deranged gunman's massacre of 32 people...

Carrying loaded pistols and unloaded rifles, dozens of gun-rights activists got as close as they could Monday to the nation's capital while still bearing arms and delivered what they said was a simple message: Don't tread on me. Hundreds of like-minded but unarmed counterparts carried out a separate rally in the nation's capital. The gun-carrying protesters in Virginia rallied on national park land, which is legal thanks to a new law signed by President Barack Obama that allows guns in national parks. Organizers said it's the first armed rally in a national park since the law passed.(continued)

An eruption in a simmering dispute over gun rights occurred when James Goldberg, wearing camouflage clothing and a holstered — and licensed — pistol on his right hip, walked into a Chili's restaurant in upscale Glastonbury, where he intended to pay for a takeout order. According to Goldberg, a college-educated, occupational safety engineer, a restaurant employee, concerned by the sight of an armed customer, called the town police department. A goggle-eyed luncheon crowd watched three officers roll up, confront Goldberg and handcuff him. "What can we get him for?" Goldberg, 32, says one of the officers asked his colleagues. The...

Homeland Security: Forget about foreign jihadists getting nukes or planting bombs in their underwear. The real enemies, some say, are domestic militia groups who play at war and those nasty Tea Party racists. The raid on a Michigan militia group accused of plotting war against the government will no doubt feed into the arguments of those who claim in the wake of health reform that the vast right-wing conspiracy is not only angry, but armed and dangerous. According to an Associated Press report, "Authorities said the arrests underscored the dangers of homegrown right-wing extremism of the sort seen in the...

The Massachusetts Judicial Council ruled on March 10 that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution does not apply to state governments and, consequently, the State of Massachusetts can regulate firearms in that state. The language of the Second Amendment states: "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." The Second Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights, which was added to the Constitution to guarantee that the federal government would not infringe upon basic rights and that those powers...

Otis McDonald, 76, stands before the Supreme Court, which Tuesday heard arguments in his suit to overturn Chicago's handgun ban Gun Rights: Otis McDonald, 76, an Army vet who lives in a high-crime area of Chicago, thinks the Constitution gives him the right to bear arms to protect himself and his wife as he protected his country. We think so too. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments on behalf of four Chicago residents led by homeowner McDonald, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Illinois State Rifle Association to overturn Chicago's three-decade-old ban on owning handguns. In a 5-4...

The Supreme Court seemed likely to rule for the first time that gun possession is fundamental to American freedom, a move that would give federal judges power to strike down state and local weapons laws for infringing on Second Amendment rights.

If I were the parent or spouse of one of those killed in the terrorist attack at Fort Hood last week, I would begin raising utter hell in the public arena the minute my loved one was buried and my tears dried up. Not only did outrageous political correctness convince otherwise rational people in authority to put our soldiers in unnecessary danger, but since 1993, there has been a gun-ban in place on our army bases.

Gun Rights: A decade after Congress forbade the CDC from studying the health consequences of gun ownership, the National Institutes of Health has started funding such research. Will reform pry the guns from our cold, sick hands? More than a decade ago Congress, seeing it as a backdoor assault on the 2nd Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms, voted to cut funding for firearms research by the Centers for Disease Control. Such research was viewed as one-sided and based on flawed assumptions that all gun use was bad, even that which saved lives and deterred crime. --...

Gun Rights: A decade after Congress forbade the CDC from studying the health consequences of gun ownership, the National Institutes of Health has started funding such research. Will reform pry the guns from our cold, sick hands? More than a decade ago Congress, seeing it as a backdoor assault on the 2nd Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms, voted to cut funding for firearms research by the Centers for Disease Control. Such research was viewed as one-sided and based on flawed assumptions that all gun use was bad, even that which saved lives and deterred crime. The...

For a decade, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been forbidden by Congress from doing research on gun-control issues. Such piddling hurdles as federal law don't matter to the Obama administration. With a wave of a hand, the CDC has simply redefined gun-control research so the ban no longer applies. They're not researching guns; they're researching alcohol sales and their impact on gun violence, or researching how teens carrying guns affect the rates of non-gun injuries. "These particular grants do not address gun control; rather they deal with the surrounding web of circumstances," wrote National Institutes of Health...

John Lennon’s observation that happiness is a warm gun may be more true now than ever if membership at the Tri-County Gun Club is any indication. The club has picked up an average of 70 new members a month through most of this year, according to George Pitts, Tri-County’s public information officer. The credit for that spike in membership falls on the Barack Obama administration, Pitts says. “We took in 77 new members this month,” Pitts said on a sunny afternoon last April, as sporadic gunfire echoed through the hills of the 230-acre club nestled in the hills between Tualatin...

Gun Control: The Supreme Court agrees to decide if the Second Amendment applies to all of us, or just Washington, D.C. Why would the Founders put in the Bill of Rights something applying only to a federal enclave? In a 5-4 decision last year written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court overturned a draconian District of Columbia gun ban enacted 32 years ago that barred private ownership of handguns at all. Scalia wrote that an individual's right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted. The court ruled that...

(Corrected) Gun Control: In a case headed for the Supreme Court, a three-judge panel rules Chicago's gun ban constitutional since the 2nd Amendment doesn't apply to states and cities. High court nominee Sonia Sotomayor concurs.Those Pennsylvania townsfolk bitterly clinging to their guns may have been premature in celebrating the decision in D.C. v. Heller that the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does indeed guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms.

Some judges on an 11-member panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals appeared to agree with gun-rights advocates that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, recently interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court to protect an individual's right to own guns, is binding on the states and can be used to challenge the county ordinance.

Daniel Ames reckons he dealt one for the good guys on Saturday night near Soldotna when he came home, found two burglars in his house, wrestled with them over a pistol, then took them down, telling them he was going to blow off their knees if they didn't start following his orders.

You can be forgiven if you thought that Republicans are for states’ rights. The Republican Party’s 2008 platform insists that Congress should respect the limits imposed by the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution, which declares that authority not granted to the federal government is reserved to the states. But for some Republicans, federal preemption of state authority seems just fine if it promotes the possession of guns. That is the message of a bill sponsored by the chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, John Thune of South Dakota. The bill, sprung on us as a proposed amendment to a...