Free Republic

SACRAMENTO — One of the most controversial gun-control bills introduced in California this year — a move to seize the 166,000 registered assault weapons grandfathered in under the state's ban — is dead, its author said Thursday. When Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, introduced AB174 in January, it was designed to declare the Legislature's intent to end all "grandfather clauses" allowing ownership of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. But on Tuesday, he gutted and amended the bill to address public-school health centers instead. Coincidentally, it was the same day that U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced he won't include Sen....

<p>HELENA, Mont. - A bill that would allow concealed carry without a permit is shooting toward passage after receiving the Senate's initial endorsement.</p> <p>House Bill 304 would allow people carry concealed weapons within city limits without obtaining a concealed-carry permit. The measure is one of the many pro-gun measures on the docket this session.</p>

U.S. Rights: As the world body meets this week to hammer out an agreement to restrict international arms trade, our Secretary of State commits us to pushing a treaty that may also restrict our Second Amendment rights. Last Friday, the day of the week when unpopular or controversial announcements are traditionally made, Secretary of State John Kerry announced U.S. support for the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), a final version of which is being hammered out in New York beginning this week. Certainly the ATT is controversial. Touted as a means of getting a handle on an international arms...

The author of a new book tries to reconcile his personal politics with his fondness for firearms. (Italics in original.) Dan Baum is not your typical gun guy. He has a lifelong love of firearms he can trace back to the age of five. But he's also a Jewish Democrat and a former staff writer for The New Yorker and feels like a misfit next to most gun owners, who identify overwhelmingly on the conservative side of the spectrum. In order to bridge this gap, Baum set off on a cross-country journey, chatting with everyone from a gun store owner...

Guns: An Illinois court has ruled that the Second Amendment means what it says and has ordered the state legislature to adopt a law by June that lets citizens bear arms in self-defense, not just keep them. On Feb. 22, a 5-4 majority of the 10-member U.S. Seventh Court of Appeals upheld the Dec. 11 decision, which had been rendered by a three-member panel, to address absurdity and inconsistency of Illinois gun laws that allowed ownership of a firearm, but not the right to carry it outside the home. In other words, the "right to keep but not to bear...

Many in America think that we are so heavily armed as a population that we could never be disarmed. But consider Russia. They were free under the Tsar and one of the most heavily armed societies. That all changed when Stalin and the communists took control. Stalin was able to control, starve, punish and imprison a defenseless people… after he took their guns. Now an internal Department of Justice memo is out which indicates that Barack Obama and company are talking gun confiscation with a forerunner of federal gun registration, says Tim Brown on thedailysheeple.com. He goes on to say...

Gun Control: On his way to a play date with the world's most famous golfer, President Obama stops in America's most violent city to push universal background checks that Chicago's violent street gangs will totally ignore. Janay McFarlane, 18, was killed late Friday just hours after her younger sister joined a group of teens onstage for President Obama's speech in Chicago on gun violence. McFarlane was shot to death hours after her little sister, Destini, 14, sat just feet away as Obama spoke in the aftermath of the similar murder of Hadiya Pendleton. The 15-year-old Pendleton was gunned down in...

A 25-year-old Iraq war veteran charged with murdering former Navy SEAL and "American Sniper" author Chris Kyle and his friend turned a gun onto the pair while they were at a Texas shooting range, authorities said Sunday. [No more pasted due to AP restrictions. Please read entire article.]

It's about time for some bipartisan...skeet shooting? Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, joined a chorus of skeptics who questioned President Barack Obama's recent comments about his hobby of skeet shooting, a sport where participants fire shotguns to break airborne clay disks. "If he is a skeet shooter, why have we not heard of this? Why have we not seen photos? Why hasn't he referenced this at any point in time?" Blackburn said Monday on CNN's "Erin Burnett OutFront." "I tell you what I do think," she later added. "I think he should invite me to Camp David, and I'll go skeet...

The current debate over the constitutionally guaranteed “right of the people to keep and bear arms” has shed more heat than light, despite a Supreme Court ruling that individuals, and not simply “well-regulated militias,” possess this right. For both liberals and conservatives have sold this right short. Liberals have been gnashing their teeth over the Court ruling, and are seeking to circumvent it by “regulating” firearms. Thus, President Obama now proposes that certain dangerous-looking rifles be banned and ammunition be strictly controlled. That this proposal has more to do with leftist ideology than public safety is demonstrated by the fact...

FAIRFIELD — Connecticut Against Gun Violence has proposed a tough legislative agenda that would expand the definition of an assault weapon and ban them from the state, including all such existing firearms. CAGV also in its proposal would not grandfather in all large capacity magazines of more than seven rounds that, along with the assault weapons, would have to be destroyed, turned over to police or taken out of Connecticut. New York just adopted a law that reduces the largest capacity magazine from 10 bullets to seven bullets. Connecticut Against Gun Violence is a nonprofit formed in 1993 to advocate...

Amid the media swirl surrounding possible gun control measures after the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre just last month, many pro-gun advocates are speaking out. Musicians are no different. Zoltan Bathory, guitarist of Five Finger Death Punch, used his Facebook page to discuss his annoyance at the media and the concern that his guns will be confiscated by the government, despite the fact there is no evidence to back up that fear. Bathory writes: "Let's talk about 'assault' rifles for a second. Anti-gun advocates in the media placing all the emphasis on the word 'ASSAULT' for a reason. It sounds menacing...

To the editor: A recent editorial called for unlimited gun ownership to defend against the government. I hear this argument a lot, but what good is your AR-15 when you're fighting the full force of the United States military? All they have to do is drop a smart bomb on your house from high above and you're done. You wouldn't even see it coming. Alternatively, they could simply run over your house with a Kevlar-plated M1 Abrams tank, or shell your dwelling from cannons positioned far away. I support the right to bear arms to protect your home and family...

RALEIGH – Many North Carolina gun owners and gun enthusiasts are worried that new gun proposals that go far beyond an assault rifle ban would make many of the otherwise law abiding 80 million Americans who are gun owners into criminals if they do not register their weapons with federal authorities. National and international media reports have stated that the White House under a committee led by Vice President Joe Biden is going to seek sweeping changes in how guns are registered, sold, and taxed in the wake of the Newton, Connecticut school shooting. Under the potential proposals which have...

Texas has some of the most classically liberal — meaning free of government interference — gun laws anywhere. Take this page of law from TexasGunLaws.org. The Basics Q: How long is the waiting period to buy a Handgun / Shotgun / Rifle in Texas? A: There is no waiting period for purchasing a firearm in the state of Texas. Q: I just moved to Texas, do I have to register my firearms? A: No, there is no state registration of firearms. Q: I just inherited / bought a gun from someone in Texas, do I need to transfer the gun...

Guns: The mayor of what is at once America's most gun-controlled city and its murder capital wants an assault weapons ban like the one he pushed in 1994. Except it didn't work then, and it won't work now. Nathaniel T. Jackson, 40, an alleged gang member with a long arrest record, was gunned down last week outside a store in Chicago's Austin neighborhood, becoming the Windy City's 500th murder victim in 2012. Up to 80% of Chicago's murders and shootings are gang-related, according to police. By one estimate, the city has almost 70,000 gang members. A police audit last spring...

School Safety: Critics of the National Rifle Association's call for armed security guards at our schools respond that one famous school did have a sheriff's deputy on scene. But without him, the toll would have been much worse. After remaining silent on the mass shooting at Sandy Hook, the NRA's Wayne LaPierre held a press conference Friday to condemn another tragedy in a gun-free zone and to advocate the placement of armed security guards at our schools as is done at airports, banks and other public venues. "It's now time for us to assume responsibility for our schools," he said....

Gun Laws: Before the tragedy in Connecticut, a shooter at an Oregon shopping mall was stopped by an armed citizen with a concealed carry permit who refused to be a victim, preventing another mass tragedy. In the target-rich environment of the Clackamas Town Center two weeks before Christmas, the shooter managed to kill only two people before killing himself. A far worse tragedy was prevented when he was confronted by a hero named Nick Meli. As the shooter was having difficulty with his weapon, Meli pulled his and took aim, reluctant to fire lest an innocent bystander be hit. But...

Gun Control: If the girlfriend of the football linebacker killed in a murder-suicide had a gun to defend herself, she might be alive today to explain how guns save lives and more of them means less crime. Let us start with the proposition that Jovan Belcher, the 6-foot-2-inch, 228-pound Kansas City Chiefs linebacker, did not need his legally obtained and registered gun to kill his girlfriend Kasandra Perkins. He could have used his bare hands to dispatch his partner, or even, say, a knife, as was used in another murder case involving a famous football player that NBC Sports announcer...

Second Amendment: A House resolution, as futile as it may be, represents growing opposition to another administration bow to the U.N. encroachment on U.S. sovereignty at the expense of its laws and even our Constitution. Treaties are ratified by a two-thirds majority of the Senate, and the final version of the U.N.'s Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) may likely be signed by this president and ratified by this Senate, especially if presented as a "sensible restriction" on international arms trafficking with no impact on our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. But some House members are not going to...