Free Republic

The news from Europe and especially from Sweden are becoming more Orwellian and depressing by the day. The case in point is Sweden for today’s piece of reality, a country that decided a few decades ago to commit cultural suicide and to abandon all the principles used by their founding fathers to build one of the most prosperous and advanced countries (both culturally and economically) in the world. Since the 70s, Sweden has become increasingly statist and multicultural, and now, a country with less than 10 million natives opened its gates to unchecked mass immigration from Africa and the Middle...

The Parkland shooting last month has energized student activists, who are angry and frustrated over gun violence. But it's also contributed to the impression that school shootings are a growing epidemic in America. In truth, they're not. "Schools are safer today than they had been in previous decades," says James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University who has studied the phenomenon of mass murder since the 1980s. Fox and doctoral student Emma Fridel crunched the numbers, and the results should come as a relief to parents.

As high school students staged a national walkout, gun control advocates have called for laws raising the age for gun purchases to 21, but one report shows this would have little if any impact. The Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) released a new report looking into the age distribution of mass public shooters in America, with a particular emphasis on whether raising the age of those purchasing guns would have made any difference in recent mass shootings.

In the wake of the recent horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, a number of proposals involving federal grant programs have been offered in Congress to try to address the critical issue of school safety. Empowering states and localities to implement evidence-based programs that meet their needs represents a sensible approach. Among the proposals under consideration is the Students, Teachers, and Officers Preventing (STOP) School Violence Act of 2018, which has been introduced in the House by Rep. John Rutherford, R-Fla., a former sheriff, and in the Senate by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. Both House...

Authorities are so far refusing to point to racism as a motive after a black man who vowed to shoot up a school and “kill all white people” reportedly murdered six random white people along biking trails in Kansas City, Missouri. According to this, police say 22-year-old Frederick Demond went on a random killing spree last August, leaving six strangers dead along walking and biking paths. Five were middle-aged white men, while one victim was a homeless white woman. All six had been shot with a handgun. Scott was indicted for all six murders late last week. The Washington Post...

On February 14, a 19-year-old former student at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, walked into the school and opened fire, killing 17 students and teachers and wounding 14 more before his shooting spree was done. It was one of the deadliest shootings of its kind in modern American history. The next morning, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, on a visit to Israel, tweeted, “Just waking up in Israel to news of heartbreaking school shooting in FL; Reminded that Israel pretty much eliminated it by placing highly trained people strategically to spot the one common thread–not the...

DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) – Troopers from the Ohio State Highway Patrol were called to the interchange of I-70 and I-75 Friday after several car windows were shot out. Two cars on Interstate 70 and two on Interstate 75 suffered damage Friday, according to police. Troopers tell 2 NEWS this appears to be similar to the incident Thursday morning where at least two vehicles, included a Dayton Police Department patrol car were damaged. A number of cars along I-70 between I-75 and Airport Access Road suffered damage. “It was in my window, and I felt something come past my face,” said...

A Wisconsin student used his shop skills to invent a door stopper.

While Americans try to cope with the losses in Florida, they're saying goodbye to someone else: America's pastor, Billy Graham. Never has our nation so desperately needed to hear the message of hope and healing that the 99-year-old spent his life sharing. So surely, it's no earthly coincidence that even in Reverend Graham's death, he's forcing us to look in the one place where the answers to this heartbreak lie: up.Torn apart by grief and rage, Americans are frantic to know why our nation is unraveling in one act of violence after another. "We're done with thoughts and prayers!" an...

Surprisingly, no one has done this yet, so I did some Googling. Using statistics available from five years ago, there are 98,000 public elementary schools in the United States. There are an additional 26,400 public secondary (high) schools also. This does not include private schools or charter schools (however, one might want to classify those). For now, I will leave private schools out. If you were to have at least two armed guards per school (some of these schools are quite large), and you account for population growth (these stats are five years old), you would get a new overnight...

US President Donald Trump has said arming teachers could prevent school shootings like that which left 17 people dead last week in Florida. A staff member with a gun could end an attack "very quickly", he said. Mr Trump floated the proposal as emotional survivors of the 14 February massacre implored him to make sure it never happens again. The Republican president also backed calls for improved background checks on gun buyers.

How did schools become gun free zones? I have seen discussions of arming trained and trusted teachers and coaches here on Free Republic, and also suggested in a Townhall.com article etc., but not much if any discussion in the mainstream media, etc. Was there some law passed requiring that schools become defenseless? Why shouldn't the same rules be applied to banks? Should we really allow armed citizens to prowl the banking premises? Women and children often go to banks! When was the last time there was a mass shooting at a bank? There is only money there, but we allow...

The Smoking Gun In Mass Shootings By The Young Still won't raise the actual issue will you? “The concept that mental illness is a precursor to violent behavior is nonsense,” said Dr. Louis Kraus, forensic psychiatry chief at Chicago’s Rush University Medical College. “The vast majority of gun violence is not attributable to mental illness.” Oh really? The article goes on to claim that ~38,000 people died from firearm violence in 2016. What is being omitted is that the majority were suicides! In fact, of those 38,000 people (37,863 for 2015 according to the CDC) 22,928 were firearm suicides in...

Organisers of gun giveaway competitions in the US have come under pressure following the Florida school shooting that killed 17 on Wednesday. Republican politicians in Maryland and Kansas went ahead with their gun giveaways, while a county sheriff in North Carolina cancelled his raffle. A children's baseball team defended its decision to continue with a fundraising effort, in which the winner will receive an AR-15 assault rifle. That type of gun was used in Florida. Gun sweepstakes - costing as little as $5 (£3.50) per ticket - are a part of life in some parts of the US, with the...

After every mass shooting, Democrats and their allies in the media tell Americans to “do something.” The response to Wednesday’s horrific shooting in Florida was no different. ... Across the country, Rep. Joe Kennedy III, part-time comedian Jimmy Kimmel and California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsome all called on elected officials to “do something.” But what is “something”? Without details, it’s like a group of lost hikers declaring they need to “find their way home.” Yes, everyone can agree with that, but which way do you go?

An Australian MP has drawn criticism for posting a photo online that showed him aiming a gun and asking: "Do you feel lucky, greenie punks?" George Christensen, a government MP, put the photo on Facebook on Saturday. The Greens party said the conservative MP's post was "disgraceful", noting it came in the same week that 17 people died in a US school shooting. Police said they would consider whether an investigation was warranted. The MP defended his post as "a joke". Mr Christensen said the post was a "tongue-in-cheek" reference to a famous line from the 1971 film Dirty Harry,...

Federal Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin said on Tuesday that the students who carried out attacks in January at high schools in Perm, Chelyabinsk, and Ulan-Ude had frequented “sadistic” websites “that propagate school violence,” including a website dedicated to the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in the United States that killed 15 people, including the two shooters: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Speaking at an agency board meeting, Bastrykin also discussed the existence of “suicide websites” dedicated to Russian teenagers who have killed themselves. According to the chief investigator, 40 juveniles in the Moscow region alone committed suicide after finding...

Tragically, no one's children will be safe at school as long as things stay that way The particulars about protecting innocents from mass murder at schools, concerts, marathons etc. are not part of FBI training. The horrific Valentine’s Day massacre that took the lives of 17 students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, leaving 14 more injured, proves it.

Had Wednesday’s massacre of 17 people at a Florida high school been different in one respect — that is, had alleged perpetrator Nikolas Cruz shouted “Allahu akbar” during the course of his rampage — conservatives would be demanding another round of get-tough measures. Tougher immigration laws. Tougher domestic surveillance. A rollback of Miranda rights for the accused. Possibly even a Muslim registry. Constitutional protections and American ideals, goes the argument, must sometimes yield to urgent public safety concerns. But Cruz, like Las Vegas’s Stephen Paddock or Newtown’s Adam Lanza and so many other mass murderers before them, is just another...

After the Florida school shooting, all you’re going to read and hear are, “Why haven’t we banned guns yet?” or, “When will the madness stop?” Advocates of gun control relentlessly ask these questions not because they know gun bans will prevent school shootings, but because of the questions they do NOT want you to ask. It’s hard in a culture whose intellectual and media agenda is dominated almost completely by leftists who want guns banned to ask these questions. But you still can, and you should. For example: Why do these shootings always and only happen in government-run schools? Clearly,...