Free Republic

(Reuters) - A special legislative session in Tennessee called by the state's Republican governor in response to a deadly school shooting ended on Tuesday with no progress on gun safety laws, capped by a brief scuffle between opposing lawmakers. Governor Bill Lee, in the special session which opened on Aug. 21, asked lawmakers to consider a "red flag" law and a number of other public safety measures he pitched in the wake of the murder of three children and three staff members at The Covenant School in March in Nashville.

Asurge in “quiet gun owners,” much like the so-called “silent majority” in political circles, is leading firearms analysts to believe that far more Americans own weapons than the accepted 30% cited in polls. At the highest end, it’s possible that up to 60% of Americans own guns, especially with the pandemic-era rise in gun buying among women and minorities, especially in suburban and urban areas. At the lowest end, it’s likely that at least 40% of Americans own guns, according to a groundbreaking study of those who lie to pollsters about firearms. The study from Rutgers University's New Jersey Gun...

Texas has joined another multistate coalition defending Second Amendment rights, this time asking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to strike down California’s assault weapons ban in the case of Miller v. Bonta. California is appealing a recent decision by U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez, who ruled that the state’s 1989 ban violates the Second Amendment. Gov. Gavin Newsom said the ruling was “a direct threat to public safety and innocent Californians.” But in his 94-page ruling, Benitez wrote that the California law “bans an entire class of very popular hardware – firearms that are lawful under federal law and...

Last Friday, a San Diego-based federal court overturned California’s three-decade-old ban on so-called assault weapons. U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez sided with a number of gun advocacy groups challenging the law, finding that firearms prohibited in the state of California are protected under Supreme Court precedent.

President Biden will find it difficult - if not impossible - to get bipartisan support in Congress for new gun control measures, like a new assault weapons ban, which passed with bipartisan support in 1994 and expired ten years later.

Trump has used the ambush to portray Biden as weak on crime Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Sunday called for gun control less than 24 hours after two Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who were critically wounded in Compton after a gunman opened fire on their squad car in an apparent ambush. “Weapons of war have no place in our communities,” the former Vice President tweeted. “We need to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.”

A very disturbing video was posted on Twitter this weekend. A homeowner in Los Angeles claims the local government is preventing him from removing a homeless encampment from his property.

"Democrats say we have guns in America because of 'corruption,'" former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared on Twitter on Sept. 12. "No, we have guns because it's our God-given right enshrined in the Constitution." The second part of that tweet is silly; God didn't give people the right to own AR-15s any more than a divine entity gave Americans the right to own automobiles without seat belts. The first part of Sanders’ tweet, though, is mostly accurate. The National Rifle Association's money doesn't corrupt Republican legislators. Instead, Republicans oppose gun control because conservative political identity is today...

Beto O’Rourke launched an expletive-fueled defense of his call Sunday to ban assault-style weapons and impose mandatory buybacks of AR-15s and AK-47s while also pushing back at critics — including fellow 2020 Democrat Pete Buttigieg. During last Thursday’s presidential debate, the former Texas congressman said, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47, and we’re not going to allow it to be used against your fellow Americans anymore.” Three days later, O’Rourke appeared on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” where host Chuck Todd pointed out that there was “a lot of hand-wringing” about the presidential contender’s full-throated call...

Beto O'Rourke's best moment on Thursday's Democratic presidential debate -- which also doubled as his best moment in the 2020 campaign to date -- came when ABC's David Muir asked whether he supported a mandatory buyback of assault weapons. "Hell, yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47," O'Rourke said to raucous applause from the crowd in Houston, Texas. "We're not going to allow it to be used against our fellow Americans anymore." The former Texas congressman defended that stance in an interview on CNN's "New Day" Friday, insisting the issue would not hurt his party. "It's not a...

The House Judiciary Committee announced a Sept. 4 vote on a group of measures aimed at reducing gun violence. “For far too long, politicians in Washington have only offered thoughts and prayers in the wake of gun violence tragedies,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said. “Thoughts and prayers have never been enough. To keep our communities safe, we must act." * * * House Democrats are nonetheless ready to advance additional gun control measures. Nadler said he’ll take up a measure that would ban high-capacity ammunition magazines, which were used in a string of deadly mass shootings this summer.

WASHINGTON — Days after a pair of deadly mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, President Trump said he was prepared to endorse what he described as “very meaningful background checks” that would be possible because of his “greater influence now over the Senate and over the House.” But after discussions with gun rights advocates during his two-week working vacation in Bedminster, N.J. — including talks with Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive of the National Rifle Association — Mr. Trump’s resolve appears to have substantially softened, and he has reverted to reiterating the conservative positions on the gun issue he has...

ORDER GRANTING PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT, DECLARING CALIFORNIA PENAL CODE § 32310 UNCONSTITUTIONAL and ENJOINING ENFORCEMENT Individual liberty and freedom are not outmoded concepts. “The judiciary is – and is often the only – protector of individual rights that are at the heart of our democracy.” -- Senator Ted Kennedy, Senate Hearing on the Nomination of Robert Bork, 1987.1 I. INTRODUCTION As two masked and armed men broke in, Susan Gonzalez was shot in the chest. She made it back to her bedroom and found her husband’s .22 caliber pistol. Wasting the first rounds on warning shots, she then...

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. In 1791, the Founding Fathers placed into the U.S. Constitution a set of ten amendments that we refer to collectively as the “Bill of Rights.” Among them was an innocuous measure designed to protect state militias against federal overreach. Until the 1970s, nobody believed that this meant anything important, or that it was relevant to modern American society. But then, inspired by profit and perfidy, the dastardly National Rifle Association recast the provision’s words and, sua sponte, brainwashed the American public into believing that they possessed an individual right to own firearms.

The state has no right to threaten financial institutions that do business with the NRA. Imagine the following scenario. Imagine the media response. By October, the governor of Texas was fed up. A well-funded ten-month campaign by Everytown for Gun Safety designed to stigmatize gun ownership was causing support for gun rights to measurably decline. Called “You afraid?” the campaign mocked men and women who carried weapons to grocery stores or restaurants. An associated “courage” campaign asked mothers to hand back their carry licenses, and while most didn’t, the dozens who did received international media attention.

The NRA is accusing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) of trying to "deprive" them and their constituents of "their First Amendment rights to speak freely about gun-related issues and defend the Second Amendment" in a new lawsuit. In April, Cuomo directed state regulators to "urge insurance companies, New York State-chartered banks, and other financial services companies licensed in New York to review any relationships they may have with the National Rifle Association." The governor's part in encouraging these entities to end their partnerships with the gun rights organization did much to hurt their finances, the group alleges. At the...

DALLAS -- A mother of two said she was pumping gas just after 10 p.m. Wednesday night in southern Dallas, when a man jumped in her car and tried to drive away with her two kids inside. Instead of hesitating, Michelle Booker-Hicks told FOX 4 in Dallas that she did what she had to in order to save her kids. "I proceeded to jump in my backseat and told the gentleman to stop, to get out the car. He would not get out of the car. He turned around and looked at me. I reached over the armrest to get...

A Tennessee man grabbed his gun and opened fire on two burglary suspects who broke into his home Friday night, killing both of them, police said.

Article's full title: "Broward sheriff's deputies cowered behind cars, tree with Parkland shooter believed in school, report says" Excerpt from article: The deputies who were among the first to arrive to the scene of the Florida school massacre were found cowering behind their cars and a nearby tree and had no idea where the gunman was, according to an official report released Tuesday. The report from Coral Springs Officer Bryan Wilkins details how he arrived at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School within minutes of the active shooter alert -- only to find Broward County Sheriff's Officers hadn't entered the school,...

District of Columbia law bans handgun possession by making it a crime to carry an unregistered firearm and prohibiting the registration of handguns; provides separately that no person may carry an unlicensed handgun, but authorizes the police chief to issue 1-year licenses; and requires residents to keep lawfully owned firearms unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device.