Free Republic

Most Californians would be banned from purchasing or taking possession of body armor, such as a bullet-proof vest, under a bill now being considered by state lawmakers.Assembly Bill 92, introduced by Assemblyman Damon Connolly, D-San Rafael, comes as a response to many high-profile mass shootings where the shooter wore body armor. That includes the 2015 massacre in San Bernardino, where two people wearing tactical gear killed 14 people at a holiday gathering.State and federal law already prohibit people convicted of a violent felony from possessing body armor. AB 92 would make it a misdemeanor for anyone outside of a specified...

As we continue to move one day closer to the lawless dystopian war zone that Bill De Blasio envisions for New York City, bullet proof vest sales are skyrocketing. Fed up with the litany of shootings and spikes in crime in the city since the Mayor’s cries to defund the police, citizens are now starting to take matters into their own hands. One midtown dealer says that sales of body armor are up 80% over 2019 due to the ongoing “unrest” in the city, according to the NY Post. Most buyers are from the Bronx and Brooklyn, where sales have...

DALLAS — Body armor can stop a bullet and save a life, but some police officers do not use the equipment. That is about to change at the Dallas Police Department. Officers may soon be required to wear a bulletproof vest or else the city will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal money. We remember the scenes and their names. Officers who were shot in the line of duty. Some were saved by wearing their body armor. Senior Cpl. Brian Jones is on the streets every day. He knows the price he could pay if he is shot...

A Virginia man who once spent eight years on the run from naval investigators was arrested in Somerset County early today with a trove of high-powered weapons, including a grenade-launcher and two assault rifles, along with maps of a U.S. military base and a civilian neighborhood, authorities said. The federal government’s Joint Terrorism Task Force quickly joined the investigation into Lloyd R. Woodson, 43, who had been staying at a Branchburg motel since last week. Woodson, whose last known address was in Reston, Va., was wearing a bullet-proof vest and carrying one of the assault rifles — customized to shoot...

Note: The following text is a quote: Queens Man and Accomplice Charged with Attempting to Provide Material Support to Hizballah Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Joseph M. Demarest, Jr., the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Office of the FBI, announced the filing of an indictment yesterday charging Patrick Nayyar and Conrad Stanisclaus Mulholland with attempting to provide material support to Hizballah, a designated foreign terrorist organization. The indictment also charges Nayyar with illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition. On Sept. 24, 2009, Nayyar, a 46-year-old citizen of India who had...

WASHINGTON - May 2002: President Bush attends a memorial for police officers killed in the line of duty. Under his jacket, he's wearing a Second Chance bulletproof vest, according to a company insider critical of the vest. A year later, a California police officer wearing the same model vest is killed when a bullet penetrates his vest. Sources involved in the case say the Justice Department now is conducting a criminal investigation into whether the company — Second Chance Body Armor — knowingly sold defective vests to the Secret Service, military and police. The company denies the allegation. "It means...

A secret Pentagon study has found that as many as 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to the upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor. Such armor has been available since 2003, but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials. The ceramic plates in vests now worn by the majority of troops in Iraq cover only some of the chest and back. In at least 74 of the 93 fatal wounds...

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - A driver stopped on an Iowa highway this month was found with flight-training manuals, Arabic documents and night-vision goggles, and he told troopers he knew of terrorist plans to shoot up trains in San Diego, according to court papers. Michael Wagner, 44, of San Diego, said he had knowledge of terrorist activities and people and groups tied to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Wagner also said that he knew about things in the Muslim communities in San Diego that would interest federal authorities.

STANWOOD, Wash. - A teenager accused of planning to supply a Somalian terrorist group with night vision goggles and bulletproof vests foreshadowed the charges in his high school yearbook with a note that mentions Somalia in his "plans for world supremacy." Mark Robert Walker, 19, was arrested Nov. 6 in El Paso, Texas, and on Friday was charged with attempting or conspiring to contribute goods or services to a global terrorist organization. A more serious charge filed earlier was dropped. Months earlier, Walker caused a stir when he left a cryptic note next to his senior portrait in the 2004...

For many GIs, Iraq appears to be a strictly BYOB war — Bring Your Own Bulletproofs. Suzanne Werfelman is a mother and a teacher who has been shopping for individual body armor. This is not in response to threats from her elementary-class students in Sciota, Pa.; it's a desperate attempt to protect her son in Iraq. Like many other U.S. service members in Iraq, her son was given a Vietnam-era flak jacket that cannot stop the type of weapons used today. It appears that parents across the country are now purchasers of body armor because of the failure of the...