Free Republic

The American media keeps telling us two “facts.” Voter ID laws are “racist,” and election fraud claims are “false” and “baseless.” The New York Times labeled state ID and voting laws as showing “the Republican Party’s growing discomfort with democracy” and “dangerously anti-democratic.” The Washington Post described it as an “anti-democratic virus.” But if these characterizations are correct, all of Europe and virtually all other developed countries must be anti-democratic as they have even stricter anti-fraud provisions than any US state. Democrats are pushing to remove identification requirements for voting, replacing voter ID rules with a sworn statement of self-identification....

Democrats and much of the media are pushing to make permanent the extraordinary, pandemic-driven measures to relax voting rules during the 2020 elections – warning anew of racist voter “suppression” otherwise. Yet democracies in Europe and elsewhere tell a different story – of the benefits of stricter voter ID requirements after hard lessons learned. A database on voting rules worldwide complied by the Crime Prevention Research Center, which I run, shows that election integrity measures are widely accepted globally, and have often been adopted by countries after they've experienced fraud under looser voting regimes. Of 47 nations surveyed in Europe...

For decades, gun control advocates constantly claim that Right-to-Carry laws would lead to disaster. But when disasters don’t occur they move on to the next prediction of disaster. We have to keep track of these predictions if only to judge how much weight to give to their erroneous predictions. Montana is the latest state to let people carry concealed handguns on college campuses, and the state Board of Regents for the university system demanded an emergency stay from the state Supreme Court because “serious harm is threatened” if the law goes into effect on June 1. The Regents took a...

Nikki Goeser is Executive Director of the Crime Prevention Research Center and a victim/survivor of a violent crime. Nikki testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution about her concerns with red flag laws and how gun-control laws can have unintended consequences that can impact good people. Nikki explains how victims of violent crime could end up flagged and unable to protect themselves, compounding their fears and what is already a very difficult situation for them.

President Biden claimed that Derek Chauvin's conviction on Tuesday "ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism" of police. With the police shooting that same day of 16-year-old girl in Columbus, Ohio, the White House again pushed the racism claim, noting that this was just another example of how "police violence disproportionately impacts Black and Latino people." But where is the evidence for these claims? In Chauvin's trial, the prosecution never once mentioned evidence that the now-former officer is racist. A day after the verdict, the Biden administration announced plans for a pattern-or-practice investigation of...

YouTube Video: Recent mass shootings have once again put guns at the center of national debate, and President Joe Biden has announced new executive orders on gun control. At the center of the discussion is a question: do gun control measures prevent crime or do they actually do the opposite? To understand what the data says, I decided to sit down with John Lott, who has studied the impact of gun control measures for decades. He’s the founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center, and author of a number of books on guns and gun control, including most recently, “Gun...

Montana got to see firsthand how well a mail-in election goes. If the results from Missoula County are any indication, it didn’t go well. Local state Rep. Brad Tschida conducted a review of Missoula votes with the assistance of the Missoula County Elections Office. He found 4,592 out of all 72,491 mail-in ballots did not have envelopes — 6.33% of the total. That is a real problem. It is against the law to count mail-in votes if there is no envelope. There is no way to match up signatures to verify if the vote is from a registered voter or...

... We constantly hear that there is no evidence of absentee ballot fraud in the 2020 election. But one state—Montana—has been reckoning with new evidence of how well its 2020 mail-in election went. If the results from Missoula County are any indication, it didn't go well. State representative Brad Tschida conducted an audit of Missoula County votes with the assistance of the county's elections office. He found that 4,592 out of all 72,491 mail-in ballots—6.33 percent of the total—did not have envelopes. That is a real problem. It is against the law to count such ballots, as there would be...

MISSOULA COUNTY, Mont. — A mountainous, 2,600-square-mile region with a population of approximately 119,600 does not seem like your prototypical setting for machine politics. Yet a recent audit of mail-in ballots cast there found irregularities characteristic of larger urban centers — on a level that could have easily swung local elections in 2020, and statewide elections in cycles past. The Biden administration, the Democrat-controlled Congress, and the Democratic National Committee are collectively pressing to both nationalize, and make permanent, many of the extraordinary pandemic-driven voting measures implemented during the 2020 election —particularly mass mail-in voting.

Here is an all too typical Twitter post making the claim that AR-15s are the weapon of choice for mass public shooters. But you have to wonder though if all this media coverage that these are the best weapons for mass public shooters actually causes more of these particular guns to be used than would otherwise be the case.

A mountainous, 2,600-square-mile region with a population of approximately 119,600 does not seem like your prototypical setting for machine politics. Yet a recent audit of mail-in ballots cast there found irregularities characteristic of larger urban centers — on a level that could have easily swung local elections in 2020, and statewide elections in cycles past. The Biden administration, the Democrat-controlled Congress, and the Democratic National Committee are collectively pressing to both nationalize, and make permanent, many of the extraordinary pandemic-driven voting measures implemented during the 2020 election —particularly mass mail-in voting. Political leaders and prominent media outlets have dismissed concerns...

With record gun sales this last year as police have been ordered to stand down and massive numbers of inmates have been released from jails and prisons, the importation of guns in 2020 also surged by about 60% over the previous year. With an estimated 22.8 million firearms sold last year, 6.4 million, or 28%, of those guns were likely imported. Given the Biden is very likely to impose a ban on the importation of modern sporting rifles, the already tight supply will likely get much worse.

Nikki Goeser, the CPRC’s Executive Director, was present for final passage of a bill that she inspired to create a lifetime order of protection. The order can be issued to a victim of certain felony offenses to prohibit the offender from coming about or communicating with the victim. The bill passed the House unanimously and had already passed the Senate unanimously. The bill now goes to Governor Bill Lee’s desk for signature. Once signed, the law will go into effect on July 1st.

On Thursday, March 11th, 2021, the House of Representatives passed two background check bills: Universal Background Checks (HR 8) and Closing the “Charleston Loophole” (HR 1446). Despite Democrats claims to the contrary, HR 1446 wouldn’t have stopped the Charleston church shooting (June 17, 2015). Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY), the co-chair of the House Second Amendment Caucus, discusses how the background checks discriminate against poor minorities. How exceptions are made only for cases of “imminent” danger. HR 8 is the same as other bills that Michael Bloomberg’s gun control groups have pushed, and the concerns that we raised regarding this legislation...

More television bias against guns. You won’t see an entertainment television show that has a victim successfully using a gun defensively, and the latest episode of Blue Bloods is no different (Season 11, Episode 8, March 5, 2021). In that episode, a jewelry store owner tries to use a gun to stop a gang from robbing his store, and one of the robbers fatally shoots the store owner. The store owner doesn’t even get a shot off. If you watched entertainment television these days, you would never know that people use guns defensively some 2 million times a year. If...

The Tennessee State Senate unanimously passed the Lifetime Order of Protection Bill this week. The final vote will take place on Monday, March 15th on the House Floor. This bill is to help prevent victims of violent crimes from being re-victimized. My situation is only one example of why this legislation is needed here in TN. Unfortunately, there are other victims of horrific crimes in our state who need help also. On April 2, 2009, my life was turned upside down. Completely Shattered. My husband Ben was murdered in front of me by a man who was stalking me. This...

With a number of states adopting Constitutional Carry laws, one of the issues that is coming up is what should the age limit be for those who carry. Of the 18 Constitutional Carry states, twelve allow people to carry guns at 18 years of age. One other state allows carrying at age 19. We have previously done research showing that 18 to 20 year olds are just as responsible at carrying as those who are 21 and older, though we can’t tell whether the results are similar for those who aren’t required to get a permit. If you count New...

The fault doesn’t lie with the universities. The fault lies with horribly performing public K-12 schools — a result of protecting teacher unions from competition. Hoping that colleges can make up for this damage is irresponsible.

Some simple, obvious facts are too politically incorrect for academics to state publicly. Georgetown University just fired law professor Sandra Sellers and forced out professor David Batson. Sellers' offense? "I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are blacks," Sellers' said in discussion with another professor at the end of a Zoom call. Batson's offense? He didn't condemn the statement, but instead sympathized with Sellers’ concerns. “What drives me crazy is… my own unconscious biases playing out in the scheme of things” might be responsible for their poor scores, he said. The logic...

The Tennessee State Senate unanimously passed the Lifetime Order of Protection Bill this week. The final vote will take place on Monday, March 15th on the House Floor. This bill is to help prevent victims of violent crimes from being re-victimized. My situation is only one example of why this legislation is needed here in TN. Unfortunately, there are other victims of horrific crimes in our state who need help also. On April 2, 2009, my life was turned upside down. Completely Shattered. My husband Ben was murdered in front of me by a man who was stalking me. This...