Free Republic

Jeffrey Scott Kirschenmann attempted to register an AR-15 with the California Department of Justice last month but instead found himself in significant legal trouble. The California DOJ accused Kirschenmann of illegally modifying the rifle he attempted to register. Law enforcement officials raided his home in Bakersfield before ultimately confiscating a dozen firearms and a few hundred rounds of ammunition, then charging him with a dozen felonies . . . The National Rifle Association said Kirschenmann's ordeal is proof that even those who attempt to comply with California's gun laws can still get caught up in them. "California residents attempting to...

The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a Washington-based think tank, on Friday released their Action Plan to Reduce Gun Violence following a Thursday meeting with the nation’s big-city police chiefs."The recommendations recognize that solving the gun violence problem is not the responsibility of one entity or one level of government," the recommendation guide said. "There is a role for everyone on the gun issue: individuals (legal gun owners and non-gun owners alike); law enforcement personnel; prosecutors; judges; state governments; the federal government; family and friends of people who may be in crisis; researchers; the philanthropic community; and the community at...

Last month, April, 2018, the California Department of Justice raided prominent Kern County Farmer, Jeffrey Scott Kirschenmann. The justification for the raid was pictures the farmer had sent to the Department of Justice in an attempt to register a rifle. The DOJ claimed the rifle was an illegally modified “Assault weapon”.  During the raid, the DOJ confiscated 230 rounds of ammunition, a dozen guns, two objects claimed to be “silencers”, and some sort of trigger activator. There is reason to be wary of the accuracy of the claims of what was found during the raid. California law is very complex....

Hollywood actress Jodie Foster said she would be “much more comfortable having robots” own a gun than an emotional human doing so. “I mean, I’d be much more comfortable having robots have them, but we are designed to have emotions that overflow and that are not guided by our heads,” the Hannibal star said in a recent interview with Indie Wire. “To have sentient beings that are completely and entirely guided by their emotions have the power to administer life or death using one kilowatt of energy in a nanosecond is just unfathomable with me,” Foster added.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) on Tuesday introduced legislation that would allow school officials to request guns be taken from students if there is “probable cause” to believe the student may harm themselves or anyone else. “Parkland sparked an outrage, where at one point, people say, enough is enough,” Cuomo said at a press conference, according to Politico. The governor, who is facing a primary challenge from the left in his bid for reelection, was referring to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in February, which left 17 dead. “A teacher should have recourse," he said. "We’re also...

Having enjoyed my 82nd birthday, I am part of a group of about 50 million Americans who are 65 years of age or older. Those who are 90 or older were in school during the 1930s. My age cohort was in school during the 1940s. Baby boomers approaching their 70s were in school during the 1950s and early '60s. Try this question to any one of those 50 million Americans who are 65 or older: Do you recall any discussions about the need to hire armed guards to protect students and teachers against school shootings? Do you remember school policemen...

Having enjoyed my 82nd birthday, I am part of a group of about 50 million Americans who are 65 years of age or older. Those who are 90 or older were in school during the 1930s. My age cohort was in school during the 1940s. Baby boomers approaching their 70s were in school during the 1950s and early '60s. Try this question to any one of those 50 million Americans who are 65 or older: Do you recall any discussions about the need to hire armed guards to protect students and teachers against school shootings? Do you remember school policemen...

Social justice busybodies obsessed with how other people live their lives often portray the success of their causes as a matter of destiny.“The young people will win,” insists one youthful gun control advocate, falsely portraying his personal crusade as a generational mandate. Yet recent events have demonstrated that bedrock American values – including support for the Second Amendment – tend to outlast moments of high emotion that are increasingly relied upon by political opportunists to advance their agenda.Given the chance to collect their thoughts, most Americans instinctively revert to freedom. We recently commented on this point with reference to poll numbers that show...

Gun control advocates seem willing to latch onto anything they can use to justify more stringent laws. They were at it again in the wake of the recent Santa Fe High School shooting. In the New York Times last Thursday, Nicholas Kristof pushed for 10 supposedly “modest” gun control measures.

Houston-based hedge fund manager John Arnold and his wife, Laura, plan to spend $20 million over the next five years to fund gun violence research. The couple's private foundation, The Laura and John Arnold Foundation, will also seek to raise an additional $30 million for a grant they're calling the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research, bringing the total grant amount to $50 million, Forbes reported. Mrs. Arnold made her and her husband's plans known during a speaking engagement at Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy on Wednesday: Ninety-six people are killed by guns in the U.S. every day. More people...

Gun control advocates seem willing to latch onto anything they can use to justify more stringent laws. They were at it again in the wake of the recent Santa Fe High School shooting. In the New York Times last Thursday, Nicholas Kristof pushed for 10 supposedly “modest” gun control measures. Everyone wants to do something to stop mass public shootings. Kristof is right that fewer school doors aren’t the solution. Schools have as many entrances as they do for a reason (such as escaping fires). One door with a metal detector won't help if the guard is the first person...

The child reporter who asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders what the Trump administration was doing to prevent school shootings said the day after his press briefing appearance that he and his fellow students face "constant worry" about the threat. In a Thursday interview with ABC's "Good Morning America," Benje Choucroun, 13, a seventh grader in Marin, Calif., said that he wanted to "make a difference" by asking the question. "I think that in a lot of schools around this country, there's this worry that, you know, our school could be next … it could be added to...

Physician members of the American Medical Association are pushing the nation’s largest doctor group to back an “unprecedented” number of measures designed to curb gun violence and coax Congress into action. Early next month, the AMA’s policy-making House of Delegates will consider nearly a dozen proposals on gun control and public safety measures in the wake of 28 school shootings this year alone including last week's at Noblesville West Middle School in Indiana. Action at the AMA meeting, which runs June 9-13 in Chicago, will put the group’s considerable lobbying clout behind legislation heading into November’s mid-term elections when gun...

Retiring Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) criticized the National Rifle Association (NRA) for refusing to accept “reasonable” gun control regulations in an interview published Wednesday. Rooney, a gun owner and Second Amendment advocate, told Sarasota Magazine that he thought raising the minimum age for assault rifle purchases was a “reasonable” measure. “The problem is with the political arm of the NRA,” Rooney said. “I don’t know in the last 10 years whether there has been any compromise with guns by the NRA.”The NRA said in a February statement to the Washington Post that raising the age for purchasing assault rifles to...

An Ohio photographer's work is going viral online after she posted images of students using the popular hashtag #IfIDieInASchoolShooting to take a stand against school shootings. Christina Angel of Paint the Sky Photography in Cincinnati, Ohio, shared photos of students ranging from elementary to high school with quotes using the somber hashtag. The professional photographer told a local Fox affiliate that she hopes the project will give students a visual voice on the matter. Angel said she started the project after she noticed teenagers, including her own daughter, writing sobering messages using the hashtag on Twitter. "There could be no...

Shares of Dick's Sporting Goods soared on Wednesday after reports the company's first-quarter earnings exceeded expectations, swaying investors' fears that its new restrictions on gun sales would hurt profits. The sports store's shares surged by 23 percent when markets opened on Wednesday, as last quarter's $1.91 billion in sales toppled estimates from last year, which had projected $1.88 billion, CNBC reports. While same-store sales reportedly dropped by 2.5 percent due to declines in hunting and electronic sales, investors had worried that the company's move to stop sales on assault-style weapons would cause greater damage. Dick's moved in February to pull...

When a Bay Area county decided to pass a law that effectively banned gun shows from its fairgrounds, it sparked one of the nation’s longest running legal battles over the right to bear arms. In the end, the county conceded and the gun shows were allowed to resume under stricter rules, leaving some of the central constitutional questions around the issue unsettled. Once again, gun shows at publicly-owned convention centers and fairgrounds are being targeted for expulsion around the state. And the legal roadmap is no less clear. History around such efforts shows a mix of outcomes, marked at times...

After the attack at the Santa Fe High School, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick denounced a loss of faith and religion in society. While the news media puts the lives of these mass public killers under a microscope, collecting any information that can be gleaned about their childhoods from their family and friends and social media history, researchers have ignored the religious views of these killers. What is most shocking is how few of these killers appear to be religious, let alone Christian. Just 16 percent have any type of religious affiliation at the time of their attacks, with a...

“CBS This Morning” gave generally fair coverage today to yesterday’s shooting at an Oklahoma City restaurant in which an armed citizen shot and killed the assailant. But CBS couldn’t help but let the MSM’s fixation on gun control creep in. At the end of the segment, the CBS reporter on the scene, David Begnaud, said: “We asked the police if that armed civilian had a permit to carry his weapon, and they told us they didn’t know but they were looking into it.”Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

After Friday’s attack at Santa Fe High School, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick forcefully told people of their “responsibility” to lock up their guns. We all want to do something, but everyone locking up their guns will cost more lives than it saves. Santa Fe High School had received an award for school safety but it was helpless to stop this latest nightmare. We need to rethink school safety. Despite this year’s attacks, deaths from school shootings have actually declined over the last few decades. Still, that doesn’t take away at all from the seriousness of the problem we face....