Free Republic

International Firearms Ownership and Homicides In 2016 Adam Lankford of the University of Alabama, published a paper examining the distribution of mass shooting/mass shooters around the world. The published result concluded the United States had a disproportionate number of these rare events.  Lankford's study showed the United States had 5% of the world's population, but 31% of the the mass shootings/mass shooters, as defined by Lankford.  It has become clear that Lankford was looking almost exclusively at single perpetrators, though he included about 2% where two people were involved. Lankford excluded terrorist attacks he identified as “sponsored” terrorism, but included...

From New Zealand to Sri Lanka, houses of worship are under attack. This has been an all too common phenomenon around the world. At home, there have been recent shootings at synagogues in Pittsburgh and San Diego, and at churches in Texas, Tennessee, Colorado, and South Carolina. So how do we make people safer?

Democrats used to argue that once felons had served their time, they had paid their debt to society and should be able to vote. Leading presidential candidate Bernie Sanders now wants felons to never lose their right to vote, not even for those who have committed the most horrible crimes, not even while they’re in prison.

The push to demonize private gun ownership never stops. Michael Bloomberg and other gun control advocates are continuing to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into research that the news media uncritically disseminates.Entertainment television shows are no less one-sided. Americans use guns defensively about 2 million times a year — about 5 times more frequently than guns are used to commit crimes. But don’t expect to see gun owners saving the day on television. Instead, gun owners are bigoted, hotheaded, and dangerous.ABC’s The Rookie has a scene where an armed neighborhood watch group is patrolling its neighborhood. One man wears a red baseball cap...

Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said Joe Biden is the only Democrat he thinks would be competitive in the 2020 election against President Trump. “Joe will be able to perpetuate the image of Uncle Joe, and he is pleasant. He is qualified,” Lott, a Mississippi Republican, said in an interview for the Yahoo News podcast “The Long Game.” “Half this bunch in there right now is not qualified,” Lott said of the current Democratic field.

Crime Prevention Research Center’s (CPRC) John Lott took the left’s go-to gun control study for mass shootings apart on December 14. The study, which claims the U.S. leads the world in mass shootings, was put together by University of Alabama’s Adam Lankford and released in 2013.

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is right that Senate’s confirmation process is "a national disgrace." The damage done to Kavanaugh’s family is horrific. Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was clear: “What you want to do is destroy this guy's life, hold this seat open and hope you win in 2020.” The threats and vicious messages that his family and Christine Blasey Ford have received are a national embarrassment. Hopefully, everyone other than the most partisan Americans wants to fix this and stop it from ever happening again. But the question is how? What went wrong? The problem has been getting worse...

Judicial confirmations have become a blood sport. Wasn’t it just weeks ago at John McCain’s funeral that Democrats were calling for more civility in politics? We never used to fight so much over Supreme Court nominations.

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is right that the Senate’s confirmation process is "a national disgrace." The damage done to Kavanaugh’s family is horrific. Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was clear: “What you want to do is destroy this guy's life, hold this seat open and hope you win in 2020.”

Media bias has real consequences. Ohio’s wealthiest supporter of the Republican party, Leslie Wexner, has withdrawn his support because he was ‘ashamed’ by President Trump’s response to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. Wexner announced his decision on Friday, just a day after former President Obama gave a speech in Ohio where he attacked Republicans who “try to shield and deflect oversight of [Trump’s] behavior.”A lot of smart people seem to have fallen for the mainstream media's lies about Trump’s comments. NBC News’ coverage of Charlottesville last year was all too typical: “On Tuesday [August 15th, 2017], Trump gave a freewheeling press...

Former President Obama has no shame, but don’t count on the mainstream media to tell you this. They are in on the deception. His talk at the University of Illinois on Friday contained all of the divisive rhetoric that he and the mainstream press accuse President Trump of engaging in.

Our attempts this week to put up ads on Facebook produced some disturbing results. Facebook treated a news link from Fox News and a link to our website very differently, even though both contained the same information. We have previously been prevented many times from linking to our Fox News opinion pieces, but we hadn’t thought about the issue of systematic bias against Fox News until the events of this week.

With the pro-football season starting this coming week for most teams, media outlets have returned to their steady drumbeat about concussions. Despite the excitement of kickoff returns, college football has bowed to pressure with a new rule this year to discourage kickoff returns.  But if the media really cares about concussions, they shouldn't be singling out this uniquely American sport.Women’s soccer players suffer a higher concussion rate than do male football players. A woman's soccer player who plays 10,000 games or practices would on average suffer 6.3 concussions. Compare that to 6.1 for men's football. But men’s wrestling and hockey have...

In 2015, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) made an error in the number of fatal firearms accidents that occurred in 2014. It was so large, it was obvious. The number of fatal firearm accidents had been falling significantly. In 2014, they suddenly and inexplicably jumped by over 25%. Most of the increase was in one state, Tennessee. Dr. John Lott noticed the error in January of 2016, and brought it to the attention of the CDC. From crimeresearch.org: In January 2016, Dr. John Lott contacted the CDC to alert them to a mistake in their numbers for 2014...

Democrats are getting hysterical about the prospect of Judge Brett Kavanaugh being seated on the Supreme Court. Most of their hyperventilating is nonsense. In a desperate attempt to block Kavanaugh’s confirmation by the Senate, the Democrats are making wild claims that abortion would be banned, people would be dying in the streets, and the president would gain immunity from investigation and prosecution if Kavanaugh joins the nation’s highest court. Time for a reality check. Let’s all take a deep breath and look at the facts about the judge who President Trump has nominated to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony...

Tuesday’s decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals means that people in the western U.S. will now be able to openly carry a handgun in public. The decision only applies to districts under the 9th Circuit’s jurisdiction, but it will likely soon affect the rest of the country. It is a huge ruling that strikes down existing state prohibitions in Hawaii and California.

The federal government has finally recognized the obvious – that sharing instructions on how to make guns with 3D printers counts as constitutionally protected speech. Despite little fanfare, this is an important victory for First Amendment rights. It also represents a real blow to the increasingly futile cause of gun control.

On his national radio show, Mark Levin mentions the CPRC research universal background checks wouldn’t have stopped one of the mass public shootings this century.

Fact checkers are out of control, and on the issue of guns they no longer even try to pretend impartiality. Especially on social media, this is becoming a serious problem. Facebook has been working with organizations such as PolitiFact, Snopes and Factcheck.org to filter news. Stories deemed “false” by these organization are labeled as false and are much more difficult to spread virally.

Gun control is a contentious issue. It is one thing for a teacher to talk to his or her class about the issue, hopefully presenting both sides of the debate. But a rally on school property, featuring student speeches and attendance by school administrators and teachers, is something quite different. My daughter is a junior in high school, and her high school participated in Wednesday’s National School Walkout. On Monday the principal assured parents and students that the event wouldn’t be political, that it would just be a memorial commemorating the 17 people murdered at a Parkland, Florida high school...