Free Republic

President Trump on Thursday blamed Chicago leaders for what he described as an unbelievable surge in gun violence in the city, his first public comments since more than 70 people were shot there over the weekend. Trump, who has threatened to send in federal officers to manage Chicago's crime and violence, brought up last weekend's violence during his opening remarks at a roundtable discussion on prison reform. "We must strengthen community bonds with law enforcement, including city's like Chicago that have been an absolute and total disaster," Trump told the room of governors, attorneys general and White House staff at...

Good grief, this is horrific. ABC News Chicago is reporting that over 60 people have been shot, with 9 killed, in Chicago just this weekend (Friday through Sunday). (Chicago) Dozens of people were wounded in shootings across Chicago since Friday, police said. One paramedic described the evening as “a war zone.” Since midnight, police said 43 people have been shot, six fatally. Since Friday at 5 p.m., 60 people have been shot, nine fatally, in shootings in Chicago. 34 of the shootings and five deaths occurred between 10 a.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Sunday, according to police. During one two-and-a-half...

On this Independence Day, let’s go ahead and admit that 2018 has not been the most uplifting year. Since January, there have been at least 23 shootings that left someone injured or killed at a school in the United States. As of last week, at least 2,000 minors separated from their parents were in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services, with no clear path to reunification. The past several months have seen high-profile instances of outright racial harassment and a much-bemoaned downturn in “civility.” Income levels are stagnating, and inequality is soaring. A growing number of...

New Orleans police arrested a 14-year-old boy Friday (July 6) in connection with two shootings and a car burglary that occurred within a week of June. Investigators connected the teen with an early June car burglary, as well as a shooting on June 9 and a shooting on June 15. In the first incident, a woman parked and locked her car in the 1400 block of 3rd Street in the Garden District on June 2, but returned six days later to find it burglarized and a handgun missing from the glovebox, police said. Then, on June 9, officers discovered a...

“You’re about to see a raft of news stories claiming that I am responsible for inspiring the deaths of journalists,” Yiannopoulos wrote in a Facebook post. “The truth, as always, is the opposite of what the media tells you.” “I sent a troll about 'vigilante death squads' as a *private* response to a few hostile journalists who were asking me for comment, basically as a way of saying, 'F---k off.' They then published it,” he continued. “Amazed they were pretending to take my joke as a 'threat,' I reposted these stories on Instagram to mock them – and to make...

The New York Times editorial board claims “at least 700 mass shootings” occurred over the least two years and 96 people are killed by firearms every day. The column was written to correspond with the second anniversary of the June 12, 2016, shooting at the gun-free Orlando Pulse nightclub. The gunman in that attack had a “statewide firearms license” enabling him to serve as an armed security guard and he passed a background check for the handgun and rifle he carried on the night of his attack. Moreover, he passed a waiting a period for the handgun.

Just days after the tragic death of fashion icon Kate Spade, new government research sheds light on a disturbing increase in suicides in the United States. The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that suicide rates have risen dramatically across most of the country in the past three decades. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. and is one of just three leading causes that are on the rise. The rate of suicide in the U.S. rose nearly 30 percent between 1999 and 2016. In 2016, nearly 45,000 Americans age 10 or...

Ever wonder why mass public shooters commit their horrible crimes? Prosecutors in Broward County, Fla., released on Wednesday the Parkland high-school shooter’s cell-phone videos, in which he bragged, “It will be a big event, and when you see me on the news, you will all know who I am.”

Thirty-eight people were shot, at least eight fatally, in gun-controlled Chicago over Memorial Day Weekend. The murders are in line with what the city has witnessed over the past few years. ABC7 reports there were seven murders over the Memorial Day Weekend in 2017 and eight during the same weekend in 2016. Chicago’s overall murder rate is slightly lower than it was last year at this point. USA Today reports there have been 191 murders year-to-date, whereas there were 237 murders at this same time last year. However, the murder rate is still high enough that it puts Chicago “on...

8 killed this weekend in Chicago

The news from Europe and especially from Sweden are becoming more Orwellian and depressing by the day. The case in point is Sweden for today’s piece of reality, a country that decided a few decades ago to commit cultural suicide and to abandon all the principles used by their founding fathers to build one of the most prosperous and advanced countries (both culturally and economically) in the world. Since the 70s, Sweden has become increasingly statist and multicultural, and now, a country with less than 10 million natives opened its gates to unchecked mass immigration from Africa and the Middle...

The Parkland shooting last month has energized student activists, who are angry and frustrated over gun violence. But it's also contributed to the impression that school shootings are a growing epidemic in America. In truth, they're not. "Schools are safer today than they had been in previous decades," says James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University who has studied the phenomenon of mass murder since the 1980s. Fox and doctoral student Emma Fridel crunched the numbers, and the results should come as a relief to parents.

As high school students staged a national walkout, gun control advocates have called for laws raising the age for gun purchases to 21, but one report shows this would have little if any impact. The Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) released a new report looking into the age distribution of mass public shooters in America, with a particular emphasis on whether raising the age of those purchasing guns would have made any difference in recent mass shootings.

In the wake of the recent horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, a number of proposals involving federal grant programs have been offered in Congress to try to address the critical issue of school safety. Empowering states and localities to implement evidence-based programs that meet their needs represents a sensible approach. Among the proposals under consideration is the Students, Teachers, and Officers Preventing (STOP) School Violence Act of 2018, which has been introduced in the House by Rep. John Rutherford, R-Fla., a former sheriff, and in the Senate by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. Both House...

Authorities are so far refusing to point to racism as a motive after a black man who vowed to shoot up a school and “kill all white people” reportedly murdered six random white people along biking trails in Kansas City, Missouri. According to this, police say 22-year-old Frederick Demond went on a random killing spree last August, leaving six strangers dead along walking and biking paths. Five were middle-aged white men, while one victim was a homeless white woman. All six had been shot with a handgun. Scott was indicted for all six murders late last week. The Washington Post...

On February 14, a 19-year-old former student at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, walked into the school and opened fire, killing 17 students and teachers and wounding 14 more before his shooting spree was done. It was one of the deadliest shootings of its kind in modern American history. The next morning, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, on a visit to Israel, tweeted, “Just waking up in Israel to news of heartbreaking school shooting in FL; Reminded that Israel pretty much eliminated it by placing highly trained people strategically to spot the one common thread–not the...

DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) – Troopers from the Ohio State Highway Patrol were called to the interchange of I-70 and I-75 Friday after several car windows were shot out. Two cars on Interstate 70 and two on Interstate 75 suffered damage Friday, according to police. Troopers tell 2 NEWS this appears to be similar to the incident Thursday morning where at least two vehicles, included a Dayton Police Department patrol car were damaged. A number of cars along I-70 between I-75 and Airport Access Road suffered damage. “It was in my window, and I felt something come past my face,” said...

A Wisconsin student used his shop skills to invent a door stopper.

While Americans try to cope with the losses in Florida, they're saying goodbye to someone else: America's pastor, Billy Graham. Never has our nation so desperately needed to hear the message of hope and healing that the 99-year-old spent his life sharing. So surely, it's no earthly coincidence that even in Reverend Graham's death, he's forcing us to look in the one place where the answers to this heartbreak lie: up.Torn apart by grief and rage, Americans are frantic to know why our nation is unraveling in one act of violence after another. "We're done with thoughts and prayers!" an...

Surprisingly, no one has done this yet, so I did some Googling. Using statistics available from five years ago, there are 98,000 public elementary schools in the United States. There are an additional 26,400 public secondary (high) schools also. This does not include private schools or charter schools (however, one might want to classify those). For now, I will leave private schools out. If you were to have at least two armed guards per school (some of these schools are quite large), and you account for population growth (these stats are five years old), you would get a new overnight...