guns

Maybe now we’ll finally get to find out where the high court’s newest justice, Sonia Sotomayor, really stands when it comes to whether the Second Amendment guarantees individual citizens a “right to bear arms.”
That was a contentious issue at her confirmation hearings, with Republican gun enthusiasts warning that she doesn’t support gun ownership as a [...]

Critics of the conservatives who’ve brought guns to rallies outside of President Barack Obama’s speeches have found an unlikely ally: Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner whose 2004 nomination to run the Department of Homeland Security foundered under ethics scandals. In a column for Newsmax, Kerik invokes his cred as a “lifetime [...]

After filing a Freedom of Information Act request, the Virginia-based Americans for Limited Government obtained documents from the Department of Homeland Security detailing how its controversial report on the rise of “rightwing extremism” was put together. Among the sources (pdf): The New York Times, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and this Washington Independent story on [...]

The man carrying an AR-15 at yesterday’s presidential speech in Arizona participated in a video project by RP4409, a channel of Ron Paul fans from the far right; Ernest Hancock, who designed the “Ron Paul rEVOLution” logo, appears in the video, too. The man, identified as “Chris,” and identified elsewhere as “Chris B.,” gets into [...]

Today’s vote to kill Sen. John Thune’s (R-S.D.) bill allowing the interstate transfer of concealed weapons permits broke down largely along predictable lines, with Republicans and rural-state Democrats voting in favor of the measure and more liberal Democrats opposing it.
A glaring exception to that rule, however, was Sen. Russ Feingold (D), a Wisconsin liberal who [...]

The Senate shot down legislation Wednesday that would have effectively scrapped local and state conceal and carry laws.

Just posted to the Senate’s site: 20 Democrats — mostly from rural, low-population states — voted in favor of the gun amendment. Two Republicans, Sens. George Voinovich (Ohio) and Richard Lugar (Ind.), voted against it.

The count was 58 to 39 — two votes shy of the 60 needed to defeat the filibuster led by liberal Democrats.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), would have forced states to honor concealed weapon permits issued by other states, even in cases when weapon holders would be ineligible to carry firearms in [...]

After I wrote my earlier posts about how the National Rifle Association opposes the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court and explaining the “incorporation” debate that dominated much of the Second Amendment discussion at the hearing, I got a note from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, whose concerns were decidedly NOT [...]

Rational Arizonans today are surely missing former Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano, who left in January to become secretary of homeland security. From The Arizona Republic:
Arizonans with concealed weapons permits will be able to take a handgun into bars and restaurants that serve alcohol.
That’s under a bill signed into law by Gov. Jan Brewer on Monday.
It [...]