Tag: guns

Commentary: Don’t Jail Parents for School Shootings – Arm Teachers

RealClearWire
Teacher Guns

Understandably, we want to blame someone besides the 14-year-old who murdered four people last week at Apalachee High School in Georgia. People are shocked and upset that the father taught the boy to shoot and hunt and bought the boy a rifle for Christmas. But that doesn’t mean it made any sense for police to arrest the father the day after the school shooting on two counts of second-degree murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter, and eight counts of cruelty to children.

This isn’t the first time that parents are being held liable for their children’s actions. Jennifer and James Crumbley were sentenced to prison for 10 to 15 years after their son perpetrated the 2021 Oxford High School shootings in Michigan. Their crime? Letting their son have access to the father’s pistol, which was used in the murders.

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Commentary: Banning Guns Is Not the Answer to School Shootings

American Greatness
Second Amendment

As a mother, I’m horrified by the notion that a child could be placed on a school bus and never come back home. Losing a child is a parent’s worst nightmare, and I’ve had too many friends who’ve walked through that darkness. As a member of a school board, I’m burdened that the decisions I make with my one vote of eleven could impact the safety of 64,000 children. I take those decisions very seriously, but I fear the root causes of this violence that are beyond my control.

The physical structures of schools are more secure than they have ever been. There are now school resource officers (SROs), stricter requirements on who can enter schools, and locked doors to keep the bad guys out. Students are encouraged to speak up: “If you see something, say something.” Yet I don’t believe anything school board members or administrators do can guarantee the safety of children without addressing the underlying cause of these senseless acts of violence—our country’s moral decay.

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Commentary: More Defensive Gun Uses Undermine Government Claims About Armed Civilians

Virginia Star Staff
Hand Gun

It should be painfully obvious to anyone paying attention that the Biden administration distrusts an armed civilian population and is willing to fudge the truth time and again to defend its untenable positions. But for those living blissfully unaware of the Biden administration’s animosity toward gun owners, it once again demonstrated its animosity in clear terms.

Earlier this month, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security accidentally said the quiet part out loud: It thinks that only the government really can be trusted with firearms, even when the government at issue is notoriously corrupt.

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Bill Would Alert Immigration When Non-Citizen Tries to Buy Guns

The Center Square
Gun Store

Nearly 15 million people living in or entering the country illegally are on an FBI list prohibiting purchase of firearms.

However, the National Instant Criminal Background Check system isn’t required to let immigration authorities know if one of those 14.8 million is an applicant and in America. Legislation is proposed to change it.

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Commentary: 11 More Examples of Defensive Gun Use to Fend Off Criminals

Virginia Star Staff
Gun Bullets

As cities across the country reel from explosive crime rates, many politicians at the local, state, and federal levels are too preoccupied with disarming peaceable American gun owners to identify, arrest, and prosecute actual criminals adequately.  

Two masked attackers met their match last month when they attacked Los Angeles resident Vince Ricci as he walked toward the front door of his house. The pair brandished a firearm at Ricci, who pulled out his own gun and shot at the thugs, who ran away.

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Commentary: Five Stupid Things the Left Would Have You Believe

Virginia Star Staff

I was on a media panel talking about what the Left has done to the Fourth Estate in America and how that damage might ultimately be repaired. And afterward, I spent a lot of time interacting with sponsors and attendees, and a common thread seemed to run through those conversations.

Namely, the multiplicity of utterly indefensible, absurd propositions that make up the narratives and constructs by which our left-wing current ruling class seeks to base its power over us.

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Commentary: The Left Would Grab Your Guns in a Minute If Patriots Stopped Defending the Constitution

Virginia Star Staff

The Left constantly reassures Americans that they do not want to take away firearms, but actions speak louder than words.

In September, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) used an emergency public health order to suspend the Second Amendment for 30 days in Albuquerque and the surrounding Bernalillo County. Grisham knew fully well that she was violating the Constitution (in fact, she happily admitted so). A handful of gun control advocates quickly condemned her unprecedented decision, but not because they respect the Constitution.

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Two Foreign Countries Join Forces in $10 Billion Lawsuit Against U.S. Gun Manufacturers

Virginia Star Staff

The Bahamas joined Mexico Wednesday to appeal a federal judge’s November decision to dismiss a $10 billion lawsuit against U.S. gun manufacturers for deaths caused by firearms, according to EyeWitness News.

Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis announced the decision, saying the firearms used to commit violent acts in his country are manufactured by American firearm companies and illegally trafficked across borders, according to EyeWitness News. The appeal follows a November ruling in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts where a federal judge dismissed Mexico’s lawsuit against gun manufacturers Smith & Wesson Brands Inc. and Sturm, Ruger & Co.

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Commentary: Yes, They’re Coming for Your Guns

Virginia Star Staff
handgun with ammo

Perhaps, like me, you’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that the un-American Left is ignorant of many things. But then they open their mouths and remove all doubt. 

The most recent example comes from the gaping maw of Elie Mystal on MSNBC, where he claimed that, like everything else in this country apparently, the Second Amendment is the creation of long-dead, racist white supremacists who supported it for the sole purpose of putting down slave revolts keeping the enslaved populations in bondage. Of course, there is as much “truth” to that as there is in the 1619 Project. Progressives use such revisionist history to discredit the founders so that they can dismantle the founders’ republic.

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Dozens of Firearms Stolen from Trains in Los Angeles

Virginia Star Staff
handgun with ammo

In the latest train robbery in the city of Los Angeles, dozens of firearms, including handguns and shotguns, were stolen from a cargo train in a massive raid.

As reported by ABC News, three suspects arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) last summer were found to be in possession of some of the new .22-caliber handguns from the stolen cache. The guns were found to match the larger batch of 36 handguns stolen from the train that had been bound for Tennessee, according to police.

One of the suspects admitted that the guns were stolen while the train was in the Lincoln Heights rail yard, which has become a prime target for train robberies in recent months. Later, two more suspects were arrested with shotguns that were found to have come from a larger batch of 46 shotguns that had also been stolen from the train.

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Missouri Legislators Want to End Sales Tax On Guns, Food, Diapers in 2022 Session

The Center Square

If the number of bills submitted in the Missouri House of Representatives and the Senate is any indication, lots of time will be devoted to debating taxes during the next legislative session starting Jan. 5, 2022.

Approximately 10% of the 1,020 bills filed contain the word “tax” in the description. Senators filed about 40 bills and joint resolutions while representatives filed approximately 60.

More than 50 bills cover taxation and general revenue.

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Biden Administration Collecting Information on Millions of American Gun Owners

Virginia Star Staff
Guy shooting hand gun at gun range

In just one year, the Biden Administration has collected records of over 54 million legal gun-owners in the United States, for the purpose of increased surveillance of such citizens by the federal government, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

As shown in internal documents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), the ATF processed approximately 54.7 million records in fiscal year 2021. These documents were obtained by the gun rights advocacy group Gun Owners of America (GOA). The records in question are “out-of-business” documents, which consist of all firearms-related transactions made by a particular gun store after the store has gone out of business, at which point those records become property of the ATF.

In the year 2021, the ATF used this method to collect 53.8 million paper records, and roughly 887,000 electronic records. Gun stores are currently allowed to destroy records that are 20 years old or older; the Biden Administration is actively pursuing avenues to ensure that such records are made permanent and cannot be destroyed.

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Commentary: The Media Doesn’t Accurately Cover Defensive Gun Usage in America

RealClearWire

While Americans know that guns take many innocent lives every year, many don’t know that firearms also save them.

On May 15, an attacker at an apartment complex in Fort Smith, Ark., fatally shot a woman and then fired 93 rounds at other people before a man killed him with a bolt-action rifle. Police said he “likely saved a number of lives in the process.”

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Commentary: I Need an AR-15

Virginia Star Staff

I don’t need an AR-15 for hunting: It’s not even legal to take a deer with one in my state—the caliber is too small. I also don’t need an AR-15 for self-defense, though I’d want to have one if someone broke into my house. And I certainly don’t need one just because it’s a beautiful piece of engineering. I need an AR-15 because the government doesn’t want me to have one.

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Commentary: ‘No Evidence’ That Gun Buyback Programs Reduce Gun Violence, New Economic Study Finds

Virginia Star Staff
handgun with ammo

Shortly before Christmas in 2018, a woman named Darlene voluntarily turned in a 9mm pistol to the Baltimore Police Department. It was just one of about 500 firearms the department collected that day as part of the city’s gun buyback program, which paid citizens somewhere between $25 and $500 in exchange for their firearms and high-capacity magazines.

Darlene, however, had a confession. She was turning in her 9mm, she told a local news reporter, so she could “upgrade to a better weapon.”

Like what? the reporter asked.

“I don’t know,” Darlene said. “I haven’t quite decided.”

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With New Administration, Record Number of People Bought Guns in January

The Center Square

Concerns about President Joe Biden’s potential restrictions on firearm purchases sent sales soaring in January, industry insiders said. More than 4.3 million people purchased guns in the first month of 2021, the highest number on record.

The 4.3 million purchases represent legal applications through the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS); it excludes illegally purchased firearms.

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Virginia to Stop Accepting Online Training for Concealed Handgun Permits

Eric Burk

Virginians will no longer be able to get concealed handgun permits through online classes after January 1, 2021. A law passed last March by the General Assembly amends Virginia Code § 18.2-308.02 to require in-person firearms training or safety courses.

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Biden’s Gun Registration Tax Could Cost Firearms Owners Billions

Virginia Star Staff

President-elect Joe Biden’s proposed firearm tax could cost gun owners upwards of $30 billion to keep the weapons they already possess, according to The Washington Free Beacon.

Biden plans to mandate both taxation and registration of so-called “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines under the National Firearms Act (NFA), which requires a $200 fee per item, according to the former vice president’s campaign website. Around 20 million rifles and 150 million magazines would be taxable, leading to a total cost to U.S. gun owners of over $34 billion, according to the Free Beacon.

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Walmart Returns Guns and Ammunition to U.S. Store Displays

The Associated Press

Walmart has reversed course, announcing it is returning ammunition and firearms to their displays in its U.S. stores.

On Thursday the nation’s largest retailer said it had removed the items from displays due to “civil unrest” in some areas of the country. Guns and ammunition, however, had remained for sale at the stores, just not visible to shoppers.

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Remington Files for Bankruptcy Amid Nationwide Unrest, Surge in Gun Purchases

Virginia Star Staff

Remington Arms Co. filed for bankruptcy amid nationwide unrest and surging gun sales.

The firearm company filed for chapter 11 protection, or reorganization bankruptcy, for the second time since 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. Remington has been in business for over 200 years, according to its webpage.

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Background Checks, a Metric for Gun Sales, Hit All-Time High

The Associated Press

Historic numbers of background checks to purchase or possess a firearm were done in June, a trend in a year marked by uncertainty over the coronavirus pandemic, a subsequent economic recession, protests over racial injustice and calls to reduce police funding.

FBI numbers released Wednesday show that 3.9 million background checks were conducted last month, the most since the system was created in November 1998 to ensure felons and other prohibited people could not buy or possess a firearm. The previous monthly record came in March, when 3.7 million checks were done. Each week in June is now in the top 10 weeks for background checks.

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