The National Rifle Association recants its lobbying arm’s criticism of grass-roots gun activists who carry rifles into restaurants. Open Carry Texas applauds the NRA for its ‘clarification.’
No, the NRA hasn’t gone soft on gun rights. But it views carrying assault-style rifles into restaurants, as practiced by Open Carry Texas, as doing more harm to the movement than good.
Most Republican lawmakers are strictly anti-pot, but a growing contingent of libertarian-leaning and tea party conservatives have begun to embrace marijuana legalization.
The killing of a German exchange student renewed international criticism of US ‘stand your ground’ self-defense laws. Police are investigating whether the alleged shooter set a trap for the student.
The White House has urged gun companies to invent safety technology that could limit a gun’s use to its owner. But two gun shops decided not to sell such guns after receiving death threats.
A majority of Americans support the death penalty, but a failed execution in Oklahoma is raising questions about what society will accept in the course of capital punishment.
A Long Island principal called the Confederate flag a ‘symbol of hate’ as he expelled two students who brought the flag to school. But views about the rebel flag are not so categorical in the South.
The SAFE Act, passed in New York last year, had an April 15 deadline for owners of assault-style weapons to register their guns with the state. Some 1 million residents have refused to abide.
Officials at Devonshire Alternative Elementary School in Ohio said Nathan Entingh, 10, formed his hand into a ‘level 2 lookalike gun.’ But critics say zero tolerance policies punish imaginative play.
The number of Americans asserting their right to carry has exploded, from less than a million a few decades ago to 11 million today.
The North Carolina legislature ordered doctors to show and talk about an ultrasound before a woman has an abortion. A federal judge ruled that the law violates the First Amendment right of physicians.
Chicago’s ban on gun stores and private gun sales ‘goes too far,’ a federal judge says, another legal blow to the gun-control policies the city has employed in an effort to reduce crime.
Complaints are mounting about Target’s response to massive theft of customer credit-card data.
A Georgia man admits to shooting a elderly man with Alzheimer’s who knocked on his door at 4 a.m. Wednesday, mistaking him for an intruder. Interpretations of Georgia’s stand your ground law could be pivotal.
A US appellate court has upheld a new law in Texas that restrictions access to abortion, immediately causing some clinics to close. Given the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion, the Texas case likely will advance to the US Supreme Court.
John Pike, a former campus police officer at UC Davis, won $38,000 in workers’ comp stemming from a 2011 Occupy protest in which he infamously used pepper spray on peaceful students. Where’s the justice in that, some are asking.
Florida justice officials have a lot of questions to answer after forged documents were used to set free two convicted killers recently. They’re both still at large.
High school officials in Morgan Hill, Calif., told three students to go home after they refused to turn their US flag-themed T-shirts inside out during Cinco de Mayo. Administrators cited lingering racial tensions at the school between Hispanics and Anglos.
At a tense House hearing Wednesday, Republicans pilloried the national parks director for closings during the government shutdown. Democrats counter: What else was he supposed to do?
National parks open in Utah Saturday, despite the government shutdown, after the state cut a deal with federal officials: $166,000 a day for 10 days to help save the lucrative October season.
By Patrik Jonsson
June 5, 2014