Being a police officer is tough. I wouldn’t do it for three times the top-end pay for an officer, much less what they actually get paid. Growing up around the profession, I saw just what kind of toll it could take on a person, and that’s without losing a number of your colleagues in a single day. Just one was enough to rattle a lot of police officers’ families deeply. Officers in Charlotte, NC, dealt with that back in 2024 when four of their colleagues were gunned down by a convicted felon armed with a…
LONDON (AP) — The U.K. has “strong indications” that Iran played a part in the incident that saw five men arrested near a U.S.-run military air base in England late at night, Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Wednesday. Burnham said U.K. and U.S. officials are carrying out a “complex and serious” investigation into how and why five men and three vans were near the perimeter of RAF Fairford, a base that has been used by American bombers striking Iran during this year’s war. Five British men in their 20s were arrested Sunday on suspicion of explosives offenses and planning an…
Can you be convicted of a crime when you act in self-defense but an errant shot strikes a home or another person? The answer may vary from state to state, and even from case to case, as the Ohio Supreme Court recently decided. This particular case involves a man named Timothy Bradley, who was originally charged with a variety of crimes after shooting a contractor named Zachary Burch at Bradley’s home in 2024. Bradley had hired, and then fired Burch, and the pair started arguing when Burch showed up to collect his tools. Video and audio…
Separating from the military sets off a series of financial deadlines that don’t run on the same schedule, and most of them aren’t automatic. Health coverage, life insurance, Department of Veterans Affairs disability filing and retirement account decisions all run on their own separate clocks, and missing any one of them can mean a gap in coverage or a benefit that closes for good. Here’s how the sequence goes, from before separation through the end of the first year. Before Separation: 90 to 180 Days Out The window to start planning opens well before your separation date. Veterans and service…
If you read my story about the Violence Policy Center’s so-called study, you had to know that sooner or later, the media would get hold of it. While I kind of expected the New York Times or someone to get hold of it and make a thing of it, I still knew someone would if they declined. And, sure enough, someone has.There’s this report out of South Carolina, and we need to talk about it.South Carolina’s rate of women killed by men remained above the national average in 2024, according to a nationwide study highlighted…
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A pilot on a flight from the United Arab Emirates to Israel stabbed another pilot Wednesday and then apparently tried to crash the jetliner carrying around 170 people, Israel’s prime minister said. Passengers and crew subdued the attacker, and the plane landed safely in Saudi Arabia. As some passengers screamed, the FlyDubai flight issued an emergency alert and abruptly descended thousands of feet (meters). Israel scrambled warplanes amid concerns about a possible hijacking. As a plane carrying passengers from the flight landed Wednesday evening in Israel, it was not clear what motivated the attack. Video…
Post from MilitaryByOwner Each time we make a move with the military, we have one huge decision to make: Do we live off base, or do we live on base? In my experience, there are 7 things to consider before living in military housing—both pros and cons. 1) You may give up some privacy. We can be a nosy community. Combine that with living a few feet from each other, and you soon have a community that knows everything about you, right down to your daily routine. But don’t be fooled; you’ll soon know just as much about your neighbors,…
An Illinois woman’s quest to enact new gun regulations through court action appears to have hit another brick wall, this time courtesy of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Shanice Mathews has been waging her court battle against the state of Illinois and the Illinois State Police for eight years now, with the help of Brady’s legal team at times. The hearing before the appellate court on Tuesday involved her fourth amended complaint seeking injunctive relief, and each and every time the courts have turned her away. Mathews is seeking a court-imposed order to FFL’s in…
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) has removed U.S. forces and equipment from Erbil Air Base in Iraq, in a move that concludes the Operation Inherent Resolve mission in the country. The U.S. launched Operation Inherent Resolve in 2014 to defeat the terrorist group ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Some 2,000 Americans went to the country to participate in the mission, officials said at the time. The U.S. and its allies dismantled a brutal ISIS “caliphate” by training and advising over 250,000 local security forces, shifting the region from active conflict to stabilization while permanently anchoring Iraqi independence and regional security. In…
There’s a tendency among gun control supporters to call anything and everything short of an outright gun ban and confiscation as “reasonable,” which means that anyone who disagrees is unreasonable. I find this duplicitous argument incredibly annoying, particularly when those making it have to play fast and loose with the facts to make their case as strong as possible. This scenario recently played out in the pages of the Capital-Journal newspaper, in a column authored by Wichita State professor Alexandra Middlewood. In the aftermath of the horrific Winfield murder-suicide that claimed the lives of four children, neighbor…
ROVANIEMI, Finland (AP) — European leaders joined forces Monday to highlight growing competition in the Arctic, where global warming is opening new shipping routes, governments are vying for vast natural resources and a Russian military buildup is heightening security concerns. The leaders, mostly from Nordic and Baltic countries, put a spotlight on environmental challenges, economic opportunities and military vulnerabilities at a time of doubts about whether the United States, through NATO, will remain a bulwark against Russia. “This region has become a geopolitical hotspot,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told a joint news conference, insisting a new EU focus should complement…
Over the years, I’ve not hidden my disdain for academia. Trying to do so would be like trying to hide Melissa McCarthy under a sock. It’s just not going to happen. And, to be fair to me, it’s not like academia has done particularly well for itself when it comes to guns and gun rights. We’ve covered it aplenty, and we’ll keep on doing so. But a couple of recent stories have come up about research that, well, didn’t suck.Let’s start with one earlier today. This one found that unsafe storage laws — they call…
The Justice Department, for the first time in history, used a secretive federal court created three decades ago to deport an accused terrorist. The DOJ used it to remove an Afghan woman who had come to the United States on residency tied to her husband’s work for the American military at Bagram Air Base, in Afghanistan. Nazira Haji Zada, 47, was removed to her native country on Aug. 25 through the Alien Terrorist Removal Court. This is a tribunal Congress established in 1996, but no administration—Republican or Democratic—had ever used it until this year. Its chief judge signed the removal…
Former New York City firefighter and U.S. Coast Guard reservist Jeffrey Palazzo’s legacy is officially enshrined on a newly commissioned cutter. On Sept. 12, the Coast Guard commissioned its newest Fast Response Cutter, Coast Guard Cutter Jeffrey Palazzo (WPC 1163), during a ceremony in New York City, marking the ship’s entry into active service. The ceremony came one day after the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center in addition to planes that crashed into the Pentagon and in a Pennsylvania field in Shanksville. Palazzo was a New York City firefighter and Coast Guard reservist…
We didn’t cover it all that much, in part because a fair bit was going on, but a shooting at a Minneapolis apartment building sent people scrambling last week as police descended upon it to deal with the active shooter threat. I wrote the original report and mostly moved on. The killer apparently decided he didn’t like the idea of being evicted, despite a history beyond not living up to his responsibilities under the lease agreement. Because you should never have to pay your rent, apparently.While we didn’t cover it, it was news, and the…
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday that Ukraine is ready to halt its strikes on Russian territory if allies can secure a genuine Russian commitment not to hit Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. His comments came after U.S. President Donald Trump claimed in a social media post that Russia and Ukraine had agreed “not to hit” each other’s energy infrastructure, though Trump did not offer further details on the purported agreement. Russia did not immediately comment on Trump’s claim. Previous efforts to broker even a partial ceasefire have repeatedly fallen apart within hours, with both sides accusing each other…
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a number of strong decisions in support of the Second Amendment in recent years, including the Hemani decision upheld by the Supreme Court that ruled the federal ban on gun possession for “unlawful drug users was unconstitutional as applied to a Texas man who regularly used marijuana. Now the appellate court may be ready to whittle away at Section 922(g)(1)’s prohibition on gun possession for those convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year in prison. The court has granted a request for en banc review…
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on Monday announced a record-high $1.17 billion in grants to continue to fight veteran homelessness. Grants were awarded to 680 organizations across the nation to help veterans who are either homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. The grants will be distributed in Fiscal Year 2027 and come after the agency touted housing 51,936 homeless veterans in FY25—a seven-year high. In FY25, the VA housed 4,011 more veterans compared to the last year under the Biden administration, according to the agency. It was described as the VA’s best performance since it began tracking the…
People who hold federal firearms licenses, or FFLs, need to be on top of what the ATF is doing. In theory, they should be partners in combating criminals obtaining firearms, so communication is important. Unfortunately, that hasn’t always been the case. The ATF has long viewed itself as a willing opponent of gun rights, or so it seems from the outside.Luckily, as the man sang badly, “The times they are a-changin’.”Now, the ATF is doing less-sucky things. For example, the new rules on suppressors.And now we have a new alert system for FFLs.ATF is extremely…
Rarely seen 9/11 photos have their own unique power, showing quiet, often overlooked moments that remind us of individual stories and human connections. Sept. 11 is etched in the collective memory of the United States, not just because of the shock and tragedy of that day, but also due to the deeply personal experiences we each hold. Vivid images and video clips of the smoking towers, heroic first responders, and the faces of those in shock and grief have become symbols of loss and rebuilding. There are also many lesser-seen photos that offer a different perspective. They serve as reminders…
Last week a Maryland rabbi won the ability to carry a firearm in his synagogue, despite Montgomery County’s ban on lawful carry in houses of worship. The injunction granted by a federal judge only applies to the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, but there’s no shortage of rabbis around the country who want to do the same. In most states that’s not much of an issue. But even where carry bans aren’t in place, many rabbis are looking for training options, which is where Magen Am steps in. The self-defense organization recently hosted a five-day…
