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So much for the small-penis theory. We’ve all heard that argument being made: “If you own a firearm,” the case runs, “it must be because you’re poorly endowed.” Guns, you see, are long and phallic — like portable, miniature Washington Monuments, there to be worn about the belt. In the 1960s, weak and diffident men would make up for their shortcomings by purchasing a Jaguar E-Type. Now they buy an AR-15. That must explain the buying spree of the last decade. A related case is made in concert: That guns are being snapped up by “scared white men” who are terrified that their privilege is being diminished. Sure, firearms owners tell pollsters that their purchases were driven by general interest or by terrorism or by a desire to defend themselves. But progressives know better than that, natch; they know that the real reason is race or gender or the panoply of isms. For years, white men have ruled the roost. But now women are doing better in college and the president is black. That must explain the surge. It doesn’t, of course. In fact, neither theory explains anything much at all — except, perhaps, the paucity of the gun-control movement’s brief. Indeed, to look at the most recently available statistics is to learn that gun ownership — and, indeed, the “bearing of arms” in general — is an increasingly diverse, rather than monochrome, thing. Over the last few years, the United States has seen the stirrings of a pro–Second Amendment rainbow coalition, comprised of all sorts and popping up in all places. Penises? Penises don’t enter into it, matey. RELATED: The Case for More Concealed Handguns As he does each year, John Lott Jr. has taken a good look at the government’s most recent concealed-carry numbers – and boy, are they interesting. As one might expect, concealed carry has grown dramatically in popularity over the last decade or so, and, as one might expect, that growth has coincided with a remarkable drop in crime. Between 2007 and 2015, Lott reports, the “murder rates fell from 5.6 to 4.7 (preliminary estimate) per 100,000,” while “violent crime fell by 18 percent.” Over the same period, “the percentage of adults with permits has soared by 190%.” Well, then. As for those “adults with permits” . . . well, they are most certainly not all old and white and male. On the contrary: Lott notes that in the “eight states where we have data by gender . . . since 2012 the number of permits has increased by 161% for women and by 85% for men.” Or, put another way, women are now obtaining carry permits at twice the rate of men. Is it penis envy, perhaps? #share#A similar dynamic has developed within minority communities — at least, it has in the one state that keeps data by race. “Texas,” Lott records, “provides detailed information on both race and gender from 1996 through 2014.” And that information shows that permitting has increased fastest for blacks, followed closely by Asians. While whites still hold the vast majority of permits, the number of black permit holders has grown more than twice as quickly as the number of white permit holders. Moreover: When permit data is broken down by race and gender, we find that rates of permit holding among American Indian, Asian, black, and white females all grew much faster than the rates for males in those racial groups. Concealed carry has increased most rapidly among black females. From 2000 to 2015, the rate of growth was 3.81 times faster than among white females. This is a complicated area, but it seems important to note that as the cost of obtaining a carry permit has dropped in Texas, the pool of carriers has become more diverse. “The growth in permit-holding by Asians, blacks, and American Indians,” writes Lott, “was by far the fastest after the minimum training requirements were reduced from 10 hours to four in 2013 . . . reducing the cost of obtaining permits seems to have had its biggest impact on minorities.” RELATED: The Bizarro Morality of America’s Gun-Control Debate And why wouldn’t it? As progressives routinely insist when the question is of voting or abortion, it is minorities, not rich white men, who are disproportionately affected by legal obstacles that are placed in their way. By reducing its mandatory training from ten to four hours, Texas has ensured both that its carry classes will be less expensive and that those who take them will need to take less time off work. The salutary result: That less “privileged” members of society are able take advantage of their constitutional rights. (One might expect to see a similar result if permitting fees were reduced across the board. New York City charges $429.75 for a carry permit; Idaho charges $20. In which place do we imagine it is easier for the poor to defend themselves?) Typically, this argument is met with what is little more than a primal scream: “But guns are dangerous and voting is not!” cry the naysayers. For now, I shall leave aside the obvious rejoinder, which is that this argument rests upon the presumption that the poor and the brown must be kept away from guns in the name of “public safety,” and I will instead point out that anybody who is worried about concealed carriers needs his ruddy head looked at. As Lott drily confirms, “concealed carry permit holders” are not only more law-abiding than the population at large, they “are even more law-abiding than police.” “Among police” in general, the FBI records, “firearms violations occur at a rate of 16.5 per 100,000 officers,” whereas “among permit holders in Florida and Texas, the rate is only 2.4 per 100,000” (and many of these “violations” are as innocuous as the permit holder’s forgetting to carry his permit on his person). This trend is borne out elsewhere. At times, watching the American gun debate can feel like attending the call-and-response segment of an especially dreary Anglican church service: “And on July 1st, Florida will issue forth carry permits.”“There will be blood in the streets.”“And there was no blood in the streets.”“There will be blood in the streets.”“As it was in the beginning, in the middle, and the end, there was no blood in the streets.”“Let us change tack: Peaceful as they may be, carriers are all white men.”“Carriers are not all white men.”“Twitter hear us: Carriers have small penises.” Etc. #related#At this rate, it will not be too long before the gun-controllers cry that concealed carriers may be impressively diverse, unusually peaceful, and continually growing in number, but they represent a serious problem to be solved because . . . well, because they just do. Progress, of a sort. — Charles C. W. Cooke is the editor of National Review Online.

On Monday, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, wiggling free just far enough from his grip on Donald Trump’s coattails to utter a mild criticism of his party’s nominee, criticized Trump for his comments regarding Gold Star father and mother Khizr Khan and his wife.

Lawmakers say pedophiles could use the game to "lure" victims

For the entirety of the primaries, Trump was short on solutions, although heavy on vague, empty promises and slogans he ripped off from the 80s. He had much ire for his Republican competitors for the nomination, but was oddly short on attacks against Democrats. Now, here we are, three months away from the general election. Trump has vanquished every legitimate, qualified candidate for the nomination, | Read More »

Paul Nehlen is just one of hundreds of candidates running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives this year, but the businessman and inventor is running as if he’s in a national race. In a way, he is. His Republican primary opponent, after all, is House Speaker Paul Ryan. And with the election […]

The Constitution does not ban vetting the religious beliefs of would-be immigrants to the United States.

Ahead of the second anniversary of the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, that touched off a wave of protests...

DHS is redesigning and extending Temporary Protected Status to thousands of Syrian nationals already residing in the United States.

Brandon took over the deputy director position of the agency in April 2015 following his predecessor's swift exit after his attempt to ban AR-15 ammunition failed spectacularly.

Khizr Khan, the Muslim Gold Star father that Democrats and their allies media wide have been using to hammer GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, has deleted his law firm’s website from the Internet.

WASHINGTON ? The CEO of the Democratic National Committee will resign Tuesday in the wake of the committee?s hacked email scandal. Amy Dacey is the highest-ranking official at the DNC t…

Media analyst Howard Kurtz on press coverage of Patricia Smith, mother of Sean Smith, and the Khan family, parents of Captain Khan. HOWARD KURTZ: Two parents, both touched by tragedy, gave impassioned speeches on big stages. Khizer Khan, a Muslim father whose soldier son was killed in Iraq denounced Donald Trump at the Democratic Convention. KHAN: Have you even read the United States Constitution? KURTZ: Patricia Smith, whose son was killed in Benghazi, denounced Hillary Clinton at the Republican Convention. SMITH: I blame Hillary Clinton personally for the death of my son. KURTZ: But only one of them drew enormous media attention. Khan's speech made the front page of The New York Times and he was invited on NBC's Meet the Press and CNN's State of the Union. KHAN: That's again, the height of ignorance on the part of a candidate for the highest office of this nation. KHAN: The way he showed disrespect towards the Gold Star mother of this country, that says it all. CHUCK TODD, NBC: Your wife? KHAN: My wife? KURTZ: He was referring to Trump's appearance on ABC's This Week. TRUMP: If you look at his wife, she was standing there, she had nothing to say. She probably -- maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say. KURTZ: The Washington Post said Ghazala Khan said she was too emotional to speak. Some analysts said Trump had escalated the controversy. JOE TRIPPI, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: This wouldn't be a big story if Trump hadn't stepped in it and gone after the family. KURTZ: But what about Patricia Smith? True, she castigated Clinton before in numerous interviews, but her speech was widely ignored and in some cases, attacked. KELLY RIDDELL, WASHINGTON TIMES: A GQ writer tweeted, 'I would like to beat her to death.' Later had to apologize for it. And MSNBC said she ruined the night and it's a gross accusation to bring up Benghazi. KURTZ: Clinton took a softer approach on FOX News Sunday. CLINTON: Chris, my heart goes out to both of them. I don't hold any ill feeling for someone who, in that moment, may not fully recall everything that was or wasn't said. KURTZ: And today, Khan was back on the TV circuit. He's ripping Trump for pushing a temporary ban on Muslim immigrants, which is unpopular with most of the media. Smith is personally blaming Clinton for Benghazi, which the media says is unfair, and that seems to show in the coverage.

Trump received five deferments that kept him from serving in Vietnam.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency has a page on its official website titled, "Secure Locations FAQ" which is essentially a guide teaching illegal immigrants how to avoid deportation. T

Watching Sean Hannity interview Donald Trump these days is always a bit of an uncomfortable experience. It's like you're intruding on two high school sophomores who are taking the final, fumbling steps of flirting before they start making out. There's one difference, though: the high schoolers have better grammar. Four times in the span of less than 60 seconds, Trump said the New York Times | Read More »

Correction: This story has been updated to correct two errors. The Hinckley Institute-Salt Lake Tribune poll was first published in June 2016. It does not track data from immediately after the July conventions. KUTV also erred in showing Clinton with a 1-p

My #NeverTrump colleagues and friends make valid points about Donald Trump. I know: I made them myself during the Republican primaries. But it is vital to understand what happens if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency. This country will be so far from what the Founders wanted, so different from what the #NeverTrumpers have always fought for, that it is almost impossible to see how America would recover from her — or any Democrat’s — victory. Thanks to the universities’ leftist indoctrination of two generations of Americans, and thanks to Bernie Sanders, the Democratic party is now in all but name a socialist party. In fact, it is actually to the left of many European socialist parties. For example, if Clinton wins, the government will now tell companies how much they must pay employees: “If you believe that companies should share profits with their workers, not paid executive bonuses, join us,” she brazenly announced. And if you think that this is unconstitutional, remember that it won’t matter, because she will appoint left-wing Supreme Court justices and left-wing federal judges who do not view their roles as protectors of the Constitution. They view their roles as promoting “social justice,” which has as much to do with justice as “people’s democracy” has to do with democracy. RELATED: A Woman, Sure, but This Woman? There will still be a country called the United States, a geographic entity situated between Canada and Mexico, but it will not be the America envisioned by the Founders, or by most Americans until the middle of the 20th century. A few days before Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, he promised that if elected, “we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” He has been true to his word. And Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party will continue this fundamental transformation. RELATED: The Hillary Mystique As Bernie Sanders said in his speech to an ecstatic Democratic National Convention, “Together, my friends, we have begun a political revolution to transform America, and that revolution — our revolution — continues.” In other words, the Democratic party now acknowledges that its aim is revolution — a revolution that undoes the American Revolution. She spelled this out very clearly in her acceptance speech. #share#Among its other highlights: “We’ll build a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants.” This means that our borders will mean nothing, that in order to guarantee Democratic-party victories for the foreseeable future, as president she will transform 10 or more million people who are here illegally into citizens. “We have the most tolerant and generous young people we’ve ever had.” RELATED: My God, She’s Running as Hillary Clinton She said this in order to pander to young Americans. But, thanks to the Left, it isn’t true. This generation is not only not “the most tolerant and generous we’ve ever had,” it is, in in many ways, the least tolerant and quite possibly the least generous “we’ve ever had.” According to Pew Research, “American Millennials are far more likely than older generations to say the government should be able to prevent people from saying offensive statements. . . . Four-in-ten Millennials say the government should be able to prevent people publicly making statements that are offensive to minority groups.” And not just about minorities. As we see almost every day, more and more college students lead campaigns against permitting conservatives to speak on their campuses. RELATED: Hillary’s Critics Don’t Hate Her Because She’s a Woman Hillary’s other pandering claim, that we have the most “generous young people we’ve ever had,” is equally false. Thanks to the Left, we probably have the least generous young people we’ve ever had. No generation in American history (with the possible exception of the Baby Boomers) has been as self-centered. Their governing motto is “Give me.” “Give me a free college education, absolve me of my financial debts, give me free health care, give me benefits until I find the job I deem commensurate with my college degree . . . ” No wonder Pew Research finds that nearly 50 percent of young Americans now have a favorable view of socialism. America will change with a Hillary Clinton presidency. Americans will become more like Europeans. This view underscores what is perhaps a very telling statement from the Democratic nominee’s speech that few seem to have noticed: “My mother, Dorothy, was abandoned by her parents as a young girl. She ended up on her own at 14, working as a house maid. She was saved by the kindness of others.” Note that her mother, who was 14 in 1933 — right before the Democrats began unraveling America with ever bigger government — was “saved by the kindness of others.” That is how America always operated — we Americans saved our fellow citizens who were abandoned, destitute, or impoverished. Not the government. #related#But that is changing, and it will change even more with a Hillary Clinton presidency. Americans will become more and more like Europeans — much less charitable with both their money and their time. Because when you know the government will take care of your neighbor, you won’t. Socialism makes people selfish. (See my five-minute video, “Socialism Makes People Selfish,” at PragerUniversity.com. When presented properly, our views can prevail: It has garnered 2 million views in two weeks, mostly of people under 35.) With either a Republican or a Democratic Congress, a President Donald Trump could be held in check, if that proves to be necessary. And there is always the possibility that he could be a good president — appointing conservative Supreme Court and federal judges, cutting taxes, and slashing regulations. But no Congress could stop a President Hillary Clinton. She will finish the job her predecessor started: to fundamentally transform the United States of America. Perhaps forever. — Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, The Ten Commandments: Still the Best Moral Code, was published by Regnery. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com. © 2016 Creators.com 

I'm old enough to remember when the people who supported Trump hated this idea when Obama proposed it. Trump was back on the stump today criticizing Clinton for... not being in favor of enough government spending. For the purposes of reference, Clinton's infrastructure plan is to spend $275 billion in her first 100 days. Trump promises to at least double that for the purposes of providing | Read More

"I truly feel that Wyatt has faced more hardship than any Marine has gone through, and for that should be given the title."

A brick wall in Melbourne, Australia, has become a battleground for freedom of expression in the city, as a griffiti artist covered up his controversial mural of a bikini-clad Hillary Clinton on Monday by painting a burqa over the image.

Trump sparked outrage in Mexico with his campaign vow to build a wall along the southern US border to keep out illegal immigrants and drugs, and to make Mexico pay for the construction.

Howard Dean told Breitbart News that "Iran is the farthest thing from an Islamic Republic" and that Iran is not "a Muslim country."

Following Trump confidant Roger Stone's allegation that Hillary Clinton might "steal this election" using the Supreme Court, and the Reuters' poll "tweaks" which sent her to a 7-point lead, Donald Trump is raising the alarm that he "is afraid the election is going to be rigged."

Donald Trump hits the media, particularly CNN, 'the Clinton News Network,' at a campaign rally in Harrisburg, Penn. Monday night. "We have a media that is so dishonest," Trump said. "These are among the most dishonest people you will ever, ever meet." "We are going to punch through the media," he said. "We have to." (video via RSBN.tv livestream)

In Presidential elections where the Republican candidate wins or comes close, you tend to see the same dynamic unfold in terms of the ideological breakdown of the electorate. The Republican wins between 80 and 85% of conservatives, the Democrat wins between 80 and 85% of liberals, and the Democrat wins moderates by some relatively small percentage. The Republican either wins or comes close based on | Read More »