First, let’s clear up one of the most abused terms in the firearms debate. An AR-15 is not an assault rifle. Calling it one doesn’t make you a firearms expert. It simply tells knowledgeable shooters that you’ve been repeating political talking points instead of learning the difference. An assault rifle has a long established military definition. It is a select fire rifle that can operate in both semiautomatic and fully automatic modes. A civilian AR-15 is semiautomatic only. One trigger pull fires one round. It is not capable of fully automatic fire without illegal modification. Unfortunately, far too many politicians, television commentators, and even some law enforcement spokespeople casually toss around the term “assault rifle” as if saying it often enough somehow changes the definition. It doesn’t. Words still matter, even if they occasionally get lost in a press conference. The term “assault weapon” became a political label decades ago for fear mongering purposes  and has ...

Charleston, SC —It’s never the losers of wars that write the history books.  With glee, the winners demonize the losers at every opportunity in anything published about the conflicts. Our Civil War was much more about a heavy handed federal government and states rights than slavery.  Personally, I abhor the concept of slavery.   Today that same federal government has made slaves out of every taxpayer.  They take more than half of what we earn and reward corrupt businesses that bribe politicians.  The slavery of the Negro is distant history. Nobody alive today owned slaves or were slaves except for taxpayers of every color. The Confederate flag represents among other things thousands of brave young American men that gave their lives fighting for their country.   It’s not a symbol of racism or hate.  Saying all that, ignorance and propaganda has relentlessly maligned the flag over the many years at least to African-Americans it ha...