By Paul Huebl There is an old song with a haunting title: “You Always Hurt the One You Love.” Those words keep returning to me as I examine the disappearance of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie from her Tucson-area home during the night of January 31 and the early morning of February 1, 2026. I have a theory about this case, and it is considerably darker than the kidnapping narrative that has dominated the headlines. I believe Nancy Guthrie may already have been dead when the supposed abduction occurred. The blood evidence at her doorstep is central to my suspicion. We know blood was discovered, but the public has not been given enough forensic information to establish precisely when she was injured, how seriously she was wounded, or whether she was alive when she left that property. Those are not minor questions. They go straight to the heart of this mystery. Nancy had been brought home earlier that evening by her son-in-law, Tommaso Cioni, who is married to her daughter, Annie Guthrie...

Here is my prediction, and I don't think it takes a crystal ball to make it: Every so-called “assault weapons” ban in America is headed for the constitutional trash heap. The Supreme Court has spent nearly two decades rebuilding Second Amendment law one major decision at a time. The message running through those cases is increasingly difficult to ignore: politicians cannot simply invent convenient legislative shortcuts around an enumerated constitutional right because technology changes, political fashions change, or somebody announces a new public-safety emergency. If politicians want to rewrite the Second Amendment, the Constitution already provides the machinery. Article V allows constitutional amendments to be proposed by two-thirds of both houses of Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the states. Good luck with that. There is nowhere near the national consensus necessary to repeal the Second Amendment. So legislatures have instead tried to accomplish pieces of that objec...

In recent years, a particularly dangerous breed of idiot has discovered a new form of entertainment: weaponizing the police against complete strangers.  It is called swatting . The formula is breathtakingly simple. Some coward sitting safely behind a telephone or computer contacts law enforcement, pretends to be a terrified victim, neighbor, or eyewitness, and reports a fictional emergency. Hostages are being held. Someone has a gun. A family is about to be murdered. Pick whatever nightmare is most likely to produce an immediate and heavily armed police response. Congratulations. With a few lies, some fool has potentially turned somebody else’s home into a battlefield. Swatting gained notoriety through online gaming feuds, where spectacularly immature sore losers decided that losing a video game apparently justified sending armed police to the winner’s house. But the insanity did not remain confined to gamers. Swatting has become a weapon for revenge, harassment, intimidation, a...

  During the last two decades, local journalism has devolved in pay, benefits, staffing, and working conditions in a brutal way. There was a time when a television reporter actually had a team. The reporter gathered the information, interviewed the witnesses, developed sources, and told the story. Photographers shot the video. Editors edited it. Producers helped write and shape the finished product. Today, many reporters are expected to do damn near everything themselves. They research the story, shoot the video, conduct the interviews, write the script, edit the video, prepare material for the web and social media, and sometimes even set up their own live shots. The corporations discovered they could eliminate jobs and simply dump the work on whoever remained. Newspapers may be in even worse shape. Almost nobody wants to buy a newspaper anymore. The public has become accustomed to getting information instantly and, preferably, free on the Internet. Convincing people to pay for yes...

I begin with an important disclosure: I am one of Massad Ayoob’s “Ayoob Files” survivors. Ayoob wrote about my own self-defense shooting case in the July/August 1991 issue of American Handgunner. I have considerable respect for Ayoob as a firearms tactician and trainer. My disagreement concerns something very different: his advice about what an armed citizen should say to police and 911 immediately after a defensive shooting. In my view, some of that advice can be extraordinarily dangerous. No two shootings are identical, and there is no universal script that safely fits every case. A statement that appears helpful in one investigation can become devastating evidence in another. A traumatized citizen standing over a wounded or dead person should be extraordinarily cautious about making statements before consulting counsel. The 911 Call Is Evidence A 911 call is not merely a request for help. It is recorded evidence. The caller may believe he is simply summoning assistance, but saying, ...

California gave birth to the motion-picture industry. Hollywood became synonymous with American movies, American entertainment and American culture around the world. What an accomplishment. So naturally, California’s current Communist politicians have spent years figuring out how to screw it up. The once-Golden State has embraced an increasingly government-heavy political and economic model, piling regulation upon regulation, taxes upon taxes, mandates upon mandates, and then acting absolutely astonished when businesses start looking for the exits. Now Warner Bros., Paramount, and even Universal Studios are looking for ways to move their business outside California. Think about that. These aren’t some three-man production companies operating out of a rented bungalow. These are names practically carved into the cornerstone of Hollywood itself. California managed to create the American film industry, dominate it for a century, and then make doing business sufficiently unattractive ...