For those who have tracked this with at least a modicum of interest, this has all been puzzling.  WeaponsMan has this to say about the death of Robert ‘LaVoy’ Finicum.

This whole mess began because a Federal prosecutor (like all of them an effete urbanite with many years in Eastern elite colleges) thought it would be amusing to make a felony out of some careless brush burnoffs by a couple of ranchers, and send the hayseeds to prison.

Amusing, you say?  This all happened because someone wanted to be amused?  Digging a little deeper, the original case was so weak that if something like this had happened around these parts, those responsible might have faced community service, a small to moderate fine and a stern talking-to by the judge.  To explain just how bizarre this whole thing was to start out, and just how head-scratching the drama surrounding this was, I turn to none other than Western Livestock Journal, well before any of this ever happened.

BLM filed charges against the Hammonds back in 2012. The federal prosecutor chose to prosecute them under the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (Anti-terrorism Act).

The trial court’s 2012 findings can be summarized as follows: Dwight and Steven admitted to having started two fires, for which the court found them guilty. One of the fires was a prescribed burn in 2001 that, according the court record, accidentally spread onto 139 acres of BLM land. Those 139 acres happened to be located on one of the family’s federal grazing allotments. The other fire, from 2006, was a back-burn. Steven had set the fire on the family’s private property in order to protect their winter feed from a lightening fire that had started on adjacent BLM land. That fire accidentally spread to one acre of BLM land.

Those are the facts of the case.  They aren’t any more complicated than that.  This all has to do with some controlled burns that weren’t exactly controlled, and an agreement the Hammonds say they had with BLM that apparently they didn’t have in writing (big mistake).  Continuing with the report.

The trial court sentenced Dwight and Steven Hammond, father and son, to a combined three months, one year and one day in prison. They served their time in 2013 and are now under three years’ “supervised release.” The court additionally revoked their firearms and Dwight lost his pilot’s license.

The Hammonds are also paying $400,000 as part of a separate settlement agreement with BLM.

They may be forced to sell part of their ranch to BLM to make the payment. BLM has additionally refused to renew the family’s federal grazing permits for two years running. This means Hammonds can use neither their BLM allotments nor thousands of their private acres, which are intermingled with BLM land. It should be noted that the civil settlement and the BLM’s refusal of Hammonds’ grazing permits are, technically, unrelated to the criminal case.

So this begins to get interesting, yes?  A harsh settlement with the court, loss of weapons rights, huge fine, time in prison, and now (this is the interesting part) loss of grazing permits and possibly having to sell the ranch because of the huge fine.  Remember, this is all stuff that was known well before anything with the so-called occupation ever occurred.  Let’s continue.

… the federal government was unsatisfied with the less-than-five-year sentence handed down by the trial court, and decided to appeal.

In the first instance, why did the federal government choose to prosecute under an anti-terrorism statute? A reading of the court documents does not provide a clear answer. The Anti-terrorism Act was enacted following the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings in the 1990s. Legislative history shows the law’s purpose is to “deter terrorism, provide justice for victims, provide for an effective death penalty, and for other purposes.” More specific purposes include authorizing federal courts to hear claims against “terrorist governments for acts of terrorism against U.S. citizens…” and revising criminal laws regarding “unlawful possession, use, transfer, and trafficking in nuclear materials and biological and chemical weapons.”

The government originally attempted to prosecute the father and son for nine violations of the Anti-terrorism Act. The trial court found Hammonds guilty on only two counts: for having started the 2001 prescribed burn and the 2006 back-burn. The guilty charges came under section 844(f) of the Act, which calls for a minimum of five years in prison for anyone who “maliciously damages or destroys, or attempts to damage or destroy, by means of fire or an explosive, any building, vehicle, or other personal or real property [of] the United States…” However, the judge and jury appeared to be conflicted over applying the Anti-terrorism Act’s full force. As noted by Judge Michael Hogan of the District Court, Hammonds’ fires likely rejuvenated and improved the federal range. Indeed, it would defy logic to expect Hammonds to purposefully and “maliciously” damage their own BLM allotments.

Of importance, too, was the trial court’s finding that no lives were endangered or harmed by the fires—which, under the Anti-terrorism Act, would have meant a minimum prison sentence of seven years.

You can read the rest for yourself.  Now, to be sure, we can combine this ridiculous legal situation with problems of our own with the Bundy’s visit to Malheur.  To begin with, if they had surrounded the Hammond’s home at their request and refused to allow him to be taken to prison, this might have ended differently, and would probably have had the support of most of the patriot community.  Instead, they occupied an unrelated building in the middle of nowhere, without the Hammonds having requested it.

Furthermore, this was tactically and logistically unsustainable, and lacked means of egress, evasion and escape.  For me, there is also the problem that the occupation is intermingled with eschatological complexities of the LDS.  Ammon Bundy claimed to be told by God to do this, and one occupier said “I’m Captain Moroni, from Utah.”  This is important.  If you do not understand the significance of this, then study it.

As for me and my theological views (give me a brief minute here, as this is related to the article), God doesn’t reveal Himself today (contra LDS, Pentecostal, or Roman Catholic with the pope speaking “ex cathedra”).  He has revealed Himself, past tense.  It’s closed – finished.  See the Westminster Confession of Faith.  I am to follow His laws for my life, and honor His guidelines and wisdom in my interactions.  I don’t listen for “voices,” wait for visions or expect God to favor me with knowledge other men don’t have.

So if you tell me God said for you to do something or other, I’m more than likely going to say, “Thank you sir,” shake your hand and be on my way.  The situation was a bad case for patriots, poorly planned, poorly thought out, and badly executed.  But it is what it is, not perfect.  Perhaps I couldn’t have done better.

And into the gap stepped Bundy, his friends and Mr. Robert ‘LaVoy’ Finicum.  They may not have known what they were stumbling into, but it is dark, deep, and a sad commentary on the state of this pitiful nation.  Let’s take a step further into the darkness, thanks to Jon Rappoport.

Is uranium at the heart of the Oregon Malheur federal-protestor standoff? That’s the question I’m asking. It isn’t a flippant question.

I realize there are many other issues swirling around this event. The Hammonds, the Bundys, militias, the feds, cattle grazing on federal lands, federal land grabs, and so on. This article isn’t meant to take apart those matters.

It’s meant to follow up on my previous article, in which I present a circumstantial case for the Clintons’ heavy involvement in a scheme that’s transferred 20% of US uranium production to Putin and Russia. And the key company in that piece is Uranium One. Remember the name. It’s apparently a major clue in what I’m about to discuss.

I also want to say, at the outset, that I don’t know how many independent news outlets and websites are covering the uranium question, or which outlet initiated this line of investigation. I’m relying on one provocative January 23 article at intellihub, by Shepard Ambellas:

“Clinton Foundation took massive payoffs, promised Hammond Ranch and other publicly owned lands to Russians, along with one-fifth of our uranium ore.”

Down in the body of that article, the author provides a link to a page at the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which is a federal agency under the Department of the Interior.

On that BLM page (“National BLM > OR/WA > Energy > Uranium Energy”), in a section titled, “Uranium on BLM-Administered Lands in OR/WA,” [(image of webpage forthcoming)] is the following statement:

“In September 2011, a representative from Oregon Energy, L.L.C. (formally Uranium One), met with local citizens, and county and state officials, to discuss the possibility of opening a uranium oxide (‘yellowcake’) mine in southern Malheur County in southeastern Oregon. Oregon Energy is interested in developing a 17-Claim parcel of land known as the Aurora Project through an open pit mining method. Besides the mine, there would be a mill for processing. The claim area occupies about 450 acres and is also referred to as the ‘New U’ uranium claims.

“On May 7, 2012, Oregon Energy LLC made a presentation to the BLM outlining its plans for development for the mine.

“The Vale District has agreed to work with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife on mitigation for the ‘New U’ uranium claims, which are located in core sage grouse habitat. Although the lands encompassing the claims have been designated core, the area is frequented by rockhounds and hunters, and has a crisscrossing of off-highway vehicle (OHV) roads and other significant land disturbance from the defunct Bretz Mercury Mine, abandoned in the 1960s.

“However, by the fall of 2012 the company said that it was putting its plans for the mine on hold until the uncertainty surrounding sage grouse issues was resolved.”

The first sentence in that BLM section ties together several key elements of the story: Uranium One; a uranium mine; southern Malheur County. Southern Malheur is the general area of the federal-protestor standoff. Let me give you that first sentence again:

“In September 2011, a representative from Oregon Energy, L.L.C. (formally Uranium One), met with local citizens, and county and state officials, to discuss the possibility of opening a uranium oxide (‘yellowcake’) mine in southern Malheur County in southeastern Oregon.”

What does this have to do with Hillary and Bill Clinton? I’ll reprint my previous article so you can read the details, but the short version is: there’s a case to be made that they, through Uranium One and the Clinton Foundation, facilitated the sale of Uranium One to Putin and the Russians. And if so, and if this area of Oregon is projected to be part of that uranium mining deal, then we are looking at a stunning “coincidence”: the US federal government is coming down hard on a group of protestors who are occupying, for their own reasons, a very valuable piece of territory that goes far beyond the issue of private cattle grazing on government land.

It comes under the heading of those old familiar lines: you have no idea what you’re involved in; you have no idea who you’re messing with; this is way over your head; you just stepped into the middle of something that’s bigger than you can imagine.

Not only is an awful lot of Uranium at stake, but the company to which he refers is very interested in Gold as well.  And right in the area of the fields of weeds in Malheur.  This observation isn’t limited to a blogger, however good he has proven to be.  Bloomberg has noted that since 2013, “the nuclear energy arm of the Russian state has controlled 20 percent of America’s uranium production capacity.”  And USA Today notes that this all comes back to a huge donation to the Clinton Foundation.

This is a good summary of the situation.

This is an update to my previous article Constitutional Shake Down in Burns Oregon.

I stated in my previous article that the Chinese wanted the uranium under Harney county but it turns out it was the Russians that wanted the uranium. David Ward the sheriff it turns out, used to work for BLM and testified against the Hammonds. It has also been revealed that the Clintons under their reign made a deal with Russia to let them mine uranium under Harney County. The Clinton money laundering Foundation received approximately 2.5 million dollars in four payments from the Russian mining company now known as Uranium One that was bought from a Canadian firm.

This would explain why state officials were nervously trying to end this and why the sheriff gave his permission for the FBI to come into the county at the behest of the governor now as 200 fed vehicles come to Harney County. This governor Kate Brown is a Clinton brown nose supporter

This corruption goes all the way to the top of the Clinton white house, the justice dept, BLM, the forestry dept. and includes the sheriff playing his role in the theft of the Hammonds freedom and land by lying on the stand to convict the Hammonds as a BLM thug. The conflict of interest alone should free the Hammonds on the basis of a mistrial.

Just like the Bundy experience, which was all related to a corrupt deal by Harry Reid to enrich the Chinese communists and his own son with the Bundy land, this is related to land, how valuable it is, and the value of its minerals.  If you think that this land is for you, if you think that you can just do anything you wish with government owned land, if you like to sing “this land is your land, this land is my land, from …,” then you’re a moron and you belong at a Bernie Sanders rally.  No one except other rubes believes that anything about federal lands is yours.  Federal land is capital.  It is power.  It is largesse.  It allows gifts to those in power.  It catalyzes corruption.  It is quid pro quo, the stuff of powerful men and women who want to rule the world, the currency of graft.

The video the FBI released was purported to show, in the words of FBI special agent Greg Bretzing, “On at least two occasions, Finicum reaches his right hand toward a pocket on the left inside portion of his jacket. He did have a loaded 9 mm semi-automatic handgun in that pocket.”  First of all, without the wife or daughters producing a proof of sales for a 9 mm pocket pistol, I don’t believe them.  Furthermore, it looks to me like he stumbled.

Additionally, even if he had a pocket pistol, no one with two brain cells (and I believe that Mr. Finicum had >> two brain cells) would present or produce a 9mm pocket pistol to engage in combat with multiple operators equipped with rifles, optics and body armor.  I don’t believe it.  If this video is the best they can do, they failed.  It proves nothing.  Whoever decided to release this video as evidence of Mr. Finicum’s decision to engage in combat is a moron.  It’s a video of a mad, but pitiful old man stumbling in the snow.  And you can’t prove that it’s anything but that.

Here we are with Mr. Finicum dead, a good man by all accounts, especially those who knew him best, his friends and family, and yet the evil goes much deeper.  The divisions are becoming more pronounced, and they will not be healed.  As for the shooters, Oregon police, or *.gov federal agents, whomever you are, this is what we know.  You knew that this mess needed to be closed out quickly.  Thus you did what you did.  Congratulations.  You killed Mr. Finicum so that Hillary Clinton could become enriched by selling the rights to American Uranium and Gold to a Russian communist.

Field & Stream writes this about the recent SHOT show.

Range Day is the Monday prior to the Show’s opening when manufacturers demonstrate their wares. People like me are bussed out to handle the goodies. This year, Range Day sounded like the Battle of Dak To, or perhaps Fallujah, with the distinctive pop-pop-pop of full-auto fire, which was extremely popular amongst all the SEAL wannabes. Indeed, this was symbolic of the whole show, which has now become so heavily militarized that you have to look fairly hard for something designed to kill animals instead of people.

It’s David Petzal.  Is anyone really surprised?  Just a few days later, David writes to tell us why he finally got an AR-15.

I also liked that the DMR is a 7.62 and not a 5.56—as the former easily outranges the latter—and that it is a gas-piston rifle, and not a direct-­impingement rifle. This keeps all the dirt and heat up front in the gas system rather than letting it pour back into the action in order to cycle the bolt.

The 18-inch medium barrel is chrome lined, which means you’ll probably never wear it out, and the match-grade trigger is a two-stage Geissele that breaks at 61⁄2 pounds. The buttstock is a Magpul PRS, and the grip is a MIAD. There is no carrying handle, just an endless Picatinny rail (four of them, actually) and excellent quick-detachable iron sights. Twenty-round Magpul PMag magazines are standard.

The weight…ah, the weight: My rifle, with a scope in high Leupold Mark 4 rings, a flash suppressor (highly recommended), and a vertical fore-end grip, weighs 131⁄2 pounds. This means I will not take it hunting, but then it is not a hunting rifle. It does mean that the DMR has hardly any kick, holds steady, and can put down aimed, controlled fire at the range very rapidly.

Finally, it is not compliant with California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, or New York restrictions. I take considerable satisfaction in that.

[ … ]

The 716 DMR is not a cheap gun at $2,970. But I’ve found that long after you’ve forgotten how much you spent, you can delight in the performance of what your money bought. I waited a long time to join the 21st century, but I went about it the right way.

Uh huh.  So you did it right, did you?  Well, you know what David?  Your rifle cost you a lot of money.  And it can shoot too, with sub-MOA accuracy.  That’s great.

But 1 – 1.5 MOA guns can shoot to, and can take down animals and tyrants.  And I take great pleasure in knowing that most of my guns would be illegal in California too.

But I don’t begrudge anyone their $400 Ruger rifle that will shoot 1.5 MOA, or their $3000 Weatherby that will shoot .75 MOA.  Honestly, for many people, there isn’t much difference between them.  And I advocate enjoying shooting for hunting, for target, for so-called “plinking,” and if need be for killing tyrants.

But I do have a confession to make.  If I never shoot anything, never hit an animal, never hit the target, never succeed at any contests, I still love to shoot.  I love it for the pure engineering behind it.  I love the explosion.  I love the idea of a projectile, and I love thinking about Newton’s laws.  I love the moving parts, I love disassembling them.  I just love the mechanics behind guns.  I love the machine.  God help me!  I do love it so!

There.  I’ve said it, and I feel better now.  And see David, I’m not an AR-15 snob.  In fact, I advocate that everyone enjoy shooting.  I usually have a smile on my face when I’m shooting, and I get jazzed when I go shooting with friends and family.  With Daniel it was a little different, sort of like a hard job when you have to shoot >> 1000 rounds a day for two years under duress.  But that’s a little different.  Daniel still likes shooting too.

For heaven’s sake, David, you don’t need to be so puckered.  Smile a little.  Be an advocate for others to enjoy the same passion you’ve been able to have your whole life.  Don’t be jealous and petty and selfish.  And don’t … I repeat … don’t, be an AR-15 snob.

David Codrea:

And just to prove he’s willing to sell out freedom of expression and online conduct (the same way “Don’t be evil” Google has done), Facebook, in order to please domestic collectivists every bit as anti-gun as their Chinese counterparts, has implemented a ban on private account gun ads …

As if we needed any more reason to hate Mark Zuckerberg.  What a horrible, terrible man.  I knew this about him when he designed a business deal that ensured his partner would hold worthless shares, giving him sole ownership of the company.  If you have a Facebook account, then so be it.  I closed mine out.  I won’t judge you, but Mark Zuckerberg is a horrible man (did I say already say that?) and I won’t give him any more power.

From Mike Vanderboegh, here are plans and details of work weekend.  I am afraid that I won’t be able to make it due to family and other issues.  I had hoped to see Mike in person, but that will have to wait.  What I can do, and have done, is donate to assist him and Rosie.  You can too, georgemason1776@aol.com.  Oh, and don’t forget to pray for him.

The F-35 software is overrun with bugs.  Well, I’ve given you a solution before, and I’ll do it again.  Shit can the whole idea, this pathetic, overblown, one-size-fits-all super jet that can’t really do anything very well, refurbish the existing fleet of fighters, and buy A-10s.  Lots and lots of A-10s.

Where are all the German men?  They fell victim to The Alienork way.

Can China copy the U.S. Marine Corps?  Ha.  They won’t try.  They wouldn’t have women in their combat ranks.

From the Finicum daughters.  This is a must watch video.  I’m surprised they held it together.  And their vocals are very good. I hope my children can say such things about me when I pass from this life to the one to come.

USA Today:

The owner of a dog shot and killed by police in 2012 will receive a $262,000 settlement from Commerce City in Colorado, according to a city spokeswoman.

On Nov. 24 2012, three Commerce City Police officers responded to reports of a “loose, vicious dog.” Police said Chloe, a 3-year-old dog, aggressively ran toward the officers. During the encounter, Officer Robert Price, shot and killed the dog.

The dog was first shocked with a stun gun and then shot multiple times. A neighbor took cellphone video of Chloe’s death, which was a key piece of evidence in the case.

The viral video showed Chloe cowering and trying to escape.

Price was found not guilty of animal cruelty charges in 2013.

The Animal Law Center says the $262,000 settlement is one of the largest of its kind.

Chloe’s owner, Gary Branson, was out of town when she was shot.

Okay, I have several comments after reading this, and after watching that horrible video in full.  First, dog owners should make arrangements for the dog at all times.  They are part of the family.  A loose dog when you’re out of town is unacceptable and irresponsible.

That said, the police are obviously guilty of animal cruelty and the one doing the shooting should have gone to prison just like Michael Vick.

The officer in the very first part of the video is an overblown, bloated fat ass, and doesn’t need to be on the police force anywhere.  The female officer is worthless, and doesn’t understand how to handle the dog.  As I’ve said before, “Voice commands are critical, and voice inflection, tonality and timbre (or tone color) make or break your communications with the animal.  Learn it.  Practice it.  Do it.  Take time with it, and if you live in a dense urban area where you cannot work with farm animals, travel on the weekends to a place where you can, or move permanently.  It’s that important.”

Within five minutes, I would have been petting Chloe and she would have been laying on her back with me scratching her belly.  The officers are hicks and goobers.  They know nothing.  They are worthless.

Just as bad as it pertains to future engagements, the final officer who shot Chloe – Robert Price – used his handgun with one hand, the other hand flailing wildly behind him.  No kidding.  Watch the video.  No, no, Robert.  Do it this way.

What the hell are they teaching these boys in Colorado?  Are they teaching them anything at all?  My God, I would hate to meet up with these morons, any one of them.  To me, they seem dangerous in their ignorance.  The dog was no danger.  The only danger was because of the idiot cops that day.  I hope all the cops in the Commerce City Police Department aren’t that stupid.

A final word about the settlement.  I hate it when the city suffers the financial harm for malicious acts of their cowardly police officers, but maybe with enough huge settlements of this sort, cities will begin to hire people who can think.

Robert Price should go to prison, and he certainly shouldn’t be allowed to have a gun.  How do you feel about costing your city $262K, Robert?  Pretty bad?  You should.  How do you feel about killing Chloe, Robert?  Pretty bad?  You should.

Military.com:

Red-dot optics mounted on pistols are becoming so popular that some professional shooters see them replacing iron sights in the tactical environment.

Non-magnifying optics have long been the primary rifle sight for troops on the battlefield. Besides being accurate and durable, they are also faster than iron sights and perform better in low-light conditions.

Now the popularity of ultra-light red-dots — such as Trijicon’s Ruggedized Miniature Reflex, or RMR, sight — has compelled pistol makers to introduce special lines of their handguns specifically designed for accepting red-dots.

Glock just unveiled its Modular Optic System at SHOT Show 2016. It’s designed so shooters can install the red-dot of their choice with just a few tools. Smith & Wesson did the same at SHOT 2015 with the introduction of its M&P Competition Optics Ready Equipment, or C.O.R.E., pistols.

“Red dots on pistols are the future of handguns,” said firearms instructor Matt Jacques.

At SHOT 2016, Jacques was showing off Raven Concealment’s new Balor mount designed for an Aimpoint Micro T1 or H1 red-dot sight on a Glock with just a few simple tools.

Red-dots offer a single-sight plane, so the shooter doesn’t have to worry about sight alignment as with traditional front and rear iron sights, Jacques said.

I don’t have any red dot optics for pistols, but I find this concept to be very appealing.  I wonder though, if existing pistols can be retrofitted for these optics without significant rework and gunsmithing, and I am not talking about the dozen or more gunsmiths who work at Hyatt Gun Shop, who can do just about anything with anything.  Will shooters have to buy new guns in order to make this a reality for them?

Via Uncle, Twitter.  An Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy loses his patrol rifle.  “The Deputy set the rifle, inside its case, on the trunk of his vehicle and inadvertently drove away.”

I guess inadvertently driving off is sort of like inadvertent discharges.  It’s all okay because its inadvertent.  Gosh, I hate it when that happens to me.  I do it all the time.  I remember the last time I did that.  The gun shop replaced it for free, and we all laughed and laughed and laughed.

One interesting question over Twitter is “Why is it called a patrol rifle when law enforcement has one, and an assault rifle if a civilian has one?”

Because shut up, says law enforcement.

By now most readers know that Robert ‘LaVoy’ Finicum was killed by federal agents.  Whatever misgivings I might have had about this particular hill to take (I would have greatly preferred that they protected the Hammonds from ever going to prison to begin with by surrounding their home), Mr. Finicum is now dead, and the ones who have been taken to prison face a world of trouble.

The *.gov types planned this as an ambush all along.  The entire operation was based on deception.  And now, courtesy of the speed of independent media, we have this eyewitness account of Mr. Finicum’s death.

I predict the *.gov will charge that she is lying, or say nothing at all.  And take note that this ambush happened in the middle of nowhere rather than around other witnesses bespeaks the high probability of the nefariousness of their methods.  If all we have is the word of the *.gov, I don’t believe them.

Let me say a few words to and about the people who did this.  Yes, we know about Special Agent Greg Bretzing, and the names, addresses and contact information of every judge who has ever been involved in this, or ever will be involved in this, should be made known.  But here I’m talking about the worker bees.

I don’t know whether this involves the federal protection police, SWAT teams from the BLM, FBI, or [fill in the letters], or a team on loan from JSOC and matrixed to *.gov for a few weeks.  In my experience, many of these guys are former Army SpecOps (not many Marines do this), and they leave the armed forces willing and ready to do anything and everything to continue this lifestyle and line of work, and provide for their families.  Other SpecOps guys leave the service understanding the corrupt nature of the system, and want nothing more to do with it.

I said it with regards to Benghazi too.  We know the names of some of the operators from the battle.  We still don’t know the name of that worm who ordered the stand-down, the CIA chief of station – you know, the one who went back to Langley and got a CIA medal for his wicked behavior.  I had said long ago that we would know what assets were available to respond to Benghazi, and not only do we know, we know now that there were also assets that were on the way and turned back.  This kind of decision gets made from the very top.  Just like we found out about the military assets, we will one day know the CIA chief of station – his name, his address, and his contact information.

As for the trigger pullers in the death of Mr. Finicum, like all trigger pullers everywhere in this line of work, they make it possible for the corrupt to continue their corruption.  The problem doesn’t just exist at the top.  It exists at the bottom too, with corrupt men willing to do corrupt things in order to be a part of the system.  Without the trigger pullers, the corruption couldn’t be enabled.  The names, addresses and contact information of the trigger pullers will one day be made known. Mark … my … words.  We will one day know who killed Mr. Finicum.

See also JWR, The 3,025 FPS Arrest Warrant.

Guns.com:

A lawsuit filed against Smith & Wesson in federal court last Thursday alleges that the plaintiff lost a finger due to a defective part on an unaltered .380 Bodyguard firearm.

Randy and Vicki McNeal, of Trimble, Tennessee, are seeking $75,000 in compensation – as well as legal fees – from the Massachusetts-based firearms manufacturer as a result of injuries received when Randy McNeal attempted to operate the firearm, which the plaintiffs alleged was “damaged, defective and unreasonably dangerous” when first manufactured, according to the complaint.

According to the complaint, McNeal purchased the firearm for his wife from a dealer in Jonesborough, Tennessee, in August of 2011, and no alterations were made to the firearm since its purchase.

The injury occurred approximately two years later, in December 2013, when he was attempting to make the gun safe to show a friend at On Target Guns and Indoor Range in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

According to the complaint, McNeal attempted to lock the slide back to ensure the chamber was empty, but due to an obstruction the slide wouldn’t come back all the way and lock into place. In an attempt to correct the problem, McNeal “briskly drew back the slide several times,” while following instructions from the gun’s safety manual.

However, the gun slipped from his grip, and when McNeal caught it, the firearm accidentally discharged, hitting his left small finger, ultimately leading to a need to amputate, the complaint says.

The plaintiffs, who reportedly had a firearms expert inspect the weapon, allege that the reason the gun could not be made safe – and ultimately the cause of the injury – was because of a loose screw on the built-in laser sight, which they say is “a defect/quality control issue.”

I’ve been hard on Remington for failure to come clean on their Walker fire control system.  But this is a loose screw.  I and every one of my readers has been at the range, or cleaning your weapons, or dry firing them, and found parts that needed to be tightened, refurbished, reformed, replaced, cleaned, or jettisoned for some other reason.

If you don’t want a screw to back out, check it periodically, or put Loctite on it [Be warned, this comes at a cost too.  AR aficionados don’t like the fact that Rock River Arms secures the Castle Nut on their rifles with red Loctite – it makes it virtually impossible to get off without a torch if you want to replace the buffer tube].

And above all else, when you drop a gun, do not try to catch it.  There are enough safety features on modern guns that catching it won’t prevent anything from happening except a little scratching when it hits, and may expose you to pulling the trigger of your weapon.  For instance, Ruger’s revolvers have their transfer bar, other makers have their features.

Again, do not try to catch a falling gun.  Ever.  My apologies for the awful music.  And for heaven’s sake, drop the gun, and drop the lawsuit.

In case you haven’t noticed, the progressives talk to each other, or at least have unwritten signals where they focus on the same things like a hive in swarm behavior.  One such common thing is smart guns again.  Obama’s call was the latest signal to the hive to push smart guns again.

David Codrea fisks the smart gun crowd in his latest, and says “Despite it being an open forum, not one of the anti-gun “professionals” I took on has seen fit to engage, probably because they know they’d be further exposed as the agenda frauds they are.”  The comments really are astute, and I won’t steal the thunder by repeating them here.  You have to go read it all yourself, and in fact, you need to in order to understand what I’m about to say.

One year ago I said this.

… let’s talk yet again about smart gun technology.  I am a registered professional engineer, and I spend all day analyzing things and performing calculations.  Let’s not speak in broad generalities and murky platitudes (such as “good enough”).  That doesn’t work with me.  By education, training and experience, I reject such things out of hand.  Perform a fault tree analysis of smart guns.  Use highly respected guidance like the NRC fault tree handbook.

Assess the reliability of one of my semi-automatic handguns as the first state point, and then add smart gun technology to it, and assess it again.  Compare the state points.  Then do that again with a revolver.  Be honest.  Assign a failure probability of greater than zero (0) to the smart technology, because you know that each additional electronic and mechanical component has a failure probability of greater than zero.

Get a PE to seal the work to demonstrate thorough and independent review.  If you can prove that so-called “smart guns” are as reliable as my guns, I’ll pour ketchup on my hard hat, eat it, and post video for everyone to see.  If you lose, you buy me the gun of my choice.  No one will take the challenge because you will lose that challenge.  I’ll win.  Case closed.  End of discussion.

I’ll still eat my hard hat covered in ketchup, and I hate ketchup.  To date, no one has taken me up on my offer.  I don’t expect anyone will.

Read all of David’s piece here.