News from North Carolina.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) – North Carolina Republicans completed a push Wednesday to eliminate the state’s long-held requirement that a handgun buyer obtain a permit from the local sheriff. But the repeal is likely to get vetoed by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who supports more gun-access restrictions.

The Senate voted 27-20 along party lines to approve a House bill that would end the pistol purchase permitting system. The current law directs a sheriff to perform a background check on applicants, evaluate their character and ensure the gun will be use for a lawful purpose.

Any Cooper veto would likely survive an override effort since there are enough Democrats in each chamber opposing the measure. The GOP-controlled House approved the measure in May on a near party-line vote.

The removal has the backing of the group representing the state’s sheriffs, which for years opposed a repeal. The North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association reversed itself this year, saying the background check is redundant given the federal background checks that licensed gun dealers must conduct before a sale are more comprehensive and reveal possible problems, such as mental health commitments or substance abuse.

Oh I can assure you that Cooper the goober will veto it.  Unfortunately, Wake and Mecklenburg Counties control too much of the vote to give us a patriotic governor.  At least he has the House and Senate to hold him in check or things would be much worse.

News from South Carolina.

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (WPDE) — The new Open Carry law went into effect in South Carolina on Aug. 15, which means people can now legally have their handguns visible, as long as they have a concealed weapons permit.

South Carolina law enforcement officers now have to think twice before approaching someone carrying a handgun.

That’s because before the new Open Carry law, police could approach anyone who had a visible handgun in public areas because it was illegal.

Myrtle Beach Police Captain Eric DiLorenzo said there are now other factors to consider before stopping someone with a visible handgun.

For example, police would have to consider if there’s a threat to the public or probable cause.

“A visible weapon with no other factors present does not give police the right to detain someone,” said Capt. DiLorenzo.

Yes, and a thousand times yes.  This is correct.  S.C. has no stop and identify statute, and simply detaining someone for doing something legal runs afoul of the concept of a “Terry Stop.”

It sounds like someone has been reading TCJ.  And let’s hope he and all other CLEOs are training their folks just like this.

News from South Carolina.

In hotels, though, gun owners will have additional rights, and will likely be allowed to carry their weapons into the hotel and up to their rooms, regardless of what hotel owners say.

As it should be.  If I stay on a hotel, it is my home for the night.  I have as much God-given right to self defense there as anywhere else.

But there’s something more interesting in this article.  The author cites 707 Gun Shop owner Robert Battista in the caption to a video saying “Robert Battista, 707 Gun Shop owner, is opposed to a law allowing anyone to buy and openly carry a weapon in South Carolina.”

So I figured that Robert is either an idiot (it has never been the case that anyone can purchase a firearm) and allowed himself to be used by the media, or friendly to tyrants.

Listen to the video.  It’s worse than that.  First of all, he isn’t in favor of constitutional carry, but prefers what he calls “national carry” where every state is the same and it’s all controlled by the FedGov.  So he isn’t just friendly with tyrants, he is a tyrant himself.

Second, he lies about S.C.  He says it is a tourist state.  That’s not correct at all.  Myrtle Beach may be a tourist destination (a poor one at that), but the upper part of the state has the largest inland port in the Southeast, and the scale of the industrial production between Greenville, S.C., and Charlotte, N.C., would stagger anyone.

Third, he says that it’s going to be a “law enforcement nightmare” if S.C. passes constitutional carry.  This, despite the fact that in the 22 other states that passed constitutional carry haven’t experienced a nightmare, and blood isn’t running in the streets.  He’s lying.  He isn’t just fabulating or exaggerating, he’s lying.

Fourth, he lies again and says that the people who want constitutional carry are the people who can’t pass the background check.  What a liar, and what an idiot.  You can’t purchase without filling out Form 4473 (unfortunately), and the people who are pushing constitutional carry are patriots like you and me.

He wants the schema where you just have to ask the government for the permit.  “All you have to do is ask,” he says.

His accent gives him away.  He’s not a native South Carolinian.  He’s from out of state.  Go home, tyrant.  And to any readers in his area, never visit his store.

Via Hot Air, communication from what’s left of the U.S. embassy in Kabul.

U.S. government-provided flights are departing. U.S. citizens, LPRs, and their spouses and unmarried children (under age 21) should consider travelling to Hamid Karzai International Airport.   You should plan to enter the airport at Camp Sullivan. From the HKIA Airport South Traffic Circle, head east for 1km and turn right on to Camp Sullivan.   Please note that gates may change frequently and that we will provide updates as necessary.

THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT CANNOT ENSURE SAFE PASSAGE TO THE HAMID KARZAI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT.…

Please be advised that a significant number of individuals have registered and space on these flights is available on a first come, first serve basis. You may be required to wait at the airport for a significant amount of time until space is available…

Do not call the U.S. Embassy in Kabul for details or updates about the flight. Do not travel to the airport until you have been informed by email that departure options exist. We will continue to provide periodic updates to this message.

Mike McDaniel makes this observation.

The airport in Kabul is surrounded by the city—easy for the Taliban to surround and control—and has a single runway.  The Taliban has surrounded the airport.  They control all access, and up to 40,000 Americans are cut off behind enemy lines, and so are innumerable nationals from allied countries.  Our government has no idea how many Americans are actually there, and they’re telling them not to call, but to go to a website to “register” for permission to be evacuated and/or telling them to go to the airport(?!).

Bagram Air Base, which was everything Kabul’s airport is not—defensible–was evacuated and abandoned, and as throughout the country, all manner of military equipment including armored vehicles, fixed and rotary winged aircraft, munitions and weapons, was left behind.  The Taliban own it, all of it.

I was an enlisted man in the USAF during the cold war, not a field grade officer, not a general.  I run this scruffy little blog, but even I know when withdrawing from a hostile country, you first evacuate all American civilians and allies, then all native civilians and others, allies you promised to protect.  Who could possibly want another hostage crisis?  Then you fly out all our military equipment, everything that could in any way help our enemies, and if you can’t fly it out, you utterly destroy it.  You destroy all our facilities to deny them to the enemy.  Only then do you evacuate every American service member, maintaining sufficient air cover to ensure their safe evacuation.  And you don’t do it all at once.

Apparently, no one inside the beltway getting “woke,” reading Karl Marx and putting on lipstick had time to learn to perform a failure modes and effects analysis, or how to do MORT (Management Oversight and Risk Tree) analysis.  Or even to learn basic planning or logistics skills.

Finally, SedDef Austin says this.  “I don’t have the capability to go out and extend operations currently into Kabul.”  While U.S. troops are stateside sitting through gender bender classes, this chaos ensues and the SecDef hasn’t the “capability” to do anything about it.

Ponder that for a while.

A picture says everything about the state of affairs and the fear that grips the area.

Some of you will say “I told you so” concerning the brilliance of the 6.5 Grendel when we’ve discussed this in the past.  But one nice thing about this cartridge is that an upper swap combined with another magazine gives you another rifle.  Buying a 6.5 Creedmoor rifle, for example, means switching to a completely different rifle, i.e., an AR-10 rather than an AR-15, with all of its recoil, weight and nonstandard parts lists.

There is this recent article from Recoil.  Here is a fairly recent video.  AR15.com does a gell test with the 6.5 Grendel.

And finally, near the end of last year, Ryan Muckenhirn did a very good discussion of the cartridge.

Anyway, it seems like a good upper to have, as well as a legitimate White Tail cartridge. It didn’t seem to catch on as fast as the 6.5 Creedmoor, but it wasn’t a “flash in the pan” either.

News from the viper’s nest.

Every day that goes by further exonerates my choice for vote during the primaries and further shows Trump to have been a weak ineffective, confused, befuddled, and rudderless leader.

If the other two goobers would shut up, this would have been an absolutely great video.  I could listen to Ryan teach me for hours.  The two goobers made it just a great video.

Reuters.

TOKYO, Aug 17 (Reuters) – The Russian Kalashnikov AK-47 and its derivatives have long been the assault rifle of choice for militant groups because of their rugged design, but some Taliban fighters are trading them in for captured U.S. guns as Afghanistan’s government collapses.

Video and pictures published by the Taliban on Twitter and elsewhere show fighters carrying M4 carbines and M16 rifles discarded by Afghan army units. Other images show Taliban forces capturing abandoned government vehicles.

Because it’s a better rifle.

Via David Codrea, this summary at Reason.

The Government has failed to show that there is a reasonable fit between their stated objective of promoting public safety and the 10-day permit use period imposed by HRS § 134-2(e). The 10-day permit use period for handguns does not survive intermediate scrutiny….

[As to the 5-day inspection period requirement], the Government [again] wholly fails to demonstrate how the in-person inspection and registration requirement furthers these interests. It merely states that “ensuring that the registration information is accurate, ensuring that the firearm complies with Hawaii law, and confirming the identity of the firearm can be easily accomplished simply by bringing the firearm to the registration for inspection.”

This bald statement is not enough to meet the Government’s burden. “To survive intermediate scrutiny, the defendants must show ‘reasonable inferences based on substantial evidence’ that the statutes are substantially related to the governmental interest.” Here, the Government has provided no evidence whatsoever in support of its position. The Government has provided no legislative history speaking to the legislature’s reasons for amending the statute. It has not shown that inaccurate registration was a problem affecting public safety (or even a problem at all) prior to enactment of the 2020 in-person inspection and registration requirement, nor has it provided any studies, examples from other jurisdictions, or any other type of evidence suggesting that an in-person inspection and registration requirement would ameliorate such a problem.

In absence of concrete evidence, the only support that the Government offers is conjecture. Defendant asserts that in-person inspection and registration promotes public safety by requiring that the police directly inspect the serial number on the gun itself, rather than the number as reported by the buyer and (separately) by the seller on the permit. Specifically, the Government speculates that “[s]ome people might innocently make mistakes in transcribing serial numbers or other identifying information” or may be unaware that their gun’s identifying marks or other attributes have been impermissibly altered. And, the Government hypothesizes, individuals may not be aware of these errors or inconsistencies until they bring their firearm to the police station to have it physically inspected. But this hypothetical falls short under intermediate scrutiny. To meet its burden, the Government must “present some meaningful evidence, not mere assertions, to justify its predictive judgments.”

Thus, it once again appears that the Government’s only permissible argument is that common sense shows the law is reasonably related to its interest in promoting public safety. But the notion that in-person inspection and registration promotes public safety is not a matter of common sense. First, as stated above, in the absence of any evidence to that end, it is not a common-sense conclusion that mistakes in registration were a problem prior to enactment of the  in-person inspection and registration requirement. Indeed, there is redundancy built into the registration process even without the in-person requirement—both the firearm seller and buyer must provide the serial number and other identifying information about the firearm. As Plaintiffs point out, “it strains credulity that both a firearms store and a buyer would both fail to properly transcribe numbers or realize” that the gun has been impermissibly altered.

Second, as the D.C. Circuit pointed out in Heller v. District of Columbia (D.C. Cir. 2015), requiring individuals to bring firearms into the police station for in-person inspection and registration may “more likely be a threat to public safety [because] there is a risk that the gun may be stolen en route or that the would-be registrant may be arrested or even shot by a police officer seeing a ‘man with a gun.'” While these possibilities—like the Government’s hypothetical about mistaken transcription—are no more than conjecture, they demonstrate that it is not a simple matter of common sense that in-person inspection and registration promotes public safety.

Finally, it is again worth noting that Hawaii is the only state in the country to require in-person inspection and registration of firearms. As in the case of the 10-day permit use period, if it were truly a matter of common sense that in-person inspection and registration promoted public safety—or that misidentification in the absence of in-person inspection and registration was a problem—one would expect additional states to maintain similar requirements. The Government has failed to show that the in-person inspection and registration requirement is reasonably tailored to a significant, substantial, or important government interest. HRS § 134-3(c)’s in-person inspection and registration requirement does not survive intermediate scrutiny.

Reason ends with this: “Congratulations to Alan Beck and Stephen D. Stamboulieh, who represented the challengers.”

Stephen Stamboulieh is a friend of TCJ and I would like to say congratulations.  I’ve held for a long time now that the fertile soil for gun rights – and recognition of all God-given rights for that matter – is local and state.  The rapid expansion of open and constitutional carry across America has demonstrated this axiom right.

Fox News.

‘America Reports’ host Sandra Smith announces that the Taliban are going house to house in Kabul looking for Afghan Special Forces members who fought alongside the U.S. military

Uh oh.  That’s not good news for them.

I told my wife tonight that if we had been in Kabul, I would have told her months ago to pack a few days of clothes because we’re going to the airport the next morning.  The pace of the Taliban offensive and the corollary collapse of the ANA/ANP doesn’t surprise me one bit.  It’s almost as if I predicted all of this years ago.

Yes, I’m sure I did in my book-length blogging on Afghanistan.  I did indeed.

It sounds like they need to be schooled in prepping.

If the ANA SpecOps boys haven’t already left the country via automobile or some other way long ago, they’re in deep trouble.