Articles by Herschel Smith

Outdoor Life.

It’s a hiker’s nightmare: you’re on a remote trail with no cell service when your ankle rolls and breaks. You have no way to contact anyone for help, and no real hope that someone will happen to hike along and find you. As a bonus, you’re surrounded by bear scat.

That’s the position one hiker found herself in during a hike with her husband through Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness Area. They were seven miles away from the trailhead—too far for the injured woman to hike out. So her husband made the tough call to leave his injured wife behind.

When he made it back to the trailhead, he made contact with authorities. As there were no local search and rescue organizations for this remote corner of the state, Two Bear Air Rescue attempted to send a helicopter to her location, near the Swift Dam along a fork of Birch Creek. But strong winds prevented the rescuers from landing near the injured hiker, and the copter was instead forced to drop off rescuers a mile and a half away.

When they hiked to the injured woman’s location, rescuers noticed bear scat all around her.

“There was grizzly bear poop everywhere,” they told the Idaho Statesman. After tending to the hiker’s injuries—her leg was broken in two places above the ankle—the rescuers then carried her piggyback to the landing site, arriving just as the sun was setting.

While the SAR team was able to get to the injured hiker before a grizzly encounter, rescuers don’t want hikers to take any chances, and they posted this reminder on their Facebook page: “When deep in the backcountry, bring a satellite communication device to save valuable time and enable the group to stay together.”

I’ve carried a satellite texting device with me in the deep backcountry before.  We found that it took between an hour and several hours to land with the recipient of the message, so there’s a delay from device to satellite to cell service to phone.  But even that would have been better than nothing.

That’s a decision I wouldn’t have made, even without communications gear.  I would have made her as comfortable as possible, prepared for the night by finding a protected and covered place to sleep, collected wood for a fire, and worked on a stretcher to drag her out myself.

Leaving her alone would simply not have been an option.

The assault weapons ban hearing is going about as well as you would imagine. Booker asks what the difference is between a semi auto rifle and semi auto handgun. When he gets an answer he doesn't like, he immediately pivots to Dr. Fuddlore pic.twitter.com/3OooAkZYDg

— Bad Weapon Takes (@BadWeaponTakes) July 20, 2022

By 500 yards the velocity of a 5.56mm round is about 1400 FPS out of a 20″ barrel (less out of 14.5″ or 16″).  The notion that a 55 grain bullet travelling at 1400 FPS could penetrate ballistic plating is so ludicrous that it’s laughable.  That’s similar to the muzzle velocity of a 22 LR.

The 5.56mm is great for CQB, but its strong suit doesn’t happen to be ballistic plate penetration at 500 yards.

The woman clearly doesn’t know anything about firearms or ballistics.  That’s clearly a gaggle of clowns twirling balls and riding unicycles in circles.  It’s just a freak show and circus.

Via WiscoDave.

Source.

Early on July 6, 2021, Leah Lokan awoke to a 417-pound grizzly bear a few feet from her tent, so close that she heard when the bear “huffed” at her head.

“Bear! Bear!” Lokan yelled, prompting Joe and Kim Cole — two other cyclists camping in the small town of Ovando as they trekked across Montana — to spring from their nearby tent, armed with bear spray and clamoring as much as possible, according to a 26-page report addressed by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee’s executive body earlier this month.

The bear fled.

After scaring it off, Lokan, a 65-year-old visiting from Chico, Calif., moved food out of her tent to a nearby building. She armed herself with a can of bear spray. She declined an offer to stay in a hotel for the night. Then, she and the Coles returned to their respective tents.

Lokan’s extra precautionary measures weren’t enough. The bear returned about an hour after the first encounter and mauled her to death.

A year later, wildlife officials said the bear that killed her had developed a “predatory instinct.” Although they couldn’t determine exactly how such an instinct evolved, food and toiletries inside and near Lokan’s tent, as well as the lingering smell of cooked food from July Fourth picnic celebrations, likely played a role.

“While foraging under the cover of darkness in Ovando, perhaps due to a simple movement made by the sleeping victim, or a certain sound made by the victim, the bear reacted,” the committee’s board of review wrote in their Jan. 4 report, which was discussed earlier this month during the executive body’s summer meeting. The 11-member review board included officials from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and the U.S. Forest Service.

The bolded section highlights three bad decisions.  She should never have had food in her tent to begin with.  Next, bear spray isn’t enough.  Third, a hotel rather than a tent near city establishments would have been a better choice.

Getting rid of food is essential.  Protection is necessary.  A large bore handgun would have been the right medicine.

The ATF wants to perform an audit in the show-me state.  From reader Wes, the Missouri AG told the ATF to stay away from Missouri.  This is a good letter, but misses one important aspect.  More on that in a moment.

Here’s an update from Sheriff Bryan Whitney.

“As the sheriff of Scotland County, I want all my citizens to know that I will not allow, cooperate or release any CCW information to the FBI, ‘even at the threat of a federal arrest,’” Republican Scotland County Sheriff Bryan Whitney wrote to residents of his community on Monday.

“Point Blank, ‘I will go down with the ship if need be,’” the letter, which was reviewed by Fox News Digital on Tuesday, said.

Whitney said he was prompted to send the letter to his community in northeastern Missouri after he was alerted to the FBI audit set to be carried out in 24 counties in Missouri next month. It’s unclear which counties will be included in the audit.

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt also demanded that the FBI “cease their attempts to illegally obtain information from local sheriffs on Missourians who have concealed carry permits,” and sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray on the matter last week.

“The FBI has absolutely no business poking around in the private information of those who have obtained a concealed carry permit in Missouri,” Schmitt said, according to a press release. “The Second Amendment rights of Missourians will absolutely not be infringed on my watch. I will use the full power of my Office to stop the FBI, which has become relentlessly politicized and has virtually no credibility, from illegally prying around in the personal information of Missouri gun owners.”

Schmitt outlined to Wray that under Missouri law it is illegal to share the confidential list with the federal government. The law was passed after “it became known that the Obama Administration wanted to know which Missourians had firearms, supposedly to establish who was entitled to federal benefits.”

No, no, no, no, no, and a thousand times no.  NO!

Don’t go “down with the ship.”  Do your job and keep the ship from sinking to begin with.

Send your deputies to arrest agents of the FedGov as soon as they cross the county line and throw them in prison.  Only release them at the county line, sending them packing on their way back to whatever rock they crawled out from under.

Do the right thing, Sheriff.  Protect the citizens of your county.  This is what the AG should have said.  They will be arrested if they try to do this.

I cannot locate any email address for the Sheriff or I would send this to him for encouragement to do the right thing.

Source.

“He engaged the gunman from quite a distance with a handgun and was very proficient in that, very tactically sound,” Ison said of Dicken. “And as he moved to close in on the suspect, he was also motioning for people to exit behind him.”

Dicken fired 10 rounds from his handgun, according to the chief, and that as he fired, the gunman “attempted to retreat back into the restroom and failed, and fell to the ground after being shot.”

Concerned for his backstop, long distance shooting, ten rounds discharged quickly, and people saved.  To be more specific, Eli Dicken shot a Glock 9mm from 40 yards away, discharging ten rounds within 15 seconds, and landing 8 out of 10 rounds.

We should all be so good with our handguns.  Not many of us will ever carry a long gun around in public.  It pays to practice with your carry gun.

He should have said “I do not allow law enforcement on my property without a warrant.  I’m calling 911 now about your trespassing, and if you return, you must have a warrant.

This is just an idiotic fishing expedition.  That cop who’s with the ATF agents should be ashamed of himself.

AP.

A bystander’s decision to shoot a man who opened fire at an Indiana mall was a rare occurrence of someone stepping in to try to prevent multiple casualties before police could arrive.

Police on Monday praised the quick actions of 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, an armed shopper who killed 20-year-old Jonathan Sapirman after Sapirman killed three people and wounded two others at a mall in the Indianapolis suburb of Greenwood.

“Many more people would have died last night if not for a responsible armed citizen,” police Chief Jim Ison said Monday, repeatedly calling Dicken a “good Samaritan” and his response “heroic.”

It isn’t common for mass shootings to be stopped in such fashion. From 2000 to 2021, fewer than 3% of 433 active attacks in the U.S. ended with a civilian firing back, according to the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University. The researchers define the attacks as one or more people targeting multiple people.

It was far more common for police or bystanders to subdue the attacker or for police to kill the person, according to the center’s national data, which were recently cited by The New York Times.

In a quarter of the shootings, the attacker stopped by leaving the area, similar to what happened during the July 4 parade in Highland Park, Illinois, where seven people were killed.

“There’s been this statement: ‘The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.’ That’s factually inaccurate because of the word ‘only,’” said Adam Lankford, a criminal justice expert at the University of Alabama who has written books and research papers about mass shootings.

And on and on the commentary drones.

To begin with, definitions are important.  Self defense events happen every day in America, whether at home or out and about.  I write on firearms and 2A rights, so I bypass chances to pen something else on self defense events literally every day to focus more on the mechanical and materials engineering of firearms, ammunition performance, method of carry, training, and the things that interest me.  The author has subdivided his topic as best as he can in order to make his most convincing case.  He has neglected literally thousands of cases of interest.

But even then, is he correct?  Maybe not.

UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh wrote in the Washington Post on April 20, 2015: “Have civilians with permitted concealed handguns stopped such mass shootings before?”  We provided Volokh with a list of such cases, which he used.

Below, we have collected news stories on more cases of permit holders stopping mass public shootings with their handguns (we separately collect cases where concealed handguns are used to stop other crimes).  There is no reason to believe that this list is comprehensive, given how little media coverage is devoted to these heroic acts.  In addition, we make no attempt here to list here the vast number of defensive gun uses in general that are reported daily in the US.

Permit holders stopped some mass public shootings that gained extensive news coverage, but only a few stories mentioned that it was a permit holder who stopped the attack. The stories frequently get other facts wrong.

The researchers list more than sixty times permit holders have stopped likely mass shootings in public.  I judge a few of them to be not applicable for various reasons, but that doesn’t negate the force of the copious data.

The author at AP did a lousy job of research, but then, that has become the standard for the legacy media.

To be sure, none of this has anything to do with God-given rights.  If a mass shooting can theoretically occur, and a carrier can theoretically stop it to prevent loss of life to himself or others, then it’s wise to carry and he or she certainly has the right to do so regardless of whether bogus research demonstrates that the result will be statistically insignificant.  What’s statistically insignificant to the writer is significant if you have a firearm trained on you as a potential victim.

This just all goes to show how absurd most reporting is.  Thus, unless the source is about some new firearm, some new ammunition or a ballistic test of older ammo designs for comparison, methods of maintenance, and the mechanical aspect of firearms, I’m not likely to link any legacy media source unless it’s to lampoon them or call out error.  And I won’t go behind a paywall even to do that.

That’s about all the legacy media is good for these days.  Some writer (and editor) actually thinks he’s earned his pay today for that tripe.

Breaking as of 8:32pm: Good Samaritan with gun credited for stopping active shooter inside Greenwood Park Mall south of Indianapolis. Police confirm 4 people dead including the shooter and two people injured. They’re being treated at Eskenazi hospital in Indy. @wrtv pic.twitter.com/wf3i0EIJfl

— Rafael Sánchez (@RafaelOnTV) July 18, 2022

There is no ethical or even remotely psychologically healthy context in which this or any LE personnel would have been laughing or smiling in Uvalde — he's in a building where children and their teachers are being murdered in real time. pic.twitter.com/1cU3SSmW0I

— Dr. Jack Brown (@DrGJackBrown) July 14, 2022

Hey, it’s only kids being murdered.  What’s not to smile about?

Home school your children.

Source.

These are tough times for military recruiting. Almost across the board, the armed forces are experiencing large shortfalls in enlistments this year — a deficit of thousands of entry-level troops that is on pace to be worse than any since just after the Vietnam War. It threatens to throw a wrench into the military’s machinery, leaving critical jobs unfilled and some platoons with too few people to function.

But longer-term demographic trends are also taking a toll. Less than a quarter of young American adults are physically fit to enlist and have no disqualifying criminal record, a proportion that has shrunk steadily in recent years. And shifting attitudes toward military service mean that now only about one in 10 young people say they would even consider it.

To try to counter those forces, the military has pushed enlistment bonuses as high as $50,000, and is offering “quick ship” cash of up to $35,000 for certain recruits who can leave for basic training in 30 days. To broaden the recruiting pool, the service branches have loosened their restrictions on neck tattoos and other standards. In June, the Army even briefly dropped its requirement for a high school diploma, before deciding that was a bad move and rescinding the change.

The Army is the largest of the armed forces, and the recruiting shortfall is hitting it the hardest. As of late June, it had recruited only about 40 percent of the roughly 57,000 new soldiers it wants to put in boots by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

Even with that much cash, there’s still a shortfall of recruits, and the ones they’re getting stand a larger chance of being subpar.

But they’re being dishonest about why.  This does a better job of explaining it.

Imagine you are an eighteen-year-old, white, Christian male in Georgia with a family history of military service. As you progressed through your teen years, you watched Confederate statues being torn down and military bases being renamed, endless media and elitist demonization of your culture as racist and deplorable and backwards, and military and civilian leadership that thinks diversity and inclusion (i.e. fewer white men) is best thing since sliced bread. Would you volunteer? Identity politics works both ways. Trash my tribe and I won’t associate with you, let alone risk my life. It shouldn’t be a shock, then, that those expressing a “great deal of trust and confidence in the military” dropped from 70 percent in 2018 to 45 percent today.

The long-term health of the all-volunteer force that began in 1973 now appears to be in serious jeopardy. The general public’s declining connection and trust in the nation and its institutions paired with the elites’ incessant culture war targeting the very Americans who traditionally served in the highest numbers spells trouble.

Combine this with some 60,000 enlisted men and officers who don’t want to take the debilitating jab, who may soon be fired, and it all makes for a terrible situation of the U.S. military.

This is basically very easy to understand.  Patriots don’t want to serve in a woke military.  The woke don’t want to serve in a patriotic military where instead of job training they may get sent to fight in whatever latest foreign misadventure the rulers see fit.

It’s all very logical and predictable and by design.