Articles by Herschel Smith

Ammoland.

While the world’s attention is focused on the horrific events unfolding in Eastern Europe, the Biden-Harris administration quietly unleashed hell on American gun dealers.

As the NRA first noted, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has started revoking licenses of gun dealers for the most minor of paperwork errors – errors that never led to license revocations until Biden took office.

The move was intended to bolster Biden’s politically motivated strategem, which he first announced June 23, 2021, that “rogue” gun dealers are responsible for skyrocketing crime rates in large cities that historically have been controlled by Democrats. The “epidemic of gun violence” wasn’t caused by weak prosecutors who refuse to hold criminals accountable, or gangs or underfunded police departments or by any combination thereof, Biden claimed. It was all the fault of “rogue gun dealers.”

Inner city crime has nothing to do with so-called “rogue” gun dealers.  It has to do with the destruction of the nuclear family and rejection of God’s laws.  We all know that.  This is just another ploy to make it as difficult as they can on firearms manufacturers, dealers and owners.

Having said all of that, I observed some number of months ago that if FFLs want to stay in business in the future, they’re going to have to implement human performance and error reduction tools, to include: (1) routine training and retraining, (2) qualification measures, (3) self check and STAR (stop, think, act and review), (4) independent verification, and so on.

Staying in business will require error-free performance of employees.  In the future, I see no other way.

By the way, as best as I can cipher the statistics, the lowest error rates by industry in the country are nuclear (coming in at the lowest), airlines, and pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors.  The medical profession comes in at one of the highest human error prone professions.  I’m not criticizing – I’m just reporting.

I wouldn’t embed this video except that I have actually talked to people like this.  Yes, to someone who told me he was arming himself (and even minimizing ammunition purchases) but planned to take what ammunition he had and steal ammo and food from other people.

I’m not kidding.

I did this on Saturday.  I shot at clays with a Beretta 1301, Langdon Tactical.  And yes, I was able to connect, but it’s more challenging with a 18.5″ barrel.

Did you make it to the range over the weekend, and what did you shoot?

This is meant to be a tactical analysis, and also to admit I was wrong about certain things a number of months (or years) ago when I discussed 5GW.

The notion behind the F-35 was communications, control of the sky, ability to leverage connection with MilStar Uplink with other air assets, command, and so forth.  That’s a simplification, and for the rest of the story you can find better explanations of it online.

True enough, the F-35 program has been disastrous and it would have been better in retrospect to have reengineered and retrofitted the F-22 which was a proven platform.  I also won’t hear of any talk of replacement of the A-10, which only an idiot would advocate.

However, it seems to me that the Russians are approaching the battle space as if they are fighting WWII.  Ukraine, on the other hand, is using modern anti-tank rocket designs to their advantage, as well as leveraging drones to kill tanks, refueling trucks and APCs.  Two things happen when the armor is found and Ukraine has the assets to attack.  First, the armor gets killed.  Second, the soldiers in the armor either die or quickly abandon the armor and scatter.

Russia is driving tanks and other armor in large, slow moving, laborious, lumbering columns, all of them susceptible to stand off weapons.  This makes them susceptible to enfilade fires.  If they break out of the lumbering columns, they splinter to the point that they are susceptible to defilade fires.  Some of the targeting is being done during the daylight hours, but a lot of it is being done at night, because as I read in one account, “They can’t see us at night.”  That report was specifically pertaining to civilian drones, as small as a couple of square feet, being operated by civilians, those same civilians working in military complexes and alongside military observers and tacticians.  Once again for emphasis, these are civilians, using small civilian-owned drones.  Frankly, I don’t think it would matter if they could see them in the daylight either.  They would be looking up in the sky all the time for something that looked like smaller than a bird.

The drone usage is for surveillance and intelligence gathering.  From their vantage, they can send ground pounders to use stand off anti-tank weapons or send weapons-carrying drones to perform armor killing functions.  Radar cannot see these small drones.

To be sure, Russia can still use large artillery and fighter jet strikes to damage infrastructure, and they are doing just that.  Also, when the battle is between ground pounders, it’s brutal, just as it always has been throughout history.

But a tank must be able to function within parameters: weight, ability keep from sinking into the ground, fuel consumption, and armor protection.  The turrets and rear ends of tanks are usually much less armored than the front.  It’s impossible to design a tank that has thick armor on all sides and the top.  It would be logistically unsustainable and wouldn’t move.  Engines would tear up, and mechanics would get shot while trying to make them work again.

It would be interesting to see how the M1A1 variants hold up under these circumstances.  They might do better than the older Russian designs because they move faster, have explosive reactive armor, and are more off-road capable than the Russian tanks.  But who knows?

But you can bet that tacticians in the Pentagon and at Leavenworth are today watching video very closely and asking some hard questions about heavy, lumbering warfare in light of the concepts of 5GW.

At the beginning of the discussions about 5GW, you could have colored me very skeptical.  Today I’m convinced.  With miniature drones the real-time intelligence and surveillance capabilities are endless.  The next barrier for these drones is the use of AI to let them all talk to each other and learn from their losses and successes, operating more autonomously when they perform proper enemy ID and surveil the area for unacceptable collateral damage potential.

Another thing this shows (and I was right about this prediction) is that the Marine Corps was stupid to have ever pushed the ridiculous EFV (Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle) to the point that the Senate had to kill it for them.  And they were smart to let it go when they were told no.  With drones and modern rocket designs, no EFV would have ever landed on any beach, anywhere.

One thing is certain.  The days of lumbering columns of tanks conducting near peer warfare on the field of battle is over forever.  No one will try it again, and if they do, they’re fools.

The two things most important in this war are ground pounders and control of the skies (and not necessarily control of the skies at tens of thousands of feet).

Andy at Practical Accuracy sends this video of shooting his RRA rifle at 1000 yards with iron sights.

Andy is a good shooter.  I can’t see a quarter that far without magnification though.  I’ll say again, Rock River Arms rifles are shooters.  We’ve discussed it many times before, but the 1:7 twist which is MilSpec was never put in place because of accuracy requirements.  Steve at RRA and I have discussed this before too, and they make their rifles 1:8 (some of them 1:9).

Of Exodus 31:4, John Calvin says this.

It was a disgraceful thing to prostrate themselves before a calf, in which there was no connection or affinity with the glory of God; and with this the Prophet expressly reproaches them, that “they changed their glory ( i. e. , God, in whom alone they should have gloried) into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass.” (Psalms 106:20.) For, if it be insulting to God to force Him into the likeness of men …

But men prostrate themselves before other men all the time, even today, looking for a savior in the form of man (or in this case, an animal).  God is jealous.  There is no more connection or affinity with God among world leaders as with the Ox.  It’s as disgraceful today as it was then.  Truly, this seeking after men as savior is as old as history.

The remedy is found in the Scriptures: “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; The righteous runs into it and is safe.” [Proverbs 18:10]

David Codrea writing at Firearms News.

That includes from the “right” as well as the “left,” and what that’s doing is diverting attention away from the one now-undeniable truth that destroys the “gun control” narrative: An armed populace is essential to a nation’s security. Citizen disarmament works to the advantage of a nation’s enemies.

So, instead of relentlessly hammering that point to where it cannot be ignored by that part of the electorate still receptive to reason, some “conservatives” are dividing into camps and descending into squabbles, with no small amount of name-calling, accusations, and vitriol.

[ … ]

Ehrlich interviewed Lira on YouTube and accepted his assertions unquestioningly when he condemned the arming of citizens and attributed the motive to the “Zelenskyy regime” wanting the Russians to commit “atrocities” (he never seems to say “Putin regime”). “This is clear,” he asserts as Ehrlich nods in agreement, “You don’t hand out weapons to civilians unless you want them to get killed.”

” … are dividing into camps and descending into squabbles.”  Dumb self-inflicted wounds.  Sometimes trying to talk to the patriot community is like trying to herd cats.  It’s an “us four and no more” mentality, with the four having to agree on literally everything if the peace is to be kept.

As for “You don’t hand out weapons …, I stopped right there.  I hate the controllers.  All of them.

Make sure to read David’s insightful piece this weekend.

A number of years ago, new fuel assemblies cost on the order of $750,000.  Today I suspect it’s more like $1 Million.  That’s for fairly low enrichment UO2 (5% or less), a 15×15 or 17×17 assembly.  Tomorrow’s microreactor designs will have up to 20% or even higher enrichment.

Now, the larger reactors need somewhere on the order of 70 – 80 feed assemblies to operate for a full cycle of 1.5 years.  The rest are reloaded assemblies, once- or twice-burned.  The smaller reactors won’t need quite that many.

There are still 93 operating reactors in the U.S., supplying a major portion of electricity for Americans.  If you can’t do the math yourself, this represents a staggering monetary gain for people who own the mineral rights to Uranium mines, who can get it out of the ground, and who can enrich it to the required (and future required) enrichments of U-235.

Remember that I told you this war in Ukraine was being fought over energy?

Yes, perhaps you do.  Now go and read these two articles, and when you’re finished, re-read them.  Study them.

ZeroHedge, “Uranium Stocks Soar After U.S. Signals Aid For Nuclear Power.”

Wired, “The Nuclear Reactors of the Future Have a Russia Problem.”

Now, go do what I said.  Read them again.  Don’t comment if you didn’t.  And also recall the WSJ article I previously linked when I told you this war is about energy.  I’m sure by now it’s behind a paywall, but if readers request it, I have the full commentary and I’ll put it up in another post.

Your rulers have sold you down the river, boy.  Sold you down the river, boy.  Sold you down the river.

Jimmy Carter made reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel into something usable again in reactors illegal (He wanted to be a shining beacon to the world, on what I don’t know).  We have no capability to do that today.

Hillary Clinton approved the sale of the mineral rights (Uranium) near the Malheur Preserve to Putin through a Canadian shell company called Uranium One.  She did that as secretary of state, an odd change of positions for the state department.  Right about that time, a very large donation was made to the Clinton Foundation.  That was what the standoff with the Bundy crowd was all about.  FedGov wanted the land there, so they approved a managed burn on a farm and then arrested the farmer and took his land for being “guilty” of arson.  Bundy’s crowd knew that.  Bet you didn’t hear that part of the story, did you?

We haven’t pursued nuclear in America in a very long time.  It was too woke and in vogue to fund solar power.  CEOs flocked to that because it was funded by subsidies and tax relief.  The environmentalists are getting sour on solar, and they will get even more sour when they learn about the toxicants, contaminants and other bad things in the panels and batteries necessary to make it all work (much less the huge pits necessary to dispose of them).  You’re going to see a lot of “Not in my back yard” coming up with those panels and batteries.  Electric cars are a fiction and fantasy – there isn’t enough electricity to power them all up.

We’ve waited far too long to start nuclear, and we haven’t ensured a reliable supply of Uranium to power reactors for the foreseeable future, not for the existing reactors nor the upcoming microreactors (and also consider the needs of the nuclear Navy).  I know what the articles above say about having some in reserve.  It’s price will skyrocket.  Mark my words, write it down today that I told you so.

Electricity is going to get a lot more expensive.  A lot.  Prepare now, and blame your rulers.

Oh, and one more time: This war is being fought over energy, no matter what the other pretexts are.

Police1.

“Of course this makes things much more difficult for our officers. It really limits the scope of the effectiveness in which we can do our jobs. If an officer needs to take a firearm from somebody, I can totally see the potential for that situation to escalate if the person isn’t wanting to and thinks that the officer doesn’t have a right to do that,” said Hanceville Police Chief Bob Long.

But at least someone makes some sense of this.

David Nunn, retired law enforcement officer and General Manager of Cullman Shooting Sports, says that the change in the law should result in little-to-no change in an officers day to day operations.

“Any officer worth his salt should already be treating every individual they come in contact with as if they are armed. They should approach people with courtesy and respect, but with the idea they are in possession of a weapon of some kind also.”

Cullman Police Chief Kenny Culpepper agrees for the most part, but says an important tool has been taken away from officers.

“Things shouldn’t look that much different as far as how officers conduct themselves, we are trained to be prepared for that worst case situation, although permits were a useful tool that we could use to make sure the guys that didn’t need to have firearms didn’t have them, and now we don’t have that.”

Oh blah, blah, blah, prattle and blather and drivel.

If someone is breaking the law, then arrest and disarm them.  If they’re not, whether they’re carrying a weapon is none of your business because it’s not against the law to carry without a permit now.  Whether they filled out Form 4473 or bought it in a person-to-person transfer is also none of your business.

See how easily I solved that problem for you?

As for the Alabama cops who are still moaning about this, here’s my message: go pound sand.

And what else would I expect to read at Police1 except blather like this.