Articles by Herschel Smith

Those poor folks just take in on the chin, yes? I’ve exchanged email with the president of the Hawaii rifle and pistol club. Nice guy. I’m sorry for this, but after all, it is a communist state superintended by a communist Ninth Circuit.

Note the horns of a dilemma they impale the supposedly free men on: You can’t have our permission without an approved instructor, and we don’t approve any instructors.

A friend responds, would be great if someone enforced the laws on the books, huh?

18 U.S.C. § 241 (conspiracy against rights)

18 U.S.C. § 242 (deprivation of rights under color of law)

TTAG.

Shortly after 5:30 a.m. on Wednesday, officers responded to the location for a report of an attempted home invasion robbery. Police spoke to the homeowner, who said three men tried to break down his door but were unsuccessful and fled the scene.

The SPD says the suspects tried a second time at around 12:25 a.m. the next morning.

Authorities say four men returned to the house to try breaking the door down with a sledgehammer.

The homeowner told police he was sleeping and woke up to loud banging at the door. He armed himself with a rifle, and when the suspects tried getting inside, he shot at them.

Most of the time home invasions are conducted by more than one person. The only thing missing here is the common protocol of the criminals to shout “Police, Police …”  Including those who are actually police.

Source.

Gaston Glock, the man responsible for developing the namesake weapon, died on Wednesday at the age of 94.

Glock developed the famous handgun in the 1980s, when the Austrian military was looking for a new, innovative weapon. Until then, the Glock company had made military knives and consumer goods including curtain rods.

Glock assembled a team of firearms experts and came up with the Glock 17, a lightweight semi-automatic gun largely made of plastic. The revolutionary design – with a frame made of a high-strength, nylon-based polymer and only the slide made of metal – beat several other companies’ blueprints and secured his upstart outfit the contract.

The easily assembled weapon became a global hit, with the Austrian winning loyal followings among police and military across the world.

The Glock has been referenced in numerous films and rap songs, including Snoop Dogg’s “Protocol” and Wu-Tang Clan’s “Da Glock.”

U.S. soldiers found toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein hiding with a Glock in a hole in the ground in 2003. They later presented that weapon to U.S. President George W. Bush.

Glock faced criticism from gun-control advocates who complained that he popularized powerful guns and made them easy to conceal and hold more ammunition.

Glock himself was reclusive, rarely granting interviews, and shunned public debate. In 2000, he refused to join other weapons manufacturers in signing a voluntary gun control deal with the United States.

At the age of 70, he survived an attempt on his life when an investment broker who managed his assets hired a former wrestler to attack him with a rubber hammer, a court heard.

Glock had grown suspicious of how the broker was managing his affairs and had flown to Luxembourg to confront him, lawyers said. He suffered seven blows to the head but fended off the assault. The broker, Charles Ewert, and the attacker, Jacques Pecheur, were both jailed.

His 49-year-old marriage with Helga Glock ended in divorce in 2011 and the pair embarked on a lengthy legal battle over alimony. Soon after, he married his second wife, Kathrin, more than 50 years his junior.

He owned a lakefront mansion and a state-of-the-art equestrian sports center in the province of Carinthia, where celebrities showed up for parties.

With divorce, alimony disputes, theft and attempted murder, it sounds like he lived a troubled life. But there’s no question as to the fact that his gun is ubiquitous.

I don’t own or shoot Glocks or any other striker fired handgun.

GM…🎄

What last minute things are you adding to your wishlist? pic.twitter.com/CqVzGxQfKD

— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) December 24, 2023

Merry Christmas to my loyal readers. I wish you the best for this Christmas day.

Source.

A federal judge in Massachusetts shut down an attempt to block the state’s assault weapons ban Friday, arguing that the law does not break with recent Supreme Court precedent that has severely shaken gun control legislation.

District Judge Dennis Saylor said the state ban keeps with “historical tradition” of gun control regulation, after the high court ruled last year in the landmark New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen decision that all gun control legislation must keep with that tradition.

“The relevant history affirms the principle that in 1791, as now, there was a tradition of regulating ‘dangerous and unusual’ weapons – specifically, those that are not reasonably necessary for self-defense,” Saylor wrote.

The judge added that the assault weapons in question are “not suitable for ordinary self-defense purposes, and pose substantial dangers far beyond those inherent in the design of ordinary firearms.”

And that, dear folks, is all it takes to prove yourself an idiot.

Not suitable for ordinary self-defense purposes.  Substantial dangers far beyond those inherent in the design of ordinary firearms. Now, try to reconcile those two passages.

No, you can’t. Because that 30-06 or 700 Rem Mag sitting in your gun safe will do far more damage than a 5.56mm round. And there were no precedents in 1791 regulating weapons, and there is nothing unusual about AR-15s when so many tens of millions of people own them.

And you know what I see after Heller, McDonald, Caetano and Bruen? I see the supreme court running away from this issue like cowards, especially Barrett. I don’t care whether the court wants to see a full stack of prior decisions on this issue. There is nothing more necessary to make this decision. All the facts are in and have been for decades.  It could be a single paragraph long. Or even shorter.

“AR-15’s are not unusual weapons in America. Therefore, they cannot be banned.”

There, I did it for them.  No muss, no fuss. It wasn’t hard. But it must be hard for them.

Dummy.

Although Gov. Kathy Hochul says a bill she signed into law this week won’t “ban hunting or fishing” in New York, it does prohibit what she deems “the wasteful taking of certain wildlife” in the state.

The law takes aim at hunting contests — competitions, tournaments or derbys — that are held for prize or entertainment purposes, making them unlawful. Only hunting contests organized for the targeted management of wildlife populations will be allowed in New York.

A release from the governor’s office notes that animals such as coyotes, crows, squirrels and rabbits are often killed in large numbers as part of these events.

“Protecting wildlife is critical to fostering the integrity and resilience of our environment and our outdoor recreation economy,” Hochul said. “This legislation establishes strong safeguards for our state’s precious wildlife species and protects our important fishing and hunting traditions.”

Precious, even!  Coyotes are precious and the environment won’t be resilient without them!

“Any wildlife killed during these activities become the property of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation,” the release says.

Oh yes.  You can’t hunt the king’s forests, for they belong to the king. In this case, no one can hunt because the king says so.

Kathy may regret that decision when even more people move out of the state, hunters flee the area never to come back with their money, and Coyotes kill pets galore.

And for any sporting even like a tournament, as long as tags are unaffected, i.e., the culling of the herd remains unchanged because tags are held constant, why would it matter how or when they were harvested as long as it was in-season?

Nice job, dummy. If you still live in NY, I hope you love the Coyotes too! Around these parts we shoot them, but I hear that in New York they’re very sweet.

And if you still live in NY … why?

Epoch Times.

ILION, N.Y.—In the village of Ilion, New York, 80 miles west of the state capital in Albany, residents are mourning the departure of gunmaker Remington Arms Co. after two centuries of continuous operation.

Without fanfare, the company announced last month that the manufacturing plant would be closing its doors on March 4, 2024.

“I feel like a family member has died,” Ilion Mayor John Stephens told The Epoch Times. “My dad raised four kids on a paycheck from there for 37 years. He walked to work and carried his lunch every day.”

Mr. Stephens said no one expected the announcement a week after Thanksgiving that the plant was set to close.

On Nov. 30, at 3:26 p.m., the company notified village officials of the decision by email. The message noted that “all separations” with the village would be completed by March 18, 2024.

Likewise, the company notified its 270 employees that they would soon be out of a job.

“They brought the second and third shifts in and said they were done,” Mr. Stephens said. “They notified the first shift in person. I found out through the media. The owner’s group didn’t even contact me.”

Mr. Stephens said the company made the announcement just five months into a newly ratified employee union contract.

“To say we were shocked [by the announcement] is probably an understatement,” the mayor told Ilion’s Village Board of Trustees at a public meeting on Dec. 11.

“In my opinion, it’s unfortunate and extremely unprofessional.”

Remington Arms didn’t return messages from The Epoch Times asking for comment.

Publicly, the company attributed the plant closure in part to a hostile political climate in Albany regarding firearms production.

“I am writing to inform you that RemArms LLC has decided to close its entire operation at 14 Hoefler Avenue, NY 13357,” Remington Arms said in a letter to employees. “The company expects that operations at the Ilion facility will conclude on or about March 4, 2024.”

The Georgia-based company said it would continue to make firearms at its facility in Huntsville, Alabama, which opened in 2014, a year after New York’s passage of the Safe Act, which created stricter gun laws.

The anti-gun political climate in Democrat-controlled Massachusetts prompted competitor Smith & Wesson to move from its longtime base in Springfield to Maryville, Tennessee. The company announced the opening of its new headquarters there in October.

In Ilion, the community reaction to the Remington plant closure has been a sense of loss and bewilderment, Mr. Stephens said.

Many are wondering what will become of the 10,000-square-foot plant and the village’s Remington identity.

Mr. Stephens said residents see the two as synonymous, interwoven by history, culture, and economics.

“Remington is Ilion—Ilion is Remington,” residents here like to say.

Eric Kennedy, who runs the Copper Cafe in the downtown village retail plaza, believes the ripple effect of the closure would impact the businesses that served Remington employees for years to come.

“I’m sure it will affect us. Any time you lose jobs, it affects the area’s economy. It definitely will hurt the economy—small town, big business in the village. It’s going to hurt a lot of families,” Mr. Kennedy told The Epoch Times.

“New York state is not friendly to hunters and sportsmen. That makes a big impact. I don’t blame [Remington] for moving out of state, [but] it’s going to hurt.”

I’m sure it will hurt and it’s all extremely sad, but there are some lessons. I’m not sure why anyone would be “bewildered” by this move.

Similar to the assembly line workers at Ford and GM who believed they should make enough money to be able to send kids to college, buy a house, buy two or three cars and a boat for the lake, there is no way on earth that the wage structure can support that sort of lifestyle for pistol and gun mechanics. It just can’t and that’s the hard truth. Wages must be set by the market or they won’t last.

In this case it’s surprising they lasted as long as they did. Where Remington moved is a right-to-work state. Where Remington left is an anti-gun, anti-business control freak show. Long ago it should have caused the Remington workers to pause and ponder that they were manufacturing firearms that they weren’t allowed to carry on their persons, or weren’t allowed to carry in their car or into the field. Long ago it should have dawned on them that they were funding with their union dues the very people who would kill their business.

To be sure, corporate missteps are always harmful, but pressing on every American worker is the fact that corporate interests are not their interests. Corporate officers will never put individual workers above the price of stock. Boards of Directors will always incentivize officers to maximize profits, ROE, EBIT and stock prices. That’s what they will do. In response, unions always seem to hurry the demise of corporations. Rather, individual workers must expand their capabilities, improve their standing, earn new credentials and increase their worth. This is the American way.

There is no such thing as a stagnant, reliable work location or job function. They disappear, and workers must be prepared. And if they had wanted to keep jobs as gun mechanics, Remington probably would have been happy to hire them in Alabama.

But little do they know we do too in a different way.  The quicker the NRA can move out of the way, the better off we’ll be with GOA, FPC and others leading the charge. The NRA scoring no longer means anything for pols, and probably never did. The NRA has negotiated rights away since they’ve been in existence.

No one who knows anything at GOA or FPC believes they will ever compromise on anything. If you think so, read their web sites, and read the FPC Twitter feed (which reads like a declaration of war).

I also listened to an interview with the head of the NAGR recently and he sounded essentially the same as the GOA and FPC.

So what? It won’t matter one whit. Scary, scary, scary … Pretty Boy Floyd, Al Capone, etc., scary, scary, scary, even more scary than the mass shooting at Waco and assassination at Ruby Ridge by Lon Horiuchi, or anything else the FedGov has perpetrated.

But that’s okay, because FedGov. It’s okay when they do it.

My prediction doesn’t change. The two “conservative” women on the court, Roberts and Barrett, side with the communists on this matter and overturn the Fifth Circuit. Barrett has been a huge, huge, huge disappointment, and you can blame Trump for her, as with so many other hundreds of things. In literally a once in a lifetime opportunity, we could have had Don Willett or James Ho. Instead, we got her. Thanks, Trump. And if Barrett is the sort of judge the Federalist Society is putting up and recommending, then what good are they? Stop listening to them.

She failed to enjoin the Illinois AWB, and for the record (I didn’t know this until a few days ago), she opposed taking the Dobbs case. I guess she would have been fine leaving Roe in place.