Articles by Herschel Smith

James Reeves runs it down for you. We’ll have to wait and see.

This is just another front in the battle between controllers and free men.

The fight never stops. The controllers will never rest.

Source.

Wayward pigs are causing issues in some parts of Connecticut – and it’s become enough of an issue that state lawmakers are looking into how to deal with it.

The legislature’s environmental committee on Friday heard testimony on how much trouble roaming swine can cause. The committee is considering a bill to form a task force focused on roaming livestock.

“The last thing that we want in Connecticut is a population of feral pigs,” State Rep. Doug Dubitsky said. “They’re incredibly destructive, they’re very dangerous, they can run 30 miles an hour, they can be 6 or 700 pounds. They can kill you and they will eat you. It’s pretty nasty.”

State Sen. Heather Somers says bands of pigs are roaming her eastern Connecticut district, causing tens of thousands of dollars in damages to crops and lawns. She says the pigs are biting and chasing farmers.

Congratulations, Connecticuters!  Whacha gonna do about it?

Oh, that’s right. Y’all don’t like guns and aren’t used to killing feral hogs. Right?

A committee.  That’s the ticket. Another public works project.  Talk to the experts about what to do. Run from them when you see them.

Actually, when you hunt them enough they become runners. If they’re chasing farmers and the farmers don’t carry firearms, you’ll never evolve them into runners. They’ll just come after you.

Congratulations.

Or how about hiring professional snipers to kill them? They won’t make a dent in the population, but it will make the committee feel better that they aren’t being mean to the hogs, or at least, someone else is doing the dirty work for them.

Unfortunately for you, there probably aren’t enough of them yet to advertise hog hunting in Connecticut as a sport.

Reddit/Firearms.

I took 2 trips where I traveled with a firearm. 1 from Philadelphia to Wisconsin. The other from Philadelphia to Arizona. My trip to Wisconsin was smooth no issues. On the way back from Arizona. They ripped my bag apart, because they “didn’t” have a X-ray scanner. Then as I arrive in Philadelphia. I go to the area where they’re supposed to bring me my bag. My friend looks over at the baggage claim where the bags fall for.people to grab their luggage. There’s my bag clearly labeled that there’s a firearm in it just spinning around freely. The airport got mad at me because I was trying to report the incident and refused to talk to me on the premise. They even went as far as having me escorted out by the police when I wasn’t even raising my voice or causing a scene.

Reddit/Firearms.

I just flew with my concealed carry (packed correctly, ammo in a box, blablabla) in it’s own hard case and checked under my boarding pass. It should be noted that my wife and I shared a large check luggage for our clothes, checked in under HER boarding pass. That bag is what got searched, I know this because they placed a placard inside our bag saying they opened and searched it, this happened twice, flying to destination as well as flying home. If it only happened once I wouldn’t be nearly as creeped out, possibly just a random search, but both flights?? Feels more like I’ve just volunteered my name onto a special list for being treated like a problem. Even though my ccw means I am “background checked” literally everyday, I should be the least profiled type of person ever. Anyone share my experience? This was the first time flying with my firearm, so I’m wondering if this is the perverbial “new normal” I’ve heard so much about.

I don’t know anything about a “new normal.” But the old normal is bad enough, and I’ve experienced the stupidity for years now.

There are those who say to avoid flying by air. It’s true enough that this is good advice, but it cannot always be followed. Some of us still have to travel by air for business purposes.

I have flown out of Charlotte many times before, and almost always have a good experience there. They seem knowledgeable and quite accustomed to dealing with firearms.

The same can’t be said at many other places. Denver is a bad place. They take luggage to a separate room and x-ray the entire piece of luggage, as if that’s going to prove anything.

Phoenix is even worse. A woman once took my luggage to a room, with me watching, and unpacked the entire contents of the luggage, clothes and all, looking for God only knows what, completely ignoring the firearm while showing no interest in whether it was truly unloaded (as if that makes thing safer anyway), then threw everything back into the luggage unfolded, gave it back to me, and walked away.

It’s the zaniest thing I’ve ever witnessed. It varies by airport, and while the TSA may tell you that the rules are understood and followed everywhere, they are lying to you. They are not, and they are not.

None of this adds to anyone’s safety. It’s all Kabuki security theater for the purpose of providing a jobs program to people too stupid or lazy to find good work doing anything else.

The only real advice I can give is to ensure that your firearm is inside a locked container where someone’s hands or a tool could be used to pry it open. Also, I like the boxes that have a cable that will attach to a structural member of the luggage. If you ever drop it off where it may be located outside (Denver is like that), watch it until it goes behind the wall.

Beyond that, it’s a crapshoot.

Quite obviously, the real reason for all of this is to prevent theft by airport employees and contractors, some of whom are being paid by your tax dollars.

Most of the reasons he gives in this video amount to one thing: the justices have either sided with the controllers or aren’t happy with the nature of the ruling that would come down if the SCOTUS took the issues up.

Thus, they will allow the lower courts to beat them up over this issue and tell them they are wrong. Quite literally, the lower courts have bullied the supreme court into ignoring a major infringement of constitutionally guaranteed rights. It’s the most shameful thing I have ever witnessed as an American citizen in my entire life.

Source.

Rep. McClintock directly asked ATF Director Steven Dettelbach, “What do you think is the purpose of the Second Amendment?” Dettelbach responded, emphasizing that the Second Amendment, like all amendments, is meant to protect fundamental rights of Americans, including the right to bear arms.

Perhaps it’s my aging years, perhaps it’s just being crotchety.  After all, Statler and Waldorf are my role models. I don’t know. But I hate it when people use the phrase “begging the question” as a replacement for “Well, that leads me to ask another question,” or “The next sensible question is [so-and-so].”

No. Don’t do that.

Begging the question is a formal logical fallacy of assuming the consequent. In other words, all immediate inferences or syllogisms have presuppositions (or axiomatic irreducibles), and another proposition that follows (or perhaps multiple other propositions that follow). If you can prove (or think you can prove) your presupposition, it isn’t a presupposition. It isn’t your starting point in your system of philosophy and logic. Presuppositions are not amenable to proof.

Begging the question has to do with reasoning in a circle and saying nothing. It isn’t quite what philosophers call self referential incoherence, which is a proposition that refutes itself, but in saying nothing, Dettelbach is very close.

You see, when asked about the raison d’etre for the second amendment, which pertains to the right to keep and bear arms (RKBA), he responded that it exists to protect the RKBA.

He knows the real reason, i.e., the second amendment exists as a bulwark against tyranny. But given his task master(s), he can’t say that. Dettelbach does appear to me to be a particularly ignorant man, but he knows enough to know that he said nothing to the congressman.

And the congressman apparently let him get away with it.

At Ammoland.

Ignore all other “authorities” on handguns and bear defense (at least regarding statistics and history). Dean rules.

With that said, I think I’d rather have a larger bore handgun for bear defense. If 9mm works, I presume it’s because of shot placement or number of rounds.

The Civil Rights Lawyer is covering this. It’s on Twitter (X) too (h/t Wisco). Here is the full video below.

Who called the police?

Who … called … the … police?

After holding the cop accountable for animal cruelty, the person who called the police should be run out of town.

When will Americans return to the notion of self-policing again?  You know, family, church, community. When you turn to the state for policing, the state knows nothing except the use of force. That’s the only tool in its tool belt.

On top of that, most police are less than average intelligence, less than average motivation, and are not usually regarded as thinking men.

In this case, the cop was lazy, having run out of patience for catching the dog. I didn’t get to see a side profile of the cop, but my guess is that he’s overweight and got tired of walking around. Someone prove me wrong.

Additionally, he lied both to his superiors and to the man who questioned him. The dog wasn’t a threat at all. It was a 10-pound lap dog who was deaf and blind. That was my immediate reaction when I saw the video and would have guessed that without having been told. Because I am a thinking man. Either that, or the dog was elderly and suffering from age-related issues. Either way, that doesn’t warrant a death sentence.

So the cop was [probably] fat, very lazy, had no emotional sympathy for the owner of the dog (and so he is likely a sociopath), is a liar, and is below average intelligence and motivation.

I would have walked over and picked the dog up. Because I am a thinking man and know that the dog wasn’t suffering from rabies. If the dog had been injured, the cop wasn’t in a legal position to know or do anything about it. Only a veterinarian is legally allowed to put dogs down.

Folks, this describes most cops in America today. America didn’t see it before the age of body-cams, but people see it today. God bless body-cams. The camera doesn’t lie.

Do not ever involve the police. You and your beasts are never in more danger than when the police are around. There is no situation so bad that it cannot be made worse by the presence of the police.

Stay away from the police. Do not get near them. Your life is in danger if you do. They are usually trigger-happy fools. Get away from them as quickly as you can.

Do not involve the police in your life. Ever.

Alloutdoor.com.

High End Defense has brought out an interesting new pistol optics mounting system at the 2024 NRA Annual Meeting. This new magnetic red dot mount allows users to add on a pistol dot onto a non-optic ready pistol easily utilizing the rear sight and magnets. So you no longer need to have any milling on the slide done, and no mounting plates or tools are needed for a pistol red dot. Instead, it locks into place using two components. The High End Defense rear sight first needs to be installed into place in the rear sight dovetail. Then the magnetic mount keys into place on the slide and the rear sight to lock into place.

Images at the link.

I wondered how long it would be before someone broke into this market. It made sense to me years ago. Slide a mount into the dove tail and you’re off to the races.

Apparently, the magnet doesn’t lose zero. It seems to me the only thing you lose without milling a slide is height over bore (if what you want is a sleek profile and low height).

They intend to do 1911s.

Cool CFD video. Based on the time of travel down the barrel (0.0006 s), I compute the lifetime of a barrel at 2000 shots to be 1.2 seconds.

h/t Wisco.

Computational fluid dynamics simulation of shooting a bullet from a rifle barrel using OpenFoam software.

[🎞️ BanuMusa R&D ]pic.twitter.com/7z9Edoglzt

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) May 23, 2024

Source.

In a press release, the RCMP explained that the father and son “had been tracking a bear with dogs” when the adult grizzly suddenly attacked the son. The two men were hunting on a steep mountainside south of Elkford, which lies in the Canadian Rockies just west of the Alberta border. Both men were locals, according to the RCMP, and the son lives in nearby Sparwood. “The man suffered serious injuries,” the RCMP said, “including broken bones and lacerations to his body during the attack.”

At some point during the attack, the son was able to shoot the bear with the firearm he was carrying. Neither the RCMP nor the BCCOS have shared any details about the firearm used, but it was likely the same rifle or shotgun he would have been using to hunt black bears; Canada has strict laws prohibiting hunters from carrying handguns unless they have a special license or explicit permission from the government.

Presumably he used a long gun to dispatch the bear. I would rather have a long gun than a handgun, but the advantage of the handgun is rapid deploy-ability.

Assuming you have the long gun in low ready, I would have to surmise that this is just a failure to respond to get off a shot before his father was wounded by the bear.

It would be interesting to know the style and make of the long gun.