Articles by Herschel Smith

Source.

A federal judge on Thursday rejected a gun rights group’s challenge to an assault weapons ban the state of Connecticut adopted after a gunman in 2012 killed 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.

The National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) filed a lawsuit in September, arguing the 2013 ban violated the right to bear arms under the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, citing a major U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that expanded gun rights.

That decision, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, was issued by the court’s 6-3 conservative majority and held the Second Amendment protects a person’s right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.

The decision also announced a new test to assess the legality of gun restrictions, saying they must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” NAGR said Connecticut’s law failed to meet that standard.

But U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton in New Haven in a 74-page ruling rejected those claims, saying the group failed to establish that assault weapons and large capacity magazines are commonly bought and used for self-defense.

She got the test wrong.  The test is “for lawful purposes.”

Here is the decision.

Defendants have submitted persuasive evidence that assault weapons and LCMs are more often sought out for their militaristic characteristics than for self-defense, that these characteristics make the weapons disproportionately dangerous to the public based on their increased capacity for lethality, and that assault weapons and LCMs are more often used in crimes and mass shootings than in self-defense. Defendants also show through the submission of historically analogous statutes and expert declarations that when a modern innovation in firearm technology results in a particular type of weapon or method of carrying being utilized for unlawful purposes to terrorize and endanger the public, the Nation has a longstanding history and tradition of regulating those aspects of the weapons or manners of carry that correlate with rising firearm violence.

[ … ]

Heller explained that it was not “permissible to ban the possession of handguns so long as the possession of other firearms (i.e., long guns) is allowed” because the handgun was the “quintessential self-defense weapon,” “possessing characteristics making it well-suited for self-defense.” Id. at 629. “Whatever the reason,” Heller found, “handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid.” Id. at 629.

Bruen, perhaps recognizing the shortcomings of a purely statistical inquiry into possession, avoided that pitfall by framing the relevant inquiry as being whether the weapons are “‘in common use’ today for self-defense.” Bruen, 142 S. Ct. at 2134 (emphasis added); see also Heller, 554 U.S. at 594 (discussing the origins of the pre-existing right codified by the Second Amendment as the “right of self-preservation” permitting a citizen to “repel force by force” when “the intervention of society in his behalf, may be too late to prevent an injury.”)

Now, go see Bruen pages 39 and 43.  Her legal clerk got the test wrong.  It’s for lawful purposes.  She also spends significant time exploring whether, in her opinion, the “unprecedented societal concern” associated with ARs.  So she does the balancing test associated with tiers of scrutiny that Bruen specifically disallowed.

And while we’re at it, the very section of Heller she quoted above dealt with handguns because ownership of long guns was already accepted, while handguns were disallowed.  The supreme court wasn’t stipulating what firearms may be owned.

Finally, this literally ignorant prose.

Unlike the broader category of handguns at issue in Heller and Bruen, the record developed here demonstrates that assault weapons and LCMs are suboptimal for self-defense.

So the old battle ax is now an expert in self defense!

Tell her Stephen Bayezes says hello.

This will be overturned, or remanded for reconsideration in light of whatever case they take up (perhaps the Illinois case).

UPDATE: Mark Smith provides a quick analysis.

These folks never stop do they?  They’re pulling out all the stops.  Fortunately, GOA is ready to take the first shot at them.

I’m guessing our buddy Stephen Stamboulieh will be busy for a while on this.

BREAKING: Reports suggest @JoeBiden’s Backdoor Universal Background (Registration) Checks to be published soon.

Gun Owners of America will be filing a lawsuit to block this unconstitutional rule ASAP.

for details ⤵ pic.twitter.com/sxiAM3RaAw

— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) August 1, 2023

I guess he’s pretty excited to get into the outdoors.  I am too when I’m couped up, as I am working behind a computer building physics models all day.

Ken likes to do a good morning post.  This can be my goodnight post.

Well that’s a big flock of chickens. I’m guessing that daddy coming home means feed time. Since these are free range chickens, I’m wondering how he keeps the hawks away unless there’s a few roosters in that flock (but more than one rooster will cause problems).

@chelseamyers613 #chicken #chickenarmy #tinyraptors ♬ original sound – Chelsea Myers

I don’t know how this guy got a cam attached to an eagle, but these views are amazing.

Okay, well now I do know how he got these shots.

From a reader, GP.

On Saturday, trying to do the right thing led to Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas being put in handcuffs and briefly detained.

The incident happened at the White Deer Rodeo in the town of White Deer about 40 miles from Amarillo, according to the Texas Tribune.

A statement from Jackson’s office said he was attending the rodeo when he was “summoned by someone in the crowd to assist a 15-year-old girl who was having a medical emergency nearby.”

The statement that Jackson, who was a White House doctor for former President Barack Obama, was informed by a relative that the girl needed help in addition to the assistance being provided because “no uniformed EMS providers on the scene at the time.”

“While assessing the patient in a very loud and chaotic environment, confusion developed with law enforcement on the scene and Dr. Jackson was briefly detained and was actually prevented from further assisting the patient,” the statement continued.

“He was immediately released as soon as law enforcement realized that he, as a medical professional, was tending to the young girl’s medical emergency.”

The statement noted said Jackson was “in the stands during the entire rodeo, in full view of the assembled crowd, and was not drinking.”

It sounds like a boilerplate statement from a chief cop concerning a screwup, yes?  Wait.  It gets much worse.

In a Facebook post in which she referred to Jackson as “ER DR” (which he is professionally), Linda Dianne Shouse gave her summation of the incident.

“I have never been more disappointed in our Rescue Team!!! I got called to render aide to my 15 year old cousin that was unresponsive at the White Deer Rodeo tonight!! She is not from here and was seen at the ER last night as she was told for dehydration and anemia!! I assessed her and she was NOT dehydrated! She was responsive to my voice but not aware of her surroundings. Respirations in the 40s. As I assessed her I noticed she looked as tho it was hypoglycemic episode,” she wrote.

“My cousin who is a BSN in a trauma hospital, myself and an ER DR were working on her. Had her responsive to her whereabouts! ER Dr agreed with me that she was seizing due to possible hypoglycemia. Sheriff’s department put a blood pressure monitor on her below her waist. I rose it to heart level and as she is awake and respirations are slowing down I placed a small piece of gum in a ball UNDER her tongue to give her some sugar. (Better than nothing).”

“Deputys screamed at me and not listening to any thing US medical Professionals had to say, they punched me in my chest and forced me back with a palm to my face as well causing me to fall backwards!! ER Dr was thrown to the grown and ARRESTED!!! I am beside myself!! Prayers for Bailey!!!!!” she concluded.

They’re all blessed to be alive.  It’s a wonder the cops didn’t discharge firearms at everyone around them.

You’re never in more danger than when the cops are around, and no situation is so bad that it cannot be made worse by the presence of the police.

That’s the good part.  The unfortunate part is that they remanded the case back to district court to determine the scope of relief (to whom this decision applies).

I do like Don Willett’s concurrence.  I’ve followed him for quite a while.  I wish he had been chosen for supreme court rather than Barrett.  Or Kavanaugh.

Watch the entire video.  Here are my initial thoughts.

“It was an honest mistake.”  No, it was honestly a dumbass mistake.  A different state – literally, the officer entered the wrong state into his database.

You’d think that brandishing a firearm at someone and the reckless endangerment that entails would necessitate some personnel error reduction training.  For example, they should be using STAR (Stop, Think, Act, Review), self-checking, independent verification, repeat backs, phenetic alphabet, and a whole host of very simple tools to prevent these sorts of stupid errors.  From wrong tag numbers to wrong-home SWAT raids, the error rate among cops has to be higher than even in the medical or pharmaceutical professions.  As I’ve pointed out before, they could take a page from the books of commercial nuclear power generators and the airline industry.  Imagine if we held cops to the same zero error-rate as FFLs?

Second, that cop who was shouting orders is much too dramatic for me.  He needs to take his finger out of the trigger well and calm down.  It’s not okay to muzzle flag people at the range, but for some reason cops think it’s okay for them to do it to innocent people.

Third, the policy is stupid.  It would had been much more effective if they had simply gone up to the window and knocked on it and asked some questions, perhaps revisited their initial work to come up with the wrong state tag.

Finally, having the people walk backwards on a freeway is about the dumbest thing they could demand. The individuals they’ve stopped have absolutely no way of knowing that they’re correct that the freeway has been shut down. After all, they’ve been stopped for no reason at all by an idiot who entered the wrong state into his database. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. My bet, however, is that a DA would have refused to charge them if someone had been run over because of “qualified immunity,” which as we’ve seen before is an unconstitutional abomination borne out of DAs and the judicial bench protecting their own.

This is just stupidity in action.  Watch as these cops make enemies of people, abandoning any hope of having people talk about “supporting the blue.”  It’s happening all over America as police departments hire the lowest IQ people they can find, and cops abandon the constitution and continue to listen to their dumb police academy trainers.

Here is their contact information.

American Hunter.

What was supposed to be a short walk last fall turned into a lot more. Lost or misdirected depends on which one of us you ask, but either way it was a long slog through a thick swamp. It was below zero earlier that morning in Maine but had warmed up, and I was overdressed. I had pounded through my one bottle of water pretty fast. I had no trouble finding more, but remembered that the stream I was following originated in an active beaver dam. Beavers carry giardia. I’ve had it before and I never want it again. I was very thirsty by the time I got back to the truck and more interested in water than hunting. You can be sure I had a way to make water safe in my backpack the next day.

Hunters have two concerns: camp water and field water. Camp water must be safe to drink, wash dishes, brush your teeth and even make coffee. Hunters in the field also need an easy and lightweight way to make water safe to drink day to day. No water supply, no matter how remote, is safe to drink.

Be cautious about water that guides or other people insist is “safe.” They may have developed an immunity to the impurities in the water.

This is certainly true.  I once worked at a Christian camp in the mountains of S.C., and our water was fed from a spring but stored in a concrete block house that had to be contaminated with various sorts of microorganisms.  Working the entire summer there brought immunity to whatever contaminants were in the water.  By contrast, campers sometimes had stomach illnesses for the first few days of their stay, and sometimes the entire week.

I also passed an AT through-hiker on the trail once and asked him what he does for water.  He said, “When I see water I face-plant in it and drink as much as I can.”  He hadn’t had any problems, and this encounter happened in Virginia.

It’s always best to pre-filter any water to remove the chunks and debris. Coffee filters work great for this. T-shirts are okay, but dirty underwear is a poor choice.

Large debris and turbidity must be removed.

In Camp
• Boiling: Perhaps the best known and easiest way to deal with contaminated water is boiling the water. Boiling will kill bacteria and other disease-causing microorganisms. At high elevations, though, the boiling point of water drops. To be 100 percent sure, boil for at least 10 minutes at sea level and add 10 more minutes for every 1,000 feet of elevation.

• Chemicals: Water purification chemicals are usually either iodine- or chlorine-based. But most are not 100 percent effective against giardia and cryptosporidium. They are best used in conjunction with a filter.

One of the best and least expensive chemicals you can use to purify drinking water is regular, unscented 5 percent to 8.25 percent household bleach. Mix one-half teaspoon of bleach per 5 gallons of clear water. If the water is cloudy, double the bleach. A slightly stronger mix, 1 tablespoon of bleach per 1 gallon of water, is great to disinfect dishes and cooking areas.

Aquatabs tablets are used all over the world to kill off waterborne germs, but they are chlorine-based and alone may not be effective against giardia.

Potable Aqua iodine tablets are the iodine-based treatment. Because iodine tastes awful, the kit comes with two bottles of tablets; the second has ascorbic acid to remove the taste. It’s not a good idea to ingest this much iodine in your water long-term, but for a few days or weeks it’s fine.

• Filters: Filters are the best choice for safe drinking water for hunters. A gravity fed, high-capacity filter will work at making safe water all day if it is tended well. These work well for a camp-based operation where water can be filtered into a large holding tank or a clean 5-gallon jug.

In the Field
The key here is to carry something lightweight and portable in a backpack or pocket to treat the water you find as you hunt. There are three choices:

• Chemicals: The two-part system used by Aquamira Water Treatment Drops uses chlorine dioxide, which is what municipal water systems have used for years. The company says it will kill off giardia and cryptosporidium, making this a good choice for hunters. As with any chemical treatment, it takes time to work. I once used Aquamira Water Treatment Drops while packing out a sheep in the mountains of Yukon. I was thirsty and my companions were impatient, so I drank it too soon, before it had time to act, and wound up with a stomach bug.

• Ultraviolet Purification: Ultraviolet (UV) light works on DNA and prevents microbes from reproducing. (I wonder if we can use it on Congress?) Without reproduction, the microbes become far less dangerous.

Water treated with UV still contains microbes. They remain present in the water, but their means for reproduction are turned off, so the water is safe to drink.

UV works best with clear water so pre-filtering is a good idea. The UV light must be able to penetrate the water. The upside is UV adds nothing to the water for you to ingest. Also, the amount of water it can handle is almost limitless because as long as the unit remains working you will never run out.

Steripen is the best-known company for consumer UV water treatment. I carry one of the company’s rechargeable units in my backpack when hunting as it weighs almost nothing. It’s also a good choice for travel in Third World situations where I sterilize the hotel water before drinking it.

• Filtration: Portable filters are designed for backpackers, hunters and other people on the move. They are relatively light and fit easily in a backpack and are available at most outdoor stores. If you are in a North American wilderness situation or even in most rural locations, water that is filtered is pretty safe to drink.

I have three water filters.  One is a larger pump filter for quantity, the next size down is a Sawyer squeeze, and the smallest one is a Life Straw.

Do the Life Straws actually work?  Yes, they do.

Well it finally happened.  Rossi actually came out with a nice looking rifle, with a pistol style grip, fairly good looking Walnut stock, with at least the appearance of a good fit and finish.  At least that’s what you’d conclude from the picture.

Right now it’s in .30-30.  It might be nice to have for a price point < $1000 (street price will be lower).  I expect it will be “unobtanium” for the time being, but time will tell how they meet demand.

So the next step for Rossi will be to make one of these in Walnut, with the pistol style grip, chambered in .454 Casull.

At Recoil they have a short assessment of the new CZ 712 G3 shotgun.

GunMagWarehouse also has a writeup.  Before pushing this to the web sites, CZ had the sense to send a gun to Target Focused Life for review.  Here is his writeup, and here is his video review.

BLUF: A few nits here and there, but overall a good review of a reasonably priced shotgun.  Gun Dog Magazine also has a review.

He finds some problems and dishonesty.

Americans have a God-given right to make machinery, including machinery that propels a projectile.