Articles by Herschel Smith

The parental rights movement actively threatens the safety and wellbeing of children and by extension, democracy itself: https://t.co/kGW6sVSh7v

— Sarah Jones (@onesarahjones) April 8, 2023

Sarah Jones writes for NY Magazine.  Of course she does.  She is a lonely cat woman who will regret her life choices when she remains unmarried her entire life, wasting the very reason she is a woman by rejecting her role as a wife and mother.  But hey, she thinks she owns your children.

The “parental rights” movement is not new, but it is enjoying a resurgence. Adherents say they’re protecting children from harm, broadly defined. After an art teacher at a Florida charter school showed students a picture of Michelangelo’s David, parental complaints forced out the principal. Members of Moms for Liberty call for book bans across the country; books with LGBT content are at special risk of removal. The architects of state bans on gender-affirming care for minors say, falsely, that children are at risk from predatory physicians and activists. A “gender cult” destroys families, claimed conservative commentator Matt Walsh. “The child they held as a baby and raised and gave their lives to and loved and still love becomes, suddenly, unrecognizable,” he said. “I would rather be dead than have that happen to my kids.” The real sin isn’t that trans youth will suffer but that the parental grip might loosen.

Conservative interest in the child extends beyond a traditional hostility to LGBT people. In March, Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, signed a bill into law that makes it easier for companies to hire children under 16 years old. More states may follow, as Terri Gerstein, the director of the Harvard Law School Labor and Worklife Program’s State and Local Enforcement Project, pointed out in the New York Times. Bills that would allow “14- and 15-year-olds to work in meatpacking plants and other dangerous jobs in Iowa as part of training programs and 16- and 17-year-olds to take jobs at construction sites in Minnesota are under consideration,” Gerstein wrote, noting that the bills coincide with a rise in dangerous child-labor violations. Not long after Republicans sought to put more children to work in Arkansas, Republicans in North Dakota killed a bill that would have expanded a free-lunch program for children from low-income families. “I can understand kids going hungry, but is that really the problem of the school district? Is that the problem of the state of North Dakota? It’s really a problem of parents being negligent with their kids,” said State Senator Mike Wobbema. His message was clear enough. A hungry child is not a collective responsibility but a private failing on the part of the parents.

Like any piece of property, a child has value to conservative activists. They are key to a future the conservative wants to win. Parental rights are merely one path to the total capture of state power and the imposition of an authoritarian hierarchy on us all. So it’s no surprise that children have long been a fixation to the right wing. The late Christian reconstructionist R.J. Rushdoony was a prominent advocate of Christian homeschooling in the 1960s through the 1980s. To Rushdoony, all education was religious, as Dr. Clint Heacock observed in a 2021 piece for Public Eye magazine. So-called government schools are churches in their own right, Rushdoony believed, indoctrinating students in the religion of secular humanism. He thought parents ought to be solely responsible for the care and education of their children instead of relinquishing them to an anti-Christian state. That fear of state influence, and belief in total parental control, isn’t limited to Rushdoony.

Literally everything she says is completely wrong.  Rushdoony had no fear of public education – he just believed it is illegitimate and a tool of statism, and taught what the Scriptures have to say about education.  Sarah confuses fear with simply knowing more than her and having a world and life view founded in Christian philosophy rather than on nothing, like Sarah.

She asserts that Christians behave and believe that children are property and a tool for taking control of them (whomever “them” is).  In fact, this is exactly the opposite of the Christian view.

You see, as I’ve pointed out so many times before, the state doesn’t own your children, but neither do you.  Ownership implies the right to enslave and abuse.  God owns our children.

That means parents are responsible for their upbringing and instruction in the way of the Lord because parents have been give authority and responsibility as lover of their children, custodians of this children, and teachers of their children – by God.

This view is embedded in and parcel to a world and life view that is as old as the Holy Writ.  To be fair, so is Sarah’s view.  Aristotle said it slightly more clearly than her.

“Neither must we suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to himself, and the care of each part is inseparable from the care of the whole.  That education should be regulated by law and should be an affair of state is not to be denied.” – R. J. Rushdoony, “The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy,” pages 85-86

It was against such men that Paul argued in Athens, when he said ” … for in Him we live and move and exist … Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent.”  Sarah is a communist.  Paul is not.

This is a clash of world and life views, not an artifact of a twenty first century fascination with child castration.  Because Sarah doesn’t read the Scriptures or philosophy, she doesn’t know anything about all of that.  And Sarah hasn’t repented of her sins.

But you do.  Teach your children to fear the Lord.  You have been empowered and ordered to do so.  He is watching you and watching over you with an army of angels to protect your family because you belong to Him if you know Christ.

2023 is gonna be one helluva year for SIG. pic.twitter.com/EFp8S2Jpjy

— Roland☃️ (@rolandpew1230) April 10, 2023

Then there’s the Milwaukee PD who intend to get rid of theirs.  Then there’s this article.  David Codrea weighs in as well.

If you doubt all of this, there is at least this anecdote from reddit/Firearms.

I’d say that if I hadn’t seen it happen at a match I was at. Guy had his hands at high ready waiting for the beep and his 320 discharged in the holster. Shirt was tucked and it was higher end OWB holster. This was circa 2020 with a newer production gun. Apparently the firing pin spring broke and that some how allowed the firing pin to drop. He was lucky as the bullet ricocheted off something in his pocket.

As for me?  I don’t like the height of the bore over the axis.  I wouldn’t have the pistol.  Then, I wouldn’t have a Sig AR because I loath whatever control Sig has over former U.S. generals that enables them to get unwarranted and undeserved contracts.

You make up your own mind.

Ryan Muckenhirn discusses the action in the Tikka bolt action rifles.  I share his admiration for the smoothness of the action and accuracy of the rifle.

Tenth Amendment Center.

RALEIGH, N.C. (April 10, 2023) – A bill introduced in the North Carolina House would prohibit financial institutions operating in the state from using a credit card merchant code to track the purchases of firearms and ammunition.

Rep. Reece Pyrtle (R) and 19 Republican cosponsors introduced House Bill 564 (H564) on April 4. The proposed law would ban financial institutions from using a firearms code in connection with a payment card transaction involving a firearm retailer in North Carolina.

The bill would also prohibit a financial institution from knowingly maintaining a record of individuals residing in this State who own firearms.

NC wouldn’t be the first state to do this.  This is a good move, and I suspect being outlawed from operation in various states, or at least sending the state AG to court against you for violation of state laws, is a real bummer for the progressive banks and a wet blanket on their plans.

Of course, goober Roy Cooper will veto the bill, and the House and Senate will have to override the veto to make this law just like they did with ridding us of the ridiculous CLEO handgun permitting and taxation scheme.

Goober Cooper can’t go away fast enough.  I hope NC voters are embarrassed at having elected that idiot to office, along with his wife (who famously flipped a bird at a school child).  Both of them are obscene, low class people.

Tench Coxe, delegate to the continental congress.

The power of the sword, say the minority…, is in the hands of Congress. My friends and countrymen, it is not so, for the powers of the sword are in the hands of the yeomanry of America from sixteen to sixty. The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress has no power to disarm the militia. Their swords and every terrible implement of the soldier are the birthright of Americans.

Notice that whatever the minority was saying, whether it be that the right of military weaponry was limited to the state, or that the continental congress should be in control of the militia, or whatever else, they were in the minority.  The minority.

This is the context when the second amendment was ratified.  End of discussion.  This allows for no control over weaponry owned and used by the common man because common men are the soldiers, using every terrible implement in order to ameliorate tyranny.

He should know.  He was there.  21st century progressives were not.

Here is the decision.

See especially 12:00 minutes onward.  The progressives want to “interpret” everything in light of their “experts.”

This is a remarkable development in a gun ban case in federal district court in Hawaii.  Everytown is representing Hawaii. They argued on HI behalf today in the attached. The document is a pro hac vice (allows you to practice in a court you aren’t licensed in) that was signed by the HI AG office, and lists Hawaii AG as the person Everytown is defending.

This is Michael Blumberg’s money at work.  The original case has to do with gun bans in Hawaii (so-called “assault pistols”).

He has his own body guards, so you’re on your own.  He and his money don’t care about the peasants.  I’m sure his body guards carry “assault pistols.”

Remember that if a gun is in common use, the supreme court decision in Heller says it cannot be banned.  Full stop.  The debate is over.  I hope Michael throws away a lot of money on this.

Googled today, Easter Sunday, April 9, 2023.

” … getting guns out of homes and off our streets.”

He doesn’t just live in a world before Bruen, but before Heller and McDonald (and while violating his oath of office to defend the constitution).

Statement from Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin on Phillipsburg Incident. pic.twitter.com/7QwKLzWzGp

— Attorney General Matt Platkin (@NewJerseyOAG) April 8, 2023

Now after the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the tomb. ² And behold, a severe earthquake had occurred, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled away the stone, and sat upon it. ³ And his appearance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. ⁴ The guards shook from fear of him and became like dead men. ⁵ And the angel said to the women, “^[a]Do not be afraid; for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified. ⁶ He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said. Come, see the place where He was lying. ⁷ And go quickly and tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead; and behold, He is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see Him; behold, I have told you.” – NASB