Articles by Herschel Smith

Hey Google-YouTube.  Why do you suck so badly?

BREAKING NEWS: Australian defense contractor NIOA has expanded its global reach with the 100 percent acquisition of the industry-leading rifle design and manufacturing company, Barrett Firearms. https://t.co/2JqptE20Df #NIOA #BarrettFirearms #TheLeaderInLongRange #Barrett pic.twitter.com/zNVu1v443F

— Barrett (@BarrettRifles) January 16, 2023

Well then.

So what does this mean for Barrett’s promises not to sell to law enforcement where the rights of the citizens aren’t honored?

What does it mean for Barrett to sell to a company ensconced in a tyrannical country like Australia where one cannot own a firearm?

Source.

BALTIMORE (WBFF) — With public safety a top priority for Maryland lawmakers, the first bill filed in the 2023 session would severely limit where people with conceal carry permits could bring their firearms.

“If people don’t feel safe nothing else matters,” said Maryland Senate President, Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City).

Senate Bill One, also know as the Gun Saftey Act, was introduced by Sen. Jeff Waldstreicher (D-Montgomery). Waldstreicher says the bill is meant to fire back at the Supreme Court’s 6–3 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. In which, the Supreme Court found New York’s gun law requiring concealed carry applicants give a reason for carrying unconstitutional. The decision meant Maryland’s “good and substantial reason” requirement fell too.

“Bruen said anyone can take any weapon anywhere at any time. I think that’s dangerous and Maryland needs to respond,” said Waldstreicher.

With more Marylanders being granted conceal carry permits, the Gun Safety Act would ban them from taking firearms within 100 feet of any public place. However, “public place” is a broad term in the legislation. In addition to restricting guns inside hospitals, churches, and government buildings — any retail establishments, restaurants, hotels, and movie theatres are also listed.

“Outside of the home what would be a space that someone could legally carry a gun?” questioned a FOX45 reporter.

“So, the bill does not define where you can, it simply says and clarifies where you cannot,” said Waldstreicher.

At least he admits that his intention is to defy the Supreme Court.  It’ll pass.  Now what will the SCOTUS do about it?

On Saturday evening my wife and I dined at a restaurant where a number of very old firearms were behind glass on the wall, from muskets to pistols of all sorts, including what I knew to be a “Sunday Gun.”  I joked to a fellow who happened to be in line behind me that the ATF wouldn’t like this gun.  He laughed and replied, “Yea, they would need to take that folding stock off of it to make them happy.”

The NFA was promulgated with pretentions of a so-called “war on crime.”  We’ve had a war on crime, a war on poverty, and a war on guns, and today we’re recapitulating the war on crime schtick.  Everyone wants to fight a war, or at least use war as an excuse to do what they otherwise may not get approval to do.

One must remember the nexus of hunting and conservation in the minds of the men who voted for the NFA, or at least recall how powerful the hunting and conservation lobby was even one hundred years ago.

William Hornaday, Director of NY Zoological Park, was the first to use the term “wildlife.”  His ideas were very influential, but also dovetailed with the ideas in vogue in the “gentleman hunt clubs” in America.  Read here, the more well-to-do as opposed to the “poors.”

In his seminal (but badly wrong as history shows) piece entitled Our Vanishing Wild Life – its Extermination and Preservation, he makes a number of bold assertions, and apparently had the support of a number of very influential hunting clubs.  These quotes would be anathema today – no one with any sense would go on record saying things like this.  So this is unadulterated and unvarnished history at its finest.

The “Sunday Gun.” —A new weapon of peculiar form and great deadliness to song birds, has recently come into use. Because of the manner of its use, it is known as the “Sunday gun.” It is specially adapted to concealment on the person. A man could go through a reception with one of these deadly weapons absolutely concealed under his dress coat! It is a weapon with two barrels, rifle and shot; and it enables the user to kill anything from a humming-bird up to a deer. What the shot-barrel can not kill, the rifle will. It is not a gun that any sportsman would own, save as a curiosity, or for target use.

The State Ornithologist of Massachusetts, Mr. E.H. Forbush, informs me that already the “Sunday gun” has become a scourge to the bird life of that state. Thousands of them are used by men and boys who live in cities and towns, and are able to get into the country only on Sundays. They conceal them under their coats, on Sunday mornings, go out into the country, and spend the day in shooting small birds and mammals. The dead birds are concealed in various pockets, the Sunday gun goes under the coat, and at nightfall the guerrilla rides back to the city with an innocent smile on his face, as if he had spent a day in harmless enjoyment of the beauties of nature.

The “Sunday gun” is on sale everywhere, and it is said to be in use both by American and Italian killers of song-birds. It weighs only two pounds, eight ounces, and its cost is so trifling that any guerrilla who wishes one can easily find the money for its purchase. There are in the United States at least a million men and boys quite mean enough to use this weapon on song-birds, swallows, woodpeckers, nuthatches, rabbits and squirrels, and like other criminals, hide both weapon and loot in their clothing. So long as this gun is in circulation, no small bird is safe, at any season, near any city or town.

Now, what are the People going to do about it?

Guns are cheap.  Guns are effective.  Those poors, including those awful Italians, will kill every last songbird among us.  Those who would do that are mean.  No bird is safe from these guerrillas.

Elsewhere he says this.

With the killing of robins, larks, blackbirds and cedar birds for food, the case is quite different. No white man calling himself a sportsman ever indulges in such low pastimes as the killing of such birds for food. That burden of disgrace rests upon the negroes and poor whites of the South; but at the same time, it is a shame that respectable white men sitting in state legislatures should deliberately enact laws permitting such disgraceful practices, or permit such disgraceful and ungentlemanly laws to remain in force!

Depression era poverty and starvation not withstanding, white men everywhere should be appalled at the idea that the poors are killing birds for food.  No self-respecting person would do that, at least, no one who calls himself a sportsman.

Elsewhere, this prediction shows the utter stupidity of most of the document.

At this date deer hunting is not permitted at any time in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas,—where there are no wild deer; nor in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, Tennessee or Kentucky. The long close seasons in Massachusetts, Connecticut and southern New York have caused a great migration of deer into those once-depopulated regions,—in fact, right down to tide-water.

Today, trophy bucks are routinely hunted in many of those states, because modern game management techniques managed by the states (not the federal government) are smarter than the author of this ridiculous screed.

Finally, he doesn’t like semiautomatic firearms of any sort and recommends their outlaw.

The sole and dominant thought of many gunmakers is to make the very deadliest guns that human skill can invent, sell them as fast as possible, and declare dividends on their stock. The Remington, Winchester, Marlin, Stevens and Union Companies are engaged in a mad race to see who can turn out the deadliest guns, and the most of them. On the market to-day there are five pump-guns, that fire six shots each, in about six seconds, without removal from the shoulder, by the quick sliding of a sleeve under the barrel, that ejects the empty shell and inserts a loaded one. There are two automatics that fire five shots each in five seconds or less, by five pulls on the trigger! The autoloading gun is reloaded and cocked again wholly by its own recoil. Now, if these are not machine guns, what are they?

His “model law” includes these words.

It shall be unlawful to use in hunting or shooting birds or animals of any kind, any automatic or repeating shot gun or pump gun, or any shot-gun holding more than two cartridges at one time, or that may be fired more than twice without removal from the shoulder for reloading.

Ah, the venerable over-under, still a very nice option for bird hunting, but in his world, the only permitted weapon for such pastimes.

You get the main points being made here.  The NFA and GCA didn’t outlaw machine guns, they just capped the number in circulation and ran their price up to where only the monied can purchase them.  You see, the poors don’t deserve them, any more than they deserve to feed their families by shooting the “songbirds.”  Men of good name and admirable and fine upbringing don’t do things like that in the hunting clubs.

This sort of rejection of modern firearms has carried through until recently with the likes of Jim Zumbo and David Petzal, who wanted to outlaw the use of the AR platform for hunting.  Never mind that in some cases it’s the best option (hogs are resilient animals and need more than a single shot to bring them down if you want to save meat).

So, while powerful men still want you to believe that they are in a war on crime, there are undercurrents which have been with us a long time concerning money, power and connections, that have guided decisions in this area of law.

Source.

EVANSVILLE, Ind. (WFIE) – In the state of Indiana, gun owners no longer need any sort of permit to carry a handgun while in public spaces. For less than a year, this has been the case after the state removed the requirement for handgun permits, and some in law enforcement aren’t happy about the change.

Before the Indiana state legislature officially removed the requirement for handgun permits, many in law enforcement weren’t convinced.

“I, along with most of my other law enforcement colleagues, were very apprehensive about this,” said Vanderburgh County Sheriff Noah Robinson.

Before the change, a gun owner looking to have a gun in public had to go to their local sheriff’s office or police department for the application and eventually, the Indiana State Police would say either yes or no.

Sheriff Robinson says this gave law enforcement valuable information. Without it, it raises more questions as they try to determine if a suspicious person with a gun is allowed to have it.

“Before, that determination was made in a quiet office over a period of weeks where someone would investigate your background and make that determination,” said Robinson. “We now have to do that on the side of the road. It’s not practical.”

The law doesn’t allow violent felons to have handguns in public, but that doesn’t always apply to those with patterns of violent behavior or mental instability who wouldn’t have been approved for a handgun permit.

“I think it decreases public safety, I think it decreases officer safety, and time will tell whether that’s borne out or not,” said Robinson.

Sheriff Robinson says permits were also valuable when they found people doing things they shouldn’t and they found a gun on them. When other charges didn’t apply, having the gun meant they could arrest the person and take and gun away.

It was also an additional source of information for them when approaching people.

“To have had the information and had that taken away from us is frustrating, because it took a system that wasn’t broken and broke it,” said Robinson.

Or perhaps this made an unconstitutional system finally constitutional.  Everything depends on perspective, yes?

This is a remarkable set of admissions from a CLEO.  They want decisions about your God-given rights to be made in a quiet room with no one watching over their shoulder and no recourse for faulty decisions that infringe on your rights.  He said so.

Also, note the use he sees in the permitting scheme.  For conditions where “other charges didn’t apply,” he could always get his man with a weapons charge.  But what does this mean – other charges didn’t apply?  It means, I take it, that the alleged perpetrator wasn’t really guilty of the crime for which he had been accused.  The LEOs are thus the judiciary in this circumstance.  He’s really guilty of doing something we don’t want, but we can’t prove it beyond as reasonable doubt.  But we can surely prove he was carrying a weapon, so there, perp.  Take that.

As for whether someone is carrying a weapon, his officers should always assume that is the case.  It’s the case with permitted carriers, and it’s the case with criminals who never obeyed the law anyway.  So what’s changed?

Nothing.  And he can’t point to blood running in the streets because of permitless carry because it hasn’t happened.

The sky is falling.  But not really.

Source.

Just days after Illinois became the ninth U.S. state to ban assault rifles, the state already hit a roadblock to implementing the law: defiant sheriff’s offices.

At least 74 Illinois sheriff’s departments have publicly vowed to defy elements of a recent gun-control law signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, which banned assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and switches. The offices have vowed to not check if weapons are registered with the state or house individuals arrested only for not complying with the law.

As the number of uncooperative sheriff’s offices increased, Pritzker has made his own vow – to ensure those members of law enforcement who fail to “do their job… won’t be in their job.”

The Illinois Sheriffs’ Association issued a statement Wednesday expressing continued opposition to the law. Simultaneously, dozens of sheriff’s offices began to post nearly identical messages promising they would not check for compliance with the law or arrest offenders of the law.

Jim Kaitschuk, executive director of the Illinois Sheriffs’ Association, said he drafted the statement which sheriff’s offices began to sign or modify.

“Therefore, as the custodian of the jail and chief law enforcement official for DuPage County, that neither myself nor my office will be checking to ensure that lawful gun owners register their weapons with the State, nor will we be arresting or housing law abiding individuals that have been charged solely with non-compliance of this Act,” DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick wrote in a statement, which was mirrored by dozens of other offices.

With a population of over 920,000 residents, DuPage County is the largest county to defy the law.

ABC News was able to identify at least 59 sheriff’s offices that issued a nearly identical statement, the main identifiable difference between the statements being the letterhead and name of the county in the text of the statement.

In total, at least 74 offices said they plan to not use resources to enforce elements of the law, impacting nearly 4,000,000 Illinois residents, or over 30 percent of the state’s residents.

Other than DuPage county, the most populous counties in Illinois – Cook, Lake, and Will Counties – have not issued any statement opposing the law. The deadly 2022 Highland Park parade shooting took place in Lake County, which is enforcing the law. Most of the sheriff’s offices opposing the law reside in counties with less than 100,000 residents, though nine defiant counties have populations exceeding 100,000.

Kaitschuk said he disagreed with the idea that sheriffs have an obligation to check compliance with the law or house offenders in their jails.

“That is not a charge that is provided to us, or mandated to us in the bill that passed and was signed by the governor,” he said.

Many of the sheriffs defying the law have described their opposition to the law as akin to civil disobedience to protect the Second Amendment.

“We will not be enforcing it in this county; I will also not house anyone in my jail that has violated this act because we know it to be an unlawful act by the general assembly and the governor,” Jefferson County Sheriff Jeff Bullard Sr. said in an online video.

Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell, whose jurisdiction covers nearly 200,000 residents, signed a modified version of the statement. In an interview with ABC News, Campbell based his opposition to the law due to both adherence to the constitution and the ineffectiveness of the law.

“The law will have zero impact on the murder rate in the state of Illinois,” Campbell said.

Some offices took less defiant stances which include waiting for movement from the courts or legislative action.

“I understand that our nation had witnesses frequent tragedies involving gun violence and I am in no way attempting to minimize the impact these events have had,” St. Clair County Sheriff Richard Watson wrote in a statement, in which he said he opposed the law but did not promise to defy it.

When asked why he decided to not enforce the law rather than wait for action from the courts, Campbell returned his belief that the law is unconstitutional and will eventually be struck down.

Pritzker addressed the defiance, commenting that members of law enforcement who fail to enforce it might lose their job.

“The fact is that yes there are of course people who are trying to politically grandstand, who want to make a name for themselves by claiming that they will not comply,” he said. “But the reality is that the state police is responsible for enforcement, as are all law enforcement all across our state and they will in fact do their job or they won’t be in their job.”

Kaitschuk rebutted the idea that Pritzker has the authority to fire members of law enforcement, especially elected sheriffs.

“I’m just not aware of any provision that provides the governor that opportunity to do so,” he said.

I’m not aware of any such provision either, but I do have a question.  Who pays the salary of the county Sheriffs?  If it’s the county, they’re good to go.  If it’s the state, then someone else holds all the cards.

As we discussed earlier, these are the initial baby steps of nullification.  The wheat will get sorted from the chaff as things move forward.

The “wheat” of the Sheriff’s Departments must follow through on action to arrest any officer who enforces the law, or else the nullification will have no effect.

I’m sure you can find the link for it so I won’t provide it here.  As I’ve said before, I don’t own any pistol-braced weapons.  Nonetheless, I’m sure readers need to know this information.  Most readers already know, but if you don’t, you are the one who needs to hear these things.

Seen at All Outdoor.

Frankly it didn’t seem like a very educated or enlightened review to me.  I’m not sure what sort of shotgunner routintely shoots sporting clays with a 22″ barrel and thus has trouble with a 30″ barrel.  That seems odd to me.

However, the gun looks beautiful to me.

I normally keep up with new offerings and so it surprised me that I hadn’t seen that Savage had come out with new over-unders.  I do like the fact that it has an adjustable cheek riser.

Savage should have sent the shotgun to me for review.  I would have examined the quality of the walnut, the finish, the parts fit-up, the lockup, etc., and reported back honestly and completely, after putting many hundreds of rounds through the gun (quail season is ending soon so I would be limited to the clay range).

With the Beretta 686 running for $2,400. the Beretta 694 running for $4,500, the Benelli over-unders running for that or higher in some cases, the Beretta DT11 running for $11,000, it’s nice to finally see an American made over-under for a reasonable price (< $1,000) and good finish and fit-up.  If it indeed can claim that – as I said, Savage didn’t send it to me for review.

Source.

Under the majority’s rule, the defendant wins by default whenever the government fails to prove that a statute unambiguously criminalizes the defendant’s conduct.

Um, yes.  And so what’s wrong with this?  Why wouldn’t any grammar school child come to the same conclusion?  A fortiori, why wouldn’t any educated lawyer come to the same conclusion?

Why would this only have to come from the majority’s rule?  Why isn’t it prima facie obvious to anyone with two brain cells?

It’s effective immediately.  Folks like Rock River Arms and Springfield Armory who ensconce in Illinois now cannot even sell to customers in their own home state.  It’s too bad they didn’t ride the “Gun Valley Moves South” train when it left the station.  I know the gun community.  Some will be reluctant to buy from a manufacturer who cannot even sell their products to folks in their own state.  By the way, Colorado is effectively doing the same thing.

The list of guns citizen in Illinois cannot have is long.  Very long.  You cannot even own tactical shotguns under the new law as best as I read it (I did note that they didn’t specifically mention the Beretta 1301, although I’ll also mention that the new law “strengthens the assault weapons ban by also allowing Illinois State Police to update the list as needed,” Welch said”).  So the ban includes whatever the cops want it to include.

Also, they are preempting the SCOTUS decision on Terry Stops: “If police stop a car driven by a semiautomatic gun owner, they can instantly check to ensure its legally owned.”  What sense this makes one can only guess – if a gun owner has registered the weapon why wouldn’t it be assumed that it’s a “legally owned weapon?”

Also, it’s back to the way it was before Bruen – you cannot have that gun with you (you know, the only ones left not on the list) when you leave home.  You cannot carry it on your person.  So, it’s all the rage now for the communist states to pretend that Bruen doesn’t exist and that the supreme court never spoke to the matter.

I have supreme confidence that this law will be adjudicated, and I expect this law to be struck down, but I’m not sure how long it will be before that happens.  In the mean time, they want citizens to register their guns if they are “grandfathered in.”  Some Sheriffs have said they will not comply, dozens and dozens, somewhere around 70 at last count.

But what does this mean?  Here is one clue.

But that’s not good enough.  Merely refusing to assist the state police isn’t doing anyone any good.  For this to have teeth the Sheriffs would need to ensure that not only were they constitutional Sheriffs, but their deputies were constitutional deputies as well, and that the city and township PDs agreed with this stance.  Those are the preconditions for success.

That would all lead to the next necessary step, which would be a threat to arrest any state police who came into their counties to enforce the new law, and the stomach to follow through with it.  Finally, if those counties have militia to whom the Sheriff could go for assistance, that may prove to be necessary as well.

Do any of the Sheriffs have the stomach for this?  I seriously doubt it.  I’ve said before, nullification laws or threats are dangerous for the citizens if they aren’t serious and don’t carry both the threat and reality of force behind them.  If they are weighty and enforced, they serve as a check on centralized power and authority to infringe on God-given rights.

Illinois is just at the beginning of this whole affair.  Chicago has decided the way it will be for everyone else in their state.  Whether the balance of the state lets it stand will be up to them.