Articles by Herschel Smith

This is a great discussion.

Source.

Fire threats and environmental concerns have prompted some US cities to forego traditional Fourth of July fireworks in favor of spectacular drone light shows this year.

Salt Lake City, Utah, tried out the alternative way of celebrating Independence Day on Saturday with its first-ever drone show.

The city’s mayor, Erin Mendenhall, said in a news release the new format marked an effort to minimize the area’s “high fire danger” and to lessen air quality problems caused by pyrotechnics.

“As temperatures rise and fire danger increases, we must be conscientious of both our air quality and the potential for wildfires,” Mendenhall said in the release.

Utah has an average of 800 to 1,000 wildfires each year, and the state is among the most wildfire-prone in the US, according to the Utah Department of Public Safety.

In neighboring Colorado, also in its wildfire season, the City of Boulder made a similar decision this year with its first-ever nighttime drone show next week.

Blah, blah, blah.  Nothing is ever good enough for these people.  Did they call up mother Gaia before making that decision?

On another front, there is a question when the celebration is really supposed to occur.

Sunday, July 2, is the 247th anniversary of the Continental Congress voting to secede from the British Crown. That’s right, July 2 is America’s actual Independence Day.

The Declaration of Independence was approved/signed on July 4. But two days earlier, on July 2, the Continental Congress passed the resolution submitted by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, declaring that we were independent of Britain. This simple resolution was a stirring call to throw off the bonds of tyranny …

In the meantime, Congress appointed a committee to write a formal declaration of independence. Its members were John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert R. Livingston of New York, and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia. Jefferson, the best writer in the group, was the document’s primary author. Jefferson’s document read like a mission statement for the revolution and set up how this nation would be different from others—the people’s rights don’t come from the government. They come from God. The document was first presented to Congress for review on June 28, 1776.

After voting for independence on July 2, Congress turned its attention to finalizing the declaration. Over several days of debate, Congress made some alterations to the text, including adding the wording of Lee’s resolution of independence to the conclusion. The text of the declaration was approved by Congress on July 4 and sent off to be printed.

Then for me the case is clear.  July 4th is really the day of celebration.  They could have changed their minds in the mean time, but didn’t, and formally approved the declaration on July 4th.

As for the drone, eh, whatever.  Drones are cool, but they’re not fireworks.  I’ll stick with John Adams.

It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

Whether it’s celebrated on July 2nd or July 4th, it should be celebrated with illuminations from one end of the continent to the other.

Boulder can keep its drones.

As you know the SCOTUS has granted certiorari to US versus Rahimi.  It’s interesting to see just how this debate is framed by the likes of Vox.

Last February, the far-right United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that a federal law prohibiting individuals from “possessing a firearm while under a domestic violence restraining order” is unconstitutional. On Friday, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear this case.

It is fairly likely that the justices will reverse the Fifth Circuit’s extraordinary decision — as many as six current members of the Court have signaled that, while some of them support an expansive reading of the Second Amendment right to bear arms, the Fifth Circuit’s decision in United States v. Rahimi goes too far. Justice Brett Kavanaugh has endorsed some prohibitions on gun possession by people who have not been convicted of a felony, including laws prohibiting people with serious mental illnesses from owning guns. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, meanwhile, wrote when she was still a lower court judge that “legislatures have the power to prohibit dangerous people from possessing guns.”

A more uncertain question is whether the Court will use the Rahimi case to impose some coherence on the incomprehensible approach to the Second Amendment that it announced just one year ago in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022).

Bruen held that huge swaths of US gun laws must fall unless the government can prove that “the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” And it instructed judges to determine whether a particular challenged gun law is consistent with this tradition by searching for “historical analogies” in early American firearm regulations.

In practice, however, it is often impossible to draw precise analogies between today’s gun laws and those from two centuries ago, because both American society and firearms technology have changed so much since the Second Amendment was ratified.

[ … ]

Or consider, for that matter, the law at issue in Rahimi, which prohibits many individuals who are “subject to a court order” that restrains them from “harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner” from possessing a gun. Notably, this law applies to individuals who have not yet been convicted of a crime, but who have had a court proceeding that determined they are a danger to their partner or their partner’s children.

The dummy who wrote this tripe for Vox has framed the question the wrong way.  I don’t know the likely outcome of the decision at the supreme court when they write it, but this isn’t the way it works.  Leaving aside the issue of whether this was a criminal or civil case (it was a civil case), there is the issue of how the retraining orders are typically issued.

They don’t decide the case before it’s tried.  That would violate due process rights.  So courts don’t simply restrain the offending party (whomever that is – that is yet to be determined because the case hasn’t been adjudicated).  Restraining orders are issued for both parties.  The fifth circuit spoke directly to that issue.

But “[t]hese judicial assessments have often led to the issuance of unmerited mutual restraining orders, namely in situations where one party is the abuser and the other party is a victim.” Id. (emphasis added). As a result, “both parties are restrained even if only one is an abuser.” Id. at 1055 (emphasis added). See also Elizabeth Topliffe, Why Civil Protection Orders Are Effective Remedies for Domestic Violence but Mutual Protective Orders Are Not, 67 Ind. L.J. 1039, 1055–56 (1992) (“[J]udges often issue a mutual protection order without any request from the respondent or his lawyer. . . . [J]udges and lawyers . . . may be tempted to resort to mutual protective orders frequently. However, when they do this in cases where there truly is one victim and one batterer, they ignore some of the real difficulties of mutual protection orders.”). See generally David Hirschel, Nat’l Criminal Justice Reference Serv., Domestic Violence Cases: What Research Shows About Arrest and Dual Arrest Rates (2008).

The net result of all this is profoundly perverse, because it means that § 922(g)(8) effectively disarms victims of domestic violence. What’s worse, victims of domestic violence may even be put in greater danger than before. Abusers may know or assume that their victims are law-abiding citizens who will comply with their legal obligation not to arm themselves in self-defense due to § 922(g)(8). Abusers might even remind their victims of the existence of § 922(g)(8) and the entry of a mutual protective order to taunt and subdue their victims. Meanwhile, the abusers are criminals who have already demonstrated that they have zero propensity to obey the dictates of criminal statutes. As a result, § 922(g)(8) effectively empowers and enables abusers by guaranteeing that their victims will be unable to fight back.

Perverse indeed.  But the controller who wrote this silly commentary doesn’t care about a victim’s right to fight back and duty to self defense because controllers hate people, themselves included.

So if the supreme court falls for this and curtails 2A rights, they’ve fallen victim themselves to the treacherous behavior of the thug AG for this administration.

FPC.

FORT WORTH, TX (June 30, 2023) – Today, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) and FPC Action Foundation (FPCAF) announced that a federal judge has granted summary judgment for the plaintiffs in VanDerStok v. Garland, vacating the ATF’s “frame or receiver” rule and preventing the federal government from enforcing it. The opinion can be viewed at FPCLegal.org.

“This case presents the question of whether the federal government may lawfully regulate partially manufactured firearm components, related firearm products, and other tools and materials in keeping with the Gun Control Act of 1968,” wrote Federal District Court Judge Reed O’Connor in his Order. “Because the Court concludes that the government cannot regulate those items without violating federal law, the Court holds that the government’s recently enacted Final Rule… is unlawful agency action taken in excess of the ATF’s statutory jurisdiction. On this basis, the Court vacates the Final Rule.”

“We’re thrilled to see the Court agree that ATF’s Frame or Receiver Rule exceeds the agency’s congressionally limited authority,” said Cody J. Wisniewski, FPCAF’s Senior Attorney for Constitutional Litigation and FPC’s counsel in this case. “With this decision, the Court has properly struck down ATF’s Rule and ensured that it cannot enforce that which it never had the authority to publish in the first place.”

“This is a monumental victory against the tyrannical ATF. Firearms Policy Coalition and FPC Law have argued that this rogue agency has unlawfully attacked gun owners in this latest round of ‘rulemaking’ and we are grateful to see the Court agree,” said Richard Thomson, FPC’s Vice President of Communications. “We will not stop, however, with this latest victory. FPC and FPC Law will continue to bring these cases to put a stop to the immoral and unconstitutional actions of the disarmament regime.”

Winning is fun!

Source.

“Even though (Wagner leader Yevgeny) Prigozhin acted out, yelling give me ammo, give me ammo, there was no actual ammo hunger,” says Ocherkhadzhiev. “The problem was, they used six times more ammo than is tactically and academically called for. They just buried the Ukrainians in shells. And in these conditions, the Ukrainians still defended.”

I don’t want the discussion thread to turn into a political one.  That’s not the point of the post.

But I find this remark utterly fascinating.  I know that when the Marines first joined the fight in Afghanistan, the Taliban were surprised at the fact that they (the Marines) could carry a half dozen magazines in a tactical vest and stretch the ammo out to cover a 24-hour fire fight under the supervision of good NCOs (the NCO corps in the U.S. military is entirely a product of Western culture and Eastern and Middle Eastern armies completely lack such a structure, focusing instead on commissioned officers, in the end making them less capable or efficient, something I’ve written on extensively).  The disciple of targeting, fire control, etc., surprised the enemy combatants.

Similarly, the practice of the Taliban was to bury U.S. troops in fire.  Seldom would they take the attack straight to U.S. forces except en masse (Battalion versus Company).  I’ve also written extensively on that subject in Massing of Forces.

Shooting Illustrated.

It’s not quick to load. Its range is miniscule. It’s not very accurate. It’s difficult to master and it kicks like hell. Even so, the shotgun is universally feared and respected.

Why? Because when it’s in trained hands, it is unlikely to miss. Its bowling-ball-size swath of destruction allows more leeway for error than a single bullet. And, when those .33-caliber, solid-lead balls smash into something at close range, there’s not much short of a world-class trauma team that can repair such damage. Dangerous men who tangle with dangerous men for a living know this, and if the other team has brought a shotgun to the fight, it commands all the attention of a rattlesnake in the outhouse. More than 100 years ago, in the Great War, Winchester’s 1897 pump-action shotgun was so devastating on the battlefield, our enemies petitioned to have it banned.

Academically, the shotgun’s power is easily defined. The standard, nine-pellet, 00-buckshot load features a collective 1.21-ounce payload that’s fired at 1,200 fps to produce roughly 1,700 ft.-lbs. of muzzle energy and 30 ft.-lbs. of free-recoil energy. Or, you can choose a 3-inch, 12-pellet magnum load fired at 1,425 fps to produce 3,295 ft.-lbs. of energy—if you are prepared for its 55 ft.-lbs. of recoil that will soon wind up on your cheek and shoulder. Either way, it’s vastly favorable to be on the butt end of that punch rather than the muzzle.

[ … ]

Yet, the shotgun’s power shouldn’t be overhyped, even by so-called experts such as this writer who have a vested interest in the arm’s worth, for it is irresponsible and dishonest to do so. Fact is, the combat shotgun is a specialized tool—requiring extensive training and practice—for certain close-range scenarios, but it shouldn’t be the end-all choice in arms for everything. After 35 yards it’s not great, and after 75 it’s terrible regardless of the load. If your hands are untrained, you’re better off with a rifle. The shotgun is heavy, takes an eternity to load compared to a detachable-magazine-fed firearm and mastering it so its pattern strikes where the shooter looks, without the use of sights, takes years to accomplish.

Some of this seems to me to be a dated viewpoint.  We’ve already shown that with the right choke, 00 buck can be put inside a five inch group at 50 yards.  By way of information, the choke used in that video the URL embeds is now available and I have one.  I have not used it yet.

Also, shooting the Beretta A400 with its gas operation and kickoff stock recoil control, I’d have to remark that it doesn’t feel much different than shooting an AR, and I could hunt Quail with it all day with ease and comfort.  And I’m not sure it’s correct or even wise to say that if you can’t shoot a shotgun accurately your “better off with a rifle.”

I do know that 00 buck will travel through walls like handgun or even rifle rounds, and that the discerning shooting will consider other loads for homes in neighborhoods like Turkey shot (#4 or #5).  Finally, I’m not sure it’s correct to focus on the difficulty of reloading when magazine tube extensions can give you seven rounds.

First up is professor Smith, and then we go on to pistol braces in Texas.

Source.

A jury has acquitted on all counts the former school resource officer who stayed outside during the February 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida – absolving him of wrongdoing in the rare trial of a law enforcement officer for his response to a mass shooting.

Scot Peterson, 60, took off his glasses and wept in court as the judge read off the verdict, finding him not guilty of seven counts of felony child neglect, three counts of culpable negligence and one count of perjury.

“I’ve got my life back,” Peterson, a former deputy for the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, told reporters outside court, describing the years since the shooting as “an emotional roller coaster.”

I couldn’t care less what sort of emotional roller coaster he’s been on nor how he feels about any of this.  He’s a coward.  Regardless of what the law requires, he should have been a righteous man and, if necessary, given his life for the children.

Having said that, this is the right legal decision.  Holding police responsible for the protection of life runs afoul of court decisions in the following cases.

Castle Rock v. Gonzalez

Warren v. District of Columbia

DeShaney v. Winnebago County

Progressives hate the police except for when they enforce laws they want (that means against everybody but them as was the case with Antifa), and the traditional conservatives are the only ones left who believe the myth that the police are there to serve and protect.  They are not, nor have they ever been.  They are agents of the state and will behave that way at every opportunity.  No court ruling has ever said police are there to protect citizens.

It is the responsibility of every good man to defend his family, and thus should men be armed and capable of doing so.  As for schools, if you want them to be safe, hire people who are under contract to do that, harden the entrances, and give teachers weapons.  Better yet, get your children out of public schools and home school them to learn math, physics, chemistry, rhetoric and logic, and theology.

Don’t conflate the fact that this man was a coward with the notion that the police are there to protect you or your children.  That’s what you and your weapons are for.

AllOutdoor.

This image is from the Montana Knife Company (so that we don’t get accused of poaching a picture from AllOutdoor).  They also have green and black and other color patterns.

It appeals to me.  I love good knives as well as well-made firearms.

Two comments.  They’re going to have to do a bit better than “Restocking Soon.”  Also, the price of $350 seems rather steep (although well-made knives go for a lot these days).  For that price, it had better function well and stand up to abuse.