The Paradox and Absurdities of Carbon-Fretting and Rewilding

Herschel Smith · 28 Jan 2024 · 4 Comments

The Bureau of Land Management is planning a truly boneheaded move, angering some conservationists over the affects to herd populations and migration routes.  From Field & Stream. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) recently released a draft plan outlining potential solar energy development in the West. The proposal is an update of the BLM’s 2012 Western Solar Plan. It adds five new states—Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming—to a list of 11 western states already earmarked…… [read more]

Some Useful Tests On Suppressors

BY Herschel Smith
4 years, 8 months ago

Via David Hardy, some useful tests on suppressors.

For our testing purposes, we used a *Larson Davis Model LxT1-QPR Sound Level Meter.

We recorded both suppressed and non-suppressed readings, using the z-weighting method of measuring high pressure levels. This method of measurement is also referred to as linear or unweighted.

Unweighted is a more accurate method of evaluating potential hearing damage and is the best method to use when testing firearms. MIL-STD 1474D is considered the military standard for measuring sound. Following these standards, we placed the microphone 1 meter to the left of the muzzle and 1.6 meters above the ground, with the microphone pointing upward, at a 90 degree angle to the bore. All testing was completed away from any reflecting surfaces, as to not negatively affect the audio readings.

We compared five of the most popular handgun and rifle calibers available on the market today, testing 30 different SKUs of ammunition in the process. Then, we test fired five rounds suppressed and three unsuppressed with each brand of ammo to find an average dB level.

[ … ]

Unsuppressed, we recorded an average of 166-171 dB for the 16″ and 20″ AR15 rifles.  When shooting with a silencer, the levels come in at an average of  135-145dB. That’s an average reduction of 36dB between the unsuppressed and suppressed shots.

We observed a change of only 1-4dB between the two barrel lengths, both suppressed and unsuppressed.

Of all the rifle calibers tested, the loudest average unsuppressed measurement of 172.87 dB came from the 18” Ruger American Predator, firing .308 Win Federal Gold Medal Berger 185gr. OTM ammo. The same ammunition fired with a suppressor came in at an average of 148.4 dB.

[ … ]

We saw comparable results for 45 ACP as we did with 9mm. The average unsuppressed levels, which were some of the loudest results for the pistol calibers, came in at average of 165-167 dB, while the average suppressed levels came in 21-26 dB lower, ranging from 141-146 dB.

This is useful, but I do have one gripe with the data and the explanation.  An unweighted measurement of sound is not the best or most useful for evaluating hearing damage, regardless of what their cited Mil Std does or doesn’t say.

OSHA uses A-weighting because that is the weighting that most closely approximates the effect of frequency differences on the ear.  So does NIOSH, and ACGIH.  That’s what the military should be doing.

An AR-15 And A Four-Man Home Invasion In Summerfield

BY Herschel Smith
4 years, 8 months ago

News from Florida.

SUMMERFIELD – Marion County sheriff’s officials say a homeowner armed with an AR-15 shot and killed two intruders and was injured himself during a home invasion robbery in Summerfield Wednesday night.

Two other robbery suspects  Robert John Hamilton, 19, of Ocala, and Seth Adam Rodriguez, 22, of Belleview  were detained near the scene, according to the Marion County Sheriff’s Office.

Nigel Doyle, 22, of Summerfield, and Keith Jackson Jr., 21, Ocala, were killed. The homeowner, whose name was not released by the Sheriff’s Office, was in stable condition at a hospital Thursday afternoon.

Rodriguez was arrested on charges of murder and home invasion robbery with a firearm. Hamilton faces home invasion robbery with a firearm. Both men were being held in the Marion County Jail without bond.

Deputies got the call at 8:21 p.m. Wednesday and went to the home at 14999 SE 32nd Court Road in response to a report of shots fired.

Sgt. Micah Moore found Doyle with a gunshot wound and a shotgun next to him on the ground. Deputies entered the home and found Jackson dead on the dining room floor. Detectives said he was wearing a “Jason” mask on top of his head, gloves on both hands, jeans and a black shirt.

They all look so nice, don’t they?

So you can tally yet another multi-intruder home invasion where an AR-15 and [presumably] standard capacity magazine saved a life.

Mr. Stephen Bayezes says hello.

First Impressions of 450 SMC

BY Herschel Smith
4 years, 8 months ago

While I said that I carried 450 SMC (and a slightly modified 1911 with a stiffer recoil spring) into the bush, I had never shot it.

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to take a very special little boy out to a field and teach him to shoot a .22LR Cricket.  I was a great time, and he exhibited the patience to do it right.  I was very proud of him.

But I used the chance to shoot a couple of rounds of 450 SMC through that 1911 to see how it performed.  While it has been said that the 450 SMC causes 78% more recoil than 45 ACP, I cannot bear that out from my experience.

Maybe it did, but I don’t find the recoil from the 45 ACP to be that stiff anyway.  I managed to shoot two shots of 450 SMC rapid fire and put them within a 3-4 inch two-shot group at 20 yards, first time, no practice shots.

I didn’t find the recoil to be problematic at all.  I would liken it to a combination of the push you get from the 45 ACP with the snappy muzzle flip of the 9mm.

Hopefully, much more to come on the 450 SMC.  I like it.

Ammunition Tags:

Everything You’re Not Supposed To Know About Suppressors

BY Herschel Smith
4 years, 8 months ago

A very good and informative video, well worth the time.

The Real Mass Shootings

BY Herschel Smith
4 years, 8 months ago

The Free Thought Project:

Tragically, in America, mass shootings in which murdering psychopaths go on rampages in public spaces have claimed the lives of 339 people since 2015. While this number is certainly shocking and far too high, during this same time frame, police in America have claimed the lives of 4,355 citizens.

Have you heard any politicians griping about those mass shootings?

The Roots Of Liberty In America

BY Herschel Smith
4 years, 8 months ago

I don’t sit waiting on the next post by Max Velocity in order to critique it, but this came in the mail and I felt that it would be appropriate to weigh in with readers.

This is a bit of a combination post and is intended to get a few things off my chest, and challenge the narrative. I will mince no words when I tell you that the state of things in this country right now appalls me. We have just had July the 4th and as a (former) Brit I have seen my share of dumb statements that drive me nuts.

Anyway, this is what I think: I will ‘recast’ for you the American Revolution. I know you won’t like it, because you have been reared on your own historical propaganda. In simple terms, the events surrounding 1776 were a civil war between the British Crown and Aristocratic landlords in the US, who were British. The colonies were British and had been for a couple of hundred years. The beginnings of America were British.

In the 1776 civil war, there were various actors. The British Regular Army, Hessian mercenaries, the Rebels, the Colonial Loyalists, and the French Navy. When Paul Revere made his ride, what he was actually yelling was “The Regulars are coming.” Not the British, because everyone was British.

When the Regulars marched to Lexington, they were met by British Colonial Militia. Yes, yes, farmers with guns blah blah, but they were actually a militia, trained to be able to fight with the weapons of the day. However, nothing should take away from the huge achievement of the rebels. I won’t go on here about that fact that Britain was involved in a huge war with France, and that a tiny percentage of combat power was only ever able to be given up to fight in the American colonies. For the colonies, this was a life and death struggle; for Britain, it was a sideshow. Same with 1814 etc: for Americans relating this on July 4th, it is everything, for the British Empire at the time it was nothing but a side-show to achieve specific political objectives. In short, there is a lot of American Hubris over events about 200 years ago, not really tied to any general awareness of world events at the time. Much of this can be traced to American ethnocentrism safe behind the ocean walls that protect this country. Consider this: Britain was involved in a total war with the French Empire, which was not concluded until the defeat of Napoleon in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo. By today’s standards, the relatively small taxes levied in the Colonies were to help pay for that war. It was extremely self centered for the Rebels to pick that time to conduct a revolution: and don’t forget the large number of Colonial Loyalists who stayed loyal. I have not studied it, but given the war in Europe, I am interested to know who it was that Britain sent to the Colonies as Regular troops in order to fight the rebellion. What was their standard? Were they green troops or hardened veterans who were sent for a needed rest? It’s an interesting point.

If he’s right, it wasn’t self-centered, it was smart.  But I don’t think he’s right.  In fact, I think this analysis is very poor and perhaps suffers from his own propagandistic rearing.  And no, I couldn’t care less who were the British regulars sent to prosecute war in the Americas.

We’ve dealt with this in just a bit of detail before, but I’ll recapitulate it.  General Howe was hopelessly mired in operations in the North.  The linchpin of the British strategy was General Cornwallis and his plan to take the important Southern port of Charleston, which he did after taking Savannah, and then move North through the Carolinas and eventually meet with General Howe.  Despite several conventional victories, his forces suffered many casualties and lack of logistics mainly because of the insurgency in South Carolina (combined with the death of his plan to use loyalist troops in battle against patriots).

His intention was to march Northward, with the hideously awful plan of leaving loyalists in charge of land and assets taken in battle.  This approach failed when loyalists evaporated and patriots multiplied.  Cornwallis’ plan to march Northward became a plan to flee to Wilmington carrying wounded troops and attempt resupply.  He was hauling wounded troops with a depleted force, and needed lead ball, gunpowder and virtually everything else.  His retreat to Wilmington was unapproved, but he knew that his force couldn’t sustain much longer without rest and resupply.

At the height of the campaign in Afghanistan, I predicted the failure of logistics through Chaman and the Khyber pass, and because of the U.S. failure to engage the Caucasus region, supply aircraft left and returned from Donaldson AFB 24 hours a day, 365 days per year (Mr. Bob King, Instructor, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Department of Joint, Interagency and Multinational Operations, Leavenworth, encouraged my work in this area).  Essentially, logistics were provided to U.S. forces in Afghanistan via air transport, which is no way to prosecute a war.

The American continent became the British Afghanistan times a thousand.  Continued logistics were impossible.  The expanse of the land made it too cumbersome, too difficult, too costly, and too involved.  Furthermore, the temperament of the people was not conducive to rule by the Brits.  It wouldn’t have mattered if The Brits had sent all of their armies.  The campaign would have lasted longer, but in the end the outcome would have been the same.

But the most profoundly wrong sentiment in the article I cited above isn’t the analysis of the campaign, but rather, the reasons and impetus for its advent.  Whether there were aristocrats involved or engaged isn’t the point.  Modern American community is fractured to the point of being nonexistent.  Consider.  In the expansive wilderness of the American frontier, if a man perished on the field of battle, he needed someone he could entrust with the lives of his widow and children.  To whom could you turn today?

In order to understand history, one must turn to the primary source documents.  Secondary source documents, along with the pronouncements of professors of history, can lead one astray.  For both the American war of independence and the war between the states, my professors forced me to study sermons, and in fact read some aloud in class.

The city square was little visited compared to the church pew in colonial times.  The place for philosophy, politics and theology was the pulpit, and the theologian-philosopher was the pastor.  In order to understand why the American revolution happened, you must read the sermons of the day.  Aristocrat-involvement or not, fighting men were needed, men who could entrust their families to aid from a dedicated community in the event of their death.  Without fighting men, such an adventure as the American revolution is just a figment of aristocratic imagination.

The sermons were heavily focused on the breakage of covenant by King George.  In fact, it has been said – and correctly so – that “The American revolution was a Presbyterian rebellion.”  “Calvinists and Calvinism permeated the American colonial milieu, and the king’s friends did not wish for this fact to go unnoticed.”

As I’ve explained elsewhere:

In terms of population alone, a high percentage of the pre-revolutionary colonies were of Puritan-Calvinist background.  There were about three million persons in the thirteen original colonies in 1776, and perhaps as many as two-thirds of these came from some kind of Calvinist or Puritan connection.

[ … ]

… by 1776, nine of the thirteen original colonies had an “established church” (generally congregational in New England, Anglican in New York, Virginia and South Carolina, “Protestant” in North Carolina, with religious freedom in Rhode Island, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Georgia) … While this did not necessarily mean that a majority of the inhabitants of these colonies were necessarily committed Christian believers, it does indicate the lingering influence of the Calvinist concept of a Christian-based civil polity as an example to a world in need of reform.

Every colony had its own form of Christian establishment or settlement.  Every one was a kind of Christian republic.  It was to them a monstrous idea … for an alien body, parliament, to impose an establishment on them.  The colonies were by nature and history Christian … to read the Constitution as the charter for a secular state is to misread history, and to misread it radically.  The Constitution was designed to perpetrate a Christian order.

Their experience in Presbyterian polity – with its doctrine of the headship of Christ over the church, the two-powers doctrine giving the church and state equal standing (so that the church’s power is not seen as flowing from the state), and the consequent right of the people to civil resistance in accordance with higher divine law – was a major ingredient in the development of the American approach to church-state relations and the underlying questions of law, authority, order and rights.

[ … ]

It was largely from the congregation polity of these New England puritans that there came the American concept and practice of government by covenant – that is to say: constitutional structure, limited by divine law and based on the consent of the people, with a lasting right in the people to resist tyranny.

It may be difficult for contemporary Americans to comprehend, but for colonial America, covenant was king, the roots of the revolution were largely theological, and the people were deeply religious whether the aristocrats were or not.  There was going to be revolution with or without the aristocrats.  The Brits in America and the Brits in England were far too different to co-exist under the same crown.

Before closing, there is one more odd statement in the article.

None of the above is to say that I don’t think that ultimately the events of 1776 – 1787, resulting in the founding of the original thirteen colonies of America as a separate united country, was a bad thing. It’s just important to look at it in it’s true light. My understanding is that a lot of loyalists moved to Canada – it’s pretty poor form that the US then tried to invade Canada! Consider also Washington’s put-down of the Whiskey Rebellion – how hypocritical. In fact, that makes you smell a rat at the very beginning of the formation of the country. It was about the first new American tax. Many of the rebels were war veterans who believed that they were fighting for the principles of the American Revolution; against taxation without local representation, while the new federal government maintained that the taxes were the legal expression of Congressional taxation powers.

I’ve seen this sentiment before and while tempting, I do not fully concur with it.  If the power of taxation doesn’t extend to the payment of salaries for military service, it would never extend to anything.  A conversation between a libertarian and me almost turned ugly at one point when he demanded that continued medical services for veterans was socialism.

To be sure, unearned entitlements such as SNAP and welfare is socialism, but as for what my son did in the USMC, he signed a contract with the U.S. government.  The WCF has this to say about lawful oaths and vows.

Whosoever taketh an oath ought duly to consider the weightiness of so solemn an act, and therein to avouch nothing but what he is fully persuaded is the truth. Neither may any man bind himself by oath to anything but what is good and just, and what he believeth so to be, and what he is able and resolved to perform.

The contract signed by my son, and all veterans, and by the U.S. government, is a lawful oath.  His education benefit, his medical benefits, and so on, were part of the contract.  Failure to meet the stipulations of that contract is sinful.  You can decide that you don’t like it and work through your elected representatives to change it, but you cannot revisit what has been signed.  I repeat.  It is a lawful covenant.

Equally sinful is the failure to pay for service rendered by the members of the continental army.  The Whiskey tax was legally passed with local representation in 1791.  Max’s objection that the rebels believed they were fighting against a tax that lacked “local representation” is fabulating.  The members of the House approved it.  They elected the members of the House.

To be sure, I would have chosen to do this otherwise (than a silly, nonsensical tax on Whiskey).  But of equal importance, perhaps more important, is the question why America believed it could avoid the immorality of failing its obligations to fulfill covenants and contracts.  That says as much about the times as does the Whiskey tax.

“You shall not muzzle an Ox when it is treading out the grain,” (Deut 25:4).  So says God, whether you like it or not.

The final points on due remuneration to soldiers of the continental army are mostly beside the point except that they were addressed in the original article.  Suffice it to say that I disagree with the spirit of the balance of the article.

I do concur that it is time for America to take note of what has been gained, what has been lost, and why we are where we find ourselves.  But Max, while full of complaints, suffers from what I find in this community.  Diagnosis of the problem is everywhere.  Remedies are in short supply.

I intend to offer a few remedies of my own, and these are unrelated to the article that started this.  I don’t want to leave the reader without hope and actionable ideas.

1] Resolve never to be disarmed.  That is the least your family and community should be able to expect from you.  This involves having a world and life view to support such a determination.  You have no greater God-given duty than to your family for their protection and provision.

Libertarianism isn’t that world and life view.  As R. J. Rushdoony observed:

“Modern libertarianism rests on a radical relativism: no law or standard exists apart from man himself. Some libertarian professors state in classes and in conversation that any position is valid as long as it does not claim to be the truth, and that therefore Biblical religion is the essence of evil to them. There must be, according to these libertarians, a total free market of ideas and practices.

If all men are angels, then a total free market of ideas and practices will produce only an angelic community. But if all men are sinners in need of Christ’s redemption, then a free market of ideas and practices will produce only a chaos of evil and anarchy. Both the libertarian and the Biblical positions rest on faith, the one on faith in the natural goodness of man, the other on God’s revelation concerning man’s sinful state and glorious potential in Christ. Clearly the so-called rational faith of such irrationalism as Hess and Rothbard represent has no support in the history of man nor in any formulation of reason. It is a faith, and a particularly blind faith in man, which they represent.”

Libertarianism is tyranny by substituting the government for the individual.  A tyrant by any other name is still a tyrant, and tyranny can present itself in lawless behavior in the community just as it can in taxation.  Classic libertarian politicians, like Ron and Rand Paul, care less about laws to protect the border than the democrats (who want voters) or republicans (who want cheap workers for the corporations).  Libertarianism leads to lawlessness and breaking of covenants, contracts, vows, oaths and obligations.

Your basis for never being disarmed is that you were created in God’s image, and His law is immutable and transcendental.  Anything else is shifting ground and will disappoint you.

2] Consider your community.  If you cannot entrust anyone except family for the protection of your wife and children, not only is that a sad testimony concerning the state of America, but it makes a laughingstock of plans to conduct small unit fire and maneuver tactics.  You need to look for a good church, one that values caring for widows and orphans more than it does large buildings and multi-media presentations.

3] Horace Mann laughs from the grave.  If your children or grandchildren are in the public school systems of communist reeducation, you should consider home schooling.  Incrementalism isn’t something we should reject in the patriot community.  Practically and humanly speaking, the father of modern Christian education in America, Rousas J. Rushdoony, believed so thoroughly in Christian education and home schooling that he spent much of his life on it and believed it to be the only real hope for America.

I hope this engenders discussion, thought and study.

Comment Policy

BY Herschel Smith
4 years, 8 months ago

I am disturbed at the nature of the comments associated with the blog lately.  Certainly, some of my posts are very negative, but if your impression is that the nature of the posts and the fairly open comment policy means that I’m simply giving you an opportunity to write protracted gripes, you’ve misunderstood my sentiment.

I write what I do in order to chronicle the decline of America, to educate my readers (and me), to enable and encourage us to prepare for the worst, and to make us better men and women.  For instance, chronicling the influx of immigrants doesn’t mean that readers need to ramp up the gripes and moans, but rather, be about our business preparing.  This isn’t going to last for long.  Chronicling the infringements on our God-given RKBA doesn’t mean that readers are invited to lay out threats against anyone.  It means that we need to understand the times, resolve never to be disarmed, and prepare for the worst.

I also have a certain religious viewpoint, and I’ve tried to make that abundantly clear on numerous occasions.  So for instance, rather than engage in hate towards ethnic groups, we should all understand the following from the WCF.

Section 2.) By this sin, they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God,(1) and so became dead in sin,(2) and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body.(3)
————————————
Section 3.) They being the root of all mankind, the guilt of this sin was imputed,(1) and the same death in sin and corrupted nature conveyed to all their posterity, descending from them by ordinary generation.(2)
————————————
Section 4.) From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good,(1) and wholly inclined to all evil,(2) do proceed all actual transgressions.(3)
————————————
Section 5.) This corruption of nature, during this life, doth remain in those that are regenerated;(1) and although it be through Christ pardoned and mortified, yet both itself, and all the motions thereof, are truly and properly sin.(2)

Thus, the focus of my efforts won’t be to hate an ethnic group, because in the absence of that group, whatever it is, there will always be another to take its place.  The total absence of central banking only means that there will be a white dictator to take its place, or an Idi Amin or Pol Pot.  If you think that evil is ensconced in a race, you have entirely missed the point of the Gospel, and you believe a lie.

Thus, from now on I intend to deal with comments without hesitation or remorse.  If you don’t like that, you can find another place to comment.

1] I do not intend to become embroiled in endless pedantic debates with readers.  I’ll end the debate by deleting the thread.

2] I do not intend to allow readers to hijack discussion threads, thus trashing the hard work I’ve put into the articles.  I’m not paid one penny for doing this – I won’t turn this site over to ne’er-do-wells who want to make it look like 4Chan or reddit by posting trashy things anonymously.

3] If you intend to make threats, e.g., “hang all pols, make a list and check it twice and get ready for war, war, war, give me violence NOW …,” you can expect to have your comments deleted without prejudice.  You won’t be returning to TCJ.  I do find it amusing and ironic that most commenters don’t use their real name, but rather, a nom de guerre, and then proceed to use this blog to lay out vicious comments about others, while I am the one who uses my real name rather than a nom de guerre and bear the brunt of whatever comes my way as a result of those comments.

Per counsel I’ve sought, I possibly bear some legal liability for comments like that, and I certainly suffer reputation when I give platform to such things.  And I also know that not a single reader is going to do anything about the comments he’s making to make a step change in society without God’s sovereign blessing upon the nation.

It isn’t true anyway.  You understand that, right?  Not all pols are evil.  Some are good.  Not all Latinos vote for progressives.  To render racial judgments based on the actions of a few, or many, is a formal logical fallacy.

4] If you engage in Jew-hate in the comments, you can expect to have your comments be deleted forthwith.

5] If you engage in any other kind of race-hate in the comments, you can expect to have your comments be deleted forthwith.

6] If you get into fights with fellow commenters, you can expect to see the entire discussion thread deleted.

I have never promised that I read all comments, and I’m not promising that here.  I simply cannot review all comments – at the present, I have over 35,000 comments on the site.  But as I catch them, I’ll deal with them appropriately.

Next, we’ve dealt with this thing of incrementalism before.  I advocate it, and you know that.  Readers have commented that the progressives have mastered the art, while we’ve been left in the dust (or maybe the dustbin of history).  But then those same readers reject out-of-hand the notion that any victory, however small, means anything.

I find it patently absurd that anyone thinks that we’re going to reverse course in America in a step change by doing anything.  You want lawlessness and lack of government?  Okay.  Then 99.99% of you will die an ignominious and meaningless death without being able to bequeath either your wealth or your heritage to your children or children’s children.  Prepare yourselves for Kosovo on steroids.

You want to reject incrementalism?  Okay.  Sit on your couch and lose to those who believe in it.  You want to try to do everything in your own power?  Okay.  Hold your fist up and engage in “high-handed sin.”  Tell God you don’t need Him.  Tell me how that goes.

Americans have no one to blame but themselves.  We have allowed the deaths of innocent victims through abortion, we have allowed the fleecing of widows and orphans by the taxation of men who are trying to do well by “leaving an inheritance of their children’s children.”  We have invited Hollywood to send smut into our homes at its whim.  We have sent children to schools of communist indoctrination, where they learn that there is no God, there is no family, and the only entity is the state.

Is it any wonder we are where we are?  Why would anyone believe that we could avoid God’s curse?  There is a way to recover America, but it doesn’t involve a step change in anything except a return to God’s Holy law.  Doing that isn’t likely to happen without re-educating children, home schooling them, and engaging in what Rousas J. Rushdoony called “Christian Reconstruction.”  The enemy has incorporated incrementalism, and it’s absurd to think that it’s going to be made easy on us at this point by rejecting that approach.  Horace Mann took a very long time to accomplish his goals.  It will take us equally long to undo what he did, or longer.

By way of final comment, you are helping no one with gripes and moans, not even yourself.  You are helping everyone when you make comments that encourage fellow readers, bolster their belief, and make practical suggestions for how to live in troubling times.  It’s okay to say “thank you” to the host of this web site from time to time.  It’s also okay to say “thank you” when a reader makes a good, educated, measured, intelligent comment that benefits you.  I like to see comments from measured men who speak intelligently and with an eye to history and philosophy.  Be that kind of commenter.

Sale Of Savage Arms

BY Herschel Smith
4 years, 8 months ago

Savage Arms has been sold.  Providing further news and perspective on this sale, American Rifleman.

More than a year after Vista Outdoor raised eyebrows by placing its Savage Arms business unit on the block, completion of the sale was announced July 8. Press releases from Vista listed the total purchase price as $170 million and said that the buyer—Long Range Acquisition LLC, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing—is a “group of investors headed by Savage President and CEO Al Kasper.”

When Vista’s intentions regarding Savage became known last spring, some pro-gun commentators reflexively feared that the Minnesota-based conglomerate was abandoning the firearm industry amid a wave of craven corporate virtue-signaling in the wake of the Parkland tragedy. As it turned out, the Savage divesture was part of a larger, ongoing strategy by Vista to reduce debt by selling assets outside of its core business of ammunition, optics and other shooting and hunting accessories. At the time, newly arrived Vista CEO Chris Metz told American Rifleman, “I’m a big believer that new products are the lifeblood of our industry, that the reason someone goes out and buys a new 20-gauge shotgun or .30-‘06 hunting rifle is probably not because they truly need one, but because whatever is new is news. All of our brands are vying for funds to feed product innovation. We sat down, took stock and strategically laid out which brands and which businesses we think we can invest in and grow.”

It makes no difference to me whether Savage Arms is owned by Vista Outdoor or someone else, as long as that someone else doesn’t do what was done to Remington (unload debt, suck off the resources via “financial engineering” tactics).

It sounds like this might be a good move if the Savage President and CEO heads the group, but we may have to wait and see.

I consider Savage to be one of the best large firearm manufacturers left.  I’d like to see them stay strong.

How To Shoot An AR-15

BY Herschel Smith
4 years, 8 months ago

John Lovell gives a tutorial.  I still consider the Magpul “Art of the Tactical Carbine” to be the best.  However, John provides some helpful tips.

Finding the “small of he shoulder” is difficult if you lift weights.  What happens is that the butt always lands on the pec.

Also, the thumb-over-bore grip is cool, but my son said what John did.  My son conducted room clearing for hours and days, and the only grip that works for that long is a much closer one.

Psychiatric Diagnoses Study Casts Reasonable Doubt On Red Flag Laws

BY Herschel Smith
4 years, 8 months ago

David Codrea:

Or as lead researcher Dr. Kate Allsopp concludes:

“Although diagnostic labels create the illusion of an explanation they are scientifically meaningless and can create stigma and prejudice.”

Liberty advocates concerned about due process-denying gun confiscations empowered by “red flag laws” should see the danger of this, when even the experts can’t agree on the basics.

As we’ve noted before, the number of psychiatric experts we can trot out to show that the various mental “diagnoses” don’t correspond with propensity to violence is virtually limitless.

Or as reader Menckenlite observed concerning guns and mental health?

Control freaks love psychiatry, a means of social control with no Due Process protections. It is a system of personal opinion masquerading as science. See, e.g., Boston University Psychology Professor Margaret Hagan’s book, Whores of the Court, to see how arbitrary psychiatric illnesses are. Peter Breggin, Fred Baughman and Thomas Szasz wrote extensively about abuses of psychiatry. Liberals blame guns for violence. Conservatives blame mental illness. Neither have any causal connection to violence. The issue is criminal conduct, crime. Suggesting that persons with legal disabilities are criminals shows the nonsensical argument of this politician and his fellow control freaks. Shame on them.

But there is no shame among pols who trot out red flag laws.


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