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]

Everything You Know About An Active Shooter Situation Is Wrong

BY Herschel Smith
6 years, 8 months ago

No, not you.  I’m talking to Jeff Sanders writing for PJM.

I have just completed the ALICE training course on dealing with an active shooter situation. If your business has not gone through this, you need to get them on board. Immediately. This is simply some of the best training I have ever been through. And it does not involve using firearms at all.

We have all heard about the tragedies at Columbine, Sandy Hook, Aurora, and Virginia Tech where an active shooter massacred people. Sadly, this sort of thing is probably not going away any time soon. How should people caught in this situation respond? Not everyone is going to carry a gun. (I am a concealed carry weapons instructor and strongly support the 2nd Amendment. But let’s face it, many people simply are not going to carry, and many should NOT carry a firearm.)

Very, very few people will dedicate the necessary amount of time and training to be able to shoot an attacker without accidentally shooting innocent people. And even if you are armed and trained, it would be incredibly difficult to react fast enough and track down the killer and eliminate the threat. There is training, however, that uses our natural God-given abilities that even children can use, and it’s in the ALICE training seminars.

“ALICE” is the acronym for a series of responses: Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate. You do not need to do all of these responses, or in the order spelled out in the acronym. You do whatever your situation demands at the moment.

Oh good Lord!  I’m so tired of hearing this claptrap I don’t know what to do except call it out for the bullshit it is.  It’s effective bullshit for the masses, just witness the comments at the linked article, or the link that sent me there to begin with.  Let me explain what this is all about.  Security contractors know that the progressive heads of corporations won’t allow their employees to carry firearms for self defense, but those same employees also know that run, hide and fight is ridiculous and sets them up to be sheep led to the slaughter on the altar of those progressive dreams of utopia.  What to do?

Enter, “Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate.”  It sounds so much better, right?  Except there is no difference since employees are unarmed and helpless.  The money quote is this: “Very, very few people will dedicate the necessary amount of time and training to be able to shoot an attacker without accidentally shooting innocent people. And even if you are armed and trained, it would be incredibly difficult to react fast enough and track down the killer and eliminate the threat.”

That’s a lie and the writer knows it, as does every security contractor who purveys this bullshit (or if he actually believes it he has poor judgment).  We’ve seen otherwise, from the young lady who had a gun to her head, reached down, unholstered her firearm, and shot the assailant.  Or consider the elderly folk who have acted in self defense, most of them essentially untrained.  I’m not advocating getting no training.  What I am advocating is that it’s possible to defend your life without the supposedly super Ninja warrior stress control training that infantry goes through.

And the notion that the police are trained to that standard is absurd.  Most police never discharge their weapons in self defense.  Neither, for that matter, do Soldiers and Marines who aren’t infantry.  That is a myth.  The bottom line is that if you are left unarmed by your employer, you are left as sheep to be slaughtered on the altar of the progressive utopian dream.

And every security contractor who teaches corporate security knows it.  Every … single … one.

Millennials’ “Mysterious” Support For Permissive Gun Laws

BY Herschel Smith
7 years, 11 months ago

The Washington Post:

When I was in middle and high school, there were spirited public debates about whether the proliferation of grisly movies, gore-glorifying song lyrics and shoot-’em-up video games might desensitize my peers and me to violence.

While I’m reluctant to pin any of this on pop culture, it’s true that my generation appears somewhat inured to violence — at least violence involving firearms.

A decade or two post-adolescence — as our own preschool-age children now practice “active shooter” drills in which they’re coached to cower in the closet or throw toys at a tactical-gear-outfitted maniac — millennials seem to have neither the desire nor the willpower to pressure our political leaders to do much to prevent such tragedies. If anything, we may be slightly more blasé about them than our elders.

Which does not bode well for liberals hoping that the arc of history will eventually bend toward greater gun control.

Poll data about views of gun control and specific gun-control measures are mixed, and responses vary depending how questions are asked. But statements about protecting gun rights generally elicit at least as much support from younger Americans as from older ones.

Well, that’s a strange visit down memory lane for the author, Ms. Catherine Rampell, and I say strange because it would never occur to me to connect gun control laws with active shooter events, except in that so-called “gun free” zones are never really that, and instead are open invitations for such nefarious miscreants to do their wickedness.

Inured to violence is how the author chose to set this up, with her appeal to blood and gore, but she slips and accidentally paints a word picture of what can happen when her restrictive gun laws are enacted – idiotic things like strategies to run, hide, fight, and throwing potted plants at shooters, or perhaps toys.  You see dear, your restrictive gun laws never stop criminals because they don’t care about your laws.  They only disarm law abiding and peaceable citizens.

Millennials are generally smart enough to figure that out.  We’re winning, the progressives know it, and I suggest that you learn to live with it.  We know how to evangelize and proselytize.  Perhaps you should even purchase a gun and learn to use it, in case of an attempted rape or an active shooter event.  The police will show up to fill out paperwork, but the event will be over by the time they arrive.  You are responsible to defend yourself.  No one else will.

Active Shooter Drills Are Worthless

BY Herschel Smith
8 years, 3 months ago

Los Angeles Times:

At first, Dorothy Vong assumed it was a drill — just like all the others at her work.

At the Inland Regional Center, where she’s a nurse, the staff works with clients and parents of clients who are sometimes angry. They have active-shooter drills every month or so.

“Drill started,” she texted her husband, Mark, around 11 a.m.

She walked to a window nearby and filmed a video as law enforcement sprinted toward the building.

“Oh, that is scary,” a voice says calmly in the background.

“They’re all geared up!” someone else says. “Rifles and everything!”

In the background, someone laughs — they still didn’t know.

Then the reality set in.

She texted her husband again: “Well it’s real.”

And then a few minutes later, another message: “We’re in a locked office.”

Mark Vong said he told his wife to stay calm and not to panic.

“They train for this,” he said, standing outside a police barricade Wednesday afternoon. “They know it’s going to happen.”

Stay calm and trust the police.  They will save you.  Except we all know now how many people perished in the attack.

I don’t know if I have any liberal readers or if any will stumble upon this post, but let me make an observation you know is true, but simply haven’t faced with all of your gun control.

Active shooter drills are stupid, as is active shooter training in general.  Oh, I’ve been through it because my own employer forbids weapons on site.  Hide under desks, lock doors, throw potted plants at the shooter (no, I’m not kidding), and all manner of ridiculous, inane, juvenile content and recommendations drowns the participant in this training like so much objectionable vomit.

It’ll never work.  None of it ever works.  It’s all concocted by the anti-gunners who want people to feel better about coming to work every day, like they can actually do anything about active shooters in the absence of a weapon to stop the shooter.

Your polices and your stupid training are culpable.  You hear me?  You’re culpable for deaths that have occurred and many more that will occur.  Get used to seeing the bloody night time news reports.  They’re going to get worse.


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