Articles by Herschel Smith

Introduced at Shot Show.

This is a nice looking handgun, with an optics ready slide, a rail and a frame mounted safety. They were responsive to customer demands. This is also made in America for around $1200.

From a friend, these words, pages 22-23 on the ATF website.

“Because these types of firearms were never designed to be fired from one hand, this rule, as described in the NPRM, does not apply to firearms commonly referred to as pistol grip shotguns.29 86 FR at 30828–29. The 2014 classification described above and any classification that provides that a pistol grip shotgun is not an NFA firearm is no longer valid or authoritative as of [INSERT DATE OF PUBLICATION IN THE FEDERAL REGISTER], and the firearm should be resubmitted to FATD for evaluation.”

Do you own a Benelli M4 for home defense?  If so, you may be rolled into the ATF clown show they’ve created for themselves and you with their awful pistol brace release.

Or based on the caveats, they may be referring to bullpup shotguns, or AOW.  Who knows at this point?

I know a bit more about this incident than what’s contained in the video (and cannot share at the moment), although the video itself should be disturbing enough to watch.  Basically, this is an execution for no good reason whatsoever.

As I’ve said before and will continue to say, “You’re never in more danger than when the police are around.”  And by the way, if you love someone, don’t ever send the police to their home to conduct a “wellness check.”  If they were well before the police arrive, they won’t be afterwards.

Travis Haley and Chris Costa go over height over bore very well in Art of the Tactical Carbine, but if you’ve never thought much about this or seen the series, this is a good explanation of what you should think about in CQB concerning the axis of the bore versus the axis of the optic.

Proverbs 30:21-23 come to mind.

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.