Articles by Herschel Smith

News from Atlanta.

It looks to me like he was in retreat to cover and didn’t aim well or land any shots.  Too bad.  But at least the presence of the rifle made the assailants flee.

No one needs an AR-15 for self defense.  Tell that to the man who was just on the receiving end of 20+ rounds.

Or tell that to Stephen Bayezes.

Or tell that to the pregnant woman who used an AR-15 to defend her family.

F&S.

A new pill undergoing trials at Duke University may be the answer to poisonous snakebites. Currently, snakebite victims need specific antivenin for the species they were bit by, and that medicine needs to be administered intravenously at a hospital. The antivenin called varespladib-methy in pill form may change that, curing a broad spectrum of bites from different snakes.

According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 2.7 million people get bit by venomous snakes each year around the world. Venomous snakes kill between 81,000 and 138,000 people annually and leave three times that many people with disabilities. Many victims are struck in remote, rural areas with limited access to antivenin, making time one of the biggest factors in saving those bitten by snakes. But researchers hope that a pill-form antivenin would change that.

I’m not sure what “pretty long time” means, and I don’t like the sound of that.  But I do like the idea of something other than what we currently use.  I’ll communicate with the doctor and see if I can’t dig up some more facts.

For those of you who don’t currently know anything about how this all goes down, I do know a little something.  My dog Heidi always had a penchant for messing with snakes.  It was something pathological about her.  She started pawing at a Copperhead one night on a walk and got bitten in the paw.

It swelled up the size of a softball and I feared she would lose the leg, or part of it.  The emergency Vet I took her to gave her some anti-inflammatory medicine and antibiotics and sent her home.  I slept with her that night.  She was pitiful.  She recovered though.

When I asked the Vet about antivenin and studied it later, as it turns out each treatment of that stuff ranged up to $15,000 (at that time, several years ago).  It is biological material and degrades with time, and they don’t give it to animals.  I wouldn’t have been able to afford it anyway.

They create antivenin by injecting cattle (usually in Mexico) with small amounts of snake venom and then extracting the blood products over time after the cattle have adapted to it.  For it to be viable, it has to be refrigerated.  This isn’t something every hospital has sitting around (sometimes it has to be delivered via a “life flight”), and even if most or all did, snakes bite at the most inopportune time, well away from hospitals.

If Heidi had gotten bitten by a Rattlesnake, she would have been dead within minutes or perhaps a couple of hours.  So would a human without treatment.  Oftentimes, humans lose arms, legs, or other body parts, when bitten by Rattlesnakes.  Water Moccasins (Cottonmouths) also kill with a neurotoxin.  Copperheads aren’t quite the deadly threat that Rattlesnakes or Water Moccasins are, but in order to keep from losing appendages, you have to seek treatment.

A tablet like they’re describing would go a long way towards reducing the cost of this treatment and expand its availability when most needed.

As I said, I’ll try to communicate with the doctor and find out more.  For those of us to bang around in the bush or work on farms or ranches, this is important stuff.

UPDATE: Related, a little boy in Colorado was killed by a Rattlesnake.

I guess Tim has discovered the tactical lever action gun.  I think this is the first video he’s done on lever action rifles.

Via Radley Balko, news from NM.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — An overnight SWAT standoff with a suspect ended with a house fire in southeast Albuquerque. Police have confirmed that a 14-year-old boy was found dead inside the home after the fire was put out.

Police said the suspect, Qiaunt Kelley, was wanted on a federal felony warrant for robbery. Police said they tracked the suspect to the home on the 8100 block of San Joaquin Avenue SE at around 10 p.m. Wednesday, but the suspect and the teenage boy hid in the home.

Several hours later, at around 3 a.m., police saw smoke emerging from the windows. Firefighters were eventually able to put the fire out, but officials said the front half of the house was engulfed in flames.

The suspect reportedly exited the home as Albuquerque Fire Rescue was extinguishing the fire. He was taken into custody and then transported to a local hospital for burn injuries.

The 14-year-old boy, however, was found dead by fire crews and police officers. No official cause of death has been determined at this time.

Albuquerque Police Department Chief Harold Medina said in addition to the felony arrest warrant, the suspect was a person of interest in several violent crimes in Albuquerque.

[ … ]

KOB 4 spoke with a woman whose sister and her family lived there. She said the people involved in the SWAT standoff weren’t related to her family and did not live there, but were acquaintances of her nephew who stopped by to pick up a bike. Now, she’s questioning how police and the SWAT team handled the situation.

The family is also blaming police for starting the fire, claiming flash bang grenades ignited it.

Police confirmed that multiple “munitions” were used at the scene – they’re used in SWAT situations to get suspects to surrender. They are working with AFR to determine if one caused the fire.

Good old fashioned police work – staking out, investigation, interviews, questioning suspects, arrest warrants signed by competent judges – is out the window.

Just call SWAT and throw grenades.  It’s how business is done these days.

Military.com.

Some 40,000 National Guard and 22,000 Reserve soldiers who refused to be vaccinated against COVID-19 are no longer allowed to participate in their military duties, also effectively cutting them off from some of their military benefits, Army officials announced Friday.

“Soldiers who refuse the vaccination order without an approved or pending exemption request are subject to adverse administrative actions, including flags, bars to service, and official reprimands,” an Army spokesperson said in a statement.

At this point even semi-literate people know what’s happening and what has occurred.  Steve Kirsch observes that:

1. a 6.6% rate of heart injury (>10M Americans)
2. 2.7% are unable to work after being vaccinated (>5M Americans),
3. 6.3% had to be hospitalized (>10M Americans)
4. you were more likely to die from COVID if you’ve taken the vaccine.
5. Almost as many (77.4%) households lost someone from the vaccines as from COVID. If you believe that 1M people in the US have died from COVID, then this survey indicates that ~750,000 people died from the vaccine (10.18/13.15*1M) with a 95% confidence of at least 600,000 deaths.

Dr. David Martin thinks this is only the beginning.

Dr. David Martin has a deep medical science and investment resume. Dr Martin also runs a company (M·CAM International) that finances cutting edge innovation worldwide.  He is also one of the key people seeking justice in lawsuits suing medical companies and the federal government involved in delivering the so-called vaccines for CV19.  In simple terms, according to Dr. Martin, the CV19 vaccines are “bioweapons.”  Big Pharma and the government knew it and also knew it would cause massive deaths and permanent injuries.  Dr. Martin says, “It’s going to get much worse. . . . It is not a Corona virus vaccine.  It is a spike protein instruction to make the human body produce a toxin. . . . The fact of the matter is the injections are an act of bioweapons and bioterrorism.  They are not a public health measure.  The facts are very simple.  This was premeditated. . . . This was a campaign of domestic terror to get the public to accept the universal vaccine platform using a known biological weapon.  That is their own words and not my interpretation.”

How many will die from the CV19 bioweapons?  Dr. Martin says, “By their own estimate, they are looking for 700 million people globally, and that would put the U.S. participation in that of the injected population as 75 million to 100 million people. . . . There are a lot of reasons why they hope it will be between now and 2028 because there is this tiny little glitch of the illiquidity of the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs.  So, the fewer recipients of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the better.  Not surprisingly, the recommendation was people over the age of 65 were the first ones to get injected.”

Dr. Martin thinks the catastrophic effects of the CV19 injections will hit the medical industry soon.  Dr. Martin explains, “The dirty secret is . . . there are a lot of pilots having micro vascular and clotting problems, and that keeps them out of the cockpit, which is a good place to not have them if they are going to throw a clot for a stroke or a heart attack.  The problem is we are going to see that exact same phenomenon in the healthcare industry and at a much larger scale.  So, we now have, along with the actual problem . . . of people getting sick and people dying, we actually have that targeting the healthcare industry writ large.  Which means we are going to have nurses and doctors who are going to be among the sick and dead.  That also means the sick and the dying are also not going to get care.”

The full interview can be found here.

I hope and pray that this is all wrong.  I fear that it is not, and I know men and women who have suffered from the shots.  And they sure are going to an awful lot of trouble to convince people that health problems like heart disease, arrythmia, and all sorts of killer diseases are part of every day life and caused by hot nights, solar flares, gardening, and a host of other activities in which men and women have been engaged for millennia.

In the mean time, there are ~60,000 Marines, Soldiers, Airmen and Sailors who apparently won’t be on this list of sufferers.

70,000 trucker contractors to be forced off the roads in California (which also affects the balance of the U.S.).

Did you know this was happening?

As I’ve said so many times before.  Droughts are natural.  All famines are man-made.

Source.

A Bay State gun rights advocate is calling out Attorney General Maura Healey’s firearm licensing guidance in the wake of a recent Supreme Court decision on guns.

Jim Wallace, writing on behalf of the Gun Owners Action League, is urging Gov. Charlie Baker to step in and block the AG’s move.

“We are aware of the joint ‘guidance’ released by the Massachusetts Office of the Attorney General and the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security,” Wallace wrote. “We are officially demanding that the so-called ‘guidance’ be retracted and revised as it does not reflect the decision handed down by the Court!”

Wallace is referring to guidance issued by Healey’s office and the EOPSS on July 1 in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.

In that case, the nation’s highest court ruled a New York law restricting firearm licenses to those who could show “proper cause” to carry was unconstitutionally infringing on residents’ 2nd Amendment rights.

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the court in a 6-3 decision, specifically cited Massachusetts as a state with similar licensing laws.

Healey was swift to respond to the court’s decision, issuing clarifications for licensing authorities — in the Bay State, that’s usually the local police chief — explaining that the state’s “good reason” rule was no longer applicable.

“Following the Bruen decision, licensing authorities can no longer enforce the ‘good reason’ provision of the Massachusetts law, which allowed license restrictions or denials if an applicant lacked a sufficiently good reason to fear injury to person or property,” Healey and Public Safety and Security Secretary Terrence Reidy’s offices said in a joint release.

However, the state officials also said some restrictions within the law do still apply, specifically the provision that allows chiefs to determine if a person is “suitable for a firearm.”

So it’s no longer “may issue,” it’s now “may issue” depending upon whatever we think today.

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.

Healey is a witch.  You didn’t think they would actually follow the law, did you?

They don’t just want a few guns.  They want them all.  The American controllers want to do exactly what Trudeau is doing now in Canada.

Sometimes my choice of focus may seem odd to readers.  But I try to focus on the things worthy of that focus, and on important trends.  There’s almost always a video to link on somebody shooting yet another rifle into a pile of bricks.  That’s not important.

Recall that we covered the Missouri 2A preservation act in gory detail – the political machinations, the law enforcement resistance to it and desire to buddy up with the federal government, the “sky is falling” predictions of the opponents, and most important, the staunch opposition to it by the federal government and the corollary legal actions to try to stop it.

The federal government hates 2A preservation acts, and for very good reason.  I told you this movement would grow, and it is.  I’ll also predict that what we see in Missouri is only the beginning.  This is Version 1.  There will be a Version 2, and 3, until they achieve the separation they want.  The movement is also growing as I said, and this time the play is being set up for us in NH.

News from NH.

Gov. Chris Sununu will soon need to decide whether to sign a bill to prevent New Hampshire law enforcement agencies from cooperating with federal agencies over enforcement of federal firearms laws. But exactly how the law might be applied – and how it might affect a firearms regulation package being negotiated in Washington – has been hotly debated in recent weeks.

Gun safety advocates and Democrats say the bill could undermine New Hampshire efforts to provide information to federal agencies determining who can purchase a firearm. And some, including the New Hampshire State Police, raised concerns that it could interfere with domestic violence protective orders.

Firearms advocates have praised the bill as a first step toward pushing back at perceived federal encroachment. But some of them say the bill does not go far enough and includes too many exceptions.

And few know how New Hampshire law enforcement would respond to the proposed law in practice.

House Bill 1178 prevents any state or local government from using resources to take action “to enforce, administer, or cooperate with” federal firearms laws that don’t exist in New Hampshire law. The bill applies to any “law, act, rule, order, or regulation” of the U.S. government and applies to any federal laws or rules relating to firearms, ammunition, magazines, ammunition feeding devices, firearms components, firearms supplies, or knives.

The bill, which cites Part II, Article 5 of the New Hampshire Constitution – the state’s’s right to bear arms – would apply that prohibition to “any person acting under the color of state, county, or municipal law.”

[ … ]

But the bill also contains exceptions. Under the bill, state or local law enforcement agents are allowed to cooperate in federal firearms investigations or arrests as long as there is a “reasonable suspicion” that that person has committed or is about to commit an additional offense not tied to a federal firearms rule or law. That exception includes any state law or a federal law that does not apply to firearms.

The exception means that New Hampshire State Police could assist in an operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives or the FBI against a New Hampshire resident with an illegal modification to their firearm, provided that they were suspected of doing something else illegal in the state, such as trespassing or firearms trafficking.

Firearms rights groups argue that that caveat is broad, and means that State Police and other agencies would be able to participate in many federal investigations or arrests.

NH isn’t willing to take anything but baby steps at the moment, those steps rendering the bill all but useless.  It isn’t necessary for state law enforcement to “cooperate” with the federal government – they can always do the investigative work themselves and effect the arrests they need under state law.

“There are very rarely going to be circumstances where there is a federal law enforcement activity occurring, criminal law enforcement activity occurring, where state and local officials are going to be prevented from cooperating,” said Sean List, an attorney with Lehmann Major List, PLLC and a firearms rights advocate.

“If someone is illegally selling machine guns … we don’t have a state law that says you can’t sell machine guns, but that’s probably a pretty bad dude,” he added. “And we can very easily figure out an articulable suspicion that this individual is also violating state law.”

Instead, supporters of the legislation say the law would more likely limit state officials from helping the enforcement of federal rules from the ATF or presidential executive orders.

One example is a rule passed by the Trump administration’s ATF in 2018 that would ban “bump stocks,” the devices that allow semi-automatic firearms to fire continuously, like a machine gun. That component was used during a deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed 59 people in 2017. The ATF and the U.S. Attorney General’s Office used the federal statute banning machine guns and applied it to bump stocks; that rule has been upheld by the U.S. Circuit Court after legal challenges.

Under HB 1178, state law enforcement agencies would not be able to help the ATF or FBI arrest someone who had modified their firearm with a bump stock, unless other laws were broken.

The shootings in Las Vegas weren’t perpetrated by a gun with a bump stock.  The event was a running gun fight down main street for miles based on 911 calls.  What you’ve been told is a lie.

Furthermore, one side says this, the other side says that.  This will cause confusion in the legal system, confusion to be exploited by law enforcement who wants to cooperate with the federal government, and confusion among the folks of NH.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  They could make it clear.  No cooperation.  Period.

You can read the rest of the article, but while I hope this gets signed by the governor, I consider it to be weak tea.  This should be considered Version 1 and needs to be modified as soon as possible.  Get it signed, make incremental advances, and take the issue on again next session.

I consider this to be bad reporting.  The writer gives us no hint concerning the predilections of the governor.  Is he disposed to sign this bill into law, or not?

Again, keep track of this movement.  This is one of the more important trends in America for gun rights as the Balkanization of America continues apace.