Articles by Herschel Smith

This is a really good and informative discussion.

Sent from reader Fred, this lawyer does a fine job of explaining some overlooked aspects of the Bruen decision.

In the case of New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Court ruled that law-abiding citizens have the right to carry firearms outside the home for self-defense. The Supreme Court explicitly affirmed that the Second Amendment protects twin rights: “to keep and bear arms,” with “keep” meaning to own or possess and “bear” meaning to carry outside the home.

But here’s the crucial part of the Bruen ruling that has escaped notice. Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas emphasizes that the proper test of constitutionality—which the Supreme Court established in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008)—“requires courts to assess whether modern firearms regulations are consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding.”

Simply put, first you need to see what the text of the Second Amendment does (and does not) mention, and then you must look at what firearm regulations were in place at the time of the American Founding. Justice Thomas gives an example: “[W]hen a challenged regulation addresses a general societal problem that has persisted since the 18th century, the lack of a distinctly similar historical regulation addressing that problem is relevant evidence that the challenged regulation is inconsistent with the Second Amendment.”

The Founders knew all about mass killings which were part of the American experience dating back to the Jamestown colony. On March 22, 1622, Native tribes of the Powhatan Confederacy killed 347 English settlers—men, women, and children. Indian raids represented a serious threat for more than two centuries after the Jamestown Massacre. Two mass killings occurred in 1755 alone. In July, Shawnee Indians attacked Draper’s Meadow, a Virginia settlement. They killed at least five people, including an infant. Then, in October, the Lenape raided a settlement along Penn’s Creek in Pennsylvania, killing fourteen.

In 1774, Mingos and Shawnees launched a series of raids on Virginia settlements. Thousands of settlers were forced to flee. In a letter dated July 1, 1774, James Madison concluded that the attacking Indians were “determined in the extirpation of the inhabitants.”

Likewise, John Adams declared the need for armed self-defense. The next year, Adams described how “hardy, robust” people throughout the colonies had become “habituated” to carrying “their fuzees or rifles upon one shoulder to defend themselves against the Indians.”

Nor did Indian raids present the only danger. During the Revolutionary War, New Jersey’s Pine Barrens offered a haven for robbers, who would plunder, burn, and murder. One historical account explains, “The inhabitants, in constant terror, were obliged for safety to carry their muskets with them into the fields, and even to the house of worship.”

The Founders enshrined the right of the people to keep and bear arms in part because they knew of this history of mass killings. As the testimonies of Madison and Adams illustrate, the Founders recognized the importance of firearms to self-defense.

I’ve always claimed that if the founders wanted to word the 2A differently, they could have.  If they had wanted to repeal it, they could have.  If they had wanted to refrain from toting weapons around themselves (which they did all the time), they could have.

They didn’t, not on any account.

The second amendment is about self defense.  Some will claim that it’s about ameliorating tyranny.  Those folks are thinking small in my opinion.

Yes, it is, but the amelioration of tyranny is a subset of self defense.  Self defense is about defending the person, family, neighborhood and community against individual attackers, gangs, or the state if tyrants want to rule you.

It isn’t either-or.  It’s both-and.

Tim at MAC does a comprehensive review of the 460 Rowland.

I would suggest that the comparison of personal defense rounds is irrelevant, and I would have expected it to turn out the way it did (it just disintegrates).  On the other hand, the penetrator performs wonderfully.

Both the 460 Rowland web site and Brownells has 460 Rowland conversion kits.

Short of a conversion, using just a new recoil spring in a 1911, I like the 450 SMC.  But it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the 450 SMC available at Double Tap.  I sent them a note to find out why they stopped producing it, and if they intend to start again.  I’ll keep you posted on what I find out.

Reason.

“If I knew in 2020 what I know now, we would do a lot differently,” said Fauci in an interview on Monday. “The insidious nature of spread in the community would have been much more of an alarm, and there would have been much, much more stringent restrictions in the sense of very, very heavy encouragement of people to wear masks, physical distancing, what have you.”

He is a foul, loathsome little swine who looks more like a Ferengi instead of a pig.

What he’s saying out loud is that he would push more of the same that didn’t work to do anything positive for the health of America.

But the health of America was never the goal.  The subjugation of America was.  What he really means, but isn’t saying out loud, is that the subjugation didn’t work like they wanted it to, because people began to ignore them.  The science was so bad that even the most idiotic couldn’t ignore the fact that it’s unrelated to health.

Masking and distancing were school-child ideas, never worthy of serious consideration.  Not being taken seriously meant that their goals of mass population control was a failed experiment.

Queue up the next issue.

David Kopel.

Today U.S. District Judge Raymond P. Moore issued a temporary restraining order against the ban on so-called “assault weapons” recently enacted by the town of Superior, Colorado, in Boulder County. The case is Rocky Mountain Gun Owners v. Superior.

Lead attorney for the plaintiffs was Barry Arrington, one of Colorado’s top lawyers on education law, and now the victor in a major Second Amendment case. Arrington previously served in the Colorado House of Representatives, and as a trustee of the Independence Institute, where I work.

Judge Moore formerly was a corporate lawyer (Davis, Graham and Stubbs, Denver), and then head Federal Public Defender for Colo. and Wyoming. He was appointed to the bench by President Obama in 2013, and confirmed unanimously.

Like several other towns in Boulder County, Superior recently outlawed semiautomatic centerfire rifles that have at least one supposedly bad characteristic, such as an adjustable stock; various semiautomatic shotguns; various semiautomatic handguns; and magazines with a capacity of over 10 rounds.

It was obvious that such arms are “commonly used by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes,” which is the Supreme Court’s rule from District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) for which arms are protected by the Second Amendment. First, the Colorado Attorney General and plaintiffs in an earlier case challenging the state of Colorado’s ban on magazines over 15 rounds had so stipulated. Colorado Outfitters Ass’n v. Hickenlooper, 24 F. Supp. 3d 1050, 1068 (D. Colo. 2014), vacated in part on other grounds and remanded, 823 F.3d 537 (10th Cir. 2016). (I represented 55 Colorado Sheriff plaintiffs in the case, which ended up with the 10th Circuit declaring that neither the Sheriffs nor the many other individual and organizational plaintiffs had standing.) Commonality was also found in the undisputed facts set forth in Fourth Circuit Judge Traxler’s dissenting opinion in Kolbe v. Hogan, 849 F.3d 114, 153-55 (4th Cir. 2017). The opinions of many other Circuit Courts provide additional, irrefutable proof of commonality; the banned firearms number in the millions, at least, and the banned magazines comprise over half of all magazines.

Pursuant to the Supreme Court’s recent decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, courts are supposed to decide Second Amendment cases on text, history, and tradition. Judge may not decide based on their own opinions about good policy, nor should they defer to legislative policy judgements. The policy  balancing was already conducted by the American people when they adopted the Second Amendment.

[ … ]

The Colorado plaintiffs also challenged Superior’s ban on open carry of handguns. Judge Moore denied the TRO motion against the open carry ban. As he accurately stated, Bruen affirms the right to bear arms, but also allows governments to decide whether the mode of carry shall be open or concealed. Since 2003 in Colorado, concealed carry permits have been available to adults with safety training who pass a fingerprint-based background check. A system that bans open carry while allowing concealed carry does not violate the Second Amendment.

At least one aspect of the ruling was correct.  All the judge can do is follow Bruen, and that decision allowed for bans on mode of carry as long as some mode of carry was allowed.

Of course, I disagree with that part of it as you know.

This article at Task & Purpose provides some interesting information, as well as this one at Guns & Ammo.

Outdoor Life.

It’s a hiker’s nightmare: you’re on a remote trail with no cell service when your ankle rolls and breaks. You have no way to contact anyone for help, and no real hope that someone will happen to hike along and find you. As a bonus, you’re surrounded by bear scat.

That’s the position one hiker found herself in during a hike with her husband through Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness Area. They were seven miles away from the trailhead—too far for the injured woman to hike out. So her husband made the tough call to leave his injured wife behind.

When he made it back to the trailhead, he made contact with authorities. As there were no local search and rescue organizations for this remote corner of the state, Two Bear Air Rescue attempted to send a helicopter to her location, near the Swift Dam along a fork of Birch Creek. But strong winds prevented the rescuers from landing near the injured hiker, and the copter was instead forced to drop off rescuers a mile and a half away.

When they hiked to the injured woman’s location, rescuers noticed bear scat all around her.

“There was grizzly bear poop everywhere,” they told the Idaho Statesman. After tending to the hiker’s injuries—her leg was broken in two places above the ankle—the rescuers then carried her piggyback to the landing site, arriving just as the sun was setting.

While the SAR team was able to get to the injured hiker before a grizzly encounter, rescuers don’t want hikers to take any chances, and they posted this reminder on their Facebook page: “When deep in the backcountry, bring a satellite communication device to save valuable time and enable the group to stay together.”

I’ve carried a satellite texting device with me in the deep backcountry before.  We found that it took between an hour and several hours to land with the recipient of the message, so there’s a delay from device to satellite to cell service to phone.  But even that would have been better than nothing.

That’s a decision I wouldn’t have made, even without communications gear.  I would have made her as comfortable as possible, prepared for the night by finding a protected and covered place to sleep, collected wood for a fire, and worked on a stretcher to drag her out myself.

Leaving her alone would simply not have been an option.

The assault weapons ban hearing is going about as well as you would imagine. Booker asks what the difference is between a semi auto rifle and semi auto handgun. When he gets an answer he doesn't like, he immediately pivots to Dr. Fuddlore pic.twitter.com/3OooAkZYDg

— Bad Weapon Takes (@BadWeaponTakes) July 20, 2022

By 500 yards the velocity of a 5.56mm round is about 1400 FPS out of a 20″ barrel (less out of 14.5″ or 16″).  The notion that a 55 grain bullet travelling at 1400 FPS could penetrate ballistic plating is so ludicrous that it’s laughable.  That’s similar to the muzzle velocity of a 22 LR.

The 5.56mm is great for CQB, but its strong suit doesn’t happen to be ballistic plate penetration at 500 yards.

The woman clearly doesn’t know anything about firearms or ballistics.  That’s clearly a gaggle of clowns twirling balls and riding unicycles in circles.  It’s just a freak show and circus.

Via WiscoDave.

Source.

Early on July 6, 2021, Leah Lokan awoke to a 417-pound grizzly bear a few feet from her tent, so close that she heard when the bear “huffed” at her head.

“Bear! Bear!” Lokan yelled, prompting Joe and Kim Cole — two other cyclists camping in the small town of Ovando as they trekked across Montana — to spring from their nearby tent, armed with bear spray and clamoring as much as possible, according to a 26-page report addressed by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee’s executive body earlier this month.

The bear fled.

After scaring it off, Lokan, a 65-year-old visiting from Chico, Calif., moved food out of her tent to a nearby building. She armed herself with a can of bear spray. She declined an offer to stay in a hotel for the night. Then, she and the Coles returned to their respective tents.

Lokan’s extra precautionary measures weren’t enough. The bear returned about an hour after the first encounter and mauled her to death.

A year later, wildlife officials said the bear that killed her had developed a “predatory instinct.” Although they couldn’t determine exactly how such an instinct evolved, food and toiletries inside and near Lokan’s tent, as well as the lingering smell of cooked food from July Fourth picnic celebrations, likely played a role.

“While foraging under the cover of darkness in Ovando, perhaps due to a simple movement made by the sleeping victim, or a certain sound made by the victim, the bear reacted,” the committee’s board of review wrote in their Jan. 4 report, which was discussed earlier this month during the executive body’s summer meeting. The 11-member review board included officials from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and the U.S. Forest Service.

The bolded section highlights three bad decisions.  She should never have had food in her tent to begin with.  Next, bear spray isn’t enough.  Third, a hotel rather than a tent near city establishments would have been a better choice.

Getting rid of food is essential.  Protection is necessary.  A large bore handgun would have been the right medicine.