Articles by Herschel Smith

I always learn something by watching or listening to Jerry.

Now, if I can just get to the range to practice these things.

On the one hand, technically, I understand his points about why the previous two cases were not granted certiorari.

On the other hand, while I understand why he makes his prediction, he tends to be over-optimistic in my opinion.

I predict exactly the opposite. I predict that if it ever makes it to the SDCOTUS, it will lose.

The follow-on remarks over Twitter show that this cop apparently thought this guy was someone who ran from him on a previous occasion, and that was an error.

There is no possible world where this isn’t attempted murder.  But the problem is that this isn’t a bad cop.  This is a normal, everyday, average cop.

Via Wisco.

Chewing a burger without a burger chewing license? Death penalty. pic.twitter.com/LD7DHnJumA

— Libertarian Party of Delaware (@LPofDelaware) October 6, 2022

I think this will take some practice.

I just can’t find a good tactical shotgun course offered anywhere near me.

It seems to have a chance.

As you all are aware by now, Texas passed a “Texas Made Suppressor Law” last session. It is a highly specific law that says that a suppressor that is made ENTIRELY of Texas made parts and stays in Texas is legal. Representative Tom Oliverson (R-District 130) led the fight for passage on this bill and it was well crafted.

It requires anyone who wants to build these to first seek a Declaratory Judgement from the courts–thus giving Attorney General Ken Paxton legal standing to defend the law.

Good news for us! The feds tried to kill the case and Judge Pittman said their arguments were not good enough to pull the plug on the case and denied their motion.

We will have our day in court! Post-Bruen, I have high hopes that this will prevail. Further, I spoke with Representative Oliverson this morning and he said ““HB957 passed its first legal challenge yesterday.  I am glad to see the lawsuit move forward and I look forward to Judge Pittman’s evaluation of the arguments.  I believe the case against federal regulation of these Texas-made, Texan-owned firearm safety devices is solid!”

It’s going to be a long haul but the trial date has been included in the four-week docket beginning November 12, 2023 and I have high hopes for it!

Here’s the problem.  Unless this bill includes the directive for local LEOs to arrest agents of the FedGov who attempt to arrest folks who have suppressors without registering them as NFA items, the law is meaningless.

It’s a setup and trap, even if unintentional.

Do the right thing with the bill.  Connect it to protection from the FedGov by the state and then it’s good to go.  Even if the FedGov cannot be watched 24 hours per day, after arrest of innocent victims of this new law the state can decide to enter FedGov facilities to regain control of the victims and arrest said agents.

It’s all about who is willing to flex their muscle enough.  And by the way, this sort of thing is exactly why the FedGov fears the new Missouri law prohibiting the ATF from interfering with the 2A in that state.  It has teeth because it’s backed by state and local law enforcement under threat of firing and never again being able to work as a LEO in Missouri.

Guy appendix carries without a holster and shoots himself in the groin.  Link -> reddit/Firearms.

Yea I know.  Use a holster – that’ll make everything safe.

Or not.  I don’t appendix carry.  I don’t point weapons at myself regardless of how much confidence I have in trigger discipline.

It’s called redundancy, or defense in depth, which is an engineering design philosophy.

You don’t point guns at other people and then claim it’s safe because you have trigger discipline, do you?

No, I don’t either, and I don’t point weapons at myself.

But that’s just my opinion.  Carry however you wish.

With a good manufacturer you shouldn’t have to worry about this.  It could be the BCG if there’s a head space problem.  Otherwise, send the gun back and demand your money back.

Reuters.

WASHINGTON, Oct 3 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court, which expanded gun rights in a major decision in June, on Monday declined to hear a challenge to a federal ban on devices called “bump stocks” that enable semi-automatic weapons to fire like a machine gun – a firearms control measure prompted by a 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting.

The justices turned away appeals by a Utah gun lobbyist named Clark Aposhian and firearms rights groups of lower court rulings upholding the ban as a reasonable interpretation of a federal law prohibiting machine gun possession.

It doesn’t meet the legal definition and they know it.  Here is the decision.

The case of McCutchen versus the United States is still alive.  It’s based on a “takings” argument.  To me this is a weaker case since technically, the government could do it with so-called just compensation.  The whole point of this is that the ATF cannot make law, but they do make law because of the overblown bureaucratic state and cowardice of the Congress to do anything about it by withholding funding and handing them pink slips.

Remember that Trump did this.  He didn’t have to.  No one held a gun to his head.  He voluntarily chose to do this.  It’s on his head – not only this ban but the precedent it sets (which is ongoing and growing as we speak with the new SBR / arm brace rules).

In connection with this, David Codrea links his piece at Ammoland where he asks what NFA items Paddock owned.  That’s right.  Paddock had prohibited weapons and you never heard anything about that.

Anyway, recall that floor camera in Paddock’s room showing all of the spent casings?  Me neither.

Las Vegas was a running gun battle with multiple shooters for several miles down main street.  Anyone who claims anything different is a liar.

The SCOTUS should have declared the ban unconstitutional because the executive branch made law.  As it stands, the best anyone could hope for now is a $150 credit on income taxes.

Weak tea and cowardice.  Just like Trump.

BLUF: Probably so.  It removes the offending piece.

We’ve covered this in previous posts.  I still believe this is all a gigantic trap.  It’s a way for the ATF to come to your door, demand your firearms, measure them, take data on them, log your serial numbers, and then make up their minds depending on the capricious “decision of the day.”  The entire point is to expand the gun registry.

Also see Tim’s discussion.

Also make sure to drop by David’s piece on this.

Outdoor Life.

It’s been a tough year for Chris Landers. The 30-year-old hunter from Strathmore, Alberta underwent four ocular surgeries at the beginning of 2022 to fix a detached retina, the result of a work accident during which some metal shavings flew into his eye. He hunted in 2021 before realizing the retina was an issue and successfully harvested an elk and a black bear. He was hoping to have similar success with his 2022 elk season, but things wouldn’t go as planned.

Landers and his buddies were hunting in the Spirit River valley north of Grand Prairie in the afternoon of Thursday, Sept. 15 when disaster struck. As they followed after a bugling elk, some thick brush knocked an arrow out of Landers’ quiver. Somehow, the arrow stuck into the ground with the broadhead pointing up. Landers didn’t see it in time and stepped right into the razor-sharp blades. The broadhead gouged into his shin, soared up behind his knee, and plunged into the back of his lower thigh.

The blades severed his peroneal nerve and nicked an artery. This not only turned his left leg into a fountain of blood, but also rendered it practically immobile and without any sensory function. Extreme damage to the tissue and cartilage around his knee joint only got worse as he fell to the ground.

“[The arrow] went right beside the bone, almost halfway up my leg,” Landers tells Outdoor Life from a hospital in Calgary. “It went past my knee and snapped off somewhere. We found the bottom half of the arrow and another small chunk where it broke, so about 10 inches of arrow were in my leg.”

His hunting partners Devon Spencer and Jared Manuel immediately sprung (sic) into action. They were miraculously in the only spot of cell phone service they’d seen in the two days they’d been hunting, so they called in emergency services.

“We stopped the bleeding so that it wasn’t crazy bad, and I just tried to calm myself down a little bit,” Landers says. “We had STARS Air Ambulance flying overhead about an hour and a half later. They nosed down and one of the nurses came down and put a tourniquet on. She couldn’t get an I.V. in because I was in shock, so she had to do an [intraosseous infusion] and had to drill a hole in my leg to put meds in through my shinbone.”

Pictures at the link.  They were initially using a belt as a tourniquet.  Even if the IFAK contains nothing more than a tourniquet and Quik Clot, carry one in the bush with you.  Virtually anything can happen.