Articles by Herschel Smith

Like I said about cattle (and specifically bulls), you don’t mess with large animals. That wolf may have a broken jaw now and may not survive.

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First, the Army is intending to deploy tank rounds intended for drones. See here.

The U.S. military is thinking about drones. Doctrine usually doesn’t survive first contact, but at least it’s a start. I especially approve of the shot shells for tanks.https://t.co/HOGeDehsWE

— CaptainsJournal (@BrutusMaximus50) July 13, 2025

Second, Big Country Expat has been doing some thinking about the more quick and easy to develop stuff.

Now, as far as (and I know this’s going to go over like the proverbial lead balloon,) but I have a COTS idea that could be implemented right here, and right now… As I discussed with Herschel last evening or the night before…

My Idea utilizes pre-existing stuff… In this case it’d be the M7/M243 LVOSS or Light Vehicle Obscuration Smoke System to dispense an anti-drone package. The anti-drone rounds would be new, but easily and cheaply made/manufatured.

I make my own ‘timed/fused’ fireworks legally here for holidays for my 37mm Launcher… If -I- can make them here, utilizing a glue gun, some black powder, and learning how to time my visco?

So easy, even an Airborne Infantryman can do it LOL.

As it is, currently, the LVOSS is/was used to ‘throw mad amounts of smoke’ in Iraq and Afghanistan during ‘negative crowd issues’ i.e. protests and/or riots. The launchers themselves individually look like this:

Each tube on a M7 launch tube is 66mm in diameter wide round, and about 5.75 inches (the round itself) in the pic above long… meaning the overall length is about 7.28 inches long, but the Boomy-Boom part of the round itself is about 5.75 inches by 66mm which is 2.6 inches wide. The round has the capacity in that picture of having a 19oz payload…

Remove that Red Phosphorous/Butyl Rubber Smoke Composition?

Replace that and Load the shell with #4 Turkey Shot?

Well the payload for the above-stated round is 19 ounces.

The math said a comparable 19-ounce load of #4 lead shot would contain approximately 2,584 pellets. #4 lead shot contains about 136 pellets per ounce. Therefore, 19 ounces * 136 pellets/ounce equals roughly 2584 pellets.

Finally, there is the extremely high tech.

🚨 Here’s What Leonidas, the U.S. Army’s New Microwave Defense System, Is Capable Of.

No bullets. No missiles. No sound.

The Leonidas system uses high-powered microwave bursts to instantly disable enemy drones mid-air by frying their electronics — not jamming, but physically… pic.twitter.com/rG2gT7KMJM

— Defence Index (@Defence_Index) July 15, 2025

So for microdrones, if you want to be capable of defense in a real-time big war, this has become a rich man’s game.

Cowboy State Daily.

Can Wyoming ranchers prevent grizzlies from killing their cattle? Possibly, if they go all-in on Charolais cattle.

That’s what happened last week when a herd of Charolais cattle on a ranch owned by DeBruycker Charolais in Dutton, Montana, decided that a pesky grizzly had to go.

Where most cattle might panic or run at the approach of the apex predator, this herd went on the offensive.

“They’re protective of their babies, as any good mother should be,” owner Brett DeBruycker told Cowboy State Daily.

Rather than running away from the grizzly, the cattle approached the pernicious predator. The grizzly was surrounded and sent running for its life, with dozens of Charolais hot on its tail to ensure it was evicted from the property.

“Charolais tough,” Kesler Martin, DeBruycker’s nephew and one of the owners of DeBruycker Charolais, posted on social media. “That bear didn’t stand a chance.”

This behavior is expected for bison, but uncommon for domestic cattle. Could Charolais cattle be the cure for grizzly predation in Wyoming?

Video at the link.

I’m no so sure about the statement that this would be “uncommon for domestic cattle.” Maybe for cows and steers, but if you’ve ever been around bulls, you know that they are some of the meanest animals God ever created.

Source.

A federal appeals court has rejected a challenge to a New York gun nuisance law that imposes liability for injuries stemming from misconduct in the sale or marketing of firearms.

In a July 10 opinion, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at New York affirmed dismissal of the lawsuit filed by the National Shooting Sports Foundation and 14 of its members.

The 2021 state law is not preempted by federal law, it does not violate principles of interstate commerce, and it is not void for vagueness, the 2nd Circuit said in an opinion by Judge Eunice C. Lee, an appointee of former President Joe Biden.

Of course Eunice said that. Shutting down firearms manufacturers has always been the holy grail of gun control.

The solution, of course, is to refuse to sell firearms to anyone in the state of New York, including and most importantly, law enforcement.

That is, if firearms manufacturers had scruples and cared more about the second amendment than they do about making money.

Source.

Shutting down firearms manufacturers has always been the holy grail of gun control.

The solution, of course, is to secede from Canada.

Great work. I’m a bit surprised they responded to the FOIA request by transferring the full FBI document over to anyone.

With this done now, it’s hard to see how the Sig lawyers or designers move forward without a whole host of lawsuits and without an announcement and complete recall of the firearm.

For the record, I have nothing that says ‘Sig’ in my locker. I don’t do striker-fired guns and I don’t do Sig. I have heard that this pistol was originally intended to be a hammer-fired gun and then later redesigned to striker-fired. If that’s true, they should have left it hammer-fired.

KUIU has a very good article up on methods of water filtration and purification for backcountry hunting, with emphasis on weight and movement. I won’t post it all or even any of it, but they have a nice list of pros and cons on the various methods.

I have most of these methods, from life straw to force filtration through ceramic filters. I don’t have (and haven’t used) tablets. I don’t like the idea of loading my thyroid up with iodine. Some are light, some are bulky and weighty, and leak inside your backpack. Again, there are pros and cons to all of it.

Prior:

Water Filtration for the Hunter and Backpacker

The Best Backpacking Water Filters

There is an X post in this link, but that’s not what interested me. The weird cacophony of comments were just as strange as anything I could have imagined.

I am an old man now. I’ve boiled away all the BS. Gun control is my litmus test. If you support gun control you are a fascist. Period. End of story.

If you support fascism there is already a party for you. The Democrats.

[ … ]

Litmus test you say?

“If you support gun control you are a fascist. Period. End of story.“

So you agree with me that Vladimir Putin is a fascist, good to know.

“Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a bill tightening gun controls in response to a deadly school shooting earlier this year.

The law, signed into force on June 28, raises the minimum age for buying hunting rifles and long-barreled guns from 18 to 21.
It also provides for additional restrictions on owning weapons.“

https://www.rferl.org/amp/russia-gun-ownership-law/31331101.html

It all goes downhill from there and apparently these commenters know each other (at least, over the interwebz) and one thinks he has something on the other. I’m glad I don’t deal with these commenters. I’d just delete them. I have no patience for things like that in my house.

Let me answer the question for you. Yes, if you support gun control, you are a communist. You may be a communist with a little ‘c’ who pretends to love liberty, or you may be a communist with a big ‘C’ who admits it all. But either way, you are a communist.

That’s why I didn’t like GWB who wanted to renew the Clinton era AWB. That’s why I didn’t like Clinton (among many other things). That’s why I didn’t like Obama (among many other things). And if Trump continues to make claims that he is the best friend gun owners have and then ignores our demands, I won’t like him very much by the end of all of this.

The same thing goes for Putin. I don’t like him because he is a gun controller (among many other things). Gun control is a signal issue that indicates to me where your heart is.

And note well that both the senate and the house let 2A advocates, sports shooters, hunters and gun owners down in their promise to undo suppressors and SBRs as NFA items. This will come back to haunt them.

I know that there is a flurry of lawsuits now over the NFA given the fact that there is now a registry without a tax which folks purport to violate other laws passed by congress.

So what? All a court has to do is decide that if congress this term had wanted to remove suppressors and SBRs from the NFA, or that they were worried about running afoul of other things they had done, they could have easily removed them from the NFA altogether or not rescinded the tax.

As it is, the $200 tax has stood for almost 100 years. Now that we’ve made it fair game, who knows what the democrats will do when they control things (as they are bound to)?

They’ve opened a can of worms by doing what they consider to be a halfway house. A court will never side with us, and even if so, the SCOTUS will never grant it certiorari. The Pollyanna posts and videos about how this is a win annoy me. It’s a fantastical and abject loss and failure.

Finally, I suspect John Thune was worried about losing the senate by exposing Cornyn and others as gun controllers. He doesn’t have his chamber in order, and I suspect that’s why he didn’t overrule the parliamentarian.

So before Elon or anyone else gets his head straight about the second amendment, we need to first focus on the senate and house, if there is really any further point to doing so. I suspect all is lost and there is no longer any purpose in politics. It’s all just one uniparty.

And we had a once in a hundred year chance to remove suppressors from the NFA. But you didn’t have your chamber in order. There are gun controllers among you that you decided to protect rather than do the people’s work. You served fellow senators instead.

— CaptainsJournal (@BrutusMaximus50) July 5, 2025

I knew that SureFire had a quick connect from their flash hider directly to a suppressor design, but I didn’t know that B&T had designed one before them. Apparently, SureFire doesn’t like the fact that B&T is making money off of their own design.

In today’s litigious society, I’m not sure I would have allowed pictures to be taken, or at least, I would have patented it long ago if I was a B&T attorney.