Articles by Herschel Smith

And demonstrating them too.  That’s a big collection for sure.

Tom Knighton writing at Bearing Arms.

However, there are a couple of other bills that, if they pass, will put them squarely at odds with the federal government.

Senate Bill 2 and House Bill 7 would both create the Alabama Second Amendment Preservation Act. This act would prohibit state law enforcement from enforcing any federal law, or other legislation, regarding the regulation of firearms, firearm accessories or ammo.

The bills would also set up penalties for whatever agency violates the proposed bill. The penalty for a first offense is a class C misdemeanor with a fine no less than $500 or more than $5,000. For all other offenses, it is a class B misdemeanor with a fine no less than $1,000 or more than $7,000.

In other words, it’ll be much like Missouri’s law that went into effect earlier this year.

That law hasn’t really been tested in the courts yet, so we don’t know how that will go, so Alabama following suit may or may not be a great move for them.

However, there’s another bill that may cause far more problems.

A different bill, House Bill 13, would prohibit state law enforcement from enforcing any federal bill or other legislation pertaining to the regulation of firearms, firearm accessories or ammo, just like Senate Bill 2. However, this only pertains to those made and sold in Alabama.

Under existing constitution law, Congress is given the authority to regulate interstate commerce. This bill would provide that firearms, ammo and firearm accessories that are made in the state and are only traded within the state are not subject to federal law or regulation.

Now, on the surface, this looks great for Alabama and I happen to agree with the reasoning behind this bill.

That said, Kansas passed a bill like this a while back. There are now people in prison because they figured the law would protect them, but the courts disagreed.

Alabama is free to pass the bill, of course, but if you live there and think that once it does, you can go out and build yourself a machinegun, well, I have some very bad news for you.

It should be noted that the prosecutions in Kansas have been upheld by the courts, so there’s no reason to believe Alabama residents would have any better luck.

Frankly, this is a bill that probably shouldn’t be passed. Yes, it’s pro-gun and yes, I agree with the reasoning and thinking behind it. However, there are people who will think this gives them license to do things that it really can’t. It’ll hurt good, decent people who simply don’t realize they’re doing anything wrong.

That doesn’t benefit anyone, I’m afraid, so it’s probably for the best if this doesn’t actually get passed.

I think Tom gets this wrong on every account, and this certainly isn’t the first or twentieth time I’ve disagreed with the folks at Bearing Arms, and it won’t be the last.

To begin with, yes Alabama should pass both of these bills and they should be signed by the governor.  First and foremost should be the constitutional carry bill, but if they get this far, they should pass the balance of the pro-2A bills as well.

But then Kansas passed such a law and people are in jail because of it, right?  Well, not so fast.  We covered it.  Kansas passed a 2A sanctuary law and I covered it.  It was more of a nullification law, and had the express purpose of allowing the purchase of NFA items without seeking approval of the controllers inside the beltway.  I said at the time that unless the governor was willing to send state and county police to arrest and imprison FedGov agents who attempted to make arrests in Kansas for said actions, it was weak tea and not really a nullification law.  Even the sponsor of the bill said that it mostly symbolic.

The Alabama bill seems a bit different, focusing on whether agents of the state can participate with FedGov agents in making such arrests.  They are taking incremental steps.  Some state is eventually going to have to broach this issue sooner or later, but until a governor is willing to battle FedGov agents, we’re left with what we’ve got.

I see the last sentence of the paragraph … “This bill would provide that firearms, ammo and firearm accessories that are made in the state and are only traded within the state are not subject to federal law or regulation” … is the tricky part.  I wouldn’t test that part of the bill, if indeed it has that proviso.  As for prohibiting agents of the state from aiding the enforcement of any new federal laws, Alabama can certainly do that, and Missouri has thus far been quite successful thus far in preventing cooperation with the FedGov, which is a good thing.  Finally, if this portends to be a weak nullification law, I see it as possibly targeting FedGov control over things like semi-automatics and AR-15s as anything else.

As for the Missouri law not being tested in court, I seriously doubt that the word of a federal court will stand as the law if the governor of the state makes it clear that the state law will be enforced, and that agents of the state who aid the FedGov will indeed lose their ability to work in law enforcement ever again.

That’s the whole point.  There are certain things a state can do regardless of what a federal court says.  This is one of them.

Alabama should pass both bills, but only after focusing first on a constitutional carry bill.

The New Yorker.

As far as radical interventions go, getting mauled by a bear is about as extreme as it gets. Few events are so undeniable, so borderline cheesy; the metaphors, embarrassed by a lack of subtlety, keep their distance. For the French anthropologist Nastassja Martin, this difficulty in meaning-making heaps insult on (devastating) injury. In August of 2015, Martin was hiking down a glacier in the Siberian mountains when she ran—almost literally—into a beast that would crush her head in his mouth, rip off a piece of her jaw, and flee only after she jabbed him with an ice axe. The encounter left her with a mutilated face and a ruptured sense of reality. “For me,” Martin writes in her new book, “In the Eye of the Wild,” translated by Sophie R. Lewis, “a bear and a woman is too big an event. It’s too big not to be instantly assimilated into one system of thought or another; too big not to be . . . consumed and then digested in order to make sense.” But what the book actually suggests is that such an event can never be assimilated; it can only be accepted. Martin’s narrative, with the bones of a personal essay and the lift of a prose poem, reciprocates the creature’s failed act of incorporation, and hunts for beauty in what remains occluded and apart.

The result is heady and obsessive, as Martin smashes again and again against the limits of what anyone can know: What is a self? What is “the other”? She considers her scars, her jaw now fitted with metal. “The figure,” Martin writes, meaning her body, “is reconstituted following its own unique pattern, but out of elements that are completely exogenous.” As a narrator, Martin can be humorless (understandably), and is often frustrated, angry, lost. While studying animist beliefs in Alaska, she’d theorized an “unlivable frontier,” implied by “the encounter between two beings from different worlds.” She now exists in that frontier, which she believes triggers a “cycle of metamorphoses” that usually ends with death. (She offers the example of a hunter who wears his prey’s scent, dons its pelt, and returns to himself and his people once he’s killed the animal—or been killed, “swallowed up by the other.”) But both bear and Martin have survived. The metamorphic dance continues, and with it the loneliness.

Drawn to the bear, Martin makes a list of what he might represent: “Strength. Courage. Abstinence. Cosmic and terrestrial cycles.”

[ … ]

Yet Martin’s rage speaks to a poignant anxiety: Just how precious or sacred are you, really, if a bear can suddenly rip off part of your head? Her crisis acquires new dimensions in an era of ecological precarity. “All you have known will disintegrate and be reshuffled,” she writes; reality “will metamorphose and become an ungraspable thing.” Martin, who worries about heat waves and melting ice caps, sees the entire planet as a desperately fragile treasure. An alarm inside her “is ringing in response” to climate change. “The misery my body is expressing,” she realizes, “comes from the world.”

I don’t know.  I think the bear screwed up her head, and the writer at The New Yorker sounds like she’s never left the confines of the city.

I’m left wondering whether reader The Alaskan thinks about things like this when he encounters a bear in the bush?  I think I’d just rather have a large bore handgun.

I’ve always admired this gun since I first saw it several years ago being demonstrated by Larry Vickers (by the way, does anyone have an update on how Larry is doing and whether he successfully got his weapons back from the ATF theft?).

For a mere $5300, you can have one too.

Epoch Times.

A dog in South Africa adopted from the SPCA into a loving forever home has repaid her owners a thousandfold after two armed robbers broke into their house and opened fire. The mixed breed, Kei, was shot in the face while ferociously protecting the family’s young lady.

Those armed intruders on Oct. 3 broke into the family’s Lakefield Benoni home; one gunman entered the master bedroom, where a terrifying firefight ensued, and was shot dead; the other man entered the eldest daughter’s room where Kei was poised on her bed ready to defend her owner.

Kei sprang at the gunman with a forcefulness that surprised him. He turned and fled, leaving a trail of blood as he ran down the stairs, and encountered the family’s Biewer Yorkie Holly and shot her dead.

Hot on his tail, Kei faced the man in the kitchen where he shot her in the face, shattering her jaw, and then escaped the house and leapt over the wall.

Kei, in a desperate bid to seek help, yet unable to bark with her terrible mouth injury, ran outside to the gate to alert the neighbors but found no one. She then bounded down to the nearby lake, where she often goes on walks, in search of help, but to no avail.

The family, desperately searching for Kei, drove the streets and after 40 minutes found her laying in the grass by the water.

They called the Boksburg SPCA and Kei was taken for treatment. She was lucky to be alive. The bullet had severely injured her tongue, blasted through two molars, and broken her jaw.

She had to be put on an IV and could not eat for many weeks to come. Eventually, though, once the doctors were sure there was no infection and an X-ray showed that all the bullet fragments had been extracted, she was taken to have surgery and have a titanium plate prosthesis put in to restore her shattered mandible.

Get you one of them.  If you don’t have a dog, you’re missing out on one of the greatest opportunities for love and protection.  You’re life will change.

Via David Codrea, this amusing missive from Larry Keane.

The Axios/Ipsos poll asked Hispanic-Americans about their top concerns and crime and violence came in at the number two spot at 30 percent – behind only COVID worries at 37 percent. Per Axios, “The finding is a warning for President Biden ahead of next year’s midterms.” A similar Wall Street Journal poll from a week earlier showed Hispanic voters are turning away from Democrats, typically supportive of more gun control, and are now nearly evenly split between their party preferences.

[ … ]

The overlay of rising crime concerns for Hispanic-Americans and their firearm purchasing is stark. According to NSSF retailer survey data, law-abiding Hispanic-Americans purchased firearms in 2020 at a 49 percent higher rate than they did in 2019. That swing of Hispanic-Americans’ preference showed in the 2020 presidential election where former President Donald Trump’s message of law and order and support for the Second Amendment resonated. The former president garnered 10 percent more Hispanic-American vote share than he did in 2016.

The trends stood out in states like Texas and California. LaPolitica Online reported on the swing of Hispanic-Americans purchasing firearms. Rafael Cedillo owns a firearm safety business where he offers training and educational courses in El Paso wherein 2019 a murderer killed 23 people at Walmart. “It’s sad, but my business really booms after a tragic incident,” Cedillo said. The firearm buying surge left his business busy. “After the one in El Paso, my home, I couldn’t fit everyone into my schedule.”

Take careful note.  A “swing” in what party the Hispanics like (see his section headers) … they “purchased firearms at a [blah-blah-blah] higher rate (which says nothing about the previous rate or whether they believe in gun control).

This is what you do when you have nothing else to say.  I repeat what I’ve observed before.  Hispanics and Latinos favor gun control by 71% according to Pew.

Immigration is a gun rights issue.  Larry Keane is telling the wrong story.

If you like this sort of thing, Hilton Head has a nest of Bald Eagles under camera watch.

Source.

This is an interesting and informative video, but I’m not so sure about some of his points.  For example, he seems to be coming from the notion that all combat is ambush style in the jungles of Vietnam and that the only solution for that is fully automatic fire.

In Afghanistan, the Marines were most successful when they carried fewer magazines, conserved ammunition, made well placed shots on target, and did so using superior marksmanship skills compared to the enemy fighters. I’ve documented cases where a mere handful of magazines sufficed for a day and a half or more of combat in Marine engagements.

Logistics is not endless, and the ability of the foot soldier to carry weight on his back is not endless.

I hope you had a great Christmas and celebrated the advent of our Lord with your Family.  I also hope that you grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ in the coming year.

For one special reader out there – you know who you are and I won’t mention your name because you wouldn’t like it – I am left completely speechless and dumbfounded by the gift.  I am certainly undeserving of it, but that’s what grace is all about.  Being undeserving, having done absolutely nothing to earn it.  That is perfectly exemplary of Christmas and redemption.

Thank you.

I cannot say enough about the value of you and your wife’s friendship with my wife and me.