Articles by Herschel Smith

Newsweek.

Leaders of the National Rifle Association (NRA) expressed concern that the organization’s more radical members—who were described as “hillbillies” and “fruitcakes”—would embarrass the gun rights organization in the days following the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, according to tapes obtained by NPR and revealed on Tuesday.

In the wake of what had been one the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, the NRA’s senior leaders—including lobbyist Marion Hammer and executive vice president Wayne LaPierre—held a conference call to discuss whether they would still hold the organization’s annual convention in Denver.

Recordings of those private meetings revealed Hammer and LaPierre mocking some of the NRA’s more activist members, who the organization worried would be the only ones showing up in the aftermath of the shooting.

“If you pull down the exhibit hall, that’s not going to leave anything for the media except the members meeting, and you’re going to have the wackos… with all kinds of crazy resolutions, with all kinds of, of dressing like a bunch of hillbillies and idiots. And, and it’s gonna, it’s gonna be the worst thing you can imagine,” Hammer is heard saying on the tapes.

LaPierre says: “The people you are most likely to get in that member meeting without an exhibit hall are the nuts.”

“I agree, the fruitcakes are going to show up,” consultant Tony Makris adds.

Tapes of the call show that several of the organization’s lobbyists were worried that the Columbine shooting would create a massive crisis for the NRA and its agenda, especially given the convention was scheduled to take place just days after the tragedy.

“At that same period where they’re going to be burying these children, we’re going to be having media… trying to run through the exhibit hall, looking at kids fondling firearms, which is going to be a horrible, horrible, horrible juxtaposition,” lobbyist Jim Baker can be heard saying.

You see, the NRA leadership has always thought of you and treated you just as the democratic and republican parties have always treated their own – with disdainful and patronizing sneer.

That’s why they supported the NFA, the GCA, the bump stock ban, the assault weapons ban, and universal background checks.

They don’t care about you or your concerns.  They only care about themselves, Wayne LaPierre’s suits, his little blond cohort in the swimming pool, their junkets and trips across the globe, and at the moment their scavenging of the NRA firearms museum for the loyalists (those firearms being donated in good faith by men who worked hard for a living).

Because they see you as goobers.  And maybe men who support the largest, most effective, most influential gun control organization on earth are just that.

A room full of court jesters.  If the judge has any integrity, he’ll call counsel to his chambers and end the trial now. The prosecuting attorney should be submitted to the BAR to have his license and practicing privileges revoked.

Kyle Rittenhouse is innocent of all charges against him. This is nothing but a political show.

Rittenhouse trial should be over immediately. pic.twitter.com/PHZnHS5rD9

— Viva Frei (@thevivafrei) November 8, 2021

JUST IN – Kyle Rittenhouse didn't shoot until a gun was pointed at him, one of his attackers just admitted in court. pic.twitter.com/PBOr0D6xc5

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) November 8, 2021

Shooting Illustrated.

For EDC, a larger dot of 6, 8 or even 10 MOA in diameter will serve your purposes much better than the currently popular smaller dots of 1, 2 or 3 MOA. The reasons are almost infinite, but some more obvious than others.

Assuming time is of the essence when engaging an adversary with your EDC pistol, the speed with which the red dot can be located and superimposed over the target is of supreme importance. The bigger the dot, the easier it is to find and direct to the target. Some may argue that a big dot is not as accurate as a small dot, therefore might not be as effective because it covers too much of the target. Let’s stop and examine that thinking by doing a little math.

A 10-MOA dot covers roughly a 10-inch diameter area at 100 yards. That subtends down to 5 inches at 50 yards, 2.5 inches at 25 yards and 1 inch at 10 yards.

I won’t judge another person’s shot-delivery capabilities under the stress of a life-or-death situation, but it would seem that a 10-MOA dot would be sufficient when considering the statistical data of the encounter being in close proximity. For the average citizen, my definition of close proximity can be thought of as the inability to escape the situation, making the use of a deadly weapon the only available choice to prevent grave bodily harm or death. This is not legal advice, just my perspective. Keep in mind that time and distance almost always have an impact on one another during a dynamic event.

I don’t know.  Based on the pictures presented of various dot sizes, I don’t like the large ones.  I don’t really have a hard time picking up iron sights.  I’m not sure how that translates to red dots.

What size do readers carry, and why?

The extent of this isn’t clear to me from the article.

Remington Firearms, the country’s oldest gun manufacturer, will be moving its headquarters from Ilion, New York, to Georgia, the company announced Monday.

As part of the deal, the company said it would invest $100 million in the operation and hire 856 people over a five-year period in Troup County.

It was not immediately clear what effect the transfer would have on Remington’s operations in New York and Tennessee. The company owns the parts of the former Remington Outdoor Co. which makes rifles, shotguns, and some handguns after the former parent auctioned its assets in pieces last year during a bankruptcy proceeding in Alabama.

Investors doing business as the Roundhill Group purchased the Remington-branded gun-making business, including operations in Ilion, New York, and Lenoir City, Tennessee, for $13 million.

[ … ]

Phil Smith, a spokesperson for the United Mine Workers of America, which represents some workers at a factory in Ilion, said the union had no information about whether workers in New York would be affected. The new owners recently restarted operations there, calling back more than 200 workers who had been laid off. The local government in New York offered 10 years of tax breaks in exchange for the restart and upgrades.

Well, at this point, you can color me confused.  I don’t know what parts are left after the sale, what is moving, and what they will be manufacturing.

This move is far too late, but I hope they can make a go of it and get back to good guns after Cerberus financially engineered the life out of them.

And if they want to make good stuff without the hassle of a union, getting to a right to work state is the best idea.  Keep the union out.

News from the Northeast.

An elderly dementia sufferer died after getting lost in a remote forest after following GPS guidance to travel to a funeral with her mentally-disabled daughter.

Deputies say the pair – Dorothy ‘Kae’ Turner, 84, and daughter Heidi Turner, 58 – were following a navigation system from Pendleton, Oregon to Salt Lake City when they got lost in the northern Idaho forest. Relatives say Dorothy suffered from dementia.

Dorothy left to find help when their car broke down, but died from exposure to the elements while Heidi, who is mentally disabled, stayed behind. She survived her ordeal, although no further updates on her condition have been given.

A hunter discovered the mother’s body in the Solitaire Saddle area of the Panhandle National Forest and reported it to the authorities at 11.45am Friday, according to the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office.

Deputies then discovered the broken-down gold 2015 Chrysler Town and Country minivan nearby with the daughter still alive and suffering from minor injuries.

A family member who reported them missing said they were taking an ‘unusual route’ through Idaho, according to the East Idaho News. They were reported missing from Pendleton, about 5 hours southwest of the forest, on Wednesday.

‘They were en route to Salt Lake City, UT from Pendleton, OR for a family funeral. Kay suffers from dementia and we have reason to believe that they may be lost and/or in danger,’ family member Doniell Taylor Arnold said in a Facebook post Thursday.

The maps and pictures of this area show it to be extremely remote, except obviously for hunters.

Take a look at the woman who ventured out on her own.  With her age, she had no hope of survival in the wilderness.

Lesson: Don’t allow family members to go out into the bush unprepared.  That lady never had a chance.

Five people have disappeared into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and never come out, with bodies never recovered.

The GSMNP is more than half a million acres.  Jones Gap in S.C. is around 13,000 acres, and people have gone missing for a period of time there.  Later, it was learned that they didn’t know what they were doing in the bush.

The missing hikers were not prepared to spend the night in the woods, according to rescue crews. They did not take food, water or flashlights.

The Greenville County Sheriff’s Office used their drone with thermal imaging to search for the teens. The area is remote with little cell coverage, according to Jones.

If efforts to find them with the drone are unsuccessful …

They ended up having to walk out on their own.

I’ve hiked Jones Gap many times.  You can die there, and I almost lost a dog from a slick rock leading to a waterfall.

Your strategy in the bush is just this: be prepared enough not to have to panic.  If you panic, adrenalin shoots into your system, you make stupid decisions, you expend too much energy, you get tired, the exhaustion leads to being cold, and being cold leads to exposure and possible hypothermia.

Be prepared enough to be able to say, “Well, we’re not where I thought we were.  We’re going to spend this night in the bush.  Let’s make camp before dark, gather firewood, set up some shelter, find water, gather bedding materials, and ration food.  We’ll find our way out tomorrow.”

Continuing when it’s almost dark leads to death.  Always carry the following: med kit, flashlight, redundant means of fire start, rubberized poncho or tarp, parka, large bore handgun, water and water filter, food energy, cordage and knife.  Even on day hikes.  Especially on day hikes.

Brownells has done something really good.  They’ve put together a comprehensive series on building an AR-15.

The full series is here, and I see that it includes a list of tools necessary for completion of the work (although I don’t know why it’s well into the series before you find this).

Reuters.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. federal appeals court issued a stay Saturday freezing the Biden administration’s efforts to require workers at U.S. companies with at least 100 employees be vaccinated against COVID-19 or be tested weekly, citing “grave statutory and constitutional” issues with the rule.

The ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit comes after numerous Republican-led states filed legal challenges against the new rule, which is set to take effect on Jan 4.

In a statement, Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda said the Labor Department was “confident in its legal authority” to issue the rule, which will be enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

“The Occupational Safety and Health Act explicitly gives OSHA the authority to act quickly in an emergency where the agency finds that workers are subjected to a grave danger and a new standard is necessary to protect them,” she said. “We are fully prepared to defend this standard in court.”

OSHA is just that – a regulatory body intended to regulate occupational safety and health.  They have various powers, and specifically emergency powers to act if, let’s say as an example, the ACGIH (American Conference on Governmental and Industrial Hygienists) finds a plant where hundreds of workers are diagnosed with cancer after exposure to Benzene at a much lower MPC (maximum permissible concentration) than allowed, leading to the conclusion that maybe the MPC is too high.

OSHA does not have the power to regulate medicine.

But Aesop seems more confident that I am.

That all amounts to the polite legalese version of “Ain’t no way in hell you can get this lead pig to fly, but watching you try to sell it in open court is going to crack us up hereabouts for years, so go ahead on.”

FedGov’s got until Monday to smoke enough dope to come up with some half-assed excuse for the mandate, followed by the plaintiffs who sued for the injunction to have another chance to beat this jackassical idea to death in court, and then strangle it with its own umbilical cord.

Normally, a case like this would start at the bottom in district court. That it went straight to the Circuit Appeals court, which then climbed up on the ring ropes, and jumped on it with both feet like a WWF match, speaks volumes about how solidly the Circuit is opposed to the entire idea in its view of the government’s actions and chances of prevailing in the case.

The White House is going to have to strategically stockpile Depends by the metric fuckton, once Gropey Dopey finds out about this, and starts sh*tting his pants all over again.

Concerning sentiments, as you see from what I’ve written above, I’m in his camp.  However, I have much less confidence in the final demise of this rule.  I have much less confidence because I have no confidence in any branch of the U.S. government to do the right thing any time on any issue.  One bright spot is that Don Willett is on the Fifth Circuit, who I had advocated for appointment to the Supreme Court (and who would have been much better than any justice Trump appointed).  But he is one in twenty.

To show you just how unconfident I am in the FedGov, let me tell you my initial reaction upon reading this.

With the Biden administration facing a growing wave of lawsuits to stop the president’s vaccine mandate on companies, an Indiana businessman-turned-senator believes he has the quickest way to kill it.

Sen. Mike Braun, backed by most GOP senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, is hopeful of nixing the mandate through the arcane but effective Congressional Review Act. It would force a vote in both Houses just before Christmas and when 93,000 firms could be firing unvaccinated workers.

The act allows Congress to review federal rules, normally ignored by the House and Senate. In this case, he would target the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s new proposal that firms with 100-plus workers have all employees vaccinated by Jan. 4 or face a hefty fine.

It was used effectively in the first year of the Trump administration to kick start the former president’s effort to wipe away costly rules that put mountains of red tape and costs on the public.

They’re not concerned about killing this ill-conceived mandate.  This is to garnish votes in the next election.

Because.  Politics.

I always like real world and ballistic tests.

Interesting results for the birdshot.

BBC.

Ah, we’re to the crux of the matter, yes?  So let’s help explain this to the article author and the Fordham professor.

As we observed earlier,

Briefly, I couldn’t care less what English common law says about anything.  The colonists fought a war over many things, including gun control (see Kopel, “How the British Gun Control Program Precipitated the American Revolution“).

The colonists fought a war against the government to overthrow tyranny.  It’s ridiculous and sophomoric to pretend that they ever assumed that men wouldn’t engage in RKBA, or that they wouldn’t turn those guns against tyranny.

Presuppositions.  This is the stuff of life.  The 2A makes no sense unless seen in the light of the lives of the men who wrote it and their own assumptions, value judgments and world and life views.

Any lawyer who begins with, discusses or ends with English common law isn’t worth his weight in salt.

But you see, most lawyers aren’t worth their weight in salt, or they are tipping their hat to the ruling elite inside the beltway.  As for the judges and justices, look at just how badly they got it wrong.  Consider Scalia’s own words, and after reading them again, don’t ever again laud the ridiculous Heller decision or Scalia as it pertains to rights.

The professor from Fordham is correct in that “England was a super hierarchical society, and one in which the King has a monopoly of force and violence.”  Not only was Scalia wrong in this sentiment or analysis, he founds the RKBA solely in English common law after the founders waged a war against England, with that war precipitated by the very thing under debate, i.e., gun control.

It does indeed boggle the mind.  But not really so much when one considers that the Heller decision was all about making the RKBA semi-palatable for the nobility inside the beltway.

Heller offers a Second Amendment cleaned up so that it can safely be brought into the homes of affluent Washington suburbanites who would never dream of resistance-they have too much sunk into the system–but who might own a gun to protect themselves from the private dangers that, they believe, stalk around their doors at night. Scalia commonly touts his own judicial courage, his willingness to read the Constitution as it stands and let the chips fall where they may. But Heller is noteworthy for its cowardice.

We must keep the chattering class and the wine and cheese crowd happy at all costs.

The secret that the Fordham professor and the author of this piece doesn’t understand is that most Americans see the 2A as a covenant, not a source of rights.  Most gun owners see their RKBA as given by God, not bestowed by the state.

Arguing the way these lawyers have, and judging the way even Scalia did, is not representative of America.  So the professor is utterly wrong when he says “Obviously, that doesn’t include many people in the gun rights community …”

Oh my.  He may correctly observe that of the legal community who is hell bent on pleasing their masters, but neither the author nor the professor are very much in touch with gun blogs, gun web sites, discussion threads (like reddit/Firearms or AR15.com), or even perhaps just knowing gun owners throughout flyover country.  We must be careful to distinguish between those who believe that we need the king’s permission to hunt the royal forests (because he owns the land), and we need the constable’s permission to carry a weapon (because he owns the roads), versus those who see such demands as a breakage of covenant leading to divorce.  We’ve been through divorce before, and it’s ugly.

What God grants cannot be removed by man, for it is as immutable as His nature.  This belief is hard wired into the American soul.  If the “nobility” presses this too far, these are lessons they may [re]learn the hardest of ways.