Articles by Herschel Smith

Chris does a good job of explaining why it works for him.  If it works for the person, that’s all that matters.

The boys at Survival Dispatch test their shotguns, and some slugs.

BLUF: Slugs will penetrate five layers of 3/4″ plywood.  I guess that’s why they’re so impressive against large predators.  Buck shot can be more accurate than you think at 50 yards with the right choke.  Buck shot doesn’t penetrate like slugs, and don’t have the same risk of over-penetration.

And I’ve said before the same thing he did.  Given one choice of a survival gun, I’d choose a shotgun.  Anything from squirrel to bear, with the right choice of ammunition.

Ammoland.

The embattled agency’s latest piece of creative fiction is a warning about “privately made firearms” or PMFs, and it should serve as a warning to gun owners, homebuilders, and everyone else who values their civil rights.

An ATF document titled “First Responder Awareness of Privately Made Firearms May Prevent Illicit Activities” was published last week by the Joint Counterterrorism Assessment Team (JCAT).
“JCAT is a collaboration by the NCTC, DHS, and FBI to improve information sharing among federal, state, local, tribal, territorial governments and private sector partners, in the interest of enhancing public safety,” the document states. “This product is NOT in response to a specific threat against the United States. It provides a general awareness of, considerations for, and additional resources related to terrorist tactics, techniques, and procedures, whether domestic or overseas.”

To be clear, the ATF and JCAT consider homebuilt firearms “terrorist tactics, techniques and procedures,” even though Americans have been making guns legally in their homes since before there even was a United States of America.

The document was never supposed to be leaked to the media or the public and is exempt from discovery through the federal Freedom of Information Act, but some freedom-loving soul published it online yesterday despite its ominous warning …

Well they will spare no expense to find and destroy him.

I have a friend who once had to install and demonstrate a piece of equipment in a plant, and when it became obvious that he needed to turn a wrench or wire something up, he sat down and did a few minutes worth of work to get the job done.

The entirety of the plant staff walked out.  You know the drill.  He didn’t think to call the workers responsible for that piece of work, he just did it because it needed to be done.  So the unionized plant staff was told to walk out.

I hate unions for this.  The American way is to learn what you need to get the job done.  Build, construct, engineer, buy the tools you need, and make something work.

This is the way America armed itself to hunt game and stay alive.  This is the way America armed itself for self defense.  And this is the way America armed itself in preparation for the war of independence.  To be sure, craftsmen were sought out to do the work at times, but every shooter must learn to maintain his own weaponry, just like he had to work on farm equipment.

I also hate that work on modern automobiles and trucks requires a diagnostic computer, to some degree a function of the emission controls equipment we shouldn’t have to have.

The ATF is a bureau of effeminate couch dwellers and controllers, fearful of everything, and helping nothing and no one.  They all ought to be handed a pink slip and sent to work on farms and ranches.

Field & Stream.

A backcountry camper in Idaho killed an aggressive bull moose in self-defense in Northern Idaho last week. The bull had charged the man and his dog at a Harrison Lake, a popular hiking and backpacking destination near Sandpoint, Idaho.

The camper, whose identity has not been released, tried to hide behind a tree when the moose charged. But the bull didn’t let up, and he shot it with a .45 caliber handgun at point blank range, stopping the bull in its tracks. Idaho Fish and Game (IDFG) officials responded to the event and located the downed moose before temporarily closing the Harrison Lake trailhead to prevent conflict between hikers and scavenging bears and wolves.

An article on the incident published in The Spokesman-Review notes that there have been male moose sightings at the lake for several years. Last fall, the U.S. Forest Service posted an advisory warning of an “aggressive moose” at the campground. Ben Read, a local hiker who is familiar with a moose in the Harrison Lake area that fits the description of the downed bull, told the Review: “I can’t say there’s never been an issue, because I know people generally run into him around the camp and obviously the two don’t mix,” he said. “However, I’ve never heard of a charging or trampling issue that someone was never able to avoid or get away from.”

Well I’ve heard of it.  Preparing for my trek through the Weminuche Wilderness I talked with someone who cut and cleared trails in that area.

He told me that bears had not been a problem in the area (this surprised me), but that Moose have been known to come into camp, and they were a danger due to stomping.

Chalk another one up for the power of the .45.  Carry self protection in the bush.

Field & Stream.

At my gun club’s range the other day, one of the other members let me shoot a couple of his straight-wall deer rifles. He told me that before he found the right bullets, he had lost a couple of well-hit deer. I was sympathetic, because losing a deer hurts, but part of me thought That never happened with slugs. Maybe the shotgun slug deserves another chance before it lumbers off to extinction.

Extinction definitely seems to be where deer slugs are headed. My local store, located in the middle of good Iowa deer country, used to sell as many scoped 20-gauge Remington 1100 packages as they could put together before deer season. Now, it’s hard to find a slug gun in the rack there, but there are plenty of .45-70 lever actions, ARs in .350 Legend and .450 Bushmaster, and a few bolt-action rifles, too.

I get it. Rifles are cool in a way that slug guns aren’t. Shotguns are bulky and heavy, and they can kick hard with slugs. They aren’t as accurate as rifles are, either. On the plus side, at real-world whitetail hunting ranges, slugs make big holes in deer. Often they make one hole going in and another on the way out. The blood trails are short and easy to follow.

Back when I started deer hunting in the early 80s, everyone ganged up and drove woodlots. Deer drives often result in shots at walking and running deer. I saw deer shot in some creative places, and learned that while it’s possible to hit a deer with a slug without killing it, it’s not an easy thing to do. I could never manage to do it.

[ … ]

As deer hunting became a bigger deal, and a bigger business, gun and ammo makers spent a lot of time making slugs shoot more accurately. Rifled barrels and slugs encased in plastic sabots came along in the late 80s and early 90s, and after twenty years or so of constant R&D and improvement, slug guns could shoot 1-2 inch groups at 100 yards. Even I could shoot a group I could cover with my hand at 200 yards with the right gun and ammo (Ithaca Deerslayer III, Winchester XP3), although for shooting at deer under any but ideal conditions, 150 yards is a better maximum range for sabots and rifled shotguns.

While it’s true that sabot slugs aren’t as big around as full-bore slugs, they’re still big. Most 12 gauge slugs are loaded with .50 caliber bullets. Even 20 gauges have .45 caliber bullets, and in my experience with them, they expand impressively.

Well, I think shotguns are pretty cool too.  With the thin barrel I don’t find shotguns heavy unless it’s a very long barrel (like duck, goose or upland bird gun), and in that case, hunt with a tactical shotgun.  I watched a guy use a Benelli M4 and put slugs on a fist size target at 100 yards.  Of course, his shoulder was bruised at the end of the day.

CNN.

 The man hailed as a hero for preventing further bloodshed after a gunman fatally shot a police officer in Arvada, Colorado, on Monday was himself fatally shot by police, Arvada police said in a statement Friday afternoon.

BLUF: Just carry a gun like you’re supposed to.

Here it is.

A majority of the Judges of this Court in regular active service has voted for rehearing en banc of this case. Sixth Circuit Rule 35(b) provides as follows: The effect of the granting of a hearing en banc shall be to vacate the previous opinion and judgment of this court, to stay the mandate and to restore the case on the docket sheet as a pending appeal. Accordingly, it is ORDERED, that the previous decision and judgment of this court are vacated, the mandate is stayed, and this case is restored to the docket as a pending appeal.

Short and to the point.  This isn’t over yet.  It shouldn’t be.  It was an awful usurpation of power, and a stupid thing for Trump to do.

I’ve documented the inaccuracies and outright ignorance of the writers for Politifact before over these pages, until at last the catalog had begun to bore even me.  To my surprise, I stumbled across an instance where they got one right.  In fact, it’s a well written piece on the second amendment by Jon Greenberg.

“The Second Amendment, from the day it was passed, limited the type of people who could own a gun and what type of weapon you could own,” Biden said. “You couldn’t buy a cannon.”

We reached out to the White House and received no comment, but Biden’s statement is not accurate history.

During the campaign, Biden made a similar claim about cannons in the Revolutionary War and who could own them. We rated that False.

This time, on top of that, Biden misrepresents what the Second Amendment says.

The text of the Second Amendment is short: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds said the amendment’s few words speak for themselves.

“The Second Amendment places no limits on individual ownership of cannon, or any other arms,” Reynolds said.

[ … ]

Fordham University law professor Nicholas Johnson said, “The amendment limited government action, not people.”

“The first federal gun control law does not appear until the 20th century,” Johnson said.

Letters of Marque were relied upon for fighting naval vessels before the arrival of the French off the coast of Yorktown, and so the fact check on cannon is easy.

Just as easy is the notion of what the second amendment was meant to do.  Weapons were ubiquitous in Colonial times.  Rights were seen as granted by God, not the state.  Those rights were already recognized – not granted – locally and at the state level.  A war was fought with King George over the idea that he could disarm the men, among other reasons, but gun confiscations precipitated the war.

Taking a twentieth century hermeneutic to the interpretation of the bill of rights is a sure way to misunderstand the entirety of the document.  The states call militia up upon need.  The men in the militia bring their own weapons.  The states wanted to ensure that the newly formed federal government had no say-so over the militia, how it was to be used, how it was to be armed, or especially the ability to turn the militia against the very state who relied on the militia against tyranny.

The Bill of Rights doesn’t grant rights, and never did.  It limits the power of the federal government.  Thus could Tench Coxe say “Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom.  Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American… The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people” (William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal).

Politifact bears watching, but at least this time, they got one right.

News from Missouri.

Missouri Gov. Michael Parson (R) signed a bill last week to prohibit in-state enforcement of certain federal gun controls. On Friday, the O’Fallon police chief responded to the new legislation by resigning from his post.

Philip Dupuis, who has been the police chief since October 2020, said the “poor wording” of the Second Amendment Preservation Act could have “unintended consequences,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. The bill allows individual officers to be fined for up to $50,000 for enforcing federal gun laws — legislation which Dupuis said leaves officers vulnerable during “good faith, justified seizures of firearms,” according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Good riddance to the tyrant.  He should never have been in the police to begin with, having lied about his oath.