Articles by Herschel Smith

I know.  The post title is a bit snarky, but I think Kurt has been a long time getting to this point.

The real goal is control of the institutions that have combat power – the police, federal law enforcement, and the military. That’s where they can find people willing to kill, and maybe die, to impose the elites will. The cops, agents, and soldiers they dream of coopting to be their caste’s personal Gestapo and Wehrmacht provide the bodies who would actually do the dirty work – as Dick made clear when he said out loud what he is too smug and dumb to know he should have kept quiet, that he and the other tourist revolutionaries intend to be eager spectators to the gory unpleasantness that always accompanies a leftist revolution (“I’ll happily provide video commentary.”). Hijacking the government, and using loyalty to the country and co-opting the ingrained sense of duty in our cops and warriors as a means to manipulate them into being the enforcement mechanism for the tyranny the elite left dreams of imposing is the goal.

Remember, when someone says he wants you dead, he wants you dead. And the people who want you dead here in the USA intend to use the people you currently rely upon to keep you safe and secure as the means to do it. It’s actually quite cunning – if they can keep the cops, agents and soldiers in line. We’ve already seen lots of cops putting pensions over honor as they hassle citizens for mask crimes. The high-ranking Obama officer corps has already sold its collective soul for a handful of stars, and lots of colonels and generals would gleefully set their forces on uppity citizens – not rioters, but people like you – to please their Democrat masters. When the Biden administration orders the cops and agents, and maybe soldiers, to imprison or kill gun owners, the uniformed flinkies will be expected to spill blood if necessary, because when you send government officials with weapons to enforce a law, whether to bust a guy peddling loose Marlboros or to confiscate AR15s, you have to assume that a certain number of those encounters will end with dead citizens. And to folks like Dick, that casualty count is a feature and not a bug.

[ … ]

Remember those cops busting moms in parks because they don’t want to miss out on their pensions?

Yet, the notion that Americans will wake up one morning, see that they are no longer free, shrug, obediently line up to turn in their Remingtons and Mossbergs and reconcile themselves to serfdom is not in the cards.

Salary, benefits and pensions.  These are the things which are important to LEOs.  But there is no honor in the America-first philosophy or patriotic jingoism when tyranny is afoot (like arresting good men and women who bring out guns for self defense when rioters threaten their lives, livelihoods and businesses).  No, I will never forget that they have done these things, and neither should you, nor that these good men and women have to hide themselves to keep from being arrested when the police let the rioters run amok.  Some breaks are irreparable and final.  The fact that the prosecutors sent them out to do these things means precisely nothing to me.  Death doesn’t mean your body cooling to ambient temperature and then the end.  There is more after that – much, much more.  And one to whom we will all answer.

If anyone recalls when Kurt has been so clear as he is here, let me know.  But he seems to have embraced that the good folks wearing uniforms may not be so good after all if and when they violate your basic God-given rights.

It’s good to see Kurt calling out the awful class of flag officers in the military, and those who have recently retired, like Generals Petraeus (an adulterer and gun controller) and McChrystal (a gun controller and murderer for his role in ROE and the deaths of the men at Ganjgal).

Via WiscoDave.

David Bernstein, University Professor and Executive Director, Liberty & Law Center, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, has a paper on this very subject.

In it, he begins well enough.

The individual right to keep and bear arms has two primary rationales. The first is to provide citizens with a means to oppose tyrannical government. The second is to provide citizens with a means to defend themselves, their loved ones, and their property from criminal aggression.

I would argue that criminal aggression envelopes both of the above two rationales, personal self defense and defense against tyranny.  Family, home and hearth need protection against both, and that was the cultural milieu within which men had and carried arms in colonial America, and in which the second amendment was crafted.  But a careful reading of Heller doesn’t exactly bring that point out.  In fact, while he uses the Heller ruling in the paper, the right to overthrow a tyrannical government really isn’t the core of Scalia’s arguments.  If it was, Scalia would have argued differently, and argued for more weaponry in the hands of the citizenry, and finally, argued against one of his core principles in the ruling.  One of his core principles is that the ruling doesn’t negate or find unconstitutional all gun control.  In fact, many traditional gun laws are left alone, untouched, and simply go without discussion other than to note that the ruling leave them alone.

Bernstein notes what the minority thought about the ruling.

The majority and dissent clashed over whether the right to self-defense with firearms is anachronistic in modern times, when police forces are expected to enforce law and order. The majority observed that although some “[u]ndoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society … where well-trained police forces provide personal security,” it was “not the role of th[e] Court to pronounce the … Amendment extinct.” The dissenting Justices, by contrast, asserted that the midnineteenth-century “development of modern urban police departments, by diminishing the need to keep loaded guns nearby in case of intruders, … ha[s] moved any … right” to armed home defense “even further away from the heart of the Amendment’s more basic protective ends.”

Readers know that we’ve addressed this issue many times before.  The minority report is a lie, and they know it.  Police do not have the responsibility to supply protection of anyone or anything, from life to property.  This is so commonly known now that it’s amazing that we have to repeat it.  See, for example, the following decisions.

Castle Rock v. Gonzalez

Warren v. District of Columbia

DeShaney v. Winnebago County

Bernstein continues with his study demonstrating that stand downs of police across the nation in the face of Antifa/BLM riots has cast new light on the necessity of armed self defense.  If the police aren’t there to do it, it’s necessary to do it ourselves.

But given the fact that the police aren’t responsible to do it, we were always responsible to do it ourselves, and the minority in Heller knew that.  Everyone who knows the law knows that.

But this still misses the primary point.  Bernstein later quotes a LEO writing at Daily Kos.

Another Daily Kos op-ed, this one by a former police officer, likewise argued that the “right to Bear Arms … became outdated and irrelevant once the country actually had a well-regulated militia,” which today is the National Guard; “Not only does the United States have a ‘well organized militia’ but every inch of the United States is protected by a police or sheriffs department.”

And now we’re to the primary point.  When the police think this way, they have become the agents of tyranny that Bernstein suggests necessitates the need for the second amendment to begin with.

They aren’t there to supply protection – the courts have repeatedly told us that.  But what they can do is extinguish your right of armed self defense, something we have seen many times in the past few months where police arrested people who engaged in that very thing rather than target the rioters.  We argue that this itself is tyranny.

For this reason, and more, I have always held that Heller was a very weak decision.  Arguing that armed self defense is protected under the second amendment games itself with silly arguments about the role of the police.  The discussion itself becomes a subterfuge and misdirect.  Heller was an odd opinion for the simple reason that it buries the real intent of the second amendment.

Despite the Court’s confident pronouncement, it is not at all clear that the Second Amendment was meant to protect a personal right of self-defense. It is, however, crystal clear that the Amendment was meant to protect the right to keep and bear arms to resist tyranny-as the Heller Court itself concedes. Yet strangely, by the time the sixty-four-page opinion has wound to an end, the Court has purged the Amendment of its revolutionary quality. Justice Scalia’s opinion never hints that the right to resist tyranny might still be alive and well and relevant to the Amendment’s interpretation, and it lays down rules that will make the right a functional nullity.

As a result, the opinion has an odd quality. Justice Scalia insists that he is being true to the language and history of the Constitution. Yet by the close of the opinion, the purpose that clearly and plainly appears in the language and history-the right of resistance-has disappeared, but the right of self defense-which is much less clearly present, if present at all, in the language and history-has taken center stage.

[ … ]

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.

Only when the second amendment is seen as protection against and amelioration of tyranny does it take on the life it should.

Armed self defense, against aggressors both individual and collective, is a God given right, and even duty.  It is merely recognized in the constitution, a covenant document and contract with the people.  Honoring that covenant brings blessings, breakage of the covenant brings curses of all kinds.

King George found out well what kind of curses it might bring.  The American war of independence was known in royal circles as being a “Presbyterian rebellion.”  He found out that he wasn’t the author of rights.  That domain belongs to the Almighty.

Shooting Illustrated.

My first fighting lever action happened to be a Marlin. Back in the early 1970s, I got a Marlin 1894 in .44 Magnum, and cut it down to Trapper size. Even with the 16-inch barrel, it held 9 rounds of 240-grain hollowpoints and was just a handy little carbine. But, I’m clearly not the only one who likes lever actions because checking the 2021 Gun Digest Annual, I find that some 10 to 12 companies are building the guns. And I think that there are a number of reasons to consider the lever-action carbine for personal defense.

The first would be the fact that many models are chambered for standard handgun cartridges. The shooter who carries a revolver may very well find that a carbine chambered in the same caliber is mighty handy if for no other reason than the fact that only one kind of ammo needs to be carried and stocked. Carbines in pistol calibers will certainly take care of business out to 100 yards, and possibly beyond. And folks who live where dangerous four-legged game are known to roam can just select a gun chambered for .308 Win., .444 Marlin, .45-70 Govt. and others. Lever guns come in calibers that will take care of all of the ornery critters that one might have to deal with.

[ … ]

… there are those who simply have grown up shooting the lever-action carbines. The guns feel natural and the shooter understands them. There is no reason to switch to something else. A .30-30, which has essentially the same performance as the 7.62×39 mm, will do as good a job of protecting home and family as it does bringing in the venison.

The lever-action carbine, in one form or another, has been around since the 1860s, and it is still around because it gets the job done.

Mirroring some of the same comments seen here at TCJ.

One thing you’ll notice as you look around at the availability of firearms and ammunition is that, while ammo is virtually unavailable at reasonable prices, there are two types of long guns that are the same (they cannot be found): AR-15s and lever guns.

Ruger, in its purchase of Marlin assets, knows what Americans want.  Revolvers will be around forever.  Lever guns will be around forever.  AR-15s will be around forever.  1911s will be around forever, whether called 1911s or 2011s and given boutique names and calibers.  Good designs are like that.

This video is very interesting.  It’s also know, apparently, as a chuckmuck.  Making char cloth is a skill useful for outdoor survival.

We covered this before, but there is an update.

Now, the judge has been charged (via reader Matt Gibson).

Somebody tell the Highland Avenue Baptist Church in Mullens that they may need a new choir director.

She doesn’t have the, ahem, judicial temperament to serve in a church of any kind.

Ruger.

Sturm, Ruger and Company, Inc. (NYSE: RGR) announced today that its offer to purchase substantially all of the Marlin Firearms assets was accepted by Remington Outdoor Company, Inc. and approved by the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Alabama. The Company will pay the $30 million purchase price from cash on hand at the time of closing, which is expected to occur in October.

“The value of Marlin and its 150-year legacy was too great of an opportunity for us to pass up,” said Ruger President and CEO Chris Killoy. “The brand aligns perfectly with ours and the Marlin product portfolio will help us widen our already diverse product offerings.”

The transaction is exclusively for the Marlin Firearms assets. Remington firearms, ammunition, other Remington Outdoor brands, and all facilities and real estate are excluded from the Ruger purchase. Once the purchase is completed, the Company will begin the process of relocating the Marlin Firearms assets to existing Ruger manufacturing facilities.

“The important thing for consumers, retailers and distributors to know at this point in time,” continued Killoy, “is that the Marlin brand and its great products will live on. Long Live the Lever Gun.”

It sounds like they have their finger on the pulse of the American gun-buying public.  This is good news.  I’m sure Ruger will do a good job with Marlin designs, maybe bringing it back to original quality.

Maybe they’ll also be more competitive with lever gun prices.

Via David Codrea, this report from Virginia Luciferian Ralph Northam.

The so-called Virginia Values Act (S.B. 868), which Gov. Ralph Northam (D-Va.) signed on Holy Saturday (the day before Easter Sunday) in the middle of a pandemic, compels churches, religious schools, and Christian ministries to hire employees who do not share their stated beliefs on marriage, sexuality, and gender identity. A companion law (H.B. 1429) requires ministries and others like them to pay for transgender surgery in employee health care plans, a procedure that violates these ministries’ convictions.

So there is a way to deal with this.  Oddly and ironically enough, but related to a different subject, the people from California show the way.

Pontes is now the county executive officer of Shasta County in Northern California and goes to work in thin socks, but another crisis has found him. “You cannot get closer to total disobedience of any kind of law,” he said, referring to the local response to Covid-19 strictures. “What’s happening up here is full-on anarchy.” Then he listed for me a few of the things that had happened recently: The county sheriff had announced that he wouldn’t enforce the state’s pandemic restrictions on social gatherings and businesses. People who had never before attended county board meetings were accusing local officials of treason. The county’s health officer, who had the unhappy job of imposing the state’s Covid rules on the citizens of Shasta County, was now receiving so many threats that Pontes had brought in a new threat-assessment team; he’d also ordered the bushes cut back away from her house, installed a security system and floodlights, and ordered police patrols of her neighborhood. “She still doesn’t feel safe out there,” he said. “At all.”

In just the past few months, a bunch of county health officers across California have been run from office. But what was happening in Shasta County felt to Pontes like a new stage of the crisis in governance. He thought it was “80-20” in favor that, at any moment, a citizen army would form, invade the public buildings, and perform citizens’ arrests of the five members of the county’s Board of Supervisors and any other government officials they could get their hands on. “Before Covid I felt I could talk my way out of just about anything,” he said. “But I had to ask the sheriff, ‘What are you going to do if they arrest us?’ He reassured me that he’s not going to take me anywhere.”

[ … ]

There was one other thing Pontes had noticed: The inconveniences caused by the state’s restrictions had attracted a new sort of person to the political process. Elissa McEuen was a case in point. She’d moved up to Shasta a few years ago from San Francisco, where she’d worked in private equity. She was a stay-at-home mom with little kids who, six months ago, couldn’t have told you where the Board of Supervisors met, much less what they did.

Now she showed up to every meeting, and spoke every time, with eloquence. Almost single-handedly she had organized a bunch of vaguely lunatic groups — the anti-vaxxers, the Second Amendment people, the chemtrail crowd — into a unified fighting force. “She’s taken it to another level,” Pontes said. “If you remove her, all of a sudden a lot of those people say, ‘Wait a minute, I don’t believe what you believe.”

Oh I don’t think so.  He makes the mistake of treating this crowd the way they think of progressives, i.e., they need a leader, and if you take out a leader, the group falls apart.  He doesn’t really understand yet the threat that awaits him and his ilk.

Maybe this is just one county of California, after all, but it’s still a county, and it’s still people.

Kit up, folks.  There’s more of this on the way.  What?  You didn’t really think Covid-19 would be the end of the globalist attempt to enslave you, did you?  That’s been going on for more than a hundred years, heating up to the point we are at today.

It gets dicier from here on.  And maybe the good folks in Virginia need to take a page from Shasta County and engage in some not-so-civil disobedience.  After all, Ralphie wants your guns and wants to kill babies.

Via Ken, this report from Texas.

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — A grand jury in Texas decided Monday to take no action against a man who fatally shot an armed man who killed two people at a Fort Worth-area church in late December, prosecutors said.

Jack Wilson, a firearms instructor who trained a volunteer security team at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, fatally shot Keith Thomas Kinnunen during a Dec. 29 service after he shot and killed 67-year-old Richard White, another security volunteer, and 64-year-old Anton “Tony” Wallace, a server.

As they should have.

But don’t miss the real issue here.  For this to have appeared before a grand jury, a prosecutor had to take it there.

Do you grok?  The prosecutor could have congratulated him, the police could try their best to emulate him, but none of that happened, apparently.  Some idiot prosecutor took it in front of a jury.

Good Lord!