Articles by Herschel Smith

Apparently, this dummy believes in stupid Disney movies and is risking getting gored by this elk and losing his life.

YT Short.

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Because America is stupid.

Meanwhile, we can no longer build aircraft carriers.

Firearms News.

The result is something few people would have predicted twenty years ago: a lever-action rifle that can comfortably coexist alongside AR-15s and modern carbines at the range. Models chambered in .357 Magnum hold a considerable number of rounds and provide impressive muzzle velocities. They are very easy to hit with, fast cycling and loads of fun. On the flip side are the .45-70 Governments and .444 Marlins big-bores which hit hard putting large diameter and heavy payloads on target. In-between are the traditional .30-30 Winchester and similar cartridges which slay white-tailed deer just as well today as they did 100 years ago.

I like lever action rifles, but for me it’s just as much the fact that you can’t put a .444 Marlin or 45-70 Government into a modern semiautomatic firearm and expect it to function reliably. On the east coast, you’re not likely to need more than these two can give you to take down game animals. We rarely get a shot beyond about 150 yards.

So this is a formal admission to violating federal law since there is not supposed to be a digitized version of that information. Drag them to jail.

— CaptainsJournal (@BrutusMaximus50) August 27, 2026

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Why do Americans protected by the 2nd Amendment still need to get permission and approval from the ATF to have a rifle with a barrel under 16 inches, or a particular brand of stock, or a suppressor that, in most cases, doesn’t silence a firearm at all but simply makes shooting it easier on a person’s hearing?  Why, for 92 years, have citizens had to pay for a tax stamp and send their fingerprints to the government for guns that should be considered a constitutional right?

This is largely due to the National Firearms Act of 1934, passed under the highly overrated Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration.  The law became a permanent annoyance to every gun owner in the US and a lucrative revenue stream for federal agencies; at least, until now.

Finally, after nearly a century, the law is being erased.  But how?

The legality of the NFA relies heavily on the existence of a $200 tax stamp.  The government did not ban covered items outright in order to avoid a clash with 2nd Amendment protections.  Instead, they added a tax to various firearms and related accessories, then made the processing of the tax and approval on the purchases an arduous affair.  Until the Trump Administration stepped in, NFA approval on any particular item could take up to a year.

This clunky process was deliberately designed to dissuade citizens from purchasing certain firearms and attachments.  For people suspicious of government lists, the fingerprinting and applications made them not want to bother.  Possession of any of the items covered under the NFA is considered a serious federal crime with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

However, when Congress passed Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” in 2025, this included a provision which lowered the NFA transfer tax to $0.  With the tax stamp gone, the legal loophole which made the NFA possible was eliminated.  Now, an army of legal challengers have brought their case to federal courts to remove the NFA entirely, and they have succeeded (for the most part).

Expectations within the gun community were reserved (gun rights advocates have long waited for this moment and remain anxious that the DOJ will try to ruin the party with an appeal).  But, this does not seem to be the case.  Trump’s DOJ missed the first 7-day deadline for an appeal.  They also have another 60-day deadline, but reports suggest that the DOJ has no intention of interfering with the court’s ruling.

Rumors are swirling that Trump was personally involved in the DOJ decision to support the removal of the NFA by refusing to appeal.  Reportedly, according to Rep. Andrew Clyde who has been leading the charge on the legal fight, Trump has confirmed that there will be no further DOJ challenges to the NFA decision.

So what does this mean?  The federal government will be issuing guidance over the next 60 days on how FFL holders and gun shops can proceed with the transfer of items listed in the NFA.  At first, coverage is limited to the plaintiffs involved in the court ruling (and their customers), however, the DOJ has the power to nationalize the court’s decision, effectively making the NFA null and void for everyone everywhere (this is now a likely outcome).

This means, suppressors, short-barreled rifles (SBRs), short-barreled shotguns (SBSs) and other items could be purchased without tax stamps, fingerprinting and wait times.  A basic background check (Form 4473) will remain in place.  It may take another couple of months, but it appears that the NFA is effectively dead thanks to the Trump Administration.  Gun owners had to suffer for nearly a century, but the long battle is ending.

Meanwhile, the Hughes Amendment is still a problem, preventing the sale or transfer of machine guns made after 1986.  But it’s all about winning one fight and moving on to the next, and the end to the NFA is an epic accomplishment; one which most gun owners never thought they would see in their lifetime.

This is good news but I live in a non-free state where there has to be a Form 4 to purchase a suppressor. So we’ll see if the DOJ does away with such a form for suppressors or if my state undoes this requirement.

As for the Hughes Amendment abomination, I think FRTs have largely made that irrelevant.

Stephen Halbrook.

Jonathan Goldstein, Adjunct Professor at University of Pennsylvania Law School, has published a comprehensive analysis of the power of Congress to “grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water,” U.S. Const., Art. I, § 8, cl. 11.  Historically, this meant that private citizens could possess cannon and ships and could wage war at sea on enemies approved by Congress.

“You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed,” President Joe Biden quipped in 2022.  Well, actually you could, and you still can.  Cannon were never restricted until included in the revision of the National Firearms Act in 1968, which taxes and requires registration of “destructive devices,” defined as weapons that expel a projectile by the action of an explosive or other propellant, the barrel of which has a bore of more than one-half inch in diameter, excluding sporting arms.

According to Heller, “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.”  The Marque and Reprisal Clause was adopted in the original Constitution prior to ratification of the Second Amendment, and it has an interesting history of its own.

For fresh insights into the obscure Marque and Reprisal Clause, see Prof. Goldstein’s new article “The Militia of the Sea: The Marque and Reprisal Clause as Textual Proof of Private Heavy-Arms Ownership at the Founding.”  Here’s the Abstract:

Courts and litigants increasingly say the Second Amendment reaches only the weapons one person can carry. The Constitution refutes that twice, in a single Article.

Article I, § 8, cl. 11 lets Congress “grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water.” That is a license to send a private citizen to war at sea in his own ship, with his own cannon, for profit. A license presupposes what it licenses. The Clause takes a privately owned, cannon-armed fleet as given; nothing in the Constitution creates it. Two clauses later, Article I, § 10 forbids a state to “keep troops, or ships of war in time of peace” without the consent of Congress. The Framers made a sovereign ask permission to keep a warship. They made the shipowner ask no one.

Under Article I, the only power over private armed force at sea that Congress received was power over the commissioning of that private force on behalf of the United States. Congress did not give permission for the ship owner to arm the ship with cannon. The Founders who ratified the Constitution’s Article I in 1788 and the Second Amendment three years later in 1791 did not appear troubled that private parties owned heavily armed ships. Indeed, they took the widespread ownership of such heavily armed ships as a given, so much so that Congress principally concerned itself not with the private ownership of significant armaments, but rather with the transformation of that private ownership into a lawful use on behalf of the federal government itself.

With textual support from a documented record of roughly 1,700 Revolutionary-era privateering commissions — granted per voyage, in the years before the Constitution was ratified — this Article refutes the modern categorical claim that heavy arms were never “arms.”

This idiotic legislation (the NFA) is the reason I know an FFL who was contracted by the U.S. Navy to build a precision 20mm rifle for use at sea. As if 50 caliber is the only think the founders would have ever allowed a citizen to own.

It’s disgusting to me, and it should be to you too.

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Anyone who has spent real time around feral hogs learns the same lesson fast: these animals trust their nose more than almost anything else. Texas A&M AgriLife materials describe feral hogs as having poor eyesight but excellent hearing and smell, and that tracks with what hunters, trappers, and wildlife managers see in the field year after year. When a hog feels pressure, it often reacts to scent before sound and long before a person gets a visual.

That matters because smell is the earliest-warning system a hog has. A deer may lift its head and stare. A turkey may freeze and listen. A hog is more likely to sort the world through odor, constantly reading air currents for food, danger, and other hogs. In thick cover, at night, and in humid bottoms where visibility is limited, that sensory strategy makes perfect sense.

Texas A&M has even noted that wild pigs can detect some odors from several miles away under favorable conditions, though that does not mean they identify every human at that range with total precision. It does mean their odor detection ability is exceptional, especially when scent is concentrated and moving steadily. For a hunter, the practical takeaway is simple: if your scent reaches them, the hunt may be over before it begins.

Eh, maybe. But I’m not so sure about this. I’ve seen deer get one whiff in a change of wind and bolt away in an instant at full speed. As for hogs, I think they are a little more prone to sauntering into the middle of a field as long as they think food may be available.

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Kathy Hochul didn’t hide the goal. New York’s left-wing Democrat governor praised the Supreme Court after the justices declined to hear a challenge to her state’s gun industry lawsuit law. Gun makers didn’t lose a ruling on the merits, but New York kept its legal weapon alive.

Gun owners should clearly see the threat.

The case is National Shooting Sports Foundation, Inc. v. Letitia James, Attorney General of New York. The Supreme Court declined review yesterday, leaving a Second Circuit ruling in place.

For now. From Just the News:

The Supreme Court did not explain its reasoning for rejecting the case. The decision comes the same day the highest court also declined to take up over a dozen cases as it winds down the term, including an appeal from a 98-year-old federal judge who had been suspended amid mental fitness concerns.

“NSSF sincerely believes that those criminals who illegally misuse lawful products should be held responsible for the harms they ‌cause when they commit their crimes,” ‌Mark Oliva, a spokesperson for NSSF told Reuters. “Holding the firearm industry responsible for the criminal misuse of a firearm is akin to holding Anheuser-Busch and Ford Motor Company ‌responsible for damages from drunk-driving crimes.”

And this, when there is a federal law in place that prohibits this behavior by plaintiffs. Just amazing, the lack of courage by the high court.

I’m telling you, there is an answer to all of this. If gun manufacturers want to stop this dead in its tracks, pull legal ownership of their weapons from LEOs in states where this legal warfare is allowed. They can do this through distributors like Sports South, Lipsey’s and other major warehouses.

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A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the National Firearms Act (NFA) no longer applies to suppressors and other items whose taxes were reduced to $0 in July 2025.

United States District Judge James Wesley Hendrix of the Northern District of Texas, a Trump appointee, granted a motion for summary judgement from attorneys representing the Silencer Shop Foundation Wednesday. In the 66-page opinion, Hendrix said that because taxes on suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns and other items had been reduced to $0 by legislation signed by President Donald Trump in July 2025, the registration and paperwork imposed by the NFA exceeded Congress’ authority under the taxation power.

I suspect that the fifth circuit will uphold this ruling and then it will go to the SCOTUS. With Ms. Barrett and Ms. Roberts on the court, it’s anyone’s guess what they do.

I cannot embed the video as I do not have an Instagram account, so I’ll have to send you there with a link.

Watch the pronghorn turn on the afterburner and easily outrun a wolf.

Pronghorn.