Articles by Herschel Smith

I guess I’m a little surprised.  He “cleaned” his gun completely without the use of any solvent.  I’ve never cleaned a gun of any kind without Hoppe’s No. 9 at the ready.

News from New York.

New York may have 13.9% of its population infected with coronavirus, meaning 2.7 million residents could have had the virus, preliminary state results Thursday showed.

[ … ]

Started last Sunday, the state did a random selection of 3,000 people at various locations across the state, including at grocery stores and big-box stores, to help understand who has built up an immunity to the virus …

This can be added to the more than half a million in LA plus one large urban area in Massachusetts.

In an Amicus Brief submitted to the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, Miller versus Becerra, the Giffords Law Center and associated attorneys make the following argument.

Such combat-style features distinguish military rifles and their semi-automatic counterparts from standard sporting rifles, and are not “merely cosmetic”—they “serve specific, combat-functional ends.” H. Rep. No. 103-489, at 18. The Regulated Assault Rifles include features that enhance ammunition capacity, concealability, stability, and control, making it easier for shooters to fire accurately without sacrificing rate of fire. The “net effect of these military combat features is a capability for lethality—more wounds, more serious, in more victims—far beyond that of other firearms in general, including other semiautomatic guns.” Id. In fact, semi-automatic firing of militarystyle weapons like the Regulated Assault Rifles is in many ways more effective than automatic firing of the same weapons because they allow for more accuracy without substantially sacrificing rate of fire. Department of the Army, supra, at 7–12 (stating that “rapid semiautomatic fire” is “[t]he most accurate technique of placing a large volume of fire on poorly defined targets or target areas such as short exposure, multiple, or moving targets”).

This is a remarkable quote, and similar in intent and import to September 2019 testimony before the U.S. House by a Giffords Senior Policy Advisor.  One might get the impression that the Giffords Center opposes semiautomatic rifles but has lost interest in fully automatic weapons.  Of course, this would be wrong.

Banning modifications like bump stocks is a key element of the bill to address the 1October mass shooting. Bump stocks are specialized rifle stocks that allow shooters to simulate automatic fire without compromising accuracy. Bump stocks allow a person to hold a finger steady, and simply “bump” the gun against his or her shoulder back into the trigger. The person does not have to pull the trigger each time. Bump firing is the act of using the recoil of a semi-automatic firearm to fire shots in rapid succession to simulate a fully automatic rate of fire.

In fact, their press release on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on bump stocks explains their view of bump stocks being a serious threat to public safety precisely because they say it mimics fully automatic fire.

So Giffords opposes semi-automatic gun ownership because it is “more effective than automatic firing of the same weapons because they allow for more accuracy without substantially sacrificing rate of fire.”  On the other hand, bump stocks are a “serious threat to public safety” precisely because, according to Giffords, it mimics fully automatic fire.

Reading legal arguments can be a bit frustrating and even a bit perplexing unless one learns to jettison the laws of logic.  Typical arguments on behalf of a client might be one attempt at persuasion to the court, supplemented by another that argues on behalf of a client using exactly the opposite set of presuppositions.  The hope is that the court buys one of the arguments, even if it rejects the other(s).  It can lead one to question whether the attorneys really believe the proffered arguments when they are inherently contradictory.

This approach seems to be present in the Giffords presentations.  Given that, the next step is to ask what Giffords actually wants?  The answer seems to be nothing other than complete disarmament.  They don’t approve of semiautomatic guns.  They don’t approve of fully automatic guns.  They don’t approve of handguns, they want universal background checks, and they support red flag laws.  The only entity in this calculus who gets the monopoly of violence is the state itself.

It’s appropriate at this point to rehearse the rights in the covenant called the constitution as a means for understanding what the founders intended.

Here is a selection of quotes pertaining to the second amendment.

George Mason — “I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials.” (Debates in Virginia Convention on Ratification of the Constitution, Elliot, Vol. 3, June 16, 1788)

Alexander Hamilton — Writing in Federalist 28, he explained that the chief reason for being sure the people are armed is so they have the power to repel a tyranny::

If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state. In a single state, if the persons intrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair.

James Madison — Writing in Federalist 46, explained that the Constitution hedges in “the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.”

Joseph Story — Associate Justice from 1811-1845, he wrote, “The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.” (Story, Joseph. Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. 3 vols. Boston, 1833.)

Here is a selection of relevant court cases:

“The Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm, unconnected with service in a militia, for traditionally lawful purposes” (District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570)

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, and that this Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the States. (Caetano v. Massachusetts, 577 U.S. 2016)

The Second Amendment protects the right of individual citizens to own the military arms required to maintain a militia to defend against invasion or tyranny. (United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174)

The Second Amendment was incorporated against state and local governments, through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. (McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742)

An unconstitutional act is not a law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; it affords no protection; it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation as inoperative as though it had never been passed. (Norton v. Shelby County, 118 U.S. 425)

Congress does not have the power to pass laws that override the Constitution. (Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137)

It is unconstitutional to require a precondition on the exercising of a right. (Guinn v US 1915, Lane v Wilson 1939)

It is unconstitutional to require a license (government permission) to exercise a right. (Murdock v PA 1943, Lowell v City of Griffin 1939, Freedman v MD 1965, Near v MN 1931, Miranda v AZ 1966)

If the State converts a right into a privilege, the citizen can ignore the license and fee and engage in the right with impunity. (Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, Alabama, 373 U.S. 262).

It is unconstitutional to delay the exercising of a right. (Org. for a Better Austin v Keefe 1971)

It is unconstitutional to charge a fee for the exercising of a right. (Harper v Virginia Board of Elections 1966)

It is unconstitutional to register (record in a government database) the exercising of a right. (Thomas v Collins 1945, Lamont v Postmaster General 1965, Haynes v US 1968)

Here is a good discussion of the cultural milieu at the time of the war of independence.

In early 1775, tensions between Great Britain and the American colonies were reaching the breaking point. The previous October, King George III had forbidden the import of arms and ammunition into the colonies, a decision which the Americans interpreted as a plan to disarm and enslave them. Kopel, How the British Gun Control Program Precipitated the American Revolution, 38 Charleston Law Review 283 (2012).

Without formal legal authorization, even from the Continental Congress, Americans began to form independent militias, outside the traditional chain of command of the royal governors. In February 1775, George Washington and George Mason organized the Fairfax Independent Militia Company.

According to Mason’s Fairfax County Militia Plan for Embodying the People, “a well regulated Militia, composed of the Gentlemen, Freeholders, and other Freemen” was needed to defend “our ancient Laws & Liberty” from the Redcoats. “And we do each of us, for ourselves respectively, promise and engage to keep a good Fire-lock in proper Order, & to furnish Ourselves as soon as possible with, & always keep by us, one Pound of Gunpowder, four Pounds of Lead, one Dozen Gun Flints, & a pair of Bullet-Moulds, with a Cartouch [cartridge] Box, or powder-horn, and Bag for Balls.” 1 The Papers of George Mason 210-11, 215-16 (Robert A. Rutland ed., 1970). Similar militias were being formed all over the American colonies, with no formal authorization and no chain of command to the established government. The legal bases of the militias were the natural rights of self-defense and self-government.

Persuaded by Henry’s eloquence, the Virginia Convention formed a committee—including Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson—”to prepare a plan for the embodying, arming, and disciplining such a number of men as may be sufficient” to defend the commonwealth. The Convention urged “that every Man be provided with a good Rifle” and “that every Horseman be provided . . . with Pistols and Holsters, a Carbine, or other Firelock.” (“Firelock” was a synonym for “flintlock,” the most common firearms of the time.) Journal of Proceedings of Convention Held at Richmond 10-11 (1775).When the Virginia militiamen assembled a few weeks later, many wore canvas hunting shirts adorned with the motto from the conclusion of Henry’s speech: “Liberty or Death.” Henry Mayer, A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Revolution 251 (1991).

And as I have stated about this, ” … promise and engage to keep a good Fire-lock in proper Order, & to furnish Ourselves as soon as possible with, & always keep by us, one Pound of Gunpowder, four Pounds of Lead, one Dozen Gun Flints, & a pair of Bullet-Moulds, with a Cartouch [cartridge] Box, or powder-horn, and Bag for Balls” – is what well regulated means.  It means, simply, regulated firearms, or in other words, properly functioning and well stocked and supplied.  Powder and shot available, sights adjusted, and in working order.”

Even before that in American history, the notion that weaponry would be controlled by persons other than citizens would have been anathema.  This explains how men saw their ownership of guns.

In the colonies, availability of hunting and need for defense led to armament statues comparable to those of the early Saxon times. In 1623, Virginia forbade its colonists to travel unless they were “well armed”; in 1631 it required colonists to engage in target practice on Sunday and to “bring their peeces to church.” In 1658 it required every householder to have a functioning firearm within his house and in 1673 its laws provided that a citizen who claimed he was too poor to purchase a firearm would have one purchased for him by the government, which would then require him to pay a reasonable price when able to do so. In Massachusetts, the first session of the legislature ordered that not only freemen, but also indentured servants own firearms and in 1644 it imposed a stern 6 shilling fine upon any citizen who was not armed.

When the British government began to increase its military presence in the colonies in the mid-eighteenth century, Massachusetts responded by calling upon its citizens to arm themselves in defense. One colonial newspaper argued that it was impossible to complain that this act was illegal since they were “British subjects, to whom the privilege of possessing arms is expressly recognized by the Bill of Rights” while another argued that this “is a natural right which the people have reserved to themselves, confirmed by the Bill of Rights, to keep arms for their own defense”. The newspaper cited Blackstone’s commentaries on the laws of England, which had listed the “having and using arms for self preservation and defense” among the “absolute rights of individuals.” The colonists felt they had an absolute right at common law to own firearms.

Thus the Giffords view of the state having a monopoly of violence runs exactly counter to the constitution. Since the constitution is a covenant between men, with blessings and curses recognized by God, the real question is what does the Almighty say about all of this?  Or in other words, is the covenant between men we call the constitution based on righteousness as outlined in Holy law?

We’ve discussed before that God expects men to be capable of self defense, and in fact makes it a duty of men.

God has laid the expectations at the feet of heads of families that they protect, provide for and defend their families and protect and defend their countries.  Little ones cannot do so, and rely solely on those who bore them.  God no more loves the willing neglect of their safety than He loves child abuse.  He no more appreciates the willingness to ignore the sanctity of our own lives than He approves of the abuse of our own bodies and souls.  God hasn’t called us to save the society by sacrificing our children or ourselves to robbers, home invaders, rapists or murderers. Self defense – and defense of the little ones – goes well beyond a right.  It is a duty based on the idea that man is made in God’s image.  It is His expectation that we do the utmost to preserve and defend ourselves when in danger, for it is He who is sovereign and who gives life, and He doesn’t expect us to be dismissive or cavalier about its loss.

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If you believe that it is your Christian duty to allow your children to be harmed by evil-doers (and you actually allow it to happen) because you think Christ was a pacifist, you are no better than a child abuser or pedophile.

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God demands violence as a response to threats on our person because of the fact that man is created in God’s image and life is to be preserved.  It is our solemn duty.

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I am afraid there have been too many centuries of bad teaching endured by the church, but it makes sense to keep trying.  As I’ve explained before, the simplest and most compelling case for self defense lies in the decalogue.  Thou shall not murder means thou shall protect life.

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If you’re willing to sacrifice the safety and health of your wife or children to the evils of abuse, kidnapping, sexual predation or death, God isn’t impressed with your fake morality.  Capable of stopping it and choosing not to, you’re no better than a child molester, and I wouldn’t allow you even to be around my grandchildren.

Indeed, all gun control is wicked.  The Bible does contain a few direct references to weapons control. There were many times throughout Israel’s history that it rebelled against God (in fact, it happened all the time). To mock His people back into submission to His Law, the Lord would often use wicked neighbors to punish Israel’s rebellion. Most notable were the Philistines and the Babylonians. 1 Samuel 13:19-22 relates the story: “Not a blacksmith could be found in the whole land of Israel, because the Philistines had said, “Otherwise the Hebrews will make swords or spears!” So all Israel went down to the Philistines to have their plowshares, mattocks, axes, and sickles sharpened…So on the day of battle not a soldier with Saul and Jonathan had a sword or spear in this hand; only Saul and his son Jonathan had them.” Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon also removed all of the craftsmen from Israel during the Babylonian captivity (2 Kings 24:14). Both of these administrations were considered exceedingly wicked including their acts of weapons control.

John Calvin’s comments on this subject.  We do not need to prove that when a good thing is commanded, the evil thing that conflicts with it is forbidden.  There is no one who doesn’t concede this.  That the opposite duties are enjoined when evil things are forbidden will also be willingly admitted in common judgment.  Indeed, it is commonplace that when virtues are commended, their opposing vices are condemned.  But we demand something more than what these phrases commonly signify.  For by the virtue of contrary to the vice, men usually mean abstinence from that vice.  We say that the virtue goes beyond this to contrary duties and deeds.  Therefore in this commandment, “You shall not kill,” men’s common sense will see only that we must abstain from wronging anyone or desiring to do so.  Besides this, it contains, I say, the requirement that we give our neighbor’s life all the help we can … the purpose of the commandment always discloses to us whatever it there enjoins or forbids us to do” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 1, Book 2, Chapter viii, Part 9).

Defense isn’t just against individuals who would endanger and oppress, but of groups of men as well, that is, the state.  Protection against tyranny is as much self defense as preventing or responding to a home invasion by criminals.

In summary, the Giffords Law Center is making arguments that not only contradict their own prior arguments and positions, demonstrating malfeasance and dishonesty in their intentions, but they make arguments that contradict the law of God.  Their arguments are anti-Christian.

Raymond Ibrahim writing at PJM.

Not only is Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari behind what several international observers are calling a “genocide” of Christians in his nation—but Barack Hussein Obama played a major role in the Muslim president’s rise to power: these two interconnected accusations are increasingly being made—not by “xenophobic” Americans but Nigerians themselves, including several leaders and officials.

Most recently, Femi Fani-Kayode, Nigeria’s former minister of culture and tourism, wrote in a Facebook post:

“What Obama, John Kerry and Hilary Clinton did to Nigeria by funding and supporting Buhari in the 2015 presidential election and helping Boko Haram in 2014/2015 was sheer wickedness and the blood of all those killed by the Buhari administration, his Fulani herdsmen and Boko Haram over the last 5 years are on their hands.”

Kerry’s and Clinton’s appeasement of Boko Haram—an Islamic terror organization notorious for massacring, enslaving, and raping Christians, and bombing and burning their churches—is apparently what connects them to this “sheer wickedness.”

For example, after a Nigerian military offensive killed 30 Boko Haram terrorists in 2013, then secretary of state Kerry “issued a strongly worded statement” to Buhari’s predecessor, President Goodluck Jonathan (2010-2015), a Christian.  In it, Kerry warned Jonathan that “We are … deeply concerned by credible allegations that Nigerian security forces are committing gross human rights violations” against the terrorists.

Similarly, during her entire tenure as secretary of state, Clinton repeatedly refused to designate Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization, despite nonstop pressure from lawmakers, human rights activists, and lobbyists—not to mention Boko Haram’s countless atrocities against Nigerian Christians.

“Those of you that still love the evil called Barack Obama,” Fani-Kayode added in his post, “should listen to this short clip and tell me if you still do.”  He was referring to a recent Al Jazeera video interview of Eeben Barlow, a former lieutenant-colonel of the South African Defence Force and chairman of a private military company hired in 2015 by Jonathan, when still president, to help defeat Boko Haram.

“In one month,” Barlow said in the interview, “we took back terrain larger than Belgium from Boko Haram. We were not allowed to finish because it came at a time when governments were in the process of changing,” he said in reference to Nigeria’s 2015 presidential elections.  “The incoming president, President Buhari, was heavily supported by a foreign government, and one of the first missions [of Buhari] was to terminate our contract.”

On being asked if he could name the “foreign government,” the former lieutenant-colonel said, “Yes, we were told it was the United States, and they had actually funded President Buhari’s campaign, and the campaign manager for President Buhari came from the US.

I think it’s fairly well established by now that Obama hated Christians.  He and his henchmen bear a huge degree of responsibility for raped little girls and dead Christians in Nigeria.

However, I’m going to say something a wee bit more controversial now.  So do the Nigerian Christians.  Christians should not, and must not, look to the state for redemption or safety.

God gave men the responsibility and duty to defend the little ones.  No one else can do it, and no one else has been told to engage in such protection (Romans 13 is an exception to what I’m saying, but that is a normative statement, a statement of God’s expectations for the state, not of His boundaries for His followers, or in other words, He raises the bar for the state, not lowers it for citizens of a state).

Nigerian Christians should have armed and gone to war with the Muslim terrorists in Nigeria until every last one of them was dead.  Nothing else will do when your family is under threat.  Until Christians jettison this notion of Jesus as the Bohemian, peacenik, flower child pacifist, they will continue to be run over, abused, raped, tortured and slaughtered.

And the frustrating thing is that it’s all so unnecessary and based on false teaching.

PJM.

The study itself acknowledges that “hydroxychloroquine, with or without azithromycin, was more likely to be prescribed to patients with more severe disease.” In such a small study that isn’t representative of the entire population, this would likely impact the results. For starters, there is a direct correlation between advanced age and the severity of side effects. If more severe cases were more likely to be prescribed the drug, it’s possible that these patients were more likely to be fatal cases regardless of the treatment, and perhaps the drugs weren’t administered early enough to alleviate the symptoms to result in recovery. “The findings should not be viewed as definitive because the analysis doesn’t adjust for patients’ clinical status and showed that hydroxychloroquine alone was provided to VA’s sickest COVID-19 patients, many times as a last resort,” a spokeswoman for the Department of Veterans Affairs told Fox News.

That’s enough to do it for me.  The claim that this therapeutic is helpful hasn’t been made in a vacuum.  The claim is that it is helpful when administered early.  It’s ridiculous that the researchers can’t seem to build the proper boundary conditions for the study.

Look, I’m not personally and emotionally committed to this therapeutic.  But we still don’t have evidence that it doesn’t work – while we do have evidence that it does work.

If it does, then prove it with studies with the right boundary conditions.  If it doesn’t, prove it with studies with the right boundary conditions and then move on to something that shows more promise.

Something you may have missed in the recent news about the Canadian shooting incident.

Through the morning Sunday, police updates about the active shooter investigation included warnings that Wortman was considered dangerous and may have been dressed as an RCMP officer in a lookalike RCMP vehicle.

“The fact that this individual had a uniform and a police car at his disposal certainly speaks to it not being a random act,” Leather said.

This individual was dressed in a uniform and had a vehicle that looked like it was a police vehicle.  Today, cops all over America, either the tacticool type who want to wear black shirts, khaki pants and drop holsters, or the sloppy and undisciplined ones who just don’t care, make it even more difficult to determine who is a cop and who isn’t.

So to reiterate a point to cops everywhere.  You understand, don’t you, why you can’t just stand at our door and yell “Police, get on the floor now,” and us believe that you are who you say you are?  We can’t believe it if you’re driving a car, standing at our doorway, or crossing paths with us on the roadside.

We just can’t believe you, because it may be the last mistake we ever make.

NYT.

To this consideration you can add a large urban area in Massachusetts and Los Angeles, where it is estimated that more than a total of half a million people have already been infected with Coronavirus in just three urban areas.

I have all of the curves: confirmed Covid-19 cases in America, mortality rate, ratio of active to confirmed cases, currently active cases, recovered cases, etc., etc.

None of it means anything.  At all.

MIT Study.

Just one section of Massachusetts could have more than 100,000 coronavirus cases — many times more than the entire state has identified at this point, according to an MIT-associated study of local sewage.

Biobot Analytics, which is a lab associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published research this week that an analysis of sewage from a treatment facility in “a large metropolitan area in the state of Massachusetts” suggested that many more people potentially have the highly contagious disease than tests have confirmed.

“On March 25, the area represented by the sample had approximately 446 confirmed cases of Covid-19,” Biobot researchers wrote Wednesday in a post about their research. “Based on our sewage analysis, we estimate that up to 115,000 people are infected and shedding the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”

Biobot, which didn’t respond to requests for comment, didn’t specify where in the state the samples came from.

MIT.  Large metropolitan area.  Probably Boston.

USC Study.

While Los Angeles County has reported a total of 13,816 coronavirus cases, early results from an antibody study conducted with the University of Southern California shows that hundreds of thousands more could have had COVID-19 in the past, officials announced Monday.

So far, 863 L.A. County residents have been tested between April 10 and 14 as part of the study.

The study estimates a prevalence of COVID-19 antibodies in the county to be 4.1%, with a range that could be as low as 2.8% and as high as 5.6%, when you factor in the reliability of the tests.

An estimated 221,000 adults to 442,000 adults at the high end may have been infected at some point before April 9 with COVID-19, suggesting that the number of total people in the county with a past or current infection is 28 to 55 times higher than the number of reported positive cases, Dr. Barbara Ferrer, L.A. County’s public health director said Monday.

“Although I report every day that we have thousands of thousands of people that have tested positive, the serology testing lets us know that we have hundreds of thousands of people that have already developed antibodies to the virus because at some point in time over the last couple of months, they have in fact been infected with COVID-19,” Ferrer said.

Everything you’re being told by the FedGov and StateGov and CountyGov is crap.  I’m a registered professional engineer.  I’ve done science, engineering and mathematical modeling for 40 years.  If I did my work like this my license would have been stripped and I would be in jail.

Bill Buppert at ZeroGov says this.

You won’t find me parsing the nonsensical and shamanesque grotesqueries of Comrades Birx or Fauci or any of the other “government health” frauds at the hilariously contranymic Center for Disease Control; when not chasing the phantoms of gun violence (is hanging rope violence?) or racism or salt, the CDC is yet another government clown posse who couldn’t predict a sunset much less the verities of viral outbreaks.

Me neither.  I’ve said it before.  It has all become a FedGov jobs program for incompetent people who can’t otherwise do real work anywhere else, all controlled by wicked rulers who want to convert America into nanny state socialism with moronic sheeple begging for more and more control over their daily lives.