Articles by Herschel Smith

Jeff Minick.

As I write these words, a reproduction of the 1897 Sears Roebuck Catalogue, published in 1968 by Chelsea House, sits at my elbow.

The fat catalog is a casual reader’s delight and a historian’s treasure trove. Here are medicines like laudanum, herb tea, and castor oil. Here are tools, bobsleds, gasoline stoves, windmills, bicycles, clothing and footwear, valises, books, clocks and watches, fountain pens, banjos and snare drums, furniture and cutlery, buggies and wagons. (The price of most surreys is under $100, a belt is fifty cents, a child’s high chair a dollar, a ball room guide for gentlemen twenty-five cents.)

And in the Sporting Goods Department we find 28 pages of guns, ammunition, and accessories.

Here we have weapons ranging from the Daisy Air Rifle to “Our $1.55 Revolver,” from shotguns for $7.95 to Marlin Repeating Rifles. Sears, Roebuck & Company also sold ammunition, pistol holders, reloading tools, and cleaners for these weapons.

No one was monitoring these sales. The government had no part in regulation. No one conducted background checks on the buyers. Indeed, Sears brags that it is “the headquarter for everything in guns,” that their prices are below all others, and that “we will send any revolver to any address.”

Yikes, right? Even a common laborer, for three or four days wages, could order a Saturday night special from Sears. With guns and ammo so easily available, we might guess that the streets of every American city and town were running red with blood every day of the week. Mass murder surely occurred on a weekly basis. Assassination and terrorist attacks must have happened so regularly that no one blinked an eye.

We might guess so, but we would be wrong.

In 1900, the number of murders and “non-negligent homicides” in the United States was approximately 1 in every 100,000 inhabitants (This figure and the others in this paragraph include all murders, not just those by firearms.) In 1980, that figure was close to 11 murders per 100,000 people. Since then, that figure has declined to between 4 and 5 murders per 100,000. (For a deeper analysis, see here.) Bear in mind too that unlike today, a gunshot wound in 1900 frequently resulted in death.

These statistics contrasted with the easy availability of guns should raise some questions. Why in 1900, when firearms were so readily accessible, were murders so infrequent? Why are murders today quadruple what they were in 1900? Based on what gun-control activists tell us, shouldn’t we expect the exact opposite?

He has his answers, but in my opinion they are all connected and symptomatic of the higher order issue, which we all know as a rejection of God and His law.  It’s a cultural issue, not one of hardware.

I’ve never had any of these things happen to my guns, but then again, I’ve never had to put 500 rounds downrange in ten minutes.  So there’s that.

I could go on for hours on this, but you don’t have hours, so …

Ammoland.

A few years back while living in New Mexico I attended a Homeland Security Combating Terrorism Conference. The days were spent watching videos of bombings, explosions, and all manner of terrorist attacks on both American and foreign soil.

However, the briefing that got my attention the most, was a short forty-five minute, New Mexico, state, public health presentation about potential large-scale medical emergencies on the US – Mexican border. The majority of the people attending the conference were from New Mexico and Texas. The big topic on everyone’s mind was weapons of mass destruction.

We continued each day of the conference learning how to train, equip, and prepare to deploy, first responder assets. What if, there was a large bombing incident in downtown Dallas that kills a thousand-plus people? Or, what if there is a radiological disaster in Albuquerque (more nukes in that town than anywhere else in the US) that contaminates a large part of the city? The major problem I discovered was no one was prepared or politically able to discuss the “Border Situation.”

Lots of discussion about how to meet a projected crisis, but for the most part it was all done as if the US-Mexico border did not exist on the south end of four of our states. The most powerful “first world” country on this planet is sitting right next door to one of the neediest “third world” countries, with only a partial fence between them.

Another what-if question, what if a new strain of swine flu or smallpox or today (March 2020) the CONVID 19 coronavirus, either naturally or, worse yet, man-manufactured, breaks out in Juarez City, Mexico?

The perception that there is anything that resembles a public health system in the Mexican State of Chihuahua that could deal with the above medical crisis is incorrect.

Oh, I think that’s the wrong question.  I don’t really think they want to be prepared, if being prepared means closing the border.

You are aware, aren’t you, that while the country is at a point of crisis over health concerns, the Senate is pushing hard for a bipartisan green social engineering bill?

There is certainly a serious threat, but you are aware that while the country reels from Covid-19, Trump met with Lindsey Graham to talk about immigration issues?  From the NumbersUSA newsletter.

A number of Republican Senators, including Gang of 8 alum Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and immigration-expansionist Thom Tillis of North Carolina met with Pres. Trump on Thursday to discuss an election year push to pass an amnesty for illegal aliens.

Sens. Graham and Tillis have been in the news as of late trying to convince their colleagues to get behind an agricultural amnesty bill that was passed by the House in December.

According to reports, the meeting was more of a session to discuss strategy should the Supreme Court strike down former Pres. Obama’s executive DACA amnesty. The Senate attempted to pass a permanent DACA amnesty in February of 2018, but three competing proposals failed to reach the 60-vote threshold needed for the proposals to come to the Senate floor for debate.

Ahead of the Thursday meeting, Sen. Graham told Fox News, “Just to see, you know, where we are in terms of the DACA Supreme Court case, [there’s a] pretty good chance that the president will win, being able to set aside the Obama-era DACA regulations and what’s the play after that.”

We know that Sen. Graham would like nothing more than to pass an amnesty for DACA recipients, and he likely doesn’t want to stop there. He’s the lead sponsor of the Dream Act, S. 874, that would add to DACA’s 800,000 recipients by granting amnesty to an estimated 3 million illegal aliens. The farm amnesty that he’s currently pushing would add another 1 million-plus to that number.

It’s almost as if during the fixation on Covid-19 in the news, the men behind the curtain are busy redistributing wealth, terraforming America, and moving colossal sums of money around, with corporations and big Pharma getting rich. Like this was all planned or something.

If I didn’t know any better.  Perhaps it’s just not letting a crisis go to waste on the vicissitudes of the idiot American public who cannot be trusted with their own rule and need the elitists to govern them.

This awful report came to my attention, and it pertains not just to social media, but to father Google too.

The email arrived on a Tuesday afternoon in January, startling Zachary McCoy as he prepared to leave for his job at a restaurant in Gainesville, Florida.

It was from Google’s legal investigations support team, writing to let him know that local police had demanded information related to his Google account. The company said it would release the data unless he went to court and tried to block it. He had just seven days.

“I was hit with a really deep fear,” McCoy, 30, recalled, even though he couldn’t think of anything he’d done wrong. He had an Android phone, which was linked to his Google account, and, like millions of other Americans, he used an assortment of Google products, including Gmail and YouTube. Now police seemingly wanted access to all of it.

“I didn’t know what it was about, but I knew the police wanted to get something from me,” McCoy said in a recent interview. “I was afraid I was going to get charged with something, I don’t know what.”

There was one clue.

In the notice from Google was a case number. McCoy searched for it on the Gainesville Police Department’s website, and found a one-page investigation report on the burglary of an elderly woman’s home 10 months earlier. The crime had occurred less than a mile from the home that McCoy, who had recently earned an associate degree in computer programming, shared with two others.

Now McCoy was even more panicked and confused. He knew he had nothing to do with the break-in ─ he’d never even been to the victim’s house ─ and didn’t know anyone who might have. And he didn’t have much time to prove it.

McCoy worried that going straight to police would lead to his arrest. So he went to his parents’ home in St. Augustine, where, over dinner, he told them what was happening. They agreed to dip into their savings to pay for a lawyer.

The lawyer, Caleb Kenyon, dug around and learned that the notice had been prompted by a “geofence warrant,” a police surveillance tool that casts a virtual dragnet over crime scenes, sweeping up Google location data — drawn from users’ GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cellular connections — from everyone nearby.

The warrants, which have increased dramatically in the past two years, can help police find potential suspects when they have no leads. They also scoop up data from people who have nothing to do with the crime, often without their knowing ─ which Google itself has described as “a significant incursion on privacy.”

Still confused ─ and very worried ─ McCoy examined his phone. An avid biker, he used an exercise-tracking app, RunKeeper, to record his rides. The app relied on his phone’s location services, which fed his movements to Google. He looked up his route on the day of the March 29, 2019, burglary and saw that he had passed the victim’s house three times within an hour, part of his frequent loops through his neighborhood, he said.

“It was a nightmare scenario,” McCoy recalled. “I was using an app to see how many miles I rode my bike and now it was putting me at the scene of the crime. And I was the lead suspect.”

There is more at the link.  It actually ended up working out okay for him, but not without some trouble and expense.

Let this be a lesson.  I have used biking apps on my phone for mountain biking trail maps, as well as Waze for navigation in my truck.

I’ve rethought that after reading this article.  Google = Fedgov.  Never forget that.

Two different readers have now confirmed to me that they know of connecting flights in America where foreign nationals were allowed to connect in America with final destinations outside of America.

Let that sink in.  That means the protocols in place for foreign nationals entering the U.S., or outright prohibitions thereto, aren’t in place for connecting flights.

Foreign nationals could be traipsing through airports on their way from one flight to another, and there is absolutely no control or protocol to monitor that or ensure the health and safety of the public.

It’s almost as if the American controllers aren’t taking this seriously.  It’s almost as if the combination of the FedGov and media has caused a panic to overcrowd medical care facilities and over-stress the staff, with little to no planning or foresight, with inadequate hospital beds, medical staff, training, equipment or protocols.

It’s almost as if the only real winners in all of this when it’s all said and done will be big Pharma and some corporations.

If I didn’t know better.

Readers feel free to drop URLs to news reports, studies and analyses of Covid-19 in comments.  This is a rare time I ask for this.

Deepclips.com.

Residents of Amherst County in Virginia lined up to volunteer at a militia muster call on Saturday, March 7. The crowd of “able-bodied residents of the Commonwealth” exercised their right to organize in case the full militia as defined under Virginia Code 44-1 is ever required to defend constitutional rights and liberties.

Floyd, Bedford and Campbell Counties have also recently held militia musters and the movement appears to be picking up steam.

It’s good to see this movement progressing.  It would be too easy to stand down in Virginia.  There’s a natural tendency to go back to the way things were.

Eventbrite.com has this announcement for “March for our rights.”

It’s supposed to be Saturday, April 4th, 2020, at the SC State House.  Do any S.C. readers know anything about this?

I’m suspicious, because we know nothing in the announcement about who is sponsoring this.  If SC Carry is sponsoring it, it’s valid and legitimate.  If someone else, who, and does SC Carry know about this event?

Can SC readers fill in the details?

Recall that one crud, vulgar, obscene Putnam County Sheriff’s Deputy violated a man’s rights guaranteed under the second and fourth amendments by an illegal and unconstitutional detention?

Also recall that we covered the violation of the fourth amendment by Putnam County Deputies about three weeks ago?

The lawyer in these cases has a new video up with more than we linked in the last video.  Watch it entirely.

His name is John H. Bryan, and he’s doing God’s work.  His web site is thecivilrightslawyer.com, and he has a new post up on the current status of the open carry case.

The judges in this case were very dismissive of the Fourth Circuit decision in Black because they just don’t care about the constitution, but I hope he carries this all the way to the Supreme Court if needed.

Further, I’ll say one more time, it never even needed to get to the point of citing Black.  West Virginia is not a “stop and identify” state, and this wasn’t a “Terry Stop.”  The state courts should have struck this all down and reprimanded the Sheriff’s department.

I’ll also say once again that Sheriff Steve Deweese should resign in shame, and remember his contact information: sdeweese@putnamwv.org.

Also remember this man.  prosecutingattorney@putnamwv.org (Mark A. Sorsaia, Office of the Prosecuting Attorney, Putnam County Judicial Building).

The deputies, crooks and thugs they are, are merely following the leadership set before them.  Followers always behave like their leaders.  To the Sheriff, you need to get up in front of your church, beg for forgiveness, ask to be placed under the discipline of the leaders of your church, resign your post, and do something you’re qualified to do, like dig ditches while serving your time in prison.

Jacob Sullum writing at Reason.com.

The allegations against Kevin Morgan were alarming. They described just the sort of circumstances that Florida legislators had in mind when they approved that state’s “red flag” law in 2018, three weeks after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

Morgan’s estranged wife, Joanie, claimed he was depressed, suicidal, and obsessed with the apocalypse, which he thought was imminent. She said he was stockpiling food, gold, guns, and ammunition in anticipation of the end times; that he talked about seeing, hearing, and wrestling with demons; and that he had performed a ritual that involved rubbing “oils” on their children and the walls of their house. She reported that he was abusing the drugs he had been prescribed for chronic pain, had talked about dismembering his former wife, had intimated he would do the same to her if she ever disrespected him, and had threatened to kill her with succinylcholine, a paralytic agent used during surgery and intubation.

Oooo … sounds awful, doesn’t it?

On the strength of such claims, Joanie Morgan obtained a temporary domestic violence protection injunction, an involuntary psychiatric evaluation order under the Florida Mental Health Act (a.k.a. the Baker Act), and a temporary “risk protection order” under the red flag law, which authorizes the suspension of a person’s Second Amendment rights when he is deemed a threat to himself or others. All three were ex parte orders, meaning they were issued without giving Kevin Morgan a chance to rebut the allegations against him.

But when it was time for a judge to decide whether the initial gun confiscation order, which was limited to 14 days, should be extended for a year, Morgan got a hearing, and the lurid picture painted by his wife disintegrated. By the end of the hearing, in an extraordinary turn of events unlike anything you are likely to see in a courtroom drama, the lawyer representing the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office, which was seeking the final order, conceded that he had not met the law’s evidentiary standard, and the judge agreed.

But why?

In the affidavit supporting her petition, Montgomery said she responded to a complaint from Joanie Morgan alleging that her husband had violated the temporary domestic violence protection injunction by returning to the house in Citrus Springs they used to share and retrieving clothing, medications, “several firearms,” and his Ford Mustang. Montgomery paraphrased the claims Joanie Morgan had made in her petitions for the injunction and the Baker Act examination: that “the respondent has had a decline in mental stability over the last four months” and “has displayed irratic [sic] behaviors to include making threats to dismember a former paramour and threats to kill his entire family while yielding [sic] a vial containing a paralytic agent.” She added that “the respondent has purchased several firearms and ammunition during this time period.”

He purchased several firearms.  Horrible man, but let’s continue to see just how horrible he really is.

At this point, Montgomery later testified, she had done no investigation beyond talking to Joanie Morgan and reading her petitions. Montgomery said she subsequently discovered there was no basis for the claim that Kevin Morgan had violated the injunction by visiting the house. “I determined that it wasn’t him that had gone to the house,” she said. “It was actually a pool maintenance worker that had been by the house.” Furthermore, “the firearms had been transferred prior to his risk protection order” in response to the domestic violence injunction, meaning there were no guns for Morgan to retrieve from the house.

Montgomery did read the Baker Act petition that led to Morgan’s court-ordered psychiatric evaluation, but she did not mention the outcome of that evaluation. On September 13, 2018, police handcuffed Morgan and took him to The Centers, a mental health facility in Ocala, where he spent the night. The next day, a psychiatrist determined that he did not meet the law’s criteria for involuntary treatment. A discharge form dated September 14, 2018, described Morgan as “alert and oriented” and “calm and cooperative.” It explained that “Kevin was evaluated by the psychiatrist and it was determined that Kevin does not present as a danger to himself or others.”

Joanie Morgan’s testimony was tearful, highly emotional, scattered, and frequently vague. She reiterated her earlier allegations and added a few more. But when Blackstone asked whether she had any evidence to corroborate what she claimed her husband had said and done, she admitted that she did not.

There were no witnesses to confirm his alleged threats and no photographs of oil on the walls, of the hypodermic needles he allegedly had stashed away to inject the succinylcholine, or of the food, gold, weapons, and ammunition he allegedly had accumulated in preparation for the end times. Nor had police ever visited the house to confirm any of those details. Blackstone also noted that, despite Joanie Morgan’s portrait of her husband as dangerously deranged, she was planning to build a new house with him on property they had purchased together in April 2018, and she had left her children overnight with him that August, in the midst of his supposed breakdown, to attend a conference in Tampa.

Joanie Morgan’s mother, Susan Harper-Clements, tried to back up her daughter’s portrayal of Kevin Morgan as dangerous, but the evidence she offered fell notably short. For example, she mentioned “conversations” after the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas. “Kevin had told me that the NRA…was all into this gun thing and that you couldn’t even buy the bullets you wanted, because people were stockpiling,” she said. “And he said, ‘When they’re all through with this, you won’t be able to buy guns and ammunition.'” On cross-examination, Blackstone noted that such comments hardly proved homicidal intent. “He has never threatened anyone in your presence, has he?” he asked. “No,” Harper-Clements replied.

Kevin Morgan’s demeanor at the hearing was as Montgomery and the staff at The Centers had described it: calm, polite, and cooperative. He denied seeing demons, making threats, or obsessing about the apocalypse. He denied that he had recently been stockpiling guns, saying he had acquired his collection of roughly 40 rifles and handguns over the course of more than two decades. The only guns he had acquired recently, he said, were three black-powder pistols he had bought the previous spring and summer—antique replicas ill-suited for the end times.

What about the mostly empty vial of succinylcholine that his wife had presented to sheriff’s deputies as evidence of Morgan’s deadly designs? Morgan recalled that his wife, a nurse who had worked at two local hospitals, had once accidentally brought home just such a vial, saying she had put it in her lab coat pocket after participating in the treatment of a patient who had suffered a cardiac arrest. Morgan, who also has a nursing degree, had managed the emergency room at one of those hospitals, but he left that job in January 2015 because of a disability caused by spinal stenosis. After that, he no longer had access to drugs such as succinylcholine. Given the expiration date on the vial that his wife gave to police, Morgan said, it was clear he could not have been the person who had obtained it.

Okay, there’s much more at the link but I’ve heard enough, and congratulations to Jacob for doing such an outstanding job of reporting this.  Go read the rest of it here.

Let me tell you what happened in this case.  She got together with her mom, who clearly doesn’t like him very much, after the wife had an argument with him of some sort.  She was in too deep to back out, so they concocted this ridiculous set of tales.

So he was embarrassed, had his God-given rights violated, and had his belongings confiscated, all without even a hint of real investigative work by the police.

So goes red flag laws in America, the best thing since sliced bread according to nearly every politician on the planet.