Articles by Herschel Smith

Via Insty.

International Sportsman.

According to an anonymous source that spoke to the BurstReview YouTube channel, FLIR will discontinue civilian sales of optics this Monday, January 20th.

According to BurstReview’s sources, FLIR’s board of directors and shareholders are anti-hunting and believe that only military and law enforcement should have access to thermal optics. This source also stated that FLIR allegedly laid off everyone in their civilian and hunting sales departments.

The sources stated this was further supported by recent events surrounding Armasight. Allegedly following FLIR’s acquisition of Armasight, they laid off all hunting prostaff and instructed social media personnel to never show any kill shots going forward.

This is very interesting news, and could turn the market against FLIR. Especially given rising tensions between civilians and militarized police that are seen as overstepping their authority.

But this is all hearsay until the alleged reveal date of Monday the 20th. Be sure to stay tuned for the latest information on this and other stories coming out of SHOT Show 2020.

And it seems like sources are confirming this.

This is continued movement towards and us versus them approach.  It’s not just automatic weapons, it’s not AP ammunition, now it’s FLIR.  When will it become magnifying scopes?  I think Matt Bracken has an essay using state control over scopes as an example, yes?  To a hunter, a good scope is a necessity.  To a collectivist, it’s the tool of a sniper.  To a competitive shooter it’s absolutely required.  To a statist it’s something that can be used against the status quo.

I’ll say that I don’t have any FLIR capable equipment, but I’m interested whether readers do, for what they’re used, and if there are any alternatives to the company FLIR.  This is a single company, not the entirety of the technology.

Aesop has a post on drop-leg holsters with interesting remarks and also interesting comments to the post.

According to her blog, the above is a dumb holster idea.

“Basically, unless you’re wearing a plate carrier or LBV or something that interferes with a normal belt mount, you should probably leave the drop-legs to Hollywood space pirates and B&W cowboys.”

Oh really?

Point of order.

Look, I can give you eleventy times and places where a drop leg of any type is weapons-grade dumb (self-castration optional); BTDT and got the t-shirt. But I can also think of several situations where it’s pretty wizard-level. And let’s face it, not everyone is a Travis Haley gunslinger, nor trying to be one.

What about for someone who’s not trying to look tacticool at all, but maybe earning a living driving a truck all day, or a cabbie, an Uber/Lyft driver, or a pizza delivery guy?
(Not in NYFC or similar anti-gun locales, but in places where the Constitution still applies most days.)

[ … ]

Sit in a car, a delivery van, or a semi rig cab, and show me your IWB or appendix-carry draw, against, say, a robber or carjacker.With your seatbelts on (in observance of the law, natch), and maybe wearing a jacket, just to make it interesting for you.  I’ll wait.

(We won’t even talk about where that IWB is digging into you all shift, or where your appendix carry muzzle is pointed, sitting in a vehicle seat. And to be sporting, we won’t stipulate that one might be a bit on the portly side.)

Now, sit in a car seat, same conditions, and tell me where your hand falls on your upper leg:
unless you’ve got gorilla-length arms (which you’d need to get to any ankle rig), that’d be right where this holster sits. Handy. Readily available. Not pointed at your junk.
Five stars.

Several things caught my interest in this.  First, I just can’t stand a one-size fits all approach to anything, and it sounds like Aesop agrees.

The Travis Haley video at the link has Travis sporting a Kydex holster with retention.  I hate Kydex, and I’m not an operator in SOC.  I choose not to wear Kydex – just because that’s what I choose to do, and I choose to do what I want.  I’m not interested in being tacticool.

I also hate appendix carry.  I hate sticking a pistol barrel into my groin / lower stomach.  It isn’t comfortable and I refuse to do it.  I can carry at 3:00 (IWB), on my ankle, or OWB.  I simply will not carry IWB appendix.

And I recently discussed how the 1911 fits my arthritic hands because of its narrow frame.  Everyone’s physique, capabilities, and jobs are different.  I can see sitting in a car or truck as a driver and needing something other than high waist carry (my seatbelt interferes frequently with me).

Similarly, Travis can make the suggestion to carry as high as possible with a drop-holster, and with the few I’ve worn I would agree, and he can make the suggestion to simply move gear around to facilitate that, but it’s not that simple.

My Marine son and I have talked about this before.  He hates drop holsters.  When clearing rooms and moving quickly through domiciles, the holster bangs on couches, flops around, and gets in the way of every movement.  It might be nice to say “move gear,” but that involves leaving behind SAW ammunition drums, or some other essential gear he might have needed for 16 hours in Fallujah.  We’re not talking about cops doing a ten minute job.  We’re talking all day and into the night, house to house, room to room, sometimes nothing happens, sometimes gunfire is streaming through the doorway.  Besides, the body armor he was issued wasn’t so amenable to wearing a drop holster high.

He also has an interesting view of the C-clamp or thumb-over-bore grip.  Yea, it looks cool, and he’s used it, but if you think you’re going to use that grip for 16 hours in Fallujah, you’re mistaken.  You can hold that for five minutes, and then you’re using another.  That’s for short-term direct action ops, not long term urban combat.

So in his job he had to use a drop holster.  He hated them.  In other jobs, people might need them.  I have no need of one, but open carry from time to time with a much higher holster, sometimes leather, sometimes Cordura.  I never use Kydex because it’s a free country and I don’t have to.

In the gun community we need to recognize differences in sex, physique, comfort, need, job and simple differences of opinion concerning what people like.

We recently discussed the second amendment sanctuary movement in North Carolina, and between that post and GRNC, the current list of counties who have adopted the resolution is as follows.

Lincoln County

Surry County

Wilkes County

Rowan County

Davidson County

Iredell County

Rutherford

Cherokee

Davidson

Please send information as you find it.  I’d like to keep an accurate list.  I need readers’ help to do this.

News from North Carolina.

Davidson County Sheriff’s Deputy Tripp Kester, speaking during a board of commissioners meeting Tuesday night, gave a fiery defense of the Constitution and Second Amendment rights, “personally and publicly” going on record that he will not enforce an unconstitutional law.

“I’m going to protect the people of the county regardless of what’s done here,” Kester said. “Let’s get on board and let’s do the right thing. We’re not going to allocate any personnel, finances, resources or anything to infringe on their liberties.”

“I am not being disrespectful, but regardless of what you do or don’t do, I am not going to enforce an unconstitutional law,” he added, garnering a raucous applause from the packed room.

Shortly after his speech, the board voted unanimously to become a Second Amendment sanctuary, joining several other North Carolina counties that have approved some form of gun rights affirming resolution over the last few weeks.

You can watch the speech below.

Thank you Deputy Kester.  We’ll all hold you to those words.  And I appreciate your support of the resolution sir.

Shooting Illustrated.

On average, with the shorter barrel there was a 12-percent reduction in velocity (100 fps). The smallest difference—26 fps—was recorded with the Buffalo Bore 110-grain Barnes TAC-XP load. The most-extreme variation—200 fps—was recorded with another Buffalo Bore load, the +P Outdoors-man, which utilizes a 158-grain, hard-cast, Keith-style bullet. More important than the velocity loss was how the slower velocities affected terminal performance. This is because when it comes to stopping bad guys, penetration and expansion are what matter.

The average penetration depth for the nine loads fired from both barrel lengths was 14.28 inches. The average penetration variation between barrel lengths was only 0.80 inch. For all practical purposes, that’s irrelevant; individual loads can vary more than that from shot to shot. However, comprising that average were a few extremes worth mentioning.

The 140-grain Hornady XTP load penetrated 2.25 inches deeper from the longer barrel simply because of its 99-fps faster impact velocity. With the 110-grain Hornady Critical Defense load, an 85 fps decrease in velocity caused the bullet to penetrate 1.75 inches less. However, with the 125-grain Golden Saber +P load, the longer barrel delivered 3 inches less penetration because the bullet deformed with a larger frontal diameter at the only slightly higher (57 fps) impact velocity. It should be noted that the hard-cast Outdoorsman load passed through all 28 inches of gelatin, regardless whether it was fired from the 1.9- or 4-inch barrel.

With regard to expansion, there was minimal difference. The average variation in expansion between rounds fired from a 1.9- and a 4-inch barrel was a mere .04 inch. The lone exception was the Winchester Silvertip bullet. Out of the 1.9-inch barrel, it expanded with a frontal diameter of .66 inch, but out of the 4-inch barrel it had a recovered frontal diameter of only .4 inch. The higher impact velocity (132 fps) overly stressed this bullet and caused it to shed 46 percent of its original weight. Out of the shorter barrel, the bullet retained 99 percent of its weight.

There was one load that stood head and shoulders above all others. The Speer 135-grain Gold Dot Short Barrel load only varied .5 inch in penetration depth and .03 inch in expansion, even though there was an 83-fps difference in impact velocity. Obviously, this load is aptly named; Speer purposely engineered it to deliver optimum performance from short barrels. Not only did it perform near identically from both barrel lengths, it delivered what many consider optimum terminal performance from a defensive handgun. Any load that will penetrate in excess of 12 inches and expand to 1.5 or more times its original diameter is noteworthy.

First of all, I think this is good news for ankle-carry small frame and short-barrel revolvers.  There just isn’t much of a loss in performance.

Second, it looks like Speer has done a very good job with .38 Spl. ammunition, calling it the “Short Barrel Load.”

This is a remarkable video.

They’ve bought into the notion of right wing violence.  No such thing is going to happen in Richmond.  Any violence will be at the hands of Antifa, and drama will be courtesy of crisis actors hired by Soros and Bloomberg.

They’re wasting their time on the wrong people.

At this hour, there is a USAF U-28A aircraft circling the Capitol.

Make of it what you will.  I know what I think.