Articles by Herschel Smith

Via David Codrea, this bit of non-news from Virginia.

RICHMOND — The Northam administration threw its weight Thursday behind the eight proposals it will back on gun control this legislative session, including a ban on assault weapons defined as any semiautomatic rifle or pistol with a magazine that holds more than 10 rounds.

The Northam-backed bill would go into effect in July, but would allow people who already own an assault weapon to obtain a permit from the state for restricted use. Without a permit, the guns would have to be disposed of, surrendered or made inoperable by January 2021.

[ … ]

It is different from a bill filed by Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw, D-Fairfax, which does not include a “grandfather” provision for current owners of weapons deemed “assault weapons.” The lack of such a provision in Saslaw’s bill has raised concerns among some gun-rights backers about confiscation. Saslaw has said his bill will be amended in committee to “resolve some problems.”

[ … ]

The definition of an assault weapon, under this bill, also includes features like a folding or telescoping stock, and thumbhole stock, a second grip and barrel that can hold a silencer or extender. The bill also classifies a semiautomatic pistol that weighs more than 50 ounces unloaded as an assault weapon.

Uh huh.  “Resolve some problems.”  I’ll bet.

So I lied.  We do learn something from this.  The ban includes all or most large frame semi-automatic pistols, perhaps leaving some compacts and sub-compacts alone as long as they are single stack or have limited capacity magazines.

Resolve some problems.  Something tells me there will be massive non-compliance with this, so the next question on all of our minds is what happens next?  What will the 2A sanctuary counties do?  See, this was never going to be door-to-door confiscations.  It was always going to be about traffic stops, red flag visits in the middle of the night based on social media entries, etc., etc.  Will gun owners support each other or let the state pick them off one-by-one?

The next steps are sure to come.  So get on with it.

News from PRCa.

A majority of Californians, including gun owners, support an “amnesty” program where high-capacity firearm magazine owners can turn them in, “no questions asked.”

More than 62 percent of Californians surveyed said that they favor such a program, which 51 percent of gun owners also said they supported.

The results, published in JAMA Network Open, come from the Violence Prevention Research Program at University of California, Davis. Researchers interpreted data from an online survey of 2,558 California adults that was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs.

Hmm … an “online survey.”  So the authors of the survey and the article want you to believe that the gun owners of California who own standard capacity magazines don’t want them, and don’t really know what to do with those plastic boxes they have in their closet?  They want to “turn them in” to someone in authority.

They don’t know how to use a hacksaw and cut them into pieces.  They don’t know how to start fires and burn them up, but they don’t want those things at all so they need an amnesty to turn them in.

Right …

It’s not just gangs.  It’s lone attackers as well in Chicago.

A 5-year-old boy was taken to the hospital Wednesday after a coyote bit him several times outside a nature museum in Lincoln Park, CBS Chicago reports. Police said the boy was near the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum when a coyote bit him “multiple times” around 4 p.m.

A Fire Department spokesman said the boy was bitten on the head and was taken to Lurie Children’s Hospital to be treated. His condition was stable, according to police.

After the attack, the coyote took off running north. CBS Chicago reported the coyote was still on the loose Wednesday night. Police drove squad cars along the running paths in the park of Lincoln Park with their spotlights shining.

[ … ]

In recent days, several coyotes have been spotted walking the streets of Chicago. While attacks on people are extremely rare, dogs have been targets.

Yes.  That’s right.  Extremely rare, just like attacks from Mountain Lions and Bears.  All of them.  Extremely rare.  Just like attacks from feral gang members.

Why would you ever carry means of self defense when attacks are so rare and the cops are there to protect and defend you, being heroes of the community and all that, responding within seconds to any threat?

Isn’t that what the controllers in Chicago tell you?

Ken Hackathorn appears to like it a lot.  The thing I really appreciate about this video though is Ken explaining proper revolver technique and procedure.

I’ll tell you what.  If you’re a grown-ass man and don’t understand the value of burning the undergrowth and dead fall, if you don’t know what a prescribed burn is (or controlled burn, or managed burn), you need to turn in your manhood card.  You’ve apparently never been in the woods backpacking and collecting dead fall for a fire and wondered how this all keeps from going up in a gigantic conflagration.  I’ve driven through controlled burns and hiked through them as well.

Well, unless you burn it, it doesn’t.  But if you’re a Hollywood or globalist type, you make up some bullshit story about carbon footprint or anthropogenic global warming in order to get rich.  If you’re a gullible sucker like most college students today, lacking any religious beliefs, you believe that story in order to give value to your miserable life.

Oh, and then there’s that little thing of forest fire jihad.

News from North Carolina.

LINCOLN COUNTY, N.C. — Officials with the Lincoln County Board of Commissioners voted to declare the county a “Second Amendment Sanctuary,” WBTV reports.

The vote happened Monday and a resolution says:

“The Lincoln County Board of Commissioners hereby expresses its intent to uphold the Second Amendment rights of the citizens of Lincoln County and that public funds, resources, employees, buildings or offices not be used to restrict Second Amendment rights or to aid or assist in the enforcement of the unnecessary and unconstitutional restriction of the rights under the Second Amendment of the citizens of Lincoln County to keep and bear arms.”

The resolution states that officials voted over concerns that legislation could be passed that infringes on “the rights of the citizens of Lincoln County to keep and bear arms or which may unduly restrict their right to the same,” and that “the criminal misuse of firearms is not a reason to infringe the rights of law-abiding citizens of Lincoln County.”

Open letter to the commissioners of Lincoln County

Dear commissioners,

I applaud your efforts to protect our God-given rights to keep and bear arms.  No doubt, what is happening in Virginia will come further South as nanny-state controller and collectivist Michael Bloomberg pours his ill-gotten money into our state just like he did in Virginia.  They want Virginia to be the model for gun control.  They have said so.

I also applaud your attention to detail – you have struck while it’s appropriate, not waiting for the efforts of Raleigh to infringe upon our God-given rights to make it clear that you won’t participate.

However, as I have warned my readers in Virginia, this is only the beginning.  If you will, it’s the first volley.  There is much more to come, and you must show your resolve in the coming days, weeks, months and years.  The controllers don’t rest, and neither can you.  To them, this is the long war.  Your resolve will require the same level of commitment.

This resolution will require commitment and absolute devotion to your duty, and even more.  Law enforcement officials will need to be fisked to see exactly where they stand.  The Sheriff, township LEOs, and city police, must be on board.  Regulations will have to be passed, or rejected, based on your commitment to the 2A.

It may come down to even more.  The resolution you passed means, as best as I understand it, that you will not allow county resources to be used to infringe on the RKBA.  This is well and good, but it won’t be enough if what is happening in Virginia is our tutor.

County LEOs must be willing to prevent others from infringing upon those same rights, and that might mean meeting them at the roadways and interdicting their efforts.  It might mean preventative tasks rather than merely sitting on the sideline and refusing to participate.  If you won’t help them, they may take on the task without your help.

Furthermore, I would have liked to see a stronger statement, more like what we are seeing in Virginia.  We know their game, and while state authorities might be claiming to honor our God-given rights by allowing bolt action rifles and three-round magazines for deer hunting, we all know that the second amendment isn’t about deer hunting with bolt action rifles or turkey hunting with 12 gauge shotguns.  It’s about much, much more than that.

The resolutions in Virginia make it utterly clear that they know the governor of Virginia is out to confiscate and/or register modern sporting rifles, standard capacity magazines, handguns of all kinds, and is pressing a host of other infringements (such as shutdown of shooting ranges and prohibitions on shooting in the bush or where regulations don’t cover).

You see, their designs are comprehensive, far-reaching and all-inclusive.  The very nature of the controller is to control everyone and everything.  They cannot not do that.  “Can a leopard change it spots?”  So your resolve must be as absolute as is theirs, and as is the governor of our very own state, who is as much of a controller as the governor of Virginia.

Your warnings to the controllers cannot be empty warnings.  Otherwise, they are toothless and meaningless, and you may as well have never acted to begin with.

Are you up to the task?

Stars and Stripes.

The U.S. is temporarily halting a program under which bomb-sniffing dogs were sent to countries in the Middle East after a report released Friday found at least five more of the specially trained dogs had died in Jordan and Egypt following poor care, mistreatment or negligence.

One of the dogs in Jordan died after overheating in June, and another was poisoned by insecticide sprayed near its kennel in September, the report by the State Department’s Inspector General said.

Three of 10 dogs the U.S. has provided to Egypt in the past year have also died — one from lung cancer, one from a ruptured gall bladder and one from heat stroke, the report said.

The announcement that the program is being stopped comes months after American inspectors found that at least 12 of the U.S.-trained canines sent to Jordan under an antiterrorism program had died from medical problems. Others were overworked, unhealthy and forced to live in kennels with “barely existent” sanitation, the officials said in an evaluation released in September.

At the time, the IG called for the U.S. to stop sending dogs to Jordan until a plan could be put in place to ensure the animals’ health and welfare, but State Department officials refused to do so. The department’s top security and counterterrorism officials said at the time their divisions were taking steps to improve monitoring of the health and training of dogs provided to foreign partner countries.

But the IG learned through a hotline complaint after the original report was published that two additional dogs had died in Jordan of “non-natural,” preventable causes.

“The death of two canines from non-natural causes — namely, hyperthermia and poisoning — since June 2019 raises serious questions about the Department’s contention that it has taken adequate steps to protect their health and safety,” said the report released Friday.

A third dog in Jordan was infected with leishmaniasis, a preventable disease spread by sand flies, officials told the IG in October. Last year, a 3-year-old Belgian Malinois provided to Jordan had to be euthanized after being infected by the same disease.

Jordan is the main recipient of U.S.-trained bomb-sniffing dogs but several other countries have also received canines under the program, which has been running for some 20 years.

Two of the deaths in Egypt were not previously disclosed to the IG, the new report said. Egypt had denied U.S. officials permission to visit the kennels or the airport where the animals would work, and would not allow U.S. mentors to accompany the dogs to Egypt for in-country training.

[ … ]

In its earlier evaluation, the IG said the department could not provide detailed information about programs in nine other countries which had a total of between 75 and 100 dogs as of last September.

In August, the State Department repossessed 10 dogs from Morocco because they were not being used for their intended purpose, the IG said.

Oh.  Okay.  It all makes sense now.  The State Department is responsible for this grotesque program.

Now see, this really pisses me off.  We’ve bred wolves (and then dogs) for millennia to be our under-foot partners and companions, always with us, faithful and loyal to us to the end.  This kind of treatment in return is an abomination.  End the program … NOW!  Totally and completely, no second chances, no modifications, no alterations.  End the program.  That’s the only thing I’ll accept.

A good man has regard for the life of his beast, the evil man doesn’t.  The State Department is evil for doing this, among many other reasons.  The article has pictures of starving dogs that I can’t bring myself to embed.

So the U.S., under the flag of foreign relations, spends a ton of money training dogs to detect explosives, sends them overseas to be used, and instead of taking care of them, they are abused by their handlers if used at all for their intended purpose.  And after finding that out, the State Department refused to stop the program.

Why does the State Department exist?  Rex Tillerson made this major mistake, among many moderate and smaller ones.  When he fired an entire floor of employees from the State Department, he should have emptied the building and permanently shuttered it.  It’s good for nothing at all.

So the intent is to detect explosives?  The Arabic culture disrespects dogs?  Fine.  Let those countries explode to hell and back.  I don’t care.

My own Marine who did a tour in Fallujah in 2007 came home disgusted and repulsed by the obscene and revolting treatment of dogs in middle eastern culture.  If you look at dogs the way they do, I look at you the way I look at the middle eastern culture.

There.  Is that clear enough for you?  On both accounts?

John Lovell has an interesting video up on AR-15 zero.

If you want more, and a somewhat different approach, Shawn Ryan has a video up of his 36 yard zero and why he does it that way.

Recoil.

On the drop-down menu, select FMI (for Form 1 manufactured), and you’re on your way. You’ll also have to describe the length and caliber of the can you’re going to make. Tip: Some people get wrapped around the axle when it comes to fingerprints. There’s absolutely no reason to make an appointment and pay a third party to fingerprint you, when you’re perfectly capable of smearing ink on your own digits. Order a fingerprint kit from Amazon, and do it yourself in the comfort of your own home.

Once your Form 1 has been approved, which usually takes around three weeks, you can then buy a tube, spacers, baffles, and endcaps from the many online vendors that exist on the fringes of the interwebs. Due to the nature of NFA law, these will be described in rather coy terms, and you may wind up purchasing “barrel shrouds,” “solvent traps,” “oil filter kits,” or “storage cups,” all of which are largely useless for their advertised purpose, but give the vendors a fig leaf of deniability. Yes, it’s all a bunch of bullsh*t, but it’s the system we’re stuck with.

Once your components arrive, you can then set to work engraving the tube to meet the legal requirements of the National Firearms Act (see RECOIL Issue 44). You could go get this done on a laser engraver and make it look all professional-like, or you could just bust out the Dremel. We did the latter, as it’s going to be wrapped in a suppressor cover anyway. With your tube engraved, you can then drill holes in the baffles and endcap, screw everything together, and head to the range with your shiny new can. Enjoy!

I had never really paid this much attention and didn’t know that the constituent parts were available like that.  I’m sure that without a lot of effort I couldn’t build a suppressor with the acoustical engineering effectiveness that the large corporations and research organizations put into it.

Then again, rarely does anyone use a suppressor without ear pro anyway, so a little bit more protection is good, albeit not perfect.

If any reader has experience with this, please drop comments below and give us some pointers.

NC Scout has his most recent podcast up, and I had intended to link this earlier.  It’s well worth the 40 minutes.  I like his style – humble and unassuming.