Articles by Herschel Smith

This has happened to me more times than I care to count (or tell you about).  It’s frustrating too.  You’d think I’d learn after a while.

News from Maine.

Leaders of the Maine Legislature voted against allowing seven different gun-related bills to be introduced in the next legislative session.

The bills, sponsored by number of different lawmakers, would have included improving public school security and creating a new child endangerment crime for those who fail to lock up stored firearms.

Gun-control advocates were critical of leadership’s votes, some of which broke along party lines.

[ … ]

The Legislature’s 10-member Legislative Council reviewed 399 proposed bills on Wednesday and voted to exclude all but 133 of them – including the gun-related measures – from the session that begins in January. The council, which comprises the minority and majority leadership in both House and Senate, as well as the speaker of the House and the Senate president, includes six Democrats and four Republicans.

[ … ]

A bill that would have banned the distribution of assault weapons without proper authority was defeated on a 4-6 vote while another that would have required all gun owners to buy liability insurance for their weapons was defeated unanimously.

Other bills that were rejected sought to redefine machine guns and ban assault-style weapons outright. Also rejected was a Republican proposal that would allow retired law enforcement officers who are cleared by the federal government to carry concealed firearms on school grounds.

It’s good to see the leftists get the comeuppance from time to time.  But don’t get cocky.  It’s only defeated for now.  The statists never sleep in their designs for total control over your life.

Via this smart post, I saw a researcher at Sandia National Laboratory had been working in the past on smart guns.  In the past he has observed the following concerning smart guns.

There are many items that the models could not demonstrate to the officers. A few of these are the technology’s cost, reliability, and adversarial strengths. Items like these will remain a concern for officers until a fieldable prototype is thoroughly tested.

Yea, I’ll bet.  To this, I’ll say the following as I’ve said before.

Perform a fault tree analysis of smart guns.  Use highly respected guidance like the NRC fault tree handbook.

Assess the reliability of one of my semi-automatic handguns as the first state point, and then add smart gun technology to it, and assess it again.  Compare the state points.  Then do that again with a revolver.  Be honest.  Assign a failure probability of greater than zero (0) to the smart technology, because you know that each additional electronic and mechanical component has a failure probability of greater than zero.

Get a PE to seal the work to demonstrate thorough and independent review.  If you can prove that so-called “smart guns” are as reliable as my guns, I’ll pour ketchup on my hard hat, eat it, and post video for everyone to see.  If you lose, you buy me the gun of my choice.  No one will take the challenge because you will lose that challenge.  I’ll win.  Case closed.  End of discussion.

Care to take the challenge, Mr. Weiss?

Via this piece, I was sent to this piece.

When John Bolton took over for McMaster in April 2018 and began appointing his own defense and foreign policy team, Mattis stopped receiving transcripts of Trump’s calls with foreign leaders, the kinds of sensitive conversations that are now at the center of the House’s impeachment inquiry.

Mattis’ patience began to wear especially thin in the spring of 2018 when Trump failed to consult with him on a host of big policy moves, from ordering the creation of a military Space Force to deploying troops to the U.S.-Mexican border, Snodgrass writes.

The surprise presidential decisions had grown for months, after beginning in earnest with a tweet from Trump in the summer of 2017 banning transgender troops from the military.

“Trump’s tweets created chaos in the Pentagon,” writes Snodgrass, who was detailed to work for Mattis early in his tenure. The damage from the transgender pronouncement “was a terrific example of how an ill-informed, and ill-considered, tweet from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue could result in a strategic defeat.”

[ … ]

Mattis also chafed at the president’s push for the Pentagon to deploy active-duty troops to the border to help stem the flow of illegal immigrants, a move the secretary considered an abuse of the military. “Mattis was now caught in his own graveyard spiral, expressing public support for a policy he didn’t agree with, bending his personal and professional beliefs to support the president,” the book says.

What in the name of all that is decent and sensible would make someone think it’s appropriate to consult a general for policy decisions or to care what the military thought of presidential orders?  Does the civilian not still command the military in this country?

Why on earth would Mattis expect to receive transcripts of the president’s phone calls with foreign leaders?  What world do I live in?

So did Mattis support transgender troops being in the military?  This book makes it sound like he did.

Finally, the one, single, solitary duty of the armed forces under the constitution is to prevent and respond to invasion.  And Mattis apparently rejected that mission in favor of foreign entanglements.  Good Lord.

And good riddance.

Maine Examiner.

A bill proposed by Rep. Victoria Doudera (D – Camden) would redefine what a “machine gun” is under state law. The Maine Legislature has attempted, without success, to pass more than a dozen laws that would impact Maine gun owners since the new Democrat majority was ushered in alongside Governor Janet Mills.

Rep. Doudera’s bill is one of a new group of proposals that will be considered by the Legislative Council on October 23. It is currently labeled LR 2829 “An Act To Amend the Definition of the Term “Machine Gun”” on the website of the Maine Revisor of Statutes.

Under current criminal code, unlawful possession of a “machine gun” is considered a substantive offense and subject to seizure and confiscation.

Maine Revised Statutes Title 17-A: Part 2, Chapter 43
§1053. Confiscation and seizure of machine gun

“Any machine gun possessed in violation of section 1051 is declared to be contraband and is subject to forfeiture to the State. Any law enforcement officer shall have the power to seize the same with due process.”

The definition of a “machine gun” subject to confiscation and seizure under state law is as follows:

Maine Revised Statutes Title 17-A: Part 2, Chapter 43
§1051. Possession of machine gun

“A weapon of any description, by whatever name known, loaded or unloaded, which is capable of discharging a number of projectiles in rapid succession by one manual or mechanical action on the trigger or firing mechanism.”

By changing the definition of a “machine gun” to encompass more of the firearms owned by Mainers, Rep. Doudera’s proposal could also make those newly defined “machine guns” subject to confiscation and seizure, turning owners of those firearms into criminals under the new law.

Rep. Doudera’s proposal is subject to approval by a majority of the Legislature’s Legislative Council at their meeting on October 23. The council is comprised of the members of House and Senate leadership from both parties, with six Democrats and four Republicans. Senate President Troy Jackson Chairs the council, with Speaker Sara Gideon serving as Vice Chair.

A contact in Maine sends this in response.

Yup;

Our “dear” Governor and the rest of the almost all, Dem contingency up here
will be spending a good piece of this next year unraveling all of the good
that was signed in by Lepage.

They intend to “do something” about AR’s/AK’s, eliminate the private sale
and “Constitutional Carry”.

All this as Maine was just determined to be the safest state in the Union
with New Hampshire and Vermont in very close contention for the same.

…another solution in search of a problem.

Of course it doesn’t matter that a semi-automatic firearm isn’t a machine gun.  Lying is just another tactic used by the left.  And by the way, after banning machine guns, what did you thing was next?  You didn’t believe the controllers would ever be happy without your total disarmament, did you?

In 6.5 Creedmoor.

Len Savage sends this.  It means that the ATF has so many paid informants that they have to have federal forms for them.  This bit of twisted sickness is also interesting.  The ATF had an informant passing on Savage’s litigation strategy to the FedGov.  It seems that very few can be trusted.  Keep that in mind.

But beware, if you’re a traitor.  Remember the case of Mike Detty.

Although Detty never solicited a dime, he was promised hefty rewards, which, of course, were never paid. This particular case took many a turn. The final twist being when Detty’s good intentions, his actions at his own peril just because it was the right thing to do, were rewarded with betrayal by the very agency on whose behalf he had risked so much.

[ … ]

Loyalty, it turned out, was not a two-way street between the Department of Justice and a public-spirited citizen who had volunteered, and worked for years at personal risk, to do the right thing.

“I learned that the ATF’s public information officer in Phoenix gave my name and contact information to a New York Times reporter who was inspired to write an article after Attorney General Eric Holder’s speech of Feb. 2, 2009, in which he detailed that Mexicans were being killed with American guns and that he and President Obama would like to see the Assault Weapons Ban reinstated,” Detty said. “If it wasn’t bad enough that Department of Justice employees were exposing me as an informant, now an ATF agent was doing the same thing.”

To keep the facts straight, from early on Detty had kept a private journal. Government minions learned of it. They apparently feared it could be a source of embarrassment or worse—in passing it detailed several official misadventures.

From that point on, Detty was cast into a limbo somewhere between persona non grata and outright threat. His personal e-files were hacked and redacted by persons unknown, but of course there were backups. Detty does not make this observation. But it begs: If a former intelligence asset now has the potential to be a liability or embarrassment, how better to solve the problem than to let the cartels he was working against know who he is and let nature take its course?

[ … ]

“With American guns being used in ruthless savagery across the border, a push could be made for a new assault weapons ban here in the United States. There is no other explanation why guns would be continually allowed to cross the border after the purchasers, their cartels and ports of entry had already been identified.”

They aren’t playing by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules.

Examiner.

The majority of Americans believe that we are two-thirds of the way to being on the edge of civil war. That to me is a very pessimistic place,” said Mo Elleithee, the executive director of Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service.

And worse, he said in announcing the results of the Institute’s Battleground Poll civility survey, the political division is likely to make the upcoming 2020 presidential race the nastiest in modern history.

The politics is just a prelude.  7 in 10 believe this because it’s true.  That’s not me saying the U.S. is on the verge of civil war, that’s a poll.  I’m just passing it on.

Everything the ruling elite could possibly do to bring this about is being done.

You can be sure of one thing, though.  There will be nothing “civil” about war in America.

News from New York.

The head of the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association said the sale of ghost guns is a growing problem.

“These ’80 percent’ guns are providing a way for prohibited people to buy a firearm,” Tom King of the NYSRPA said, referring to people who don’t have a gun permit or are otherwise prohibited from possessing a gun.

He said self-assembled guns provide a way for competition shooters to make a custom-fitted firearm. Such weapons should have serial numbers and be registered — and any new legislation should consider such a provision, he said. But it appears increasingly, King said, people trying to evade the law are the ones buying and selling self-assembled weapons.

“It appears what was meant to be something for competitive shooters and serious shooters to build their own unique firearm may be turning into a criminal enterprise,” King said.

I don’t see Tom King as a quisling or coward.  I think he is a gun controller, an enemy of liberty, set out to do everything in his power to destroy recognition of God-given rights.  Sometimes it comes in the obvious form like it does above, sometimes it’s more discrete.

Fellow gun owners I submit this to you for your consideration. We will never convert the 22% rabid anti-gunners, we don’t have to convert the 32% avid pro gunners but we must convert a sizable portion of the 46% of those somewhere in between if we want to retain our 2nd Amendment Rights long term. These are the soccer moms, the guys who say I’ve never shot a gun but would like to try it and the people worried about their safety. How do we do that? Not by standing on stage screaming obscenities at Cuomo and certainly at large rallies where people stand on stage, pound their chest and tell the attendees to prepare for war. That frightens the very people we want to attract to our side, the people who will insure (sic) 2nd Amendment Rights for our grandchildren.

Whether it’s working to increase regulation, or make gun owners and their protests toothless, either way, his actions are those of an avowed enemy of God’s laws.  And take careful note, Tom King is a current member of the NRA board of directors.

Also see Tooling an 80% Lower Receiver.

Judicial Watch.

Judicial Watch today released new Clinton emails on the Benghazi controversy that had been covered up for years and would have exposed Hillary Clinton’s email account if they had been released when the State Department first uncovered them in 2014. The long withheld email, clearly responsive to Judicial Watch’s lawsuit seeking records concerning “talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack,” contains Clinton’s private email address and a conversation about the YouTube video that sparked the Benghazi talking points scandal (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)). This Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit led directly to the disclosure of the Clinton email system in 2015.

The Clinton email cover-up led to court-ordered discovery into three specific areas: whether Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server was intended to stymie FOIA; whether the State Department’s intent to settle this case in late 2014 and early 2015 amounted to bad faith; and whether the State Department has adequately searched for records responsive to Judicial Watch’s request. The court also authorized discovery into whether the Benghazi controversy motivated the cover-up of Clinton’s email.  (The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”)

Personal coverup at the expense of dead people in Benghazi, while support was denied to the living when it was available.  What pigs.  What swine.