Articles by Herschel Smith

As readers know, I modified a S&W E-Series Performance Center 1911 by installing a 22# spring purchased from Wolff Gunsprings in lieu of the 18# spring that came with the gun.

Since then, it has performed flawlessly with 450 SMC, albeit a little stiff on the recoil.    Recall that the 450 SMC round comes with a rifle primer rather than a pistol primer, leaving more room for powder.  With stippled wooden grips I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to shoot more than three or four dozen rounds before getting some hand sting.  I would need to install different grips if I intended to shoot 450 SMC all day at the range.

But the question came up about this round whether the higher spring constant affected the gun’s ability to properly cycle .45 ACP (i.e., does the weaker ammunition incompletely cycle the slide and cause a FTF/FTE)?

I can confidently say after having shot several brands of .45 ACP with the stiffer 22# spring that I’ve had no malfunctions at all.  To me this is good news since I won’t have to change the spring for my choice of ammunition.

This video is a little dated, but informative.

A pastor named James Pence.

As a nation we have seemed to somehow elevated the Second Amendment to the status of one of the Ten Commandments as if God positively said, “Thou shalt bear arms.” Of course the irony is there is the commandment that forbids murder, and nowhere in Holy Scriptures do we see the necessity of having weapons.

[ … ]

The times call for bold action once again in the face of the national epidemic of gun violence by restricting a class of weapons to only the military and our law enforcement personnel. I’m tired of seeing “Thou shalt not kill” being violated in mass killings, but, most of all, I’m tired of lowering the flag to half staff every two weeks when it could be flying high and proud.

You can read the rest for yourself.  The problems with this commentary are manifold and too numerous to address in full, but we’ll make a few observations.

As I’ve pointed out before, when Jesus commanded His disciples to go find swords, he wasn’t the Bohemian, peacenik, flowerchild hippie He’s made out to be by contemporary preachers of false theology.  No, He was quite literally commanding His disciples to go procure weapons in direct violation of the law at the time.  He was commanding disobedience to the law.

… for some evidence, see Digest 48.6.1: collecting weapons ‘beyond those customary for hunting or for a journey by land or sea’ is forbidden; 48.6.3.1 forbids a man ‘of full age’ appearing in public with a weapon (telum) (references and translation are from Mommsen 1985). See also Mommsen 1899: 564 n. 2; 657-58 n. 1; and Linderski 2007: 102-103 (though he cites only Mommsen). Other laws from the same context of the Digest sometimes cited in this regard are not as worthwhile for my purposes because they seem to be forbidding the possession of weapons with criminal intent. But for the outright forbidding of being armed while in public in Rome, see Cicero’s letter to his brother relating an incident in Rome in which a man, who is apparently falsely accused of plotting an assassination, is nonetheless arrested merely for having confessed to having been armed with a dagger while in the city: To Atticus, Letter 44 (II.24). See also Cicero, Philippics 5.6 (§17). Finally we may cite a letter that Synesius of Cyrene wrote to his brother, probably sometime around the year 400 ce. The brother had apparently questioned the legality of Synesius having his household produce weapons to defend themselves against marauding bands. Synesius points out that there are no Roman legions anywhere near for protection, but he seems reluctantly to admit that he is engaged in an illegal act (Letter 107; for English trans., see Fitzgerald 1926).

It was against the law for His disciples to own and bear a sword, especially in a populated area like that, and no amount of Scripture twisting can change that.  Jesus commanded them to be lawbreakers by going about armed.

Next, the preacher should be asked if he would allow his wife to be raped and his children to be murdered by home invaders, or if he would attempt to stop it.  The police can’t get there in time, and besides, you can’t use a phone when you’re tied up awaiting torture.  So the scenario we may pose is this: four home invaders have just busted into his home intent on raping his wife and dousing him with gasoline before setting him on fire.  He needs a semiautomatic weapon to handle the four invaders.  What does he do, and if he doesn’t make plans ahead of time to defend home and hearth, is he any better than a child molester or wife beater?

We’ve asked these questions before, Mr. Pence.  No gun controller or pacifist Christian has ever responded.  May we hear yours?  Oh, and by the way, what do you think causes all of that violence?  Where does it come from?  To answer this question, turn to the first few chapters of Genesis like your seminary professors told you to do.  Do you really believe that more controls will make the federal headship of Adam go away?

David Codrea.

“They all started out as ‘weapons war,’ you lying dumb@$$!” I’d love to hear somebody within microphone range yell back. Having “every other terrible implement of the soldier” is what the Founders intended “the people” to keep and bear. Even the rigged Miller opinion admitted the plan was for their arms to have “some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia [or] that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense.”

I’ve pointed out before ” …the next time some loud mouth tells you that “civilians” should not have “weapons of war designed only to kill others,” inform them that every soldier or Marine is first and foremost a civilian (in that he came from our ranks and will return to our ranks), and that every weapon that has ever been designed, or improvised, by an insurgency or uniformed army, is a weapon of war.  There are no exceptions, from sticks to rocks, from shotguns to rifles, from revolvers to pistols, from bolt action long guns to machine guns.”

Literally.  The Marine Corps used shotguns to clear rooms in Now Zad, Afghanistan.  Carlos Hathcock used a Winchester model 70, as did the Marine Corps in Desert Storm.  Revolvers were in use in WWI, perhaps during parts of WWII (I truly wish I could find a picture of use of revolvers in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan – that would make my day, and I and readers could celebrate an astounding victory!).  The Marine Corps infantry officer course in Quantico still teaches the use of improvised weapons in the bush, including rocks and sticks in hand-to-hand fights.  I have a 9mm pistol, but John Moses Browning’s 1911 is still my favorite gun to shoot, as it is with Clint Smith.

Ridiculous news from a reader.

A Port Washington man hoarded more than two dozen guns and assault rifles — including about a dozen untraceable “ghost guns” — and thousands of rounds of ammunition in his home, Nassau County police said Saturday, the day after his arraignment on weapons possession charges.

Nassau County police, State Police and the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested John Dejana, 47, following a search warrant Thursday at his home on Slocum Avenue, authorities said.

Dejana, who had no licenses for any of the weapons, was charged with first-degree criminal possession of a weapon, police said. He was arraigned Friday in First District Court in Hempstead, where bail was set at $200,000 bond or $100,000 cash. He could face up to 25 years in prison if convicted, Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas said.

“We took these weapons … out of the home of someone who should not possess those weapons,” Singas said. “This defendant possessed an arsenal of firepower. This is deeply disturbing this firepower was in a home in Port Washington in our county.”

The FBI investigation and Nassau intelligence officers recovered 27 weapons including 12 ghost guns, five assault rifles and 10 other long guns and handguns, Nassau County First Deputy Police Commissioner Kevin Smith said.

Ghost guns are classified as untraceable guns without serial numbers, or those that may be untraceable. Some guns are assembled through kits or 3D printers and may not be detectable through metal detectors, Smith said.

“I can’t tell you what he may have planned for all these weapons,” Smith said.

Authorities unveiled the haul of weapons and 3,000 rounds ammunition Saturday in Mineola to conclude “Operation Ghost Gun.”

Dejana, who has no prior criminal record, worked as a contractor and lived in the home with his wife, four daughters and two dogs. Detectives recovered an unloaded handgun with a plastic magazine and a pink Louis Vuitton holster in his 12-year-old daughter’s nightstand, police said.

Well, maybe he just liked guns.  Maybe he was a collector and didn’t have the money to purchase NFA machine guns like he was rich.  Maybe he was planning to shoot competitively.  I don’t know his plans either, and it’s none of my business.

Contractor.  I assume a hard working man.  No criminal record.  Didn’t bother anybody.

Um … they do realize that the world’s best machinists, fabricators, builders, chemists, metallurgists and engineers live in America, right?

You can’t stop the signal.

PJM.

So it turns out that the acting director of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, William Perry Pendley, has denied the Left’s “climate change” mythology, and opposes jihad violence and illegal immigration. CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski is out for blood, trying to get Pendley for heresy, that is, for his dissent from Leftist orthodoxy.

Leftists want you and your family to suffer – to terraform the nation, to see violence and to redistribute your wealth through whatever means they can concoct (e.g., anthropogenic global warming).

The Holy Writ says that “The good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children.”

The Washington Times.

The federal government collected fewer than 1,000 bump stocks during the run-up to a new ban in March, despite estimates that hundreds of thousands of the devices that mimic machine gun fire are in circulation, according to federal data provided to The Washington Times by the Justice Department.

As the nation marked the second anniversary Oct. 1 of the Las Vegas massacre, which prodded the Trump administration to ban bump stocks, the numbers offer a cautionary tale on the scope and resources needed to enforce any sort of gun buyback program.

Between the issuance of the final rule banning the devices in December 2018 and April 4, 2019, shortly after the prohibition took effect in late March, 582 bump stocks were “abandoned” to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to Justice Department records, and 98 bump stocks were kept as evidence.

The Times obtained the records through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The administration cited estimates that 280,000 to 520,000 bump-stock-type devices were in circulation when it published the final rule in December.

I’ve seen estimates as high as 550,000 in circulation, but we’ll take their number of 520,000.  That computes to 0.1119%.

What do you think will happen when the FedGov demands that citizens turn over $1000 rifles which have been bought with the intent of bequeathing to their children for personal defense?

Via David Codrea, who posted this some time ago, this goes along nicely with our previous post. I have immense respect for the shop fellows who confronted the thugs. The cops are just swine to me.

WiscoDave sends this.

A Greenville County deputy who shot a Simpsonville homeowner through his front-door window has been cleared of criminal wrongdoing.

The State Law Enforcement Division investigated the shooting and submitted findings to the state Attorney General’s Office, which recommended that no criminal charges be filed against Deputy Kevin Azzara.

“It is my legal opinion that the officer used lawful force under the circumstances. As such, we are not recommending initiation of criminal charges against the officer,” Jerrod Fussnecker, an assistant attorney general, wrote in a disposition letter to SLED that was obtained by The Greenville News.

The man, Dick Tench, plans to file a lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Office, his lawyer told The News on Wednesday.

“He wants to seek justice and if it was up to Dick, this officer would no longer be on the force,” Ashmore said Wednesday. “Dick wants to tell his story and wants his story to get out, and one day that will happen in a jury trial setting.”

Yea, we talked about this, and we all knew nothing would come of it.  If it were up to me, this officer would be in prison awaiting charges on assault with a deadly weapon, intent to inflict bodily injury, trespassing, and attempted manslaughter.

But as you know, there are two sets of rules: one for us, and one for “the only ones.”  And they wonder why everyone hates them.