Articles by Herschel Smith

Wirecutter has this video up on barrel twist rate.  Go to his place to see it.

I don’t think the author of the video understands the basic concept and what’s going on here.  This is a screen shot of the video I linked on barrel twist rate.

Bullet tractability is the degree to which the nose of the bullet follows the trajectory.  In the screen shot above, it doesn’t.  This can indeed happen if the bullet is overstabilized, something we concluded in our assessment of this.

In the video (screen shot above) it is explained that this doesn’t usually happen at closer distances, but rather towards the end of the flight path.  In the case of the 5.56mm flight path, we’re looking at around 500 yards effective distance.

The author of the video Wirecutter gave us is shooting at 100 yards.  Basically, I’m saying he has proven nothing at all.  He’s a decent shot, but he hasn’t tested what he thinks he has tested.

And by the way, the twist rate, if you’ll remember, of 1:7 was meant to stabilize the tracer round.  But most twist rates for common ammunition should be fine.  The testing conducted by the Army on both older and newer 5.56mm ammunition involved 1:8 accurized barrels.

Prior: AR-15 Ammunition And Barrel Twist Rates

Fox News:

National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre charged the organization’s ad agency more than $240,000 for expenses related to trips he took to Italy, Hungary, the Bahamas and other locales without providing adequate documentation, according to a letter from the ad agency given to the group’s board last week and described by people familiar with the matter.

Some of Mr. LaPierre’s expenses were charged to one of the ad firm’s credit cards, the people said, and overall costs included a 2014 stay at the Four Seasons hotel in Budapest and expenses related to trips to Palm Beach, Fla., and Reno, Nev. The ad firm, Ackerman McQueen Inc., was reimbursed over time by the gun-rights group, these people said.

[ … ]

Mr. Brewer said certain fundraising and travel expenses were routed through Ackerman McQueen for “confidentiality and security purposes,” but the practice has since been modified. Mr. LaPierre didn’t return messages left at the NRA.

[ … ]

The Journal previously reported that Mr. LaPierre received more than $200,000 in suits and other clothing paid for by a vendor—which people familiar with the matter now say was also Ackerman McQueen. NRA officials have said the spending was justified because of his numerous speaking and TV appearances.

The Ackerman McQueen letter was given to the NRA directors last week by then-NRA President Oliver North, who called for a crisis committee of the board to probe the travel costs and other allegations of financial mismanagement.

[ … ]

In a statement Thursday, NRA director Marion Hammer said the travel-expense allegations were “part of the failed coup attempt” and have been properly vetted by the board.

[ … ]

The trip to Italy, one person familiar with the matter said, was tied to a short 2015 documentary feature on the Italian gun maker Beretta posted on NRATV. Mr. LaPierre’s wife, Susan LaPierre, appears in the video talking to a Beretta family member.

Marion Hammer is a horrible person and whatever she says should be dismissed.  As for travel expenses, I actually don’t have a problem with the corporation paying for that.  Virtually no one can afford that kind of travel, and as long as it’s on corporate business, the corporation should pay for it (excepting, of course, for Wayne’s wife).  In my opinion, time spent on trying to understand every little detail of travel expenses, except insofar as it requires receipts for accounting and tax purposes, is time and effort wasted by the board or its surrogate.

But what I do have a problem with is $200,000 for clothing.  The failure of the NRA isn’t a failure to keep receipts – that’s just in the details of internal management, even if it needs correction.  The failure of the NRA is in a failure to represent the gun owners of America, in fact, in its active attempt to undermine the gun owners of America.  That goes for Marion Hammer and the rest of the BOD too.

I’ll tell you what.  I would agree to that salary with one business suit per year, and I’ll promise not to pathologically retreat, surrender, give up, and equivocate on everything that comes up.

And in the end, the NRA would be better off.  So would gun owners.

John Richardson:

We’ve long said that if you want to make sure you get pro-gun politicians elected to Congress and the various state houses, we have to start pushing candidates at the local level. It is the rare candidate that starts out running for office at the state or national level. For every Donald Trump, there are thousands and thousands of other politicians that started with the school board, town council, or even just a town or county appointed committee.

Everytown has just made endorsements for three candidates at the school board or city council level. The fact that they are pushing gun prohibitionists at this level says a number of things. First, they are actually using Bloomberg’s money to start building an actual grassroots. Second, they recognize that candidates start local and then move up from there. Third, it is an expansion of their efforts from the state level to the local level since they have no had success (so far) at the nation level.

Well, it depends upon whether you believe red flag confiscation laws are a local or a national success for the controllers.  In some sense they’re national, given that the NRA gave them cover and Trump reassured them it was the thing to do.

It may also be said that a true grass roots movement isn’t really about the people in charge so much as the people who put them there.  In other words, what’s really important is what the people think, not the politicians.

On the other hand, they are educating the future electorate, and in that they will be profoundly successful.  This is Horace Mann’s communist project bringing fruit.  I see Bloomberg and Mann in the same mold, just with Bloomberg being stupider.

In FOIA Response From The ATF: No Bumpstocks Used In Any Crime To Date, I conveyed an ATF response to a FOIA request.  This request was made on behalf of Len Savage, and Len sends me this initial letter making the request.

Obviously, they had trouble getting anything out of the ATF.  Len also sent some other email exchanges between him and the ATF which I will eventually post.

In the mean time, David Codrea had this to say.

Herschel has some thoughts. [More]

To reiterate, it’s not “us” creating “conspiracy theories”: Mr. Stamboulieh, Mr. Savage and I are simply repeating what the government is saying, and if that results in inferences and conclusions, they are the ones who can clear it all up — and won’t.

I received the Chisolm letter from the principals the other day along with the document that prompted this response. There’s more to say, which I will in a day or so when I finish some other stuff I’m working on first.

The main “spoiler” I’ll give away is that the government attorney is being cute here, and I don’t think the federal judiciary is going to appreciate that.

Stay tuned.

Okay, I’m a bit out of the loop on this and both Len and David know more than I do about what’s going on.  I’ll try to stay in better touch with both of them on this.

I accept David’s observation that the government is trying to be “cute.”  But I’ll throw in that they’re also being very careful.  I’ve worked with FedGov lawyers before, and they don’t like putting documents out containing material false information.  If any licensee of any kind sends information to FedGov that causes them to repeat it in such a manner that the FedGov owns it, e.g., it ends up in the federal register or other archived government documents, they get really pissed and come after you.

They don’t like material false information because for one, it’s illegal to communicate it (either to or on the part of FedGov), and two, it’s unethical.  If it can be demonstrated that the material false information was knowing and intentional, that can mean disbarment (for a lawyer) or even imprisonment.

I’m sure they’re being “cute.”  I am also sure they are being very, very, very careful.

Fox News:

“Do you think if those people had guns there would be anything but more chaos, more violence and more death?” Williams asked. “Let me ask you, New York City, you think if you have a gun you could stand up to the New York City Police Department, much less the state National Guard or the U.S. military?

“I think if the American people are armed to the teeth,” Watters responded.

“Get them more guns!” Wiliams said in disbelief.

I don’t watch television, so when something like this little debate happens I have to read about it or I don’t know it existed.

This is instructive, yes?  Juan is arguing that the citizens should be willing to accept the chaos and death that is occurring now in Venezuela – from APCs running over people, to starvation, to death and disease from overcrowded medical facilities, to heat stroke because of no electricity, to extreme poverty because of the corruption of socialism – just in order to prevent even more problems.

Or in other words, there is never any justification for stopping governmental abuse, governmental corruption, or death by government (which in the twentieth century alone totaled 170 million souls).  This is a remarkable defense, but you should always remember that this is the way progressives think.  They never have your best interest at heart – it’s always some perceived betterment of a social engineering construct as determined by the central planners, even if the central planners are murderers.

Now, one more time, let’s dispense with this mythos that an insurgency cannot tangle with a uniformed army.  Juan (as most people who offer up this objection) has an overblown view of what a uniformed army can accomplish.

There simply aren’t that many infantry battalions in the armed forces.  A full 80% of enlisted and commissioned people are logistics, intel, transport, maintenance, engineering, and administration.  Furthermore, we’ve seen what an insurgency can do to a uniformed armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Although we’ve been through this before many times, let’s do it again.  The MultiNational Force reported years ago at the very height of the insurgency in Iraq that the total number of foreign fighters (the main ones doing the nefarious work) never exceeded approximately 20,000.  Ponder: 20,000 poorly trained and poorly equipped and supplied insurgents fought the entire U.S. military to a virtual standstill in Iraq.

Ultimately, areas of Iraq were pacified, but it came at a tremendous cost, with saturation of Marines in Fallujah in 2007, and other tactics employed that aren’t long term, serving only for temporary pacification because we decided not to stay and work the politics for the purposes of U.S. interests.  Similar results were achieved in the Malayan emergency by the British forces, but it involved brutal tactics and saturation of troops, and was only temporary.

A counterinsurgency is extremely difficult even with a very small insurgency.  An insurgency isn’t about great armies lining up in fields of battle and walking towards each other while shooting.  Insurgent and government live in the same neighborhoods, beside each other, wear the same uniforms, go to the same schools, work the same jobs, and walk the same streets.  In such conditions, it’s impossible to tell insurgent from government.  Juan has watched too many movies about old style warfare.

Talking heads and pundits still don’t understand what 4GW would involve, nor how difficult it would be to stop.  The U.S. armed forces now focuses on 5GW (F35, Milstar uplinks to do everything, etc.) because they never figured out how to win 4GW and believe they’ll never be in one again.

Finally, isn’t it ironic that the very pundits who purvey this crap are the ones who wouldn’t propose allowing citizens to have fully automatic weapons (what do you think Juan would say about repealing the Hughes amendment?), but do want the police and military to have such weapons?  That shows they haven’t come to terms with their own arguments.  They don’t really even believe what’s coming out of their own mouths.

News from Charlotte:

“He always was able to put others before himself and never hesitated to help anyone who needed it.”

So when a gunman walked into his classroom at UNC Charlotte late Tuesday evening and opened fire, officials said Howell sacrificed himself to save his peers.

[ … ]

Chief Putney said Howell’s sacrifice saved lives. Blocked inside a classroom, Putney said he had no option to run or hide, so he fought.

“He took the fight to the assailant. Unfortunately, he had to give his life to do so, but he saved lives doing so,” Putney said about Howell. “He took the assailant off his feet, and the heroes that we have here were able to apprehend from there.”

“Mr. Howell saved lives.”

Um, Mr. Putney, you have it exactly backwards.  I don’t know how you could have screwed this up any more if you had actually tried.

The heroes aren’t the cops, who were all armed.  The UNC system is a “gun free zone,” meaning that only your officers got to confront the assailant being able to defend themselves.  Sorry, but that doesn’t count as heroic.

Leave it to a cop to elevate other cops as heroes when someone else gave his life.  The hero here is Mr. Howell.  You know it, I know it, and everybody who heard that speech knows it.  You embarrassed yourself in front of the world.  And you’re probably too stupid to know it.

Via reddit/firearms.

The poor guys at reddit are befuddled.  “So the Vegas shooting was a lie? This is confusing me … It confuses the hell out of me, too.”  Others think it was a lazy, cursory search.

Nay.  I say that the DoJ responded this way because, hold your breath and grab your britches, there have been no bump stocks used in any crime to date.

UPDATE: FOIA On Bumpstocks Used In Crimes

See the list at Shooting Illustrated.  This one was particular interesting.

Alexander Arms Highlander
Available in 6.5 Grendel, .50 Beowulf, .300 BLK and .17 HMR, the Highlander offers the added efficiency of a carbine-length gas system in select models.

The .50 Beowulf is a large bear round.  I cannot imagine shooting that out of a pistol length barrel.  It’s interesting that they have engineered this down to the .17 HMR, which of course is a rimfire round.  I wonder about the reliability of cycling this round in an AR?

Explained.

If the New York attorney general Letitia James found sufficient cause and evidence that the NRA was violating the rules and regulations governing nonprofits, she could attempt to force the dissolution of the organization. This would undoubtedly set off a massive legal fight and ironically, be one of the most galvanizing threats the NRA could ever want. You want to get a lot more donations and renewed memberships? Argue that the New York state government is attempting to destroy the organization.

A more likely scenario is that James puts the organization through the wringer, legally, exposing every bloated contract, every dubious expenditure, and every violation of state regulations. She may not dissolve the organization, but she is likely to attempt to impose a massive fine, crippling the organization’s already-shaky finances. What’s more, depending upon what the investigation found, it could dispirit many NRA members, exacerbating existing concerns among some members that their membership dues and donations are being spent on luxuries.

In other words, what the NRA is being investigated about has very little to do with gun laws.

The NRA’s board of directors is operating in extraordinarily tight-lipped manner but referred certain matters to their internal ethics committee Monday. As discussed this weekend, if they did want to remove an officer such as executive vice president Wayne LaPierre, it would take 15 days and a hearing, and three-quarters of the board’s 76 members would have to agree.

Two years ago, at the NRA convention in Atlanta, LaPierre was on top of the world. Donald Trump, once a supporter of certain gun-control proposals, had been elected president with resolutely pro–Second Amendment stance and the help of the NRA. Neil Gorsuch was on the Supreme Court, and a pro–Second Amendment majority on the nation’s highest court appeared secure. A pro-gun GOP majority controlled the House and Senate.

LaPierre has been executive vice president of the NRA — and the guy really running the show day to day — since 1991. His watch has seen the enactment of the Assault Weapons Ban and its expiration, the Columbine shootings and our chilling ongoing era of school shootings, the enormously consequential Heller decision at the Supreme Court, booming gun sales during the Obama years, and the formation of new, exceptionally well-funded gun control groups by former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg. He’s seen the gradual extinction of pro-gun Democratic elected officials, particularly in Washington. After Trump won, some wondered if he would ride off into the sunset and let someone else take over the NRA.

After this past week, he may wish he had.

When a man gets power, he rarely likes to give it up.  Corrupt men desire power over others, but when they get that power, the power itself corrupts further.

As I’ve said, I suspect the Board of Directors bears a lot of financial and legal liability for what’s going on, and they may wish they had taken tighter control of things before this is all over.

David Codrea:

When gun-grabbers first started throwing around that claim, they were assuring us it was “95 to 100 percent.” The con they’re pulling is limiting numbers to what is being submitted for tracing. The total population of guns recovered but not submitted is much larger. And the total number of guns in the hands of Mexico’s warring cartels equips armies.

Speaking of which, since KPBS brought up “grenades,” who thinks the cartels get their weapons onesie-twosie from U.S. gun stores and gun shows? How about their “U.S.-military issued rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers and explosives”?

In reality, many of the weapons are obtained from police, Army deserters and corrupt administrators.

The only thing this proves to me is that the best gunsmiths and machinists live in the U.S. and sell legally to the police and military in other countries.  Otherwise, what’s old is new again.  Always looking for a reason to control things.