Articles by Herschel Smith

I confess I had never thought of something like that.  Tim Harmsen of The Military Arms Channel answers the question, as well as one more.

NextGov:

The FBI still has not assessed whether its facial recognition systems meet privacy and accuracy standards nearly three years after a congressional watchdog—the Government Accountability Office—raised multiple concerns about the bureau’s use of the tech.

Since 2015, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have used the Next Generation Identification-Interstate Photo System, which uses facial recognition software to link potential suspects to crimes, pulling from a database of more than 30 million mugshots and other photos.

In May 2016, the Government Accountability Office recommended the FBI establish checks to ensure the software adhered to the Justice Department’s privacy and accuracy standards, but according to a report published Wednesday, the bureau has yet to implement any of the six proposed policy changes.

And they won’t.  If you have a Facebook account or a federal compliant driver’s license, you’ve already given them your photograph.

On a related note, do you recall this scene from Sicario, where he says, “The CIA can’t operate within U.S. borders without a domestic agency attached?”

So how does the FBI, local law enforcement, state law enforcement, and the CIA all cooperate “within the law?”  This may not be a surprise to my readers, but it’s called the JTTF, and the field implementation involves a network of cameras that would put the U.K. to shame, all managed out of field offices called “Fusion Centers.”

It’s not the stuff of conspiracy theory.  It’s real, today, right now, and they track you everywhere you go.

News from AP:

The cathedral’s rector said a “computer glitch” may have played a role in the rapidly spreading blaze that devastated the 850-year-old architectural masterpiece.

[ … ]

Paris police investigators said they believe an electrical short-circuit most likely caused the fire. It’s believed to be one of multiple leads being investigated.

Um … what?  A “computer glitch” isn’t an electrical short.  The two are very different things.  So if you think this is all from a “computer glitch,” send the coding our way.  I have readers who understand C++, and I can code in FORTRAN.  I think we can help.

I’m not getting that good warm fuzzy feeling that they’re taking this seriously and being forthcoming and honest about it.

He is risen indeed!

News from New Zealand:

Critics of the Government’s gun law changes say a loophole means that a lower-powered version of the assault rifle used by the Christchurch mosque shooter remains legal.

Police have confirmed that an AR15 WMR .22 semi automatic with military-style features does not fit the definition of a prohibited firearm under the new law, provided it is fitted with a magazine holding 10 rounds or less.

The mosque shooter used a more powerful, centrefire version of the AR15, with large capacity magazines, during his rampage, which left 50 people dead.

He had bought his weapons on a standard firearms licence and illegally converted them to military-style with easily obtainable parts.

The Government banned all centrefire “military style” semi-automatics, but less powerful rimfire .22 semi-automatics remain legal for people holding a standard firearms licence.

Those weapons range from rifles that use standard .22 long rifle (LR) ammunition to a cartridge more than two times as powerful – the .22 WMR (Winchester Magnum Rimfire), also known as the .22 MAG.

Northland man Michael Beckett said he warned the select committee considering the changes that the .22WMR would become the weapon of choice of AR15 owners and become a threat to the public.

He was surprised it had not been covered in the amended law and feared it was a loophole that would be exploited.

Beckett said the standard .22LR was more than sufficient for pest control on farms – he described the .22 MAG as a “double deadly cartridge” with 2.6 times the muzzle energy of .22LR.

Oooo … a “double deadly cartridge.”  Damn.  Must get one of those.

To my readers in New Zealand (I know I have some), don’t be satisfied with the crumbs that fall from the master’s table like a dog.  Not that I have anything against the nice little .22 WMR (Kel-Tec makes a .22 WMR carbine), but a rimfire cartridge will always be a rimfire cartridge.  It’s dirtier and less reliable than a centerfire cartridge.

You have a God-given right to what you have sitting inside your gun safe right now, and more.

John Richardson:

In the last couple of days since the lawsuit against Ackerman McQueen I’ve spoken to a former lobbyist for the NRA and two serving NRA Board Members. The conversations were off the record and not for attribution. Then I read this article in The New Yorker thanks to a link to it posted on Facebook by Prof. David Yamane.

The article is entitled “Secrecy, Self-Dealing, and Greed at the N.R.A.” Mike Spies article has a subhead saying “The organization’s leadership is focussed on external threats, but the real crisis may be internal.” I hate to say this given all the attacks on the NRA from every Democrat running for President, the State of New York, and the media but from what I’ve gathered Spies is correct. Just because we don’t like the source doesn’t mean they are wrong.

Last August, the N.R.A., in desperate need of funds, raised its dues for the second time in two years. To cut costs, it has eliminated free coffee and water coolers at its headquarters and has frozen its employees’ pension plan. Carry Guard, which was meant to save the organization, has proved disastrous. According to the memos, in 2017, the year that Carry Guard was introduced, Ackerman McQueen received some six million dollars for its work on the product, which included the creation of a Web site and media productions featuring celebrity firearms trainers. The lawsuit against New York State has created an additional burden. Sources familiar with the N.R.A.’s financial commitments say that it is paying Brewer’s firm an average of a million and a half dollars a month.

An official assessment performed by Cummins last summer dryly describes the N.R.A.’s decision-making during the previous year as “management’s shift in risk appetite.” The document analyzes the organization’s executive-liability exposures and discusses insurance policies that “protect NRA directors and officers from claims by third parties that they have breached their duties, such as by mismanagement of association assets.” From 2018 to 2019, it says, insurance costs increased by three hundred and forty-one per cent. “To say this is a major increase would be an understatement,” Peter Kochenburger, the deputy director of the Insurance Law Center at the University of Connecticut, told me. “This seems to be pretty direct evidence that the N.R.A.’s problems are not due to New York but rather to how the organization conducts itself.”

David Codrea links a different source, but concludes essentially the same thing: “You would be right to assume Bloomberg front The Trace will use everything it’s got to hurt NRA as much as it can.  You would be wrong to dismiss everything they have presented here because of that.”

Commenter BRVTVS links the same source as John, comments “lays out pretty well why the NRA fails to protect gun owners.”

I don’t have money to throw away, and I have not renewed my NRA membership and never will, at least, not under these circumstances.  It would be “nice” to be able to say that we’re losing the NRA (because to be able to say that would mean it has served us until now), but the truth of the matter is that we lost the NRA a very long time ago.  Since initially joining, I’ve never been happy with their work on our behalf, and given this, why would I be a member?

They should have left insurance alone and focused on applying honest grading to politicians, but they haven’t been honest for a long time.  As we’ve all discussed before, they are the most well-connected, well-financed, most powerful gun control lobby in the history of mankind and on earth.  They supported the NFA, the Gun Control Act, the Hughes Amendment, the bump stock ban, and red flag laws.

If any other organization had tried to do more harm to the rights of gun owners in America, what action would they have taken that the NRA hasn’t?

WSPA.com:

ANDERSON CO., SC (WSPA) – Deputies are looking for the person or persons responsible for vandalizing a church in Anderson County.

The Anderson County Sheriff’s Office says someone broke windows and spray painted messages on the side of Midway Presbyterian Church on Midway Road.

According to deputies, the windows in the church were over 125 years old.

The words “SUBMIT TO GOD THRU ISLAM” and “MUHAMMED IS HIS PROPHET” were spray pained in black onto the siding of the church.

Elders of the church tell 7News they did not let the act of vandals disturb their services and lunch on Sunday.

“It was very disturbing because we feel like this was an individual act and we don’t hold any religious group responsible for it,” said Bob Harrell. “We think it most likely was some misguided young people. However, we do take it very seriously and we’ll do everything we can to assist law enforcement.”

As I’ve said, prepare now.

If you are a member of a church and attend worship regularly, do you have a security plan?  No, having an armed cop on duty isn’t a security plan.  Do you have a number of armed congregants in the building?  Have you trained together as a group?  Do you have overwatch?  Do you have security cameras?  Do you have patrols?  I’m talking about 24/365 security, or a recognition that if you don’t have that kind of security on your building, as the country trends towards Europe, you may lose the building.

Tomorrow will be too late.  This may be a prank, but it may not be.  You live in a different American than what your mother and father knew.

It didn’t take long after the church abdicated its responsibility to be salt and light before American went to hell.  I’ve often thought that premillennial dispensationalism (the belief that God has two different people, the Jews and the church, saved in different ways, with the church pulled out of the world in the “rapture” before the real fireworks begin), with its belief that “you don’t polish brass on a sinking ship,” was the best crafted lie in history to neuter and render the church powerless and lifeless.

I once asked a close friend, who is a dispensationalist, the following question.  “There isn’t a single time in history when God allowed His people (the church is His people) to abdicate responsibility to be salt and light, to turn over the arts and sciences to the godless, to give their children over the Baal, and follow the world rather than Christ, and get away with avoiding the consequences of their actions.  What makes you think God will do that for the church, since it has gotten in bed with Hollywood, allowed abortion on demand, voted for all manner of scum, failed to teach the world about God’s law, and turned its children over to the state for education?  What makes you think that God will snatch us out and allow us to avoid the consequences of our own behavior?”

His answer: “Just because it’s never happened doesn’t mean it won’t.”  That, people, is the voice of irrationality.

Prepare for judgment.  It is coming upon America, and you’re here at the beginning of it.

Via WRSA.  We all knew that Buzzfeed and Politico suck, but Paul Joseph Watson does such a good job of reminding us and refreshing the knowledge that it’s worth it to watch the entire video.  He is at his best.  The beatdown he gives Buzzfeed and Politico is simply epic.

Shooting Illustrated:

On top of the freezing temperatures, the Marines faced tens of thousands of mostly Chinese soldiers around the Chosin Reservoir. This battle took place in November and December of 1950, and there were many reservoir veterans still on active duty when I became a Marine in 1957. Most of them agreed that the main effect of the sub-zero weather was to grind you down physically. Every physical act was much more difficult to perform, and the difficulty was magnified by a lack of sleep and cold food. This was the nature of what I call the Cold Fight—at the Chosin Reservoir—where it was the deadliest kind of infantry fighting under the worst kind of circumstances. In my view, the men who did these things were giants.

Not long after I entered the Marine Corps, I was at Quantico’s Basic School with several hundred other second lieutenants. I had transgressed in some way, and the Marine Corps thought it necessary for me to go explain my deficient behavior to the Executive Officer of the school. This was not the most-comfortable position for a newbie to be in, but I had no say in the matter. I’ll never forget the cold, unblinking eyes of LtCol Reginald Myers. He got it over quickly, making sure I understood that all rules and regulations were to be obeyed. Throughout the session, I was mesmerized by the top ribbon on his uniform blouse—light blue with a sprinkling of white stars. I had never seen one. As a major, he had been the XO of a battalion in the 1st Regiment at the reservoir. Given a scraped-together force of truck drivers, cooks and personnel from other services, he led them on an attack that kept the main road open for the division to pass. This involved setting an example for his troops and that meant getting out in front. Situations like this (leading unfamiliar troops under deadly conditions) are challenging.

Myers was not the only recipient of the Medal of Honor out of the Cold Fight. Over in the 7th Marines, F-company was commanded by William Barber, and he had his company controlling Toktong pass. This narrow place was essential for the 5th and 7th regiments to get out of the valley of Yudam-Ni. He fought, wounded, for several days and kept the pass open. It also happens that a private in one of his platoons put up a fight that defies easy description. Hector Cafferata fought all night with his M1 and hand grenades, several times stopping to bat Chinese grenades back with an entrenching tool. His feat of arms was all the more impressive in that he was caught with his boots off when it started. He was never able to get enough of a break to go find his boots and get them on. Capt Barber and Pfc Cafferata both received the Medal of Honor. Barber later said Cafferata may have killed as many as 100 Chinese soldiers. That puts him in the same class as one Daniel Daly atop the Tartar Wall in the Boxer Rebellion. Everywhere you look in the several histories of the battle, you run into more examples of incredible bravery.

I believe this campaign was the most-severe test ever of Marines and their fightin’ iron.

Today, women would be in the infantry Battalions, perhaps leading them, and there may be transgenders and gays along with them.

Do you think we could win a war like that today?

As a brief followup to my observations on The Burning Of Notre Dame, I thought I’d point out what it would take to make me happy concerning the post-mortem and investigation.

If the investigation is conducted by local fire department folks, it’s meaningless to me.  Even if the investigation is conducted by French fire engineers, it’s still meaningless.

No offense, but I’m completely uninterested in what fire fighters have to say about what happened.  I would like to see fully independent fire engineers, preferably not French engineers, conduct a thorough investigation and publish a fully peer reviewed report, unredacted, for my review.  In this case, fully peer reviewed means yet another independent set of eyes on the problem, with full concurrence in the conclusions before they are published, except for cases where disagreement exists, with those disagreements fully outlined as part of or an appendix to the main report.

Only then will I take the investigation seriously.