Articles by Herschel Smith

The Washington Times:

ICE officers who endorsed President Trump in 2016 now say he has failed to follow through on his get-tough promises, saying catch-and-release of immigrants living illegally in the U.S. is not only still happening, but has gone into “overdrive.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers say they’re being roped into such mundane tasks as opening the doors on vans to release immigrants already caught by Border Patrol agents. That’s dragging the officers from their usual duties of nabbing fugitives, or scouring local prisons and jails for immigrant criminals who lived illegally in the U.S. ready to be deported.

The shell game is all the more “ridiculous,” the officers said, because Border Patrol agents could fill out paperwork and open the doors themselves, but the agency’s leaders don’t want to be part of catch-and-release.

“Hundreds of man hours are wasted each day at a time of crisis on the border,” the leaders of the National ICE Council, the union that represents ICE officers, said in a letter sent directly to Mr. Trump on Monday.

[ … ]

“You frequently speak publicly of the great public safety work ICE is doing under your leadership. To be direct Mr. President — the rhetoric doesn’t match reality and we hope that this letter shows you the complete and total nonsense that is really taking place under the Trump Administration on the southern border,” the ICE officers said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The letter comes as the situation at the southwestern border has grown out of control for Homeland Security.

Some 160,000 migrant children and family members have been encountered at the border over the last five months, shattering previous records.

Most are arrested by the Border Patrol, though 10-15 percent are encountered by Customs and Border Protection officers trying to come through a border crossing without permission.

Because of the overwhelming numbers, lack of bed space and court rulings, Homeland Security usually processes and quickly releases most of them, with the vain hope that they’ll come back for hearings and eventual deportation.

That’s been dubbed “catch-and-release,” and Mr. Trump took office promising to stop it.

Instead the rate has increased, and it’s spurred the bureaucratic sparring.

Mr. Crane says Border Patrol agents have the power to fill out the release paperwork and to do the releases on their own, but they don’t want to face the embarrassment. So they make ICE officers fill out the release paperwork, and when they drive the immigrants to bus stations to be dropped off, they make an ICE officer actually open the van doors.

Because if Trump ever did intend to do anything about immigration and the border (and he was probably being dishonest about immigration), he intended to wait until after he no longer had the House of Representatives to make it a big deal so that he would be blocked and could make it a re-election issue.

Because he thinks Americans are tools.  By my calculations the only good thing we’ve gotten from Trump is Neil Gorsuch.

News from NYC:

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — The NYPD posted a photo on social media of a rifle and bullets that were seized during a domestic incident in New Springville.

Domestic Violence and Field Intelligence officers found the gun and ammunition during a home visit, according to the 121st Precinct Twitter feed.

The officers were conducting a home visit in the vicinity of Windham Loop and Marsh Avenue on Monday when they were made aware of a gun that was not registered, according to a spokeswoman for the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Public Information.

No arrests were made and the weapon was confiscated, the police spokeswoman said.

A verbal dispute between a husband and wife prompted the visit from the Domestic Violence officers, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.

The husband had failed to re-register the hunting rifle, the source said.

It’s hard to tell what the rifle is, but it’s not a rimfire gun.  It’s a carbine of some sort, but some reader can help with this I’m sure.

This is what we’re reduced to – the NYPD posting pictures to Twitter with hashtag #OneLessGun.  Proudly, no less.

Despicable.  Nothing good ever comes from calling the police to your home.  Why did they do that over an argument?  Why?

ICE had to simply drop off newly minted immigrants to a bus stop.

Immigration officials dropped off about 50 more undocumented migrants, mostly from Central America, Friday morning at a Greyhound bus station near Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, where they were left to fend for themselves as overwhelmed volunteers sought help for them.

[ … ]

Since Dec. 21, according to the data, ICE has released 84,500 migrant family members. Of that, 14,500 have been released in the Phoenix area, 37,500 have been released in communities in south Texas, 24,000 in El Paso and 8,500 in San Diego, the data shows.

They just let them go.  Cheer up.  We can all pay their medical bills when they go to the local hospital ER for care.

But the real problem isn’t even illegal immigration, it’s legal immigration (via WRSA):

The legal immigration problem has dropped off America’s radar screen—displaced by the undeniable crisis over illegals.

But legal immigration is larger, growing faster, potentially more disruptive—and, because it is set by inflexible statute, just as much out of control.

Go check out all of his data.  From the most recent NumbersUSA newsletter, Trump isn’t helping anything with his actions or rhetoric.

The problem is that President Trump appears be backing off his campaign pledge in favor of placating the business lobby clamoring for an increase in foreign workers.

The White House goes on to describe the meeting with “some of the country’s top CEO –including Apple’s Tim Cook and Walmart’s Doug McMillon.”

Employers were coming to us and they were saying, ‘We’re optimistic about America, we want to invest here and a constraint for growth is the lack of a skilled workforce,'” Ms. Trump told The Wall Street Journal this week. “We don’t have people to fill the jobs.

The President has strongly indicated he no longer supports immigration reduction, including at the White House meeting this week.

‘We want to have a very strong border, but we want to have a lot of people coming in,’ Trump said during a White House meeting with more than 20 CEOs and officials from state and local governments.’ A lot of people don’t understand that. They think we’re shutting it out. We’re not shutting it out. We want people to come in, but they have to come in through a process.

President Trump’s rhetoric is not far removed from U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donahue, who said last October that “The United States is fundamentally out of people.”

When there are still 50 million people in the United States between the ages of 18 and 64 who are not employed, the problem is not a lack of workers.

The problem of course is that the democrats want Latinos for their votes, and republican elitists and corporations want them for their cheap labor, cheap that is, as long as the law, regulations and codes are in place to let everyone else pay for their medical care so the corporations don’t have to.  The cost isn’t so much hidden or non-existent as it is borne on the backs of American workers who can’t save or invest because of this corporate theft.

So in addition to Trump making half a million bump stock owners felons with the stroke of a pen, in addition to his support for red flag laws (which after Lindsey Graham and the democrats send to him he will sign on a federal level), he wants to flood the country with more foreign workers for you to support, just as long as it’s all legal.

Or in other words, America may as well have elected a democrat, huh?  Oh, and by the way, don’t worry about how all of those Latinos are going to vote in the presidential elections.  I’m sure it’ll all work out to support your 2A rights.

Breitbart:

In October 2017, one instructor asked his students to show up for physical training the Thursday before a four-day weekend. When only three students showed up out of 40, he called another mandatory training session that weekend. Two hours later, he was fired.

Poor babies.  I feel so sorry for them.  I’m glad the USMC wouldn’t have done anything so wicked to my son when he was in the fleet.

Maybe we could have the officers and NCOs arrange for catered meals, back rubs and lacy underwear for them all?

Shooting Illustrated:

Nothing particularly appeals to me about either cartridge, but if you’re into one or the other, or both, it would seem that the sweet spot is 110-gr BO, with the best accuracy coupled with about the highest muzzle velocity.

News from New Mexico:

Extensive advocacy work by proponents of stronger gun regulations in New Mexico has led to a new law that will require federal background checks for most gun purchases, including online sales and at gun shows.

Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who took office in January, signed Senate Bill 8 into law on Friday. It will take effect in July.

“We all have a constitutional right to be safe in our homes and communities,” Lujan Grisham said, according to the Albuquerque Journal.

At an emotional signing ceremony, the governor was accompanied by several young people, law enforcement officials, and gun reform advocates, the Associated Press reported.

The governor is an idiot.  There is no such constitutional guarantee and she can’t quote one.  As we had discussed earlier, there is a problem is utopia.

… in New Mexico, 30 of 33 county sheriffs have signed a letter pledging to not help enforce several gun-control measures supported by Democrats in Santa Fe, according to the state’s sheriff association. The sheriffs, who are elected, say they are heeding the wishes of voters in the counties they serve. More than two dozen counties in the state have enacted “sanctuary” resolutions backing the sheriffs and affirming that no tax dollars in their jurisdictions should go to enforcing the proposed laws.

[ … ]

Democratic New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas said local officials should comply with state and federal law but declined to say what measures he would take if they don’t.

Local Sheriffs could stop this all in its tracks if they chose to.  The AG didn’t say what measures he would take because he doesn’t know what to do with men who hold weapons and refuse to comply.

Weapons.  Refuse to comply.  There’s a moral to that story, yes?

News from Washington:

For the third time in the last month, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson has sent a letter to the mostly rural areas in Washington where county sheriffs have threatened to not enforce the new, stricter gun laws that state voters approved last year.

On Thursday, Ferguson and Gov. Jay Inslee sent a letter to 262 gun dealers in counties where sheriffs have said they won’t enforce the new law, known as Initiative 1639. The letters warned that the dealers are still responsible for following the law, which bars the sale of semi-automatic rifles to anyone under 21 and requires enhanced background checks for those guns.

“Certain officials in your county have publicly said they will not enforce Initiative 1639 because they believe it is unconstitutional,” Inslee and Ferguson wrote. “We want to prevent you and your business from finding yourself in legal jeopardy because of a misunderstanding of the law caused by statements made by elected officials in your area.”

Yes, it’s all so altruistic, isn’t it?  They want to prevent good people from running afoul of the new law because of misunderstandings.  How retarded.

The AG is like a little boy screaming on the playground, and he disgusts me.  This situation is similar to the one in New Mexico, but slightly different because in Washington there is now an age limit.  In both cases it’s difficult to see the state turning over cases to the FedGov for prosecution if Form 4473 is properly completed.

It would take local or county officials to effect arrests of people in person to person transfers (if the state becomes aware of them, a highly dubious assumption).

It’s likely that this law won’t have much affect on person to person transfers, but it remains to be seen if any Sheriffs will mobilize their deputies in the defense of persons (be they gun store employees or not) to run afoul of the law.

My bet is not.  A promise not to enforce the law isn’t the same thing as a promise to engage in gun battle with state police in the defense of supposed “sanctuary” counties or cities.

B J Campbell:

There is no clear correlation whatsoever between gun ownership rate and gun homicide rate. Not within the USA. Not regionally. Not internationally. Not among peaceful societies. Not among violent ones. Gun ownership doesn’t make us safer. It doesn’t make us less safe. A bivariate correlation simply isn’t there. It is blatantly not-there. It is so tremendously not-there that the “not-there-ness” of it alone should be a huge news story.

A correlation coefficient (R^2) of < 0.5%.  Worthless.

Be sure to read the rest of his piece, where he fisks the jobs that Mother Jones, Vox and others do with the data.  Spread it far and wide.

CNBC:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told CNN on Wednesday the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on gun control on March 26.

The influential committee chairman said the panel will discuss “red flag” laws, passed in many U.S. states, that allow courts to take away firearms from suspected dangerous individuals after receiving warnings from police officers or family members.

Red flag laws, also known as extreme risk protection, enjoy bipartisan support and have been praised by the White House and the National Rifle Association.

Graham, who has become a close ally of the president, said he and Trump had discussed the matter. He noted that there was “a lot of common ground” on aspects of the proposal.

[ … ]

A month later, Graham and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., introduced red flag legislation that ultimately never went anywhere.

So you see several important things here.  Lindsey V.2 isn’t so much really Version 2, but Lindsey V.1 with some makeup.  He talks big, but then when push comes to shove, it’s like putting lipstick on a pig.  Graham supports red flag laws.

Second, Graham has spoken to Trump, and apparently Trump is favorable, which we essentially already knew from his “take the guns first” comment.

Third, a republican senate is convening hearings on new gun control legislation.  I repeat, a republican senate.  And in two short years, in Trump’s closing arguments for your vote for presidency, he’ll say that he stands in the way of the bad people taking your guns and will never let your second amendment rights be infringed.

News from New Mexico:

ALBUQUERQUE – A bill to expand background checks on private gun sales in New Mexico that’s awaiting the governor’s promised signature is presenting a key question for law enforcement as it heads for her desk: How do they expect to enforce it?

Debate over the bill exposed a rift in the state over gun rights before it won final approval in the Legislature this week and was sent to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who has described it as common-sense reform.

A large majority of sheriffs has vowed not to enforce the law, arguing it burdens lawful gun owners and will be difficult to enforce. That’s because a gun most likely would have to be used in a crime before law enforcement could investigate whether it had been purchased unlawfully, according to the bill’s opponents.

But others, including Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza, say the measure will provide a public safety tool. For example, he said officers could follow up on complaints that felons or others restricted from owning firearms are obtaining them.

Doña Ana County Sheriff Kim Stewart said the measure offers deputies the ability to ask gun owners they encounter how they obtained a gun, just as they are now able to ask motorists if they are licensed to drive. It also offers private gun dealers increased opportunity to determine that they are not selling to a felon.

“I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask them to do this one thing,” she said.

The bill is the first of a handful of proposed gun reforms this year to clear the Legislature, despite outcry from dozens of sheriffs and others that the law may infringe on state residents’ gun rights.

In an interview, University of New Mexico law professor Joshua Kastenberg said the law is “constitutionally sound,” but that he sees both those for and against the measure having compelling arguments.

“It’s more a political policy debate,” he said.

[ … ]

Cibola County Sheriff Tony Mace said he believes the bill violates his constituents’ rights.

As president of the New Mexico Sheriff’s Association, he organized a push for the county law enforcement officials to present draft resolutions to their commissioners declaring their jurisdictions Second Amendment sanctuaries. He said 26 out of 33 New Mexico counties have approved the resolutions.

New Mexico elected officials generally take oaths pledging to uphold both constitutions, as well as state laws.

What else would you expect a law professor to say?  There are two things here, the first being whether it should pass constitutional muster (it shouldn’t) and the second is whether it will as determined by the black robed tyrants who sit on the bench.  The answer is that it will, of course.

“Doña Ana County Sheriff Kim Stewart said the measure offers deputies the ability to ask gun owners they encounter how they obtained a gun …”  Answer: It’s none of your damn business.  Or better yet, “I’m being represented by my lawyer so you’ll have to pose the question to him.”  Don’t ever talk to the police, and don’t answer any such question.

Unless it’s a “Terry Stop” it’s unconstitutional, and if the stop is legitimate, don’t answer his questions.

As we watch the proliferation of gun control laws in America both at the national and state levels, you can expect to see more of this sort of thing, where local and state representatives, law enforcement officers and other authorities hand-wring over what to do with such unenforceable laws and regulations.  You can expect them to worry more about the danger to cops of trying to enforce things like this, and you can expect more cops and lawyers to fabricate all kinds of myths about what those laws allow them to do.

You can expect a requested swelling and bloating of the police state, but with unfunded liabilities approaching 300 trillion dollars, no money or personnel will be forthcoming.  And finally, you can expect more lies from the controllers about how this is a “common sense” proposal that will aid public safety.