Articles by Herschel Smith

Via WoG, the Ohio Supreme Court has gotten pissed off at God and decided they would do better at the job.

The Ohio Supreme Court has proposed rule changes that would disarm and force those subject to a civil protection order to surrender firearms, ammunition, and concealed handgun license to law enforcement. This seizure would take place even if there is no “sufficient nexus,” specifically evidence that a firearm was threatened to be used, used, or brandished.

The Supreme Court drafts proposed rule changes. The proposed rule changes are put out for public comment.

To comment and demand that these proposed changes not be enacted, email objections to: diana.ramos-reardon@sc.ohio.gov Include your full name and mailing address in any comments submitted by e-mail.

The legislature wasn’t doing what the court wanted them to do, so they stepped in and make themselves the only sovereign potentate, the most high god.  Able to calm the seas and change the winds.

Of course, there is always an answer for tyrants like this, and it involves oak trees and hemp rope.

PJM:

When the Spanish Christian monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella recaptured Granada on January 2, 1492, they ended almost eight centuries of jihad ravages (described by Bertrand in 1934, and in 2016 here) — massacres, pillage, mass enslavement, and deportation — and the grinding imposition of Sharia by Spain’s various pious Muslim conquerors, and rulers. Bertrand’s unsparing narrative describes the bitter, chronic fate of Spain’s Christians under Islam, both those fully subjugated and the populations never entirely subdued in the semi-autonomous northern regions:

The Christians of the interior were mastered. They had lost their leaders and their principal centers of resistance. The armies of the Caliph, the Arab and Berber chieftains, had massacred them, burned them out and pillaged them to the best of their ability. Thus decimated and humiliated, they nevertheless continued to exist, in a furtive and more or less precarious way of life …The Christians of the North scarcely knew the meaning of repose, security, or any of the amenities of life. They were continually at war with their Musulman [Muslim] neighbors. It was the fatality of that Arab conquest, a superficial and hasty conquest, never carried through to the end, that it had divided the country into two irreducible camps: that of the replete, and that of the hungry; those who held the best soil, and those who were relegated to the mountains or to desert plains…[The Muslims] interposed a desert between themselves and the Christians, and made a waste of the region which lay on the left bank of the latter [Duero] river. This was what they called “the Great Desert.” …

To keep the Christians in their place it did not suffice to surround them with a zone of famine and devastation. It was necessary also to go and sew terror and massacre among them. Twice a year, in spring and autumn, an army sallied forth from Cordova to go and raid the Christians, destroy their villages, their fortified posts, their monasteries and their churches, except when it was a question of expeditions of larger scope, involving sieges and pitched battles. In cases of simply punitive expeditions, the soldiers of the Caliph confined themselves to destroying harvests and cutting down trees. Most of the time they took the field to win booty. A district was allowed to re-people itself and be brought under cultivation; then it was suddenly fallen upon. Workers, harvesters, fruits and cattle were seized.

The religious Islamic jihad motivations for this devastation, and related “pious,” sadistic savagery of their triumphal execution, were underscored by Bertrand:

If one bears in mind that this brigandage was almost continual, and that this fury of destruction and extermination was regarded as a work of piety — it was a holy war against the infidels — it is not surprising that whole regions of Spain should have been made irremediably sterile. This was one of the capital causes of the deforestation from which the [Iberian] Peninsula still suffers. With what savage satisfaction and in what pious accents do the Arab annalists tell us of those at least bi-annual raids!A typical phrase for praising the devotion of a Caliph is this: “he penetrated into Christian territory, where he wrought devastation, devoted himself to pillage, and took prisoners. After that he brought the Musulmans back to Cordova safe and sound and laden with booty.” Abd er Rhaman [r. 912-961 A.D.], in the course of a campaign in Navarre, “did not fail, whenever a Christian retreat was to be found in the neighborhood, to carry destruction there and deliver the surrounding countryside to incendiarism, so that the Christian territory was ravaged by the flames to an extent often square miles.”

The same Caliph, when he laid siege to Toledo, began by destroying everything in the rich plain which surrounded the town. “He commenced by doing the rebels unimaginable harm. He remained there for thirty-seven days without ceasing his devastation cutting down the trees, pillaging and ruining the villages, destroying all the crops.” And again: “the strongholds of this region were reduced to ruins. Not one stone was left upon another…, The suburbs were surrendered to the flames, the harvests and all the property in the neighborhood were utterly ravaged and laid waste.”

Bertrand also chronicled the 11th and 12th century North African Berber Muslim Almoravid and Almohad invasions of Spain. These renewed jihad campaigns wrought not only further ravages and persecutions of Spain’s Christians, but massive population transfers:

From the outset of the Almoravid invasion the destruction of Christian churches had begun. … The faquis [Muslim clerics] commenced to persecute the Christian Mozarabs [dhimmis] so intolerably that they begged the King of Aragon, Alfonso the Warrior, to come and deliver them. The Aragonese did not succeed in taking Granada. When they retreated, the faquis avenged themselves on the Mozarabs in the most merciless fashion. Already ten thousand of them had been compelled to emigrate into the territory of Alfonso to escape their enemies’ repression. The remainder were deprived of their property, imprisoned, or put to death. Many of them were deported to Africa. They were established in the neighborhood of Sale and Meknes, where oppression of all kinds compelled them to embrace Islam.Ten years later there was a fresh expulsion. The Christians were again deported to Morocco en masse. Here, then, were cities and whole districts depopulated by massacres and proscriptions. This corresponded with a plan drawn upon in advance, a systematic course of action. “Sultan Yousouf,” writes [Muslim historian] Marrakeshi, “never failed to repeat at every one of his audiences: ‘To rid the [Iberian] Peninsula of the Christians that is our sole purpose … ’” Accordingly, after having expelled the Christians, he replaced them by Berbers. “To combat our enemies,” said Yousouf himself, “I shall fill Spain with horsemen and footmen who think nothing of repose, who do not know what it is to live softly, whose sole thought is to groom and train their horses, take care of their arms, and hasten to obey their orders.” The Almohads devoted themselves no less ardently to repopulating the South of Spain by filling it with Africans and Arabs.

From WiscoDave, this:

Bloomberg reports that the $40 million is on top of $431 million Wells Fargo has issued to gun manufacturers since the December 14, 2012, Sandy Hook attack. This means Wells Fargo is not only bucking the corporate gun control trend in 2018 but has also withstood the firearm divestiture campaign that launched following Sandy Hook.

On April 15, 2018, Breitbart News reported that Wells Fargo stemmed the tide of the push for new financial restrictions on gun makers and sellers by stressing that it is not a bank’s job to set U.S. gun policy.  Reuters quoted Wells Fargo chief financial officer John Shrewsberry saying, “The best way to make progress on these issues is through the political and legislative process. In the meantime, Wells Fargo is engaging our customers that legally manufacture firearms and other stakeholders on what we can do together to promote better gun safety in our communities.”

Wells Fargo’s refusal to place new restrictions on gun manufacturers came shortly after Citigroup and Bank of America caved to the gun control push. On March 23, 2018, Breitbart News reported that Citibank issued new requirements whereby customers who own gun stores must stop selling long guns to anyone under the age of 21 and to quit selling “high-capacity” magazines as well. And Bank of America made clear they will no longer loan money to manufacturers that make “military-style firearms.”

But even though Wells Fargo hasn’t buckled yet, things are not so nice in banking land.

APOPKA, Fla. – Representatives from Fifth Third Bank visited Spike’s Tactical, a Florida-based firearm manufacturer, last Tuesday to inform them that the bank was discreetly planning to exit the banking sector for gun-related businesses.

According to Spike’s Tactical co-owner Angela Register, the bank representative informed her and their chief financial officer that their business line of credit would not be renewed and encouraged them to find a new bank to hold their accounts, even mentioning that their commercial mortgage should be transferred or it could potentially be called early.

The war continues, and all is proceeding just as I had foreseen.  Actually, it’s all proceeding just as the controllers said it would.  I just told you what the controllers said.  At some point, they’re going to come directly after owners as well.  Their intention is to drive manufacturers out of business from being unable to make payroll and enable their lines of supply and logistics.

The large manufacturers will have a difficult time of it, especially with the controllers buying up stock.  The small manufacturers, i.e., those who aren’t subject to public stockholders and whose employees own the company, and who enable their lines of logistics without the help of the large banks, will flourish.

I suspect Spike’s Tactical will come out of this okay if they can find a small bank who will take the mortgage.

Judicial Watch:

Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), a component of the Department of Justice, for 1,900 pages of records about a proposed reclassification that would effectively ban certain types of AR-15 ammunition as armor-piercing (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:18-cv-02218)).

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit after the agency failed to respond to a May 14, 2018, FOIA request for the 1,900 documents about the Obama administration’s AR-15 ammo ban efforts. The documents include ATF talking points about the “Armor Piercing Ammunition Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” and other records discussing ammunition classification.

The lawsuit is the latest development in Judicial Watch’s more than three-year effort to obtain documents from the ATF. Judicial Watch discovered the document cache in separate litigation on the ammo ban issue.

In March 2015, more than 200 members of Congress wrote to former ATF Director B. Todd Jones to express their “serious concern” that the proposal to reclassify the ammunition types as armor-piercing may violate the Second Amendment by restricting ammunition that had been primarily used for “sporting purposes.” The ATF’s move “does not comport with the letter or spirit of the law and will interfere with Second Amendment rights by disrupting the market for ammunition that law abiding Americans use for sporting and other legitimate purposes,” the letter said. The ATF subsequently halted its efforts.

The precise statutory definition of armor-piercing ammunition can be found in 18 U.S.C. §921(a)(17).

“Simply put, the ATF refuses to comply with federal open records law,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “The ATF has withheld records for over three years concerning the Obama administration’s shady attempt to institute gun control by restricting ammunition instead of guns.”

To begin with, civilians should have access to everything the military has, including armor-piercing ammunition, under our second amendment rights and duties.

Second, M855 (“Green Tip”) is not armor piercing ammunition.  That’s enough said.  If I have to say any more about that, I may as well try to teach calculus to my dog – I’ll probably have more success and I’m sure a more receptive audience.

Tom Fitton and Judicial Watch is doing Yeoman’s work on just about everything imaginable.  I’m on their email list and see what they’re engaged in, and I simply can’t link it all, and I certainly can’t intelligently comment on it all.  If you’re not on their distribution, you need to get on it right of way.

As I said before, most of the ATF employees were there under Holder and at least complicit in the abuse of American citizens.  That’s who they are, it’s the way they think.  Tom had to push this hard for success because what’s in the collection of documents is embarrassing to the ATF.  You can count on it.

And also as I’ve said before, for me (who cannot afford to file a lawsuit every time I turn around), the FOIA is essentially worthless.  The FedGov has ignored virtually every one of my requests (I’ve had success only once).  The power of the purse is what the Congress has over the heads of the bureaucratic tyrants.  They won’t use it.  Thus there is no check on their power.

Josh Wayner at Ammoland:

I tested theses loads for velocity over my Oehler 35P chronograph and they came in exactly the same at average of 2165fps, which is very close to the stated velocity from the manufacturer (Hornady lists the 2200fps from a 20” barrel, mine is 16”) and was very consistent. The accuracy (after I figured out some issues) came in at 1.5” for five shots at 100 yards.

The Buffalo Bore loads are very new on the scene as of this year I received three different loads to test: the 300gr JHP, 250gr JHP, and 275gr XPB Barnes Lead Free. These loads are all a far cry from the original .450 offerings and two of them have conventional rounded pistol bullets in them as opposed to a pointy rifle bullet.

The claimed velocity for the 300gr JHP load is 1950fps. My rifle fired this load at a five-shot average of 1920fps. This load generated the most recoil out of any .450 load I fired and it also showed the most drop of any load, falling about 14” at 200 yards from a 100 yard zero. It was quite accurate considering the bullets used and generated 5-shot groups of 2.9” at 100 yards.

The next load, the 275gr XBP, has a stated velocity of 2000fps. My rifle fired it at 1922fps and averaged 2” for five shots at 100 yards. This was a very low-recoil load and it was very comfortable to shoot. I noticed that it appeared to also be slightly lower pressure judging by a rounded primer flatness and smooth, easy ejection of cases.

The final Buffalo Bore load is the 250gr JHP. The manufacturer says this is a load designed for deer hunting and has a bullet designed to expand at pistol velocities. At a claimed velocity of 2250fps and matching speed of 2249fps from my rifle, this load certainly was faster than pistol velocities, and produced the fastest speeds of any round I tested among this group. It was acceptably accurate at 2.5” for five shots at 100 yards.

He has a number of other observations, including what it takes to get reliable feed with this large cartridge.  I see the attraction of this – essentially, this is the one shot knockdown that the SpecOps folks were searching for in the 458 SOCOM.  That’s important for the two-legged threats, but it’s also important for threats of the four-legged kind in the bush.

Not coincidentally, it’s good for hog and deer hunting within 250 yards.

NBC:

Here’s a new Rocky matchup for you: It’s Rocky the dog versus the bear!

Pictures snapped by the dog’s owner show the tense moments between a pet and the wild animal in Wolcott.

Animal control says they’ve never seen anything like it in town until now.

“Rocky tackled the bear. The bear was on his back, paws up and Rocky was on top of him,” Wolcott resident Laura Canby explained.

Her 60-pound pit bull named Rocky is nursing some wounds after taking on a several hundred pound black bear.

“I was very scared. He wasn’t listening and coming back. He was too busy protecting me and the girls,” Canby said.

Canby said it all began when she heard the garbage cans bang outside her home yesterday. As she walked out all of a sudden Rocky darted through the yard after a nearby bear, just as the school bus arrived to drop off Canby’s older daughter.

“I freaked out and grabbed a shovel and started yelling at the school bus driver to keep the baby on the bus, don’t let her off,” Canby said.

That driver also called animal control.

While the bear could have won the fight if it had gone long term, it looks as if the bear decided it didn’t want to tangle with that dog any more.  No meal from a trash can is worth that.

Shooting Illustrated:

NRA member and Marine Corps veteran Dave Elliot was a fan of the 1911 chambered in .45 ACP, but dreamed of .357 Mag. performance and greater capacity from a semi-automatic handgun. In the early 1980s, John Ricco developed the 9×23 mm, which came close to the .357 Mag., but it could not accommodate heavier bullets. It also operated at high pressures.

Elliot decided to cut some 9 mm Win. Mag. cases to the length of the 10 mm Auto and load them with .357—not .355 (9 mm)—diameter, 140-, 158- and 170-grain bullets. He then designed a chamber around these cartridges. To test the concept, he cut some .357 Mag. cases to the same length, and starting with 60-percent .357 Mag. loads and the QuickLoad program, slowly worked his way up. Elliot figured his new cartridge (the .357 Ring of Fire) would be excellent for police, combat and hunting—especially with its potential for added capacity. You can actually cram 18 rounds of .357 Ring of Fire into a Glock G20, 10 mm magazine.

Based on the real-world performance of the .357 Mag., I was intrigued. Regardless of which so-called stopping-power theory you subscribe to, the effectiveness of the .357 Mag. on the street cannot be denied. Elliot had created a semi-auto-pistol cartridge nearing that level of performance. So, I asked him to send me a gun and some ammunition for further investigation.

I received a Glock G20 with a ported 5.5-inch barrel and 100 rounds of ammo. The ammunition was comprised of five different loads, using bullets between 125 and 200 grains in weight. I found I could indeed get 18 rounds into a Glock G20 magazine, which, when fully loaded, weighed almost 1 pound. This brought the gun’s total weight to 2 pounds, 12 ounces, with a round in the chamber.

I started with the 200-grain, lead-round-nose loads. At 920 fps, theBut y replicate 200-grain .45 ACP external ballistics and were very comfortable to shoot. Up next was the 170-grain Sierra FMJ loads at 1,060 fps. These were just as comfortable and quite similar to common.40 S&W 180-grain loads. Yet, the first round of the 125-grain Nosler load really got my attention. It was not the recoil that surprised me; it was the ring of fire that appeared in front of my face when the pistol went off. (Now I know where Elliot got the name.) At 1,335 fps this load duplicates the best .357 SIG offerings.

That same fireball was present with the 140-grain Hornady XTP and 158-grain hollow-point loads. At 1,430 fps the lighter load is indeed the equivalent of a .357 Mag. As for the 158-grain hollow point, the hottest .357 Mag. loads will exceed 1,400 fps, but 1,200 to 1,300 fps is much more common. Surprisingly, recoil with both was still extremely manageable. I’m sure this was due, in no small part, to the ported barrel.

So this is a wildcat round that probably exceeds SAAMI pressures for the 10mm chamber/barrel, but it being shot from a 10mm gun nonetheless.

I can see the desire for something like this, although I’m just fine and happy with shooting my 230 grain ammunition at greater than 1100 FPS from 450 SMC cartridges.  I may also investigate the 460 Rowland with a ported extension.

But in order for these cartridges to be very successful on the market, engineers are going to have to do the calculations and testing to ensure safety and endurance over protracted chamber and barrel lifetimes.  I like the fact that engineers at CMMG have done this for the 450 SMC.

David Codrea:

Curiously, the go-to guy AP went to for ATF input was retired agent Bernard Zapor, who made the profitability of smuggling guns south of the border sound lucrative enough to make AP’s case for them. The guy knows something about gun smuggling—he was in charge of the St. Paul Field Division when “Operation Fearless” resulted in an agent’s guns and a machine gun being stolen.

I highly doubt that this would have been their only choice.  I suspect that there are current ATF agents who want to see this as a pretext for the disarming of Americans.  After all, most of the AT F employees who were with that abominable organization during the Holder years are still there.

The spirits of Obama and Holder speak from the grave through the current statists among the FedGov.

BRVTVS gives us this video on some .45 ACP testing.

A few comments.

First of all, it’s just wrong to say that the lighter rounds lack penetration.  The data shows otherwise.  On the other hand, I agree that I’d never recommend PD ammunition for protection against large predatory animals.  Ball ammunition (jacketed) is the way to go.  Expansion is your enemy when you’re trying for maximum penetration and organ damage against a large quadruped.

For jacketed .45 ACP, I’m now focused on purchase of Browning flat nose 920 FPS cartridges.

If I’m in the bush, I’ll carry my S&W E Series 1911 for which I’ve installed a 22# spring, and shoot 450 SMC.  That’s my main complaint with the video.  He doesn’t cover the big hitters in these guns, whether 450 SMC or 460 Rowland.  It’s easy to install a 22# spring, and the 460 Rowland conversions (that include a compensator) aren’t that expensive.