Articles by Herschel Smith

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.

News from The Far Side:

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens on Thursday said that high court nominee Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, who Stevens once lauded in one of his books, does not belong on the Supreme Court.

Speaking to a crowd of retirees in Boca Raton, Stevens, 98, said Kavanaugh’s performance during a recent Senate confirmation hearing suggested that he lacks the temperament for the job.

The same man who said this.

That support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms. But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment.

Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment, which provides that “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century.

I collect, cull and communicate the data.  You’re smart enough to decide.  On a positive note, it’s nice to hear that mankind is no longer affected by his sinful nature and his only intentions are good, all of the time.

Who knew?

News from Alaska:

Admiralty Island, Alaska — A female bear and her two cubs mauled and killed a young man working at a remote mine site on a southeast Alaska island with one of the highest bear densities in the state, authorities said Monday.

Anthony David Montoya, 18, a contract worker from Oklahoma, died at a remote drill site accessible only by helicopter, according to Hecla Greens Creek Mine and authorities. Mine officials said workers receive training on how to deal with bears because of the large number in the area.

[ … ]

The silver mine is on Admiralty Island, which is about 18 miles southwest of Juneau and where an estimated 1,500 brown bears roam, said Stephen Bethune, a biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Tours to the island that’s largely uninhabited by people tout bear-viewing possibilities.

[ … ]

Workers are taught, for example, ways to prevent bear encounters, including proper disposal of food. Bear spray is available to carry between buildings and trained personnel use bean bags to scare away bears from established areas.

The mine also has videos on bear behavior. In remote locations, bear spray is among the tools employees generally bring with them in the case of bear encounters, Satre said.

Bear spray.  I don’t think I would work in a place with that kind of bear density and not be allowed to carry a firearm for self defense.

In other news where people are not made in God’s image and animal life is more important than human life, a judge unilaterally decided to protect the bear sleuth.

“We stand behind our scientific finding that the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly bear is biologically recovered and no longer requires protection under the Endangered Species Act,” the FWS said in a statement.

U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen overturned the Service’s decision to delist the bears Sept. 24. He based the ruling, in part, on the FWS failure to consider the impact delisting the bears in the Yellowstone region would have on other, still not recovered, bear populations around the United States, according to the court order.

[ … ]

“There are only a couple grizzly bear populations that are viable in the United States,” said Wendy Keefover, the native carnivore protection manager at the Humane Society of the United States, one of the organizations that sued to stop the delisting. “In 50 years, we’ve not had one individual make it between them. There are just these tiny islands of grizzly bear populations left. They need far more protection, not less.”

I’m wondering if The Alaskan wants to invite them in for dinner?  Or maybe he wants to be dinner for these poor critters?  After all, they need protection and sustenance.

News from the Northeast:

Sensing controversy, Gov. Phil Scott privately asked Vermont lawmakers to drop a limit on the size of gun magazines from a package of firearms regulations that was about to pass the Legislature this spring.

The governor was unsuccessful, and in April he signed the magazine limit along with other firearms laws.

“I advocated for them to consider taking that out because I knew that it was going to be a hot-button issue for many,” Scott said in a recent interview. “But I wasn’t persuasive enough for them to take it out. We’ll live with that.”

[ … ]

Scott has distanced himself from the magazine ban during his re-election campaign, saying in one Republican debate that the restriction “wasn’t my idea.”

Scott now says he has no plans to seek a repeal of the magazine ban if he wins re-election.

“I think we’ve had enough of the gun discussion at this point in time,” Scott said.

Ah, I see.  You wanted to get in bed with the controllers.  But you now regret it because you’re afraid you might lose power and don’t really have any scruples at all and believe nothing.  Therefore you regret the decision.  But not enough.

So let’s just forget all about it.

We’ve discussed guns enough.  Bless your heart.  Is that how you think this works?

Via Codrea, this:

Authorities say a baggage handler at Portland International Airport stole six guns from checked luggage.

Court documents filed Friday show that 26-year-old Deshawn A. Kelly was arrested on suspicion of theft, being a felon in possession of a firearm and attempting to tamper with or obliterate the serial number on a firearm.

Remember what I said?

Let’s face it, folks.  Since we are dropping off the luggage and we are picking it up, the only necessity for the luggage to be locked up is what happens behind the wall.  The only good of locking up the gun is theft by airport employees.  We know it, the TSA knows it, and the airlines know it.  It’s the truth.  None of this has anything to do with security.  It’s all about airport theft by airline or airport employees.

Like I said.