Articles by Herschel Smith

Military.com:

While the congressionally mandated close-air support tests between the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and A-10 Warthog wrapped up this week, lawmakers may not be satisfied with the results as questions continue to swirl about how each performed.

“I personally wrote the specific provisions in the [Fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act] mandating a fly-off between the F-35 & A-10,” Rep. Martha McSally, an Arizona Republican, tweeted Friday. “It must be carried out per Congressional intent & direction.”

McSally, a former A-10 pilot whose home state includes Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, said she had reached out to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein to “ensure an objective comparison.”

The requirement that the two aircraft go up against each other was included as a provision in the bill amid congressional concerns over plans to retire the A-10 and replace it with the F-35. McSally was one of the architects of the bill’s language.

Her comments follow a Project on Government Oversight report that slams what it calls skewed testing techniques, saying the flights overwhelmingly favored the F-35.

Well of course it did.  The effeminate fly boys must have their drones and 5GW electronics and sexy air frames to impress the other effeminate boys.  But if you ask me, there is nothing sexier looking than an A-10.  Any country that would give up such a magnificent air frame deserves what’s coming.

I had missed it until this article, but there is a very nice video – well worth watching in its entirety – of the distinction between A-10 pilots and everyone else.  They are grunts in the sky.  But before we get there, watch the devastation that 30mm gun can bring down on the enemy.  Fast forward to the 6:24 mark.  The caption says it takes a while to call in an air strike.

And now for grunts in the sky.

Star Advertiser:

Maui police were looking for three suspects after several shots were fired during a home invasion robbery in Haiku.

Police responded to a report of shots fired at a Haiku home at about 10:35 p.m. Thursday and found three adult victims who said three males wearing hooded sweatshirts entered their home with one of them brandishing a shiny handgun.

The bandits forced one victim into a bathroom, then walked through the house. A second victim armed himself with an AR-15 rifle and fired a round at the robbers, nearly striking one.

The three suspects fled, firing four gunshots on the way out.

No one was hurt during the robbery, police said. One victim reported the suspects took $3,000.

[ … ]

Police said a firearm was recovered at the scene.

How ironic.  Simply rolling out an AR-15 and missing with it was enough to thwart the home invasion, and this in the state with the most onerous gun control in the nation (perhaps with the exception of New York).

Hey, with all of that gun control, how did these perps manage to get a firearm anyway?  I thought gun control was supposed to assure us this kind of thing wouldn’t happen?

HuffPo:

Well, I’ll say it if Trump won’t.  Hey Trey, are you listening?

The NSA and CIA are among the most wicked organizations on the planet, and cannot be trusted.  You can throw the DOJ and FBI into that mix as well.

As for Gowdy, what do you think the chances are of Trey having been method-actor this whole time, working for the deep state, always outraged, never bringing anyone to justice, and always preventing the need to take anything to court or hold anyone accountable for their illegal actions?

Gaston Gazette:

Public access to an outdoor pistol range near Rankin Lake Park has officially been shot down after a five-year run.

Gastonia leaders say low interest in the amenity, combined with the cost of staffing the facility, led to the decision at the city’s Firearms and Tactical Training Center. Cutting off public use of the pistol range will maximize the use of all the amenities there, including a neighboring rifle range, said City Councilman David Humphries.

Humphries chairs a public safety committee that reviewed recent trends at the range before making the recommendation to do away with public pistol range access. City Council members voted unanimously in favor of that decision this month.

The facility at 1000 Tulip Drive features a public skeet and trap range, as well as a pistol and rifle range that are heavily used by law enforcement officers for training purposes. In 2013, the city opened things up and began allowing residents to fire handguns on the range from 8 a.m. to noon, and rifles from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturdays. The fee for 30 minutes of handgun time was $5 for Gastonia residents and $10 for non-residents. Rifle rates were the same, though on an hourly basis.

The public access to the pistol and rifle ranges has never been advertised on the city’s website, relying mostly on word of mouth for people to know about it.

Minimal public use of the pistol range prompted the city to cut back the hours of operation there beginning in 2017. Humphries said at the time that maintaining time for public use of the range had taken away opportunities for law enforcement officers to train on the grounds. And Gastonia Police Chief Robert Helton said keeping track of handgun users requires more oversight, because it’s easier for a careless person to inadvertently point a loaded handgun in an unsafe direction.

After the cutback, the pistol range was generally only open to the public for four hours a month – generally on the first Saturday of each month. Humphries and Councilman Jim Gallagher said at least two city staff members had to man the pistol range during those times, and few people ever showed up.

“I think the average was one to two (people) per session,” said Humphries. “With rifle shooters, a lot more of them show up at different times of the year.”

The change will enhance the more popular public use of the rifle range, he said. Because of the 90-degree configuration of the training center, the rifle and pistol ranges cannot safely be used at the same time.

Maybe if the ranges were open more often than they are – both of them – and maybe if the folks who run them weren’t jerks, both would be more popular and well used.

Here’s the thing, officer.  I’ve shot at so many ranges I’ve lost count and couldn’t name them all.  At every one of them, folks managed to shoot pistols without pointing them in an unsafe direction, whether we had ROs with us or not.  Some of the safest shooting I’ve ever done is when shooters were self-policing.  I don’t buy your argument.

As for your rifle range, the folks who run it are obnoxious.  I won’t go back there again.  And I’ll have to say that South Carolina has North Carolina beat by ten miles on this front.  South Carolina has free ranges associated with the DNR.  North Carolina doesn’t.

Via WRSA, the British authorities knew all along that the Pakistani rape gang existed in Rotherham a full decade before investigating.  Furthermore, the police knew and ignored it.

Here in the states, Mueller has offered Tony Podesta immunity for testifying against Paul Manafort.  John and Tony Podesta both ought to be in prison as we speak.

And yet here we are with the swamp creatures alive and well.  Do you understand?

Shooting Illustrated:

To see how illustrative a small sampling might be, I decided to fire 100 rounds of the same ammo, out of the same rifle, during identical shooting and atmospheric conditions. My thinking was 100 carefully fired and recorded shots should provide a more practical picture of performance. The results changed the way I look at performance testing results, and might explain some of the misses we sometimes experience.

[ … ]

If we accept this 100-shot accuracy test as being representative, it’s clear simply firing and chronographing a couple three- or five-shot groups is not illustrative of how any rifle/load combination will perform over time. If you want to know what you can really expect from your rifle, every time you pull the trigger on a certain load, you need to evaluate more than one box of ammo.

In this article he deals only with those pseudo-random variables like velocity due to differences in loading, bullet weight, etc.  While it is well beyond the scope of this post, there are also things like stochastic vibration propagation along grain boundaries and crystalline structures of the gun barrel, which gets very complicated.  That subject cannot be given justice here.

When you fire a 3-shot group and claim that the gun shoots “__” MOA, or a 5-shot group and that the gun is capable of “__” MOA, that’s only marginally useful.  That data doesn’t meet the Central Limit Theorem (CLT) for convergence and presence of  at least three moments (a mean, fractional standard deviation of < 5% and a Variance of the Variance that is acceptable to an analyst).

But 3-shot and 5-shot groups is all you’ll ever see from a gun manufacturer.  Just realize that this is essentially meaningless and much more is needed to yield a standard distribution with proper variance.

Readers know that I not only open carry (sometimes) because I hate the feel of concealed carry and find it highly uncomfortable, but also because I believe we need to normalize this behavior.  As I’ve said before, I believe that opposition to open carry is about shaming gun owners.  I’ve also observed that “there is no prima facie reason that open carry cannot be legitimately for the reason of making a statement or for education purposes.”  I believe in open carry “For the peace, good and dignity of the country and the welfare of its people.”

If you do not choose to open carry for whatever reason, I’m okay with that.  I’m also okay with a gun carrier not feeling comfortable with doing something in an attempt to normalize acceptance.  I’m okay with these things as long as concealed carriers are okay with my choices and don’t criticize me for mine.  I do not open carry all of the time, but when I do, I expect acceptance from the gun community.  No, I demand acceptance from the gun community.

This all stipulates that open carriers don’t act like a jerk.  I was with an open carrier tonight waiting in a fast food line (I ended up getting a chicken salad), and he acted like a prick.  He was resting his hand on his firearm much of the time.  You’re as much of a goober if you touch your weapon as a cop is.  Get your damn hand off your gun.

He was dressed poorly and sloppily.  He then proceeded to act like a prick to the lady behind the counter about something, said hey to no one and offered no greetings, and as he sat with his family after he got his food, he blurted out obnoxious comments to his children wanting to know where they were going and what they were doing in a manner that everyone could hear him.  His poor daughter was simply going to the drink fountain.

If you openly carry, you are an ambassador for our cause.  Don’t be an ass.  Please.  Just stay home.  Dress appropriately, be nice, be respectful, observe proper rules (don’t play with your gun), and don’t leave retention straps hanging down from your holster.  Work on your holster to make it look like a gentleman is carrying a gun.

Do more than just look like a gentleman.  Become a gentleman.  Or stay home.

According to The Washington Post.

Juan Carlos Nazario was sitting on a lakeside bench waiting to play soccer when he heard the staccato popping of gunshots outside Louie’s On the Lake, a popular waterfront grill and pub. He ran to his car to get his gun and moved toward the sounds.

Bryan Whittle was driving with his wife, heading off for a Memorial Day weekend getaway, when he saw a commotion outside Louie’s. He thought someone might be drowning, so instead of turning his truck onto the highway, he barreled into the parking lot to offer help. As he jumped out, what he learned stunned him: There was an active shooter just yards away, and wounded victims were holed up in the restaurant’s bathroom.

Whittle, too, grabbed his gun.

In a matter of seconds, the two armed citizens became self-appointed protectors, moving to take up positions around the shooter, drawing their weapons and shouting for him to drop his. Time stretched and warped. There was an exchange of gunfire. The gunman was hit several times and fell. As Nazario and Whittle converged over the man to restrain him, police arrived. Unsure who was who, officers handcuffed all of the men and put them on the ground as the shooter bled out into the grass and died.

“I was just doing what I was supposed to do,” recalled Nazario, a former police officer who said he now works as a security guard, always has his gun in the car and usually carries it with him.

“I just reacted,” said Whittle, who has served for nearly 20 years in the Oklahoma Air National Guard and works for the Federal Aviation Administration. “There’s a guy with a gun. I’ve got a gun. Stop the threat.”

Though they were loaded into police cars and taken downtown for questioning, they were soon hailed as heroes. They were also called champions of Second Amendment rights, gun-carrying examples of why Oklahoma’s Republican governor should not have vetoed a bill two weeks earlier that would have eliminated the need for a permit and training to carry a gun in public.

Local police also praised Nazario and Whittle, saying their swift response ended what a police spokesman called “a very dangerous situation.”

But police also noted that armed citizens can complicate volatile situations. The first of 57 uniformed police officers arrived just a minute after the initial 911 calls and found a complex scene with multiple armed people and no clear sense of what had happened or who was responsible.

“We don’t want people to be vigilantes,” Bo Mathews, a spokesman for the Oklahoma City Police Department, said in a recent interview. “That’s why we have police officers.”

What?  We have police officers to be vigilantes, not other people?  Is that what’s being said here?

Probably not.  He probably means that we just cannot have ordinary people defending themselves – after all, that’s what the police are for.

Or not.  Yea, surely not.

Perhaps he meant that they didn’t want their officers having to think about the situation when they show up, and just shoot everybody who looks like they might have a firearm without observing proper rules for the use of force and thus have to worry about pedestrian things like backstop and proper target ID.

You can make up your own mind.  Maybe you’ll know what you’re talking about.  He sure as hell doesn’t.

Fox News:

In bodycam footage so stunning it could be mistaken for a Hollywood action flick, a Las Vegas Metro police officer chasing two men in an SUV is seen speeding through Sin City’s downtown while simultaneously shooting out his car’s front windshield and trading shots from his side window during a deadly gun battle.

The two suspects allegedly fled after a July 11 traffic stop conducted by cops investigating the murder of a man near a car wash, FOX5 Vegas reported.

The suspects traded more than 60 shots with police during the harrowing pursuit. The officer behind the wheel, William Umana, can be heard on video yelling “shots fired” multiple times. The chase ended when the suspects crashed into the wall of an elementary school.

Rene Nunez, 30, got out of the vehicle and tried to run upstairs into the school, but the door was locked, Las Vegas Metro police Assistant Sheriff Tim Kelly said.

Fidel Miranda, 23, moved toward the passenger seat of the SUV and started to move it back toward the officer’s cruiser. Police fired on Miranda and he later died at the scene. Nunez, who was also wounded, was arrested and is facing several felony charges, including murder, police said.

The shooting “paints a picture of the dangers these officers dealt with that day,” Kelly said.

“In my opinion, they show a level of bravery, professionalism, heroics, that we come to expect of our officers,” Kelly said. “The officer could have backed off but he didn’t, he stuck with that individual knowing what type of individual he was dealing with.”

So he’s a hero and pistolero.  But tell me after watching the video that he knew his backstop when he was shooting out the window while moving, and especially when he was shooting through the windshield of his patrol unit when the bullet could have been sent at virtually any angle.

Tell me the officer knew he wasn’t going to shoot some little girl or boy walking on the sidewalk.

Army Technology:

The US Army has awarded a new contract to aerospace and defence manufacturing firm Textron Systems to develop a functional prototype for the Next Generation Squad Automatic Rifle (NGSAR) programme.

Textron’s prototype could be used to replace the army’s light machine gun, the M249 squad automatic weapon (SAW), in the Brigade Combat Teams (BCT).

The scope of the contract involves the development and delivery of a new system demonstrator, which would be based on Textron Systems’ current portfolio of Cased-Telescoped (CT) weapons and ammunition.

The company intends to produce a high-velocity, magazine-fed system of an intermediate caliber.

A new automatic rifle with a new ammunition from a manufacturer who has no history making guns.  I’m sure this will work out well.