Articles by Herschel Smith

Via reader JoeFour, this link is an veritable encyclopedia of knowledge of the 1911.  I intend to print it out, read it, and keep it handy.  In the mean time, it would be nice if readers would peruse the contents and lift the important things out for us here, or merely the interesting things to you for commentary and discussion.

Via WRSA.  Bad things.  That’s what.

Before the 1945 Soviet occupation of Romania, the people had the right to own guns. I remember my father telling me his dad owned a double barreled shotgun he used to hunt rabbits with as well as a Luger picked from the retreating German troops (German soldiers were getting rid of all their military equipment by simply throwing it out of the troop transport trains).

When the communists took power in 1949 following falsified elections, the first law they enacted was total gun  confiscation (for the greater good of course).Then after they made sure the population was disarmed they started the arrests, imprisonments, reeducation camps and killings.  So practically since 1949 it was illegal to own any firearms in communist Romania.

Then there is this very important observation.  Listen carefully dear men.

After so many years of restrictions and servitude for over two generations, the perception of the Romanian population about gun rights changed in worse; I must admit when I first came to the US I too was surprised to see how owning guns is something normal and affordable and I too believed guns in the hands of untrained people can be dangerous (and keep in mind I served 2 years in the military so I was familiar with firearms).

After so many years of war and occupation the overwhelming majority of the people were sick and tired of the war so they believed what the propaganda of the new regime was telling them. They were lied that the government will protect them, that guns must be surrendered for their own safety, that since the war is over there is no need for guns anymore.

I’ve made the same observation before, albeit thankfully without first hand knowledge.

Every single one of the genocides in the twentieth century – every … single … one – from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot to Idi Amin to the Turkish Ottoman Muslim extermination of the Armenian Christians, was preceded by gun confiscations.

Nothing good ever comes from surrendering your firearms.  The founders knew that and gave us the 2nd amendment – if we can keep it.  And again, make careful note that reeducation and propagandizing is all part of the larger strategy for subduing the American culture to the wishes of the controllers.

The Gun Writer:

While traditional open carry is generally banned, Florida law allows the open carry of handguns while hunting or fishing.

To be clear, you can wear an exposed handgun in a holster if you’re fishing — period. It’s completely legal.

There are a few other exceptions.

This fishing exception was apparently unknown by Miami Beach police officers Sunday morning.

The results were almost tragic.

Thank God no one was killed or seriously injured.

Details are still emerging, but here’s what we know for sure:

A group of fishermen — who were lawfully open-carrying handguns — was fishing off of the South Pointe Pier in Miami Beach Sunday morning at around 10:40, when they were confronted by Miami Beach police officers.

At some point during the confrontation, a Miami Beach police officer pointed his gun at the group. At least one man was unlawfully detained and his weapon was confiscated.

Police injured one man’s shoulder when they took him to the ground. He was later transported to a hospital.

So now do you want to hear how the MSM reported this event?  Hold on to your breeches boys.

Six armed people who were fishing Sunday morning at the South Pointe Pier in Miami Beach were detained by police and then released.

The anglers, whose guns were openly displayed on their hips, cited a state law that allows people to carry a firearm while fishing, hunting, camping or attending a gun show, said Miami Beach Police spokesman Ernesto Rodriguez.

Park rangers spotted the group about 10 a.m. Sunday and summoned police. The anglers were questioned by police but allowed to stay after mentioning the state law, Rodriguez said.

“Out of an abundance of caution we have assigned two officers to the pier while they remain,” he said. “We are encouraging visitors to use other portions of South Pointe Park.”

It all sounds so peaceful and well-intentioned, yes?  So here is a question for you.  Abundance of what caution?  Exactly what did the police think they were protecting?

Let’s pose a question. “Why officer, you don’t want us to see a weapon on the carriers, but carrying concealed is acceptable, then exactly what are you doing by recommending we stay away from these men?  They could be carrying anyway and it be legal, it’s just that we wouldn’t know about it?”

They would only have one answer.  “We don’t want you to see peaceable men openly carrying weapons because you may figure out that there is no difference between open and concealed carry except that you don’t know it if someone has concealed their weapons.  Then you may demand that these men be allowed to do that everywhere, or at least not oppose open carry, and we can’t have the peasants with the same rights we have, can we?”

But the MSM reporter doesn’t go there, because like all MSM reporters, she got her talking points from the cops.  The MSM is an organ of the state.  It always has been, it always will be.

One final thing.  Let’s stipulate that the cops were poorly bred, uneducated imbeciles for a moment (that’s usually a good approximation for cops).  The first thing out of my mouth if I had responded to this event as a cop would have been this.  “Hey boys, how’s the fishing?  Catching anything today?  Let’s talk about what you’re doing here, sirs.”

Unholstering a weapon and pointing it at someone who is peaceable and innocent is the most idiotic, irresponsible, dangerous and thoughtless thing a person can do.  The cops truly are morons of the highest order.

This one is rather different from the room-clearing and military operations on urban terrain (MOUT) in so much of Iraq.  But it’s not too different from the footage of the battle where Travis Haley was making successful kills at 600 meters.

The battle is long range, and a collection of forces (US Army, Blackwater, Spanish troops) are defending a FOB when it came under attack from Sadr’s fighters.

The first scene is in daylight, with some slower targeted shooting and also some use of crew-served weapons, while the second (and more interesting) scene is a night battle where they are making big use of fires targeted by use of an M203.

The Intercept:

The secrets are hidden behind fortified walls in cities across the United States, inside towering, windowless skyscrapers and fortress-like concrete structures that were built to withstand earthquakes and even nuclear attack. Thousands of people pass by the buildings each day and rarely give them a second glance, because their function is not publicly known. They are an integral part of one of the world’s largest telecommunications networks – and they are also linked to a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program.

Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. In each of these cities, The Intercept has identified an AT&T facility containing networking equipment that transports large quantities of internet traffic across the United States and the world. A body of evidence – including classified NSA documents, public records, and interviews with several former AT&T employees – indicates that the buildings are central to an NSA spying initiative that has for years monitored billions of emails, phone calls, and online chats passing across U.S. territory.

The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.”

My oldest son Josh says “They didn’t even mention 33 Thomas St. in NYC.  AT&T is a government entity.”

Yes, like Google and many other companies.  It wouldn’t be a problem if [a] the FedGov didn’t spy on its own people, and /or [b] FedGov couldn’t find willing corporate partners in this endeavor.

When men reject God, they must created a god in their own image, but assign him attributes of the only true God in order to have a replacement.  Thus, all of their philosophy is based on theft.

In this case they are erecting a totem of omniscience, helped and assisted by mankind because their god is dead.  The state is usurping the true authority of God, because only He can be or should be omniscient.  This is evil in all of its manifestations and applications, and those who do it or help them walk in wickedness.

FedGov is wicked.  AT&T is wicked.

Shooting Sports USA has an interesting article on changing barrel lengths and the necessary adjustments to everything else.  I confess I had never thought of most of that.  There is this interesting deliverance of their testing.

Accuracy testing with a six-inch barrel resulted in an approximate 30 FPS drop in velocity when the same barrel was shortened to five inches. Surprising to some, accuracy actually improved by ⅜ inch (.375) with the shorter barrel. This was likely due to a balance of velocity and stabilization.

I’ve got a trip into the bush coming up soon and this is the rig I’m carrying.

I like the 5″ barrel and the weight added by the tactical light and the Wilson Combat magazine.  To me it assists in stabilization versus shooting .45 ACP from a 4.25″ barrel (which takes me a little longer to recover sight picture due to muzzle rise).

Stephen Halbrook:

For 20 years now, a well-meaning law professor has been peddling the fiction that the Second Amendment – guaranteeing the right of Americans to keep and bear arms – was adopted to protect slavery. He first proposed this in a 1998 law review article and trotted it out again in a recent New York Times op-ed.

The trouble is: It’s untrue. Not a single one of America’s founders is known to have suggested such a purpose.

When the Redcoats came to disarm the colonists, the American patriots relied on the right to “have arms for their Defense,” as stated in the English Declaration of Rights of 1689.

In 1776, Pennsylvania declared: “That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves, and the state.” Vermont copied that language in its constitution, which explicitly abolished slavery. Massachusetts and North Carolina adopted their own versions.

When the states debated adoption of the Constitution without a bill of rights in 1787-88, Samuel Adams proposed the right to bear arms in Massachusetts’s ratification convention. The Dissent of the Minority did so in Pennsylvania, and the entire New Hampshire convention demanded recognition of the right.

There was no connection to slavery in any of these historical antecedents.

In his articles, Professor Carl T. Bogus of Roger Williams University speculates that George Mason’s and Patrick Henry’s demands in the Virginia ratification convention could have been motivated to protect slavery. Not so.

Mason recalled that “when the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised … to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”

And Patrick Henry implored: “The great object is, that every man be armed.” The ensuing debate concerned defense against tyranny and invasion – not slavery.

New York, North Carolina and Rhode Island joined in the demand for what became the Second Amendment. The right to bear arms had universal support.

I’ve seen those claims before and dismissed them as the trivial contrivances they are.

The problem is that men tend to see history through their own eyes and the context they have in post-modern America, even if that isn’t the way historical studies works.

It’s also very difficult to understand American history without the framework of continental Calvinian doctrine and polity, and an understanding of the proper relationship of the three institutions ordained by God, i.e., state, church and family (Gary North also includes economics, or in other words, the market).  You can add the fourth if so inclined.

Balance between institutions means implementing covenant in all of its blessings and curses.  It means not allowing one institution to usurp the authority of God over the other institutions, and that necessitates something like the second amendment.

It wasn’t anything so pedestrian as slavery that created the second amendment.  It was a necessary doctrine in a nation to be founded on Biblical principles, albeit imperfectly.

Honest men understand that and use it as a framework to understand American history.  Dishonest men and imbeciles make up their own shit just because.

Shreveport Times:

A Shreveport police officer is under an administrative investigation after he accidentally fired his department-issued gun while teaching two summer interns about gun safety.

Cpl. Marcus Hines accidentally fired his department-issued .40-caliber Glock handgun around 11 a.m. on Wednesday, June 20, while inside his office, according to a police report.

Hines told the department that neither he nor the two public information office interns — a 21-year-old woman and a 22-year-old man — were injured.

Hines’s work assignment is to serve as a department spokesman. Calls to him Thursday evening regarding the incident were not returned.

According to police reports, Hines and the interns recently returned from watching the department’s special response team receive tactical training when Hines began to discuss department-issued weapons and gun safety.

During the conversation, Hines unholstered his gun, removed the magazine and then removed a round from the chamber. He was telling the interns how one should always point the gun in a safe direction when it fired, said Chief Administrative Assistant Ben Raymond in a statement.

The round penetrated the carpet of Hines’ office. Police later removed round fragments near Hines’ desk and took photos of the scene, police said.

After the gun went off, Hines followed police protocol and contacted a supervisor. Hines was then taken to Willis-Knighton Work Kare for substance-abuse screening, police said.

Hines told police he was trying to make the weapon “safe” when the gun went off.

I know.  It just went off.  I hate it when that happens to me.

But here’s a tip that’s helped me a lot.  Take those dumb ass ear buds out when you’re on duty and trying to keep life safe for folks.

David Codrea:

Who thinks the Bloods, the Crips, the Latin Kings, MS-13, Vatos Locos, the 18^th Street Gang and all the others will have their activities curtailed in the slightest? Gun-grabbing Opposite Day “progressives” are sticking it once more to the “law-abiding” and creating even more incentives for a dangerous black market (and attendant “turf wars”) to flourish.

It’s always the peaceable men who suffer under the yoke of bondage.  It’s almost like they’re trying to turn otherwise peaceable men into fighters.

And I’m assuming that since New Jersey is such a safe place anyway, criminals won’t benefit from this, will they?

Thanks for the well-wishers on Friday.  Nickel summary: The host had a card that had been hacked.  The bank told us that most accounts would roll over to the new card without a problem since it was the same number (just different security code).  Most did.

The hosting company didn’t.  So we had to give them new bank information and then the site was put back up.

Money.  Sorry for the inconvenience.