Articles by Herschel Smith

Have a good memorial day, and remember to find a family member who lost their loved one on the field of battle and tell them how thankful you are for them.  Perhaps you will find a moment to pray for them?

And remember, Memorial Day isn’t Veteran’s Day, and Veteran’s Day isn’t Memorial Day.

The Courier-Tribune:

An off-duty deputy was bowling when his pistol accidentally discharged, grazing a child with shrapnel on Friday night, the Iredell County Sheriff’s Office said.

The pistol discharged shortly before 8 p.m. at George Pappas’ Victory Lanes on Morlake Drive in Mooresville , according to a sheriff’s office news release. Pappas is a retired Hall of Fame bowler from Charlotte.

The shrapnel grazed the back of a 10-year-old boy, Observer news partner WBTV reported.

The child was not seriously injured and wasn’t taken to a hospital, according to the sheriff’s office.

The sheriff’s office said it will investigate the incident internally, while the Mooresville Police Department determines if any laws were broken.

The deputy has been placed on leave pending the investigations, the sheriff’s office said.

The headline reads “goes off,” while the article says “accidentally discharged.”  Don’t you love how they never say “negligent discharge” when it comes to cops?

But remember boys and girls, only cops can be trusted with firearms.

Laura Loomer:

Recent documents released regarding the the October 1, 2017 Las Vegas Shooting are beginning to shed light on more discrepancies and abnormalities surrounding the official timeline and narrative of the tragedy as originally stated by Sheriff Joe Lombardo and Special Agent Aaron Rouse of the Las Vegas FBI , including documentation that three women were found in the alleged shooter’s room.

The most recent batch of documents that were released include witness reports, dispatch logs, and officer reports that recount the events that took place that night and further reveal that Paddock was not alone in his room as was was first stated by Sheriff Lombardo.

Page 26 of the dispatch logs that were released by LVMPD details the moments when the alleged shooter, Stephen Paddock, was located by a security detail at the Mandalay Bay. As actions were taken to assemble a team of officers to apprehend the suspect, a dispatcher shared the name of the alleged shooter located in Room 32-135, along with three females that were reported to be in the room with Mr. Paddock. However, the names of those three women are redacted from the report …

No wonder the FBI and LVPD didn’t want these documents released.  So here’s a question to ponder.  How many MSM outlets will investigate this?

CNN:

Armed with a federal search warrant, weapons, body armor and flash-bang grenades, DEA agents and members of the Bradley County SWAT team crept up to a house in Cleveland, Tennessee, before dawn Tuesday and then burst inside.

As they swept the entryway, they detonated the grenades and smoke filled the first floor.

Then they opened the basement door and found a man with a gun. They tackled him and told him he was under arrest, wanted for murder.

Except… it was the wrong house and the wrong man.

Spencer Renck says his alarm had just gone off and he was getting up to go to work when he heard the noises upstairs. He grabbed his gun “to protect (his) family from whatever was happening.”

“I thought someone had broke in,” he said in a post on Facebook, recounting the incident. His wife and four children were also in the house.

He went up the basement stairs to see what was going on.

As soon as they open the door I turned around, seen all those guns to pointed at me,” Renck told CNN affiliate WDEF.

That’s when he was tackled, he said, and it took a few minutes before the agents and SWAT team realized they had the wrong address.

“They destroyed my door, door frame, carpet on my stairs blew my ceiling out and burned my living room floor and hallway. All because someone got the wrong house,” Renck wrote on the Facebook post.

He said after they realized their mistake, the agents went to his neighbor’s house.

Renck said that during the raid, one flash-bang grenade went through the open doorway of his young son’s bedroom, and it “blinded and deafened” him.

Now, Renck told WDEF, his son is “worried about how he’s going to sleep at night and he’s wondering if he’s going to have nightmares when he had guns drawn in his room, waking up to a big bang.”

“This operation was a part of a larger ongoing investigation. Unfortunately, this search warrant was initially served on the wrong residence… situations such as these are tragic and DEA takes them very seriously. We intend to look into this matter further and take steps to ensure situations such as this never occur again.”

Hey, I have an idea that will prevent this from ever happening again.  Get rid of your dumb ass SWAT team because it violates the fourth amendment.  How’d I do?

The Salt Lake Tribune, written by Robert Rees who teaches religion at Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, Calif., where he is director of Mormon Studies.

But no matter how much research we do or how much support we drum up to support our own prejudices about guns, we are likely just to go on shouting slogans at each other. Until we are able to permit one another’s views, we will continue to see only so far as the inside of our own heads — and reason only so far as defending our own axioms.

There is no doubt that the LDS takes a strong and unbending position against firearms except in the hands of law enforcement.

LDS Church policy restricts “lethal weapons” at church.

So do the Jehova’s Witnesses.

How a Christian chooses to protect himself, his family, or his possessions is, of course, largely a personal matter, as is his choice of employment. That said, Bible principles reflect God’s wisdom and his love for us. Out of regard for those principles, spiritually mature Christians choose not to keep a firearm for protection against other humans. They know that true and lasting security comes to those who demonstrate trust in God by living in harmony with Bible principles.​

During the great tribulation, Christians will rely on Jehovah and not try to defend themselves.

It’s truly a shame because were these folks more open minded and cared about proper exegesis of the Scriptures, it’s trivial to make an unassailable Biblical case not only for the right of self defense, but the duty to defend not only oneself but other lives as well with every means possible.

The first writer I quoted, Robert Rees, mentioned a world without “moral certainty.”  It’s no wonder that the LDS is screwed up with professors who are morally uncertain.  Moral certainty, sir, comes from the law-word of almighty God, found in the Holy Writ, and of that, I’m quite certain.

It’s so very hard to pick because there are so many good ones.  This one stood out as important by reader Zion.

Lautenberg amendment in NICS acts retroactively to convictions prior to the law and they were NEVER INFORMED. This is “EX POST FACTO”. Those priors before NICS did NOT get “DUE PROCESS” to a lifetime gun ban adding a second sentencing to a prior judgement. This is a “BILL OF ATTAINDER”. NICS IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL TYRANNY, and supporters need to be prosecuted.

Not that there is any court in the land that will say such things as this.

Free Thought Project:

In an email Tuesday night, former Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul released an ominous statement claiming that a source they have in the Senate revealed Democrats are teaming up with Republicans to push through a massive gun control bill.

According to their source, as Paul explained, “Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) are teaming up with Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to ram through one of the worst nationwide gun confiscation schemes ever devised.”

The gun confiscation bill, according to Paul, is designed to disarm Americans without any due process. The senators are using the recent tragic shooting in Texas as the impetus behind the law—in spite of the fact that this law would not have prevented the shooting at all.

As the Free Thought Project has previously reported, some states have already begun implementing laws like this one. Using mass shootings as a their ammunition, states have enacted “Red Flag” or “Risk Protection” laws which allow police to confiscate a person’s weapon before they are ever given a chance to defend themselves.

In both of the gun confiscation cases reported by TFTP, neither of the two men were suspected of committing a crime, nor had they committed a crime.

Under the fifth and fourteenth amendments, due process clauses are in place to act as a safeguard from arbitrary denial of life, liberty, or property by the government outside the sanction of law. What’s more, neither of the men were granted their sixth amendment rights to be confronted with the witnesses against them. In both cases, simple orders—under new laws—were issued, arguably arbitrarily, which stripped these two men of their property.

In spite of what officials and the media claim, when a person is stripped of their constitutional rights, albeit temporarily, without being given the chance to make their own case based on what can be entirely arbitrary accusations, this is the removal of due process.

As Ron Paul explains, this removal of due process could soon be a federal law.

I’ll observe several things here.  I’ve found Ron Paul useful and informed at times, and other times not so much.  Let’s assume that he’s well informed this time and go from there.

It doesn’t surprise me at all to see the names Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.  If he were in better health, we’d see John McCain as well on that list.  These men are controllers, and we all know it.

I’ll also observe that while it’s bothersome and telling about the sorry state of respect for constitutional protections in America, I’m not so impressed by “due process.”  Due process means an activist social planner district attorney takes you on to destroy you and packs the jury with idiots who wear goofy-ass sports jerseys of their favorite criminal and worry about things like their “fantasy football” team.

Due process in America is a bad joke.  The problem is that America is sick unto death, and that doesn’t just mean the politicians.

I’ll close with several predictions.  First, if this does indeed make its way through the system, the NRA will support it and give all of the politicians cover for voting in favor of the bill.  Second, Trump will sign it into law if it crosses his desk.  Third, no court in the land will strike it down as unconstitutional.

We’ll see how well I have predicted, won’t we?

Sun Sentinel:

The families of two victims of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting on Wednesday sued the maker and seller of the weapon used in the rampage, claiming they should be held partially responsible for what Nikolas Cruz did with it.

The parents of Jaime Guttenberg and Alex Schachter want a judge to clear the way for them to claim damages against American Outdoor Brands, formerly known as Smith & Wesson, and Sunrise Tactical Supply. The Coral Springs store is where Cruz purchased the AR-15-style weapon used in the Feb. 14 shooting spree.

Fred and Jennifer Guttenberg, and Max Schachter “seek to hold defendants legally responsible for their complicity in the entirely foreseeable, deadly use of the assault-style weapons that they place on the market,” according to the lawsuit, filed in Broward Circuit Court.

Before the lawsuit can go forward, their attorneys said, judges have to clarify that gun manufacturers and sellers can be sued by victims.

“A confusingly written Florida statute stands in the way,” the attorneys wrote. “If the defendants claim that [the law] entitles them to immunity from such claims, and the courts agree,” the victims will be forced to pay the gun maker’s and seller’s legal fees instead of recovering damages.

The 2001 law, Florida Statute 790.331, explicitly prohibits state, county and city government agencies from suing businesses over the legal manufacture and sale of weapons that are later used unlawfully. The law is silent on whether victims can sue on those grounds.

The same law allows governments and victims to sue over defects in the weapons, but “the potential of a firearm or ammunition to cause serious injury, damage, or death as a result of normal function does not constitute a defective condition of the product.”

The Guttenbergs and Schachter want a judge to either declare that the law does not block them from collecting damages — or to declare the law unconstitutional.

Cruz, 19, bought his Smith & Wesson M&P 15 .223 rifle legally a year before the shooting in Parkland.

Messages left for the attorney representing Sunrise Tactical Supply were not returned Wednesday. Attempts to reach American Outdoor Brands were unsuccessful.

I suspect that the Florida statute is clear, as is the federal statute.  So one of two things happen here.  Either the judge is an activist totalitarian and declares that the suit can go forward, in which case S&W has to hire attorneys as does the Sunrise Tactical Supply, and potentially lose in court – or, the judge declares that the suit can’t go forward and S&W still has to hire litigation attorneys who will charge them a lot of money.

Although we may never be able to prove it, the lawyers for the victims may be funded by Everytown and Bloomberg (or Soros).  This should not be seen disaggregated from the holistic gun controller strategy which is a multi-front war on gun owners and gun manufacturers and sellers.  This is one manifestation of the legal battles we will face in the future, the other manifestation being law-makers at the state and federal level.

This is war.  See it that way.

Via reader Fred Tippens, Bearing Arms:

Now, Gunsite is trying to process this stuff through another company, so I hope they can recover most, if not all, of the money, but I also hope they take Intuit to court over these shenanigans. This isn’t right on any level. At all.

More than that, though, this is the kick of thing that needs to be punished. Intuit needs to be fought on this stuff each and every time it tries this if at all possible. It needs to be forced to figure this into its decision-making matrix before it pulls this with other companies.

The irony? If it wants people to be safer with guns, places like Gunsite are the kind of places it should support. It should want people to go there, train there, learn there, then bring it home to share that knowledge with their fellow gun owners. The reason is that Gunsite is known for being a very safe training academy, something everyone should want to support.

But no. They sell guns, so they must be punished, apparently.

Let that be a lesson to anyone else who has a gun-related business. Now you know who not to do business with.

Oh, it’s much more complicated than that, Tom.  This is another installment, albeit small, in the multifront war on gun owners and gun manufacturers, this time with the flavor of the day being training.

I’ve discussed it in detail, my readers know all about it.  The war is escalating.  The only good thing, as I’ve pointed out, is that the enemy has told us his strategy.  We should listen.

Not everything out there is bad news.  There are some upstart gun makers coming on line.

BROKEN ARROW, Okla. – Business owners in Broken Arrow said downturns in the oil and gas industry has pushed them to manufacture guns instead.

The owners of RISE Armament in Broken Arrow said they started the company in 2013 to focus on manufacturing oil, gas and aerospace equipment. A downturn in the industry, however, changed their plans.

Now, the company manufacturers AR-15 rifles.

The owners told FOX23 that the business near Kenosha and the Broken Arrow Expressway received new machinery this week that will allow them to increase manufacturing numbers.

They said the engineers they employ were able to transfer their previous industry skills to making weapons. They believe that they have been able to make their designs unique.

The owners said they are glad they made the business shift in 2015. They said they can now produce more than 1,600 triggers each week and feel they will soon expand even further.

Good.  I see that Rise Armament makes nice looking rifles, even if a wee bit on the pricey side.

Take this tip from us fellows.  Don’t get yourself entangled with corporate America, and work your logistics train with as little reference to major banks as possible.  Keep us posted on your progress.

A quick note – I do parts, component and gun reviews.  Just sayin’.

Following up the revelation via the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife that sticks and rocks are more effective weapons than guns against mountain lion attacks, reader Fred is still questioning that guidance.

POCATELLO, Idaho (AP) – Idaho State University officials are warning people to use caution after a second mountain lion was spotted on the Pocatello campus in less than a week.

On May 11, Idaho Department of Fish and Game officials tranquilized and relocated a cougar from a trail south of the university. On Wednesday, ISU officials issued a campus-wide alert after a resident reported spotting a mountain lion near the school’s Stephens Performing Arts Center.

ISU public safety officers, Pocatello police and state wildlife officials searched the area but didn’t find the big cat.

Mountain lion sightings in and around Pocatello, as well as elsewhere in the state, happen throughout the year, especially in areas that are on the edge of the urban-wildlife interface.

Since only the King’s men may hunt the royal forests (tip to reader Josh for the comment), Fred may have to test this hypothesis for us by going into the bush in Idaho without a gun to see if a stick is more effective against a big cat.  I think I’ll let Fred go on this adventure by himself.