Articles by Herschel Smith

News from Detroit:

FOWLERVILLE, Mich. – A gunshot rang out at Fowlerville High School during a wrestling tournament Saturday.

Police said an off-duty police officer was at the school to watch his son wrestle when his weapon accidentally discharged about 12:40 p.m. The bullet struck the gymnasium floor.

One person was treated for a twisted ankle they suffered while fleeing the scene, police said, but no one was hurt as a result of the shooting.

His weapon accidentally discharged.  It took on a mind of it’s own and decided, without aid or interaction with any human, to discharge a round.

Don’t you just love how the media puts it when it happens to a cop?  It’s always the gun’s fault.  It’s never a negligent discharge.

ABC News:

An off-duty California police officer pulled a gun on a man whom he accused of stealing Mentos candy at a gas station, according to ABC TV station KABC in Los Angeles.

The man had in fact just purchased the candy, according to surveillance video of the March 16 incident posted by KABC.

In the video, a customer later identified as Jose Arreola can be seen paying a cashier for the Mentos at the gas station in Orange County south of Los Angeles.

Moments later, a man in black shorts and a black shirt who is standing in line behind Arreola pulls out a gun and tells him to put the candy back.

After Arreola tells the man he paid for the candy, the man asks the clerk, “Did he pay for this?”

The clerk confirms the purchase, and the officer apologizes to Arreola.

Arreola told the Orange County Register in a story published Friday that the incident left him scared and angry.

Since you’re not a cop, you’re not a “hero of the community there to protect and serve.”  Therefore, you can’t get away with something like that.

This cop had no muzzle discipline, and doesn’t have the brains to understand Tennessee v. Garner.  But that’s okay, since no prosecutor will ever charge him with assault with a deadly weapon (which is what would happen to us if we ever did something that brainless).

This video is worth watching to the end.  First of all, I dislike the fawning over the NRA and even more over cops.  Stephen is a good man, a very good man, but the thing about this service to the community is that it was unpaid and without regard for the safety of his own life.

As to the part about cops being “sheepdogs,” for me to think of cops that way would require a massive change in culture.  For any individual to rise to the level of being a “sheepdog,” he must be unpaid, and Willeford didn’t think for one second about “coming home safely at the end of the day.”  That’s why this was self-sacrifice.  Cops who write and follow procedures that put officer safety first are not involved in self-sacrifice.

Here is the video.

He’s of course right about the sheepdogs needing a shepherd.

FB:

To All Our Loyal Fans & Customers: We have had a number of inquiries about whether we plan to discontinue sales to Dick’s Sporting Goods. We do not sell to Dick’s. Ruger utilizes a two-step distribution system in which we sell to independent, federally licensed distributors, who sell to independent, federally licensed retailers. Because the distributors are independent, we cannot control where they sell the products they acquire. However, we share your concerns about how Dick’s is conducting itself and are disappointed by their recent actions. Given Dick’s recent pronouncements, we expect it is safe to assume that you will not be seeing Ruger firearms in their stores. #Ruger #firearms

I just don’t know whether I believe this.  All Ruger – or any other manufacturer – has to do is require of their distributors that they not sell to Dick’s Sporting Goods.  If they are caught doing that, then Ruger does not use those distributors any more.

In fact, this could all be set up in a contractual agreement.  What’s so hard about that?  Why is Ruger dismissing this as if we’re stupid and can’t figure it out?

Moe Mensale, Joefour, Frank Clarke and Fred have all had trouble at various times posting comments.

This is very frustrating for me and I know it is for you.  I have over 30,000 comments so far, and I must do something to manage them.  @WRSA has had difficulty as well.  Don’t underestimate the time it takes to do this.

So the way it is currently set up, as best as I can figure, is that the site requires moderation for the first comment, and thereafter unless I spam a commenter they are all allowed.  You don’t have to agree with me in order to be moderated to allow comments.

This is true unless there are URLs in the post.  Then it requires moderation, even for my own if I have a URL in the comment, and thereafter I think the process starts over again.

I do get a number of spam comments with URLs in them from all sorts of seamy places.  Try to live with this until I can figure out a fix.

Thanks for your patience.

Writing in USA Today, Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California’s San Francisco Bay area, is co-chair of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee.

Reinstating the federal assault weapons ban that was in effect from 1994 to 2004 would prohibit manufacture and sales, but it would not affect weapons already possessed. This would leave millions of assault weapons in our communities for decades to come.

Instead, we should ban possession of military-style semiautomatic assault weapons, we should buy back such weapons from all who choose to abide by the law, and we should criminally prosecute any who choose to defy it by keeping their weapons. The ban would not apply to law enforcement agencies or shooting clubs.

I think he underestimates the scope, difficulty, magnitude, and danger of his project.  I suggest proof of principle.  Start in South Carolina.  Send FedGov agents of all kinds to Traveler’s Rest, Pickens, Spartanburg, Boiling Springs, and Marietta, and tell them to go door to door confiscating weapons.

Make sure you drop by that boy’s home who drives the loud truck with the Confederate flag waving.  He has a Molon Labe sticker on the back windshield.  Yes, yes, I know there’s a lot of them.  That’s not my problem.  This is your project, not mine.

Write me a note and tell me how that goes.

Magpul is soon to release a new bipod they’ve apparently been working a while on.  Here is the video.

It has extendable legs, as well as hardware for a Picatinny rail mount.  I’m assuming that this video and their design targets tactical shooters, whereas the Harris bipod targets precision shooters and hunters.

The best thing about this product is the cost.  At $110, it will market for approximately half the cost of the Harris bipod.

When it was released yesterday over the objection of law enforcement, I watched it and thought at the time it was a lot of nothing.

It took ZeroHedge pointing out to us that no broken windows were reported.  In fact, it’s really more than that.  It was positively asserted by one team member that there were no broken windows.

Make of this what you will, and fill us in with the comments.

In the mail from Springfield Armory, teamspringfield@springfield-armory.com.

GENESEO, IL, (05/03/18) – Springfield Armory is severing ties with Dick’s Sporting Goods and its subsidiary, Field & Stream, in response to their hiring a group for anti-Second Amendment lobbying.

This latest action follows Dick’s Sporting Goods’ decision to remove and destroy all modern sporting rifles (MSR) from their inventory. In addition, they have denied Second Amendment rights to Americans under the age of 21. We at Springfield Armory believe that all law abiding American citizens of adult age are guaranteed this sacred right under our Constitution.

It is clear where Dick’s Sporting Goods and its subsidiary, Field & Stream, stand on the Second Amendment, and we want to be clear about our message in response. Their position runs counter to what we stand for as a company. At Springfield Armory, we believe in the right and principles fought for and secured by American patriots and our founding forefathers, without question. We will not accept Dick’s Sporting Goods’ continued attempts to deny Second Amendment freedoms to our fellow Americans.

Good.  Let’s hope more follow, as well as more manufacturers refusing to sell to the State of New York.

Citizen Times:

“I don’t think we’ll take up gun legislation of any type,” said state Rep. Chuck McGrady, a Henderson County Republican first elected to the General Assembly in 2010, the same year Republicans established control of the body.

“To get to a different place on guns, you’d have to have a different mix of legislators — it’s a pretty conservative state,” McGrady said. “I do anticipate we’ll be putting some monies into the school safety issue.”

That would revolve around “hardening” schools — adding security, police officers and other physical measures that would make schools more difficult for a shooter to attack — not measures designed to make it harder to buy guns.

State Rep. Brian Turner, a Democrat who represents part of Buncombe County, said it’s unrealistic to expect the Republican-dominated legislature to impose rules making it harder to get guns when the body opens the 2018 session May 16.

“If we do see something, I would imagine it would probably be along the lines of the hardening of schools and adding additional resource officers,” Turner said. “I think the focus would be less around firearms specifically and more about deterrence and prevention.”

A gun owner and hunter himself, Turner is far from anti-gun. But restrictions on “Title 2 weapons,” such as short-barreled shotguns or suppressors, might make sense, he said.

While North Carolina elected a Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, in 2016, it also went overwhelmingly for President Donald Trump, a Republican. On gun issues, the Tar Heel State is reliably conservative, according to Chris Cooper, a political scientist at Western Carolina University.

Cooper acknowledged Florida’s legislature raised the age to buy an AR-15 to 21 after the school shooting, as the shooter was 19, but he said “it’s unlikely we’ll see a lot of movement” in North Carolina.

“I think there was a policy window that opened briefly, but it appears to be closing,” Cooper said. “Florida had a little bit of movement, and people are talking about the issue, but I don’t think there’s a lot of persuasion going on. Even though people are talking about it more, I think both sides are drawing people more firmly into their own camps.”

Gun control legislation is “a particularly tough sell in North Carolina,” which has a strong tradition of hunting and gun ownership.

“We’ve looked to be to the left of some of the country on some issues, but gun rights is not one of those issues,” Cooper said.

Restrictions on suppressors might make sense to State Rep. Brian Turner because he is an idiot.  If he is a hunter like he says he is, he would understand the value of hearing and how much damage can be done to it.  So I think he is lying.  I don’t think he’s a hunter at all.

Moreover, hunting has nothing whatsoever to do with gun rights or the second amendment or the constitution of North Carolina.  So I think he just threw in hunting to bolster his creds thinking that we’d buy it.  I don’t.  I don’t buy any of his claptrap.  I wish people would stop mentioning hunting in the context of gun rights.  It’s stupid and it makes the person saying it look like an imbecile.

But what I do buy is that the NC legislature will do nothing to enact further restrictions on firearms freedoms without a huge fight.  For the sake of everyone, this isn’t a bridge Turner or anyone else wants to cross.  The only gun legislation I want to see is constitutional carry and repeal of the CLEO permitting process.