Articles by Herschel Smith

The Hill:

A Bank of America executive announced Tuesday that the bank will stop lending money to companies that manufacture “military-style” rifles that are available for civilians to purchase.

Anne Finucane, Bank of America’s vice chair, told Bloomberg TV that the bank doesn’t want to “underwrite or finance military-style firearms” and has told a number of gun manufacturers that it will no longer do business with them.

The bank has lended to the gun makers Vista Outdoor, Remington and Sturm Ruger, CNBC reported.

Bank of America had said that after the shooting in Parkland, Fla., in mid-February it was exploring ways it could contribute to stemming gun violence. The confessed gunman in that shooting used an AR-15-style rifle.

“These are clients we have enjoyed a relationship with,” Finucane said. “There are those I think will reduce their portfolios and we’ll work with them and others that will choose to do something else.”

Asked if Bank of America would stop doing business with retailers that sell assault weapons, Finucane said that would involve complicated issues dealing with civil liberties and the Second Amendment.

“That’s a good public dialogue, but that’s a ways off,” she said.

Finucane said that reaction from gun manufacturers to Bank of America’s decision has been mixed.

“Reduce their portfolios.”  That’s what the progressives at BoA want gun makers to do.  Reduce their portfolios.  Gun control by fiat via decisions in the banking industry.  Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear at some point that the FedGov was involved in meetings with BoA to encourage this decision.

Also take note that the notion of stopping business with retailers who do not comply deserves a “public dialogue,” and is “a ways off.”  In other words, it’s a step in the works but needs more time to ferment.  And it was two days ago I said this.

Now let’s turn to gun manufacturers.  Suppose that Ruger needs to spend $500,000 buying to tooling to replace old and worn tooling machinery, or to retool a line to fabricate a new product.  Suppose that none of the banks will do business with Ruger.  How does Ruger pay for the tooling machinery?  They can’t go through the bank.  They can’t hand cash to the machinery manufacturer – their accountant would reject it as making them look like they’re doing business with Iran.  No bank in their right mind will allow a company to deposit $500,000 cash without knowing where it came from.

I know accountants.  I maintain that no accountant can deposit a million dollars in cash with a bank teller.  It just doesn’t happen.  No, I’m not talking about drug deals in Florida or Texas or whatever other exception you can find.  I’m talking about people who pay their taxes, want to stay in business, and have to make it work with banks in order to stay above board.

This will prove to be very difficult for gun manufacturers to deal with.  And I maintain that this is just one step in the coming festivities over the next couple of years.  There will be further controls over gun owners as well.  You mark my words on that, whether at the local, state or federal level.  Bump stocks won’t be the last you hear of gun control by the Trump administration, all endorsed and given cover by the NRA.

Dallas News:

Months before President Donald Trump announced that he would ban bump stocks in the wake of the deadly Las Vegas mass shooting, Doug Alexander spent $300 on the accessory to show off at the gun range.

“I’ll be real honest with you, the bump stock, I bought it as a toy because it looked cool,” the Abilene resident and Air Force veteran said of the gun device that allows a semi-automatic rifle to fire at nearly automatic rates.

Although Alexander purchased the device legally more than a year ago, he’s now among tens of thousands of bump stock owners whose expensive accessories face an uncertain fate under a proposed federal ban of the devices.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives estimated that more than half a million people own bump stocks in a report released March 29 for the agency’s proposed bump stock ban. The report also found that 2,281 retailers and two bump stock manufacturers would be impacted by a ban. The proposal is expected to cost the industry, public and the government more than $200 million in a 10-year time span.

Alexander, a 61-year-old Dallas native, purchased his bump stock from Slide Fire, the country’s leading bump stock manufacturer based in the tiny Texas town of Moran, 40 miles east of Abilene.

“I thought it was cool that they were producing this, and I kind of figured I was helping the local economy, too,” he said.

ATF posted the proposed ban at the end of March, which requires a 90-day public comment period. The change would revise the agency’s definition of a machine gun to include “bump-stock-type devices,” despite a 2010 decision that determined bump stocks can’t be classified as a machine gun.

Under pressure after mass shootings around the country, Trump ordered the Justice Department and ATF to ban the devices. Bump stocks were found in the Las Vegas shooter’s hotel room, but they were not used in the Florida high school rampage in February or the massacre at the Sutherland Springs, Texas, church in November.

“Bump stocks are going to be gone,” Trump vowed last month.

Obama Administration legalized bump stocks. BAD IDEA. As I promised, today the Department of Justice will issue the rule banning BUMP STOCKS with a mandated comment period. We will BAN all devices that turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2018

And you can bet that many gun owners feel the same way.  I told you – Trump is a one-termer because of this.  They separated him from his base.  And in doing so, the Congressmen and Senators managed to get the ban they wanted without having to go on record with a vote, thus opening themselves to the disapproval of the gun owning public.

The NRA gave him cover to do this.  You can blame the NRA, and you can blame Trump, who believes in nothing but himself.

Voice of Europe:

Wednesday night, about 20 Muslim migrants attacked a Christian congregation outside St. Mary’s church during the holy liturgy in Leukosia, Greece’s Pronews reports. 

Most of the Christians were inside the church when 20 Muslims suddenly arrived at the temple’s yard and began screaming, cursing, and beating the attendees.

According to statements given by locals at Sigma live news, one of the Muslims was waving an adze and tried to use it against members of the congregation. The Muslims disappeared after the police, called in by the terrorized believers, appeared on the scene.

The people of Cyprus live in agony, as the Orthodox Easter will be on the next Sunday. No one knows if a similar accident will happen again.

Europe is lost.  We all know that.  Christians have been led to the slaughter by their leaders who flooded the continent with savages, and who either never let them arm up or demanded that they disarm.

This is what happens.  The coming chaos and terror for Christians is unavoidable and nothing can be done to stop it.  They cannot even defend themselves.

As for Christians in America, there are many subdivisions, but the two most dangerous and debilitating are [1] those who believe that Jesus is returning to remove them from the chaos and set up a reign in Jerusalem, and [2] those who believe that Jesus called on them to be pacifists.

I don’t believe either one of the two positions.  There has never been a time in church history where God allowed His people to refuse to be salt and light, let the culture around them go to hell, and then snatch His people out of the trouble they caused by their recalcitrance.  There are consequences to disobedience, and those consequences create a wake of consequences for others.  We sleep in the bed we make.

And we’ve dealt with this ridiculous notion that Christ called on His people to be Bohemian hippie flower child pacifists.  It’s wrong, and dangerously so.  Holy warriors, armed and dispensing death to invaders, murderers and rapists is a much better example to follow.

But the two categories of Christians I mentioned are sleepwalking into catastrophe and slaughter.  They may wake up to find that their daughters are being raped when they don’t wear head cover, and their sons are being recruited for jihad.  Wake up, ye church.  Wake up from your slumber before it’s too late.

Abigail Hauslohner at The Washington Post:

Fabian Rodriguez was cradling his new rifle when he stopped at one of the gun-show booths to purchase a $5 chicken fajita MRE.

The “Meal Ready to Eat” is a mainstay for troops on combat missions. But Rodriguez, a 28-year-old San Antonio native who sells auto paint for a living, wasn’t going anywhere that would require one.

Fabian Rodriguez, 28, tries out his new AR-15 rifle at a shooting range in San Antonio.

“I like them,” he said. “Well, I like watching reviews of them. That’s something people do online, like, open them up and do taste tests.”

Rodriguez, who wears his handlebar mustache slicked into points and never leaves home without his cowboy boots, had come to the gun show to buy his first AR-15, a variant model of the M-16 and M-4 assault rifles that are used by the military, and currently the most popular rifle on the market.

[ … ]

The expanse of tables before him display AR-15s, AK-47s and every other sort of assault-style rifle; hefty shotguns and sleek, modern hunting rifles; handguns that range from high caliber Smith & Wessons to tiny Derringer guns that fit in the palm of your hand.

He makes his way past boxes of ammunition, T-shirts that say things like “CNN IS FAKE NEWS,” and a $1,900 Magnum Desert Eagle that he immediately recognizes as the gun Angelina Jolie carried in the movie “Tomb Raider.” “That specific one she used in the movie was 50-caliber, which is humongous,” he says.

He finds a strap for his AR, and a quick-disconnect for the strap. He inquires about left-handed adjustments and revisits the table where yesterday he purchased an AR-15 magazine engraved with the “Don’t tread on me” snake logo, just like the one pictured on the worn leather wallet that he is now again removing from his pocket.

“Can I still get that discount if I bought one yesterday?” he asks the vendor.

“Yeah, the two for $35?”

Rodriguez nods.

“I remember you,” the vendor adds, as Rodriguez hands him the cash for another magazine, this one engraved with the words, “You can’t protect the First without the Second.

[ … ]

The NSSF, an association of gun manufacturers and sellers — which several years ago started calling ARs “modern sporting rifles” — likes to hype the idea of the AR’s versatility as the key to its appeal: a gun for hunting, home security and whatever else you might need.

David Chipman, who used to carry an AR-15 for his job as a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, thinks there’s more to it.

“I would compare it to the same reason Americans might want a muscle car or enjoy a muscle car: It’s American-made, it has outsized power,” said Chipman, who left ATF after a 25-year career and now serves as a senior policy adviser to the gun-control advocacy group Giffords.

There’s a sort of “X-Game-type sensibility” to it, he said, a fixture of “American culture that I see most often with men.”

Rodriguez encounters plenty of skeptics in addition to his mother who ask him why anyone would need so many guns, particularly a semiautomatic rifle like an AR-15 — a gun that can fire 45 high-velocity rounds per minute, bullets that travel so fast that their shock waves mimic an explosion as they enter a body.

His honest answer: He doesn’t need them.

He wants them because he enjoys them, and the Constitution gives him the right to have them.

“I know I don’t need it,” he says of the AR-15. “The revolver, statistically speaking, is more than enough to defend myself.”

But it’s frustrating when people ask him this, because that’s not the point.

The point is that the Second Amendment protects his right to bear arms, whatever and however many he wants, as a guard against tyranny.

Hmm … there’s nothing comparable to getting an “authority” like a former ATF agent to say that there’s some mystique about the gun, alluring, tempting, tantalizing, beckoning people who otherwise wouldn’t want them to come, come, come to me, dear soul, and shoot me.  I can make your life complete.

Good God, what claptrap.  It’s as if Abigail has gone on a quest to hunt the snark, to find the great unwashed dirt people who eat beef, wear cowboy boots and hats, work an hourly job, get their hands dirty, run tooling equipment, run horses and cattle, drive trucks, and so on the list could go.  She’s heard that such people exist, but never actually met one inside the beltway.

Ooo … an expanse of tables with guns and ammo, tee shirts, and stupid bumper stickers.  And the allure and beckon of guns and money exchanging hands.  It’s as if there is actually private enterprise going on in America.

Give me a call, honey.  I can take you up to where they make corn liquor and don’t take kindly to FedGov sticking their nose around.  And you can shoot an AR-15 too.  Wouldn’t you enjoy that?  It’s the next logical step for you.

Seriously, gun owners know the first rule of gun club, which is that you don’t talk about gun club to the MSM.  That’s why gun data on ownership is so crappy.  Most gun owners aren’t going to talk, or if they do, they aren’t going to tell the truth.  Every now and then a MSM writer finds a gullible dunce like this to follow around.

Remember folks, the first rule of gun club is that you don’t talk about gun club to the MSM.  You only talk about gun club to make other gun owners among the potential recruits.

Via reddit/r/firearms.

Removing dangerous items from the poor folks in the UK, while they protect Pakistani rape gangs for 20 years.  And doing so without any shame.

I am neither a prophet nor son of a prophet (2 Kings 2:3).  If I’m wrong, no one stands to lose anything.  But if I’m right, we might all be headed for rough times ahead.

There is such a proliferation of gun control and ammunition control articles, commentaries, editorials and laws that it would be impossible to mention them all, let along discuss them.  Boulder has just announced a new assault weapons ban.  The LA Times advocates ammunition regulation, Smith & Wesson will soon be under pressure from its parent company, Black Rock Investment is pimping gun free investments, a recent challenge to the Massachusetts assault weapons ban has fallen, bump stocks will soon be illegal, the Las Vegas Sun is publishing letters advocating the confiscation of ammunition, and the News Tribune published a reader who wants to tax ammunition more heavily.

I was in the Bass Pro Shop recently and looked at ammunition. I noticed that a box of 9mm bullets, 50 rounds, cost exactly the same as I paid for it in high school in the early 1990s — $10 to $15.

How is it that ammunition has totally escaped inflation? Perhaps state officials should add a 10-cents per round tax that would go to fund school security and mental health services.

I have made this suggestion to all 27 local legislators as well as Congressman Derek Kilmer but have received no substantive response, just a form letter.

Note that to the reader, if ammunition makers have held costs in check (although I doubt he remembers it correctly), that’s a reason to tax them more, not celebrate the free market.

We could go on for hours and hours over this.  The point is that something has snapped in American culture, and we are being put in a pincer movement.  Consider this thought experiment.

Suppose that an assault weapons ban happens in your AO, or suppose it’s just standard capacity magazines.  Are you stocked like you would want to be?  Suppose that it requires a background check to purchase ammunition in the future in your AO.  Is your stock where you want it to be?

Now let’s turn to gun manufacturers.  Suppose that Ruger needs to spend $500,000 buying to tooling to replace old and worn tooling machinery, or to retool a line to fabricate a new product.  Suppose that none of the banks will do business with Ruger.  How does Ruger pay for the tooling machinery?  They can’t go through the bank.  They can’t hand cash to the machinery manufacturer – their accountant would reject it as making them look like they’re doing business with Iran.  No bank in their right mind will allow a company to deposit $500,000 cash without knowing where it came from.

This could all happen to Ruger without a new law being passed, since CEOs can do what they want, and corporations are in the main controlled by progressives and lawyers.  Furthermore, when bans happen, we’ll all have to decide where we stand, and some of us will have to turn “gray man” in order to live and work in our communities and continue to have a job.  Not everyone can be a very public figure like Mike Vanderboegh was.

Unless the culture makes a U-turn very quickly – and I don’t think it will – we are in for some hard times ahead and we will all have to make difficult choices.  Put on your thinking caps, stock your supplies, watch your six, consider your options, and make sure of your friends.

NYT:

In the early 1880s, legend has it that Daniel B. Wesson, a co-founder of Smith & Wesson, the gun manufacturer, heard about a child who injured himself by cocking the hammer and pulling the trigger of one of his firm’s revolvers. Wesson, known as D. B., was so distraught about the accident that he and his son, Joseph, developed a more child-safe revolver that they called the .38 Safety Hammerless.

Wesson was also my great-great-great-grandfather. Though it has been half a century since my family was involved with Smith & Wesson, I feel a twinge of responsibility every time a mass shooting occurs. I realize this is not entirely rational: I play no part in making or selling firearms and have never lost anyone close to me from gun violence. But it still haunts me.

[ … ]

It is only fair for me, for all of us, to demand that our gun manufacturers become leaders in this national discussion around gun violence. They create products designed to kill human beings. The responsibility that must accompany the creation of weapons like an AR-15 is too large to be brushed aside by shouting about freedom and an amendment to our Constitution ratified in 1791.

Yes, the company and other gun makers have taken some steps in calling for better enforcement of the national background check system and sponsoring firearm safety programs. But they can do so much more.

I would start by asking the parent company of Smith & Wesson, American Outdoor Brands Corporation, to push for gun-violence research. Since 1996 the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been severely restricted in researching gun violence. If gun manufacturers are truly responsible organizations, they should wholeheartedly want to back this research as a public health concern. Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the C.D.C. from 2009 to 2017, asked Congress repeatedly to fund research in gun-violence prevention but never succeeded.

In response to recent questions from BlackRock, an investment firm that owns the largest share of American Outdoor Brands, the gun maker’s president, James Debney, and chairman, Barry M. Monheit, said, “We must collectively have the courage to ensure any actions are guided by data, by facts and by what will actually make us safer.” Sounds like Mr. Debney, Mr. Monheit and Dr. Frieden are on the same page, so let’s see Smith & Wesson lead the charge in renewing gun-violence research by the C.D.C.

I would also ask that the company publicly endorse the Brady Campaign’s Gun Dealer Code of Conduct. It should support requiring universal background checks and a national registry for tracking its products, and indeed all firearms.

To the author, Eliza Sydnor Romm, I would say that it’s not that it doesn’t sound entirely rational to feel responsibility for the criminal behavior of others, I’d say that it’s so irrational it makes you seem like an imbecile and a dolt.  It would be no different than feeling responsibility for hit and run accidents perpetrated by drivers of Ford trucks, and then trying to tell Ford how to design and build trucks because of that.  If that sounds stupid, it’s because it is.

As for Smith & Wesson, I don’t know much about the parent company of American Outdoor Brands, but I have heard fairly bad things about Black Rock.

BlackRock announced new products for clients looking to avoid investing in companies that make or sell firearms for civilian use, a significant step for the world’s largest asset manager as Wall Street comes under pressure to take a stance in America’s gun debate.

“As it has for many people, the recent tragedy in Florida has driven home for BlackRock the terrible toll from gun violence in America,” it said in a statement in March. “It has put a spotlight on the role of companies that manufacture and distribute civilian firearms. Some of the largest manufacturers and retailers are held in the portfolios of millions of individual and institutional investors around the world.”

On Thursday, BlackRock said it had created new exchange-traded funds and products for pensions and retirement plans that screen for companies that make or sell firearms. BlackRock is also shifting the indexes of existing exchange-traded funds focused on socially responsible investments to avoid gunmakers and sellers.

Back to Smith & Wesson, such moves as the author describes would mean certain, sure and almost immediate death in the market place as gun buyers turned their backs on the company and their workers fled for greener pastures with Ruger or other companies.  Perhaps the Performance Shop at Smith & Wesson could relocate South like so many other gun makers and start up shop in a friendlier climate.

And perhaps busting up one of the leading manufacturers of firearms is the purpose of pressure like this.  What will Smith & Wesson do with an owner who doesn’t like their products?

TFB:

According to the Swedish online hunting magazinecalled Jakt & Jägare, Norway is to ban some semi-automatic hunting rifles.

Norway is not even a member of the European Union, but they seem to be following – and even prepared to go much further – than the EU Gun Ban that is going to be implemented in the rest of the EU in 2018.

Where Norway used to be is outlined here.

Today there are 1,329,000 guns registered in private ownership in Norway, some 90,000 more than in 2011. Anders Groven, secretary-general of the Norwegian Shooting Association, reckons that the increase reflects the rising affluence of the country, as hunters can now afford selections of rifles for different sorts of game.

Gun laws have been prominent in public debate since far-right terrorist Anders Behring Breivik used two semi-automatic guns to kill 69 young people at a youth camp on the island of Utøya on July 22, 2011. A commission appointed to investigate the mass murder has recommended that semi-automatic weapons be prohibited. But a complete ban seems unlikely, as there’s political opposition to it in the Storting.

After the January 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, the EU initiated drafting of a new directive that will further restrict semi-automatic guns. Countries throughout the Schengen Agreement area, including Norway, will be obliged to comply with it.

The man in Norway most aware of the current and imminent future changes in gun ownership most likely is Willy Røgneberg, the manager of Oslo Skytesenter (shooting center), the country’s largest gun shop (shown above at the shop counter). He observes that, “In Norway we’ve always had lots of guns, as we have a hunting culture. Most people in Norway respect weapons and view them sensibly. Here in the shop we’ve hardly ever had a customer come in to buy a gun on impulse, not least because so doing is illegal.” To that he adds the opinion that the country’s gun laws are sufficiently strict.

“Sufficiently strict.”  Sufficient enough to have to register guns.  So it looks like a gun registry is indeed a precursor to gun illegality and confiscation.  Turn them in, boys.  Or fight.

NPR:

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has signed an executive order making data on gun violence more accessible to the public.

The so-called “Name and Shame” order will cite the origin of a gun involved in a crime. According to the state, approximately 80 percent of guns involved in crime come from outside of New Jersey.

Now, New Jersey authorities will identify the origins of those guns involved in crimes. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, who was elected to replace Republican Chris Christie, touts the order as being in the public interest, saying in a statement, “Any death due to gun violence, is one death too many.”

According to the order, department and state police would periodically publish data on guns involved in crime and where they came from. This data is already collected and open to the public via the FBI, but according Murphy, this law would streamline the process. The first published data is expected next month.

Currently, New Jersey is ranked as having the third-toughest gun laws in the nation, behind California and Connecticut, and is poising itself to pass more gun legislation. The governor is also urging the Democratically-controlled legislature to pass half a dozen gun-tightening measures for him to sign. Of the measure, one would require people applying for a gun permit to demonstrate a “justifiable need.”

Name and shame.  “Justifiable need.”  Now, replace the words “gun” and “gun permit” with automobile, and read it back to yourself and see how utterly ridiculous the article sounds.  All cars that cause deaths must have their sellers shamed.  In order to purchase a car, you must demonstrate justifiable need.

And to think, driving a car isn’t even mentioned in the constitution.

David Codrea:

“The AR-15 and its analogs, along with large capacity magazines, are simply not weapons within the original meaning of the individual constitutional rights to ‘bear arms,” U.S. District Judge William Young wrote in a decision Thursday in Boston, dismissing a lawsuit over Massachusetts’ so-called “assault weapon” ban.

[ … ]

And Young is living proof that, as bad as the Democrats re on guns, no one can hurt us quite like a Republican turncoat. He was appointed by Ronald Reagan, making him a disappointment along with no shortage of other “conservative” federal court nominees. And Reagan himself, reputation as a “conservative hero” for gun owners notwithstanding, in actuality was not.

I hold other things against Reagan as well, including the withdrawal of the U.S. Marines from the barracks in Lebanon, and the first immigrant amnesty, not to mention Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor.

As for Young, he is a tyrant.  The think about King George is that he lived a long ways away and had soldiers do the fighting for him.  Judge Young lives among you.  At some point this is going to turn violent.  Do they understand that?