Articles by Herschel Smith

I have never used this ammo before and have no particular comment on their procurement, except that CZ manufactures very good guns. I wish they were entirely in America.

Source.

FRANKFORT, Ky. (WKYT) -A proposal to remove guns from people in certain high-risk or crisis situations was heard in a state legislative committee Friday.

The CARR (Crisis Aversion and Rights Retention) Act is similar to many red flag laws that allow for the confiscation or temporary removal of firearms from a person who is in crisis mode or is determined to be at risk.

People flocked to Frankfort to hear about the proposal, and it was so crowded in the legislative committee room they spilled out into the hallways and filled up two “overflow” rooms to watch on video screens.

“On that day, I faced something that I can only describe as hell on earth,” said Whitney Austin, who survived being shot 12 times while being trapped in a revolving door during a shooting in Cincinnati. She supports the CARR Act, which backers say protects the Second Amendment while temporarily transferring guns from those determined to be at risk.

“In researching mass shooters over the last three decades, we know 80% of the time they signal their intentions,” said Austin.

The debate drew an emotional response from Senator Karen Berg of Louisville. She said her son killed himself a year ago Friday.

“And if we could do one thing in this state to prevent one parent from having to go through that, it is worth it,” said Berg.

The debate drew a lot of emotion and opinions on both sides of the political aisle. Republican Whitney Westerfield supports the CARR Act, but others in the GOP have a lot of questions.

“I am still trying to figure out how we can stop someone from hurting themself or others in real-time,” said Rep. Patrick Flannery, R-Olive Hill.

“To me, our common ground is the constitution. We have all sworn to uphold it,” said Rep. Savannah Maddox, R-Dry Ridge.

Maddox has long stood her ground in support of firearms issues and vehemently opposes any laws that restrict them. She also said, “94% of mass casualties occur in so-called “gun-free zones,” and places where people are stripped of their constitutional rights.

That isn’t what this law would be used for – threats are already illegal. The law will be used by angry wives, pissed off neighbors, anti-gun nuts and all manner of others for the purposes of disarmament.

It’s all the rage now, apparently even in Kentucky.  Stop it before it grows into a cancer. Excise it.

This reddit/Firearms thread discusses dehumidifiers and the process of trying to keep your guns from rusting.

There is some confusion in that thread and I know this comes up sometimes so I thought I would clarify this issue for readers.

Customary dehumidifiers are nothing more than strip heaters.  What happens is that when sensible heat is added to air, it moves horizontally across the psychrometric chart and (a) increases the dry bulb temperature while also (b) decreasing relative humidity.

Relative humidity is not absolute humidity. The number of grains of moisture per pound of dry air doesn’t change when sensible heat is added (or even removed, as long as we stipulate not condensing moisture out of the air).  Changing the relative humidity changes the amount of moisture the air can contain.  At a higher temperature, the air can contain more moisture, and lower temperature lower amount of moisture.

The air contains more energy at higher temperatures and thus it’s more difficult for the moisture to condense out of the air. Try moisture removal only occurs when the air is passed across a cooling coil down to the condensation line, passing that condensate to a drain pipe (usually with a running trap that needs to be inspected at least yearly to ensure no clogging and filled with Clorox). Then when the air must be sensibly heated again, with a true reduction in absolute humidity for use in the designated space. This is what happens when you air condition your home.

It isn’t usually practical to pass the air in your gun cabinet or gun safe through a cooling coil to remove moisture. The only other option for conditioning the air is to pass it over a strip heater thus changing the relative humidity, not absolute humidity.

As long as the space where your guns are located is already conditioned, i.e., your home, that’s usually not necessary. However, I do a little extra by putting desiccant in my gun safe to ensure the driest possible environment.

I don’t like the idea of a strip heat causing an increase in dry bulb temperature in my gun safe, mainly because of possible malfunctions.

If your gun safe is located in an unconditioned space like a basement, you may have to consider strip heating. The better option would be to remove your safe and put it in your home. I don’t have a safe in my garage for that very reason (and also because of possible theft).

Source.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) published two pieces of model legislation on Wednesday for states to consider to help address gun violence affecting communities nationwide.

According to a DOJ news release, the model legislation is drawn from commonsense gun safety statutes already on the books in many states.

Could there be any clearer indication that the DOJ has lost its way and become part of the fourth branch of government in America when it publishes “Model Legislation?”

Fire them all.  Send them home at Christmas with pink slips.  They are unnecessary and even worse, infringe on rights and impede justice.

You’ve heard the news.  Here and here (note that there were no dissents).  I guess the lack of dissents means that there weren’t enough votes and everyone knew it.

Listen to Washington Gun Law where he puts the best spin on bad news.

Then listen to Langley Outdoors Academy where I agree with him.

Here’s my problem with the SCOTUS. They’ll get involved at the flip of a hat to stay a Fifth Circuit knockdown of the ATF, but completely ignore infringement of rights.

Frankly, I just don’t buy the notion that they all want to see a complete record of the case.  It just doesn’t fit the facts.  They get involved all the time where constitutional rights are being infringed.  I guess the second amendment is still a second class right regardless of what the Bruen decision says.

Dave Kopel.

Two weeks ago, I filed an amicus brief in U.S. District Court in Colorado, in Gates v. Polis, a case challenging the Colorado legislature’s 2013 ban on magazines over 15 rounds. The brief was on behalf of Sheriffs and law enforcement training organizations: the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association, the Colorado Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors Association, the Western States Sheriffs Association, 10 elected Colorado County Sheriffs, and the Independence Institute (where I work).

Some of the brief explains the practical mechanics of armed self-defense, and why bans on standard magazines do not impair mass shooters, but do endanger ordinary citizens, especially when attacked by multiple criminals. Another part of the brief shows that the key data created by some of the Colorado Attorney General’s expert witnesses is obviously false.

But in this post, I will focus on a more fundamental argument in the brief. The law enforcement amici reject the claim that arms universally recognized as appropriate for ordinary law enforcement officers should be banned for ordinary citizens. The claim is based on the pernicious idea that law enforcement officers are above the people, rather than part of the people. Here are some excerpts from the brief:

The magazine ban attempts to divorce today’s common arms of law-abiding citizens from today’s common arms of law enforcement officers, including sheriffs and their deputies. The divorce, contrary to the wishes of both parties, endangers citizens and officers alike.

The arms of ordinary law enforcement officers are carefully selected for only one purpose: lawful defense of innocents in civil society. Throughout American history, many citizens have looked to law enforcement for guidance in choosing arms for the same purpose. Denying those arms to citizens and to retired law enforcement officers  endangers them for the same reasons that denying these arms to active law enforcement officers would endanger them. The most important reason is the necessity of reserve capacity, as detailed in Part II.

More fundamentally, the magazine ban violates the principles of our Constitution and of American law enforcement. Policing by consent is the American value, not militarized occupation from above.

Well, that’s of course true (and you can read the rest of what he said at the link), but I think he gets the issue of people depending on LEOs for defense of society all wrong.  As he knows, based on:

Castle Rock v. Gonzalez

Warren v. District of Columbia

DeShaney v. Winnebago County

There is no duty to defend the society or anyone in it, and no expectation for them to do so.  In fact, in society today the police are more likely to harm society than help it.  As I’ve said before, there is no situation so bad and dangerous that it cannot be made worse by the presence of the police.  Furthermore, the modern judicial (and wrong) notion of qualified immunity has made them reckless, and the supreme court telling them that they can lie has made matters even worse.

Folks, the supreme court may have said LEOs can lie with impunity, but it’s still a sin and anyone who willfully lies to someone they have brought in by the power of a badge and gun will face a mighty maker one day and answer for his sins – all of them, including lying to people.  I don’t care what the supreme court said.

But if it’s true that police are part of “the people,” then that goes more to my point that they shouldn’t have qualified immunity, they shouldn’t be allowed machine guns and other NFA items while we’re prohibited from ownership of them, they shouldn’t be allowed to knock down doors and invade homes if I can’t, and they shouldn’t be allowed to muzzle flag innocent people because of “officer safety” when I would be thrown in prison for assault with a deadly weapon for doing the same thing.

I’d like to see Kopel go there in his brief to other cases.

By the way, the comments at this Reason article are as awful and beggarly as they always are at Reason.  Consider this one.

Assuming, he says.  He purports to set up a syllogism, or an immediate inference, and then does nothing of the sort.  The whole thing is a non sequitur.  Stephen Lathop is an idiot, but he is also a communist.  He sees police as the “People’s Special Constraint.”

You need to be constrained, and Stephen says that’s what the police are for.

When you read articles at Reason, just ignore the comments.  You will be dumber for having read them if you take a deep dive into the minds of children who are throwing tantrums and pretending like it means anything.

Source.

Man has killed off much of the Earth’s existing wildlife, and some scientists argue that human activity has set off the world’s sixth mass extinction event. New research now shows global animal populations are declining more rapidly than earlier believed.

[ … ]

Animal populations disappear all the time to make way for new species, but the new study highlights the extent of “real” biodiversity loss as the species with declining populations far outnumber those with increasing numbers, says research co-author Daniel Pincheira-Donoso. “The issue with this mass extinction in particular is that it is happening too quickly,” he tells TIME. “Species do not have enough time to evolve to take [over] those [other] species. So we lose and lose and lose, and we don’t see our turnover.”

Whew!  Sounds terrible. But maybe somebody didn’t get the memo.

A nationwide bird hunt soon could be underway. Knewz.com has learned a federal agency wants to eliminate one kind of owl to save two other ones.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is holding public meetings online on a plan to kill more than 500,000 barred owls over the next 30 years.

We need to let nature take its course and get out of the way.  But maybe not.  Maybe we really are god and worthy of managing everything.

There’s a movement to give nature the same rights as humans.  But maybe we need to help it along instead of just standing back.  We need to “rewild” the planet.  After all, the climate is erupting into a cataclysmic catastrophe and we must do something.  Bill Gates says so.

That means things like starting new wolf populations.  But in Massachusetts deer are ruining the environment.  If there are less humans like Bill Gates wants, that shouldn’t be a problem for the farmers because there will be fewer people to have to feed. But what of that whole issue of carbon footprint?  Deer harvests are down in WV and all over the country, and bear harvests are down in Pennsylvania.

We want to rewild the planet – but wait, there’s too many deer!  We need to introduce more wolves – but wait, they have a carbon footprint too and after all so do bears and we haven’t killed enough of them!

Oh, oh, oh, it’s so confusing to worship Gaia.  She is a confused god, hasn’t spoken infallibly, doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and her worshipers are equally confused.

Or … you could just worship the Lord of all creation who owns the cattle on a thousand hills and gave man dominion over all of them.

So here is Mark Smith. He takes a fairly realistic view of things.

Here is Washington Gun Law, where he takes a slightly better view of what’s possible, perhaps too rosy.

Here is Jared in an inexplicably optimistic view of things.

So I set each up with the little preview because I think Jared may miss the point.  This was a case seeking a preliminary injunction, and no final ruling has been made.  I think the other two analyses are a bit closer to the truth.

I think it will be hard to get SCOTUS review of this because they are just that stolid and slow to react – and also because of the chief justice.  To be sure, this was seeking a preliminary injunction, but it must be remembered that the decisions already written on this assesses the probability of success before these courts.

They may delay the final rulings for another two or three years, or more, but there won’t be another outcome than the one you’ve already witnessed.  So even if they don’t, it makes perfect sense for the SCOTUS to take this up now.  One wonders what they’re waiting for – perhaps another supreme court justice to die with a pillow over his face like Scalia?

Judge Frank Easterbrook is a so-called “law and order conservative.”  Let me translate for you.  That’s the same thing as the communists on the alleged other side of the isle.  Just like AG Barr, who argued in defense of Lon Horiuchi.

In America, it’s always easy to detect a communist.  Just look at his position on the second amendment.

The only explanation for allowing this sort of thing to continue is having sympathy for these actions.  Piracy isn’t some sort of movie – it’s reckless endangerment, kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon, and thievery.  The Biblical punishments for these actions is death.  Cutting the heads off of pirates and running them up the flag pole might put an end to piracy right quickly.

However, in spite of the wishes of the founders, we have a standing army for purposes of foreign misadventures, and another standing army (police of all sorts) for purposes of violation of foundational constitutional rights at home. The one thing the federal government is tasked with, i.e., protection of the border, it routinely ignores and even laughs at.

And the one reason for a standing army for foreign wars was piracy.  Jefferson commissioned the U.S. Marines for such things, but rather than sending a couple of MEUs to handle this problems, we would rather send MEUs out on humanitarian missions across the globe.

Black is white, up is down, and darkness is light.

Houthis to world. Our Red Sea maritime interdiction has worked so well that we’ll expand it.https://t.co/oZ4S8JNTcz

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) December 9, 2023

I already told you I have about as much respect and use for the Fourth Circuit as toe jam.  Remember they are the ones who found against the carry of weapons in the parking lots of national parks in U.S. versus Masciandaro, and this was even after the law had been changed in 2010 allowing guns in national parks.  Yes, that’s right. They found it illegal even though it was expressly legal and had been declared a year before.