Articles by Herschel Smith

Albert Mohler:

He was one of the great defenders of historic Christianity of our times. It is fair to say that R.C. was the greatest and most influential proponent of the recovery of Reformed theology in the last century. He was a stalwart defender of the Word of God, and one of the primary architects of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy in 1978. His tapes were soon accompanied by his books and the vastly expanding influence of Ligonier Ministries.

When he taught about the holiness of God, a generation of evangelicals was rescued from the emaciated and desiccated theology of cultural Christianity. When he defended Reformed theology, he taught us all how to understand the gospel in terms of God’s eternal purpose to save, consistent with his sovereignty. He was rigorously biblical and ruthlessly logical . . . with a smile.

He loved to introduce Christians to both the splendors and the humbling lessons of church history. He wanted evangelical Christians to stand in a line of faithfulness that began with the apostles and continued to the present. He had the heart and courage of Martin Luther and the theological precision and passion of John Calvin. He was a proud son of the Reformation, and the solas of the Reformation were the architecture of his mind. He urged and taught Christians toward the development of the Christian mind, and ideas were his battleground.

There were many theologians responsible (humanly speaking) for a resurgence of reformed theology in the twentieth century, including Cornelius Van Til, R. J. Rushdoony, Gordon Clark, Greg Bahnsen, Alvin Plantinga, and many others.  However, from the perspective of the popularization of theological ideas and the ability to see the future and react quickly to the changes in how people would be educated, Sproul was unsurpassed.  He was also unsurpassed as a communicator and teacher.

His legacy is cemented, but I’m sure he isn’t concerned about his legacy right now.  I don’t believe in the term RIP (rest in peace).  There is no rest.  Sproul is busy worshipping at the throne of glory right now.  Good.

Via David Codrea, this from Larry Keane writing for Ammoland.

For those on the pro-gun side who argue online or respond to posts with the message that the entire system should be scrapped for whatever reason, or that it will lead someday to a national gun registry, you need to hear this: Take a breath, think.

If there was not a NICS system, we would have had some other system imposed, just as we did in the five years before NICS was implemented. The Brady Act imposed a waiting period while NICS was under construction. Would you prefer that? Existing federal law prevents a national registry. That will not change with Fix NICS.

Well isn’t that just swell.  Larry Keane, head of NSSF, is lecturing us on accepting something because something else could be worse.  Nevermind that the whole thing is an unconstitutional infringement.

Smarter and more morally grounded writers, Roger J. Katz, Attorney at Law, and Stephen L. D’Andrilli, also write for Ammoland why they are concerned about “fixing NICS.”

Anti-gun proponents, through their Congressional representatives—Senate Democratic Party members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including ranking Democratic Party member, Dianne Feinstein, and her principal cohorts, Patrick Leahy, Richard Blumenthal, Dick Durbin, and Sheldon Whitehouse, among others—wish to move the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) and other criminal and mental health databases into an efficient and massive and broad digital firearms registration scheme, embracing more and more individuals and incentivizing the military and the States to add comprehensive criminal and mental health data into NICS and other databases. Through this Hearing, and through recent comments of anti-gun proponents in news broadcasts, we see renewed efforts by anti-gun proponents, stoked by the recent mass shooting incidents—to weaken the Second Amendment beyond past efforts. Emboldened, we see efforts afoot by anti-gun proponents to transform NICS and other federal and State databases into a comprehensive digital firearms’ registration scheme, wrapping it into a more restrictive, draconian criminal and mental health background check scheme.

It’s a long article and well worth your time.  Please read it all, and thanks to David for bringing Keane’s Krap to our attention.

You know my position.  I’ve made it abundantly clear, and I don’t retreat one iota from it.  “I do not support any bill, ever, under any circumstances, for any reason whatsoever, that includes more gun laws.  I do not believe in compromise.”

The Baltimore Sun:

Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler has asked state lawmakers to let handgun owners bring their weapons to worship, saying he wants congregations to be able to defend themselves against a mass shooting like the one that happened last month in Texas.

Gahler backs a proposal that would let parishioners who have the written permission of church officials wear and carry a handgun on church property. The parishioner would need a state handgun license, but not a concealed-carry permit.

He was joined at a news conference this week in Edgewood by the two lawmakers who plan to introduce the legislation— Republican House Minority Whip Kathy Szeliga and state Sen. Wayne Norman — and three local pastors who support the idea. The sheriff, also a Republican, said he asked lawmakers to pursue the issue.

They called the measure the Parishioner Protection Act of 2018.

The Sheriff is to be congratulated for his stand.  It isn’t constitutional carry, you say?  No, it’s not.  But it’s all he could ever hope to get (regardless of his views on constitutional carry).  So why does he want this for Marylanders?

Gahler said there are about 300 churches in Harford County and about 20 Sheriff’s Office deputies on duty at any time.

“The police cannot be everywhere, and this proposed legislation grew out of the faith-based community reaching out to us,” he said.

But continuing with the previous report, this isn’t likely to happen.

The proposal is counter to political winds in Annapolis, where the presiding officers of the Democrat-dominated General Assembly have proposed tightening — not loosening — Maryland’s gun laws.

“We don’t need guns in churches,” Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller said in a statement to The Baltimore Sun.

Miller and House Speaker Michael E. Busch, both Democrats, have jointly announced support for expanding the state’s ban on assault-style weapons and revamping the process for appealing denial of concealed-carry permit requests.

Miller and Busch want to replace the Handgun Permit Review Board, which is composed of five political appointees who can overturn decisions of the Maryland State Police, with an administrative judge — taking gun permit requests out of the hands of civilians.

“Maryland has one of the strongest gun control laws in the country — and we are not going to take a step backward now,” Busch said in a statement.

Given that environment, “I don’t see it happening,” Del. Kathleen Dumais said of the new proposal on guns in houses of worship.

“We will certainly hear the bill,” said Dumais, a Montgomery County Democrat who is vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee. “I am just not convinced that more people carrying guns is the solution.”

Under current law, those who want a concealed-carry permit must undergo training and apply to the state police. The applicant must show “a good and substantial reason” for needing the permit, and the police investigate to determine whether the applicant has “exhibited a propensity for violence or instability.”

“Good and substantial reason.”  You see, you basically cannot have a concealed handgun permit in Maryland.  It isn’t a shall issue state.  The Sheriff wants to allow congregants to carry on church property without one.

The communists in Maryland would rather see congregants die.  They are one Islamist away from hundreds of deaths that could have been avoided.

Do you live in Maryland?  If so, why?

William Jacobson details his problems with the refusal to peacefully transfer power to the Trump administration.  It’s an interesting read, but the thing that most caught my attention is the comments.

tiger66 | December 12, 2017 at 3:59 pm

People know almost without having to be taught, that the second amendment isn’t about hunting.  That’s why tyranny will ultimately fail.  The more the deep state tyrants try to squeeze the people, the more guns and ammunition they buy.

Now to be sure, they have to be willing to use them, but that time will come.  It’s a peaceful, longsuffering people.  But they can be pushed hard enough to crack.  I don’t know whether the revolution will be televised or not, but I’m certain that parts of America won’t have power, so many people won’t see it even if some do.

Meanwhile, Matt Bracken has updated his visual on the deep state coup.  It’s nice to see the major actors all on the visual, including McCabe, Comey, etc., but we should also remember that there are some deeper and even more hidden actors within the CIA, FBI and Department of State that make the wheels turn.

And then there are some even deeper actors than that, e.g., Steve Feinberg and DynCorps and perhaps the head of the snake itself, the Council on Foreign Relations.

WKYC.com:

The description of the suspect at the time was a 40-year-old woman.

Officers determined that the suspect had fled the scene, and their investigation led them to another house on the Westside of Grand Rapids. As they set up a perimeter, two women and the 11-year-old walked out of the house. Police said the two women looked to be about 40.

Officers pointed their guns at all three individuals as they determined if any of them were the suspect. The guns were lowered and the girl was patted down and handcuffed while police determined if the knife from the stabbing had been passed off to her.

According to police, the girl was handcuffed for two minutes then the cuffs were removed and she was detained in the back of a police cruiser for 10 minutes with the other women.

After this, GRPD officers reached the conclusion that the two women and the girl were not the suspect involved in the stabbing. All three were then released.

Sergeant Cathy Williams of the GRPD said, “At no time was anyone thrown nor was any force used other than the detention with handcuffs.”

After this incident, a complaint was filed on behalf of the 11-year-old with the GRPD who then opened an internal investigation.

The Grand Rapids PD make it sound so reasonable and peaceful, don’t they?  Having coffee and crumpets with the ladies, were they not?

No, they were not.  They were pointing deadly weapons at them.  So what the GRPD wants you to accept is that it’s okay for cops to go on a rambling, disorganized, discombobulated, knuckleheaded search for someone, they know not whom, point weapons at innocent ladies, touch and search a little girl, handcuff her, and detain her unlawfully.  Because cops.  And that’s all you need to know.

And this could have been your wife or daughter.  Is that okay with you?

Reason.com:

According to a 2016 report from the Justice Department’s inspector general that looked at a sample of 125 delayed denials from 2008 through 2014, the ATF recovered weapons in 116 cases. In two cases, the gun owners already had resold the weapons, and in one case “the matter was referred to local authorities after the subject was arrested by them on unrelated charges.” In five cases, “the subjects could not be located,” and in one case “the ATF office explained that due to competing priorities it did not have the resources to retrieve the firearm.” In other words, the illegal gun owners were disarmed 95 percent of the time. But the public safety benefit of those efforts is debatable, because the reasons people are forbidden to own guns often have little or nothing to do with the threat they pose.

[ … ]

The 2004 report noted that gun buyers who fail background checks before completing their purchases are rarely prosecuted, even though all of them, on the face of it, have committed felonies by making false statements on the ATF form they filled out while trying to buy a firearm. The FBI blocked 122,000 gun sales in 2002 and 2003, which represented 0.7 percent of background checks. Only 154 of the would-be gun owners—0.1 percent—were prosecuted. According to the 2016 report, prosecution rates in more recent years have been even lower. “These cases lack ‘jury appeal’ for various reasons,” the 2004 report noted. One of those reasons: “The factors prohibiting someone from possessing a firearm may have been nonviolent or committed many years ago.”

If most people who are forbidden to own guns by federal law do not strike ATF agents or jurors as dangerous, maybe there is something wrong with the law. The scandal is not lackadaisical ATF agents, negligent prosecutors, or apathetic jurors; it is the casual ease with which the government deprives people of the fundamental right to armed self-defense.

But in order to understand what’s happening here, you have to remember that Form 4473 isn’t really about preventing dangerous people from buying guns.  It’s about FedGov control.

The thing that struck me in this article was the fact that buyers had stated they sold the firearm, and that apparently was good enough for either local law enforcement, the FedGov, or both.  Some states require that you keep a bill of sale for person-to-person transfers, but in the case you don’t, most prosecutors aren’t going to waste jury and judge time on failure to retain a BoS.

That means that Form 4473 – and no, I don’t like it, and I think it’s an infringement, and it could easily be turned into a FedGov gun registration list, and therefore is a dangerous thing that ought to be abolished – is not yet a FedGov gun registry.

Not yet.

See WRSA for the details.  I knew the video was out there, but I just couldn’t stand to watch another killer cop execution.  I watched anyway.

Good Lord!  What kind of imbeciles are they hiring to be cops anyway?  Both hands up and crawl towards me.  What kind of set of commands is that?  Crawling necessitates that hands be on the floor.

Honestly, the only time I feel uncomfortable and unsafe is around cops.  I’ve walked straight through gang members before, boys whom I knew for a fact were Bloods or Crips.  I was carrying, but I wasn’t worried.  For the most part, gang members still have some sense of avoidance of consequences to their actions.

This is true for black gang members, but as best as I can tell, not for Latino gangs like MS-13.  I place cops in the same category as MS-13.  MS-13 just doesn’t care.  Neither do cops, but for a different reason.  Cops know that the courts have their back.

I try to treat them as psychopathic, ticking bombs.  It helps me to navigate their presence – sort of.

Actually, it includes not just 5.56mm but popular .223 ammunition as well.  The source is here.  Read it all to find out his test method.

Here are the results.

In my opinion this isn’t a complete test.  I would have liked to see PMC ammo tested as well, but he couldn’t include everything.  I’m not interested in steel case ammunition.  Also, I’d like to see some heavier loads tested (62 gr., 77 gr., etc.).  This should be an ongoing series of articles and I found it useful.

So says Michael Shermer of Skeptic magazine:

Gun-rights advocates also make the grandiose claim that gun ownership is a deterrent against tyrannical governments. Indeed, the wording of the Second Amendment makes this point explicitly: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” That may have made sense in the 1770s, when breech-loading flintlock muskets were the primary weapons tyrants used to conquer other peoples and subdue their own citizens who could, in turn, equalize the power equation by arming themselves with equivalent firepower. But that is no longer true.

If you think stock piling firearms from the local Guns and Guitars store, where the Las Vegas shooter purchased some of his many weapons, and dressing up in camouflage and body armor is going to protect you from an American military capable of delivering tanks and armored vehicles full Navy SEALs to your door, you’re delusional. The tragic incidents at Ruby Ridge, in Idaho, and Waco, Tex., in the 1990s, in which citizens armed to the teeth collided with government agencies and lost badly, is a case study for what would happen were the citizenry to rise up in violence against the state today.

News from the land of the communists.

Boston — Massachusetts has some of the toughest gun and ammunition laws in the country, but 5 Investigates put some of those laws to the test and found just how easy it is to purchase hundreds of rounds of ammunition without the proper license.

Within minutes, 5 Investigates went online and was able to buy that ammunition and get it delivered within a few days of ordering, no questions asked.

At the The Gun Parlor, a licensed gun and ammunition dealer in Worcester, ammunition is readily available for purchase by Massachusetts residents if they have a license to carry (LTC) or a firearms identification card (FID), which is required by law.

Justin Gabriel, owner of the gun shop, said no one can come in his store and buy ammunition without a proper license. “Absolutely not,” he said. “You need a license. Whether you have an FID or LTC, you need one of those licenses in Massachusetts to purchase the ammo.”

But 5 Investigates discovered that’s not always the case online when we managed to score 450 rounds of ammunition with no firearms license required.

Working with a WCVB employee who is properly licensed, 5 Investigates set up an account with Connecticut-based online dealer Target Sports USA and ordered nine boxes of .40 caliber full metal jacket bullets.

The questionable deal was done, and 5 Investigates was never asked for or any type of ID, even though our account and shipping address made it clear the ammunition was headed for Massachusetts, which is one of a handful of states that restricts online purchases like this.

It’s alarming because in our purchase, anyone with just a credit card could have gotten their hands on that ammunition. Not only must Massachusetts residents be of age and have the proper firearms license, but the companies must be licensed by the state to sell it here legally.

Just a few days later, FedEx rolled down the driveway and delivered the goods. The box containing hundreds of bullets was left on the doorstep for anyone to grab.

The 5 Investigates probe also showed this was not just a one-time event.

This story began with a tip from a licensed gun owner troubled that he could order 2,000 rounds of ammunition from the same company, no questions asked. Again, the firepower was left on his doorstep for anyone to access.

“This is just putting the stuff in the hands of the wrong people,” the man said. “You don’t want someone who shouldn’t have a gun that’s got a gun [and] now they have an unlimited supply of ammo through the mail.”

5 Investigates’ purchase and others like it are particularly chilling in the wake of some of the deadliest shootings in our nation’s history, where in some cases thousands of rounds of ammo were bought online and stockpiled.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who enforces some of the toughest gun laws in the country, is troubled by what 5 Investigates could do.

“I think people would be very surprised by that and outraged, and that is in fact why we have laws in Massachusetts that prohibit that kind of conduct,” Healey said. “We don’t want to see people stockpiling ammunition illegally and unlawfully here in Massachusetts.”

Well, I’m sure it makes everyone feel safer with Maura on the case.  She never misses a chance to infringe.

Can you smell the self-righteous shock and indignation from the writer?  The ammunition laws in Massachusetts must make the collectivists proud.  My goodness, how far they’ve fallen from the war of independence where British gun control catalyzed the war of independence.