Articles by Herschel Smith

PJM:

Here is the full report.

First of all, I realize that nurses do not swear the Hippocratic oath like doctors.  Second, I do not believe in the concept of thought crimes.  I don’t want such an idea ever applied to me, and I won’t apply it to her.

Still, there is the notion of legal obligations and criminality that may have come from negligence or even intent, and so she should be investigated.  She has the right to think what she wants, but she doesn’t have a right to act on it if that means violating laws against persons.

Now that the individual has been addressed, think for a moment about how she got here.  The society enabled her, perhaps even persuaded her and encouraged her to think this way, to blame all evil in her universe on the white patriarchy.  Evil, problems, social ills, etc., are all a function not of individual choices she and her community makes, or of the moral conditions of the soul.  They are always and forever a function of someone or something else.

This is the condition wrought by modern education and the entitlement state.  It isn’t just that it steals from you and your family.  That would be bad enough, for we know from the Scriptures that the “Good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children” (Proverbs 13:22), and how do you do that when much of your wealth goes to the state?  It’s worse.  In cases like these, she may have inflicted pain or maimed or even killed someone because of her attitude.

Ponder this for a moment.  If they tried any harder could they find a better way than things like this to foment a class war, race war, or culture war?  One is tempted to conclude this is their intention, yes?  Would you want loved ones to be treated by this girl or someone like her?  How would you ever know if the nurse treating you is someone like her?

News from New Orleans:

An 18-year-old with an AR-15 rifle in his pants was among more than 20 people arrested for illegal gun possession as Thanksgiving and the Bayou Classic football game brought big crowds to the French Quarter over the long holiday weekend, the New Orleans Police Department said Monday.

The NOPD made 19 gun arrests Friday and Saturday, and State Police added six of its own, including the arrest of a Bourbon Street bar security guard and bouncer who shocked another man with a stun gun while pretending to be a law enforcement officer.

[ … ]

A group of undercover officers found the AR-15 on Saturday in the possession of Joseph Graham, of Baton Rouge. The cops stopped Graham after they said they saw him smoking marijuana near Canal and Bourbon streets. During the stop, they found that he somehow had managed to hide the rifle, which is a staple of the U.S. military, in his pants, Gernon said.

Ah, I see that the law against SBRs (long guns with less than a 16″ barrel must be registered as SBRs with a background check, ATF approval and a $200 tax stamp) didn’t stop him from going ahead and concealing a carbine length barrel.  Look at the picture.  That’s not an SBR, it’s got a barrel of 16″ or greater.

So much for the wisdom of Congress and the NFA.  But we peaceable, law abiding gentlemen who want to have SBRs must continue to have the paperwork.  Because 16″.  It’s a magic number.  Even though we could conceal a longer barrel.  They didn’t stop him for a rifle.  They stopped him for pot.

KCENTV.com:

CENTRAL TEXAS — A Killeen woman has shared disturbing video of an attempted burglary in an effort to warn other residents to be on alert and to keep the would-be thieves from targeting anyone else.

The footage was captured on a Vivint home security system around 1:08 a.m. Nov. 18 in the 2200 block of Fieldstone Drive off of Willow Spring Road in Killeen.

The victim said she heard glass break toward the front of her house. When she went into her living room, she realize someone had broken her window. So, she called 911.

While the woman was on the phone with 911, a guy in a jersey knocked on her door and asked if she was okay. But, the woman claimed the male in the jersey was only a distraction to allow the other guys to approach with guns.

She said the trio was going to rob her but saw she had four dogs and ran away.

When police arrived, officers said they found the guy in the jersey in front of the house claiming to be a concerned neighbor. As the victim suspected, police later determined he was involved, so they arrested him. Investigators also located two suspicious vehicles nearby. They determined the occupants in the vehicles were the other suspects in the incident and arrested the occupants in both.

In total, four adults were arrested and one juvenile was taken into custody. All five were charged with burglary of a habitation. The four adults were identified as Gjavion Smith-Williams, 17, Davieon Reed, 22, Jamal Marbury Jr., 18, and Daquan Lavant, 18.

It brought a smile to my face to see the hoodlums run away in that video.

Next up, news from Canada.

It is an amazing tale of survival.

Dog walker Annette Poitras spent more than two days lost in the backcountry of Eagle Mountain in Coquitlam with three dogs.

They were all rescued alive and safe Wednesday afternoon, and now more details are coming to light about how they survived the rain and the elements.

Marcel, Annette’s husband, told Global News on Thursday that the dogs helped his wife stay alive.

“One of them was cuddling [her] and one of them was on guard and the other one was looking for food,” he said.

Annette was with a collie named Chloe, a boxer named Roxy and a puggle named Bubba. They didn’t leave her side, even though one of them initially wandered off when Annette fell and hurt herself.

But luckily, that dog came back and then all four of them stayed together until they were rescued.

Despite having no water or food, it appears the group took care of each other as best they could.

“[At] one point, the last night — when it was torrential rain — the short-haired boxer, [Roxy], was cold, so [Annette] took off one of her rain jackets to put over the boxer,” said Marcel. “To keep it warm.”

Annette also learned a survival tip from the dogs.

“She happened to notice one of the dogs was digging a hole to sleep in,” explained Marcel. “[The undergrowth], it’s very spongy, it soaks up a lot of water. So she started sweeping away all the brush and everything to get down into the dirt and kind of made herself a little well to sleep in. She learned from the dogs.”

I don’t think it was “lucky” that the one dog came back to her, but then, I don’t believe in luck or chance.  I doubt that the dog who hunted for food came back with anything for her that could be eaten unprepared, but I also doubt that she had much of a chance for survival without the dogs.

Got dogs?  If you want companionship, faithful, loyal and loved family members, and committed partners for your protection, you can’t do any better than dogs.

The Post and Courier:

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson on Tuesday urged Congress to pass legislation that would make states recognize one another’s concealed weapon permits, arguing every citizen’s right to self-defense is at risk without it.

With Wilson’s signature, South Carolina signed onto a letter with four other states — Missouri, Alabama, Louisiana, and Montana — in asking Congress to pass either the U.S. Senate’s Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 or the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017, a House bill.

The bills would require states to recognize the permits of other states, including ones with less-stringent laws.

“States should not be able to deny citizens of other states the basic constitutional right to self-defense,” Wilson said in a statement. “South Carolinians who have gone through the process of getting concealed weapon permits shouldn’t have to worry about whether they can protect themselves and their families when they travel in other states.”

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-Seneca, is among the Senate bill’s 38 co-sponsors. The House bill is backed by the National Rifle Association. All six of South Carolina’s Republican congressional representatives are among the House bill’s 213 cosponsors.

Well isn’t this just rich?  Ms. Lindsey Graham wants to glom onto a gun rights issue.  As for Wilson’s position, I didn’t hear him speak up when open carry was before the S.C. legislature.  Let me say that again and add a little to it.  If you say nothing when open carry rights come up in the state house and senate, you have no right to open your mouth when some other state doesn’t like your version of infringement.

An infringement is an infringement is an infringement.  They’re all the same to me.

And Wilson is a hypocrite.

David Codrea:

The real question here is why is John Cornyn so eager to give the gun-grabbers a victory, teaming with the likes of Chris Murphy and Dianne Feinstein to “Fix NICS”? After all, we’re talking about a politician that the NRA, which gives him an”A+,” says “has always defended our gun rights in Congress!”

And it’s not like there’s any delegated Constitutional authority for the national government to impose prior restraints on firearms transfers in the first place. So why give citizen disarmament leaders something to crow about, especially since no one but a useful idiot believes expanding infringements is aimed at any but the law-abiding?

For whatever reason – I consider it to be a moral deficiency – this isn’t any different than what we’ve seen for years with him.  He pushed mental health checks two years ago with bureaucrats getting the say over whether someone was “mentally defective.”

This does go to show one useful thing in particular: NRA scoring is meaningless.  Don’t ever trust it for anything.

HuffPo:

The interview, which can be read in full here, touches on Gorka’s stint advising Trump on national security (Gorka left in August, following criticism over his anti-Islamist views and reported ties to a far-right Hungarian group), his political stances and his dim view of the media (hi!).

Since Recoil is focused on firearms, the piece included a large segment devoted to Gorka’s zest for guns and shooting. And there was one detail in particular that stood out and captured the interest of many folks on social media.

Well, social media is stupid, so what do you expect?  I routinely carry two guns, depending upon what I’m doing and where I’m going.  At night (walking the dog, travelling, etc.) a good tactical light is a must, and if you ever leave home without a knife, you’re leaving the best tool ever known to mankind.  There isn’t a single day that goes by without me using my tactical knives for something.

The fact that the social media entries think Gorka is excessive is just proof that while they may grow hipster beards and wear flannel, they likely have never done a man’s work a day in their pathetic lives.  What kind of a man doesn’t carry a knife?

PDN:

Here’s why I don’t even like these devices being called “safeties.” I started shooting at a very young age and took my hunter’s safety course when I was eight years old. In that course we were taught that mechanical safeties are by definition “mechanical devices prone to failure.” We went on to learn the basic rules of firearms safety and that you should not rely on a mechanical safety. This has stuck with me throughout my years of shooting and even more so now that I am an instructor.

Many people have the misconception that these mechanical devices automatically make a gun “safe” and therefore you can let your guard down about the firearms safety rules once they are engaged. This leads to complacency and dangerous behavior, and goes even further when people question firearms not having these mechanical devices when children are around. The thought that this mechanical lever or button is going to prevent a child from firing a gun if they gain access to it is far from reality. But due to the name of these devices, uninformed people assume they instantly make a gun “safe.”

Due to these misconceptions, I believe that calling mechanical safeties a “safety” actually leads to firearms being more dangerous – the idea that once you “turn the safety on” you can ignore the standard rules of firearms handling. I have seen people get upset about being reprimanded for pointing a gun at someone, with the reasoning, “Well, the safety was on.” Some people have even been upset that anyone would question them about safety. Following the rules of safe gun handling does not end because you utilize a mechanical safety. Instead, if you choose to own or carry a firearm that requires the use of a mechanical safety, such as a single-action semi-automatic or double/single one in single-action mode, you should make an even greater effort to follow the basic safety rules of gun handling due to these firearms having more likelihood of an accidental discharge if you forget to engage the mechanical safety.

This argument makes no sense to me.  It’s like telling an engineer that he shouldn’t perform his designs with margin, rather, just learn not ever to make any errors or simplifying assumptions or engineering judgments.  I’m with him on ensuring that having a “safety” doesn’t lead you to ignore the rules of gun safety.  But my emphasis would be to follow the rules of gun safety regardless of the various and sundry mechanical features of your firearm, and if you want a mechanical safety, then have one.

I’ll keep my traditional 1911, thank you very much.  To his credit he does address the light trigger when the hammer is cocked on the 1911 and seems, haltingly and begrudgingly, to accept the 1911 safety.  But what about striker fired pistols and their light trigger pull?  The author spends a lot of time on double-action semi-automatics and the heavy trigger pull for the first shot, but when he addresses the obvious question of the light trigger pull for single-action striker fired pistols, unlike with the 1911 (where he accepts the safety) he simply rehearses the rules of gun safety again.

I think he wants his cake and eat it too.  Or not to offend 1911 owners, or something else I don’t understand.  Like I said, I’ll stick with my 1911, or an internal hammer pistol (FN makes models that have internal hammers).  My FN 5.7 has a safety and is an internal hammer pistol.  As for reaching the safeties of either my 1911s or my FN, I don’t see it as a problem since it is right where one of my fingers (or thumb) is.  Sure, it’s something to practice, but I don’t see this as a reason to give up guns with safeties.

Dallas News:

Mike Brewer has tried all kinds of corn bait to lure feral hogs into a $1,000 trap at his Sunnyvale pecan orchard. He even mixed the corn with strawberry gelatin because the pigs love strawberries.

Nothing.

The hogs dig around the trees and trample the earth. They eat his pecan harvest off the ground. It costs Brewer and his wife, Kathy, weeks and weeks of labor to patch up the soil around the trees.

“It’s a constant battle,” Brewer said this month.

So what action has been delayed in the state?

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller spoke enthusiastically about a “Hog Apocalypse” earlier this year when he approved the use of a controversial poison called Kaput Feral Hog Bait. The poison contains a chemical called warfarin, an anticoagulant that makes pigs bleed internally, ending in slow, painful deaths. Some people voiced concerns about the unknown effect on the food chain, and the manufacturer withdrew its state registration for the poison. Because it was classified as a state limited-use pesticide, Texas can no longer license people to use the bait.

Good Lord.  I cannot imagine a worse idea for hog control than to introduce that into the environment not knowing the effects on the food chain, and besides that, while these are awful and destructive creatures, we should still be concerned about “ethical kills” as good hunters.  This is a profoundly bad idea all around.

Hey, here’s the low-down on that stupid statement in the article about hog removal not being as simple as shooting them.  A kill shot is ethical, and removes the hog from the population.  If lethal removal isn’t enough in America – and so far it hasn’t been and is a long way from being enough – then we aren’t doing enough lethal removal.

Prior:

Save The Planet: Buy An AR-15

Texan Takes 416 Pound Hog With AR-15

I’m thankful for my work, my life, my health, my family, and so many things I cannot even mention them all.  All good things come from God’s kindness to us, and I recognize His graciousness in my life.

I’m also thankful for my readers.

Mostly though, I’m thankful for Christ.  Have a blessed day and enjoy family.

The Washington Post:

As many as 10 members of the MS-13 street gang lured a man into a park in Wheaton, Md., spoke with one another over walkie-talkies as he arrived, stabbed him more than 100 times, decapitated him and then cut out his heart, according to police documents made public Wednesday in Montgomery County District Court.

The first alleged attacker to be arrested, Miguel “Timido” Angel Lopez-Abrego, 19, was charged with first-degree murder and held in jail after a brief hearing Wednesday.

I’m just keeping you posted on the wages of open borders so that you can plan appropriately.