Articles by Herschel Smith

The Hill:

The mayor of Columbia, S.C., is planning to propose a ban on bump stocks and trigger cranks on guns in the city.

“I believe in responsible gun ownership, and I believe in common sense,” Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin (D) said in a statement, according to ABC News.

“That’s why I’ve decided to do what our federal and state governments are either unable or unwilling to do.”

And next up, Tim Scott:

South Carolina Senator Tim Scott is among the sponsors of bipartisan legislation to ensure federal agencies and state governments accurately report relevant criminal history to the FBI’s database of prohibited gun buyers.

The Republican senator is one of more than half a dozen sponsors of the “Fix NICS Act,” which would penalize federal agencies that fail to properly report required records. It also rewards states that comply by providing them with federal grant preferences.

You can blame Nikki Haley for Tim Scott.  He a republican, but may as well be a democrat.  Ah hell, there’s essentially no difference anyway.  Nevermind.

The Hill:

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said on Wednesday that senators are nearing a bipartisan deal on gun legislation following a number of high-profile mass shootings.

Big news: super close to a bipartisan breakthrough on gun legislation. Stay tuned…

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) November 15, 2017

Murphy’s office pointed The Hill to comments made last week by Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas), who said that he would talk to Democrats about strengthening background checks – an initiative that gained some bipartisan momentum earlier this month after a gunman opened fire on a church in southern Texas, killing 26 people.

…

Cornyn has been a driving force in the GOP for strengthening background checks since the Nov. 5 shooting. He told reporters last week that he would work with Democrats to close gaps in the system, and that he had spoke to Murphy, as well as Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) about the matter.

Oh nice.  That means that despite the fact that it had nothing to do with it, they intend to make person-to-person transfers a felony.  Can’t give that deer rifle to your grandson anymore, gentlemen.  FedGov may come after you.

Here’s a note to Murphy and Cornyn.  Go to hell.

Here’s a quick observation.  Prepare for noncompliance.

There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle going on over the accusations of treason against the purveyors of the deal that sent ownership of Uranium to Vladimir Putin.  Jonah Goldberg is up first.

My real objection is to the way people on late-night shout shows and talk radio blithely and irresponsibly throw around claims that our national security was gravely damaged, or insinuate that treason has been committed. It’s neither of those things. Sebastian Gorka’s repeated invocation of the Rosenbergs is dangerous, demagogic, and dippy.

As Shep notes, the uranium the Russians bought can only be sold . . . in America to American facilities. We weren’t giving ammunition to an enemy (an enemy usually only for the purposes of the Uranium One story, by the way) to kill us with nuclear weapons. Russia already has vastly more Uranium than we do. The U.S. has 1 percent of the global reserves of uranium. Russia has 9 percent. So when you hear radio talkers screaming about how Hillary Clinton gave the Russians TWENTY PERCENT!!!!!! of America’s precious uranium supply, they’re talking about one-fifth of one percent of a fairly common metal (Australia has 29 percent of the known uranium reserves).

In fact, one way you can tell if a commodity is rare is by looking at its price. Gold today is at a bit under $1,300 per ounce. Rhodium, mostly used in things like catalytic converters is around $1,400 per ounce. Platinum (which I always thought until this morning was more expensive than gold) is around $1,000 bucks per ounce. Uranium? It sells for less than $25 bucks – per pound.

To underscore his derision, he embeds a video by Shep Smith who relies mainly on MSM reporting and then displays his own derision for the scandal.

So let’s take a shallow dive into the facts – a deep dive will likely lose most readers.  We are no longer enriching weapons-grade Uranium or Plutonium (or creating Tritium, but I’ll get to that in a moment).  Even the Reliable Replacement Warhead program doesn’t do that.  Despite this conflated and rambling entry at Global Security, the program to date consists mainly of calculations performed to demonstrate that what we have will still work despite decay.

At some point in the future the piper will come playing and he must be paid.  We can only kick the can down the road for so long.  Before that happens, if we have any sense at all, we will have begun a new weapons program.  When that happens, the price and availability of raw material matters.  What Jonah cited is yellowcake, not weapons grade material.

This material must be enriched a great deal to fissile isotopes like U-235 (not fissionable, like U-238) or Pu-239.  That requires industrial and reactor operations (separation and transmutation).  We don’t get a pound of weapons grade material for every pound of yellowcake removed from the earth.  In fact, we don’t get very many at all.

Furthermore, this enrichment must occur just to be able to operate commercial nuclear reactors, and I consider their operation vital to national security (try living in America without the electricity supplied by commercial nuclear power).  Most fuel assemblies loaded into commercial nuclear reactors today are enriched to 4% – 5% by weight U-235.  Fuel assemblies aren’t light.  Each one typically contains just below half a metric ton of enriched Uranium (0.45 – 0.5 MTU).  Hundreds get loaded into commercial nuclear reactors every year.  For this enrichment to occur to make operational feasible, we must have many more pounds of yellowcake than what we get out as fissile or fissionable material in commercial nuclear reactors.

There is no indication that Putin would stop with his current level of ownership, or that he wouldn’t find some way to abscond with the raw material via nefarious means.  Moreover, with any ownership, one can begin to control pricing and certainly stands to make a handsome profit.  Why else would Putin want ownership?

Andy McCarthy seems to admit some level of accuracy to what Goldberg says by replying that “when Jonah says, “The Uranium One story is crap,” I take him to be talking about the story as it is being related by a number of commentators, as if it involved a major national-security crisis. (Note that Jonah is careful to acknowledge that an investigation of the Uranium One transaction might be warranted.) It is true that hyperbole about national security and treason is not helping people’s understanding of what this is about. Uranium One has never primarily been a national-security controversy. It is a corruption controversy with some national-security aspects, which are related to domestic energy supply, not nuclear weapons.”

He’s wrong, and it’s almost a waste of time and air to say that Goldberg and Smith are wrong since they are such lightweights on the matter.  We need a reliable and inexpensive source of raw nuclear material for nuclear security, and we also need universities to continue to have and fund nuclear engineering programs.  Without commercial nuclear power, there will be no nuclear engineers, and without nuclear engineers there will be no nuclear weapons program.  Without nuclear engineers and reactors, there will be no Tritium for weapons, which is created by activation of Lithium, because we won’t be able to create the high neutron flux necessary to make enough Tritium.  In order to have these reactors to create the Tritium, we need enriched nuclear fuel.

This is all vital to our national security.  There is no further discussion necessary over this question.  Better said, there isn’t even a question about it.  This isn’t primarily about a scandal, and secondarily about appurtenant national security issues.  This is about a scandal that runs so far, deep and wide that certain people would sell out the national security of nation for small payoffs.

Here’s a suggestion for Andy McCarthy.  Stay in your own lane.  Here’s a note to Shep Smith.  You’re a good mouthpiece for your progressive buddies, but some of us know you to be a buffoon and clown, just a talking head who uses unction and a suit to convince people you’re something other than a carnival actor.

Here’s a note for Jonah.  All it takes is a little understanding of nuclear science – and I have more than a little understanding – and human nature to know that this is more serious than you indicate in your silly commentary.  The next time you decide to play the court jester over some issue, stop and reconsider if you’re tempted to couple yourself to a buffoon like Shep.

If you want to comment on engineering, then go get a degree in engineering.  You are unqualified by training, experience or education to make decisions like this on technical matters and issues of national security.  It’s like watching a first grader challenge Alvin Plantinga to a debate on concepts of rationality and epistemic warrant.  Or watching my granddaughter try to field strip a 1911.  When you couple yourself to moronic prose and moronic people, you play the moron.

God help us all when people like Shep Smith and Jonah Goldberg are the “experts” on national security.

Shooting Illustrated:

In general, you want to start off with the largest diameter suppressor you think you’ll need. You can shoot 9 mm through a .45 ACP can, albeit with a slight increase in noise due to the larger opening, but you cannot shoot .45 ACP through a 9 mm can. Also, in general, shorter and smaller suppressors are going to be louder, because they have less volume to soak up the expanding gasses escaping from the muzzle.

When it comes to mounting your suppressor on the barrel of your gun, Knox says that direct-thread suppressors will have more versatility because they will fit on any barrel threaded to the same pitch. However, you will occasionally need to tighten the fit, as it can work loose as you shoot. A quick-detach (QD) mount, allows for faster attaching and detaching from one gun to another, but it pretty much locks you into using one manufacturer’s quick-detach mount on all your guns.

When it comes to specific types of suppressors, there are essentially three different types: Rimfire, centerfire pistol, and centerfire rifle. Rimfire suppressors are less expensive and weigh less because the pressure buildup inside the can is much less than with a centerfire round. However, rimfire rounds, especially .22 LR, tend to shoot a lot dirtier than their centerfire cousins, which means that easy disassembly for a cleaning is vital in a rimfire can.

Centerfire-pistol suppressors have unique features as well. Most service pistols today use some variation of a tilting-barrel delayed blowback action, and hanging a suppressor off the barrel of such guns can make it significantly less reliable due to the extra weight on the barrel. A muzzle booster or Nielsen device inside the can momentarily relieves that weight, much like jumping up inside an elevator going down can give you a brief feeling of weightlessness and lets the pistol function normally. Also, because most suppressors block the sight picture from normal-height pistol sights, suppressor-height sights are almost a must for a pistol that has a can.

When it comes to rifles, the weight of your suppressor matters less than it does with a pistol. A rifle already weighs at least several pounds, so the few ounces of a suppressor added onto it are less noticeable compared to pistol cans, and because of the power of rounds they shoot, centerfire rifle cans are much more robust than either pistol or rimfire suppressors.

Because rifles don’t use a tilting-block action, there is little need for a Nielsen Device or other muzzle booster. But because of increased distance they can shoot, a consistent point of impact with or without a suppressor on the gun is of vital importance to the accuracy of the rifle. Hanging a weight off the muzzle end of a rifle and messing with how the propellant gases exit the barrel is going to affect how the bullet leaves your gun. There will probably be a point of impact (POI) shift when you attach a suppressor to your rifle, but better-engineered cans will affect your POI less than others. In general, as long as the POI shift you get when you attach a suppressor to your rifle is consistent and repeatable, you can adjust for it and keep on shooting your gun.

Time will tell if suppressors become more available to armed citizens, but in the meantime, take your time and do your research before you choose a can that’s right for you. The legal complexities of owning a suppressor (not to mention the extra $200 you need to pay the government to own one) means that buying the right suppressor for you is even more important than buying a gun that’s right for you.

I’ve lately been discussing suppressors with a neighbor since I don’t believe anyone in Washington has the guts necessary to press the SHARE act, at least not without also giving something away so that the state may further infringe upon our rights (the example, by the way, being set by the NRA).  Moreover, they may give something away without ever getting a thing.  Most “men” in Washington aren’t fit to clean dog shit off the floor.

What I’ve found is that it’s difficult to get good advice on suppressors, there are almost no really good reviews, and the discussion forums are mostly void of buyer and user remarks and experience.  This is a shame with something that ends up being as expensive as it is.

Any experience with suppressors by readers is welcome in the comments or by EMail.  Preferably use comments so that we can all learn.

NPR is stunned, befuddled and aghast.

Those who live around Sutherland Springs, Texas, may still be questioning why a gunman shot up a Baptist church during Sunday worship. But they’re not at all confused about how citizens should respond. Many believe the best way to stop the next massacre is to pack a pistol everywhere they go.

Those who live around Sutherland Springs, Texas, may still be questioning why a gunman shot up a Baptist church during Sunday worship, but they’re not at all confused about how citizens should respond. Many believe that the best way to stop the next massacre is to pack a pistol everywhere they go. NPR’s John Burnett reports from Wilson County, which includes the rural Texas town.

JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: There’s a sort of cowboy ethic that exists in Wilson County, Texas. A historical marker in front of the stately 19th-century courthouse describes the sheriff a century ago as always armed, but gentlemanly and kind. The current sheriff, Joe Tackitt Jr., has worn the badge for 25 years. In his white cowboy hat and white cowboy shirt, he pauses in the courthouse hallway to ruminate on the private citizen who grabbed a rifle and confronted Devin Patrick Kelley as he left the church where he killed 26 people. The citizen shot Kelley, who fled and later killed himself.

JOE TACKITT JR: I consider the man a hero. I mean, he ended the threat right there at the church. Now, do we know where the guy might have gone had he left the church? ‘Cause he still had weapons.

BURNETT: There is no gun debate for many people who own weapons here in Wilson County. If there was, Sunday’s massacre settled it. Only hours after the shooting, a retired oilfield hand named Ethan Campbell stood on the porch of his house a couple of blocks from the church in Sutherland Springs, cradling his infant son.

ETHAN CAMPBELL: In my opinion, everybody should carry a gun ’cause no matter what, a criminal’s going to carry a gun if you don’t. And if you’ve got a gun on you, you can at least protect yourself or your family.

BURNETT: Many people in the surrounding communities believe Sunday’s massacre validated the NRA’s position – it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun. To get a countervailing view I reached out to Angela Turner, who lives in San Antonio 30 miles northwest of here. She works at a private school and volunteers for a group called Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

ANGELA TURNER: It just makes me sad that this is where the conversation has come, that we’re talking about whether we need to arm ourselves to go to church and protect our kids when they’re going to Sunday school when the conversation that we really should be having is how do we keep violent people from having a gun in the first place?

BURNETT: Nearly 6 percent of Texans have permits to carry guns with them in public. Texas is the state with the third-most permits in the nation after Florida and Pennsylvania. The sheriff reports that lots of his citizens pack pistols, people like Kaelyn Thompson, a 23-year-old waitress who works at Trail Riders Steakhouse in Floresville. She says she and her mom both have 9 mm handguns when they worship at their church. And she wonders whether things would have turned out differently if someone in the Sutherland Springs congregation had shot back.

KAELYN THOMPSON: I mean, I wasn’t there, so I don’t know the circumstances. But to me, if I’m going to die, I would like to least fight, you know? And I don’t know why they didn’t fight or why they didn’t have a gun. Like, there are just so many crazy people out there and so many incidents that you never know when something’s going to happen. But honestly, I carry everywhere I go.

BURNETT: Thompson says several friends and family have said now they plan to get right-to-carry permits. Roman Bolton is one of those considering keeping a concealed handgun on him. He’s a clerk at a hardware store in La Vernia just up the highway from Sutherland Springs. Bolton says even before the recent shooting he has sat in his pew in his church on Sunday mornings and wondered…

ROMAN BOLTON: What if somebody comes in here now and he starts spraying the place? How long does it take a policeman to respond to something like that? Ten minutes is a long time.

BURNETT: A customer, Steve Stephenson, has brought his mower down to the shop to get it worked on. He listens intently to the discussion. I ask him if he thinks that more guns make for a safer society.

STEVE STEPHENSON: I don’t know. What about the Old West? Was that a safe place? Everybody carried back then.

BURNETT: John Burnett, NPR News, Wilson County.

Stunned, he was, that anyone could think that a man’s duty is to take care of himself and his family.  After all, the hippie culture of the colleges doesn’t teach anything like that, and apparently neither did his parents or grandparents.

So in order to make sense of all of this, he “reached out” to get a “countervailing view.”  Of course he did.  He might consider a revised title for this silly piece, something like “At NPR, no one believes that you can do anything to help yourself or make yourself or family safer, except to call the state.”  For some reason or other, the state knows how to do something you don’t.

Dave Kopel:

The global history of mass shootings demonstrates that the vast majority of these crimes are perpetrated in places where citizen firearms ownership is close to nil. While people can argue about cause and effect, the facts are indisputable.

This might seem surprising to people who read a recent article in the New York Times claiming that the mass shootings in the United States are a direct consequence of the high density of gun ownership in the country. But the article is analytically flawed, as Robert VerBruggen detailed for National Review Online. For example, the Times article is based on a study by a professor who refuses to allow skeptics to see his data or his methodology. But let’s hypothesize that the assertions by the professor are correct. It is still true that mass shooting fatalities are heavily concentrated in areas where citizen firearms possession is prohibited.

Consider, for example, some of the deadliest mass shootings of the 20th century. As soon as the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union began on June 22, 1941, special SS units called Einsatzgruppen were deployed for mass killings. All the Jews or Gypsies (also known as Roma) in a village would be assembled and marched out of town. Then they would all be shot at once. (Yehuda Bauer, “Jewish Resistance in the Ukraine and Belarus during the Holocaust,” in Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis, Patrick Henry ed. [D. C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2014], pp. 485-93.)

Within a year, the 3,000 Einsatzgruppen, aided by several thousand helpers from the German police and military, had murdered about 1 million people, concentrating on small towns in formerly Soviet territory. (Hillary Earl, The Nuremberg SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial, 1945–1958 [Cambridge, U. K.: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 2009], pp. 4–8; Reuben Ainsztein, Jewish Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Eastern Europe [London: Elek Books, 1974], pp. 222–25.) Einsatzgruppen mass shootings took place not only in today’s Russia but also in nations that the Soviet Communists had taken over, and which were then over-run by the Nazis: eastern Poland (taken by Stalin pursuant to the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact), Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Because of psychological damage to the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazis attempted to replace mass shootings with mobile gas vans. But these did not work out well, partly because herding people into the gas vans required even closer contact with the victims than did mass shooting. (Earl, p. 7). Therefore, the Nazis invented extermination camps with huge gas chambers, which were more efficient at mass killing, and which created a larger physical (and, consequently, psychological) distance between the murderers and their victims.

In pre-WWII Poland and in the Soviet Union, “no firearm, not even a shotgun,” could be lawfully possessed without a government permit. For most people, “such permits were impossible to obtain.” (Ainsztein, p. 304; see also Chaika Grossman, The Underground Army: Fighters of Bialystok Ghetto, trans. Schmuel Beeri [N.Y.: Holocaust Library, 1987; first pub. in Israel 1965], p. 3.) “Not to allow the peasants to have arms” had been the policy “from time immemorial.” (Ainsztein, p. 304.) In this regard, Lenin and Stalin carried on the Russian czarist tradition, as they did in many other ways. (See generally Eugene Lyons, Stalin: Czar of All the Russias [Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1940]; Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar [N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004].)

In Poland, the main way that firearms got into citizens’ hands was peasant scavenging of rifles that had been left behind from the battles of World War I (1914-1918) and the Russo-Polish War (1919-1920). Usually the rifle barrels would be sawed short, for concealment. (Ainsztein, p. 304.) But thanks to the 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact, the Soviet Union invaded and conquered the eastern third of Poland at the beginning of World War II. The Soviet secret police, the NKVD, “took great care to disarm the local population, and was very successful.” (Ibid.)

The one big chance to acquire arms was in the chaos immediately after June 22, 1941. In those first weeks, the Soviet army reeled in retreat, leaving large quantities of weapons behind. But the abandoned arms tended to be in rural areas (where Polish peasants picked up many), whereas most Jews lived in cities or towns. (Ibid.)

During the chaotic early weeks on the Eastern Front, the Nazis successfully deterred most Jews from attempting to scavenge arms. As in every nation conquered by the Third Reich, being caught with a firearm meant instant death for oneself and one’s family, and perhaps even for others, in reprisal. This was especially so for Jews. Disarmed, the Jews and Roma were soon destroyed.

Victims of a mass shooting perpetrated by organized government are just as dead as victims of a mass shooting perpetrated by a lone nut. Adopt the broadest definition of “mass shooting” that you want (e.g., three victims wounded, one killed). Add up all the mass shooting deaths from lunatics, organized crime, jihadist cells and ordinary criminals. The global, historical total of mass shooting deaths will be gruesome, and it will also be small compared to the total of mass shooting deaths perpetrated by criminal governments — including Fascists, Communists and non-ideological tyrants.

University of Hawaii political science professor R.J. Rummel compiled demographic data regarding genocide. He estimated the total number of victims of mass murders by governments from 1901 to 1990 to be 169,198,000. (Rudolph J. Rummel, Death by Government [Piscataway, N.J.: Transaction Pub., 2d ed. 2000].) This figure does not include deaths from wars; it includes only deliberate mass murder of civilian populations.

Let that number wash over you again, and consider it in the context of Hitler, Pol Pot, the Armenian Christian genocide at the hands of the Turkish Muslims, and the Christians in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Uganda (under Idi Amin), and throughout Africa (the later count of murdered Christians may not even be included in the estimate).

This is why we have a second amendment.  Right there before your eyes.  Look no further.  We have weapons because of the evil perpetrated on men by governments.  If you ever forego having them and training with them, you risk a similar fate.

Ask yourself why these numbers are excluded in the statistics on mass shootings by the controllers?

Dallas News:

A Dallas SWAT officer accidentally shot himself in the leg Saturday morning during a drug raid in east Oak Cliff, police said.

The officer, a 10-year veteran of the SWAT unit, and several other officers were executing a narcotics search warrant about 11:20 a.m. at an apartment in the 3800 block of Bonnie View Road, near Illinois Avenue and Overton Road.

Assistant Chief of Police Gary Tittle said the officer’s rifle sling got caught on something in the apartment, and when he tried to pull it free, the rifle discharged into his calf.

Um … what?  “The officer’s sling got caught on something in the apartment, and when he tried to pull it free, the rifle discharged into his calf?”

What?

Fred Tippens:

Men cowering in their bathtub or not having the means to return fire is a sickness on their soul, the cure for which is Christ Jesus. If a man refuses to go armed he admits to a Holy God and all of mankind that he is unfit for his duties in a fallen world. He is a stunted child that is unequal to the task of manhood. Additionally, he doesn’t love his family. A man, any man, will fight to the death to protect that which he loves. This is God’s natural order that they deny and therefore, they deny God himself.

With Fred, I believe that any man who won’t defend his family is an ungodly coward.  Using Jesus as an excuse for his cowardliness is insulting to the Gospel.

Jesus came to die for the sins of His people as a vicarious atonement.  He had to drink the cup that was before Him.  Your death, or the deaths of your family members, won’t be a vicarious atonement for anything or anyone.  That’s why Jesus told His disciples to buy swords.

For everyone who wants to be a pacifist, beatnik, long haired hippie flower child, I suggest a long conversation with your wife (and children, if you have them).  It can begin this way.  “Dear, you know that I love you, and we lock our doors at night because I don’t want anything to happen to you.  But that’s as far as I’m willing to go to protect or defend you.  If someone invades our home, I’m willing to let him rape or even torture you, kill our children, and burn down our house, because I think that’s what Jesus wants us to do.  We care more about the criminals than we do our own safety.  I hope you understand.  Oh, by the way, just to make sure you understand, I feel the same way about defense of you and the children in restaurants, school, and at church as well.”

Please write me and let me know how this conversation goes.  I want the nitty, gritty details of her reaction.

The Atlantic:

During the Vietnam war era, as a newly graduated mechanical engineer, I was hired by Colt’s Firearms, the original manufacturer of the M-16, and tasked with M-16 related assignments during my employment.

There was no commercially available civilian version of the AR-15 prior to the U.S. Military’s decision to make it the default military rifle replacing the M-14, and designating it as the M16A1. I have significant personal experience with the issues experienced by the M16A1, which were the result of a combined civilian/military screw-up. [JF note: this screwup was the subject of my original article.]

The AR-15 was developed specifically as a military weapon to replace the M-14. It was probably one of the first major weapons systems to be privately developed following the DOD’s decision to privatize the design and development function. This function had heretofore been carried out by publicly funded government operations, most notably, in the case of military small arms, the Springield Arsenal.

The AR-15 derived from a design by Eugene Stoner. His original design using that architecture and operating system was the AR-10, which used the 7.62mm NATO round. Seen today, it looks like an overgrown AR-15. The Armalite Company tasked two engineers with developing a version of the AR-10 that used the 5.56mm cartridge; these engineers were Jim Sullivan and Bob Fremont.

Only after civilian manufacturers like Colt’s made boatloads of money producing M16A1’s and selling them to the government did someone (I believe it was Colt’s Firearms) decide to make and sell a semi-automatic-only version of the weapon for civilian sale. It was, of course, known as the AR-15.

Small but significant changes were made to the architecture of the lower receiver, primarily slight relocation of pivot pins and redesign of the trigger/hammer components that pivoted on them, so that it would not be possible to acquire, legally or illegally, M16 trigger/hammer and fire selector components and thus easily convert the AR-15 to possess the same full automatic capability as the M16.

Like Eugene Stoner, whose mission was producing better equipment for the military, I do not believe that there is any place in the civilian world for a family of weapons that were born as an assault rifle. I am a staunch supporter of properly equipping our nation’s military but also of effective gun control for weapons available to civilians, to include banning those which are inappropriate outside a military context.

The author of this horrible commentary, James Fallows, cites a letter from a reader with no name whatsoever and with no indication that he has done his job of vetting this information.

One thing that makes me hold it suspect is that he gives a bit too much credit to Jim Sullivan and Robert Fremont, who weren’t the “engineers” in charge of the development of the AR-15.  They were the designers, while Eugene Stoner was still the chief engineer behind the project.

But at any rate, even if this report is really from someone who worked as an engineer with Colt, so what?  His statement that “Like Eugene Stoner, whose mission was producing better equipment for the military, I do not believe that there is any place in the civilian world for a family of weapons that were born as an assault rifle” just like the title of this article which is one of the best examples of overreach I’ve ever seen, is a world too far, and even more than that, is an outright lie.

Eugene Stoner never said that.  If you think he did, prove it.  Or shut up.  I’m waiting.

I’m going to offer up these links (via reader B Bauch) with just a little bit of commentary.  The reader can judge for himself the content of the links.  As for the first one, it’s a highly useful link and video until it gets to the ads.

If you come to me telling me things and you have a badge and title, I don’t believe you.  But guess what?  As for that black lady in the video?  I believe her.  Every word of what she said happened that night.

Next up is Intellihub:

LAS VEGAS (INTELLIHUB) — Footage captured by a private surveillance camera on the night of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history reveals several shocking details which authorities have failed to investigate.

The bombshell footage was released on Fox News’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Friday evening and is presumed to have been captured by a nearby business’s southward facing security camera which is located approximately 780 feet due east of the venue where the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival was held on Oct. 1. The tape was given to Fox News by an attorney who represents several shooting victims.

Although the date burned into the video says ‘Oct. 2,’ Tucker Carlson confirms that the tape was in fact recorded on Oct. 1, the night of the shooting. The discrepancy comes after the proper date was not entered upon installation of the system.

A close look at the footage reveals the first notable detail occurs at 10:06 p.m. which is just one minute into the shooting, according to the official timeline, as Carlson points out.

At 10:06 concertgoers can be seen running eastward through the parking lot in an effort to get to safety.

“By ten-fourteen much larger crowds of people can be seen streaming through the area to escape the massacre going on,” Carlson explains. “You can see a large amount of wind and debris, apparently that is due to a helicopter hovering overhead.”

This is astonishing, to say the least! A helicopter hovering overhead?

[ … ]

According to Carlson, the owner of the tape maintains that law enforcement investigators have never asked to see the footage.

Here is the video.  Read the rest at Intellihub.

I maintain that I don’t need a pet theory of what happened that night and why it happened.  I’m not a conspiracy theorist.  I don’t have to prove my theories.  I also maintain that the narrative told to you by FedGov is a lie.