Articles by Herschel Smith

Codrea, concerning McMaster’s calling the car violence “terrorism.”

McMaster… isn’t that the guy who says “the Islamic State is not Islamic“…?

Yes it is, and he is also the one who is said to oppose everything the president wants to do.  And the one whose advisers are running a smear campaign to save his job.  And the one who emptied the National Security Council of everyone worthwhile, and the one whose folks are likely the leakers to the press.

Strange, who Trump surrounds himself with, yes?

This is as good an afteraction report as you’ll find anywhere on what happened at Charlottesville, Virginia.  This is an afteraction report from Seattle, and this is a report from Durham.

DURHAM, N.C. (WNCN) – A crowd of protesters gathered outside the old Durham County courthouse on Main Street Monday evening in opposition to a Confederate monument in front of the government building.

Around 7:10 p.m. a woman using a ladder climbed the statue of a Confederate soldier and attached a rope around the statue.

Moments later, the crowd pulled on the rope and the statue fell.  One man quickly ran up and spat on the statue and several others began kicking it.

Durham police later said they monitored the protests to make sure they were “safe” but did not interfere with the statue toppling because it happened on county property.

“Because this incident occurred on county property, where county law enforcement officials were staffed, no arrests were made by DPD officers,” Durham Police spokesman Wil Glenn said in a statement.

Durham County Sheriff’s deputies videotaped the statue being brought down — but didn’t stop it from happening.

After toppling the statue, the protesters started marching. They blocked traffic with authorities trying to stay ahead of them. The protesters made their way down East Main Street to the site of the new Durham Police Department.

Watch the video.  I suspect that when all is said and done, it will be learned that fat girl and metrosexual boy were paid protesters funded by George Soros because they are too stupid to find work any other way.

We already know that many, if not most of the protesters at Charlottesville, were in the employ of Soros, and one was clearly a high level DNC operative.

Attempts to blame guns and open carry fell flat today given that there was no violence perpetrated by anyone except Antifa.  I said very little about what McAuliffe said about the event, except to quote him.

You saw the militia walking down the street, you would have thought they were an army,” he added. “I was just talking to the State Police upstairs; they had better equipment than our State Police had,” he said, referring to the militia members. “And yet not a shot was fired, zero property damage.”

To which I said, “Good for you.  Good job, boys.”  Read between the lines here.  McAuliffe is clearly a shill, and I’ve always thought of him as a rather dense one at that.  He wanted to blame the right, and wanted to blame guns more than anything else.

But he couldn’t, and he knew it.  He knew that as soon as he did so, he would be proven wrong by all of the video, afteraction reports and eyewitness accounts, some by the very police he told to stand down.  He couldn’t blame the militia and had to stipulate that there was no property damage.

People damage – well, that’s another story.  The various militia groups who marched that day did a great job showing restraint, and frankly I would have preferred to see more aggression.  I would have preferred to see at least the use of bear spray on the Antifa rioters.  So if each and every militia member wasn’t carrying and didn’t deploy bear spray on an Antifa rioter, I don’t understand why.

Furthermore, when someone like that attacks you, your life is in danger, regardless of the kinds of weapons employed.  Fists can kill.  Sooner or later, guns will have to be used in the defense of life and property.  As Matt Bracken says, there will be shooting.  Carbines, up until now unloaded and for show, will be aimed, and triggers will be pulled.  You know it’s going to happen sooner or later.

These are the beginning stages of the great American split, and let’s pray that it is only a split into multiple countries instead of a civil war.

I will detail my thoughts on Robert E. Lee later.  I am not as big of a fan of his leadership as many, and see him and his horrible tactical decisions at Gettysburg as one of the primary reasons for the loss of the South in the war between the states.  The point of all of this is not what I or you think about Lee, it’s what we think about the erasure of our heritage.

CBS Detroit:

As the rhetoric ramps up over North Korea and nuclear weapons, the cash registers have been ringing at a local Army Supply store, where some are apparently prepping for a third World War.

Ben Orr, the manager of Joe’s Army Navy in Royal Oak, says he’s been selling a lot of “prepper items” over the past week or so.

“We’ve been very busy. Unusually busy, I’d say,” Orr told WWJ’s Sandra McNeill. “It’s definitely an increase, just in selling all the normal prepper stuff, end of the world stuff. A lot of water prep stuff, food, MREs — the military meals.”

And there’s been a substantial increase in the sale of a particular item they don’t sell much of — a so-called radiation antidote called potassium iodide.

“It actually stops your thyroid from absorbing any radiation. So, it fills your thyroid with iodine, which it normally does anyways,” said Orr. “Your body can’t tell the difference between bad, radioactive iodine and acceptable iodine, so it actually will stop you from getting thyroid cancer.”

Oh good Lord!  Stop it.  Just stop it.  Your ignorance is dangerous and you could hurt yourself and perhaps hurt your family too.  Stop the hysterics.

Let’s discuss a few things concerning radiation, radioactivity and nuclear events.  If you’re a layman, most articles you will read on these subjects will either be written way above your head, or by people who only pretend to know what they’re talking about because they lack the proper education and experience to speak intelligently.  Even the man who wrote this article on surviving a nuclear attack is in that category.

I could wax haughty and throw words around showing what I know about photon, electron and neutron shielding, the theoretical and mathematical difference between a Rad, Roentgen and a Rem, committed dose equivalent to organs, total effective dose equivalent, albedos, Keff (criticality) calculations, the Boltzmann transport equation and reactor kinetics.  But it would do you precisely no good.  None.  You wouldn’t be one bit better off after having read an article like that than you are right now.  You would have to take an advanced engineering degree or train in the radiological sciences in order to stay with me in such a discussion, and you can’t right now, so that’s that.  Something else needs to be done because the conversation the “journalist” had with that prepper above is off the charts stupid.

Potassium Iodine, or KI, doesn’t stop the thyroid from “absorbing radiation.”  It isn’t a magic radiation pill, regardless of how pepper and survivalist web sites market it.  There is nothing magic about it.  There is a little bit it can do under the right circumstances, and it can’t do anything else.  If you take it – and be aware that taking KI when you don’t need it can lead to severe health problems, especially in the young and old – it will load your thyroid with iodine and prevent the absorption of any more iodine, radioactive or not.  The intent behind this is to prevent radioactive iodine from being absorbed by the thyroid and thus the absorbed radiation dose from such a localized source.

What it doesn’t do is prevent the thyroid from “absorbing radiation.”  The entire whole body, including every organ in your body and the skin (which is treated as an organ by the ICRP) will still attenuate and absorb radiation from external sources, such as immersion in a cloud of radioactive material.  Charged particles (such as betas, or in other words, electrons) can be essentially stopped by clothing, skin and just a little tissue overlying the organs.

You cannot wear enough shielding to stop gammas or neutrons, although being inside a structure deep in the ground could help.  But you cannot stay in such structures unless you have millions of dollars worth of engineered safety features, like leak tight doors, HEPA and charcoal filtration for breathing air, food stores, water purification systems, and so on.  That’s because part of the problem isn’t just penetrating particles from radioactive material, but the transport of that radioactive material into your living space, food and on to and into your person through breathing or ingestion.

Radioactive iodine isn’t nearly the biggest problem.  Cesium is a thyroid-seeker as well, and the half lives for Cs-134 and Cs-137 are significant compared to the longest-lived iodine isotope, I-131 at 8.01 days.  The heavy elements such as the actinides are bone seekers and can cause cancer from ingestion and inhalation.  You name an organ, and I can name you an isotope (produced in nuclear fission) or list of isotopes that seek that organ.  For your own study, you can reference Federal Guidance Report No. 11.

Furthermore, immersion in airborne radioactivity causes dose to your whole body and all of your organs from exposure to externally generated particles.  Federal Guidance Report No. 12 outlines dose coefficients from each of the relevant radionuclides (immersed in a semi-infinite cloud, or an infinite hemispherical cloud).  Dr. Keith Eckerman and his group (before he retired from Oak Ridge National Laboratory) created these wonderful documents using ICRP models.  I know Keith, and I know they did a great job on these documents.  If you have any doubts about the potential dose from airborne radioactivity, you can refer to these documents (available on the web).

So what are you to do to prepare for nuclear disasters?  I would like to divide my simple and practical counsel into three categories: commercial nuclear power plants, so-called “dirty” nuclear weapons, and nuclear warfare.

Concerning commercial nuclear reactors, in America they are designed per the code of federal regulations with an overall negative power coefficient.  This means a number of complicated things as it pertains to Doppler broadening of resonance peaks for capture and fission of neutrons and the resultant power, and moderator temperature feedback in a nuclear reactor.  Let me simplify it for you, since we don’t have the time to convey an advanced engineering degree.

Commercial nuclear reactors, upon sustaining transients, shut down.  They do not explode like nuclear bombs.  Ever.  But what about Chernobyl?  Well, Russian nuclear reactor design is in fact designed with a potential overall positive power coefficient (the RMBK-1000 design), in part because they wanted the reactor to be neutronically loosely coupled, graphite moderated rather than water moderated, and capable of being refueled online where weapons grade Plutonium could be taken from the fuel.  It’s a complicated story, but the moderator (water) was a neutron poison rather than a positive reactivity feedback in the reactor.  Once a heatup occurred due to testing they were conducting, it fed the power excursion and led to an increase in power by a factor of 100 within one second, according to multi-dimensional analysis performed for this reactor accident.

This was still a steam explosion, not a nuclear explosion.  But what about Fukushima Daiichi?  For that Japanese reactor, it was designed safely.  They experienced a Tsunami of over 30 meters, leading to destruction of the plant equipment and transport of the resultant radioactive material off site.  And the death toll from radiation exposure?  Zero.  None.  The death toll from the Tsunami itself?  Over 15,000 souls.

If you are ever told by the authorities to evacuate due to a nuclear power plant accident, your best bet would be to stay put and watch the circus unfold around you in the safety of your own home.  The U.S. had our core melt – it is called TMI, or Three Mile Island.  Total radiation exposure offsite?  Zero.  Nothing.  American nuclear reactor designs, in addition to have negative overall power coefficients, have hard containment designs.  You are unsafe if you put your family on the road around all of the other panicked, foolish people who think nuclear reactors explode like bombs.  They don’t, so please end that myth and tell everyone you know who thinks their local nuclear reactor explodes to get educated about it.  Stop fearing what they don’t see.

As for so-called “dirty” nuclear weapons, those are mainly for instigating terror, not any tactical value.  In order to make such a weapon effective, one must be able to aerate radioactive material in order to cause dose from intake and uptake of that material.  That first requires radioactive material, and secondly requires that it be capable of aeration, and thirdly (and most importantly) that the space the terrorist intends to target be a confined space.

Confined spaces are dangerous.  Crowds are dangerous.  You can get trampled, you can run out of oxygen, you can be exposed to toxic gases, you can be shot, and you can be assaulted and unable to fight back.  I’ve seen the results of unintentional deployment of a Cardox system on humans, and it’s not pretty.  And … humans can breath radioactive material in confined spaces.  Dispersal is your friend, and there is no possibility of dispersal to the point of being at a safe concentration if you are in a confined space.  Stay out of confined spaces.  That means concerts by your favorite band, that means bars, that means fire trap buildings.  It means tunnels, it means tanks, ravines and caves.  Do not go spelunking.

Anyway, the value of dirty weapons is mitigated by the fact that they are like chlorine.  When AQI was deploying chlorine in Fallujah, I said they were stupid.  They could have exploded conventional ordnance and done far greater damage than deployment of chlorine.  The same is true of dirty weapons.  If a terrorist wants to deploy the greatest tactical advantage, he won’t choose dirty weapons or chlorine (or other chemical weapons).  He will explode conventional ordnance.

As for nuclear war, this is a very complicated topic, and one on which I am less of an expert than the above topics.  It’s certainly possible to survive a nuclear blast, witness some of the Japanese survivors of WWII.  Yet if nuclear war occurs with a real nuclear power such as Russia, it would be very bad.  Seats of power and government, military installations, ports and the littoral regions would be hardest hit, and many millions of people would perish.

Those left would be breathing aerated radioactive material (intake), and eating food that had radioactive material in it (uptake).  This subject requires a whole host of articles, including such topics as engineered safety features such a HEPA and charcoal filters, leak-tight doors, food stores, anti-contamination clothing and dress-out procedures, and bunkers and structures to help shield humans from external exposure from radioactive material.  We can wade through the details later on this in multiple posts if readers want that, but something tells me that you don’t.

The most useful thing I can tell you is that the cheapest, best way to protect your family in such an event is to scan your food.  I was in training once with a Russian engineer who lived in Kiev, and even years after the event at Chernobyl he was still scanning his food for beta and gamma radiation, as was everyone else in Kiev.  They had been given GM detectors and taught the simple procedures for doing that.

I have an Eberline GM detector with a pancake probe.  That may be a little expensive for your tastes, but there are detectors on the market cheaper than that.  This reminds me of a science project where I used this to help my son with his High School project, but more on that in a moment.

Now let’s deal briefly with North Korea.  They aren’t going to go to war with the U.S. – at least, that’s my judgment.  They don’t want to perish.  They are starving to death and they want grain, other food stuffs and money.  They do this every so often, we make deals with them to sustain and support them for another decade, and they are happy to enslave their people unimpeded.

We created the problem of North Korea.  It’s like the welfare state.  If we would have left them alone and ignored them, and told South Korea to defend itself, we would not be where we are.  North Korea would be much more open and competitive – or they would have starved.  But we must provide that umbrella of protection for Japan, Taiwan and South Korea because we are imperialists.  It’s what imperialists do.

It reminds me of the Elk in the preserve near Jackson Hole.  I stayed right across from the National Elk preserve one week a couple of years ago.  It’s a vast, grassy plane where the Elk can feed in the winter after they come down out of Yellowstone.  They return to Yellowstone for much better eating and cooler temperatures in the spring.  The environmentalists got the bright idea to feed the Elk.  Now the Elk won’t go back to Yellowstone, and they have a new welfare state in Jackson Hole.

I have my doubts that NK has been able to miniaturize nuclear weapons.  I also have doubts in their solid fuel rocket program.  I also have doubts in their electronics and ability to design and construct nose cones that don’t burn up upon reentry.  In any case, this is the welfare state we’ve created, and we’re better off to cut the cord of dependence right now, ignoring them for good.

In summary, until I can put something better together that is more detailed and useful, here are a few tips.  When faced with a commercial nuclear reactor accident in America, stay home, watch the festivities, and have a cookout that night.  Concerning chemical and radiological (“dirty”) weapons, stay away from confined spaces (structures and buildings if and when you can, subways, trains, tanks with limited egress, corridors and hallways with limited egress, roadways and byways and any other situation where your means of escape, evasion and egress have been restricted or limited).  If you are really concerned about nuclear war, then purchase a GM detector and do a little research on how to scan your food before deciding to consume it.

Now a brief lesson in just how stupid the public school system is.  My oldest son Joshua had a science project due back when he was in High School.  I have a radioactive rock at home.  God made it.  It was given to me by someone who visited a Uranium ore mine.  It’s natural.  God made it.  It cannot hurt you unless I throw it at you.

I suggested that we experiment with it, and Josh liked that idea.  I suggested that we learn things concerning Gauss’s law, and so we used the rock as a point source (it loosely approximated a point source) and learned about 1/R^2.  Then we tested Gauss’s law on sound by borrowing a sound meter from the sound engineer at church, and then just for good measure tested Gauss’s law for light by using a light meter from one of the safety technicians where I worked.

Then I suggested that we test radiation attenuation.  First I covered the pancake probe with a credit card to block the betas, and then we tested gamma radiation at a certain distance.  Then we got an aluminum sheet that reduced the dose rate to half of that value.  I asked Josh what he thought would happen if I put another sheet of that same aluminum in front of the probe, and he speculated, but was surprised to see that instead of reducing it to zero, it reduced it to half again.  And half again, and so on.  First, the dose rate was 100% of its value, then 50%, then 25%, then 12.5%, and so on.  So I had him chart this all out, and then explained the exponential curve he’d just drawn.  He understood that you can never stop all radiation, you can only exponentially attenuate it.

When I sent him to school with the rock and story board, I figured that no one would believe it unless I sent the GM detector with him.  So I did some calculations on dose rate at one meter converting counts per minute to dose rate, compared it to ICRP limits, showed it was safe, and sealed it with my PE stamp.  I have since considered sleeping with it under my pillow at night just for good measure, but my wife wouldn’t like the décor.  Later that morning we got a call from the school.  We were told to come get the rock before they called the Charlotte Hazmat team to confiscate it.

I had plans for that rock.  I wanted to go in where they had it under lock and key, invite the school authorities to watch, remove it from the bag, and lick the rock.  Sadly, my wife got there before me and took possession of the rock.  Josh failed that science project because the teacher didn’t understand what he did.

This happened because public schools suck, do not teach the STEM courses, and staff their positions with idiots who have been trained in colleges of communism.  For many years I invested in Christian schools for my children, but stopped when I figured out that they were full of cliques that impede education.  I transitioned to public schools partly because of the expense of Christian schools (I spent as much every year as you would for a college education), and was turned off by virtually every experience I had with the communists in public education.  If I had it to do over, I would have home-schooled them all twelve years.

Don’t be like that dumbass teacher, always turning to the state, and never willing to learn.

UPDATE: As I was saying …

NYT:

You saw the militia walking down the street, you would have thought they were an army,” he added. “I was just talking to the State Police upstairs; they had better equipment than our State Police had,” he said, referring to the militia members. “And yet not a shot was fired, zero property damage.”

Good for you.  Good job, boys.

Charles C.W. Cooke:

Is it cherished in Britain, a nation that has been on the front lines of late? In this area, no, it is not. I traveled back to my home country just after the latest terror attack to cover the recent elections. While there, I put Noble’s idea to my family and friends, and was met with the sort of incredulous, mouth-agape reaction that I’d expect if I had suggested invading Norway with just a pocket square for protection. “If these attacks become quotidian,” I asked, “do you think that the British will need to rethink guns?” The answers: No, no, no, no and no. Indeed, my interlocutors could scarcely have been more emphatic if I’d advised them to buy a fighter jet.

The British, to put it lightly, do not like guns. They don’t want guns. And, in all likelihood, they’re not going to change their minds on that point. Americans who are wondering if the Brits are on the verge of a sea change here should understand this: They’re not. Not even close. Culture matters, and the United Kingdom has shifted on this. In 1688, the right to bear arms was cherished; today, it is seen as a relic. Were a politician to run on the promise of liberalizing the gun laws, he would lose—badly. This is, to borrow a line from Monty Python, a dead parrot.

Well, that’s too bad.  Then they will suffer under the yoke of violence and Islamic Sharia.  There can be no other end for them.  Keep a stiff upper lip, Brits.  It’s the English way.

As for Charles, he wants liberty, he wants the lack of such a yoke of bondage, but since he doesn’t understand where America’s freedom comes from, he will never really understand guns or their availability in the U.S.  You see, Americans retain the right to replace their government, by force if necessary.  This comes from the Calvinian concept of covenant, passed through to the pastors, thinkers and other men who risked their lives, families and wealth to secure their liberty from a tyrant.  I’ve discussed this in great detail before, and so I won’t rehearse it again here.  But suffice it to say that God gives me rights and duties, not any piece of parchment.  That piece of parchment represents the agreement of the government to live in accordance with said stipulations, just as do I.

The reason for my reticence on Charles?  He is an atheist.

ABC:

John Howard’s gun laws are collapsing, gun control advocates say, as they compile a stocktake on states and territories’ compliance with the National Firearms Agreement.

The agreement — which is non-binding, and underpinned by state and territory firearms laws — was negotiated by the then prime minister in 1996 after 35 people died in the Port Arthur massacre.

Preliminary findings from Gun Control Australia’s report on the issue indicate a “chain reaction” has been speeding up since 2008. The organisation’s chair, Samantha Lee, told the ABC that changes often began with gun lobby wins in NSW.

“As one of the bigger states passes laws to water down their legislation, the other states are following suit … the result being, our national approach to gun control is eroding,” Ms Lee said.

The audit is set to be released next month, and comes as states and territories are moving to implement an update of the agreement signed by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) last December.

The main outcome of that review was tougher restrictions on lever-action shotguns, after an uproar about the arrival of a new weapon, the Turkish-made Adler A110.

The Adler came in 5- and 7-shot versions, with the latter banned for import by federal justice minister Michael Keenan in 2015.

Shooters were outraged at the ban, believing there was no new technology in the Adler, and no evidence that lever-action shotguns were being used in crime.

The backlash from shooters has been so strong that some states and territories may baulk at implementing the revised national agreement. So far, only NSW and the ACT have implemented it.

Coalition governments have fractured over the ban, with several federal National Party MPs supporting a disallowance motion by Senator David Leyonhjelm in November, and Liberal MLC Peter Phelps crossing the floor when the enabling legislation reached the NSW Parliament in May.

NSW Police Minister Troy Grant took a public stand against the tougher restrictions until he resigned as deputy premier late last year, at which point NSW fell into line with other states and signed up to the revised agreement.

Mr Grant said at the time that he was standing up for the rights of law-abiding gun owners, and did not believe there was any evidence that lever-action shotguns were more dangerous than other weapons available to recreational shooters.

But Background Briefing can reveal that before his resignation, he received — and then overrode — confidential advice about the contentious laws from his own police force.

The heavily redacted advice, signed off by the NSW Police Firearms Registry and obtained under freedom of information laws by NSW Greens justice spokesperson David Shoebridge, says that improved technology means that lever-action shotguns “are now similar, in terms of their rapidity, to pump-action shotguns”.

Pump-action shotguns are highly restricted under the National Firearms Agreement.

Although the document did not make any recommendation, Mr Shoebridge said the clear implication of the expert police opinion was that circulation of lever-action shotguns should be just as restricted.

Okay, so we’re talking about lever action shotgun tube magazine capacity.  They’re not even close yet.  They have a long way to go, the police will always take the side of the controllers, and the non-binding nature of the national agreement (a fact which I didn’t know) give an avenue for replacement of the local and state leaders to turn back the real control over handguns, semi-automatic rifles and other weapons.

Codrea:

“Skyhorse Publishing is about to release my next book, which is devoted to great and fatal government-caused disasters. The title is …. ‘I’m From the Government, and I’m Here to Kill You: The Human Cost of Official Negligence,’” attorney and author David T. Hardy informed AmmoLand Shooting Sports News Thursday. “Texas City, the Tuskegee Syphilis study, Ruby Ridge, Waco, Fast and Furious, the VA hospital scandal – time after time, government employees kill Americans by negligence, stupidity, or agency corruption, and time after time they escape all legal accountability.”

Hardy’s should be a familiar name to longtime readers of this columnist’s work. His contributions to advancing the right to keep and bear arms have been chronicled extensively on The War On Guns blog, which has over the years featured numerous posts on his numerous books, his groundbreaking “In Search of the Second Amendment” documentary, his observations on the Of Arms & the Law blog, and his legal work, including cases and law review articles.

I saw this announcement a few days ago and intend to place my order.

John Stossel:

Have a gun license? Plan to bring your gun to my hometown? Don’t.

Mean New York authorities will make your life miserable.

Patricia Jordan and her daughter flew here from her home state of Georgia. She wanted her gun nearby for protection.

Jordan obeyed all the Transportation Security Administration’s rules: She put her gun in a locked TSA-approved case with its bullets separate. She informed the airline that she had a gun. The airline had no problem with that.

In New York City, she kept the gun locked in her hotel room. She never needed it, but her daughter told me, “I was glad she brought it just in case something did happen.”

When leaving the city, Jordan followed the TSA’s rules again. At the airline counter, she again told the agent she wanted to check her gun. But this time, she was told: “Wait.”

“Next thing I know, they’re getting ready to arrest me,” she said.

Her daughter was crying, “Please don’t arrest my mom!” But New York City cops arrested her, jailed her and told her she was guilty of a felony that mandates a minimum 3 1/2 years in jail.

Jordan’s ordeal is not unique. Roughly once a week, New York City locks up people for carrying guns legally licensed by other states.

Another Georgia visitor, Avi Wolf, was jailed although he didn’t even have a gun. He just had part of a gun—an empty magazine—a little plastic box with a small metal spring. He brought it to the city because it wasn’t working well and he thought a New York friend might repair it. He couldn’t believe he was being arrested.

“Somebody could’ve done more damage to an individual with a fork from McDonald’s,” Wolf told me.

Wolf, too, checked with the TSA beforehand. They said, just declare it to TSA agents. So he did.

“I’m telling them… I have a magazine here. It’s empty, no bullets… Next thing I know they’re pulling me over to the side, they’re like, ‘Do you know what you have in your bag?!’ ‘I know what I have in my bag, I told you what I have in my bag.'”

Following TSA instructions didn’t do Wolf any good. “Fast forward about an hour and it was four Port Authority police there. The chief of LaGuardia airport is there, [as if] they thought they found somebody trying to do 9/11 repeat,” he says.

“They asked me if I had a gun license. Of course I had a license. I’m from Georgia, and everybody there’s got a gun license. And they’re like, well, sir, you’re going to be getting arrested now.”

Wolf and Jordan spent less than a day in jail, but each had to pay lawyers $15,000 to bargain the felony charge down to “public disorder.”

Gun owners know to steer clear of New York – the entire state, not just New York City.  The TSA works with transportation of firearms (and they don’t do that very well).  They cannot possibly tell you the laws of the state you plan to visit.

In New York, the entire state, you cannot have a handgun on your person.  Not for self defense, not for any reason.  The best policy is not to visit New York – the entire state – for any reason, at any time.  Ever.  New York is a shit hole.  The same goes for Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, California and Hawaii.

Oh, by the way, besides Remington and Kimber, what firearms manufacturers are still in New York?  Why hasn’t Remington and Kimber shut their doors to operations in the state of New York?  That’s the only remaining question to me.

H/T WRSA.

It occurs to me that the deep state, and all of its actors in the Senate and House, really have no idea how close America is as we speak to dystopia and how difficult this would be for them.

Tyler Yzaguirre:

The United States is a nation built upon individual rights and freedoms.

One in particular that is often fought over is the “right of the people to keep and bear arms,” or more simply put, the right to carry a firearm.

Open carry is the act of publicly carrying a firearm on one’s person in plain sight. The majority of states allow citizens to open carry a firearm without a permit.

Surprisingly, Texas is not one of those states.

Now while this may seem shocking at first, most of these open carry states place burdensome restrictions on the act. These include location restrictions such as high schools and certain cities, state buildings, police stations, and shopping malls. With all these restrictions, open carry isn’t as permissible as it sounds.

The First Amendment has historically been much more difficult to limit than the Second, so extending Freedom of Speech to encompass the open display of firearms needs to be addressed. The case for open carrying being protected under the First Amendment can be made through symbolic speech.

The United States Supreme Court has answered the issue of firearms being protected by the Second Amendment through DC v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010). In regards to open carry from a legal perspective, we must look to the state laws rather than the Constitution.

However, there has been no Supreme Court case deciding whether or not the act of open carrying is protected by the First Amendment.

Open carrying a firearm is an action; it is symbolic speech because it is a public statement. As history has shown us, actions and public statements, are protected by the First Amendment under symbolic speech. Examples of this include students in Des Moines wearing armbands to protest the Vietnam War, waving flags that may be seen as offensive and even flag burning.

Symbolic speech relies heavily on the context within which it occurs.

According to Delaware’s leading Open Carry organization, “self-defense is the foremost reason for open carry.”Another leading reason as to why law abiding citizens open carry firearms is for educational purposes.

People want to bring attention to the fact that they have the right to bear arms and that they can legally and safely exercise that right.

Well, this is an interesting perspective indeed.  Since I open carry from time to time and have strongly advocated open carry legislation in my neighboring state of South Carolina, I have addressed the issue of open carry with my readers.

I have said in no uncertain terms that I do not open carry to “make a point.”  I open carry because I hate concealed carry.  It’s uncomfortable and tactically inferior to open carry, and in the summer if I conceal I sweat my weapon, which not only causes rust and corrosion, but makes it a lint-magnet as well.  I have very practical reasons for open carry.

But I have also made it clear that any calls to LEOs because someone openly carries would be a good opportunity for 911 operators to educate the public: “What do you mean he was carrying a gun, ma’am?  Was he brandishing it, holding it, waving it around or threatening someone with it?”  “No?  Okay then, he isn’t violating any law in North Carolina by simply carrying a holstered firearm.”

There is no prima facie reason that open carry cannot be legitimately for the reason of making a statement or for education purposes.  I’ve just never personally taken that stance for myself.  But the author makes a good case for such behavior being protected by the constitution, and I see this as ripe for litigation.