Articles by Herschel Smith

This commentary caused me to revisit the National Firearms Act (hereafter, NFA).  Perhaps there are better versions of this discussion (perhaps someone can find a PDF of the deliberations), but here is a rendering of the deliberations of the Congress on the NFA.

One of the most stark and eyebrow raising parts comes up front.  It is the testimony of Homer S. Cummings, then Attorney General of the United States.

Here are some of his statements.

“The situation has become exceedingly serious … there are more people in the underworld today armed with deadly weapons, in fact, twice as many, as there are in the Army and Navy of the United States combined.  In other words, roughly speaking, there are at least 500,000 of these people who are warring against society and who carrying about with them or have available at hand, weapons of the most deadly character.”

” … defines firearms to mean pistol, revolver, a shotgun having a barrel less than 16 inches in length.”

” … it defines a machine gun as any weapon designed to shoot automatically, or semiautomatically, 12 or more shots without reloading.”

This is the first draft of the NFA on which he is testifying.  Note that all handguns, including revolvers, and all semi-automatic rifles, were included in the first draft of the NFA.

For that matter, so was body armor, what he called “bullet-proof vests.”

But he waxes to the most earnest and emotional part thereafter when asked how laws were going to effect change in those who already had these weapons.

“I racked my brain to try to find some simple and effective manner of those already armed.”

His solution if you care to read it is to tax them, trace them and make interstate commerce and travel with these NFA items illegal.

And thus we know that his entire testimony is complete and unmitigated bullshit.  He begins by whipping up the terror.  Half a million.  Again, half a million of these nefarious workers of evil who have no compunction about killing or savagery currently have access to machine guns (which he defines as semi-automatic rifles) and pistols.  Not only that, he points out upon questioning that these are half a million people, not weapons.  Each person may have a dozen or more weapons.  Seriously,  read it for yourself.  That’s six million machine guns in the hands of cold blooded killers who have no conscience and a ready-made organization.  More, mind you, than the Army and Navy combined.

And yet, making interstate commerce in those weapons and travel across state lines illegal is supposed to work as an effective deterrent to the crimes they perpetrate.  Realistically, half a million machine gun toting cold blooded killers could have taken over the government in a day, and yet Cummings is advocating his law as an effective means to hold them at bay.

This law will go down as an abomination and obscenity, and in fact it already has.  The testimony was full of lies, the law was intended to disarm peaceable men, and the use of terror was an emotional ploy on stolid Congressmen, or perhaps those who knew and played along in the disarming of the public.

The NFA is a wicked testimony to the depravity of mankind.  It’s still the holy grail for gun controllers today who want to restrict semi-automatic weapons, pistols, barrel lengths and magazine capacity.  God will not bless a country with a history of controlling people in such a manner, and this law deserves our utmost disapprobation.  We should not and do not recognize its legitimacy.

I won’t outline the details of the Obama executive order for you.  You know the details.  The order included submission of names to the FICS who were social security recipients and who also had someone other than themselves handling their personal finances.

This is a fairly simple thing.  It’s routine for elderly people to have someone acting as power of attorney, and it’s also fairly routine to have someone other than themselves (e.g., their children) who handles personal finances.  This isn’t just commonplace with the elderly.  Seldom do both spouses handle the finances, and seldom do both spouses want to handle the finances.

The Congress has punted this ridiculous order (although why this couldn’t be punted by another executive order, I don’t know).  According to the progressives, the end of the world is upon us.  Consider these quotes.

NJ.com: “It was deemed that the ability to manage one’s own finances was a suitable proxy to identify the severely mentally ill.”

ARSTechnica: “Beneficiaries affected would be those suffering with mental illnesses so severe that they require a representative to manage their finances for them.”

CNN: ” … those who are considered incapable of managing their own disability benefits due mental illness.”

The Sacramento Bee: ” … Obama administration regulation intended to keep guns away from people so mentally disordered that they cannot work, and so depend on Social Security benefits.”

And finally, The Hill: “If your mental impairment is so significant you cannot work and cannot manage money, chances are you cannot safely manage an automatic weapon.”

Forget the fact that retiring to take advantage of social security benefits has nothing whatsoever to do with so-called mental illness.  Forget also the fact that handling finances today requires online presence unfamiliar to many Americans currently on social security.  I seriously doubt the authors of any of these commentaries know anything about the computer they use as a dumb terminal anyway.

Most of them couldn’t code their way through a hand held calculator and are likely only barely able to operate the calculator on their iPhones to multiply two numbers together.  I’d like to see them solve a differential equation, and upon failure perhaps I could cast doubt on their mental readiness to operate a vehicle.

No, these elderly folks are characterized as mentally ill, not only that, severely mentally ill, and moreover, disabled and disordered.

These anti-gun commentaries have become so outlandish that they’re cartoonish and laughable.  One can only suppose that they are receiving their talking points from Everytown or some Bloomberg apparatchik.  They are in good company along with Hamilton Nolan at Gawker who exclaimed:

When you’re old you’re slow as hell and decades of muscle erosion have made you weak. Pretty much any healthy young person can beat you up. Is a gun gonna even things out? Nope. In order for that gun to work you have to pull it out and aim it in a moment of crisis. While you’re fumbling to do that, all slow, a young person is just pushing you on the ground. And taking your gun out of your feeble hands.

Leave the guns to the young nuts, oldie.

Smoothly drawing a gun from a holster, aiming it quickly, and firing it accurately despite the kickback require a level of strength and dexterity that you just don’t have. I’ll lay 5-1 odds that any street criminal can kick you in the knee and chuckle as you roll around on the ground, grasping for the gun you dropped, as they rifle through your purse and then steal your gun, too.

How we treat the weaker among us is as good a metric of our national character as it ever was, perhaps the best possible metric.

One of the commentaries poses the question for a poll.  Should the mentally ill be allowed to have guns?  In my response I refuse to play their game.  Mental maladies have no correspondence to propensity to violence, so says the mental health experts.  The elderly have the right to self defense just as anyone else.

I believe we should restrict gun rights, but only for those who believe that we can define mental health in such a way as to restrict the rights of those we define.  Unprovoked violence has to do with wickedness, not mental illness.  In other words, if you believe that we should take guns away from people based on your definitions of who should have guns and who shouldn’t, I believe you are too dangerous to have guns.

The desire to control the actions of other men is pathological.  Acting on this pathology is wickedness.  I don’t believe you are actionable people for compromise or open discussion if you fall into this category.  You are a danger to society and should have your gun rights restricted.  If you would lord it over other men to control their lives, fortunes, self defense, children, work and other aspects of their lives, you are suitable only as an opponent in battle.

David Codrea:

“As a long term bureaucrat, this white paper reads as an application for the ATF director spot,” Weingarten surmises. “The paper fairly screams: I am willing to work with you, and I know how to take direction.”

That tracks with opinions I’ve received from insider and industry sources. It also works to mitigate the threat to the Bureau of having its functions spun off to different agencies.

I must admit to being skeptical of the motivation myself.  Government employees don’t usually work to undermine the scope of their authority.

I’ll also comment on a point David makes about a FOIA request in which he was involved.  Perhaps the FOIA request caught them with their pants down and forces them to consider their failures as an organization.

My experience has been that any entity that thinks it will be embarrassed by what it divulges in response to a FOIA will ignore the FOIA.  If you have massive legal assets like Judicial Watch, you typically can get what you want, albeit with some effort.  But for me, this usually goes badly.  The FOIA framework has no teeth because little people like me have no ability to force them to obey the law.

At any rate, the white paper reads like a job application.  Perhaps it is.  I don’t blame him.  I blame the executive branch of the government for allowing the ATF to get this badly out of control, I blame the Senate for the NFA and GCA, and I blame the people of the U.S. for putting communists in place who would promulgate this kind of legal framework to begin with.

What a sorry situation.

Sorry for the light posting.  I was out of town yesterday, last night and today on business, and no connectivity.  Back home now.

Talk amongst yourselves, and back to regular posting tomorrow.

I routinely publish articles outlining current gun control bills, and in these same article advocate action by lovers of liberty.  One such article was this one concerning constitutional carry being dead in Texas this term.

A few of the comments tend towards the fatalistic view, there is nothing we can do, or the notion that we just violate the laws until such time as civil war begins.

These views are shortsighted and myopic.  There will never be a time when politics isn’t considered warfare, or a time when warfare is absent or void of politics.  Warfare and politics are different manifestations of the same thing.  Conflict.

They may be different gradations of conflict and conflict resolution, different pressure points, or different avenues of force, but there has never been and never will be in world history an even, clear, demarcation or bifurcation between warfare and politics.

There isn’t now even in the U.S.  George Webb (Swiegart) who famously has the series on YouTube, made a good point on one recent video.  The State Department is an arm of the CIA.  They are the visible arm, the political arm, but an arm nonetheless.

If you don’t understand this point, you need to go back and study the Chinese thesis Unrestricted Warfare.  And if you still don’t understand my point, study it again, and again, and again until you do.

Folks, we must be thinking men.

Progressive legislators in New Mexico are threatening with new gun control laws.

Santa Fe, NM – A bill requiring background checks on all firearm sales passed the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee by a vote of 3 to 1.  House Bill 50 would close a dangerous loophole that allows guns to be sold online or at gun shows or even in parking lots without criminal background checks. It has exceptions written in to allow family members to transfer guns to their relatives and for the loaning of guns for hunting, shooting ranges or self-defense.

“We must balance public safety with convenience,” said HB 50’s sponsor Rep. Stephanie Garcia Richard (D-Los Alamos). “It’s not difficult to buy a gun from a licensed dealer. Background checks take, on average, two minutes.”

Rep. Garcia Richard told of her own experience buying a gun from an online dealer. “We met at the parking lot of a McDonald’s. No names, no IDs, and I paid cash.”

Testimony was given by members of New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence, Voices For Children, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense New Mexico Chapter, the National Association of Social Workers New Mexico Chapter, Everytown for Gun Safety, former law enforcement officials, and other concerned citizens who support this common sense measure. Rep. Eliseo Alcon (D-Milan), chairman of the committee, allowed any member of the public who wanted to speak for or against the bill to comment at today’s hearing.

They’re lying about what this bill does.  The truth of the matter is more stark.

• An individual loaning his or her significant other a handgun for self-protection when homes or apartments in her neighborhood have been burglarized;
• A member of the military who is deployed overseas and wants to store his or her personal firearms with a trusted friend;
• Someone borrowing their co-worker’s gun to take on a hunting trip, to the local range or to shoot on BLM land when the colleague cannot accompany him or her on the excursion.
• Working ranch employees possessing and transporting ranch-owned rifles in vehicles or on their person.
• Volunteers staging auction or raffle items for a non-profit, charitable fundraising event where a firearm is displayed.

SB 48/ HB 50 also require the return of loaned firearms to original owners be conducted through a licensed dealer, with completion of federal paperwork and payment of an undetermined fee.

I don’t have a sense of how the legislature will act, nor do I know the governor well enough to predict the outcome.  But New Mexico residents need to be flaming the Senate and House members, and telling the governor in no uncertain terms that this bill must not pass.  And that you have a very long memory.

Revolvers were in the news and commentary this weekend or recently.  Sig Sauer has a new line of revolver ammunition called Sig Elite Performance V-Crown Revolver Ammunition.  It’s nice to see manufacturers not forget about wheel guns.

Sam Hoober writing at Ammoland has a piece up advocating the .45 ACP revolver.  Given the advantages of the revolver, which are: (a) reliability, (b) if enough time is available to run the gun in single action, the trigger pull is very light, (c) double action gun if it is needed, and (d) the pressure escape through the cylinder and forcing cone allows for much hotter loads than can be used inside semi-automatic pistols, thus giving higher muzzle velocity.

I’m not so sure about the idea of a .45 ACP revolver.  I would use something like that only for inside-the-home shooting given its lower muzzle velocity.

Cheaper Than Dirt also has an interesting advocacy piece for wheel guns, where they observe the following.

A further advantage of the revolver is that the revolver can be placed against an opponent’s body and fired repeatedly as a contact weapon. The automatic pistol would jam after the first shot, tying up with blood or clothing material blown into the slide. It may also short cycle due to a less than perfect grip

I just happened to grab one of my wheel guns for shooting at the range this weekend.

I do love a good revolver.

The Austin Chronicle:

In 2015, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law two provisions expanding gun rights in Texas. With House Bill 910, Texas joined 14 other states that allow open carry of firearms in public spaces with a valid permit. Senate Bill 11 implemented campus carry. The two laws, widely praised by advocates as extensions of Texans’ liberty, also ushered in a firestorm of opposition in Austin and around the state. Groups like Texas Gun Sense cold-called local businesses to see which ones would allow open carry on their grounds, hoping that economic consequences would affect businesses’ choices – and in many cases it did. Lists, including one compiled in these pages, swelled with names of restaurants and businesses opting out.

Protests against campus carry were particularly robust at UT-Austin, where organizers were dogged in resisting a law that ultimately went into effect Aug. 1, 2016, the 50th anniversary of Charles Whitman’s Tower shooting. On the first day of classes, #CocksNotGlocks protesters set off a fresh round of outrage that reverberated internationally. Gun advocates and Lege regulars scratched their heads at the level of opposition, many of them feeling the two laws functioned as a substitute for constitutional, or permitless, carry, the ultimate goal of many gun rights groups.

Constitutional carry finds itself on the legislative agenda this year. Rep. Jonathan Stickland, R-Bedford, has pledged his support for such a measure via HB 375, which would eliminate the licensing requirement for carrying a handgun, essentially deregulating open carry. Stickland announced his commitment to passing the law at a Jan. 23 press conference hosted by Texans for Accountable Government and Lone Star Gun Rights. “There’s been a lot of education involved,” he said, explaining why he believes the measure faces better odds this session than two years ago, when the pro-gun caucus was more fragmented. “There are a lot of groups that are coming together and saying, ‘You know what? It’s wrong that Texans have to beg for permission for their Second Amendment rights. It’s wrong that we’re forcing people to pay a fee and take a class for their Second Amendment rights.'”

But Stickland may not have as much support as he suggests. Andrea Brauer, execu­tive director of Texas Gun Sense, suggested the conservative representative is very much in the minority on the issue. Rather, she said, the priority among Capitol Republicans remains eliminating the licensing fees for open carry enthusiasts while leaving the class requirement in place, though no lawmaker has filed a bill quite yet. “I’m not hearing people say [permitless carry] is a priority except for Jonathan Stickland,” she continued.

Where are the Texans?  Look folks.  I know it’s a lot of work to stay active in these matters.  But I noticed some gun bills in formation in Arkansas a few days ago, some good some very bad, and I spent the time to get the email addresses of every state senator and a number of pastors of high profile churches in Arkansas to send out blast emails linking articles I intend to write if this begins to go badly for Arkansas.  And I don’t even live in Arkansas.

You guys have got to spend the time to be active or we’ll always be relegated to second or third class, or lower.  Our liberties are at stake.  Fill their ear up with our demands.  They won’t hear it from anyone else, will they?

H&K hates you, or so they say.  It appears they hate America too.

German gunmaker Heckler & Koch said U.S. aerospace and defence company Orbital ATK Inc had filed a suit in the United States seeking damages in excess of $27 million.

In the complaint, filed at the U.S. District court in the district of Minnesota, Orbital said it was seeking damages for breach of contract over the XM25 semi-automatic weapon system which Orbital and Heckler & Koch started developing more than 20 years ago.

“Heckler & Koch GmbH rejects all claims, based on the information we have so far,” the company said in a statement on Thursday.

“Heckler & Koch GmbH did not receive the complaint formally from the U.S. District Court, District of Minnesota so far,” the gunmaker also said in its brief statement.

A spokesman for Heckler & Koch declined to comment on the details of the claims.

Orbital said in the filing, seen by Reuters, that Heckler & Koch had failed to deliver twenty additional prototypes of the XM25 weapon systems, as contracted, and that its failure to do so meant the U.S. Army had raised the possibility of terminating its contract with Orbital.

“Even if the Prime Contract is not terminated, Orbital ATK has incurred and will incur additional costs as a direct result of the substantial delay caused by Heckler & Koch’s non-performance and the need to re-procure the twenty weapons from an alternate manufacturer,” it stated in the filing.

Orbital is also asking in the filing that Heckler & Koch transfer certain intellectual property to enable another contractor to carry out the work.

The filing said Heckler & Koch had queried whether the weapons, which target enemies protected by walls or hidden in hard-to-reach places, would violate international laws of war.

The filing also said that after receiving legal opinions, Heckler & Koch had said it would only supply the weapons if the U.S. government provided a special certification, which the government refused to do. Informal mediation failed, and Heckler & Koch refused to engage in formal mediation, the filing stated.

Um … what?  As best as I can determine, H&K decided that the very weapon they were designing for the stated purpose of being an airburst counter defilade weapon isn’t appropriate in anyone’s hands, and decided not to fulfill contractual obligations.

David Codrea:

• What did the Founders mean by “A well regulated militia”?
• What did the Founder mean by “being necessary to the security of a free State”?
• What did the Founders mean by “the right of the people to keep and bear arms”?
• What did the Founders mean by “shall not be infringed”?
• How can past Supreme Court opinion specifying protected arms as those being “in common use at the time” not apply to the types of firearms needed for militia service?

I’ve already made my feelings know about the Gorsuch selection.  He’s got some very good points and he’s certainly not someone HRC would have picked, and thank God for that, but the liberties in the constitution are sacrosanct.  They are inviolable.  They are stipulations in a covenant that shall not be broken.

David recommends tweeting Ted Cruz and recommending these questions for Gorsuch.  I did.  You should find your own way to communicate with your elected representatives, and especially those on the judicial committee.