Articles by Herschel Smith

The Washington Post:

Suddenly, the officer rapped on the rear passenger side window with his pistol. My daughter, who was sitting inches from the barrel of his gun, jumped with fear as the officer yelled at me to roll down the front passenger window, his service weapon pointed directly at me. I knew something was terribly awry and I tried to remain calm, keeping my hands visible as I slowly fumbled for the window controls in an unfamiliar car.

My daughter rolled down her window and I explained that we were in a rental car, that we had no weapons, and I was having trouble figuring out how to roll down the front passenger window from my driver’s side door. The officer didn’t listen, and kept yelling louder and more insistently, ordering me to comply with his request as he leered at me down the barrel of his pistol. My daughter panicked and tried to get out of her booster seat to reach forward to roll down the front window, and the officer screamed her at her not to move as he pointed his pistol at her.

Then, as I had my hands in the air, he yelled, at the top of his lungs, in a voice I will never forget, as my daughter looked on in terror, “Get your hands away from your waist or I’ll blow two holes through your back right now!” My hands were high in the air as he said this, and I was not in any way reaching for my waist. I was utterly terrified. I’ve heard stories of police yelling out false things like this before they unjustifiably attack someone as a way to justify the attack, and I thought this was what was happening to me. I braced for bullets to hit me and all I could think of was my daughter having to watch it happen and being left alone on the side of the highway with an insane, violent cop.

I would be terrified for my child too.  The report says that the officer thought it was a stolen car.  Whatever.  There is no excuse for this kind of behavior.  None.

With a child in the car, the officer should have immediately reassessed the situation and concluded that his information was likely incorrect.  It often is, witness so many wrong-home SWAT raids.  Furthermore, inability to figure out how a window works when under duress isn’t equivalent to being noncompliant with the officer’s commands.  The officer doesn’t know everything about the situation, and he shouldn’t have drawn his service weapon.

Finally, men like this give gun owners like me a bad name.  His trigger discipline and muzzle discipline are non-existent.  Even if it was a stolen vehicle like he thought, the presence of a child in the automobile should have made him stop and conclude that it wasn’t worth the risk of injury to the child, even if the driver drove away.  The driver will never actually get away.  He knows that.

Honestly, from my vantage point, I don’t worry so much about crime or assault.  My biggest worry is goobers like this who believe they are Mr. tactical, when their thinking more matches Barney Fife.  And I would bet every penny I had that if a negligent discharge occurred, killing the innocent man or injuring the child, the PD would have hired “experts” who testified that he did everything right.  He would have gotten away with it.

Here’s what Los Alamos, New Mexico looks like with a summer storm in the distance.

It’s called virga.

Houston Chronicle, the history of the open carry bill in Texas from Texas Senator Joan Huffman.

There is also a misconception that the Legislature did not listen to law enforcement or care about their input on open carry legislation. It is true some police had objections and opposed the law, and most made it clear that if open carry of handguns were to become law they strongly requested that a license requirement remain and that a holster requirement be made part of the law. Texans must still be licensed and can only openly carry a holstered handgun.

I fought hard in the Senate to remove a House amendment to HB 910 that law enforcement groups strongly opposed. This amendment would have prohibited a peace officer from making a simple investigatory inquiry or other temporary detention to see if a person openly carrying a handgun in fact has a license. I worked with law enforcement to ensure the amendment was removed before HB910 finally passed. It was removed, much to our relief.

The permissive, licensed open carry of handguns has been the law for almost a year now, and I believe there has been little or no effect on law enforcement. In fact, it appears so far the right to openly carry is rarely exercised. I am currently conducting a written survey of the heads of law enforcement around the state asking about their experiences regarding the open carry of firearms. The Legislature will continue to monitor these important policy issues to ensure that public safety remains at the forefront of our discussion. The causes of these tragedies will continue to haunt us. But there is no benefit in blaming a law, a political organization, a political party or a person – other than the killer. I think we can all agree that the answers are much more complex than that.

Well, Joan wants to straddle the fence and keep one foot in the liberty pasture, with another in the collectivist field.  But it’s good to know just who was responsible for what, yes?  It supplies you with better optics when the enemy self-identifies.

Her assertion that the open carry bill has had little or no effect seems to be tied to the notion that this is a rarely exercised right.  The corollary is that if people actually exercise their rights, then it would be unsafe and the police would be adversely effected.

We’ve covered this before in the context of the Dallas shootings.  The fact that an open carrier had his picture posted on Twitter is completely irrelevant and didn’t hamper law enforcement in the least.  The officers who responded were fighting for their lives as they engaged in CQB with the shooter.  What Twitter did or didn’t say wasn’t even remotely part of their thinking.  That was all done by different officers, and by the way, if a shooter was going to kill multiple police officers, do you think he would post his picture on Twitter?  Really, people.  Do I have to come teach LEOs basic common sense?

As for what law enforcement wants, I couldn’t care less.  Communist Art Acevedo (who assisted and supported federal agents conducting forcible, random blood draws at a DUI check) won’t be happy until everyone is in shackles and chains wearing the uniforms of slave labor except his own department.

News from Calais:

Maëva Mayla uploaded four photographs to her Facebook page showing the damage to the Audi vehicle and the post has been shared more than 6,000 times.

Meanwhile, locals living near the French port city have also warned drivers to avoid the area and have reportedly said migrants are not checking whether children are inside the vehicles before they attack them.

Ms Mayla posted photographs of her brother-in-law’s vehicle and wrote that it sustained more than £435 worth of damage when it was set upon by ’15 migrants’ who carried out the attack ‘just for fun’.

One woman that commented on her post, Marine Gabrielle, said she no longer uses the roads around Calais as she is ‘so scared’.

The damage to Ms Mayla’s brother-in-law’s vehicle comes just weeks after lorry drivers warned that it is just a matter of time before someone is killed.

Earlier this month a migrant armed with a chainsaw threatened a driver.

But it get’s even better.  They are using trees to stop motorists.

If you believe the police will stop this, or a prosecutor in America will prosecute this and thus be your protection, you’re beyond naïve.  You’re out of your mind.

Steel yourself now for what is coming, and what you must do in response.  And by the way, I deny that any of this is “just for fun.”  The person who said that doesn’t understand the nature of the conflict.  Every engagement has a purpose, and is part of the larger campaign to subjugate the people to Sharia.

American Hunter:

I have been guiding brown bear hunters and fishermen and bear photographers from our homestead within Becharof National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska for 33 years and have had numerous close encounters with bears. Until now, I have never had to shoot an unwounded bear to protect either myself or clients, but the other week an event occurred and my good fortune changed. When it happened, I was fully aware of what was going on and how big the bear was. I also managed to stay aware of where my clients were, even when the bear was directly between us. The woman I was guiding said that while she did not remember smelling the bear’s breath, it was close enough to her face that it could have bitten her!

I have killed enough bears to know how important shot placement can be, even with large-bore rifles. I was well aware of the limitations of my 9mm pistol, even with Buffalo Bore ammo. I was aiming for a vital area with each shot; because it all took place between 6 and 8 feet, they were not far off. But hitting the head and brain of a highly animated and agitated animal is a difficult shot.

You can read his justification for leaving home with a single stack 9mm.  I’m glad everything worked out for him and everyone except the bear.

But I have to tell you, I just wouldn’t carry a 9mm on any kind of expedition into the Alaskan wilderness.  That just seems like you’re asking for trouble.  What if his shot placement wasn’t so good?  On the other hand, I suppose you could ask that about any cartridge.

Report from Germany:

“Toys of Christian children are being destroyed, Christian asylum seekers are told not only to wash their dishes after eating but also that they must clean the entire kitchen as it would otherwise be ‘unclean’. Many Muslim asylum seekers call all Christians unclean. Church services are held in secret, bibles and crucifixes have to be hidden,” she explained.

Ms Mousapour, pastor of the Evangelical Free Church, disclosed that even converts who no longer live in migrant housing attract Muslims’ ire, and recounted her experience of being threatened at knifepoint on the street.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician called the anti-Christian hate crimes “horrific attacks on our fundamental values and our Constitution.

“This kind of crime weighs on me more heavily than shoplifting. If we do nothing about it we will lose our foundations in this country,” she added.

Dear, Germany is already lost.  What you see as future tense in a fantasy world is present tense in reality.  Germans have been disarmed by their rulers, and so you have no means of self defense, and your country doesn’t believe what you’re calling “our foundations” enough to save it.  It is at best a weakly held system of beliefs.  The land of Luther is now home to Islamists.

But this could not happen in America, could it?

As Father Josiah Trenham prepared to read the Gospel, several parishioners discreetly scooped up their babies, retreated up the aisles of St. Andrew Orthodox Church and out into the spring air, so as not to allow the crying of little ones to disturb the divine liturgy.

The time-honored tradition was shattered when a car passed by the Riverside, Calif., church, slowing down as the front passenger leaned out of his window and bellowed menacingly through a bullhorn, according to witnesses.

“Allahu Akbar!” the unidentified man repeated several times as the unnerved parents drew their infants close and exchanged worried glances.

Witnesses were able to give Riverside police a description of the green Honda Civic, but not of the three occupants. Some told police they believed one or more of the men may have been taking photographs, according to Officer Ryan Railsback. Although Trenham insisted multiple congregants heard the Arabic phrase, Railsback noted no mention of it was in the police report.

[ … ]

“We have guards now; we never used to have guards,” said St. Andrew attendee Solomon Saddi, a Syrian-American Christian. “They keep an eye on everyone and talk to the faces that aren’t familiar,” he continued, referring to the aftermath of the April incident. “It is a very dangerous time for us even in America.” …

Forget the guards.  They are no good for protection.  Be your own protection, and if things in America become like they are in Germany, it will have been lost.  Heed the warnings.  And always remember Herschel’s Dictum.  I will never hide my Bible.

Mike Vanderboegh has passed away.  We knew this was coming, but it’s still bracing and reflective at the same time.  Since I’m going to link a number of articles and commentaries at the end, I see no point in recapitulating what’s already been said.  Instead, I have some (what I hope to be) unique reflections to make about Mike.

I’ve heard it said that such-and-such a man had “redeeming qualities.”  Hogwash.  Men don’t have redeeming qualities.  Men are themselves redeemed, or they are lost.  The God-man Christ Jesus saves men or they perish without Christ but with all of the punishments due to them, and all men are under judgment.

That’s the sweet thing about Mike.  He knew this, and he believed it.  Mike didn’t do a single thing to redeem himself, but he trusted Christ and the vicarious atonement for his very life.  That means that it was a life well-lived.  Everything else is wasted.

But if man cannot redeem himself, that doesn’t mean he cannot redeem what’s around him by taking dominion of the world for God’s glory.  Mike did exactly that, and today he is in heaven with his Lord.  I don’t believe in the phrase “rest in peace” (and Isaiah 57:2 isn’t discussing ethereal floating of one’s spirit for eternity).  I also don’t believe that man’s body cools to ambient temperature and that’s the end.  Mike didn’t believe that either.

In heaven there is worshiping, and there is work.  It’s just that work won’t be done by the sweat of our brow and we won’t be fighting sin, either in ourselves or others.  No, Mike is active, and you can bet your soul on it.  Thankfully, his son, Matthew Vanderboegh, told me that his friends should call him, and gave me the direct line into where he and Rosie were.  Mike was too weak to speak, and Rosie sounded exhausted, so the conversation was one way and very short.

But I told him that they were planning a party in heaven, and he was wasn’t a guest, but the newest resident.  He was almost home, and he would soon see our Lord.  “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his faithful servants” (Psalm 116:15).  That party is now underway, and Mike is casting his crowns down at the feet of his savior, giving Him all of the glory.

In case you haven’t gotten the picture by now, I am claiming that Mike did the Lord’s work.  I advocate a Calvinian world view, in which, following Christ, redeemed man is prophet, priest and king.  What we do during the day, how we work, the attitudes we take to our calling, is as holy a practice and activity as administering The Lord’s Supper (communion) or baptizing a newborn.  I’ve made no secret of the fact that I view liberty and proper government a function of our calling before God, and that when covenants are broken, the Biblical justification for separation is clear.  Thus is was with the American war of independence.

Mike saw what he did as a calling as well, and so he took it very seriously.  So I took his acceptance into the community of bloggers as a sign of both affirmation and his good judgment.  When I left military blogging (for reasons I’ve outlined before but won’t here), I began advocating duty of self defense, liberty and constitutionally limited government.  It wasn’t long before I ran across Mike.  It didn’t take Mike long to start linking my work, and when he did, I always looked forward to his clever titles, his pithy observations or his lengthy analyses.  Seriously, with a cup of coffee, it was first on my list every day.

I say good judgment about Mike’s acceptance of me and my work because Mike has his detractors, and the liberty movement has its imposters who fly fake flags.  I pay no attention to those men, and I’m not one of them.  When I advocate something, you can bet I’m being serious about it.  This is a labor of love for me.  Mike knew that in short order, and he was right.  He was a good judge of character.

And concerning the detractors, I mock them to myself and my close friends, and I ignore them on the pages of my blog.  They want attention, and I studiously avoid giving it to them.  I’ll offer up one final observation.  Mike traveled, wrote, spoke and blogged under his own name and true identity, just like I do.  The liberty movement is filled with men who are a former spook, former special forces or special operations, former lawyer, former dish washer of ditch digger (you continue the list yourself), and while I don’t really know whether these men are who they say they are, I suppose I get a little from their writing from time to time, but I mostly ignore them too.

I mean no offense, I just don’t give much credence to someone who tells me the world is going to hell, I have to plan and train, I have to do my part to save my piece of it, and oh by the way, you don’t even know my real name because I’m using a nom de guerre.  So maybe I don’t really believe it after all, or maybe I’m just running my mouth, or maybe while the world goes to hell and I want people to save their piece of it, I’ll be hiding.

You know them.  They blog, write and comment anonymously.  They are “gray man.”  Matt Bracken had some words for gray man.

Same here. If everybody goes “gray man,” the tyrants win by default. We need to stand on the roof and be seen by everybody, on all sides. Others can go gray man, that’s fine, their choice. But we all can’t hide forever.

I don’t use a nom de guerre, and Mike wasn’t gray man.  If I put myself on the line every day I write, Mike did in the superlative.  He did it with humor, grace, and wisdom.  I will miss him, truly I will.  He leaves behind quite a legacy, but you again I say, you can bet everything that he is busy today.  There is no rest for Mike, there is just rest from a sinful world.

Other:

SSI

WRSA

WoG

Ammoland

The Kansas City Star

According to Todd Hubbard:

GUNS are awesome machines.

Built with great precision, advanced over generations, they are powerful tools for their purpose. Practicing with them brings the pleasure and satisfaction that comes with honing difficult skills. The enforcers of our laws use them to stop the criminals who threaten our lives and property. Our military uses them to kill and contain the violent enemies of our nation. As with any fine machine, looking at a gun, possessing one or working with one is exciting and empowering.

This is what guns are not:

In the hands of civilians, they are not protection from crime. Unless you wear a uniform with a badge or a service patch on it, the gun you carry is more likely to kill you or someone you know or love than it is to kill anyone who threatens you or your loved ones. The “good guy with a gun” who will protect us, rather than threaten us, is the man or woman who has been screened, trained, authorized and empowered by us to do the job. Anyone else, no matter how well-intentioned, is an amateur at best and a hazard to the rest of us at worst. The past 40 years in the United States has been a massive experiment in the theory that a highly armed citizenry will make us safer, and the experiment has been an abysmal failure.

In the hands of civilians, guns are not a bulwark against tyranny. If you believe that guns are a remedy against an oppressive government, then you are on the side of the black man who perceived “his” people being abused by government agents and chose to strike back with a gun. You are on the side of the troubled white man who, 52 years earlier, wanted to bring down the elected government he viewed as corrupt. Dallas is what Second Amendment remedies look like in practice: dead police officers, a dead president.

Many of you, my friends and family, own firearms. I do not want you to surrender your guns. I do not want the government to confiscate them. But I do want you to help address the problem of so many deaths caused by these awesome machines. An informed, engaged electorate is what protects us from tyranny. Stop pretending this problem does not exist or that the only solution is more guns. Do not hide behind “originalist” arguments about the Constitution’s Second Amendment.

Oh good heavens.  So let’s cover this one more time for the dense or stolid listener.  Mr. Hubbard, who apparently is an attorney, is engaging in lying, and any considered assessment of his behavior would conclude that it approaches malfeasance because he knows better.

In the 1981 decision in Warren v. District of Columbia the D.C. Court of Appeals concluded that it is a “fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen.”  In Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005), the Supreme Court declined to expand any requirements for protection and ruled that the police cannot be sued for failure to protect individuals, even when restraining orders were in place.

Mr. Hubbard knows these decisions, and also knows that even if it was commonly accepted that the police were required to protect individuals, it would be impossible.  They cannot be there all of the time, and they cannot even promise any particular timely response to your calls.  The police can literally eat popcorn and watch while a woman is raped, as long as they effect an arrest after the fact.  They may be fired for failure to follow a department procedure, but they will not be charged with a crime.  “To protect and serve” is a sweet campaign slogan for Sheriffs who are running for office, but it’s a lie – it’s always a lie – and Mr. Hubbard knows it.  The police are there for stability operations and security of the government.  Understand that.

You must be your own protection, and if you are a morally righteous man who cares about his own life and the lives of his loved ones, you will have means of effecting that self defense.  If you don’t you are negligent in your God-given duties.  By negligent, I mean more than that you simply don’t know better.  I mean you know better and willingly choose to neglect your duties.

We know that it’s claptrap to say that it’s impossible to effect this self defense, just like we all know that the rate of crime hasn’t gone up as a result of guns.  But we also suspect that Mr. Hubbard knows about fourth generation warfare, and that guns are indeed means of amelioration of tyranny, and that genocide is always preceded by gun confiscations.

We don’t “hide behind” the second amendment.  It doesn’t grant us the right to own weapons.  God does that Himself.  The constitution is a covenant between men for how they will live together.  Like all covenants, there are promises and curses.  Mr. Hubbard doesn’t want to endure the curses of failure to live according to the covenant to which we are all bound, including the second amendment.  Mr. Hubbard would do well to ponder that fact.

CBS News:

The video surveillance from an Albuquerque motel shows it clearly: A man paces the corridor; a woman exits her room to get something from her car, and then returns.

“And from out of nowhere this guy came back around the corner,” recalled Lynne Russell, “and this time he had a gun and he was pointing it right at my abdomen.”

At that very moment, Russell’s husband, Chuck De Caro, emerged from the shower. He recalled: “He then moved the gun from pointing at my wife to pointing at me, and he said, ‘I need your money.'”

But the gunman did not know that Russell, a former CNN anchor, and De Caro, a former CNN reporter who trained as a Special Forces soldier, habitually travel with guns that they are licensed and trained to use.

Russell was able to slip her gun from the nightstand into her purse, which she handed to De Caro, telling him “‘Take a really good look inside here; see if there’s anything you can find that we want to give the man.’ And Chuck looked and he said, ‘Yes, there is.”

And, they say, as the suspect started to shoot, De Caro fired back: “And I killed him,” he said.

“But you got shot yourself?” asked Braver.

“Well, that’s the nature of the game,” De Caro replied. “It’s called combat.”

[ … ]

But Dallas Police Chief David Brown, speaking after five officers were shot and killed, says these “good guys” actually complicate matters for police: “It’s been the presumption that a good guy with a gun is the best way to resolve some of these things. Well, we don’t know who the good guy is versus who the bad guy is if everybody starts shooting.”

The police would rather you be disarmed so that it makes their job of mopping up the remains and going home after their shift easier.  But is it actually possible to protect yourself?  We keep hearing the progressives say that it’s impossible, an argument that disproves their point since they never logically extend the argument to disarming the police.

Well, let’s see.

AZ Family reports that police arrived on scene to find 27-year-old Frank Taylor in the parking lot, suffering from a gunshot wound. He was rushed to a hospital, where he died from his injuries. Witnesses told police that Taylor held a gun to 23-year-old Carol Miracle’s head and demanded money. Miracle told police that “Taylor tried to rob her at gunpoint near the store.”

Glendale police officer Tiffany Smith indicated that investigators “learned that Taylor pointed his gun at Miracle’s head.” Smith said, “She then drew her own handgun that was holstered on her hip, and shot him one time while she was in fear for her life.”

Smith said the evidence recovered at the scene is “consistent” with eyewitness testimony that Taylor had a gun to Miracle’s head.

You mean without all of that super Ninja warrior stress control training LEOs go through she was able to defend her life?  I’m shocked.  Shocked!

She didn’t have all of that Ninja assassin training she needs.

Perhaps if the “terrorist attack” has to do with knives, or gun, or trucks, a person like her would be effective against it.  She seemed pretty cool under pressure to me.  If it involves a battalion of Ninja warriors, she may need some help.  It’s best, then, if everyone carries guns.

C. J. Chivers writing for The New York Times has an extensive piece entitled Tools of Modern Terror: How the AK-47 and AR-15 Evolved into Rifles of Choice for Mass Killers.  I recommend that you read it.

Chivers has the usual (for him) admiration for the AK-47 as a weapon that never fails.  “The Kalashnikov line was shorter and lighter than traditional rifles. It was inexpensive to manufacture, built for durability and reliable to an extraordinary degree. With few moving parts, and a design that made its disassembly and reassembly almost intuitive, its basics could be mastered by all manner of combatants — from traditionally instructed conscripts to almost wholly untrained guerrillas — in very little time.”

But fail it does.  I blogged on OIF and OEF long enough and had enough friends and acquaintances who had done combat tours in Iraq or Afghanistan that I heard some horror stories about AK-47s that wouldn’t fire more than a round or two and have a FTF / FTE, and that a shooter couldn’t hit the “broad side of a barn” with it.  I’ve shot one, as have you, and those complaints may be exaggerated, but they are about as exaggerated as the complaints against the AR-15.

Chivers focuses some of his time on the initial failure of the Stoner weapon system in Vietnam, while not spending much time on the Molly-Chrome or Stainless Steel barrels found today in AR-15s.  With upgraded buffer springs, enhanced extractor springs, etc., that make the M4/AR-15 weapons so reliable today, we really do have the professional soldier’s weapon that can be used by the masses, or in other words, the tight tolerances, accuracy and recoil-along-the-axis design (as opposed to coupling around the shooter’s hand with the angled buttstock) that makes it such an admirable carbine for shooters of any skill. We’ve had virtually every imaginable torture test, and the high end AR-15s outperform not only AKs but the Garand and Garand variants (M-14).  My Rock River Arms AR-15 could be beaten with a sledge hammer, soaked in paint, and dropped in sand and it would still eat and shoot everything I fed it.

But it’s true that the AK-47 found ready acceptance among terror-producing nations and peoples, and Chivers makes no attempt to diagnose why that is.  Take a long look at his maps of AK usage versus AR-15 usage.  Neither does Chivers make any attempt to diagnose any other element of weapons and terror, such as the possibility that use of the AK or AR for such things marks a shift to CQB versus standoff sniping as with Charles Whitman (with a bolt action rifle).  In other words, what if the problem isn’t the AK or the AR, but the heart of sinful mankind that causes these things, with the weapon of choice being a function of tactical choices the shooter makes?

Chivers disappoints me with this paragraph.

Governments have done little to stop the spread of this class of weapons. Often, as in the case of the United States, they have contributed to it. Acts of crime, terror and oppression with Kalashnikovs and AR-15 descendants, endured by civilians under withering fire, have been hard-wired into our times. There is no end in sight.

“Stop the spread of this class of weapons.”  As if stopping the spread of any class of weapons among peaceable people who need means of self defense is a bad thing.  Chivers is a legitimate military journalist who did a wonderful job on coverage of the campaign in Afghanistan and is a voice for the men in uniform.

But with this one paragraph it appears to me that he has placed his politics squarely on the side of gun controllers who believe that laws, regulations, governmental actions and policies effect behavior and catalyze moral righteousness.  Matthew 15:15-20 teach us that weapons don’t defile the man, any more than alcohol makes a drunkard.

But from the end of the gun comes self defense, and Chivers would do well to consider the millions of men, women and children who have been slaughtered as a result of not having means of self defense.