Articles by Herschel Smith

Yea, Rob.  Simple.  But not easy.

NRA Blog:

• Circa 1650 – The Kalthoff Repeating Flintlock: As Mike Blessing explains, the Kalthoff Repeating Flintlock came into production in the 1650s, seeing combat in the Siege of Copenhagen in 1659 and later during the Scanian War of 1675 to 1679 — 132 and 116 years, respectively, before the Second Amendment was ratified in 1791. While manufacturing and repair costs kept the Kalthoff out of mass production, it represents the reality that “high capacity” firearms are not a contemporary concept, as some models of the Kalthoff boasted magazines of up to 30 rounds – the same number of rounds in a true standard-capacity AR-15 magazine of today.

• Circa 1750 – The Cookson Volitional Repeating Flintlock: A lever-action breech-loading repeater, is one of many similar designs to make an appearance on the world stage beginning in the 17th century. The revolutionary mechanism at the heart of the Cookson repeater dates from 1680 and was originally known in Europe as the Lorenzoni System, named for Italian gunsmith Michele Lorenzoni of Florence. Long arms utilizing this system were produced in other European nations and in the United States until about 1849. The Cookson rifle dates from 1750 and features a two-chamber horizontally mounted rotating drum. After firing the rifle, the cycling process could be repeated until the two magazines, with their seven-shot capacities, were empty. Although other breech loading rifles were introduced in later years, the Cookson-type long arms were unique in their ability to fire multiple shots without reloading.

• 1777 – The Belton Repeating Flintlock: Philadelphian Joseph Belton’s repeating flintlock design reportedly boasted a 16-to-20 shot capacity, using the superposed load mechanism. Sources indicate there was correspondence between the inventor and the Continental Congress in 1777, as the he had reportedly been commissioned by the Congress to build 100 of his repeaters for the U.S. military, with the order being dismissed solely for cost purposes. This discussion presents strong evidence that the founding fathers were perfectly able to conceive of “high capacity” repeating firearms.

• 1782-1804 – The Nock Volley Gun: The close quarters of Naval warfare demanded a powerful, yet compact firearm that could provide abundant firepower. The Nock Volley gun fired seven shots all at once from seven clustered bores. This powerful rifle was issued nine years before the dawn on the Second Amendment.

They left out the wonderful Girandoni air rifle.

This is a wonderful and interesting rundown of the semi-automatic firearms available prior to and immediately after the war of independence.  Go read the NRA Blog article for more detail, as well as the context.  But I’ve explained the second amendment properly interpreted before (at least in my own view).

The second amendment discusses the right to bear arms and be free of federal interference in the context of the states’ desire to keep that interference from happening.  That is the historical milieu in which it was written.  The founders only needed one excuse to prevent federal government interference with the states on firearms, and they chose the most likely and obvious choice, i.e., the militia.  The second amendment is not a treatise on the foundation of liberty.

It’s an illogical jump to cast that as the only reason for the right to own and bear arms.  If you had discussed regulation on the right to own and use a tool of their trade to protect their families, hunt, and ameliorate tyranny with a colonial man, he would have buried you under the remotest prison.  God gave us our rights based on man being created in His image and the expected duty to work and subdue the earth to His glory.  The militia was a convenient excuse for a certain clause in one part of the constitution.  Limiting our rights to our understanding of that clause is a mistake.

And there’s more.

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.

Look folks, if our wise founders had wanted the citizenry armed with inferior weapons to the king, they would never have said the things they did, fomented a revolution, or hid behind trees and killed, only to melt into the woods and mountains to kill another day, fighting a war of insurgency like none which had gone before it.

The founders ensured a covenant that codified man’s rights to firearms for the purpose not only self defense (which is assumed but left unaddressed by the second amendment), but for the second amendment remedy against tyranny.  There is no other sensible way to see it.

I notice that Kyle doesn’t shoot his rifle with the “aggressive plates forward” stance that seems to be popular these days. I’m not saying you have to, but that’s how I was taught and I find it comfortable with AR-15s. Of course, not so with bolt action hunting rifles or shotguns.

I’ve shot thousands and thousands and thousands of rounds through pistols, and I’ve never had this malfunction (perhaps because I only try to shoot higher quality firearms and ammunition). I’m very down on low quality ammunition, and I look on it sort of like putting cheap oil in your engine. Also, I’m very observant of my magazines, and try to keep them clean. But if you are subject to this failure, he gives you a way out.

By now you’ve heard that Judge Barbara Bellis dismissed the case against Remington.  Good.  But she should have done this long ago.  The only people who got rich here were the lawyers.  I have no desire to analyze what she said.  It’s a waste of my time.

Early on she said the law “does not prevent lawyers for the families of Sandy Hook victims from arguing that the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle is a military weapon and should not have been sold to civilians.”  Now she says it does.  Here’s my analysis.  She has her sights set on higher things, and wants eventually to be considered for some higher judicial post.  She can’t make an idiotic ruling that gets reversed by the Supreme Court of Connecticut or the United States and keep that hope alive.  I suspect this was entirely self serving.

PJ Media:

One of John Podesta’s emails released by WikiLeaks this week exposes how progressive elites seek to exploit the unwashed masses. The email features one of Podesta’s colleagues from the Center for American Progress admitting that the institutional left “conspires to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry,” ostensibly to impose their radical agenda on us without much resistance.

The correspondent is Bill Ivey of Global Cultural Strategies, “the online representation of the ideas, writings, and affiliations of author/consultant Bill Ivey.” He is an author trained in folklore and history, a trustee of the Center for American Progress, a former team leader in the Barack Obama presidential transition in 2008, and the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts in the Clinton administration.

In the email from March of 2016, Ivey expresses concern about the rise of “opinionated blowhard” Trump and frets because the “citizenry” seems to be awakening.

Well, we all thought the big problem for our US democracy was Citizens United/Koch Brothers big money in politics. Silly us; turns out that money isn’t all that important if you can conflate entertainment with the electoral process.

Trump masters TV, TV so-called news picks up and repeats and repeats to death this opinionated blowhard and his hairbrained ideas, free-floating discontent attaches to a seeming strongman and we’re off and running. JFK, Jr would be delighted by all this as his “George” magazine saw celebrity politics coming. The magazine struggled as it was ahead of its time but now looks prescient. George, of course, played the development pretty lightly, basically for charm and gossip, like People, but what we are dealing with now is dead serious.

How does this get handled in the general? Secretary Clinton is not an entertainer, and not a celebrity in the Trump, Kardashian mold; what can she do to offset this? I’m certain the poll-directed insiders are sure things will default to policy as soon as the conventions are over, but I think not.

And as I’ve mentioned, we’ve all been quite content to demean government, drop civics and in general conspire to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry. The unawareness remains strong but compliance is obviously fading rapidly. This problem demands some serious, serious thinking – and not just poll driven, demographically-inspired messaging.

I’m not insulted.  I actually feel a bit sorry for your ignorance.  Mr. Ivey, you make the same mistake that most other progressives make.  Oh, there’s a lot of couch potatoes around who like to watch night time sitcoms, wear stupid clothing and cheer for their favorite band of criminals on Sunday.

But you’re missing the larger point.  The NRA is blamed for rousting the masses of gun owners, for telling them what to think, and for getting in the way of “common sense” gun regulations.  You see the world this way because progressives need their leaders to tell them how to think and what to do.  To the extent that the NRA fights the Senate, Congress and President, they’re doing what we tell them to do.  To the extent that they don’t, they are being recalcitrant.  In the total absence of the NRA, our views wouldn’t change one iota.  We don’t look to them for our world view.

Similarly, messaging won’t change things for us.  When I say “us,” I mean more people than you know.  Donald Trump is a symptom, not the disease.  The only other candidate who had any chance of winning was Ted Cruz, and he was as hated by the establishment as Trump is.  Trump didn’t ascend to the top because of his television persona, but because it’s all being burned down by the people.  Trump is the vessel.  The people threw gasoline and lit the match.

As for the goal of conspiring to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry, you’re far too late for that.  America is the most heavily armed nation in the world.  I’ve seen your plans.

The legislation has already been written. H.R. 4269 would enact a national, permanent ban on the manufacture and sale of so-called “assault weapons” and all firearm magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds. The bill, introduced last December, already has149 Democratic co-sponsors (218 are needed to pass the House).

H.R. 4269 would ban all AR-15 and AK-type rifles and all civilian versions of military rifles produced anywhere in the word within the past 60 years or so. The bill would also ban all parts kits, stripped receivers, “bump-fire” stocks, thumbhole stocks, trigger cranks, so-called “compliant” rifles, and “any… characteristic that can function as a [pistol] grip.” Law enforcement is exempt from the bill’s provisions.

H.R. 4269 is not a “kick down the door and confiscate ‘em” bill. Existing rifles and magazines are “grandfathered” (but the transfer of existing magazines is permanently prohibited). Gun banners know that it is literally impossible to perform a door-to-door gun confiscation in a nation of 300 million people, and that any attempt to do so would certainly be met with violence. Consequently, they have pre-empted the “Come and take it” crowd by employing a long-term strategy. Once the manufacture and sale of certain weapons is prohibited, it is only a matter of time before the legislation would be amended to outlaw the transfer of “grandfathered” rifles as well as magazines, thus enacting a de facto confiscation within a generation.

This won’t work.  No one will comply.  You don’t honestly think we’re going to spend our hard earned money on guns and ammunition, teach our sons to shoot and fend for themselves, and then turn the guns over to you in our wills, do you?

As I said.  It’s too late.  There is an inevitable split coming to America.  Your plans for collectivism can’t control the American spirit.  Every turn of the screw by you will only make matters worse and the people more ungovernable.  But since your world view works from the top down, I don’t expect you to understand this.  That bodes darkness for the near term.

Wikileaks:

RE: Thanks

From:elmendorf@teamsubjectmatter.com To: john.podesta@gmail.com Date: 2016-02-09 20:56

Subject: RE: Thanks

I am all in

Sounds like it will be a bad nite , we all need to buckle up and double down

From: John Podesta [mailto:john.podesta@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, February 09, 2016 4:36 PM To: Steve Elmendorf <elmendorf@teamsubjectmatter.com>

Subject: Thanks

Didn’t think wet works meant pool parties at the Vineyard.

So I don’t run in the same circles with spooks, and until tonight I didn’t know what the phrase “wet works” meant.  I do now.  John Podesta needs to explain himself immediately.  The phraseology and the timing look damning.

TCJ wants to know.  What does this mean, John?  Who knew what, when?  Who was involved in what, John?  What did you do?

Informative video.  In the end, if you make it that far, I think they reach the right conclusion.  AR-15s (and their parts) have become so reliable that it makes little difference now.  The point of diminishing returns is reached very soon (the sweet spot is < $1500).

Fox News:

NEW CASTLE, Ind. –  An Indiana pastor is charged with threatening to shoot neighborhood children to keep them away from his church.

The (Muncie) Star Press reports (http://tspne.ws/2eh5K8T ) that 69-year-old Bobby Slagle of New Castle’s Calvary Baptist Church is charged with felony intimidation and misdemeanor resisting law enforcement

According to a police report, Slagle said he was frustrated about vandalism at his church in New Castle, 50 miles east of Indianapolis.

New Castle police say Slagle “advised the kids that if they did not get off his property he was going to shoot them.” Police say Slagle raised his shirt, showing the children a revolver in his waist band.

The report says Slagle struggled with arresting officers. He waived his right to an initial hearing. A judge entered not guilty pleas on his behalf.

Well, riddle me this, readers.  What’s the difference between ISIS destroying churches throughout Mesopotamia, and gang members destroying them in America?

Right, it looks very bad, and I wouldn’t have done it, and he shouldn’t have either.  It was a dumb move.  He’ll no doubt pay the price for his dumb move.

But listen to me on the implications of this, if you will.  Be prepared for more of this to come.  Muslims will come to be very militant in America, as gang members are now.  Perhaps even more so.

For those of you who are part of congregations who own church buildings, what are you going to do when your property is vandalized every week, or eventually burned down?  Do you put 24-hour security on the physical plant?  Are you going to be part of that security?  If so, what do you do when the property is threatened, and the gang members (I’m sure they weren’t “children”) figure out that comporting with the law you’re unwilling to use lethal means to stop the aggression, and there are too many of them to do anything except call the police and wait the fifteen minutes for them to arrive and find no one?

If this is the way it all works out, you may as well not have security.  Or church property.  Or for those of you who aren’t Christians but who own homes, perhaps your home is the same as that church property.

Such is life when society lurches towards dystopia.

Statesman:

Continuing his efforts to champion law enforcement since five Dallas officers were shot to death in July, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick announced Wednesday that he will press legislators to provide all 59,000 Texas patrol officers with a bulletproof vest capable of stopping high-caliber rifle rounds.

Early estimates place the cost at $15 million to $20 million, Patrick said, vowing to fight for the money in the 2017 legislative session despite a tight budget thanks to depressed oil and gas prices.

Oh my.  Do you think he understands that he’s talking about sending every cop out every day with hard shell SAPI plates and tactical vest plate carriers?  Wouldn’t that be a sight in Texas heat?  Sort of like it was with Marines running around Fallujah in 120 degree weather with full body armor on.  We’d have officers passing out everywhere, unable to get into and out of their patrol vehicles, knees crumbling from the stress, and unable to pass the physical with the additional weight of the vests.

Do you think someone needs to talk to him in private?  Or perhaps not.  Let’s see how this little experiment goes, shall we?  Everyone in favor, say aye?