Articles by Herschel Smith

KAGSTV.com:

In the first panicked hours following the ambush on Dallas police officers, the department released a photo of a man carrying a long gun as a person of interest.

But he was the wrong guy—and one who never broke any laws by carrying that gun.

“I also don’t fault Dallas police for immediately listing that person as a person of interest,” said Ray Hunt with the Houston Police Officers Union. “Just like anybody else that had guns on the scene, they would be considered persons of interest. That’s just called clues in police work.”

The worklist for police has gotten longer as more people will be sporting pistols and handguns through the state’s open carry law, which took effect this year. And at any scene, it may require more resources.

“It may take another officer to be there to watch that person to make sure that person is not part of the problem,” Hunt said.

But the Houston Police Officers Union is more concerned about the public.

“The number of people who were gonna be calling, because they’re not used to seeing that,” Hunt said.

So far, it hasn’t seemed too problematic.

Since January, the Houston Police Department says out of the tens of thousands of calls a month, only 62 were weapon related.

And out of those, only 19 were actual open-carry situations.

Considering the shootings we have seen around the country, it’s possible people are hypersensitive to weapons. So for now, police can only hope that dispatchers will determine how serious the threat is.

“If we find out that someone is carrying and they’re allowed to be carrying we are allowed to disarm them during the investigation,” Hunt said. “And then give them their weapon back at the end.”

So I reckon the sky isn’t falling and the bodies aren’t stacking up in the morgue because of open carry.  So much for the hyper-dramatic hysteria by the gun controllers.

But on to something the article said about LEO interactions.  “If we find out that someone is carrying and they’re allowed to be carrying we are allowed to disarm them during the investigation,” Hunt said. “And then give them their weapon back at the end.”

You … have … got … to … be … kidding … me?  Is the Houston police department really doing this?  Seriously?  Previously I had said this about the practice of LEOs unholstering weapons from innocent citizens.

If you’re a LEO and you actually touch another man’s gun in the process of a stop, or you have a partner touch his gun, much less unholster it, “secure” it or anything else you think you are doing to it, let me be as clear as I can be.  You … are … an … idiot.  If your procedures have you doing this, then your procedures were written by idiots.  You can tell them I said so and send them this article.

You have no business risking NDs or taking possession of property that isn’t yours, even temporarily, and especially since you don’t know of modifications that may have been made to the firearm that would make it unfamiliar to you.

Don’t do it.  Just say no.  I wouldn’t walk up and presume to take possession of another man’s gun at a range or while in his home.  You have no business doing that either.  It’s weird, creepy, and unsafe.

It makes no one safer, and it makes everyone less safe.  So in light of this, I have two questions for the Houston PD.

1. What basis in law gives you the authority to touch another man’s weapon if he isn’t being charged with any crime?
2. Given that there is a step change downward in safety if you touch another man’s weapon like this, why do your procedures have your officers doing such a stupid thing?

Submitted.

Matt Bracken’s article at WRSA or Ammoland is well worth your time.  In order to understand what I’m saying about it, you need to go read it.

For non-permissive environments, Matt has given a good option.  If it appears at the outset a bit absurd, consider why we have to do things like this to begin with.  This is why I prefer legal open carry.  Concealed carry means almost by definition that your weapon will be a “smallish” to medium frame gun.  With open carry it can be larger.  Additionally, you don’t have to bother with things like sweating your weapon in the summer, or the lack of comfort associated with IWB or ankle carry.

I personally wouldn’t engage in the OWB/concealed carry suggestion he advocates with improvised holsters, but if that works for you and you prefer it, then by all means do it.  I like much better the use of sacks, satchels, bags, and small backpacks for carry of a larger sidearm along with ammunition.  I also see a tactical light in his kit.  I never go on a road trip without one, and sometimes won’t even go down to the grocery store without one.

The Precision Rifle Blog has a very interesting piece up on semi-automatics (in this case, AR style rifles) versus bolt action rifles for precision shooting.  It is noteworthy that, according to PRB, “there isn’t a single shooter among the top 100 competitors in the Precision Rifle Series (PRS) using a semi-automatic rifle. Why not? Even though speed, maneuverability, and recoil management are huge parts to that game, the best shooters are all running bolt-action rifles. Some believe that is because AR’s can’t achieve the same precision as bolt guns, so the goal of this test was to quantify the precision difference between a couple of high-end gas guns and a custom bolt-action rifle.”

But they put all of this to the test by comparing bolties and ARs in a side-by-side competition.  It’s worth your time to go investigate his findings.  He uses the 6.5 Creedmoor for his test, and I’ll comment on this in a moment.  It’s also noteworthy that the group sizes look like this.

Now let me speak for a moment on testing for MOA.  Barrel harmonics and its effect on bullet placement is a heuristic process.  It will follow the Central Limit Theorem.  If you shoot three or five shots and claim that your MOA is thus-and-so, you haven’t really given us useful information because you don’t have fractional standard deviation (relative error) and variance of the variance (VOV) information along with the test data for us to ascertain how good it is (and it won’t be good with such few shots).  Understand what I’m saying.  The more rounds you put down range, the more you will fill in the tails of the distribution and the wider your MOA will be (or at least, you will be able to give us your MOA with its associated standard deviation).  There is no such thing as MOA.  There is only MOA with its associated standard deviation.

This is a pet peeve of mine, but when anyone – shooters or manufacturer – tells you that a gun is 1 MOA “out of the box,” they aren’t really telling you anything about how many rounds they used to make this judgment.  But moving on from this, I’ll note that the high-end ARs are performing very well.

There is another point to be made.  I’ll turn to WeaponsMan for his observations.

Money spent on accuracy not used is money wasted. In economic terms, it’s an opportunity cost. 100%, to a first approximation, of shooters, would improve their lethality and therefore their safety in an armed encounter if they put those dollars into ammo, or, especially, training. Yet the guy who balks at taking a pistol class (unless maybe he can take it from a high-speed “operator” who wears designer Multicam down to his skivvies) will drop that money on a tuned 1911. Who are you going to shoot with that 1911? If you’re the late Paul Poole, you shot F-type silhouettes at 100 yards to get people’s attention; if you’re a ranked competitor, you might need that edge when X-rings decide who takes home the trophy. But who are you going to plug with a .45? A burglar in your bedroom? A carjacker in the pax seat of your Prius?

The waste of excessive accuracy is not the only problem with high-precision weaponry. Yes, precision costs money — any gunsmith, machinist, hell, any biologist sequencing a bacterial genome will tell you that. Costs rise asymptotically as you approach the goal of perfection.  And yes, all this is bad. Because money is fungible, at the defense ministry or service finance level, a dollar spent on excess accuracy is a dollar than can’t buy training ammo, tank fuel, medical supplies or new radios (or anything else).

But the things that make for optimum accuracy alone may not be suitable for a general purpose weapon. Have you ever wondered why all M1 Garands or M14s weren’t National Match rifles? It’s not just because Uncle Same Numba Ten Cheap Charlie. It’s because some of the NM “improvements” are only improvements for the express purpose of match competition. Tighter parts fit? Hand-lapped locking lugs? A “blueprinted” or tight chamber? A smaller rear-sight aperture? All of these things are wonderful when your target is a bullseye at 500 yards, but they’re no help when your target’s the 10,000 screaming Norks or Chinamen who are coming to take your position or die trying. Indeed, since history tells us that you’ll be facing that human wave in bitter cold, blowing sleet, enervating heat or jungle monsoons, accuracy for a service rifle is defined as practical accuracy that a real-world rifleman (who is not NRA Distinguished or the owner of a Presidents Hundred tab) can employ in real-world combat.

Engineers have a saying for this. “The best is the enemy of the good.” Excess performance over practical specs has uncertain benefits but very real costs.

Yea, engineers have another saying too.  Good, fast and cheap.  Choose any two.  I have chosen the middle of the road.  Rock River Arms has a nice competition grade rifle (5.56) with an 18″ stainless steel barrel, sleek barrel shroud and muzzle brake, and it’s not cheap, but it also isn’t top of the line expensive.  It’s advertised as 0.75 MOA, and it’s obviously designed for 3-gun competition (as well as some distance shooting competitions).  I have one on order as a complement to my RRA 16″ barrel carbine with rails.

Folks, 0.75 MOA challenges the best that most bolt action rifles can do.  This is true of 5.56 mm, and I see that the 6.5 Creedmoor bolt actions are similarly challenged by AR designs.  I’m not sure that the same can be said of 7.62/.308.  In fact if you read the forums on the AR-10, commenters are rather down on the lack of similar design features / lack of modularity, breaking parts, higher expense to get the accuracy, and other things.  It may be that accomplishing this kind of accuracy with .308 in semi-automatic invokes the observations about too much expense to get the accuracy.

And 0.75 MOA challenges what I can do with a rifle as well.  Other manufacturers have similar designs for 3-gun and target competition with ARs (they usually involve 18″ SS barrels and a muzzle brake).  It’s good to see manufacturers closing the gap between semi-automatics and bolt actions on the smaller calibers, but I’m not sure that I expect for this progress to hold for the larger calibers.

WNCN.com:

SNOW CAMP, N.C. (WMFY) — A teenage girl is credited for scaring off intruders at her parents’ home with a rifle.

It happened on Lambe Road in Snow Camp around 12 p.m. Thursday.

Kirk Puckett, a spokesperson for the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office, said two sisters, 12 and 13, were inside the home when they heard knocking on the front door.

Puckett said when they looked outside, they saw three unfamiliar men. He said the older sister grabbed her dad’s rifle.

The suspects then broke in through the back door. Puckett said the 13-year-old pointed the rifle at them, causing them to run away without taking anything.

[ … ]

“There’s a school of thought where folks will say, ‘I’m armed, and if someone comes in my house someone is going to get shot or die,’” Puckett said. “There’s the other school of thought to retreat. Where someone would retreat out of another exit. Go into another room and barricade themselves.”

Wait!  This is impossible.  It doesn’t fit the narrative.  According to the progressives, she should have shot herself because guns are more dangerous to the person wielding them than to the person at the end of the barrel.  And she should have just waited around to be raped or killed.  According to the progressives.

As for whether a person flees or fights, if you’re not in a confined space and have means of egress, evasion and escape, then it might pay to retreat (of course, while maintaining situational awareness), especially if you’re not in your own home.  But the notion that one should just go hide in a closet or try to jump out of a window is profoundly bad counsel.  Criminals can close the gap very quickly, and you just might hear that knock at the door to the closet, or jump into the arms of a rapist or murderer.

Get guns.  Learn how to use them.  This teenage girl managed to do just fine.  And I don’t want to hear another damn word about how people who haven’t been trained in all of that LEO super-ninja stress control can’t defend themselves.

Via Uncle.

NCLR:

ORLANDO, Fla.—NCLR (National Council of La Raza) announced today that its Board of Directors has unanimously voted in favor of policies aimed at reducing gun violence in the nation. The position, a first in the organization’s 48-year history, was announced at the 2016 NCLR Annual Conference during the National Affiliate Luncheon, a gathering of the nation’s Latino leaders representing NCLR’s Affiliate Network of almost 300 community-based organizations. The announcement comes after the nation has experienced a series of mass shootings and other incidents of gun violence, most recently the horrific events in Orlando, Baton Rouge, St. Paul, and Dallas.

“Our announcement today comes as we hold our Annual Conference in Orlando, the site of the largest mass shooting in our nation’s history, which took the lives of 49 innocent people, most of whom were Latino,” said NCLR President and CEO Janet Murguía. “The tragic event at Pulse nightclub changed Orlando and it has changed NCLR. Today, by formally adopting this position, we join with the vast majority of Americans calling for an end to gun violence and we will urge policymakers to adopt common-sense measures to reduce mass shootings and gun violence, saving countless lives.”

The NCLR Board of Directors adopted a position to reduce gun violence that includes the following elements:

• Reasonable restrictions on the acquisition of firearms and ammunition consistent with the protection of the civil rights of all Americans, including support for universal background checks
• A ban on assault weapons.
• Collection and analysis of data related to gun violence to understand causes and develop prevention strategies.

Why should you care what La Raza advocates, you might be asking yourself?  Well, you should care a great deal.  It isn’t credible that an organization such as this one, who represents so many Latinos, would advocate a position that is out of accord with their own constituency.  In other words, they represent Hispanics and Latinos, and thus Hispanics and Latinos favor gun control.

This is entirely consistent with what we already know about Hispanics and Latinos and their tendencies concerning gun control.  Remember this when you consider open borders, amnesty and pathways to citizenship.

Prior:

Hispanics Have Again Said They Favor Strict Gun Control

Hispanics And Latinos Favor Gun Control

David Codrea:

“Here’s An Idea: Only Women Should Have Guns,” this new theme goes. “[S]ince it’s abundantly clear that they’ll commit less violence than men and be vulnerable to violence committed by men, let’s take all the guns away from men and give them to women.”

I recently heard another engineer complain that the engineering schools should be graduating at least as many women and men.  Why? I don’t really know.  Just because, I suppose.

I would rather people pursue their God-given talents and ambitions rather than be pigeonholed into a degree program just because they are a woman or man.  And as for guns, the fourth wave feminists just think men are dirty, unruly, loathsome creatures who need to be controlled by laws and regulations and requirements.  The true spirituality belongs to women.

Hey, now that I think about it, who would do all of this taking away of guns the feminists propose?  They might just have to turn to those nasty men with guns.  Do LEOs know what the feminists really think about them?  They would just as soon you be a woman, but if you must be a man, then at least you need to do their bidding until they can replace you.

Commonwealth Magazine:

Christopher Pinto, president of the advocacy group Massachusetts Gun Rights, Inc., of Worcester, claimed he bought an AR-15 for his wife on Wednesday to beat Healey’s directive and insisted he intends to keep it.

“What is she going to do, come to my house and get it?“ asked Pinto, who was in Cleveland as a delegate at the Republican National Convention.

A group of gun owners gathered at the State House Thursday evening to protest Healey’s action, with another rally planned on Saturday when the Legislature is in session. Many said Healey’s decision was not an enforcement of the law but rather stemmed from her interpretation based on what they say is her anti-gun stance. Most in attendance said they own the types of rifles Healey says are illegal. Even though she said she won’t take action against those who bought them before Wednesday, the protesters said they were concerned she could change her mind and arbitrarily confiscate their weapons in the future.

One of the comments is interesting.  We read, “I called the local gun shop around noon on Wednesday, while they had heard something in the news they had not received any directive to stop selling the firearms so they sold the remainder of their stock (they were out by 2pm). These directives require some form of legal notification not someone forwarding something from facebook. She had a press conference in the morning and posted it online but until the notification was officially delivered to the gun shops they had no duty to stop selling.”

Note the position of the FFLs versus the AG.  The AG announced her decision in an opinion piece and over Facebook.  That’s not how legal orders get disseminated.  The commenter is right.

The AG is doing this, I surmise, because she knows her case is weak and unsupported by law, and is trying to effect law from her office anyway.  She is the kind of person who whispers in the ear of the playground bully in order to get someone else beaten up.  She isn’t going to do the work herself, but she will dispatch men with warrants and guns, and show up in court in order to prosecute what she believes is evil.  Or if she can’t, she’ll try to bully people into doing her will because of what might happen to them.  Compliance to avoid the unknown.

She’s what school girls call a “mean girl,” a totalitarian and control freak with an obsession.  She needs to be put back into her place.

CNN:

The mall shooting in Germany is being blamed on first person shooter games, because it certainly can’t be someone running through a mall shooting people shouting Allahu Akbar.  That doesn’t fit the narrative.  But to keep piling leaky buckets together in this chain of deplorable logic, it must be that the shooter was depressed and suffered from anxiety.

Documents found in his home confirmed that he suffered from mental illness, including depression and anxiety, Munich prosecutor Thomas Steinkraus-Koch said Sunday.

At SWJ one writer is advocating that the police conduct “three block war” over America.

There is more required for such a system to work than just an information operations cell. Police have to be trained to recognize what should be reported, be it good or bad. Twenty years ago, the Marine Corps began a training program to develop what it called “Strategic Corporals”. Marine leadership realized that a fire team leader engaged in the urban Three Block War must be trained to recognize that, in the media age, a local incident could have world-wide strategic impact near immediately (the Three Block War refers to situations where one can be involved in a humanitarian operation on one block, peacekeeping on another, and a full scale firefight on yet another in an urban environment). Junior Marine leaders were taught to recognize potential strategic incidents and act accordingly. In this age of social media, our police are engaged in a Three Block War domestically as was the case in Dallas and Baton Rouge; they need to be trained to react accordingly.

Expecting the police to perform COIN and stability operations is a testimony to just how badly the progressives have botched their urban, utopian dream.  But more on that later.  At any rate, it isn’t clear that there are any “strategic corporals” anywhere in any police department in the country.

There are thousands of examples every day, but let’s just focus on two recent ones.  First to the human interaction.

Video released Wednesday shows the moment before North Miami police shot an unarmed, behavioral therapist as he tried to calm a man with autism, according to WSVN.

Still recovering in a hospital bed, Charles Kinsey is now talking about what happened in that cellphone video recorded Monday.

“When I went to the ground, I went to the ground with my hands up,” he said. “And I am laying there just like this, telling them again there is no need for firearms.”

Police were responding to a 911 call about a disturbed man walking around with a gun, threatening suicide. Kinsey said that man was one of his patients, Rinaldo, who has autism. The reported gun, he said, was actually a toy truck.

The video shows Kinsey, with both hands held up in the air, telling officers “All he has is a toy truck. A toy truck. I am a behavior therapist at a group home.”

Kinsey was simultaneously trying to calm Rinaldo and explain what was happening to the police, he says, when an officer shot him.

“I thought it was a mosquito bite, and when it hit me I had my hands in the air, and I’m thinking, ‘I just got shot!’ Kinsey recalled. “I’m saying, ‘Sir, why did you shoot me?’ and his words to me were, ‘I don’t know.’”

Next, to the animal (via David Codrea)

WYNNEWOOD, Okla. (KOKH) — “There’s something wrong with Opie.”

Vickie Malone heard those words come from her young son as he stared outside the window of their Wynnewood home.

Malone had just taken in the children from outside where they had been playing while celebrating the birthday of her five-year-old son. Inside the birthday cake and ice cream hadn’t even been served when they heard the bang from outside.

That bang was the sound of a Wynnewood police officer shooting the family dog. Opie was a three-year-old American Bulldog and Pit Bull mix. To her son Eli, he was his best friend.

“I would have fun with him when he runned around and we played tag,” Eli told FOX 25.

The adults ran outside to see Opie near the fence that surrounds their yard.

“He [Opie] was over here kicking and gasping for air,” Vickie said.

The police officer used a high-powered rifle he retrieved from his police vehicle to put the dog down. He fired two more shots from the rifle in front of the children.

Malone said the officer initially told her the dog had lunged at him through the fence. According to the Wynnewood police chief, the dog charged the officer. While he declined our multiple requests for a recorded interview, Chief Ken Moore said the officer told him the dog was vicious and attacked him by coming around the corner of the house. Moore said the officer tried to kick the dog off him once and then shot him.

However, the chief said he had not seen video of the aftermath of the shooting which was provided to FOX 25. The video shows the dead dog with a gunshot wound to his head lying near the fence, not near the house.

The police chief said the officer was serving a warrant, which gave him legal authority to be on the private property. However, the Malones said they were never shown any warrant. They were only told the officer was looking for someone who had listed that address as his ten years ago.

“He said he was checking to see if a guy name Shon McNiel lived here and no one here has heard of talking about,” Malone said. The warrant for McNiel was from a 10-year-old case and the police chief said the Malone house was his last known address.

However the police chief said the department was aware the Malones had lived there for the past year. He also told FOX 25 the address was a “rent house” and that multiple people had “moved in and out” in the past decade. Moore defended the officer’s presence there saying he “had to start somewhere” in his effort to serve the warrant.

Yea, he had to start somewhere.  Just like that cop who shot the therapist.  How else would you find out what’s going on?  Kill ’em all and let God sort them out, right?

There you have it.  That’s what three-block-war looks like in America.

UPDATE: Cop’s union.  I was aiming at autistic patient, not therapist.  I don’t believe you.  Besides, you shouldn’t have been aiming at anyone, idiot.