Articles by Herschel Smith

We all knew it would happen one day, this final divorce from the political scene.  It’s been building for a long time, but before I get ahead of myself, let me explain how I got into politics.

I’ve never really been in politics, per se.  I’ve never run for office, I’ve never been an active part of a party, but I have donated, worked hard to persuade others of my views, and diligently voted, as well as followed the political scene very closely.  It all began my final year at Clemson University.  I recall being in Johnston Hall in a small dormitory room (are there any other sizes?), along with about twenty other guys.  We were packed in, and all watching Jimmy Carter debate Ronald Reagan.  Reagan handed him a resounding defeat, and at that time we were all Reagan supporters.  The entire campus, it felt like, thought like we did.  There couldn’t be found a single student on campus who supported Jimmy Carter, or if there could, he didn’t say so out loud.

In addition to studying engineering into the late hours every night, we were carefully and diligently following every particular, every detail, of the political scene, and understood fairly well the theoretical and philosophical basis of the choices the candidates made.  Those were heady days – from Calculus and engineering mechanics to political theory and theology and the Bible and back again to physics and chemistry (Even then, the humanities department was infected with progressives, and if we wanted to learn we had to teach ourselves.  I’m reminded of a friend studying philosophy at another college who had to ignore his classes and read Frederick Copleston to learn philosophy, but that’s another story).  The Reagan revolution was strong at Clemson in those days, and we survived on caffeine and late night snacks.  More than a few pots of coffee were made in that horrible kitchen in Johnston Hall at midnight.

We won, and it wasn’t that we won, so much as our ideas held sway.  I do wish that Reagan had been a little more into the details of things, because I hold these four things against him: (1) the first amnesty, (2) Sandra Day O’Conner and Anthony Kennedy, (3) The Hughes Amendment, and (4) deploying the Marines to the barracks in Beirut, only to withdraw them after attack by Hezbollah.  Every one of these things have been shown to have deleterious effects on America (including the Hughes amendment which has caused a lack of investment and design engineering in weapons for our military).  Those are four big failures, but still, we knew that the unborn had a champion, small government had an advocate, and that the danger of “near peers” wouldn’t be underestimated.

Over the course of time, compromise began to occur.  Deals were made, and the mantra of electing the “conservative” who was most electable replaced principled conservatism.  As the democratic party moved more to the left, republicans moved with them in order to stay “relevant.”  The same disease afflicts the American church, leading to the defenestration of doctrine in favor of relevancy.  Whereas the church used to talk about the vicarious atonement, the sovereignty of God and the Council of Nicea, it now focuses on racial reconciliation, nuclear weapons, and gender identity.

We all knew this would happen one day.  By not stopping the diminution of the party, we fed the monster of big government, largesse, entitlements, debt, money printing, high stakes gambling on Wall Street, corporatism, open borders to feed low wage labor, hospital emergency rooms functioning as primary care clinics all paid for by the middle class (so that those low wage workers can work for the corporate masters), crony capitalism and its attendant involvement in the drafting of millions of pages of law, regulation and federal register notices to ensure that the corporations “get theirs.”

I wasn’t surprised at the revolution of the voters this election cycle.  I suspected that it would occur.  What did surprise me was the popularity of Donald Trump.  South Carolina broke my heart, and I knew it was over for Ted Cruz at that point.  Here was the perfect chance to elect someone who would come as close as possible to taking us back to the Reagan revolution, and perhaps even do better than that, in Ted Cruz.  He is a champion of the unborn, has an even stronger position on work visas than Donald Trump, is against the imperialistic military meddling in the affairs of other states and has said so quite clearly (the effect of this position in alienating him from the likes of George W. Bush, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and the rest of the neocons, has been underestimated and is ripe territory for study), has always been a strong supporter of the right to bear arms, has successfully argued before the Supreme Court and understands its machinations well enough to appoint reliably constitutionalist jurists, favors a flat tax, has tried his best to shut down funding for Obamacare (with no help from his senate colleagues), and has sworn to overthrow the single payer health care system.

I have relayed what I heard Louie Gohmert say regarding the meetings between Cruz, Lee, Brat, Gohmert and Duncan, among others, in Cruz’s office, to overturn support for the “gang of eight” bill.  Cruz was hated inside the beltway for very good reason.  While Jeff Sessions was telling us that only Trump would “bust up the Oligarchy” in Washington, Cruz was doing just that.  Busting up the Oligarchy is sure to make the Oligarchs mad.  It doesn’t bother me at all that Cruz was hated by others in Washington.  I would have been even more his supporter if Cruz had advocated an old fashioned lynching of most of the Senators and Representatives, or perhaps tar and feathering.  No one is angrier than I am over the devolution of things in Washington.

And yet the people have chosen Donald Trump.  A man who mocks the handicapped, who considers free speech a disgrace, who triangulated a position so nonsensical on North Carolina’s bathroom law that no one knows what he means, who is a proven hypocrite on foreign workers and immigration, who wants to increase the lands owned by federal government rather than decreasing federal power and turning over the lands to the states, who has never asked anyone for forgiveness, most especially God, who only recently triangulated his position on gun rights when previously supporting an “assault weapons” ban, who supports abortion, who believes that Maryanne Trump Barry (who supports infanticide) would make a fine supreme court justice, who criticizes women for their appearance, who calls people disgusting because of pictures taken of them while they eat, and who believes in a single payer health care system.

It’s like watching an awful reality show or perhaps an interstate wreck at high speed.  Donald Trump is an obscene, narcissistic, self serving, hateful, vengeful, grotesque, moral monster who hates anything that isn’t rewarding him for being him.  He is the post-modern man, evolved past Sartre and Camus and (I suppose, finding emptiness) circling back to the pinnacle of self indulgence, Marquis de Sade.  He is an awful man.  I’ve repeatedly heard that Ted Cruz was born in Canada or wherever, or that he took a loan from such-and-such bank.  The former issue never got any traction with me, and as for the later issue, so taking loans is now illegal or immoral?  I have a loan on my house.  So what?  And as for Trump’s bankruptcies?  That’s okay, because sadism is all about self indulgence at the expense of someone else.

I get the revolutionary flavor of the current political scene.  But instead of supporting the only real revolutionary, the GOP voters have collectively dropped their drawers and mooned God and everyone else in a protest of the preceding years.  It’s a sad thing to watch.  They chose the wrong symbol of protest, and will end up getting what they most loathe, as they become what disgusts and repels them.  The people have raised their fist to God and shouted, “give us a king like all the others.”  And the Lord has said, “very well.”  Suck it up folks, because you’re getting ready to reap the rewards of your choice.

Voting for the least bad candidate is partly what got us here.  Oh, I blame the GOPe, the establishment, 100% for this debacle.  This is a protest vote.  The voters are burning it all down because of your corruption, and the sad, sorry truth is that you still don’t get it.  But it doesn’t stop there for me.  I also blame the voters, 100%.  It isn’t either-or with me, it’s both-and.  No one held a gun to your head and forced you to vote this way in the booth.  You could have chosen to be thinking men and women, but you didn’t.  You became an unthinking mob.  So we are where we are.

And for me, that means that I’ve cast my last vote.  I am bidding farewell to voting.  I am now a disenfranchised conservative Christian, and if a third party opens up for me, I might decide to rejoin in the struggle, but I’ve won’t vote GOP again for the rest of my life.  The GOP has left me – establishment and voters.  It’s no longer my party.  I have no party.  But if I ever vote for an upstart party that is true to my conservative, constitutional ideals, I won’t cast my vote because I think politics will save us.  I don’t.  As John Adams has observed, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

If we are to be saved, no piece of paper or parchment will do it.  Thus, I sympathize with my friend Claire Wolfe on our sad state of affairs.

In part it’s because I see so many angry people putting so much hope in Trump — a man who, should he manage to buy his way into office (or tumble in by default after Hillary gets indicted) will betray them even worse than than the poltroons of 1994 betrayed We the Hopeful Fools.

But also because, horrible as the prospect of either President Trump or President Clinton the Second is, it’s a relief not to feel hope.

Or despair, for that matter. Horrible as the prospects are, it’s glorious to know how very little it really matters. For freedom. For anything that counts. Oh sure, either pretender to the throne has the potential to make a ghastly mess of things — up to and including World War III (unlikely, but someday somebody’s going to do it). Or building a wall to keep us all in. Or decreeing that all guns must Go Away Now, So There, I Have Spoken. More likely not much happens except the routine bad getting routinely worse. And millions ignoring whatever “the most important leader in the world” says, decrees, promises, etc.

And those poor hopeful fools losing hope. Been there. Done that. It hurts. It burns. It makes you want to go postal. (That was the state of mind I was in from about February 1995, when the betrayal became obvious, to late 1996 when I took my life back, laughed, sat down, and wrote 101 Things to do ‘Til the Revolution.)

Yeah, it hurts. But it hurts like growing up and learning that Santa didn’t really put those presents under the tree.

To be sure, while Cruz called out Senator Mitch McConnell for being the liar he is, I fully expect to see Trump rubbing shoulders with McConnell, Paul Ryan, and so on.  He will cut deals with them.  He said so.  Have you ever heard Trump attack McConnel, Ryan, Eric Cantor, or any of the other creeps that helped to get us here?  No, you’ve only heard him attack fellow candidates.

But unlike Claire, I never expected government to work right any more than I believe presents come from Santa Claus.  I’ve always treated my vote as a precious gift from God whether I effect change with it or not, a power over which I had stewardship and for which I will one day answer to the most high.  I have always voted based on principle rather than pragmatism, or at least I have tried to, and because of principle I am now out of the process until a third party develops that is true to my beliefs.

As for the voters, enjoy what you have created.  When you build you house on sand, don’t be surprised when the first heavy rain knocks it down.  I bid you farewell.  Oh, I’ll poke fun on occasion and remind you of your choices, and I’ll get a good chuckle out of all of this.  But I’m out of the political scene.  I won’t be voting for Donald Trump.  As for my mockery of the situation, I’ll see you over the transom.

NBC10.com:

If you see an armed jogger in Mount Airy, Pennsylvania, these days, it’s not a “run-by” in progress.

He’s trying to make a point.

Mike Vanderboegh:

For those who expected deliverance from national politics that glimmer of light is now extinguished. The GOP will now go the way of the Whigs, clearing the way for the enemies of the Republic both within and without the party. What will be left will merely be different speeds and paths to the next civil war. All meaningful politics are now local, and will depend in the end on the muzzles of our rifles and the wisdom and training of those who point them.

It’s nice to see Mike writing.  And yes, this is the next installment, perhaps a touchstone on the wrong road.

Uh oh.  Matt Vanderboegh is starting a caliber war.  I always got pounded when I did that.

Here’s Matt on kit when crossing the line.  Always been a problem, always will be.  And it’s one reason that women aren’t suited for infantry.

David Codrea:

Such confident Democrat affinity for immigration, both legal and illegal, becomes obvious when you look at the numbers, as Pew research did in a 2012 “Political Party Affiliation among Hispanics” poll. Whether you look at all, at registered voters, at native born, foreign born, unauthorized, legal permanent residents or foreign-born US citizens, that affiliation is overwhelmingly Democrat.

It comes from their culture.

Update on Mike Vanderboegh.  Continue to pray for him.

Christ or a Glock.  Well, it’s not an either-or.  It’s both-and.  Except that I don’t do Glocks.  I would rather have a Springfield Armory, just about any model.

The Washington Post:

When I was in middle and high school, there were spirited public debates about whether the proliferation of grisly movies, gore-glorifying song lyrics and shoot-’em-up video games might desensitize my peers and me to violence.

While I’m reluctant to pin any of this on pop culture, it’s true that my generation appears somewhat inured to violence — at least violence involving firearms.

A decade or two post-adolescence — as our own preschool-age children now practice “active shooter” drills in which they’re coached to cower in the closet or throw toys at a tactical-gear-outfitted maniac — millennials seem to have neither the desire nor the willpower to pressure our political leaders to do much to prevent such tragedies. If anything, we may be slightly more blasé about them than our elders.

Which does not bode well for liberals hoping that the arc of history will eventually bend toward greater gun control.

Poll data about views of gun control and specific gun-control measures are mixed, and responses vary depending how questions are asked. But statements about protecting gun rights generally elicit at least as much support from younger Americans as from older ones.

Well, that’s a strange visit down memory lane for the author, Ms. Catherine Rampell, and I say strange because it would never occur to me to connect gun control laws with active shooter events, except in that so-called “gun free” zones are never really that, and instead are open invitations for such nefarious miscreants to do their wickedness.

Inured to violence is how the author chose to set this up, with her appeal to blood and gore, but she slips and accidentally paints a word picture of what can happen when her restrictive gun laws are enacted – idiotic things like strategies to run, hide, fight, and throwing potted plants at shooters, or perhaps toys.  You see dear, your restrictive gun laws never stop criminals because they don’t care about your laws.  They only disarm law abiding and peaceable citizens.

Millennials are generally smart enough to figure that out.  We’re winning, the progressives know it, and I suggest that you learn to live with it.  We know how to evangelize and proselytize.  Perhaps you should even purchase a gun and learn to use it, in case of an attempted rape or an active shooter event.  The police will show up to fill out paperwork, but the event will be over by the time they arrive.  You are responsible to defend yourself.  No one else will.

Chicago Tribune:

When a Portage couple heard a knock on their door a year ago, they were shocked to see 20 armed police officers standing outside, yelling an expletive at them to open their door.

Portage SWAT then searched their home as they were forced to watch before someone realized they were at the wrong address, according to a lawsuit filed by Jon Groski and Stacey McFadden against the city, the Portage Police Department and a number of officers.

Mayor Jim Snyder could not be reached for comment.

According to the lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Hammond, the couple and their 4-year-old daughter were at home in the 3300 block of Oakwood Street on the morning of April 13, 2015, when they heard loud banging on their door.

Groski looked through a window and saw 20 officers all wearing black with assault rifles on his doorstep, the lawsuit says, and one of them yelled at him “Open the (expletive) door, right (expletive) now.”

When he asked what was going on, another officer told him “It doesn’t (expletive) matter,” the lawsuit says.

It adds that when Groski did open the door, they rushed in with their weapons drawn at everyone in the house.

The lawsuit says that police never actually identified themselves as officers and never produced a warrant. After searching the house for some time, one officer made a comment about being at the wrong house, according to the suit.

The suit says that Groski and McFadden later learned police were trying to serve a warrant on someone who did not live at the house and that that person was not wanted for a violent crime.

It argues police used excessive force against the family and would not let them leave during the search. They are suing for unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

This is the troupe of goobers responsible for this.

They think it’s acceptable to force their way into another man’s home, property not their own, point guns at his family, and tell him it’s none of his business why they’re doing it.  To boot, this is yet another wrong-home raid, and making this even richer, the man they “wanted” wasn’t even wanted for a violent crime.

Hey folks, put the carbines down, get out of the monkey costumes, take the shades off (no, they don’t make you look cool), take some classes in scientific forensics (perhaps even including – gasp! – Calculus and physics), and be useful to your community.  As it is, you’re doing no one any good.  You’re collective drains on society, loads on the turbine.  You’re not earning your keep.

Do your investigative work, go door to door, knock on the doors, be friends of the community, ask questions, and so on, and for heaven’s sake, dress up in a formal uniform, shirt and tie and try to at least look like you’re a professional.  Defenestrate the tactical gear and jump suits and lose the bellies.  You look stupid.  But before you do any of that, read the constitution for what you can and can’t do, and don’t even think about deferring to a rubber stamp judge to prove that it’s okay for you to be abusive to citizens.  God won’t care what that judge said.

At WRSA there is an interesting discussion on the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.  Here is a snippet.

I recognized that, despite the cries of today’s Constitutionalists about the Divine inspiration of the US Constitution and the accompanying Bill of Rights (USC/BoR), both of the foundational documents of American governance were drafted by mere humans based on the political accommodations necessary at the time (e.g., chattel slavery) and had no effective provisions for enforcement when violated.

I realized that, even if one does not fully accept the “intentionally fraudulent from the beginning” premise of Royce’s Hologram of Liberty, the institutions established by the USC/BoR have failed in preserving individual freedom and American sovereignty.

It should be remembered what John Adams said to us.  “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  The only perfect text is the Holy Writ because it has both human and divine authorship – no text that is exclusively human can be free of flaw.  But that isn’t the problem with failure to preserve our liberties.  The problem comes from the heart of man.

It’s called federal headship [of Adam] and original sin, and it extends to every man, woman and child, to every corner of the globe, and to every part of the moral and physical constitution of mankind.  Take for example the second amendment.  We’ve discussed before how “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.”

As elaborated by one commenter, “All the rights in the BoR are subsidiary, or appurtenant, rights. That is, appurtenant to the fundamental rights of Life, Liberty, and Property. The 2d Amdt is an agreement as to the practical, real-world way in which a people protects its fundamental rights, and which any just government must guarantee if the citizenry’s fundamental rights are to be protected.

It could be worded a thousand different ways (and the 2d always seemed poorly worded), but the underlying fundamental rights — and the necessity of a practical means of ensuring them — does not depend on the wording, nor upon whether there is any wording at all.  The rights exist. They cannot be overridden, taken, bargained away, or lost … especially not by appeal to legal or linguistic “precedent.”

Yes, but why?  I no longer appeal to anything in the constitution for my rights, as readers might be able to tell (or if I do, the appeal is short and for the purpose of connection with my readers).  I see the constitution as a covenant, with attendant rights, responsibilities and punishments.  Surely, if all parties are in collusion with the wickedness, there is no punishment for violation of the provisions of the constitution.

But the furniture is there to effect such punishments, e.g., impeachment, withholding of funding, and corporal punishments up to and including imprisonment and death.  The college of gargoyles, demons and pit vipers inside the beltway won’t hold anyone accountable because many of them are part of the problem.  The neutered politicians at the state and county level won’t because they have rendered themselves eunuchs by choice.

So the furniture is there, the volition is absent.  Our constitution is intended only for a moral and religious people.  It cannot function for any other.  And if you are one of those individuals who wants to find moral absolutes, framework for society, and rules upon which you can entrust your future in any document written by mankind, or any system of ethics absent God, your project is doomed to abject failure, just as Bertrand Russell couldn’t establish morality without God in his debate with Frederick Coppleston, or Gordon Stein in his debate with Greg Bahnsen.

One writer editorialized about the second amendment (in Heller) that “there was never any risk of the court adopting the gun movement’s more exotic premises, such as the notion that gun rights are “God-given,” a view handed down by National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre in his colorful sermons.”  I don’t know anything about sermons by Wayne, or NRA position papers on this topic, nor do I really need to know any of that.  The interesting thing about this writer is that he considers the notion that our rights are God-given to be exotic.

To the post-modern pawn, the constitution is as good as anything else given that appeal to the masses based on the emotion of the moment will certainly bring random ethics to bear.  They may as well twist the words of the agreement (constitution) to mean what they want them to mean – that way, at least they have a chance of winning.  But to those whose God is the Lord, it’s much clearer given that the only sovereign has declared beforehand the boundaries, times and epochs of His creatures.

Men must decide how they will live together.  If their eyes are firmly fixed on God, they will endeavor to live together in peace and liberty.  To the degree to which they worship themselves, no paper or parchment can save man, regardless of the provisions contained therein.

Self defense isn’t just a responsibility, it’s a duty based on the image of God in man.  This self defense doesn’t stop with personal safety, but extends to family safety and even further.  There is nothing natural about rights, and the foundation of liberty itself is based on the God of the bible.

The reference to “natural laws” and what nature may teach us is quaint and amusing, but philosophically outdated and meaningless.  Nature confers upon us nothing, and certainly not rights of any sort.  What may be obvious to us is contrary to the pronouncements of others who look at the same “nature.”  To John Dewey, John Stuart Mill and in more drastic form the communists, whatever works the best and achieves the greatest good for the greatest number is “good” (whatever that means).

But under this rubric many men and women have perished, a fact that is acceptable to the communists.  Under this rubric many millions of unborn infants in America have also perished, a fact that is wholly acceptable to the pragmatists and utilitarians.  The tribes in Ethiopia engaged in the practice of killing healthy baby boys whose top teeth came in before his bottom teeth.

America has for a long time found acceptable the idea of theft through taxation and inflation (both of which steal wealth), because that’s what the majority say.  If one turns to “nature” for values, whatever that means, perhaps the best source for ethics and morality would be watching male lions kill the cubs of females so that they come into estrus, or watching other animals as they steal kills.  Again to emphasize the point, nature cannot reveal a system of laws and turning to natural law means that you haven’t thought things through.

For those who have taken courses in apologetics or philosophy (and also for those who haven’t), a world view requires a system of categories working together, including metaphysics, ontology, ethics, epistemology, and so forth.  All of it is usually seen to be based on epistemology, as that category of philosophy describes and explains your source of truth.

It also requires that you posit your presuppositions beforehand.  Arguing that you want “reason” instead of “faith” belies ignorance (and the failure to take courses in math and philosophy).  Recalling the advice of Gordon H. Clark, you need to take a class in geometry.  All logic is governed by rules of deduction, but based on presupposition, axiomatic irreducibles.  If it can be demonstrated it is a pronouncement of your syllogism, not a presupposition.

With the right presuppositions you can demonstrate that the moon is made of green cheese.  You must state yours, and we get to examine them, along with your syllogisms.  What is your source of truth?  You see, these things are necessary before your system can amount to anything.  Otherwise, you’re an infant trying to read a calculus textbook.

Politics is ethics.  It is part of a larger system of philosophy, and it cannot be posited in a vacuum without being void of compelling argument.  You must explain how you know what you know in order for us to judge it, and all of your system must show itself to be consistent with the rest.  This is what philosopher Gordon H. Clark shows so well in “Religion, Reason and Revelation.”

I’m not disappointed in the founders, and I don’t think they intended failure of the republic.  I know that mankind is fallen, and that covenants must be enforced at points in history, that is, the punishments of the covenant.  The founders knew it too, and in fact if you read them carefully, they used their covenants with the King to justify their actions, legally speaking, but philosophically they appealed elsewhere.

If your appeal for liberty is to the constitution, you’re robbing yourself of the surety and certainty that comes from knowing the truth, denuding yourself of the very cloak of righteousness you will need to move forward in uncertain times.

Smart ass Ron Conway is banking on your stupidity.

In the 2012 movie Skyfall, James Bond brandishes his trusty sidearm, but with a high-tech twist: There’s a sensor in the grip that reads palm prints so only he can fire it. The souped-up firearm saves the secret agent’s life, and in the real world, similar technology could do the same for thousands. Or so says Ron Conway, an avuncular Silicon Valley billionaire trying to disrupt the gun industry.

Speaking at the International Smart Gun Symposium in San Francisco in February, Conway exuded the cockiness of a man who invested early in Google, Airbnb and Twitter. “The gun companies have chosen to sit on their asses and not innovate,” he said. “Silicon Valley is coming to their rescue.”

Conway isn’t a gun owner, and for most of his life, he never gave much thought to firearms. But after Adam Lanza shot up an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, killing 26, Conway created a foundation that has given $1 million to inventors. The goal: perfect user-authenticated firearms.

The only problem is politics, not technology.  Ignore the fact that any legitimate fault tree analysis of so-called “smart guns” would find them less reliable due to differences that cannot be overcome with any design change.  Know-it-all Ron Conway knows what you want and is going to drag you kicking and screaming if necessary into the promised land.

On another front, president Barry is going to renew his push for smart guns, and guess whose Ox is getting gored?

While the “smart gun” element of the actions drew little attention earlier this year, critics are gearing up to fight back against the possibility that such guns could be required for government firearms purchases.

A source familiar with the plans said that type of mandate isn’t on tap right now, but critics are still worried the administration is laying the groundwork for such a move. Among the biggest skeptics are cops worried about testing an unproven technology on the streets.

“Police officers in general, federal officers in particular, shouldn’t be asked to be the guinea pigs in evaluating a firearm that nobody’s even seen yet,” said James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police. “We have some very, very serious questions.”

Uh huh, I’ll bet you do, blue costumed one.  And one recent editorial at the Albany Times-Union believes that a mandate is the only way to go – for all guns.

Of course smart gun technology won’t cure gun violence in America altogether. But if the technology can be made reasonably reliable — as reliable, say, as an ordinary gun is today — it could prevent many such guns from being obtained illegally and used to commit crimes. It could also make it impossible for a child to stumble on to one and accidentally fire it. We’re at a loss to see anything undesirable about either of those outcomes.

The technology takes several forms that share a common feature: making a gun inoperable to anyone who does not know how to disable the security. That might be done with a code or fingerprint, technologies that are already used to safeguard things like computers, cars, homes and offices.

Groups like the National Rifle Association still will no doubt find reasons why smart guns are a bad idea. Limiting future firearms production and sales to smart guns, they’re sure to say, wouldn’t removed from circulation the more than 300 million guns already in the United States that lack smart technology, nor would it stop determined bad guys from hacking smart guns. And if it adds even a small cost to the price of a gun, they’ll insist that’s an infringement on the right to keep and bear arms.

The NRA and the National Shooting Sports Foundation already say the marketplace should decide whether smart gun technology is a good idea or a bad one.

But we all know, as they do, that the marketplace won’t insist on safety, any more than the market was keen on seat belts, motorcycle helmets, smoke detectors, or emission controls in cars or factories.

Ah, it’s literally that simple.  It’s the NRA rather than individual gun owners, it’s a matter of seat belts, smoke detectors and helmets.  It’s all so clear now.

Here’s what I think.  No matter what smart ass Ron Conway says, I don’t think he or any venture capitalist is going to invest any money or time at all in so-called “smart gun technology” because they know they won’t get one dollar back out of it.  Oh how I wish they would.  Oh how I wish someone would invest his life’s earnings in such an endeavor to “make us safe.”  It would be a good object lesson, yes?  But alas, it won’t happen.

And I don’t really believe that president Barry is going to mandate that anyone in any federal agency only use or procure smart guns.  President Barry will be out of office by the time such a mandate would take effect anyway.  President Barry is a lame duck and can’t mandate anything.  At this point he is nothing more than a court jester.

And I think the editors of the Albany Times-Union don’t really understand what they’re demanding.  Question for the editors.  Does the phrase “second amendment remedy” ring any bells for you?  Yea, that one.  Listen to me.  Any time you’re feeling froggy – any time you’re feeling froggy – you give it a whirl and try to mandate that we gun owners only purchase, own or carry “smart guns.”  See how much “safer” that makes you when the second amendment remedies are invoked.

Any time you’re feeling froggy.

Prior: Smart Guns Tag

The Sydney Morning Herald:

Australians now own more guns than before the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, according to new research that shows firearm imports hit a record high in 2014-15.

The surge in gun-buying over the past 16 years, which has seen 1.02 million guns brought into the country, has been largely a “gun swap”, according to Philip Alpers, a University of Sydney public health researcher, gun control expert and founding director of GunPolicy.org.

“The proud claim of some Australians that their country has ‘solved the gun problem’ might only be a temporary illusion,” Associate Professor Alpers will write in The Conversation on Thursday, the 20th anniversary of the massacre.

“The million guns destroyed after Port Arthur have been replaced with 1,026,000 new ones. And the surge only shows upward momentum.”

The chart above tracks the steady rise in legal private gun sales since 1999. (New firearms must be imported since firearms are not manufactured in Australia.)

The spike in 1996-97 represents the buying spree triggered by the firearm laws, as banned rapid-fire firearms were replaced with freshly-imported single-shot firearms.

Gun sales in 2014-15 were the highest on record, swelling six-fold compared with 1999, the GunPolicy.org research shows.

With 104,000 guns added last year, the national arsenal is, for the first time in 20 years, bigger than before the 1996 national buyback.

Population growth over the past 20 years means the rate of private gun ownership remains about 23 per cent lower than before the massacre.

Researchers struggle to explain who is buying all these guns and why.

Associate Professor Alpers believes the surge is most likely driven by gun owners increasing their collections, rather than more Australians buying guns.

He points to figures that show the proportion of Australian households with a gun fell by 75 per cent between 1988 and 2005.

“That suggests the people who are buying the guns are people who already have guns. And that fits into the global pattern … [of] a steady and substantial downward trend over the past 30-40 years,” Associate Professor Alpers said.

Psychologist and self-described gun control critic Samara McPhedran, from Griffith University’s Violence Research and Prevention Program, attributes the boom in firearm sales to the rising popularity of shooting sports among a younger demographic.

“I think what the figures show fundamentally is that people are interested in target shooting and hunting, and that interest seems to be growing over time,” she said.

However, others argue the evidence for this is questionable.

One unintended consequence of the post-Port Arthur gun laws was to boost the wealth and widen the influence of shooting clubs, according to Associate Professor Alpers.

The 1996 laws require gun owners to show they have a genuine reason to own a firearm. The easiest way for people in urban areas to do this is through membership in a gun club, Associate Professor Alpers said.

And not just membership but active participation. In NSW, for example, the firearm licensing regulations require members of target shooting clubs to participate at least four times a year. In Victoria, a licensed handgun owner is required to participate in at least 10 shoots a year. The requirements vary by jurisdiction.

“People who never normally went to gun clubs were now going to gun clubs and shooting ranges because the law obliged them to,” Associate Professor Alpers said.

“So the gun lobby has grown in size, political clout and, certainly, in money … as a side-effect of the post-Port Arthur gun laws.”

Such clubs also play a vital role in politicising gun owners and nurturing future ones, Associate Professor Alpers said.

For example, shooters clubs have called for age restrictions on minors firearm licences to be lifted, so children of all ages will be allowed to use weapons while supervised.

“They do that because they’re convinced … that the next generation should love guns as much as they do. It is one of their highest concerns,” Associate Professor Alpers said.

And it’s a strategy aimed at survival. “The single most reliable indicator of gun ownership is whether your father had a gun,” he said.

On the other hand, the link between Australia’s gun-buying surge and gun violence isn’t clear.

After all, rising gun sales are nothing new. “This isn’t a sudden increase. It’s a consistent pattern that we’ve seen over a number of years,” Dr McPhedran said.

“And despite those increases we’ve seen steady declines in firearm misuse.”

It doesn’t fit the narrative, does it?  In Australia, they tried ever so hard to stamp out gun ownership, crime fell, they falsely attributed it to lack of gun ownership, and we know that it is a false attribution because just as soon as they tried to stamp out guns, gun ownership began to rise again while crime fell.  It’s just a nightmare all around for the progressives.

But another very important note should be taken from this report.  In their efforts to stamp out guns, they accidentally aided gun owners in evangelizing and proselytizing non-gun owners.  This is the second – and perhaps most important – progressive failure.

Reader and commenter Fred is fond of saying this.

1. Find young, first time and new shooters. Make sure they have a good time at the range. Explain how hitler/mao/stalin/etc took the guns and killed millions. Offer to help them learn more about shooting and self defense. Rinse, repeat.
2. Make sure reps at all levels know that control/confiscation will not be
tolerated. I’m not afraid to engage my sheriff, local, state and fed reps. I
tell them exactly where I stand. Rinse, repeat.
3. Track, forward and reply to important legislative activities. (see step 2)
4. I personally do not engage the enemy directly. They are illegitimate. I stay on offense, always.

Just so.  Don’t back down one inch.  Work the people, and do it better than the progressives do.  The true gun confiscators are few and far between.  Few people want to enact meaningless bans of magazines, bans they know will bring massive non-compliance, and those monkeys who did the grabbing also don’t want to have to “watch their six” at night when they take their dog out to piss before bed.  They know we might be there in the dark.  But it may not come to this.  The great middle will ultimately decide whether we have to go to fisticuffs over the progressive wet dream of full-orbed statism.  They are leaning our direction.

This is fertile ground.  Plow it, seed it, fertilize it, water it, reap it.

America Is About To See How Guns Used In Mass Shootings Are Marketed:

When family members and survivors of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School filed suit against Bushmaster in December 2014, it seemed a lot like a lost cause. After all, a 2005 federal law called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) was designed to prevent people from holding gun manufacturers accountable for wrongful deaths. Even last week, when a Connecticut judge shot down a motion to dismiss the suit, experts said she was just delaying an inevitable dismissal later down the line.

But then last Tuesday, that same judge, Barbara Bellis, of Connecticut’s Superior Court, issued another ruling that determined the suit would be more than symbolic. Specifically, she said the discovery process could begin immediately and set a tentative trial date for April 3, 2018. A jury hearing the case would be historic, but Katherine Mesner-Hage, an attorney for the plaintiffs, says that getting the gun company to open its books for discovery is arguably just as huge.

That’s because she and her co-council have constructed a creative PLCAA exemption, claiming, in essence, that the gun Adam Lanza used in the Sandy Hook massacre was specifically marketed as a killing machine. As part of discovery, they’ll dig through the gunmaker’s internal company memos and try to prove that the company was negligent.

I spoke to Mesner-Hage about how the gun industry became so protected from civil suits, what she and the other lawyers for the Sandy Hook survivors hope to find in discovery, and how their legal strategy is similar to the one used against Big Tobacco in the 90s.

VICE: What are you hoping to find in discovery that will be such a big deal?
Katherine Mesner-Hage: We’re looking for documents, and we’re looking to depose key people at Remington especially, but also at the distributor and the retail level. We’re asking for internal memos about how to market the AR-15 and how to market specifically the patrolman’s carbine, which is the one that Adam Lanza used.

We want to depose the head of marketing. We want to talk to the people at the company who are making the decisions about marketing. That’s how we build our case, although the marketing speaks for itself on one level. This is our chance to kind of peel back the curtain and see what’s really going on. One of the things about discovery in general is that you don’t know what you’re looking for before you start.

Has any other case against a gun company gotten to the discovery stage since PLCAA was passed? What are the broader implications of this recent decision?
I can’t think of any case that’s gotten to the point in which discovery was open in the post-PLCAA era.

Nothing good can come from this.  As I have said before, the Sandy Hook Families aren’t entitled to that information and the case has no merit.

I know what they’re after.  As I have documented before, the law protects firearms manufacturers, but excepts cases where there is “negligent entrustment.”  I recall thinking as I read this, “this is an oddball exception.”  The reason that it is odd is that firearms manufacturers don’t sell to customers.  They sell to distributors who then sell to stores (some manufacturers sell directly online, but go through a local FFL, e.g., Rock River Arms, LaRue Tactical, etc.).

They are thinking that this exception, the negligent entrustment clause, has not been tested in court and still need fleshing out as to its real definition.  But I don’t agree with lawsuits against gun manufacturers any more than I agree with Tobacco companies being sued over lung cancer.  Evil actions such as was perpetrated that day redound to federal headship in Adam, original sin, and the volitional decision to commit wicked acts.  Marketing has nothing to do with it.

Back in 2005 when I was headed for a professional conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I left Charlotte, N.C. that day and headed towards Western North Carolina.  Instead of driving one of those put-put-put cars companies like to put you in, the car rental agency apologized and told me that the only car left on the lot for me that day was a brand new 2005 Ford Mustang GT.  I recalled laughing out loud to the puzzlement of the sales clerk.  Little did she know, I thought.

I drove towards Murphy, N.C., and past the NOC (Nantahala Outdoor Center), and on the curvy roads past all of those TVA dams, curve after curve after curve, in a brand new Ford Mustang GT.  It was a great day, that Sunday, and I exceeded the posted speed limit by a wide margin.  A wide margin.  But I didn’t do anything unsafe, and I didn’t cause additional risk for anyone else on the road.

Or perhaps I’m lying or simply a bad judge of risk.  If I had harmed anything or anyone that day, it wouldn’t have been a great day, and I would have been responsible for it.  Ford’s marketing of its 2005 Mustang GT had nothing whatsoever to do with my decision to exceed the posted speed limit.

And Adam Lanza is in hell for what he did since he didn’t know Jesus Christ as his savior and advocate before the Father.  I’m certain that the parents have bitterness and heartache over what happened.  But they’re taking it out on the wrong person, the wrong company, the wrong workers, the wrong objects.  They are poorly trained, theologically and philosophically, and besides that badly mistaken that marketing carbines to young males is somehow responsible for the deaths of their loved ones (witness Charles Whitman who used a bolt action rifle, the best option for his choice of locations).

These parents are in danger of harm to their own souls with this continued blame of the wrong people.  The lawyers are going to get rich, and the judge is a wicked woman and will receive her just recompense eventually, and perhaps sooner.

Prior:

Judge Barbara Bellis Says Sandy Hook Families’ Lawsuit Against Remington Goes Forward

Judge Barbara Bellis: Update On The Sandy Hook Families’ Lawsuit Of Remington

David Codrea:

I drove down from my home in Ohio to see Mike Vanderboegh this weekend at his home in Alabama. I was able to spend some time with him on Friday night and again on Saturday morning.

His appearance is about what you’d expect for a man who told us a week ago the doctors have given him four weeks to live – there’s no need to dwell on that here. After years of friendship, it was important for me to see him face-to-face, and to show him how much I valued the blessing of knowing him. In fact, grim and sad as the reason for my trip was, I told Mike I not only considered making it one blessing, but two: That there are people in my life I care enough about to make such a trip for, and that I have the means and the capability to do it.

It’s about 12 hours each way (with stops for gas and to get the circulation going again), meaning I had time Friday evening to visit with Mike, and his steadfast wife, Rosey, for a little over an hour. Mike was lying on the couch for the duration. Pain is being managed, such as it can be, with a patch. I kept the visit short, not just because I didn’t want to overdo things for him, but I was also pretty tired. I returned to their house Saturday morning, where they were joined by their loving daughters, there to help with a garage sale. For that, I was happy to see him able to sit in a chair, supervise the goings-on, and engage with people …

We also talked about the transition of his beloved Sipsey Street Irregulars blog to his son Matthew, who is off to a strong start, and I committed to doing what I can to support the continuation of the legacy.

I’m quite jealous of David, but I could have decided to commit the time to do this.  It’s been very hard and busy lately, with pressing issues at work, family business, graduations, an upcoming marriage in the family, sickness with my father, and so on.  I regret not having met him in person, but as I said before, we’ll meet in the new heavens and the new earth as old friends who recognize each other but in bodies that never get sick.

I’ve already exchanged email with Matt, and he sent me a very kind reply, very lengthy and very worthy of a long reply back again.  I have a lot of things to say to him.  I will find the time to do just that.