Articles by Herschel Smith

David Codrea:

“‘cause in rural America, there are a lot of folks — Sen. Enzi knows this — they might be out huntin’ gophers and go in to pick up the mail, and they got the gun sittin’ in their pickup — it’s just a matter — it’s a tool to do their work with,” he explained.

You jerk off bigot!  I know your type and I loath you.  Your antics don’t amuse me.  As for the pathetic republican cowards, how about shutting down the government over shit like this?  Oh, I forgot.  Ted Cruz already tried this and you hung him out to dry.  So come to think of it, I loath all of you.

One day at the great and awful white throne judgment when the Lord of Lords sits and examines everyone, someone will answer for the thievery of Fifth generation warfare and the waste associated with the F-35.

Pat Toomey gun control ads.  Good grief.  The man cranks it up again.

Effects of universal background check laughable.  So why did you support it, Dave Workman?

In light of the murder of a security guard at a nuclear power plant allegedly by ISIS, I had a conversation with someone this weekend on that subject.  A brief synopsis of it follows.

Person A: So can ISIS do anything to a nuclear power plant?

Me: Do you really want to have this conversation?

Person A: Yes.

Me: Okay.  So be it.  No, ISIS can’t do anything.

Person A: But what about Chernobyl?

Me:  At Chernobyl, which is an RBMK-1000 design, it was neutronically a loosely couple reactor in order to allow refueling on line because it was producing weapons grade material.  It’s neutron moderator was graphite, not water.  The water was both the coolant and a neutron poison.  Thus, on lose of coolant, the neutron population rapidly increased.  That fateful night an electrical engineer was running a test on the reactor, and the reactor operators were operating under his procedure.  He put the plant in a condition in which safety systems and automatic reactor trips were bypassed, forced a plant transient, and voided the core of water.

When he did this, reactor power increased by a factor of 100 within one second.  Shortly after the accident a lot of multidimensional analysis work was performed to ascertain whether it was a nuclear explosion or a steam explosion.  The answer was pretty clear, it was a steam explosion.  Commercial nuclear reactors cannot explode like a bomb.  It’s impossible.  But it dispersed the coolant channels in such a manner that the core could no longer be cooled.  It melted.

This Russian design had what we call a positive void coefficient, leading to an overall positive power coefficient.  Reactor transients with increasing power further increase power.  In America, the code of federal regulations dictates that reactors be designed with overall negative power coefficients.  In Europe too, I believe.  The RBMK only exists in Russia and the Ukraine.

I’m sorry, I asked you if you really wanted to have this conversation.

Person A: So the plant is intrinsically safe, but can ISIS do anything with the security badge?

Me: No.  Entry into the plant requires biometric screening, like palm prints.  If someone tried to force their way into the plant, they would be shot within seconds (not to mention the fact that the turnstiles would never open).  The only real threat to safety and security would be an inside job, where engineers who had extensive knowledge of the safety analysis of the plant went into the plant to area terminal cabinets and opened sliding links, lifted leads, and so on, disabling safety systems.  In other words, malicious tampering.  Engineers are very non-fertile ground for that sort of thing, having worked their entire careers trying to baby the machine into working right to begin with.  No engineer wants to see his life’s work go away in ignominy.  Besides, engineers are boring people.

Person A: So why all the hype?

Me: Soccer moms will do anything, give over any amount of privacy, give up virtually anything, in order to maintain a level of safety and security.  ISIS and nuclear power plants is the latest incarnation of the whole ISIS thing generically.  The government gets a chance to say, “Hey, listen to us, we’ll protect you if you’ll only give us access to your iPhone, all of your records, bank accounts, medical data, tell us whether you have any guns in the home, let us listen to and record your phone calls and all of your text messages, and in short be your protector.  We’ll take care of you, we promise!  We won’t let the mean bad men make the big bad thingy go BOOM and hurt your precious little babies!  Let me have the keys to your life, sweetie!”

NYT:

Though Mr. Cruz has adjusted his public tone, calling for party harmony and appealing to “our better angels” in a moment of political discord, senior Republican officials say Mr. Cruz has made little effort to repair relationships, particularly in the Senate.

Senator John Cornyn, the second-ranking Republican senator and Mr. Cruz’s fellow Texan, privately lobbied Mr. Cruz to attend a Senate Republican luncheon in the Capitol and soothe feelings, according to a Republican strategist briefed on the request. But after a CNN report in which some Republican senators suggested that Mr. Cruz apologize to the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, whom Mr. Cruz called a liar on the Senate floor, Mr. Cruz’s campaign became irritated and backed off a peacemaking lunch.

Mr. Cruz and Mr. McConnell have still not spoken, according to an aide to Mr. McConnell.

“I’m not sure there’s anything to apologize for,” Jason Johnson, Mr. Cruz’s chief strategist, told reporters recently.

Hey Lindsey, you can cram your endorsement up your ass.  As for Mitch McConnell, apologizing to him would be akin to pledging fealty to a demon.  I would lose all respect for Ted.  I would rather see McConnell tarred and feathered.  Or perhaps hanged.  But a good old fashioned tarring and feathering would drag it out longer.

Don’t do this.

WRSA has this up where it is implicitly suggested that Paul Ryan (weasel that he is), is actually going to make a move for candidacy.  It also appears to be suggested that this behavior is somehow controlled by the GOP machine.

Bhah!  The establishment controls little to nothing, Paul Ryan has as much chance at being the candidate as my dog, and the second example is a bunch of goobers in over their head trying to run things they shouldn’t.  Nothing more.

I’ve heard it until I’m sick and fed up.  The establishment.  They are to blame for Trump.  The establishment.  THE ESTABLISHMENT!  Screw the establishment!  They are responsible for all of the nation’s ills.  Except, not really.

The establishment is mostly filled with gargoyles, demons and pit vipers, except for a few like Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Louie Gohmert (TX), Dave Brat and Jeff Duncan (who as I discussed before, all met in Ted’s office on a regular basis and strategized to kill the gang of eight bill, for which they all give him credit).  But the bad ones, and they are numerous, were put there by voters.

Let’s cover that point again.  Voters put the bastards in office.  Every Senator and member of the House (with the sole exception of which I am aware, Tim Scott) was voted into office, not appointed.  The voters have all the power.  The voters put the bastards in office.  Sure, the voters’ ranks is mostly filled ignoramuses, goobers, idiots who would rather spend time playing fantasy football, and couch potatoes who would rather watch mind-numbing nighttime sitcoms than learn anything about government, human nature, theology, philosophy or anything that requires heavy thought.

But that’s the point.  If voters are too stupid or disconnected to vote honorable men into office, then it’s to be expected that dishonorable men will behave dishonorably.  And by the way, I simply don’t buy Ann Barnhardt’s axiom that “The culture has degraded such that seeking and/or holding office, especially national-level office, is, in and of itself, proof that a given person is psychologically and morally unfit to hold public office.”  It has absolutely nothing to do with the culture, and everything to do with the state of man both redeemed and unredeemed.  There is nowhere in the Holy Writ that Ann can turn that explains that merely seeking leadership marks a man out as being more sinful than any other man (Ann should read more John Calvin on the state of mankind), and she can’t demonstrate that there is.  Screaming it louder and louder doesn’t make it so, and Ann just made that up because she’s so pissed off, like she always is.

As for the GOPe, “the establishment,” they are easily dealt with.  The voters are doing it now.  A single election cycle can throw them all out on their ears.  The establishment has no power not given to it by the idiot voters.  Finally, most of the chattering class is woefully ignorant of most of the things I’m telling you, so you’re now smarter than most of the pundits inside the beltway (you probably were anyway).

Except that they may be beginning to catch on (and I’ll cite with caveats and stipulations).  Enter Jonah Goldberg.

Nominating Donald Trump will wreck the Republican party as we know it. Not nominating Trump will wreck the Republican party as we know it. The sooner everyone recognizes this fact, the better.

[ … ]

Trump’s response to this floor-fight talk was to vomit up the usual word salad. “All I can say is this, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Trump told ABC’s This Week. “But I will say this, you’re going to have a lot of very unhappy people [if I’m denied the nomination]. And I think, frankly, for the Republicans to disenfranchise all those people because if that happens, they’re not voting and the Republicans lose.”

Even through the syntactical fog, Trump’s point is clear: If he can’t reach 1,237, he should get the nomination anyway. Because he is Trump. If that doesn’t happen, his supporters will stay home, defect from the party, riot, or all three.

And he’s right. Not about deserving the nomination even if he doesn’t have the delegates. That’s typical Trumpian whining. But he’s right that if he’s denied the nomination, many — not all, but many — of his supporters will bolt from the convention and the party. Left out of Trump’s unsubtle threat: Many anti-Trump Republicans will desert the convention and the party if he’s not denied the nomination.

[ … ]

Trump represents just the most pronounced of a spiderweb of ideological and demographic fault lines that are increasingly difficult to paper over. As Joel Kotkin put it in a column for the Orange County Register, the Republican party now “consists of interest groups that so broadly dislike each other that they share little common ground.”

For whatever reason, Trump’s supporters have concluded that (a) they don’t care about issues of life and will vote for candidates who support abortion, and (b) they don’t care about having a single payer socialist health care system for the rest of their lives and the lives of the children’s children.

I’ve told you before and I’ll say it again.  This election cycle is the last chance … the … last … chance … you have to turn back a single payer health care system.  If Trump dumps Obamacare and substitutes his own version of a single payer system (which is no different except that it opens state lines), it will never be reversed in American history without bloody revolution.  It will take weapons to turn it back.  Maybe that’s what you want.

And yet there are those Ted Cruz voters, who have said that they will bolt the party if Trump is nominated.  I’ve outlined my four non-negotiables, and Trump misses on two of them, and is weak on a third (he misses on pro-life, misses on a single payer health care system, and he’s weak on gun rights).  I won’t vote for Trump, so I’m in the category I mentioned above.  On election night, I’ll sit back and laugh, but I won’t whore my vote out to the least bad candidate.

But that’s the point of this whole thing, yes?  The fault of the GOP debacle lies not with the GOPe, not with Trump, and not with Cruz.  The responsibility for the debacle lies in fault lines developed years ago, irreconcilable differences, voters who have fundamentally different world views on very important matters.

The GOP is not finished if Trump is the candidate (future tense).  The GOP is not finished if Cruz is the candidate (future tense).  The GOP is not finished because of the GOPe.  The GOP is finished – past tense – because of fault lines in the voters.  It is irreversible, having to do with things theological and philosophical and things related to incorrigible values and world and life view.

Prepare yourself now for the fallout.

HBR:

Absent from much of the discussion, and President Obama’s recent Executive Order in particular, is any role for the gun manufacturers. When it comes to guns getting into the wrong hands, the President’s executive order frames it as a dealer issue to be addressed by expanding the capability of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). When it comes to technological development for safer guns, it is a task assigned to the Departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security — not to the U.S. based firms who have been designing and manufacturing guns since the Civil War. So it’s natural to ask: Where are the gun manufacturers?

To understand why they’re absent from any discussions of gun safety, you have to both grasp how the gun industry works — and go back about a decade to a landmark piece of legislation.

None of the “Big 3” sell guns directly to consumers. Ruger sells exclusively to a small set of wholesalers, each of which are licensed by the federal government. Remington sells to both federally licensed wholesalers and directly to some federally licensed retailers (Walmart being its largest retail account). In each case, the company uses this buffer of its distribution structure as a disclaimer of any responsibility for the ultimate use of their weapons. For example, in the wake of Sandy Hook where one of its Bushmaster assault rifles was used for all 26 killings, company management issued a statement saying the company: “…does not sell weapons or ammunition directly to consumers, through gun shows or otherwise. Sales are made only to federally licensed firearms dealers in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.”

Statements like this seem to suffice as legal protection for manufacturers due to the 2005 passage of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Firearms Act, which the National Rifle Association referred to as its “number one legislative priority and a monumental victory for the Association…” The Act grants broad immunity to manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and even industry trade associations. No action can be brought as long as the product functioned “as designed and intended” and there is no evident negligence. Since the act’s passage, no case has been successfully brought against a gun manufacturer. So without the threat of litigation, the manufacturers’ stance has been to protect the status quo – no matter how unhealthy that status quo is to the public.

“Obey the law” is generally good business advice. But gun manufacturers, guided by senior leaders trained at some of the best business schools in the country, are quite capable of more.

[ … ]

Step one is for manufacturers to adopt the role of steward for the entire gun marketing system, all the way to the buyer. This would include not only efficient distribution within the legal channel but directing meaningful effort to minimize the flow of guns from legal to illegal channels …

Step two is to monitor and stop selling to “problem” dealers …

Step three is to put some portion of the research and development spend — about $25 million in 2015 for the Big 3 — in technology-enabled gun safety to direct a new generation of guns to consumers.

There you have it.  Three easy steps to business success!  First, do the job of law enforcement.  Second, be intrusive into the lives of their customers.  Third, invest money into things (smart guns) that no one will buy, no one wants, and no one will use.

It’s a sad day when a Harvard Business School professor ignores business realities and teaches vapid tripe in order to push a political agenda.  The business realities of his suggestions would certainly be harmful to firearms manufacturers, but of course, that’s his intention, yes?

And how much does it cost to attend Harvard Business School?  Couldn’t you just take that same amount of money, invest it in firearms manufacturers and be much better off?  How is that for business advice professor?

Ammoland.com:

Our firm regularly prepares employee handbooks that include policies against violence that are protective of employers while allowing employees to carry their firearms to work. If you are an employer and would like to implement such a policy, here are a few

1. Screen your employees before you hire them, and always, always, conduct a thorough background check. A safe workplace begins with the hiring process.

2. Set requirements for training—if your state laws allow you to do so. At a minimum, require that your employees have a state concealed carry permit, which means they have passed a background check conducted by law enforcement.

3. Establish requirements for storage and control of the firearm. Leaving a firearm unattended inside the workplace where it is accessible to others is grounds for termination without discussion.

4. Ensure that employees have read your firearms policy and have had an opportunity to ask questions.

5. If not prohibited by your state’s law, implement a reporting system for employees who carry. Employees should at least annually update you with proof of their training. They should also at least annually sign a declaration stating they are not a prohibited person under state or federal law.

6. Have a self-reporting policy that requires employees to report immediately to their supervisor if they become a person who is prohibited from possessing a firearm.

7. Make sure you have a procedure for other employees to report threats of violence.

My company already has most of those things since I work under a fitness for duty program that meets the requirements of the code of federal regulations.  I’m not sure what she intends for number 2, but I put more rounds downrange than most LEOs.  I shouldn’t have to demonstrate over and over again at a cost to me that I know how to safely and effectively operate my firearms.

On the other hand, if the company wants to rent out a range for a day and have employee fun day at the range with a qualification supervisor watching, I’m all in for that.  I’d even buy my own ammunition.  I just don’t think I should have to go pay a state-approved CHP instructor every year for this.

What’s not to like about this?  It’s a win-win, and as few of those that come along in life, you have to grab them when you can.

Army Times:

What if you never had to clean and lubricate your rifle again?

Army engineers at Picatinny Arsenal believe they’ve cracked the code to make it happen with a new surface applicant, which they said could go into production in 2018.

When rifles and machine guns are fired, byproducts accumulate, leading to what’s known as “fouling.” Buildup of powder residue and moisture can eventually cause the weapon to jam, or lose accuracy, reliability and cyclic rate (rounds per minute). That’s why soldiers have to clean their rifles, generally with a wet lubricant known as CLP (cleaner, lubricant and preservative).

The new material, known as durable solid lubricant, would be applied during manufacturing and coats the weapon’s moving parts. DSL simply prevents material from sticking to the weapon’s surface. Since the fouling buildup only loosely adheres to a DSL surface, any force from the other moving parts or vibrations from firing is enough to knock it loose and keep the rifle clean.

“We see this as a major breakthrough in a technology that hasn’t been able to demonstrate performance like this in the past,” said Adam Foltz, an experimental engineer at Picatinny working on the project.

Christopher Mulligan, a research engineer who has a doctorate in materials science and has worked for Army Research, Development and Engineering Command for 13 years, said the material is a hard coating that drastically reduces friction and corrosion, improving the rifle’s reliability. Explosive byproducts don’t stick to the material, he said. The Army has a patent pending on DSL; he and Foltz didn’t want to go into detail on the technology until the patent is approved.

Testing so far has been limited but encouraging, the two said. A 10,000-round test of an M4A1, for example, produced zero stoppages despite testers never cleaning the gun, Foltz said. “The only time we weren’t shooting was to let the barrel cool.” There have been other tests that, while lab-based, incorporated sand, mud and extreme temperatures.

Not only does DSL make a rifle easier to maintain, but it greatly reduces wear thanks to removal of CPL. The oil mixes with phosphate and hot propellant gas produced by firing, which increases the volume of a buildup that can erode a weapon’s moving parts, Mulligan said. The engineers provided an image depicting test results which they say show parts of a bolt and bolt carrier 50 percent to 90 percent worn after firing 15,000 rounds while treated with CLP. The DSL-coated parts showed wear ranging from 10 percent to less than 5 percent on the same parts over the same use.

In order to keep Dr. Christopher Mulligan employed, it takes a lot of money.  Ph.D. engineers don’t come cheap, and their research time doesn’t either.  Paying an engineer for five or six years to do one thing in hopes that the entire project doesn’t fail for lack of viability is a pricey endeavor, tailor made for endurance rather than sprint.

This is just the kind of thing they would use tax money for, and that brings to mind the following question.  Why is the Army seeking a patent on this?  A patent is an odd thing to attach to this project, and is normally reserved for use when money is at stake.

For something like a secret project involving DARPA, or perhaps some project involving the nuclear assets of the nation I can see the need for secrecy, FOUO and other types of classifications.  But what’s the intent here?  Does the Army intend to sell it, or perhaps prevent some company inside of the states from reverse engineering this and marketing it?

When the national laboratories conduct work and research, normally the results of their work are in the public domain unless it involves secrecy (such as with the nuclear program).  The idea is that if tax money has been used to create the intellectual property, then taxpayers own it.

And it’s not such a bad idea.  So why is the Army seeking a patent on this technology?

Inquisitr:

Senator Coleman Young II introduced Senate Bill 851, which is a bill to amend the insurance code of 1956, to the Michigan State Senate this month. The bill would add a new chapter to Michigan’s 1956 PA 128 that would require Michigan firearm owners to purchase firearm liability insurance if they want to legally own guns.

Coleman Young II is the son of former Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, who was booted from the UAW, according to Powerline, for being too radical. Sen. Coleman Young II is a Michigan State Senator for the 1st District in Michigan. Opposition to SB 851 in Michigan note that one of the state senator’s biggest campaign donors is the insurance industry, which donated over $11,000 to Young over the years. Young also recently made the news when he introduces a bill that would eliminate exemptions that allow lawmakers and the state’s governor from being subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

SB 851 would also establish a Firearms Claims Association as an unincorporated, nonprofit association. According to the terms of the proposed amendment, an insurer that would provide the firearm liability insurance required by Michigan firearms owners would be required to be a member of the Firearm Claims Association. The Firearms Claims Association would establish procedures by which insurers would report claims that would involve the Association paying out insurance.

Additionally, in Michigan, a Firearms Authority would provide financial support to the Department of State Police and to local law enforcement agencies for the creation of illegal firearm enforcement teams that would work to reduce the number of illegal firearms. It would also provide financial support to local prosecutors for programs that are designed to reduce the number of illegal firearms in communities. It would also provide financial support for educational programs about firearm safety and firearm insurance.

This is all the rage now among the statists, i.e., raising revenue on the backs of gun owners.  We’ve just recently seen with the bill in Oklahoma to remove permitting requirements for open carry that the singular objection in the legislature appears to be that the permitting revenue stream will be lost, thus necessitating a hard look at the future employment of those doing the permitting.

In this case, the statists are going for all the marbles.  Not only does the state itself stand to gain from this, but crony corporatism is alive and well in Michigan.  Can you imagine the astronomical cost associated with insuring gun owners, how much the corporations stand to gain from this, and how little gun owners will benefit?  What would an insurer do – assure a gun owner of never being charged with a crime?  Of course not.  This is a money laundering scheme run by the best criminals in the business, the government.

And it’s all on the backs of gun owners.  The statists kill two birds with one stone.  They raise largesse, and they enact gun control without calling it gun control.  What do you want to bet the NRA won’t even score this or take a stand on the issue?

Say what you will about the NRA and failure to score the things they should about politicians (and I’ve said plenty), but American Rifleman fields a great article from time to time.  Hence, they have come through with Guns Of The Easter Rising.

On Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, scattered groups of men of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army, as well as women of the nationalist auxiliary organization, the Cumann na mBan, assembled at their mustering points throughout Dublin. Most of them were unaware that, instead of meeting for a routine maneuver, they were embarking on an armed uprising against the British Crown. Due to a series of mishaps and intrigues, only a fraction of the Volunteers’ nominal strength actually reported for duty. While some were in the green uniforms of the Irish Volunteers or the Citizen Army, the majority of them were in civilian clothes, and they carried an amazing assortment of firearms.

The Easter Rising of 1916, or as it is sometimes known, the Easter Rebellion, marked a significant shift in Irish-British relations, and is considered by many to be the first stroke of the popular uprising that severed Ireland from the British Crown in 1922. Time and space here do not allow a detailed discussion of the causes of the Rising, but a short introduction is necessary to understand the reasons for the variety of small arms carried in this battle.

A few years before the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the British government pledged to return a semblance of Home Rule to Ireland, after a hiatus of more than 100 years. The northern province of Ulster, populated mainly by Presbyterians who had emigrated from Scotland some 300 years earlier, feared domination by the other three overwhelmingly Catholic provinces, and pledged to oppose Home Rule by force, equating it with “Rome Rule.” In a daring smuggling operation, the newly formed Ulster Volunteer Force armed itself with modern Austrian Mannlicher rifles, obsolescent German Model 1888 “Commission” rifles, and obsolete Italian Vetterli rifles.

The Irish Volunteers (pledged to fight for Home Rule), who had been smuggling in small lots of arms, followed suit when they landed two small boatloads of antiquated Model 1871 German Mauser rifles in Ireland. Arms smuggling on both sides continued right up to the point when Great Britain declared war on Germany in August 1914, resulting in a wide array of shoulder arms and handguns coming into Ireland. Under a mutual agreement, the Home Rule controversy was temporarily shelved for the duration of the war, and both the Ulster Volunteers and the Irish Volunteers (immediately renamed the “Irish National Volunteers”) volunteered en masse for service with the British Army. However, a small number of the original Irish Volunteers (retaining their original name) refused to fight for the government they considered as oppressors.

The article goes on to discuss both the history and the guns used in the Easter Rising.  It concludes thusly.

The wide variety of arms in the Easter Rising was a result of a disarmed populace trying to end foreign domination by using whatever firearms it could find. This same motley array of armament would plague the men and women who would fight another war, just three years later, in their successful attempt to make “Ireland, once a province, be a nation once again.”

There are many observations we could draw, but my job is to send readers their direction and let you comment here, because what you say will undoubtedly be better than what I could say.  But my oh my, what I wouldn’t give to shoot some of those old guns, the Mauser, Lee-Enfield, etc.

They weren’t properly armed.  And they’re not properly armed now either.

While homicide rates at least started to decline over the past decade in England and Wales, there is little sign of any such trend in Ireland at this time.

Ireland has a long history of highly restrictive gun control laws, many of them justified on the grounds of combating the IRA and similar organizations. Gun control was stepped up in the early 70s when new legislation was introduced, accompanied by a large-scale gun confiscation operation that occurred when police asked for guns to be turned in “temporarily” for inspection. The guns were never returned by police.

Since then, the homicide rate in Ireland has increased significantly, and in recent years, Ireland has adopted numerous additional gun control laws in the face of growing homicide rates.

Source: Graph 9.4 (Retrieved by Google Cache from Central Statistics Office of Ireland.) and this report.

So there you have it.  Seldom will you find a more telling pictorial depiction of the stolid commitment to presuppositions (i.e., we can control violence by confiscating the firearms of peaceable and law-abiding citizens) than here.  They keep pressing confiscation and increased gun regulations, it keeps having the opposite effect of what they claim they want, and they keep doing it.

Or at least, a reduction in violence is what they claim is the reason for gun regulations.  Perhaps that’s just a pretext, yes?