Articles by Herschel Smith

Examiner:

A rural Maryland sheriff on Tuesday blamed President Obama’s open-door immigration policy for a surge in gangland crime that included a retaliation murder and assault on an officer doing paperwork in his cruiser.

“Case by case amnesty, backdoor amnesty, DACA programs, and the Dream Act were pushed through by executive order,” said Frederick County Sheriff Charles Jenkins.

“Policy shifts by President Obama weakened and ruined Secure Communities, and did not allow action by ICE when Sheriffs and police departments ignored detainers, allowing criminal to be released back on the streets. In effect, criminal aliens that should have been deported have been allowed to remain and commit more serious crimes becoming violent offenders,” he told the House Judiciary Committee probing the criminal impact of illegals in the United States.

He was joined by family members of victims of illegal immigrant crime, a surging issue around the nation as Obama’s policies allow more unauthorized aliens to leave jail and remain in the country.

A rural Maryland sheriff on Tuesday blamed President Obama’s open-door immigration policy for a surge in gangland crime that included a retaliation murder and assault on an officer doing paperwork in his cruiser.

Frederick is north of Washington, D.C., but has become a haven for criminal “transnational” gangs, especially in high schools. Members of MS-13 and 18th Street gangs have become influential in the schools and county.

“Transnational alien gangs are structured criminal enterprises involved in drug and human trafficking, crimes of violence over turf, retaliation, money laundering, and other serious crime. As these gangs are recruiting locally and increasing in number, so does the associated crime within communities,” said Jenkins.

He gave some details on the crimes by immigrant gangs in his county:

— There are over 75 active known validated transnational criminal gang members in Frederick County, many more suspected of gang affiliation. We also believe that MS-13 and 18th Street alien gangs are recruiting, locally, in our schools, in the region, and out of country.

[ … ]

— 7 of 11 (64%) of the criminal alien gang members encountered in 2015 were unaccompanied juveniles when they entered the U.S and eventually located to Frederick County, Maryland. Now they are adults committing serious felonies.

— Crimes committed include; 5 occurrences Attempted 1st and 2nd Degree Murder, Armed Robbery, 1st Degree Assault, Home Invasion, Armed Carjacking, Kidnapping, Use of a Firearm in the Commission of a Violent Felony, Carrying Concealed Deadly Weapons.

If you think this is going away – if you think they will be deported by anyone – if you think you and your family won’t be affected by this – if you think you are immune to this problem – if you think they aren’t coming to your neighborhood – you are badly mistaken.

Prepare to defend yourself and your family.  Have weapons inside and outside the home, prepare for anything to happen at any time.  Always carry a gun.  All is not lost.  Don’t despair, and remember Herschel’s Dictum.

Politico:

New York’s junior senator, a passionate Clinton backer and feminist, broke down during an emotional sit-down here for POLITICO’s “Off Message” podcast when I asked her about her own conversion from an upstate House member with a 100 percent NRA rating (who once stored a shotgun under her bed) to an upper-chamber anti-gun crusader.

“I was somebody who was not as focused on this, as I should have been, as a House member. Meeting these families devastated me, broke my heart,” said Gillibrand, when I suggested she switched positions as a matter of political expediency in a deep-blue state where most Democrats favor stringent gun restrictions.

Gillibrand, a 49-year-old mother of two young sons not prone to public expressions of emotion, began to cry in mid-sentence. “It’s so crippling — I mean, I sat down with a mother last week in Brooklyn, and she lost her 4-year-old baby … she took her kid to a park,” she said. “Every mom takes their kid to a park. And she took her kid to a park and the kid was killed, a baby, a 4-year-old. … [Sanders] doesn’t have the sensitivity he needs to the horror that is happening in these families. I just don’t think he’s fully getting how horrible it is for these families.”

[ … ]

Her critics (some of them envious members of the state’s uniformly liberal congressional delegation) suggested her wedding with the gun control movement was of the shotgun variety.

But Gillibrand says her whipsaw transformation was genuine. Her mostly white, semi-rural district outside the state capital closely resembles Sanders’ Vermont, and Gillibrand says she’d simply never seen the impact of guns in big cities. She took her first step away from the NRA by introducing a gun-trafficking bill at the behest of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s police commissioner, Ray Kelly.

Whatever her initial motivations, Gillibrand possesses the zeal of the converted and sees guns as the issue that will allow Clinton to generate the kind of enthusiasm for her candidacy — especially among women — that has thus far been missing from her candidacy. “This debate is relegated to the men. It’s about hunting? It has nothing to do with hunting,” she said. “Nothing in this debate has to do with hunting, and nothing in this debate has to do with the Second Amendment rights. Nothing. … I think — I see the world in the lens of women’s issues. I’m making everything a woman’s issue. I want guns to be a woman’s issue.”

Clinton, who has been campaigning with African-American mothers whose kids were killed in gun crimes, isn’t going quite far enough, Gillibrand says. She wants a “women’s crusade” on the issue, adding that Clinton “might not have made that connection in her own mind. I’ve made that connection.”

The gun control debate has nothing to do with the second amendment.  Nothing.  Because she says so.  It has to do with being a woman, because only if you’re a woman can you appropriately feel the pain of others and understand what needs to be done to bring motherly control into people’s lives.  She says so.  She’s making it that way.  So don’t confuse the issue for her or anyone else.  Don’t bring up that this motherly control doesn’t have any affect on criminals.  It’s simple, and if you can’t understand that it’s simple, then you’re a man and you just don’t care about women’s issues.

That this is self referentially incoherent doesn’t matter.  If you’re a man, shut up, she argues, just because – and anyway she is a woman and you’re not.  It’s that simple.  This is a woman’s issue.  How does the NRA feel about that A rating now?

Via Townhall, this sad tale:

A San Francisco sheriff’s deputy accidentally discharged a non-duty weapon, a “baby Glock,” inside the Hall of Justice on Wednesday morning, apparently while trying to demonstrate the proper use of the weapon to a colleague.

The round narrowly missed the fellow deputy, but no one was injured.

San Francisco Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Eileen Hirst said the discharge occurred before court started and was under investigation. She was not able to provide details, pending the outcome of the probe.

“An accidental discharge of a firearm is a very serious matter,” she said. “We are all very grateful that no one was injured.”

Sources say that Rhonda Gaines, a 20-plus year veteran, brought the gun to work and that Sotero Santos accidentally fired it. Hirst would not confirm either identities but said that the person who fired the weapon is receiving a one-on-one refresher on firearm training, as is the deputy who brought the weapon to the courthouse.

[…]

Sources told NBC Bay Area that Gaines brought the handgun, a 22-caliber “baby” Glock, to work and was apparently not familiar with how it operated. She handed it to Santos and asked him about its use, sources said. The second deputy pointed the weapon at the first deputy and – apparently unaware the weapon was loaded – pulled the trigger. The round missed her, piercing an equipment storage cabinet, before lodging in the office wall.

I don’t do Glocks, but even so, I know that unless it’s had the conversion kit applied to it, there is no .22 Glock.  The department may have been referring to a Glock 22, which is a .40.  Either way, it’s a good thing this happened among people so well trained in the science of firearms use and tactical applications (unlike us ignorant civilians).  Otherwise, someone might have been hurt and the other sent to prison.

It looks like Mike is coming down towards the end.  This is very sad news for me.  I have a deep regret, namely, not ever having personally met Mike.  But we will meet in the new heavens and the new earth.  Keep him in your prayers.

It looks like there is a change of command at SSI, and while it’s nice to see his son taking on his legacy, I’ll tell you what.  You’ve got big shoes to fill, son.  I’ll be watching.

David Codrea:

“[T]he documents reveal how senior Justice Department officials—including Attorney General Eric Holder—intensely followed and managed an effort to carefully limit and obstruct the information produced to Congress,” the memo notes, adding further cause for curiosity. “Justice Department officials in Washington impeded the congressional investigation in several ways…”

Well, he’s a criminal, but he worked for a criminal too.  So it all started at the top and worked its way down, one gigantic criminal enterprise.

Ben Carson: “You know, during the Jim Crow era, those were the rules, too,” Ben Carson told MSNBC today, while discussing the caucus rules of the Colorado Republican Party. “They were written. Everybody knew about them. Didn’t make them right.”

I like how he has begun to speak in pseudo-sentences just like Trump.  But hey, we did indeed learn something!  Who knew you could be so stupid and still be a neurosurgeon?

Nate with Haley Strategic gives us his version of unique carry options.

Hartford Courant:

Superior Court judge has denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit accusing gun makers and sellers of liability in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, saying the broad immunity granted to the firearms industry does not strip the court of jurisdiction to hear the claim.

While the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act generally insulates gun companies from liability, Judge Barbara Bellis said the law could be used to attack the legal sufficiency of the plaintiffs’ claims, but not to have the case thrown out at this early stage.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs – nine victims’ families and an administrator who was shot and survived – declared the ruling a major win, as victories against firearms companies are extremely rare. But the ruling does not preclude the defendants from reasserting their claims of immunity under federal law in a future motion.

The lawsuit accuses the Remington Arms Co. and other defendants of negligently selling to civilians a weapon the plaintiffs claim is suitable only for the military and law enforcement. At a hearing in February, Bridgeport lawyer Josh Koskoff argued against dismissing the case, saying the lawsuit’s claim of “negligent entrustment” is an exception to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

But Bellis ruled on a narrower issue, agreeing with the plaintiffs that she has jurisdiction to continue with the case, but not ruling on whether the federal law blocks the plaintiffs from pursuing their claim.

“At this juncture,” Bellis wrote, “the court need not and will not consider the merits of the plaintiffs’ negligent entrustment theory.”

Well, there may be a little more to what the judge concluded than that.  According to the AP, she concluded that the law “does not prevent lawyers for the families of Sandy Hook victims from arguing that the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle is a military weapon and should not have been sold to civilians.”  Selling an AR-15 to civilians is their equivalent of “negligent entrustment.”  The judge found that the lawyers may indeed argue that, and that she shouldn’t rule at the present on the appropriateness of said argument.  But since this is all covered by a law, let’s see what the law says.

(5) Businesses in the United States that are engaged in interstate and foreign commerce through the lawful design, manufacture, marketing, distribution, importation, or sale to the public of firearms or ammunition products that have been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce are not, and should not, be liable for the harm caused by those who criminally or unlawfully misuse firearm products or ammunition products that function as designed and intended.

(6) The possibility of imposing liability on an entire industry for harm that is solely caused by others is an abuse of the legal system, erodes public confidence in our Nation’s laws, threatens the diminution of a basic constitutional right and civil liberty, invites the disassembly and destabilization of other industries and economic sectors lawfully competing in the free enterprise system of the United States, and constitutes an unreasonable burden on interstate and foreign commerce of the United States.

(7) The liability actions commenced or contemplated by the Federal Government, States, municipalities, and private interest groups and others are based on theories without foundation in hundreds of years of the common law and jurisprudence of the United States and do not represent a bona fide expansion of the common law. The possible sustaining of these actions by a maverick judicial officer or petit jury would expand civil liability in a manner never contemplated by the framers of the Constitution, by Congress, or by the legislatures of the several States. Such an expansion of liability would constitute a deprivation of the rights, privileges, and immunities guaranteed to a citizen of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

(8) The liability actions commenced or contemplated by the Federal Government, States, municipalities, private interest groups and others attempt to use the judicial branch to circumvent the Legislative branch of government to regulate interstate and foreign commerce through judgments and judicial decrees thereby threatening the Separation of Powers doctrine and weakening and undermining important principles of federalism, State sovereignty and comity between the sister States.

It’s difficult to imagine a clearer statement than that.  The Congress intended for all judicial actions against firearms manufacturers to fail, excepting what they called “negligent entrustment.”  Further into the law, one reads just what that means, and it is obviously intended only to apply to known cases of sales to criminals who intended to perpetrate crimes with those weapons, instances where the seller knew or should have known the intent (presumably because he heard it directly from the buyer).

It doesn’t include all sales of certain categories of firearms to certain categories of the population, such as AR-15s sold to civilians.  Additionally, the notion that because one wants to purchase an AR-15 means that he wants to perpetrate some sort of crime is prima facie absurd.  We’ve discussed the fact that there is virtually no distinction between civilian and military firearms.  AR-15s are currently ubiquitous in America, and rarely are they used to perpetrate crimes.  Pistols on the battlefield and in the homes of America look the same because they are the same, unless one wants to point out that most of the time civilians own better weapons.

The U.S. Marine Corps took Benelli shotguns into Now Zad for house clearing, and the same Marine Corps took Remington 700s and Winchester bolt action guns into Iraq as designated marksman and sniper rifles.  Excluding fully automatic crew served weapons (along with the fact that M4s are selective fire), the only firearms I can find still in considerable use among the civilian population that isn’t in use in the military is the revolver, which is a shame given the beautiful wheel guns being made at the Smith & Wesson performance center.

The case is absurd, and the judge should certainly have dismissed it with prejudice.  And take note of one of the very reasons stated by the Congress for protection of firearms manufacturers, i.e., maverick judicial officer[s].  Judge Barbara Bellis is a maverick judicial officer (which I take to include both prosecutors and judges).  She is allowing her political views to cloud her judgment.

Uncle thinks this argument is a losing argument.  I guess I have to disagree.  In a dysfunctional judicial system, anything can happen.  It should be a losing argument.  David French thinks we should watch this one carefully.  I agree.  Right along with impeaching the judge (or if you wish, tar and feathers is a good approach too).

This video comes via KTRK.  Watch it all.

No he didn’t point a gun at the cop.  It’s as simple as that.  No he didn’t.  The video clearly shows that he pulled in, he got out of the truck and knocked his gun out of the floorboard of the vehicle (I’ve never done that with a gun but I have with my iPhone and wallet), reached down to pick it up, turned back towards the truck with it, placed it in the truck, and closed the door.  Then he was surprised by an off-duty cop who unholstered his firearm and didn’t observed muzzle or trigger discipline.  He pointed a deadly weapon at the man.  There was no excuse for this.  None.

The comments here are interesting.

“Overreaction on the part of the cop. Period. No harm, no foul,” and “Yep, shake hands and walk away.

So the cop should be able to do what I can’t without it being a felony, otherwise called assault with a deadly weapon, because you know, he’s a cop and all that.  And cops are different.

David Codrea gives a thorough fisking to the folks at Politifact.  Sorry, but I almost can’t type or say the word “Politifact” without belly laughing.  I put them in the same category as Snopes.  Ignore all of it.

Alabama Senate on guns in cars.  Well, it’s a start.  Let’s see what the governor does with this.

Nice review of the Springfield Armory Range Officer.  It’s affinity for light ammunition and occasional FTF/FTE is troubling, but then again, the notion of a 9mm 1911 is troubling too.  If I ever got one, it would certainly be .45 ACP like God and John Moses Browning intended them to be.  I’ve been thinking about getting a RO compact for IWB carry.  Then again, Sig makes a nice desert tan Cerakote small/medium 1911 that’s on display at Gander Mountain right down the road.  Oh, life is filled with such hard choices.  What to do, what to do?

Why the U.S. Navy didn’t shoot down that Russian fighter that buzzed our ship.  I rather think it has to do with being pussies.

Only a bigot would be offended by the sight of another woman’s penis.

Beaten for being white.  This is partially why public schooling sucks.  Home school.  Your children will be better off, and so will you.

Remember just eight short months ago Senator John Cornyn tried to get his bipartisan guns and mental health bill passed?  Well, the worm is at it again.

The Hill:

The fight over gun control is threatening to scuttle a bipartisan mental health reform effort in the Senate as lawmakers rush to get the issue to the floor.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is in talks with leaders of the Senate health committee to combine his mental health bill with one that passed the committee last month.

But Democrats object to certain sections of Cornyn’s bill that they say would make it easier for mentally ill people to acquire guns, and the controversial provisions could shatter Democratic support for the bill.

Provisions in Cornyn’s bill would require a full judicial hearing to ban someone from buying guns due to mental illness and would allow people previously committed for mental illness to purchase a gun as soon as a judge’s commitment order expires.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), one of the sponsors of the health committee’s bill, said such provisions would prevent him from supporting the bill.

“We’re still talking to [Cornyn] about whether we can move forward without those provisions,” Murphy said. “Obviously I can’t support a bill on the floor that has those provisions in it.”

Cornyn disagrees with Democrats’ argument, calling the position “unrealistic.” But he said he is open to discussing changes.

“I’m certainly open to discussing it, but I mean this whole idea that we’re not going to have a fulsome discussion about mental health and [the] problems it creates with the criminal justice system, housing and the healthcare field seems kind of unrealistic to me,” Cornyn said.

Still, he added: “I’m more interested in getting a solution and advancing the ball than I am trying to make a point.”

Murphy is one of the Senate’s strongest proponents of gun control, representing the state where the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting took place in 2012.

Asked if Cornyn has been open to dropping the problematic provisions, Murphy indicated the talks are still in an early stage.

“We haven’t gotten there yet,” he said.

Also involved in the talks are Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and health committee leaders Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

Both sides are still hopeful that some agreement can be reached. Mental health reform is seen as one of the few issues on which a meaningful bipartisan bill could pass this year.

About one in five adults, or 44 million people, experience a mental illness per year, but the number of available psychiatric beds has declined 14 percent in recent years, and families are often prevented by privacy laws from accessing crucial information to help care for family members with mental illness.

But gun politics has long been an obstacle for mental health reform.

Republicans argue for mental health reform as a response to mass shootings, while Democrats contend that mental health reform, while important in its own right, is no substitute for new gun control laws.

“The two work in tandem, not one as a substitute for the other,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at a hearing in February in which he denounced the gun-related sections of Cornyn’s bill. “If we did gun legislation, we’d need mental health legislation with real dollars. If we did mental health legislation with real dollars, we’d need gun legislation.”

One fear is that if Cornyn’s gun-related provisions made it into the final bill, it could spark a back and forth with Democrats putting forward their own gun-control amendments, disintegrating the bipartisan calm that would be crucial to passing the bill in an election year.

Murphy is trying to convince other Democrats not to introduce gun-related amendments of their own.

Even so, a Senate Democratic aide said that moving forward with a clean mental health bill is more likely now than it seemed a few weeks ago.

Murray said in a statement she is proud of the bipartisan bill that passed committee last month.

“I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to move our bill to the floor and continue building on that bipartisan foundation as soon as possible,” she said.

Will the GOP ever learn?  We don’t want any of this.  I don’t care what kind of protections Cornyn has in the bill, or what he claims are protections.  The court system is corrupt, and appeal to mental health professionals is the twenty first century equivalent of appeal to the village witch doctor.  I don’t want bipartisan cooperation.  I don’t want kindness and collegiality.  I don’t want both sides to come to agreement.  And I really, really don’t care if the NRA supports this bill or not.  I want war.  Not one more gun law, not a single one, not even a hint of one.  The only gun legislation that should be passed should be to undo the past obscenities such as the Hughes amendment.

And remember what reader Menckenlite said about psychiatry?

Control freaks love psychiatry, a means of social control with no Due Process protections. It is a system of personal opinion masquerading as science. See, e.g., Boston University Psychology Professor Margaret Hagan’s book, Whores of the Court, to see how arbitrary psychiatric illnesses are. Peter Breggin, Fred Baughman and Thomas Szasz wrote extensively about abuses of psychiatry. Liberals blame guns for violence. Conservatives blame mental illness. Neither have any causal connection to violence. The issue is criminal conduct, crime. Suggesting that persons with legal disabilities are criminals shows the nonsensical argument of this politician and his fellow control freaks. Shame on them.

Mental health, if it can be consistently defined by the village witchdoctor, has no causal bearing on or connection to the perpetration of evil.  The perpetration of evil is done by those with mental maladies and those without alike.  It has to do with federal headship in Adam, the first man, and whether that fallen nature has been redeemed.  Leave the issues of morality and the soul to the doctors of the church, Johnny boy.  Your doctors aren’t good enough and don’t really understand.