Articles by Herschel Smith

I often criticize the politicians from other states.  North Carolina isn’t immune from worms that eat rotten flesh either.  Richard Burr is one such worm.

Earlier today it was widely reported that North Carolina Senator Richard Burr was not happy with Ted Cruz. That doesn’t make him a special snowflake. Most of the practitioners of crony capitalism and Failure Theater in the Senate are not happy with Ted Cruz. But Burr was not content to merely take a number and get in line. Burr had to make a point of how pissed he was at the idea of Ted Cruz winning the nomination. (Burr’s Heritage Action score is 45%, which is the same as arch-conservatives John Cornyn and Mitch McConnell.)

Cruz has become such a pariah that one of his colleagues, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, told supporters at a campaign fundraiser for his own re-election that he would vote for liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders for president before Cruz, according to one person who attended the event. Burr did not appear to be joking, said the person, who demanded anonymity to discuss the private gathering.

Robert Pittenger is another worm.

“We must continue to protect privacy,” said Republican Rep. Robert Pittenger of North Carolina, who wants to draft bi-partisan legislation to improve the flow of information. “But there should also be enough room for law enforcement to be alerted to specific concerns about those with mental illness and have the opportunity to investigate and determine if further action is necessary.”

He said an unintended consequence of federal privacy laws is that it’s “nearly impossible to share potentially life-saving patient information with law enforcement.”

Robert buys into the false religion of mental health professionals being able to be predictors of behavior, like a bad version of Minority Report.  But he should instead believe what commenter Menckenlite says.

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.

They’re worms, all of them.  Well, not all of them.  I have respect for Ted Cruz, Jeff Sessions, and Representative Walter B. Jones of North Carolina.  For the rest, I’m a gracious and kind man.  I say we give them their choice.  Hemp rope and lampposts, or tar and feathers.

Tampa Bay Times:

Hoping to override legislation that would relax existing state law by allowing concealed-weapons permit holders to visibly carry their weapons in public, the Florida Sheriffs Association announced its own measure Wednesday.

The proposal would protect concealed-carry permit holders from arrest if they accidentally display a firearm in public.

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri — the FSA’s legislative chairman — says the measure clarifies Florida laws and diminishes the call to legalize open carry.

“The way we crafted this proposal is airtight and provides a fix,” Gualtieri said. “It states that no law-abiding, concealed-carry holder will ever face any sanctions for inadvertently exposing their gun.”

Gualtieri said the proposal is presented as an alternative to open-carry legislation bills and would help solve the “gotcha law” problem if someone’s gun was accidentally visible.

The proposal would require a person to intentionally and deliberately — “in a clear and obvious manner,” Gualtieri said — violate concealed-carry laws before they can be arrested.

The proposal also enforces a requirement that lets people explain circumstances surrounding their guns being accidentally exposed. If for some reason a concealed-carry holder is arrested, and it’s later proved their gun was exposed accidentally, the proposal calls for immediate expunction of the incident from their record.

“We don’t think it’s necessary to go from where we are today to full open carry,” Gualtieri said.

“The purpose of this is to solidly protect concealed-carry holders — I fully support everyone’s right to (lawfully) concealed carry. … We’re offering a solution so that people with concealed-carry permits aren’t going to get in trouble for something they shouldn’t get in trouble for.”

First, law enforcement has absolutely no business advocating one law or criticizing another.  It isn’t any of their business, any more than it’s the business of, say, the local utility to weigh in on whether something like open carry should be legal.

Second, accidental exposure of a weapon isn’t the only problem associated with open carry.  In a hot state like Florida, there are other reasons for open carry, like sweating your weapon when you are carrying IWB, rubbing your flesh raw when walking with IWB carry, etc.

Third, as we’ve discussed many times before, as a [sometimes] open carrier who lives in a traditional open carry state, the problems law enforcement allege to exist with open carry simply do not obtain.  They’re misleading you.  It isn’t the big deal they say it is, and blood doesn’t run in the streets.

Fourth (and this is perhaps the saddest thing we learn from the report), accidental exposure of a weapon is indeed an issue, and the Florida Sheriff’s association knows it to be so.  That’s the only reason they have proposed this as substitute legislation.  They want to placate weapons carriers, and they know that wasting court time for a shirt lifting in the wind is silly.  Thus, they’ve been down this road before.  They know all about arresting people for silly accidents that have no affect on anyone.

And they waited this long to do anything about it, and only proposed this law in an attempt to deflate open carry rights.  How disgraceful.  How absolutely contemptible.

News and views from Maine:

Two accomplished and popular leaders of sportsmen have stepped up to support extension of background checks to all gun sales in Maine. Bucky Owen and Bill Vail, former Commissioners of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, will lead a group of sportsmen who support the initiative.

At a Tuesday morning press conference, representatives of the group, Maine Moms Demand Action, stood in front of boxes filled with petitions bearing the signatures of 85,436 citizens from all 503 Maine cities and towns, an impressive effort. One third of the signatures came from Maine’s Second Congressional District.

Jackie Sartoris, a MMDA volunteer, reported their polling found that 80 percent of Maine voters support the initiative. At the press conference, Bucky Owen noted that he’s been a lifelong hunter, angler, and gun owner. “We have a proud heritage of responsible gun ownership,” said Owen, a resident of Orono. “I believe strongly in the Second Amendment,” he said, “and in keeping guns out of the hands of the wrong people. This initiative includes safeguards for us and will not lead to gun registration,” he concluded.

The Act to Require Criminal Background Checks for Gun Sales requires background checks for all gun sales, with some notable exceptions. For those of us who are sportsmen, the most important exceptions are these. No background checks are required “while hunting or trapping if such activity is legal in all places where the transferee possesses the firearm and the transferee holds any license or permit required for such activity.”

This is important to me, because I loaned a firearm to two hunters in November, including the Portland Press Herald’s outdoor writer Deirdre Fleming, who were deer hunting for the first time. It would have been ridiculous to have to go through a background check in those circumstances. There is another exception for shooting ranges.

Probably the most important exception for sportsmen and gun owners is the one that exempts us from the background check if we are selling a gun to a family member defined as a husband, wife, domestic partner, parent by blood, parent by adoption, child by blood, child by adoption, sibling by blood, sibling by adoption, grandparent, grandchild, niece, nephew, aunt, uncle, first cousin, father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, stepfather, stepmother, stepson, stepdaughter, stepbrother, stepsister, half brother, half sister, or intimate partner.” A pretty comprehensive list!

I see.  So you can sell a gun to the local whore if you’ve been to bed with her, but you cannot sell a gun to that neighbor or church member whom you’ve known for thirty or forty years, who helped bury your parents, who came to all of your children’s activities, who helped you with your duties around the home, reciprocating the love you showed them?  You know, that neighbor or church member who is so trusted that he has keys to your home and visits and watches out for it while you’re away?  Yes, that’s right.  That one.

You can color me unimpressed, you two old collectivist Fudds.  I don’t care where you worked, I don’t care if you’ve hunted all of your life, and I don’t care what you think you can make the polls prove in Maine.  And as for that matter, you cannot honestly assert that universal background checks won’t lead to a gun registry.  You know you can’t, and you know that the temptation of totalitarians is always to accumulate more power and control.  So that makes you a liar.

David Codrea:

“While I am concerned that America’s current gun laws are too relaxed, this does not mean that I oppose gun ownership,” Hess continues digging himself into a hole. “I have always enjoyed shooting as a hobby.”

Good for you, Sarge. But I don’t think you want to go the “sporting purposes“ route, at least without figuring out where that evil concept originated.

[ … ]

Yeah, this guy’s a willing tool, meaning there’s really no need to fisk the rest of his propaganda screed, except to say that “law-abiding” is a relative term used to disqualify rights in “progressive” strongholds, and that trying to ban what he calls “military grade assault rifles” is an act of utter betrayal to the oath he swore. Evidently Hess is not ignorant of what that oath meant—he’s just contemptuous of it.

As I said before, I have my doubts he is a former Marine.  He’s welcome to prove it to me.  But if he is, he certainly isn’t a grunt.  No grunt would use the term “military-grade assault rifle” so inaccurately.  If he was a grunt, he knows that there are three requirements to meet the definition of assault rifle, and AR-15s miss on one of them.  As for the term “military grade,” he knows that the Marines took Remington 700 .308s into Iraq as sniper rifles.  The term means nothing.  Even the phrase Milspec doesn’t necessarily mean the best or most reliable.

But if he is a former Marine, David has responded as best as anyone can.  He is an oath breaker.  His word means nothing.  As for the appended note at the end of David’s column, sure there are former Marines.  My son is one.  What there isn’t is an ex-Marine.  Unless of course you’re an oath breaker.

12NewsNow.com:

LIBERTY COUNTY –Investigators say a man “dry firing” a handgun resulted in the accidental shooting death of a Liberty County man.

The shooting happened on County Road 4893 in south Liberty County according to a sheriff’ office report. Deputies determined that Van Everett Wuhas, 21, of Liberty County, was “dry firing” a 9mm pistol  when it fired striking Justin Taylor Gonzales, 20, in the right upper chest area around 5:20 p.m. Tuesday.

Lead Investigator Sgt. Billy Knox said it was determined that Justin Gonzales and Wuhas were very close friends to the point they call themselves “cousins”. According to Wuhas, his friend Gonzales was visiting at his home, alone when the shooting happened.  He said Gonzales had just stepped into the same room as Wuhas when the pistol discharged and the bullet struck Gonzales. Wuhas immediately called “911” and reported the shooting.

Gonzales was conscious but obviously in critical condition when medical staff arrived. Life Flight was called and Gonzales was air lifted but died while in flight to the Houston hospital.

So apparently he wasn’t really dry firing the gun, huh?  There go those gun safety rules, defenestrated straight out the window.

Cara McDonough:

I ended my story by saying that I felt the only way to move forward in this debate was to talk to people who did get the gun thing. That I wanted to understand the other side because, truthfully, I’d never tried to before.

A handful of gun owners — individuals with political views very different from my own — apparently read all the way through. They got the sentiment and took me up on my request and wrote to me. Because I’d prompted the discussion, I realized I needed to follow through, so I wrote back. And we’ve been talking.

I’m not claiming that I’ve begun some sort of revolution. The back-and-forth is slow going, but we’re communicating. In some instances, the conversation has remained focused on gun policy, while other email threads have morphed into discussing personal life beyond the issue at hand.

Writing to gun owners humanized the issue for me. After feeling so hopeless, the emails made me feel better. They were the only thing that did. Talking to people who owned guns and were willing to discuss that with me in a reasonable and respectful way had some immediate, and surprising, results.

I began to get “the gun thing,” as I’d dismissively termed it. A few who wrote to me pointed out that when you live in a rural community and calling law enforcement does not necessarily result in a prompt response, owning a gun for personal safety seems prudent. I’m a product of East Coast city life and — naively, shortsightedly — had never considered this.

But here’s the thing, Cara.  You never really advocated or even intended to advocate disarming everyone.  You never really believed in gun control for everyone, because you didn’t advocate disarming cops.  That’s a problem.  That means that you believe in guns, just in what you consider “the right hands.”  You want the government to have a monopoly of force, and for others to be left defenseless against criminals and, yes, against their own government as well.

The example you cited about people in the countryside is shameful, and not only should you never have brought that up, your detractors should have kept their mouths shut because they don’t believe in gun rights either.  Gun rights are just that – rights.  They are no respecter of persons or location.  Urbanites need self defense just as much as rural folk.

As for the cops you assume would be there is you call them, you do understand that they are under no legal obligation to protect you, don’t you?  Not according to Warren v. D.C., Castle Rock v. Gonzales, and other decisions.  Legally, the police can wait until your neighbors smell your rotting corpse before sending in the medical examiner, while they go eat doughnuts.  Besides, given typical response times, the crimes are over by the time police respond.

On a larger scale, guns protect men and women from awful people like ISIS, who get off on beheading defenseless women and children, or the Taliban, who want to perpetrate female circumcision and destroy school books so that children can’t learn to read.  Guns enabled our own revolution against a tyrant in England, and guns ended Hitler’s reign of terror in Europe.

You see, you know that guns are a tool with magnificent utility, an equalizer of the evil and the innocent, of the  criminal and the righteous.  But you still want the innocent and the righteous to be defenseless, and that says something deeply troubling about your values.  I suggest a deep, quiet period of soul-searching before writing about this again.

And before you do write again, you should get up with someone like me, who can sit for several hours and show you how our side safely handles firearms, and how they can be safely deployed at the gun range.  It simply isn’t enough to write emails back and forth.  You aren’t really fully engaged in this issue yet.  You’re just nibbling around the edges.

Matt Bracken on The Alienork Way.  If you don’t read anything else this week, read this.

Yet another reason to hate Mark Zuckerberg.  Do we really need any more?

Update on the Remington 700 Walker Fire Control System.  This sure would have been easier if I had been CEO and had made the decisions on what to do when they first found out the system could discharge under all kinds of unintended conditions.

Ernie Chambers on white folk.

David Codrea isn’t very impressed with the recent judge’s decision on fast and furious documents still held by the crocked administration.  Or for that matter, Congressman Jason Chaffetz.  Neither am I.

David also links the great work recently done by Dave Hardy at the Clinton library.  Part I is here, Part II is here.

2016 Shot Show coverage.

The New Yorker:

“ISIS was telling everyone, ‘We’re all brothers,’ ” Abu Malik said. “They let people smoke and drink. At the checkpoints, they distributed presents to the kids. They ate with people, drank tea with people. They were very nice—they didn’t bother anyone. Then, a week or so after they arrived, they started confiscating weapons. They told us it didn’t matter if we’d been with the Awakening or the Army or the police—if we gave up our weapons, we’d be forgiven. Ten days later, they started taking people. Everything changed. They took my cousin. My brothers dug holes in the fields and hid. I was at my house when they came for me. It was afternoon. I saw two Hyundai Santa Fes pull up outside, and I ran out the back and jumped over the wall. That was the last time I saw my family.”

Totalitarians of all stripes have one thing in common.  The ordinary folk cannot have weapons.  Weapons are a threat to the hierarchy of rule, a symbol of power and independence, an enabler of equality.

Whether European and American totalitarians or ISIS, guns have to go.  Fascists are all the same everywhere, always, throughout history.

Sweden goes bonkers.

The Swedish state is funding a “sniper” training course for recently-arrived Third World “refugees” as part of their “integration program”—despite the ever-growing refugee-terrorist attacks across Europe.

The almost unbelievable plunge into insanity—started two years ago already—was reported—in a positive pro-refugee light—by the Allehanda newspaper in Sweden, under the title “Fired up for Sniping,” (Laddade för prickskytte, literally “Charged up for Sniping”) and shows a large number of Third Worlders being taught how to target shoot with “sniper” target rifles on a formal shooting ground in Sollefteå, central Sweden.

David Codrea:

“We have received a preliminary copy of one of the most dangerous pieces of anti-gun legislation we have ever seen,” Oregon Firearms Federation alerted its members. “This bill eviscerates due process and turns Oregon into a Soviet style collection of secret snitches!

Remember what TCJ commenter menckenlite said?  “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.”

It’s just that in this particular law, the list of government snitches who can bypass due process protections has grown to mammoth proportions.

Nice job, jerk off!

A former Marine for gun control.  Oh, it’s not worth the time for me to formally respond.  I think he’s lying.  I don’t really think he is a former anything, most of all Marine.

Gun violence.  Because people decide that’s what they want to do, not because of guns.

One commenter thinks there will be civil war in Canada if the newly elected effete boy-ruler tries to confiscate weapons.  “The province of Quebec has been the worst – where the mafia practically owned Montreal during the 30s to the 60s and the cops often looked the other way . With the muslim immigrant threat in the 21st century , the mafia days will come across ,in another 10 years,sadly,as “the good old days”. The western provinces (basically politically conservative ) are so fed up with the garbage from the East (Ontario,Quebec and the Maritimes) and their support of Justin Trudeau that there is a growing movement for a call of separation from Canada. Vancouver (on the West or “Left” coast) is viewed as being quite brain dead to any reality. Canada, far from it’s image of being composed of nice little polite “Canuckies” living in little log cabins eating back bacon ,is on the verge of much internal strife and conflict in the coming years. If Trudeau tries to grab guns in Alberta and Saskatchewan there will be “civil war”. Tough times ahead for the whole world and Canada is not exempt from it.Not by a long shot.”