Articles by Herschel Smith

Washington Post:

Soon after news broke on Wednesday that a gunman had opened fire on a social service center in San Bernardino, Calif., killing 14 people and wounding 17 others, the liberal Daily Kos website published an opinion piece under the headline “Your opinion on gun control doesn’t matter.” It crystallized much of the anger and frustration that gun-control advocates were expressing on social media in the wake of another American mass shooting.

The piece takes interesting turns and undulations.  But in the end it has the feel and rhythm of another “everyone is so misunderstood” article, including (gasp) gun owners.  Gun owners, they claim, actually do support some gun control measures.

Here they cherry pick data that we have refuted, but suffice it to say [without rehearsing all of the information we’ve covered in the past] that the majority of gun owners don’t want to have to go to an FFL to transfer a weapon, regardless of what the authors claim.

And there may be a nexus between gun ownership and the understanding that we increasingly live in a society defined by Fabian socialism and government control.  But the authors need to spend a little more time around gun owners before writing prose that makes it sound like they can speak authoritatively on gun ownership.  A little more love, a little less government aggression, and a few more promises, and we won’t suddenly come together, agree to new gun control laws, and melt our guns into farming implements.

Man is fallen, he is predisposed to evil, governments only seek more control always, false religions seek to impose their will on other men, and saying “peace, peace,” when there is no peace, is not a recipe for brotherhood.

As for the disagreeable ones over at Kos, I would respond that if you bristle at the idea of gun rights, fine.  But what you are really saying is that while evil men hunt down the innocent in places of work, worship and play to kill them, what you really want to see is those innocent men perish rather than have access to a means of self defense.

You would rather see women hiding and cowering under desks than be able to live another day for their children, and you would rather see blood in the streets for the sake of government control than free men who won’t allow their families to be harmed.

The hatred of police that your hippie fathers and mothers cherished, has turned into a love of government control.  The love of guns owned and operated by the Black Panthers, The Weather Underground and others, turned into a hatred of anything that could threaten the power of the state – once your ilk was in charge.  What you once loved you now hate because it gives someone else that same freedom and power.  Admit it.  Go ahead and admit it.  Is that such an unreasonable thing to ask?

Kos is blaming republicans, but better still, others are blaming God.

As yet another mass shooting claimed the lives of 14 people Wednesday in San Bernardino, Calif., a familiar refrain echoed from the lips of politicians: Pray.

But for many fed up with the now seemingly routine shootings and the resulting inaction from each over how to stop another tragedy, pleas to God weren’t enough anymore.

That was the sentiment New York’s Daily News proclaimed on its cover Thursday. With the headline blaring, “God Isn’t Fixing This,” the tabloid highlighted the tweets of GOP politicians, each asking for prayer following the shooting at an office party at the Inland Regional Center.

“Prayers aren’t working,” the paper wrote. “White House hopefuls on the Democratic side of the aisle called for stricter gun laws in the wake of the shooting. … But after yet another mass shooting in America, GOP presidential contenders were conspicuously silent on the issue of gun control. Instead, the Republicans were preaching about prayer.”

This is just rich.  So it’s God’s fault because prayers aren’t working.  The comments at NPR are even better.  They range from frustration, to confusion, to atheistic ramblings about prayer to make-believe characters.

Look, having studied apologetics as I have, I would debate anyone on the existence of God, but it would be on my terms and by my rules.  Atheists don’t scare me one bit.  But trying to persuade someone in unbelief to jettison their lack of belief isn’t the point here.

The notion that we can break God’s holy laws, turn the nation into a melting pot of religious paganism, and turn to the state as the worshipers of Baal did to a statue, and then expect the one true and living God to perform for us like some sort of circus act when the nation utters what it perceives to be an incantation is so ludicrous that it’s amazing anyone believes it.

Bless your heart!  So you think God doesn’t hear your prayers?  Get used to it.  He only knows His sheep, and His sheep know His voice and follow Him.

Put the popcorn in the microwave, take it out and watch the show.  The liberals are eating each others’ livers out.  This should be fun.

David Codrea:

Like the saying goes, haters gonna hate. They’re going to rage, they’re going to lie, they’re going to accuse and they’re going to demand. The less temperate and tactical among them, that is, the self-control-challenged who go nuts if they can’t control everyone else, will say some furious, ridiculous and desperate things that will both show all their cards and their impotence.

That’s because they know, deep in their cowardly and covetous hearts, that the final card is held by gun owners who, in the final analysis, will not be scapegoated and will not comply with subversive edicts that do nothing but give all advantages to the evil. That’s because they know that ultimately, they’re stopped in their tracks by one simple, defiant response:

No. Your move.

And it will probably all come down to that.  And be it known that this “gun show loophole” Obama is talking about doesn’t exist.  He and we all know what he’s really after: person-to-person transfers.  Vendors at gun shows already go through Form 4473.  Obama wants universal background checks as a predecessor to gun registration.

And he won’t get it, because we won’t comply.

Weekly Standard:

Peter Doocy: “President Obama yesterday jumped to say that this mass shooting means it’s time for commonsense gun laws. Does the President really think that common sense gun laws would deter terrorists now that he has admitted that these two may have been terrorists?”

White House press secretary Josh Earnest: “Yes. The president believes that passing common sense gun laws that makes it harder for people with bad intentions to get guns, makes the country safer.”

Peter Doocy: “But so the president thinks that when there are potentially two terrorists sitting around planning a mass murder they may call it off because President Obama has put in place common sense gun laws?”

Earnest: “Well Peter, we’re still learning of the precise motives of the individuals who carried out this heinous act of violence yesterday. One thing we do know, is the four fire arms they were wielding we’re legally purchased under the laws in place now.

So what’s a terrorist to do if he cannot legally purchase guns?  There goes the whole plan, out the window.  Defenestrate the project and go somewhere else … that’s the only solution.

No, a terrorist wouldn’t think of illegally obtaining weapons.  And no, this dialogue isn’t fabricated.  It really happened.  Such is the life of the progressives, where every day is upside down day, where good means bad, up means down, and light means dark.

Los Angeles Times:

At first, Dorothy Vong assumed it was a drill — just like all the others at her work.

At the Inland Regional Center, where she’s a nurse, the staff works with clients and parents of clients who are sometimes angry. They have active-shooter drills every month or so.

“Drill started,” she texted her husband, Mark, around 11 a.m.

She walked to a window nearby and filmed a video as law enforcement sprinted toward the building.

“Oh, that is scary,” a voice says calmly in the background.

“They’re all geared up!” someone else says. “Rifles and everything!”

In the background, someone laughs — they still didn’t know.

Then the reality set in.

She texted her husband again: “Well it’s real.”

And then a few minutes later, another message: “We’re in a locked office.”

Mark Vong said he told his wife to stay calm and not to panic.

“They train for this,” he said, standing outside a police barricade Wednesday afternoon. “They know it’s going to happen.”

Stay calm and trust the police.  They will save you.  Except we all know now how many people perished in the attack.

I don’t know if I have any liberal readers or if any will stumble upon this post, but let me make an observation you know is true, but simply haven’t faced with all of your gun control.

Active shooter drills are stupid, as is active shooter training in general.  Oh, I’ve been through it because my own employer forbids weapons on site.  Hide under desks, lock doors, throw potted plants at the shooter (no, I’m not kidding), and all manner of ridiculous, inane, juvenile content and recommendations drowns the participant in this training like so much objectionable vomit.

It’ll never work.  None of it ever works.  It’s all concocted by the anti-gunners who want people to feel better about coming to work every day, like they can actually do anything about active shooters in the absence of a weapon to stop the shooter.

Your polices and your stupid training are culpable.  You hear me?  You’re culpable for deaths that have occurred and many more that will occur.  Get used to seeing the bloody night time news reports.  They’re going to get worse.

WSBTV.com:

The Clayton County police officer who put an unloaded gun to a recruit’s head and pulled the trigger will be demoted.

Channel 2 Action News learned Office Michael Lowe turned in his sergeant’s badge.

“I think that was a very bad decision,” the department’s interim police chief told Channel 2’s Mark Winne in an exclusive interview.

Chief Mike Register said Lowe will get his department-issued gun back, but soon he will holster it not as a sergeant, but at the rank of officer.

“I can’t tolerate that. I can’t have an instructor that creates an unsafe environment,” Chief Mike Register said. “I personally apologized to each recruit that they were exposed to that.”

The incident in a police academy classroom also led to a loss of Lowe’s instructor status at the department and major rule changes.

In a transcript the sergeant involved says, “At the time I felt that I was doing it for the right reasons, however my execution was very poor.” He added, “I knew that three days later, when I was sitting home. I was going, ‘That was dumb. I should not have done that.’'”

Gosh, I hate it when that happens to me.  I remember the last time I put a gun to someone’s head and pulled the trigger.  It was with one of my own kids.  The family didn’t like it much.  But at least the chief is better off with what happened than “the fam” was with me.  He said he cannot tolerate that, but apparently he can, just not with the guy being paid as much as he was.

Fox News:

A Marine Corps officer who sent classified material from an unclassified email account in an attempt to warn fellow troops about a corrupt Afghan police chief had his honorable discharge upheld on Monday by a senior Navy Department official, The Washington Post reported.

Maj. Jason Brezler’s attorney, Michael Bowe, said the next step is a lawsuit to be filed against the Marine Corps.

“We will now proceed to a real court and prove that Commandant [Gen. James F.] Amos and his generals illegally retaliated against Major Brezler because they were more concerned with politics and their careers than the lives of their Marines and the service of a good Marine who did the right thing,” Bowe told The Post in an emailed statement. “I look forward to their cross-examination.”

Amos was the Marine Corps’ top officer when the investigation into Brezler’s actions began. Brezler attached classified documents to an email alerting fellow marines in August 2012 that Taliban-linked police chief Sarwar Jan was corrupt and sexually abusing kids.

If you aren’t familiar with the case of Major Jason Brezler, you ought to be.  Thus does the DoD, and USMC side with murderers, child abusers and pedophiles and against honorable men.

This is to be expected by the likes of the man who made the decision, Juan Garcia, who said:

Leadership at all levels of the organization, by both military and civilians, is essential to eliminating discrimination and encouraging the acceptance of differences … We acknowledge the Department of the Navy LGBT community as a vital force in our work and integral part of our success

“Vital.”  An “integral part of our success.”  Well damn.  I sure am glad this administration is spending time and effort on the right things.

David Codrea:

… his defense centered on the protest that in New York politics, everybody does it.

That’s probably true, and no doubt goes a long way toward explaining why criminals are so concerned about making sure everyone but they and their enforcers are disarmed. No one has been more rabid about that than Silver, abusing his influential political position to betray his oath of office and subvert the rights of his constituents, and not just the ones dumb enough to trust him with power over their lives.

I’m certainly not surprised.  Collectivists aren’t keen on recognizing or defending the rights of others, but certainly quick to leverage their position to increase their own standing.

Speaking of which, Ray Kelly, I don’t support more guns.  Of course you don’t.

Via Uncle, who says we don’t need to carry guns to church?

The TSA on how to fly with firearms.  Except that I’ve been told by American Airlines to put the ammunition outside the locked container where my gun is, contrary to what the TSA is saying here.  You know, because someone doesn’t have their act together, perhaps the TSA, or perhaps the airlines, or perhaps both.

Matt Bracken has written a very important essay, but before I get to that, I wanted to preface his essay with a few remarks.

Matt deals with a number of very important things, spending much of his effort in the where, what and wherefore of the vice set up for peaceable men and women across the globe.  We are under increasing pressure from many sides, and Matt explores that in his essay with his focus on (1) Islam, (2) International Socialism, and (3) Nationalism.  His essay is a treatise in history, and one which is largely unparalleled in my opinion.

But Matt’s audience isn’t necessarily theologically committed, nor is it his purpose to address the ideological underpinnings of these three nefarious movements and their common moral malfunction.  In other words, the “why” was not explored in this essay, and that I think was purposeful.  Furthermore, Matt’s exploration into the “why” of things might differ from my own.

My own views are clear to regular readers.  I am a committed Christian, specifically a Calvinist.  I do not apologize one iota for my system of doctrine.  Islam is a devilish political religion concocted by a syphilitic pedophile for the purpose of keeping a band of warlords and murderers together.  Statism in all of its forms is evil, pernicious, and a foul odor in the nostrils of God.  There is only one God, and one true religion, and our way to reconciliation with Him is through His son, Jesus Christ, who is fully God and fully man.  He (Jesus) demands fealty, He sits in the heavens and mocks the rulers of this age, and He will judge them in both time and eternity.

Jews didn’t cause our problem.  Bankers – for all of their evil with fractional reserve banking – are a sign of the times and have the same cause as all of the other evils I am discussing.  Statists are the same as Islamists, who are the same as the banking cabal, who is the same as the current administration and most previous ones, and (here is the hard part for readers) who is the same as the voting electorate who put them in place.  They are all servants of the evil one.

Bankers wouldn’t have power if politicians didn’t grant it to them and men avoided debt, and the politicians wouldn’t be in power if the voters hadn’t voted themselves more largesse.  The root cause of all of this is a rejection of the Son of man, the God-man Christ Jesus, and his demands for our lives, and His holy law for the governance of men.  But contrary to the demands of the false God Allah, His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.  He is a God of love and light, not of darkness and death as is the false god of Allah, or the false god of mammon.

Finally, the men who forged this nation (Samuel Rutherford, John Adams, etc.) split with the English over much less than what we face.  We are a pitiful men, worthy of everything we are suffering now.  God grant us the strength to stand when it matters, and the wisdom to know how and when.

As for Matt’s essay, he is published at WRSA and Gates of Vienna.  Here is a teaser in case you haven’t already read his essay.

Right now, approximately a million new Muslim migrants are engaged in a struggle to find a warm place to sleep in a continent with nothing approaching the capacity to adequately house them. At least 75% of the migrant invaders are Muslim men of fighting age. Native-born ethnic Germans, Swedes and others are being thrown onto the street to provide emergency housing for Muslim “refugees.” Tens of thousands of migrants are currently living in tents, and in temporary shelters like school gymnasiums and underused warehouses.

There will be no means of finding or creating permanent quarters for them before the Central European blizzards come. When the snow is deep in Germany and across Europe, these men are going to enter local houses, demanding to be taken in as boarders—or else. Where it is useful, small migrant children will be held up in front as human shields for their emotional blackmail value; elsewise, they will be discarded. One way or the other, Muslim migrants will be attempting to move inside of German homes and apartments seeking heat and food, and the young Muslim men will be seeking undefended infidel or kafir women to slake their lust (which is their right, under Islamic Sharia law).

In disarmed Europe, any group of a dozen or more cold, hungry and angry Muslim men armed with clubs and knives will be able to enter any German house or business that they like. Worse, there are now reports of vast quantities of firearms being smuggled into Europe by the muhajirs, with cowed European authorities afraid to search the migrants or their baggage, lest they provoke riots. And weapons are not only smuggled in “refugee” baggage: eight hundred assault-style shotguns were just seized in a single truck in northern Italy, bound from Turkey to Belgium. How many truckloads of weapons and explosives have not been stopped?

In Germany, even before the winter snows, the migrants are flash mobbing and looting shops and stores. Seeking to forestall a social eruption, police do not respond until the mobs have safely departed. For now, the German government is paying these store owners for their lost merchandise, but this cannot continue forever. Businesses are closing and Germans are retreating in fear, as the muhajirs learn that they can invade private property and rob Germans without repercussions, convincing them even further of the docile passivity of their hosts, and the inevitability of their ultimate hijra invasion success.

As attacks mount, the German police will nearly always fall out on the side of the traitor-elite politicians who pay their salaries, and they will not come to the rescue of besieged ethnic Germans. At least, not under official orders, or in uniform. This calculated disregard by the international socialist elites for the safety and welfare of ordinary German citizens will in time lead to vigilantism and death squad actions by “off-duty” German military and police personnel. They will be acting against their “hands off the Muslims” orders, which are ultimately emanating from Brussels. And in time, enough firearms will find their way from the military, police and black markets into the hands of ordinary European nationalists for them to mount an armed resistance.

Things are going to get dicey.  Never give up your guns.  You will need them.

The never-ending caliber debate can be tiresome, but then again occasionally there are good and useful additions to the body of knowledge.  Because of my son being deployed, I have always known and understood (not first hand, but second hand) the utility and superior performance of the 5.56mm in the field (and when I say “field,” I mean Fallujah, not your local shooting range where your know-nothing, tacticool weekend warrior waxes stupid in front of everyone).

I have also heard from his teammates about being shot by the 7.62×39.  Specifically, Corpsman Prince gave me details of his experience.

He was very kind and friendly, well trained, in excellent physical condition, and had absolute commitment to his fellow Marines.  He showed me his wound from Iraq within several days of returning.  A round from an AK-47 had entered through the front part of his lower thigh, ricocheted up his thigh, and exited out of the very upper part of the back of his thigh.  Entry and exit wounds (now scars) were at least a foot apart.

Corpsman Prince stayed in Iraq and did his own rehabilitation during the deployment.  The hardest thing about the experience, he told me, was getting enough pairs of clothing after each successive pair became blood stained.  The more interesting thing about what happened that day with Corpsman Prince was what happened to his fellow Marines.  He wasn’t the only one who was wounded in that engagement.  Several other Marines were also wounded, and Prince had to treat them before he could treat himself.  He did so while bleeding out.

The exit wound was small, virtually as small as the entry wound (if the scar is any indication of the wound size when it happened).  The scars I saw were identical in size.

But the specific addition I wanted to mention has more authority than anything I can muster.  It comes via Defense Review, from Tacmed Australia.  I will quote at length, and then offer up a disagreement and an agreement.

Admittedly I’d rather not be shot with either, but if I had to choose, I’d take a round from the AK47 over the M4 any day of the week. To understand why, it’s important to have a very basic look at the physics behind terminal ballistics, in this case being the science of what happens when a penetrating missile enters a human body. The first place to start is the Kinetic Energy Equation:

KE = ½ M (V1-V2)²

Breaking this equation down into its components, we have Kinetic Energy (KE) influenced by the Mass (M) of the penetrating missile, as well as the Velocity (V) of the missile. This make sense, and it is logical that a heavier, faster missile is going to do more damage than a lighter, slower missile. What is important to understand is the relative influence that Mass and Velocity have on Kinetic Energy, as this is key to understanding why I’d rather be shot by an AK than an M4. You’ll notice that the Mass component of the KE equation is halved, whereas the Velocity component is squared. For this reason, it is the Velocity of the projectile that has far more bearing on the energy that it dissipates into the target than the mass. The V1-V2 component of the equation takes into consideration that the projectile might actually pass straight through the target, rather than coming to rest in the target. In this instance, the change in the Velocity of the projectile as it passes through the target (V1 being its velocity as it enters, and V2 being velocity on exit) is the factor that is considered when calculating how much energy the missile delivered into the target. Naturally if the projectile comes to rest in the target (ie: no exit wound) then V2 equals zero and the projectile’s velocity as it entered (V1) is used to calculate the KE.

That’s enough physics for now, but you get the concept that the optimum projectile to shoot someone with is one that has a decent mass, is very, very fast, and is guaranteed to come to rest in your target, as to dissipate as much energy as possible into them, and hence do maximal damage.

The next concept to grasp is that of permanent cavitation versus temporary cavitation. Permanent cavitation is the hole that gets left in a target from a projectile punching through it. You can think of it simply like a sharp stick being pushed through a target and leaving a hole the diameter of the stick. The permanent cavity left by a bullet is proportionate to the surface area of the bullet as it passes through the tissue. For instance, if a AK47 round of 7.62mm diameter at its widest point passes cleanly through a target, it will leave a round 7.62mm hole (permanent cavity). If this hole goes through a vital structure in the body then the wound can be fatal, however if the bullet passes through soft tissues only then the permanent cavity can be relatively benign. This is a slight oversimplification of the concept, as bullets will rarely remain dead straight as they pass through human bodies, as they have a tendency to destabalise, and for the heavier back end of the bullet to want to overtake the front. This concept, known as yaw, increases the frontal surface area of the bullet as it passes through tissue, and hence creates a larger permanent cavity.

Here is my disagreement so far.  I’m not certain that the author understands the distinction between cavitation and creating a cavity (or perhaps it is that he isn’t clearly delineating the difference).  Cavitation has to do with the formation of voids due to change of state of a liquid to a gas, whereas some of what he is discussing has to do with the yawing and fragmentation of the 5.56mm round in tissue.  There are both of these effects at work.

We’ve discussed the rocking back and forth in flight that occurs with the 5.56mm round, based on the very well researched paper Small Caliber Lethality: 5.56 mm Performance In Close Quarters Battle.  This rocking back and forth during flight, which occurs even with boat tail 5.56mm, causes rapid yawing when it enters tissue.  Fragmentation ensues, ensuring multiple fragments take different trajectories through tissue.  This may be what the author is referring to when he mentions permanent cavity.  Or then again, he may be referring to the high velocity of the 5.56mm round, and as I said above, both effects are at work.

But by mentioning Newtonian physics, he is on to something.  It’s not only the energy of the projectile that’s important, but the velocity term is a function of the exit velocity, which means that it’s also important how much energy gets deposited in the object.  If the bullet doesn’t stop, fragment, or otherwise leave its energy in the object, it will not do as much damage as one which does.  It’s the same way with, for example, radiation.  A high energy gamma (e.g., from N-16) can pass through a piece of tissue without ever interacting with orbital electrons and ionizing atoms.  Thus, high energy photons can pass through a body without causing dose, depending upon depth, energy, etc.

In order to demonstrate the point, he provides two videos, one of 5.56mm in ballistic gelatin, and one of 7.62 in ballistic gelatin.  But the most impressive thing the author does is convey his own experience treating wounds from 7.62 mm and 5.56 mm rounds, and then show you what an X-ray looks like of an upper thigh and femur that has been hit with a 5.56 mm round from a couple of hundred meters.

As I said, this was from a couple of hundred meters.  Ponder on that a bit.  While this article doesn’t specifically address the .308/7.62×51, some of the principles are applicable.