Articles by Herschel Smith

One of the all time dumbest clown moments courtesy of @RepDianaDeGette.

P.S. You’ll ban nothing and enjoy it. https://t.co/1KbYY4zDk4 pic.twitter.com/ljkydYRXTM

— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) December 4, 2023

Watch it all.  It seems not to matter to these so-called “experts” that they are parroting incoherent and inconsistent talking points.

First “expert”: the deer herd has decreased because of hard winters.  Second “expert”: the deer herd has increased and hunters are having more success, and just because there are wolves around doesn’t mean wolves are killing them, it just means the wolves are following them and the hunters see the wolves.

And the “journalist” is too stupid to call them out on the inconsistency.

Next up, imagine what it would be like to live in a country without the patients aren’t running the asylum.  This judge has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about, and neither do the people to whom he listened, and has no right to interfere with state hunting regulations or the state wildlife biologists, and finally shouldn’t be concerned about bears with missing toes.

Good Lord.  Why do I have to point these things out?  Why doesn’t the entire country look at them and laugh and point and make fun of them?

F&S.

A federal judge has cut wolf trapping season in half in most of Montana. The decision comes after multiple animal advocacy groups filed a lawsuit claiming that federally-protected grizzly bears are being unintentionally snared in the western part of the Big Sky State.

According to Montana Public Radio that four cases of grizzlies with missing toes and legs were documented by state biologists in 2021. By shrinking the wolf trapping season from nearly four months to less than two months, the ruling aims to mitigate unintentional harm to grizzly bears, the outlet reports.

The intent is to have traps active only when bears are hibernating, wrote U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy in the final ruling. Molloy also pointed to shifting weather patterns as a reason for the court-ordered regulation change, writing that grizzlies are becoming more active outside of their dens during the shoulder seasons due to climate change.

Ooo … climate change.  Well there you go.  Gaia has spoken.  The FedGov listened and obeyed.

Prior: Scientists War American Promotion of Hunting is Ruiling the Environment.

I won’t go into the details now because it’s not obvious to me that it’s a serious threat.  I suspect it will be filibustered in the senate and as long as the GOP owns the House it has no chance at all of passing.  After the next election cycle all bets are off because as you know, rigged machines will do the counting and fake ballots will be shipped to voting polls.

But it’s an amazing thing to me that anyone would believe that Americans are going to give up five hundred million semiautomatic firearms.

Anyway, this is always how it happens.  It’s the signal sign of cowardice when a man asks someone else to do the dirty and dangerous work for him.  And be sure, it will be dirty and dangerous.

If all these guns are so dangerous, perhaps you should reconsider trying to wrestle them away from the people who own them.

Just a thought. https://t.co/opS8ZlQXnV

— Feni Ammunition (@FenixAmmunition) December 1, 2023

Source.

Scientists have warned that a strong focus on hunting—instead of rewilding key species—is “reinforcing” biodiversity loss.

Parts of the U.S. are currently facing a biodiversity crisis for a variety of reasons including habitat degradation, invasive species, and climate change.

A new study published in the journal BioScience reported that state agencies are taking “the provisioning of hunting opportunities as their top priority.”

“Among species of wildlife, relatively few are hunted. So the focus on hunted species can tend toward the homogenization of wildlife communities, reinforcing the loss of biodiversity,” John A. Vucetich, a distinguished professor of wildlife conservation at Michigan Technological University, who worked on the study, told Newsweek.

“For example, the species of wild mammal with the most biomass on the planet is white-tailed deer. Overabundant deer populations have a negative impact on biodiversity—manifest mainly through over-browsing. The overabundance of deer is importantly a result of efforts to maximize deer abundance for the sake of hunting. Also, for example, considerable effort is devoted to promoting pheasant populations in several states for the sake of hunting, even though pheasants are not even part of these states’ native biodiversity.”

[ … ]

This included the restoration of either extinct or imperiled species …

Let me translate this claptrap for you. Any time you hear the words “climate change” your antennae should go up.

Michael Mann is a shyster and a fake.  I do science and engineering every day of my life, and I don’t have to falsify data to build my models and perform my calculations.  Mann is a complete and total fraud, just like the so-called “science” he purports to support.  Their agenda is population control, and now their agenda is clearly being expanded from population control of mankind to population control of animals because of “biodiversity” and climate change.

Here’s the bottom line.  We all know that wildlife biologists are very good at knowing the population of white tail deer, knowing the proportion of does to bucks, and selling the number of tags necessary to keep the population right and the balance acceptable, or even increase the population just a bit, without creating such a large population that deer starve.

The climate change religionist freaks don’t like that.  Not only do they want you dead and for you to produce no more offspring, they also want white tail deer dead.  Their recipe for that?  Introduce predators such as wolves and shut down the hunters to help maintain a healthy population.

Now do you understand why they want to reintroduce wolves and why they have harassed hunters like they have?  Now do you understand why states have to have hunter harassment laws?  Now do you understand why they hate us?

Only two tonight, but these are well worth watching, especially the first one.

We gain the trust of animals with patience.  Ask for a little, give a lot.  This farrier is very, very good at his work,

These are two big boys fighting it out.  Never get near them when this is going on.

Source.

A gun factory in upstate New York with a history stretching back to the 19th century is scheduled to close in March, according to a letter from the company to union officials.

RemArms, the current version of Remington Arms, will close its facility in the Mohawk Valley village of Ilion around March 4, according to the letter sent Thursday. The letter said the company “did not arrive at this decision lightly,” according to the Observer-Dispatch of Utica.

Remington, the country’s oldest gun maker, began making flintlock rifles in the region in 1816. The factory site in the village dates to 1828, with many of the current buildings constructed early in the 20th century.

More recently, the company faced temporary closures in Ilion, bankruptcy and legal pressure over the Sandy Hook school massacre. The current company no longer makes the Bushmaster AR-15 rifles used to kill 20 first-graders and six educators in the Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut in 2012.

Investors doing business as the Roundhill Group purchased the Remington-branded gun-making business, including operations in Ilion and Lenoir City, Tennessee for $13 million. Owners announced plans in 2021 to move the company’s headquarters to Georgia.

Union officials called the news this week disappointing.

“The workers in Ilion enabled RemArms to rise from the ashes of the Remington Arms bankruptcy in 2020-21,” United Mine Workers of America International President Cecil E. Robert said in a prepared statement. “Without these workers and their dedication to producing the best firearms in the world, this company simply would not exist.”

I have a completely different take on things.  First, they had bad lawyers for the Sandy Hook lawsuit. Next, they ensconced in a gun control state and left only when it was too late. Third, they didn’t acknowledge and correct the errors and malfunctions of the Remington 700, even when they duplicated weapon discharge in their own labs without anything even being near the trigger. Fourth, they never got a handle on poor QA.

Fifth, and maybe the most significant error, they never left a union state to move to a right-to-work state. The union can blame it on others all they want to. When you extort employers rather than allow the market to set wages, this is the result.

Mark Hiskes writing for Reformed Journal.

… when I was 21, two ski-masked men with guns reinforced her teaching. Around midnight they snuck into our college home of 5 friends, rapped a loaded gun at the back of each of our heads, made us lay face down on the floor, tied our hands behind our back and our ankles together, and then for about 5 hours ransacked every inch of our house for anything of value. When the police arrived the next morning and dusted the place for fingerprints, they made one thing clear, as we shivered close by in this house that no longer felt like home: “If you’d tried to resist in any way, you’d be dead.”

To this day I have absolutely no doubt that owning a gun would have gotten us killed that night.

So, when I read about God and Guns, The Bible Against Gun Culture, edited by Christopher B. Hays and C.L. Crouch, I knew I had to read it–because as a Christian I also believe, as Hays puts it early in the book, that “any Christianity that supports guns as a solution to social problems is not Christianity at all” (10).  Written and edited by seven Biblical scholars with an excellent foreword by Stanley Hauerwas, each chapter is steeped in Biblical scholarship but written for a wide audience. The authors recognize that there are good people on both sides of this issue; however, as Hauerwas says, they still “must challenge what has been and continues to be taken for granted by good people” (x).

[ … ]

Yolanda Norton’s essay uses the Old Testament story of Rizpah to show how a mother’s public lament over a slain son can be “a prophetic witness” to both state and community, citing contemporary instances of such lament by mothers of slain black sons. Her essay is a powerful indictment of American gun culture, which, she argues, “has again and again, demonstrated its own willingness to sacrifice Black bodies to its own purposes” (53).

[ … ]

Of course, the Bible has nothing to say directly about guns per se, but T.M. Lemos makes a fascinating comparison between Israelite bows and American guns, showing how hypermasculinity is common to both. He argues that “This idea of personhood, grounded in domination, is something that other parts of the Bible take great pains to reject. This has important implications for the place of the gun in the life of contemporary Christians” (78). Given the multifaceted, violent media environment we inhabit in 2023 and the pride with which mostly men pose, biceps bulging, their AR15 front and center, it’s hard to argue with Lemos’s point.

David Lincicum’s concluding essay, “Can a Christian Own a Gun?” cuts to the Biblical chase: “The gun is a temptation to arrogate life-destroying power to the wielder and should be resisted by those who follow in allegiance to a crucified Messiah” (116).

Looking at the ‘about’ page and also the names of the commenters, it didn’t take me long to figure out that this is mostly a CRC publication (Christian Reformed Church).  The CRC has had many problems of late, mostly having to do with accepting modernity into their church and the full rejection of core doctrinal beliefs.  Calling them “reformed” is a throw-back to what they may have been 100 years ago, but it’s certainly not accurate today.  They are no more followers of Calvin than I am a globalist.

He sets up various straw men to make it easy to knock them down.  No one I know, Christian or otherwise, believes that guns are a solution to the ills of society.  Only turning to Christ will do that.  Furthermore, the ease with which he is persuaded to believe falsehoods is lamentable.  He doesn’t know any more about the existence of all “possible worlds” than the cops did when they told him they would all be dead if they had resisted.  I recall covering two elderly people who didn’t resist a home invasion, and they were both doused with gasoline and set on fire before the home invaders left for the night. They both perished.

In the comments I see that some people see it as a duty to acknowledge that hunting is legitimate.  I “accept it,” say some commenters.  Honestly, God gave mankind dominion over the animals, and it doesn’t matter to me whether they “accept it” or not.

Finally, let’s assume that this man is married or has other family.  He might defend their lives with his hands, and then end up getting killed by a firearm in a home invasion, but in either case (live or die), he wouldn’t be available to defend him wife against rape, torture or kidnapping. I’ve often wondered how wives feel about husbands like that.

As I’ve said before, I consider such men no better than child molesters.  They wouldn’t lift a finger to defend the weak, helpless or downtrodden among us.  They’re worthless as defenders.  I’ve addressed this so many times before it makes no sense to keep rehearsing it. But rehearse it briefly I will.

… the best case for the necessity of self defense comes straight from the Decalogue.  John Calvin, commenting on commandment and prohibition, observes:

We do not need to prove that when a good thing is commanded, the evil thing that conflicts with it is forbidden.  There is no one who doesn’t concede this.  That the opposite duties are enjoined when evil things are forbidden will also be willingly admitted in common judgment.  Indeed, it is commonplace that when virtues are commended, their opposing vices are condemned.  But we demand something more than what these phrases commonly signify.  For by the virtue of contrary to the vice, men usually mean abstinence from that vice.  We say that the virtue goes beyond this to contrary duties and deeds.  Therefore in this commandment, “You shall not kill,” men’s common sense will see only that we must abstain from wronging anyone or desiring to do so.  Besides this, it contains, I say, the requirement that we give our neighbor’s life all the help we can … the purpose of the commandment always discloses to us whatever it there enjoins or forbids us to do” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 1, Book 2, Chapter viii, Part 9).

Matthew Henry observes the same concerning Proverbs 24:11-12 (“If we see the lives or livelihoods of any in danger of being taken away unjustly, we ought to bestir ourselves all we can do to save them …”).  Far from a weak or forced case for self defense, this is one of the strongest in the Scriptures.  Thou shalt not kill means that thou shalt not allow yourself or those around you to be killed, thus says the Lord.  It isn’t an option – it is His commandment.

There’s Calvin for you, Mr. “Reformed.” Jesus Himself was so adamant about self defense that He ordered His disciples to break the law in order to carry weapons.

Jesus, who wasn’t the Bohemian hippie flower child pacifist he’s made out to be in contemporary culture, demanded that His followers find weapons themselves.  It’s important to remember that this command involved disobedience to the state.  Jesus’ command involved civil (and if necessary, violent) disobedience, thus forcing his followers to become criminals if they followed His command.

… for some evidence, see Digest 48.6.1: collecting weapons ‘beyond those customary for hunting or for a journey by land or sea’ is forbidden; 48.6.3.1 forbids a man ‘of full age’ appearing in public with a weapon (telum) (references and translation are from Mommsen 1985). See also Mommsen 1899: 564 n. 2; 657-58 n. 1; and Linderski 2007: 102-103 (though he cites only Mommsen). Other laws from the same context of the Digest sometimes cited in this regard are not as worthwhile for my purposes because they seem to be forbidding the possession of weapons with criminal intent. But for the outright forbidding of being armed while in public in Rome, see Cicero’s letter to his brother relating an incident in Rome in which a man, who is apparently falsely accused of plotting an assassination, is nonetheless arrested merely for having confessed to having been armed with a dagger while in the city: To Atticus, Letter 44 (II.24). See also Cicero, Philippics 5.6 (§17). Finally we may cite a letter that Synesius of Cyrene wrote to his brother, probably sometime around the year 400 ce. The brother had apparently questioned the legality of Synesius having his household produce weapons to defend themselves against marauding bands. Synesius points out that there are no Roman legions anywhere near for protection, but he seems reluctantly to admit that he is engaged in an illegal act (Letter 107; for English trans., see Fitzgerald 1926).

I’ll also point out that the very cause of the violence to which Ms. Norton speaks remains unaddressed in her essay, at least the part quoted.  Fatherless families, children out of wedlock, and government handouts. Go fix that problem Ms. Norton and you’ll see a different society.

Finally, the author says, “You are different with a gun in your hand,” or at least he seems to quote it with approval. Here we are again back at that superstitious belief that an object can change a man’s heart.  So tell me, Mr. Hiskes, how does that comport with 1 John 1:8, Eccl 7:20 and Eccl 9:3? Give us some theology here, Mr. “Reformed.” Make sure it agrees with the confession and larger and shorter catechisms.

I told you that the fourth circuit was as worthless as the gunk between my toes. I meant it.  Now you see why.

I hate the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. I consider them to be about as worthless as the gunk between the toes of my feet.  But occasionally they get it right like a blind squirrel finds a nut from time to time.

Also from Mark, a state judge in Maryland granted a win for civil rights by striking the sensitive places law.

Of course, the communists in Maryland will continue to enforce the law until told to stop.

Source.

I guess it doesn’t help when the police are too afraid to chase men who point rifles at other people.

But you see, rather than tackle the root cause of the crime (fatherless homes, welfare, payment for having children out of wedlock, etc.) and quit doing the very things causing the problem in the first place, they’d rather send SWAT teams to wrong addresses in the suburbs and pester you about gun ownership.

This is your tax dollars at work.