Articles by Herschel Smith

Survival Blog:

Much like a muscle that atrophies with disuse, any right that goes unexercised for many years devolves into a privilege, and eventually can even be redefined as a crime.

Open carry was once the norm.  Concerning our founders, “Their laws about children and guns were strict: every family was required to own a gun, to carry it in public places (especially when going to church) and to train children in firearms proficiency. On the first Thanksgiving Day, in 1621, the colonists and the Indians joined together for target practice; the colonist Edward Winslow wrote back to England that “amongst other recreations we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us.”

If we want a culture where open carry is once again the norm, the only way to effect that change is to open carry on a regular basis to make it the norm.

Recall that I told you “that Rock River Arms, Knights Armament, LaRue Tactical and Daniel Defense isn’t the Colt produced under milspec for the Army and Marine Corps (these are all superior to the Colt M-16 and M-4)?”  And recall that John Jay and I have both discussed Milspec and what it does (and doesn’t) mean?  And at Western Rifle Shooter’s Association I have had this discussion in even more detail.

While some features of some AR-15s (that don’t match Milspec) are positive, like the Wylde chamber which is highly acclaimed), some not so much. For example, RRA uses red Loctite on the Castle Nut, a feature many guys who do their own build don’t like much.

Listen, as an engineer (PE), I can tell you how I would approach it. I would take several rifles from different lots and measure the crap out of each and every tolerance (including head space, chamber, leade, etc.) before passing the design and saying it met my specifications. If I say that some specific part used SS304, I would send that part out of rifles with different lots to be melted down, and a spectrographic analysis done to determine if the Mn, Cr, Co and other elements were within tolerance. One slipup means the whole lot gets rejected.

And that’s the way the mechanics and engineers at the Picatinny Arsenal will approach it too. Milspec means something very specific, good in some instances, perhaps not keeping with current design improvements in others, but simply meeting the original order specs sent by the engineers.

Well, the Marine Corps is upgrading their rifles.

MARINE CORPS BASE QUANTICO, Va. – If the Marine Corps’ top marksmanship experts get their way, Marines are going to get a rifle retooled with an array of upgrades that will make them deadlier shooters. They recently directed the study of a number of significant changes to the service’s weapons, ammunition, shooting curriculum and ranges and have approved new competitions.

Most eagerly anticipated are recommendations to study overhauling M16A4 rifles and M4 carbines with a host of new features, including a new trigger and barrel, all of which will be a hot topic at the next Combat Marksmanship Symposium in October.

[ … ]

Current M16A4 rifles and M4 carbines could get a significant overhaul with mostly inexpensive components already available to consumers. The upgrades would drastically improve accuracy and function without incurring the expense of procuring an new rifle.

Those updates could include a free-floating barrel, rifle compensators, new reticles for the Rifle Combat Optic, more ambidextrous controls and a new trigger group. With significant advancements in rifle technology for the civilian shooting market over the past two decades, those are all features commonly seen on competition rifles and those carried by elite operators.

[ … ]

Standard-issue M16A4s and M4s use hand guards and rail systems that are directly connected to the barrel. As a result, any force exerted on an accessory like a rifle sling used to achieve greater stability also exerts force on the barrel. That can ever so slightly bend or pull the barrel off center relative to zeroed optics. The movement can translate into big variances over distance. The longer the shot, the further the external pressure exerted on the barrel will throw it.

A free floating barrel is achieved by using a hand guard and rail system that does not contact the barrel at any point. So any force exerted on a sling or other rifle-mounted accessory attached to the rail system does not translate to the barrel which contacts the rifle at only one point – the upper receiver. That ensures the barrel and optics which are also mounted to the upper receiver point in precisely the same direction.

“Free floating barrels have been seen in the competition world since the ’90s,” said Layou. “In combat you are not able to apply the same sling tension every time. You are shooting in different positions at different targets. So it’s not a training solution, it is a material solution needed to reduce barrel flex.”

This is a very odd way of explaining it.  Rifle optics can be set up with the assistance of a bore sight to zero at about 25 yards (which zeros the 5.56 mm at 100 yards too without BDC), even given the small undulations in the barrel.  That’s not really the issue.  The issue has to do with the fact that if it is not a free floated barrel there is a hinge point, or a fixed point beyond which the barrel cantilevers.

This point interferes with the natural frequency of the barrel and thus alters the harmonics of the system.  The vibrations send the projectile off directions other than the direction of the bore (at static conditions) without the vibrations from the explosion.  With an anchor point for the barrel, this smooth sinusoidal wave of vibrations becomes an interrupted mess of multiple competing and non-metered or oddly-patterned waves.  The point is this: barrel anchor points = bad, free floated barrel = good.

As I said before, purchasing something Milspec isn’t always the best option, and in most instances today with the progression of technology since mid-twentieth century, it leads to inferior design and manufacture.

WeaponsMan also has a good article on Making an M4 Run Like A Gazelle.

David goes on record at Guns Magazine trying to convince hunters and other sportsmen (not the first time he has tried) to be wary of so-called “environmental” and gun control groups and alliances with such ne’er-do-wells.  I just don’t see what the debate is all about, despite one commenter.  If hunters think for one second that any single so-called “environmental” group or other gun controller has their interests at heart, or cares one iota about game management practices and herd size and health, or the availability of nice bolt action guns for the hunters, they are too stupid to be running around in the fields or in deer stands with guns.  The gun controllers think that bolt action rifle of yours with high powered glass is an evil “sniper rifle.”  And they don’t want you to carry a handgun to dispatch wounded deer quickly and humanely, because they wouldn’t allow you to shoot the deer at all.  Also note that Kurt Hofmann brings up one issue that I’ve brought up in the past.

David Codrea:

A leading local civil rights attorney was arrested over the weekend at Cleveland Hopkins Airport for having a concealed handgun in his carry-on bag, The Plain Dealer reported Sunday. David Malik, the original attorney for the family of 12-year-old Tamir Rice who was slain by police in November, spent the night in jail after a .22 caliber handgun and a box of ammunition were discovered by airport security.

“What’s interesting about David is he is such an anti-gun person,” Steve Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, told the press. “He’s such an anti-violence person, and of all the things for him to get arrested for, that really surprises me.”

Not me.  Laws are for the little people, not those who would rule over us.

Kurt Hofmann:

Suppressors are safety equipment, in that they dramatically reduce the danger of permanent hearing loss. Anyone who opposes more permissive suppressor laws is effectively in favor of Americans suffering damage to their hearing.

Yes they are, and yes they are.  Suppressors are safety equipment, as much so as hard hats, safety glasses and SCBAs in confined spaces.  And yes, the gun controllers are against any equipment that might save hearing.  There is a dark morality to anti-gun beliefs, in that they don’t really care about people as they like you to believe.  They only care about guns being in the hands of the ruling elite, or in other words, the government.

No, Sebastian, I don’t want the federal government to allow “green tip” ammunition because it might be a good substitute for lead.  I want to use lead too, and whatever else I want.  It’s none of the government’s damn business and I don’t need a law substantiating my choices.

So the Canadian armed forces are looking into a Bullpup design?  Um, okay, whatever.  That puts the explosion right at your ear, which is why I don’t have Bullpup rifles or shotguns.

There is an awful lot of proposed gun legislation in West Virginia.  Most of it looks good, at least what I saw.

D.C. gun laws remain the same despite recent court ruling, because D.C. elites don’t care about the difference between right and wrong.

David Codrea:

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives posted a proposed rule change Friday removing a previous exemption and banning the manufacture, import and sale of “5.56 mm (.223) SS109 and M855 ‘green tip’ ammunition containing a steel core,” saying it now considers it to be “non-sporting” handgun ammunition capable of penetrating protective vests worn by law enforcement officers. This latest development, ceding to law enforcement lobby interests, is prompted by the development of handguns capable of firing the cited ammunition.

[ … ]

“This ‘sporting use’ strategy was used before,” author and attorney Richard Stevens documented. “The Nazi Weapons Law (18 March 1938) forbade importation of weapons under substantially the same test.” Additionally, the intent of founders in drafting the Second Amendment makes no such exception to allow “sporting purpose” infringements, particularly by the federal government.

Read all of David’s well-sourced article.  Steel tip (aka “green tip”) ammunition is designed a little heavier for slightly different flight and terminal ballistics and better penetration at long distances.  There are a host of reasons someone might want to have this ammunition, not all of which have to do with so-called sporting purposes according to the ATF.  Then again, my definition of sporting purposes and the ATF’s definition of sporting purposes differ by a wide margin.

The Sporting Purposes test should be found unconstitutional since the second amendment pertains to the amelioration of tyranny rather than hunting.  The ATF has crafted a regulatory framework that contradicts and violates the intent of the founding fathers.  Therefore, everyone who works for the ATF is undermining the constitution.

On a personal note, I would like to thank Eric Holder for reminding me that it’s important to keep track of the good bargains in my area of operations.

450 rounds of M855 “green tip,” 30 cents per round – ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

As for Holder and the lawyers at ATF who have crafted such statist regulations, and the Golgothan for whom they all work, you will see your maker soon enough and then answer for your sins.

Trail Blazers Blog:

Among the more interesting data points – and there were a slew of them – to come out of Thursday’s Senate committee hearing on two high-profile gun bills was a recent survey conducted by the Texas Police Chiefs Association.

Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo, in his testimony, pointed to data that the vast majority Texas police chiefs surveyed opposed open carry of a handgun. He added that if open carry were to pass, a greater majority supported licensed open carry over unlicensed.

That information, at least the first part, didn’t apparently move the Senate committee. The panel voted 7-2 – with only Democrats voting against – to send to the full Senate the bills on so-called campus carry and licensed open carry of handguns.

But given that law enforcement continues to be central to the debate, we wanted to learn more about the survey. And James McLaughlin, executive director of the police chiefs association, on Friday passed along more detail on the six-question survey.

The group recently sent the survey to 800-plus police chiefs – covering municipalities, college campuses, independent school districts and others. Though Acevedo said around 285 responded, a hard copy of the survey results shows a response from 192 chiefs.

Here are the major data points from the survey, which can be seen after the jump:

– Nearly 75 percent opposed open carry in Texas.
– 90 percent said that if open carry passes, a license should be required.
– 94 percent said an openly carried handgun should have to be holstered.
– 71 percent said that holsters should have retention ratings, which help secure the gun.

While that certainly shows a consensus, it’s harder to make broader generalizations. McLaughlin said the responses came in blind, so there’s no way to know if these chiefs are mainly from big cities or small ones, East Texas or West Texas, and so on.

[ … ]

But he said the association does want to point out some of the challenges that law enforcement has already faced with those who openly carry long guns. And he said there are certain issues that, if open carry passes, the association would like to see dealt with.

Those include ideas mentioned on Thursday by Houston Assistant Police Chief Don McKinney: boosting the standards for training and holsters.

They didn’t all respond to the questionnaire but its a fair assumption that these police chiefs are representative of the whole bunch.

First of all note the man who brought all of this up to the committee – Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo.  Acevedo is the chief cop who pressed for “no refusal” blood draws.  That’s right, he believes that police have a right to strap your arm down and shove a needle in you to test for BAC.  But then also recall that he believes gun enthusiasts need to be vetted by law enforcement.

“Folks, let me tell you what keeps me up at night, it’s these guys. It’s these homegrown extremists that are lone wolves, that are mad at the world, that are angry. And that’s why it’s important for us as Americans to know our neighbors, know our families. Tell somebody. If you know somebody that’s acting with a lot of hatred towards a particular group especially if you know somebody who’s a gun enthusiast or they’re armed with this type of fire arms and they’re showing any type of propensity for hatred, doesn’t mean that we’re going to go and take them to jail, but we might want to vet these people. He may well be alive today had we had the opportunity to do that.”

Finally, the presumed “concerns” and issues LEOs have with open carry have all been thrown around before.  In fact, in Mississippi open carry was going to be the wild, wild West, and blood running in the streets.  Except it wasn’t.  Louisiana is an open carry state, but no one has been hurt from it.

My own home state of North Carolina is a traditional open carry state.  We still all go about our business as usual, women and children don’t run screaming in the streets, and men don’t run around crazy when they finally get to put their weapons outside their waistband instead of inside their waistband.  The sad thing about the open carry bill that has made its way to the Senate is that it is licensed open carry rather than constitutional carry.

The Texas LEOs see the devil around every corner, and bogeymen under the bed and in the closet.  They sound like frightened little girls.  Someone tell them that everything will be alright, and the sun will come up tomorrow.  And for heaven’s sake, Austin needs to get rid of Art Acevedo and send him back to the hole from which he crawled.

Can you do everything Travis does in this video?

I like to provide training videos when I can, and since I can’t train you to do much, Jerry Miculek has to stand in for me.

The Austin-American Statesman is carrying an opinion piece by John Lott on the open carry bills in Texas.  It is subscription, but Mr. Lott also mirrors the entire commentary on the web site Crime Prevention Research Center (where he is president).  Mr. Lott felt the latitude to undercut the Austin-American Statesman by publishing the entire piece on his site, but I will only provide excerpts.

With well over 700,000 concealed handgun permit holders in Texas, there is a good chance that someone next you in a grocery store or restaurant is carrying a concealed handgun. But some are only satisfied if others actually know that they are carrying.  They think that by openly carrying guns they can make others comfortable with guns. They want to make a statement.

Texas lawmakers are now wrestling with the questions of campus carry and open carry. They couldn’t face a clearer choice between enhancing safety or making political statements.

Open carry advocates carry rifles because they can’t legally openly carry handguns. While no problems have occurred, simply handling a rifle as opposed to keeping a handgun in a holster, raises the risk that something might go wrong.

Open carry advocates have not been the best at public relations and they have scared some people. Much has been made of supposed gun bans by Starbucks, Jack in the Box, Chipotle, Wendy’s, Applebee’s, Chili’s and Sonic’s supposedly banning guns. In fact, these companies merely “respectfully request” that customers not openly carry guns. Passing an open carry law where proponents carried handguns, instead of rifles, would be less threatening and thus likely make it less of a PR issue.

Still, there is a more basic problem with open carry – it isn’t as effective in protecting people.

Criminals and terrorists can strike anywhere and at any time, that gives them a huge strategic advantage. When an attacker sees someone openly carrying a gun, they can either attack that person or wait for a more opportune moment. Alternatively, they can select another target.

Concealed carry makes attacks riskier. A killer can’t attack an auditorium in Texas without facing near-certain resistance. And, of course, an attacker has no idea who might be packing heat.

[ … ]

Open carry isn’t bad, but concealed carry is better. There are more important changes to be made. At $140, Texas has one of the highest permit fees in the US. Lower fees would increase the number of people who can protect others. It would especially help those who are most likely to be victims of violent crime — poor blacks living in high-crime urban areas.

If safety is the goal, let’s eliminate gun-free zones or lower permit fees. Open carry may make a political statement, but is that really the top priority?

In order fully to answer this, I have to point folks back to an article I wrote entitled Suburban Battle Rattle.  I didn’t write this to be silly, trivial or even tendentious.  I did it in order to get feedback from readers about what they do and how they approach this subject.

Mike Vanderboegh linked it, and one reader in particular put me on edge by saying this.

I would not recommend an ankle rig unless it was for your “third gun”. For years I worked plain clothes assignments as a DA Investigator. I was in some of the worst areas of SoCal. My duty weapon was a Glock 19 in a very secure DeSantis rig on my right hip. In my left front pants pocket was a S&W model 37 with a bobbed hammer in a Galco pocket rig. Extra mags were on my belt and in the left pocket of my sport coat, I kept an impact device, edged device, and a few other lightweight goodies.

If you have to evac and area in a hurry, ankle rigs will not only slow you down, they can loosen and start spinning around your ankle. Been there, done that.

The best weapon I had was the one between my two ears. Situational awareness and OODA techniques kept me in one piece until I was eligible to retire. H/T to Mr. Mike: I did not poke any wolverines in their nether regions unless I had a good plan in place and a secure method of egress.

” …ankle rigs will not only slow you down, they can loosen and start spinning around your ankle. Been there, done that.”  I don’t so much disagree with him, as dismiss it as bluster if he doesn’t back it all up by political action and other necessary things to force changes to both law and cultural norms to allow open carry.  Let me explain a bit and then I’ll get back to John Lott.

I’ve had my ankle rig swing around on me too, and beyond that, if I needed it quickly I am hampered by the location of the weapon and its being covered by my trousers.  But it’s one thing to complain about ankle rigs while you’re a LEO who can open carry, and quite another to work to change the situation for those of us who cannot open carry all of the time.

Even though my own home state is a traditional open carry state, I cannot open carry all of the time because of cultural norms.  Sometimes I am left with concealed carry IWB or ankle rig.  I find IWB carry obnoxious for a number of reasons, including but not limited to: (1) sweat and body oils rust and corrode your weapon, (2) it’s uncomfortable, and (3) you must use a small handgun or print your clothing.

With swollen knuckles due to my arthritis, I cannot efficiently handle small frame subcompacts (I do just fine with larger frame weapons).  So I am left with a large frame weapon which weighs too much and prints at my side.  I may as well use a rigger’s belt and open carry, which I find significantly more comfortable than IWB carry.  I’m saying all of this to suggest that Lott’s assertion that open carry is done in order to make a political statement is both insulting and ignorant.  When I open carry, I don’t do it to make any kind of statement.

But beyond being insulting and ignorant, Lott’s procedure is the same as he has used before, and it is as objectionable as it has always been.  As I’ve stated before:

“What happens to society at the macroscopic level is immaterial.  My rights involve me and my family, and don’t depend on being able to demonstrate that the general health effects in society are not a corollary to or adversely affected by the free exercise of them.  It’s insidious and even dangerous to argue gun rights as a part of crime prevention based on statistics because it presupposes what the social planners do, i.e., that I’m part of the collective.”  I object to John Lott’s procedure, and have stated frequently that I do not believe in the second amendment.  I believe in God.  The Almighty grants me the rights to be armed, and when the Almighty has spoken, it is eternal law for all men everywhere and in all ages and epochs.  See also Holding Human Rights Hostage To Favorable Statistical Outcomes, and Kurt Hoffman on the same subject.

And that’s the main problem with John Lott and his procedure.  If you need to, read his commentary above again, very carefully.  He doesn’t come right out and say he is opposed to the legalization of open carry, but he spends his entire time trying to prove that it is inferior to concealed carry, and ends with the question, is it “really a top priority?”

He is trying to talk the Texas legislators into letting the bills perish in committee.  It isn’t good enough for him to enable the practice of God-given rights.  It isn’t good enough for him to couple with other gun rights activists to press forward to the enjoyment of more freedom.  No, for some inexplicable reason he must work to undermine the gun rights community and be divisive and schismatic.  Being quiet isn’t good enough.  He must engage in chest pounding, blathering on in front of people about how much he knows.  As to how much he supposedly knows, I do Monte Carlo particle transport calculations, worrying over things like the first, second and third moments of a problem, sampling statistics, variance reduction and meeting the central limit theorem.  John Lott doesn’t impress me (with his anecdotal accounts in the distribution “tails”) any more than the VPC or Brady gun controllers.

Ironically, while various anti-gun groups such as the VPC attempt to use arguments like this to prohibit the practice of God-given rights by a subterfuge of worthless “statistics” they don’t really understand, John Lott attempts to do the very same thing under the guise of being safe and ensuring the best response to potential attackers.  He is more like the anti-gun crowd than he would be willing to admit.  It isn’t enough that we must do battle with the collectivists to ensure the free exercise of our rights.  We must also do battle with self-proclaimed gun rights advocates like John Lott.  Working to legalize open carry in Texas doesn’t change cultural norms, but it’s a starting point.  Those of us who favor such legalization will have to step over the “gun rights” activists to make this happen.

David Codrea:

Falling back on a tradition of deceptive hysteria in order to subvert gun rights, the Fourth Estate Fifth Columnists at The New York Times are scaring those who don’t know any better into thinking lawful concealed carriers represent a significant menace to society. Relying wholly on numbers compiled from internet searches of news accounts by the Violence Policy Center, Gray Lady readers are being convinced that people who believe in self-defense and the right to bear arms pose an unreasonable criminal threat to everyone else.

Yea, others are pushing this junk science too, and for the same reason.  Go to David’s article and do some of the very basic mathematics he requests.  Come back and tell me what you find?  Look folks, I’ve explained what I think about so-called “scientists” like this before.  Do your study, send it to a registered professional engineer for review, and let him put his PE seal on it where he legally liable for errors and omissions.  Then I’ll review it.  Until then, it’s nothing to me.  Putting Dr. or PhD with your name doesn’t impress me in the least.  PhDs are the ones who gave us the myth and lies of anthropogenic global warming.

Kurt Hofmann:

He said those who wanted high-capacity magazines were more interested in “arming against the government.”

All the scores of millions of us? Oddly, Murphy did not bother to address some rather glaring exemptions to the ban–the usual, military, law enforcement, and retired law enforcement. So is there some need for these people to be “arming against the government”?

Murphy is frightened of a well armed American citizenry. This is very good news. Those who would presume to govern a free people should be mortally afraid of the wrath of the people whose rights they threaten.

Right.  What exactly does he think the second amendment is for anyway?  Well, a blind squirrel does find a nut from time to time.  In this case, Murphy is both the blind squirrel and the nut, and always has been.  Hey, that 1911 at the top of the article is a double stack 1911 if I am not mistaken.  Hmm … good juxtaposition given the subject Kurt, but I have to say, I just don’t know what to think of such an oddball thing.  A double stack 1911?  John Moses Browning frowns from heaven.

See this comment by Mike Vanderboegh.  This one is worth reading.  I leave comments and send letters too, most of them not worthy of posting (only on rare occasion have I posted comments on other sites).

NBC10.com:

A Pennsylvania state police corporal was arrested Tuesday on reckless endangerment charges in a firearms training accident that claimed the life of a state trooper.

Cpl. Richard Schroeter, 43, was conducting a training session Sept. 30 and pulled the trigger on his firearm while discussing the weapon’s mechanism, prosecutors said. The gun discharged, killing 26-year-old Trooper David Kedra.