Articles by Herschel Smith

In my review of American Sniper, readers Comrade X, Ned Weatherby and I had a discussion about the rifle Chris Kyle used.  Here it seems to be answered affirmatively correct for all of us.

Being a highly trained Navy SEAL, Chris Kyle had used many weapons over the course of his military career. There were two rifles Kyle liked to use, one of which he used to make the record-setting long distance shot.

A lot of Kyle’s marksmanship was done while using the Remington 700 Long Action chambered to fire a .300 Winchester Magnum round. This is a very common hunting rifle that can be purchased for less than $500 from Cabelas. But of course Kyle’s rifle had several expensive modifications.

In his autobiography, Kyle mentions his love of Nightforce scopes for the quality of the optics and its durability in harsh conditions. He also reduced the trigger pull weight to 2 pounds, stating he liked to be surprised when the gun went off, he didn’t want to jerk the gun when pulling the trigger. “I used a 2 pound trigger on my rifles. That’s a fairly light pull. I want the trigger to surprise me every time; I don’t want to jerk the gun as I fire.”

The .300 Winchester Magnum round is one of the most popular rounds used by American hunters. It is extremely effective at ranges around 1,000 yards, and a skilled operator can easily hit a target at the maximum effective range of 1,210 yards. The round is effective against elk, moose, and even brown bear. In his book, Kyle spoke of the round, saying, “I used the .300 Win Mag for most of my kills. It’s an excellent all-around cartridge, whose performance allows for superb accuracy as well as stopping power. It shoots like a laser. Anything from 1,000 yards and out, you’re just plain nailing it.”

It’s useful to see tactical advice, in this case accolades for Nightforce scopes.  But that’s not the end of the matter.

During his later tours, Kyle was given a McMillan TAC-338 rifle. This is a far more advanced and expensive weapon system than the average hunter would shoot an elk with, costing north of $5,000. This superior rifle fires a much larger round, the .338 Lapua Magnum.

“I used a .338 on my last deployment. I would have used it more if I’d had it,” said Kyle, “The bullet shoots farther and flatter than a .50 caliber, weighs less, costs less, and will do just about as much damage. They are awesome weapons.”

Kyle made his record-setting shot with this .338 round. It has a maximum effective range of 1,910 yards, which makes Kyle’s 2,100-yard shot even more impressive.

Yes, tactical bolt action rifles are extremely, extremely expensive, except for the Tikka T3 CTR weighing in at around $1000.

CNN:

Smith & Wesson fired up investors on Tuesday by saying it sees “recent, positive trends” in the consumer firearm market, and that’s likely to translate directly into higher profits for the gun maker.

The firearm company feels so confident that it raised its sales and earnings targets for 2015 above what Wall Street had been banking on.

The stock surged nearly 20% as investors cheered the news.

Rival Sturm, Ruger & Co. also saw its shares pop about 4% on the upbeat sentiment.

All of this marks a 180 turn for gun makers. Only a few weeks ago Smith & Wesson and other firearm manufacturers warned that Americans didn’t seem to be buying guns anymore. They pointed to sluggish rifle sales and a supply glut caused by retailers placing unrealistically high orders for guns.

Smith & Wesson predicted it will generate sales of around $125 million in the quarter that ends January 31. That would easily exceed expectations from analysts for revenue of less than $118 million.

“They are really showing improving fundamentals and continue to work off a lot of their retail inventory,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities.

He said the “wild card” with Smith & Wesson is the bidding war that’s underway to become the new handgun manufacturer for the U.S. Army. Hogan said the company is the “frontrunner” for the new contract, which would trigger an initial revenue gain of roughly $500 million.

Does Mr. Hogan know something we don’t?  Is the M&P the real “frontrunner” in the competition to replaced the Beretta, or this just wishful thinking or fabrication?  If Smith & Wesson wins the contract, in my opinion while this may be an initial infusion of welcome cash, it will ultimately cause S&W to be less responsive to customers.

On another issue related to S&W, I received an e-mail notification today from S&W on new products for 2015.  It mainly looks like more variants of the M&P.  The e-mail said, and I quote, “Smith & Wesson Corp. announced today that the company has expanded its award-winning line of professionally engineered M&P Series firearms with new offerings for 2015.”  S&W may want to rethink this language.

When you use the words “professional engineer,” “engineer,” “engineering” or “professionally engineered,” you invoke all sorts of legal stipulations that the service or product was designed and specified by a registered professional engineer.  In the past, companies who have done this without having a registered professional engineer on staff with the work being performed under his responsible charge were fined and issued cease and desist letters from the attorney general’s office of the state in which the company does business.  Perhaps they don’t know this, but you can’t just throw around the words professional engineer, any more than you can throw around the words doctor or lawyer.  Moreover, the legal burden such language places on the product manufacturer (for product liability) is rather onerous.

The State:

That confounded Union general whose name still draws hisses in South Carolina 150 years after he laid waste to the Capital City is causing yet another ruckus in Columbia.

On their way out of town, Union troops led by William T. Sherman dumped loads of captured Confederate ordnance – from cannonballs to ball cartridges, rammers, sabers, bayonet scabbards and knapsacks – into the Congaree River.

The artifacts have long been part of local lore, and the few pieces retrieved over the years indicated there might be more.

Now, through the science of sonar and metal detection, historians and researchers have better evidence of precisely where the munitions were dumped near the Gervais Street bridge in downtown Columbia. Excavators are planning how best to retrieve the artifacts.

“It’s really going to help us interpret what was a defining point for Columbia’s history, and, really, South Carolina’s history,” Joe Long, curator of the S.C. Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, said of the impending finds.

In 1865, Sherman’s troops kept what they wanted of confiscated rebel ordnance, then threw the rest into the river to keep it away from the Confederates. Better armed, Sherman then headed for North Carolina on his destructive march.

[ … ]

A formal archeological study of the site has not been done, so precisely what will be uncovered during dredging remains a mystery.

But a Feb. 17, 1865, inventory of the ordnance and ordnance stores captured in Columbia lists 1.2 million ball cartridges, 100,000 percussion caps, 26,150 pounds of gun powder, 4,000 bayonet scabbards, 3,100 sabers, 1,100 knapsacks, 58 tents and 20 blacksmith vices, among much more equipment.

As Sherman’s army roared in from the west, three divisions and a Union cavalry unit camped Feb. 16, 1865, on the west bank of the Congaree directly across from the Capital City.

After a short battle at Congaree Creek near what is now Cayce, one of three corps of Sherman’s army spread out and began shelling Columbia, from among other places, the West Columbia shoreline.

Rebel troops burned the then-wooden Gervais Street bridge to slow Sherman’s advance, the Tidewater report states.

“Columbia citizens were trying to evacuate the city, and bales of cotton were dragged into the street to be carried off and burned to keep them from falling into enemy hands,” wrote the consultants, who studied the area’s history dating to the Paleoindian period between 10,000 to 12,500 years ago.

“Wade Hampton, hastily promoted to lieutenant general, was left to defend the city with General Joseph Wheeler’s cavalry,” the historical account continues. “Sensing the futility of the defense, Wheeler’s men began looting the city, ostensibly to prevent capture by the Union army.

“On the night of the 16th, Hampton announced that he planned to evacuate on the following morning, leaving behind the cotton which he was unable to transport. That evening, fueled by spirits dispensed without restriction, Union troops created more mischief through the city. When the cotton in the streets caught fire, they were unable or unwilling to contain the blazes.

“The result was the near complete destruction of Columbia,” the consultants’ report states. “Having the run of the countryside for several days, Union troops burned many homes and farms in the region.”

So let’s get this straight.  The union troops Dipp’d their bill, got hammered, and went on a wild rampage through Columbia burning and destroying things, and all of it allowed by leaders who didn’t care.  They confiscated weapons, took what they wanted, and dumped the rest in the river.

Okay.  Got it.  We won’t forget.

Todd Frankel blogging at The Washington Post:

So what does the study say?

It’s hefty, running 121 pages. The title is “Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence.” The National Academies’ Institute of Medicine and National Research Council published it in 2013.

And the study clearly makes the case for why more gun-violence research is needed.

The CDC requested the study to identify research goals after Obama issued his January 2012 executive order. The National Academies’s study authors clearly see gun violence as a problem worth examining:  “By their sheer magnitude, injuries and deaths involving firearms constitute a pressing public health problem.”

The authors suggested focusing on five areas: the characteristics of firearm violence, risk and protective factors, interventions and strategies, gun safety technology and the influence of video games and other media. The document is peppered with examples of how little we know about the causes and consequences of gun violence — no doubt the result of an 18-year-old CDC research ban.

But gun-rights supporters zeroed on in a few statements to make their case. One related to the defensive use of guns. The New American Magazine article noted that “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”

So it would appear the “good use” of guns outweighs the “bad use.” That may be true, except the study says all of those statistics are in dispute — creating, in the study authors’ eyes, a research imperative.

You can read the whole post for yourself.  I’ve lifted the money quotes out (and hopefully not out of context).  Mr. Frankel charges gun-rights activists with an error in interpretation of data and statistics, and whether Mr. Frankel is correct in his own interpretation or not is irrelevant.  The Germane point is that gun rights activists – if they are indeed using such data and statistics to demonstrate a point – are in error for simply using the data, not for misinterpreting it.

We’ve discussed this before.  I’ve made the point that “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.

There is probably little constitutional basis for such a thing as the Centers for Disease Control at the expense of our tax dollars even when studying diseases.  But there is certainly none whatsoever for its existence when it pens studies for the express intent of infringing on God-given rights.  If gun rights activists are arguing statistics with the collectivists, that’s the mistake right there.  Full stop.  Don’t do that.  Ever.  You presuppose their world view when you do that.

Fox News:

Two female Marine officers who volunteered to attempt the Corps’ challenging Infantry Officer Course did not proceed beyond the first day of the course, a Marine Corps spokesperson confirms to the Free Beacon. The two were the only female officers attempting the course in the current cycle, which began Thursday in Quantico, Virginia.

With the two most recent drops, there have been 29 attempts by female officers to pass the course since women have been allowed to volunteer, with none making it to graduation. (At least one woman has attempted the course more than once.) Only four female officers have made it beyond the initial day of training, a grueling evaluation known as the Combat Endurance Test, or CET. Male officers also regularly fail to pass the CET, and the overall course has a substantial attrition rate for males.

Regular readers know what I think about women in the infantry, so there is no need to rehearse all of it again.  Just to give a quick reminder, remember this?

Marines in Helmand, water transported by helicopter with it so hot by the time it got there it would scald their throats, full kit, body armor, mortar plate, no showers for seven months, sleeping by two’s in “hobbit holes” in Now Zad, and so on.  Need I say more?  No, but I will.

WeaponsMan:

The standards have been evaluated and will be lowered where necessary, but ALCON will deny that any standards were lowered. They are calling this an “assessment” and when the “assessment” is complete and its success is announced, they will move forward into the bright sunlit uplands of making room for the next group of “victims,” those confused or mistaken about what sex they are. Such is progress in the Year of Our Lord 2015.

Coddling of the women attendees includes a pre-ranger prep course, and a shadowy sisterhood made of dozens of appointed female commissars called “observer/advisors” who are to mentor, encourage, (and not incidentally, prevent male instructors from giving failing grades to), the Unique and Special Snowflakes. The commissars do not have to attend Ranger School themselves. Good intentions suffice, and good intentions are defined by their conformity with what the suits in the E-ring, and the generals purring in their laps, desire.

Yep.  Sounds about right for post-modern America, children of the enlightenment who have rejected everything decent and good.  There isn’t much left any more except for the circus and clown show all around us.

And to summarize, I’ll convey a conversation I had with Daniel on this very subject (allow me some latitude, since it was multiple conversations over many months).  His view: it’s about more than just a PT or a “school” or whether you can make the grade in a fixed set of conditions with known boundary conditions.  Daniel went four days without sleep at times in Fallujah.  If he didn’t carry enough water on patrol and made the mistake of drinking the local water, he got dysintery (or at least the runs very badly).  He went without food on many occasions, during training and in Iraq.  All of this and more, while being shot at.  It’s like the camping trip from hell that never ends while people are trying to kill you.

Just the training can kill you (as it did with some of the Marines in my son’s Battalion during squad rushes with live fire).  Or perhaps the women want to be with the boys after they have visited every range in America during pre-deployment workup, finally during winter in the mountains when the sadistic sergeants removed more and more and more equipment from the company, the last few nights being the fleece, sleeping bags and tents.  The Marines slept against and on top of each other, an entire company, covered by leaves and branches trying to stay alive.

It’s not an issue, for example, of being able to lift a certain amount of weight, or run so far so fast.  It’s an issue of having had nothing to eat, no sleep, no water, and weak to the point that you can hardly stand, and then having to handle munitions (or sand bags, or heavy weapons, or fill in the blank), over and over and over and over and over again, off body axis and twisting so that there is maximum opportunity to hurt your back, and then when you’re finished, doing it again, and then trying to keep a fellow Marine alive who has just been shot, and then doing it all over again.

I didn’t make any of this up.  I’ve never been in the military.  All of this is from my son.  And God has made men and women differently, in case you haven’t already noticed.

I went to see American Sniper this weekend.  But first, this from Deadline Hollywood:

While the competition did well this weekend against the titan American Sniper, some executives griped that the Eastwood film shaved off dollars off their initial projections.

“It felt like we opened against a Marvel movie,” said one studio executive about Sniper‘s presence. “The people portrayed in American Sniper – these are real-life heroes to people in the same way that Marvel characters are heroes to fanboys. But it’s the Marvel concept for adults.”

[ … ]

Warner Bros. preferred not to comment on the lofty figures, which makes sense because it’s better to get another day under your belt as the weekend progresses and projections become more exact. All over town, executives are gobsmacked by the opening traction for this movie, the highest ever in Eastwood’s career …

In sum, American Sniper is an amazing feat for Warner Bros. On the surface, the film appeared risky with its anti-war message.

Only an idiot would compare this to Marvel.  Enough said about that.  The fact that executives are “gobsmacked” makes perfect sense.  The theater was full when I went, and full for the next showing, and I suspect full for the entire weekend.  Football sucks anyway, so where’s the choice?  Executives are “gobsmacked” because they are disconnected to reality.  They think since they have a certain world view, others must have it as well.  They’re stupid, and if the goal is to make money, I could have told them how to make a whole lot more a long time ago.

As to the last point in the horrible article I cited, there is no way this film can be construed as anti-war.  It isn’t pro-war, and it isn’t anti-war.  It’s a stunning panorama of skill, life and death.  It is as engaging as any film I have ever seen, and after the film you feel as though you know both Chris Kyle and his wife.  It’s a portrait of heroism, love, devotion, a life well-lived, and a death that came too soon.

I do have one nit (and I’m not entirely sure that it’s a nit if I’m wrong).  During an early scene in Fallujah in the 2004 time frame, one of Chris’s colleagues says something about the Marines who are there that sounds strange.  “Six months ago, they were civilian.”  As for my son, by the time he was out of boot camp, took the necessary break, went to School of Infantry (SOI), got out and was assigned to fleet, about six months had elapsed.  Then he had fleet training, the workup to deployment in Iraq being a full year (e.g., squad rushes, time at virtually every military range in America, training and extensive practice time in room clearing, room clearing with night vision gear, designated marksman training [at least for my son], and so on the list goes, including a time at the end with live tissue training).  If the Marines were actually deploying men to Fallujah six months after enlistment, that’s a real problem.  I doubt they were.

Finally, I like Chris Kyle’s weapons kit.  It seems to me that he (and his colleagues) chose right.  A pistol (although I don’t like the choice for pistol), a carbine (5.56), and bolt action rifle with high power glass for long range shooting (I believe he was shooting .338).

I’m probably partial to the exploits of Carlos Hathcock and his ingress, concealment and egress.  But there is no questioning the fact that Chris Kyle is the most prolific sniper in American history.  Reward yourself with a visit to the theater to see this one.

Vice News:

As US lawmakers are proposing nixing gun-free zones and arming teachers and guards with firearms to halt potential school massacres, one pro-gun group has unwittingly provided a case in point against fighting guns with more guns.

The Truth About Guns, a weapons rights group based in Texas, recently recreated a set mirroring the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, where masked gunmen last week killed 12 people. The group then reenacted the massacre with paintball rounds to determine whether throwing an “armed defender” into the mix could have saved lives.

In nearly every single setup, the armed civilian — portrayed by 12 different local volunteers — died. The only exception was in the scenario where the team member with the gun immediately fled the scene.

The group ran the exercise in Plano, Texas and posted footage from a camera mounted to one of the attacker’s rifles to YouTube on Thursday. The Truth About Guns did not immediately respond to VICE News’ request for comment on the experiment Friday.

Sigh.  I’m not even going to link the video.  It’s meaningless.  Here’s Uncle’s take on it.

So, if one were to recreate what happened, they’d probably do something based on what happened. Or, instead, you could get some firearms trainers who know how to handle simunitions, let them strap on their gear and tell them to go practice a room-clearing exercise on random people you got to volunteer off the street to play CCW holder. Surprisingly, the firearms trainers manage to outperform the random people from the street.

Then, you could compound the error by inviting local media. Then, you get picked up by all the shitty, sensationalized listicle sites and are all over social media. And, boom, you got self-promotion.

Leave it to the occasional jackass to conclude that gun control helps the situation.

France’s ban on guns isn’t actually a gun ban of any sort. In fact, most French citizens share the same rights to firearm ownership as Americans.

The difference, however, is that French leaders haven’t sold out to the deep pockets of gun manufacturers and their lobbying group and removed important regulations that dramatically alter the mindset of citizens about those very deadly firearms.

Instead, these are the ultra-restrictive laws that some claim were responsible for the French terrorist attacks: Citizens must acquire a license to own a gun, including handguns. A requirement to obtain and keep that license is that the holder show proof of being an active shooting club member with at least three trips to the range each year and certification from a physician of the holder’s physical and mental capabilities.

Once that license is acquired, the only “gun ban,” is on fully automatic weapons, just like the one in the U.S.

Aside from that, the French can own pretty much any gun that an American can own.

But usually, they don’t own them. They don’t carry them around on their hips like this is some old West movie.

But it’s more invasive than that.  This point of view was written by a Frenchman right after Newtown.

From the French point of view, this shooting is just another example of the United States’ gun addiction …

France, however, underwent a major shift in its regulation of weapons in 1939. The French government worried that tough living conditions during the upcoming war with Germany could lead to revolts and unrest similar to those experienced by Germany and Russia during World War I. The government thus passed a law that would ban most guns. Moreover, when the Germans invaded France in 1940, another decree required every Frenchman to hand over his weapons.

This ban, justified by historical reasons, remained enforced after the war and has been the backbone of French firearm regulation ever since. In today’s legislation, the only weapons easy to purchase are hunting rifles, which has remained a French pastime.

The purchase of any type of military and civil firearm is only permitted in shooting sports for which a license is required. To obtain the licence, a year long process is required, including  a 6 month membership at a shooting club and background check by the police. This license needs to be renewed every three years.  Thus, for the last 73 years, weapons, except hunting rifles, have been ban for most Frenchmen. Promoting a gun-free environment has become the country’s answer to preventing mass shootings.

But it didn’t prevent a mass shooting, and I wonder if this Frenchman would care to revisit his position since the recent shooting in Paris?

See this analysis and this analysis for a discussion of category A, B, C and D in French gun control law, and if you wish to carry a handgun for personal defense, that isn’t viable.  It won’t happen in France.

Simply put, any attempted analysis, including that at TTAG, that focuses on what happens when shooters who plan their attack go to work on unsuspecting victims who have handguns (or nothing) proves only that when defending against attackers with foreknowledge and rifles, you would rather have foreknowledge and rifles yourself.

There are other variables that such a test doesn’t measure, such as could a potential victim in another room, hearing the commotion or seeing the attack, prepare in such a way as to save his life and the lives of others?  Philosophers call it “possible worlds,” and reenacting events like this one doesn’t even come close to exploring what might have, what could have, what may have happened.

Ignore all such “tests” and “reenactments.”  Arm yourselves to have a better chance to live in such an attack.  That’s the simplest and best advice anyone can give you.  The rest is just self promotion.

WeaponsMan admits to being dumb as a bag of rocks over some relatively minor factual error that they later corrected.  For the record, I don’t think WeaponsMan is dumb as a bag of rocks, but this catapults me into my next topic.  They are also discussing stolen valor.

At one time I had an e-mail argument with one Uncle Jimbo who writes at Black Five.  He actually wrote words down (and copied many other people) threatening to kick me in the balls and do other things to me (only a real genius writes down threats and sends it out to multiple people so the threat is well documented).  Mind you, not that I was worried, especially about him.  I can take care of myself.  But the subject was interesting – it was over Stanley McChrystal.  Regular readers who have been with me a while know exactly what I think of Stanley McChrystal.

He is an ignoramus who got promoted far beyond what his moral fiber and intellectual capability could bear.  Oh, and by the way, he thinks you shouldn’t be allowed to have guns, as you will recall.  Well, Uncle Jimbo took issue with my dislike of McChrystal, as well as my friendship with Michael Yon, and the idiot wanted to perform an internet “intervention” of Michael (as if anyone actually needed any of this).

This is all actually going somewhere, so hold on.  Now enter the boys from This Ain’t Hell (who are also stolen valor intensive bloggers).  Because of the name of this blog, one of them began dropping comments on various posts about me being involved in “stolen valor,” as if I was advertizing myself as a captain of anything except this blog.

The name of the blog was selected long ago in a far away place, and since Captain’s Quarters was already taken, we settled on Captain’s Journal.  The About page is clear about that.  I was tempted to become embroiled in a tete- a-tete, starting with “can you read?”  No seriously, can you read past a second grade level?  You don’t have to be able to digest Alvin Plantinga  or Nicholas Wolterstorff to be able to click on over to the about page and take a minute to read it.

But I didn’t, and ignored the idiotic posted comments from this simpleton and deleted them.  In the mean time, read all you wish about stolen valor – these folks and others focus on such things, and it ain’t my bag.  If you say something and then later correct it when better data becomes available, that proves you are able to learn and you’re not threatened by the good editing commenters can bring.  You’re not dumb as a bag of rocks.  If you insist on something stupid in spite of the evidence like the boys at This Ain’t Hell did, yea, that does make you about as dumb as a bag of rocks.  It actually makes me wonder about everything else they’ve written.

As for Stanley McChrystal, I hope he is forever haunted by the memories of those who perished at Ganjgal (like the relatives of those very men who commented on this post).  And I hope the ring knockers from government military schools who used his ROE guidance to deny good men support that awful day live regretful lives, always shamed by what they did.  They should be.

In summary, idiots will be idiots (at least the ones who don’t know how to read), and Stanley McChrystal is no better a man than he was yesterday or years ago.