Articles by Herschel Smith

The latest silliness from Mike Weisser comes to us from Huffington Post:

Last week I attended a conference on medicine and gun violence in which a cross-section of researchers and clinicians focused on how to figure out if patients are at risk for gun violence and how to intervene appropriately when such a clinical situation appears to exist. The problem raises medical, legal and ethical issues involving proper patient care, privacy, liability and other questions that the medical profession has been wrestling with for a long time but have really come home to roost this year.

Three states have now passed laws limiting the degree to which physicians can ask patients about guns and only a last-minute surge of votes from Democratic senators who will shortly be replaced by Republicans allowed a Surgeon General to be confirmed whose views are decidedly anti-gun.

Throughout the conference I kept listening to presentations which were based on an assumption about medicine and guns which I’m not sure is really true. And it goes like this: in order to effectively raise the issue of gun risk, the physician must first determine whether a patient is, indeed, a risk to himself or others if he has access to a gun. And if the physician determines that the patient is, in fact, a health risk if there’s a gun around, how do you determine the degree of gun access without infringing on his right to own a gun whether he’s a risk for gun violence or not?

The reason I’m not comfortable with this assumption is because I happen to believe one simple thing about guns, namely, that if there is a gun lying around, locked or unlocked, the risk of gun injury is simply much greater than if the gun doesn’t exist. To borrow a phrase from the late Elmore Leonard, “Don’t fool with guns in here, okay? The goddamn piece’s liable to go off.” Now researchers can parse all the data with a fine-tooth comb from today until next year, but the bottom line is exactly what Leonard says: if it’s around, sooner or later it’s going to go off.

We’ve covered this in detail before.  Guns don’t “go off.”  Someone puts their finger on the trigger and pulls it.  If it is pointed in an unsafe direction, someone may get harmed or killed.  It’s the same with automobiles or trucks.  I drove beside a truck the other day that was swerving to the point I thought the driver may be drunk.  Likely he was sleepy, which is as bad or worse than being drunk.  Or, we may substitute chemicals in the home, or cold temperatures, or overheating for the elderly if they lose or cannot afford air conditioning.

Guns are no different.  The problem is that the author sees the role of doctors the same as the role of any other profession – as agents of the state.  He sees life this way because he is a collectivist.  And he likely knows that guns don’t just “go off.”  He is using that phrase in order to evoke emotion and approbation for doctors who won’t behave as agents of the state.

You recall another society where doctors were agents of the state, don’t you?

Crisis Group:

“Mexico cannot go on like this”, President Enrique Peña Nieto said on 27 November, addressing the country from the National Assembly. Most Mexicans would agree, yet Mexico remains embroiled in a political crisis over the disappearance of 43 students, apparently at the hands of police and local thugs and assisted by city officials, in the southwestern state of Guerrero. Protests, sometimes destructive, continue, while on this issue the government seems paralyzed: Peña Nieto’s security and justice reform package is stuck in Congress and his approval ratings have sunk to record lows.

The popular outrage reflects not only Mexicans’ exhaustion with criminal violence but also their deep distrust of a political class widely associated with corruption. So far the government seems unable to turn the tide of public opinion and undertake the institutional reforms needed to combat violence in a country where powerful criminal groups still dominate many areas.

Few would have predicted such a crisis earlier this year. In August, Peña Nieto celebrated passage of legislation to implement a comprehensive energy reform, ending the state-run oil company’s 76-year monopoly and opening the sector to private, including foreign, investment. The energy measures were the culmination of a sweeping package of new laws and constitutional amendments designed to make Mexico more competitive through fiscal and financial reforms, new education policies and an end to monopolies in telecommunications.

Then, on 26 September, several busloads of students from the rural teachers’ college of Ayotzinapa were attacked in the city of Iguala by municipal police, allegedly acting on orders of the mayor. According to witnesses interviewed by federal prosecutors, police turned the students over to members of a criminal gang known as “Guerreros Unidos”, who killed them and then incinerated the bodies in a local dump.

Neither this testimony nor the arrest of more than 80 suspects, including 44 police officers, has quelled demands for justice and the students’ return. Skepticism about the government’s version of events is high; leaked documents allegedly from government sources, published in the magazine Proceso, suggest federal and state police were alerted in real time about the students’ movements and their clashes with local police, but did nothing to stop the bloodshed. “It was the State” – a blanket indictment of all government institutions – has become a protest slogan and social media meme.

Remember folks, these are the hordes that are flooding across the border out of an act of love (and for all of you Rand Paul advocates, he thinks just like his father does on immigration). The Hispanics and Latinos don’t believe in your God-give rights to bear arms, but hey, the Chamber of Commerce will be happy and Monsanto and Archer-Daniels-Midland will have some new field workers.

The Blaze:

A sheriff in Washington state responded Monday to a controversial comment made by one of his deputies two weeks ago during a charity event.

Jerry Moffett, a deputy in Spokane County, Washington, was caught on tape at the Holiday and Heroes event during which some officers took underprivileged children shopping while others stood outside meeting and greeting those attending. But one woman who spoke to Moffett decided to record the interaction. In the video, the woman asks Moffett about the department’s Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) military-style vehicles.

“I’m thinking that is totally appropriate in Iraq but what kind of a situation in the U.S. would you see that happening?” the woman asked Moffett.

The deputy responded by saying, “We’ve got a lot of Constitutionalists and a lot of people that stockpile weapons, a lot of ammunition. They have weapons here locally.”

The Sheriff made a followup comment.

Knezovich said there is “no way” the equipment will be used on any law-abiding citizen. ”It will never be used to take your guns away,” he told the outlet. The outlet noted Moffett is a 20-year veteran of the force and an Army veteran … KXLY reported that Knezovich has since admitted that Moffett’s word choice could have been better, suggesting “extremist” would have been more appropriate than “Constitutionalist

Far from being shocked, disappointed or aghast at the comment by Moffett, I’m pleasantly surprised at his honesty.  It’s always a good thing when the truth comes out.  There is no reason for such equipment on police forces across the nation except for use on the people of America.  Moffett’s candid response reminds us of this truth.

I’m also pleasantly surprised that the Sheriff brought up his time in grade on the police force and his military background.  My own son believes that former military should try to avoid law enforcement if possible.  There are good men who are former military, and there are bad men who are former military.  Moffett is a bad one, and there is no justification for worship of the military.  I know what my own son answers to the question, ‘Son, will you fire on American citizens?’  He would sooner fire on his commanding officers who issued such an order.

Mike Vanderboegh was called a radical right-winger.  Hey, radical right-winger, constitutionalist or extremist.  It’s six one way and half a dozen the other.  As for Moffett, we know where he stands, and it’s because of people like him that we are constitutionalists and stockpile weapons.  Bring it, Moffett.

Breitbart:

Writing on Facebook, Jefferies said he believes many people will argue that the hostage situation proves that gun control–of which Australia has plenty–does not stop criminals. But Jefferies believes the hostage situation proves just the opposite.

Jefferies wrote:

I don’t know what the end result of this stand-off will be, but I do know this, he will only shoot that shotgun once before the police will be in there. This is a piss weak terrorist at best.

If this had happened in the USA the guy would have semi automatic weapons and hand guns that could easily kill many people in a short period of time. It seems to me that gun control in Australia is working better than ever.

And as for that one time, well, if it’s you I guess he’s sorry, but you’re not important enough for him to relinquish his collectivist views.  To this Newsweek article, the comment thread is interesting.

Harold Rosenbaum

You can’t take people’s guns away if guns are still in the hands of others. I wonder what would have happened if someone had a gun in the purse or on their person.

Better to sacrifice one or two schmucks than to allow the whole lot of them to be killed , or so goes the thinking in Australia.

David Codrea:

Democratic Virginia State Delegate Joe Morrissey “is on a leash,” Henrico County Sheriff Michael Wade told CBS 6 in a Tuesday report on the jailed politician’s work release arrangement. Morrissey, 57, was convicted last week of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and sentenced to 12 months in jail with six months suspended for “an inappropriate relationship” with a 17-year-old administrative staffer in his legal office who is now reportedly pregnant … So when Morrissey attacked the right to keep and bear arms in 2013 by bringing an AK-style rifle onto the floor of the House of Delegates “in a wild stunt aimed at rallying support for tougher gun laws …

Hey, laws and morality are for the peasants.  Otherwise, what good is an election anyway?

Kurt Hofmann:

Among “progressives,” it’s an article of faith that gun rights advocacy and racism are inextricably linked. One writer goes so far as to argue that broad recognition of gun rights in the U.S. causes cops to shoot black men … No matter that American “gun control” has its roots in a desire to keep African-Americans disarmed and thus powerless

Here in my state we still have laws that require the approval of the CLEO to purchase handguns, laws that have historically been used to prevent those horrible Negros from getting their hands on things that can hurt the good folks.  Hey, what good is a Jim Crow law if it can’t be used to generate revenue whilst encoding bigotry in the law books?

Uncle:

A man who can’t use his arms was in a car with others. The police pulled them over. The police found a gun in the car. And are charging the man who can’t use his arms with possession.

Hey, it’s New Jersey.  If the cops and prosecutors can’t be stupid there, what the hell is happening to this great country?

Kansas City opinion pages, weapons force difficult decisions for police officers.  Hey, if they would just follow the same rules I have to, the decisions would be much easier for them.

NYT:

Soon after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, President Obama made mental health care a major part of his plan to curb gun violence. And this week, following the two-year anniversary of that crime, Rep. Tim Murphy is calling for federal legislation he believes would help stop mentally ill people from becoming violent. “I remain firmly convinced we can make tremendous legislative strides in preventing mass tragedies involving someone with a serious mental illness,” he writes at The Guardian.

But according to one recent analysis, mental-health screening may not be the best way to prevent mass shootings — and expecting psychiatrists to identify potential shooters may do more harm than good.

In a paper published in the American Journal of Public Health, Jonathan M. Metzl and Kenneth T. MacLeish investigate a number of common beliefs about mental illness and gun violence, including the idea that “psychiatric diagnosis can predict gun crime before it happens.” They write that “legislation in a number of states now mandates that psychiatrists assess their patients for the potential to commit violent gun crime.” New York, for instance, “requires mental health professionals to report anyone who ‘is likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to self or others’ to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services, which then alerts the local authorities to revoke the person’s firearms license and confiscate his or her weapons.”

However, they argue, asking psychiatrists to judge who’s likely to become violent may be the wrong approach. They cite research showing that most gun violence isn’t committed by people who are determined to have mental illness — and that most people with mental illness don’t commit violence. According to one study, “the risk is exponentially greater that individuals diagnosed with serious mental illness will be assaulted by others, rather than the other way around.”

The editorial goes on to pose the salient question as follows.

Dr. MacLeish believes psychiatrists and other mental health practitioners should have a role in the national discussion around guns — just not the role of telling authorities which of their patients will become violent. Rather, “there needs to be a new politics to how psychiatry engages with the gun debate.” As it stands now, he said, that debate isn’t really addressing questions like “why do people feel like they need guns” and “what are the implications of being surrounded by guns in people’s daily lives.”

The question has an easy answer.  Number one, to prevent or otherwise answer or ameliorate tyranny and those who would try to enslave us, and second, for self defense (which is just another form of enslavement, just personal and individual).  Thus the answer(s) finds its roots in the prevention of enslavement.  These are issues we investigate and plumb every day.  They are welcome to join the discussion – it isn’t a new one – but the Psychiatrists may be late to the conversation.  Better late than never.  I welcome the opportunity to persuade others of our position.

But the interesting thing about this editorial is that it continues the theme we’ve noted for a long time (even the NYT is catching on, even if their solution is to employ “mental health professionals” for the purpose of larger gun control efforts), and it is that mental health has nothing whatsoever to do with gun violence or any other kind of violence.  As reader menckenlite has noted:

Control freaks love psychiatry, a means of social control with no Due Process protections. It is a system of personal opinion masquerading as science. See, e.g., Boston University Psychology Professor Margaret Hagan’s book, Whores of the Court, to see how arbitrary psychiatric illnesses are. Peter Breggin, Fred Baughman and Thomas Szasz wrote extensively about abuses of psychiatry. Liberals blame guns for violence. Conservatives blame mental illness. Neither have any causal connection to violence.

There isn’t one iota of difference between the role Tim Murphy wants “doctors” to play and the role of doctors in Nazi Germany.  It all has to do with control for the benefit of the state.  Can Psychiatrists stop gun violence?  No, any more than they can stop any other kind of violence.  But they also shouldn’t allow themselves to be duped into being willing rubes on behalf of a totalitarian state.

Prior:

The Link Between Mental Health And Gun Violence

Guns And Mental Health Bigotry In California

The Myth Of Mental Illness And Gun Violence

ATF Rulemaking On Adjudication As Mentally Defective

Mental Health And Guns: Mentally Defective Because You Believe In The Second Amendment

Guns And The Mentally Ill: A Professional Assessment

Fusion:

Philip Alpers, a professor at the Sydney University School of Public Health, said that’s not likely to change. He said most Australians would still agree with Howard, the conservative former prime minister who instituted the gun laws.

“There are only a handful of Australians who might suggest that having more guns inside that café would have made the situation less dangerous,” Alpers said. He added that if anyone suggested more guns were the answer, “he’d be howled down and become a laughingstock across the country.”

This file photo taken on September 8, 1996 shows Norm Legg, a project supervisor with a local security firm, holding up an armalite rifle which is similar to the one used in the Port Arthur massacre and which was handed in for scrap in Melbourne after Australia banned all automatic and semi-automatic rifles in the aftermath of the Port Arthur shooting. (William West /AFP/Getty Images)

Mr. Alpers may be whistling past the grave yard if Australians want their country back and, but it remains to be seen.  If he’s right, thus continues the enslavement of the Australians to their collective.  Never underestimate the ability of the totalitarians to get slaves to advocate and go along with their captivity.

Mike Vanderboegh:

You know the Founders were as suspicious of unrestrained democracy as they were of absolute monarchy. Both can be tyrannical. Both can be deadly. Both are threats to life and liberty and property. This is why they crafted a constitutional republic. The Founders knew that the mob could be manipulated by cynical elites to rob other citizens of their liberty, their property and their lives – cynical elites, wealthy men, powerful men, with unceasing appetites for more and more power …

Tyranny as you have now experienced with I-594 can be voted into existence by a majority. This does not make it right. This does not make it legitimate. Indeed it is a violation of natural law and natural rights derived from God …

This is one of Mike’s best, and I’ve been thinking about freedom, slavery and God-given rights over the last few days.  Slavery in all of its forms is evil.  To be sure, forced labor for the benefit of others is theft.  Forced relocation is kidnapping, and forced sex is rape.  But as heinous as these things are, they are byproducts of the main focus of the evil behind slavery.

Slavery is an interdiction and attempted thwarting of the main institution and building block in God’s economy – the family.  When I say “economy,” don’t think money and finances, although that would certainly be included.  Think of the role of the family in education, self determination, living location, choice of labor, value system, religious proclivities, and every other aspect of life.  Think God’s administration of His created order.  The family is central, it is essential, it cannot be harmed without both adverse natural consequences and God’s divine punishment on people, individually and corporately.

Whether it is a totalitarian state that sucks bank accounts dry through taxation, Boko Haram who steals girls from their families for sex, ISIS who beheads teenagers who refuse to relinquish their Christianity and swear allegiance to a false religion, diktats which govern what guns can be owned by whom and when, or whatever the form, it all steps in between the head of a family and his wife and children, a man’s work, a man’s calling before God, a man’s ability and freedom to say how his family will live and how he will care for and protect them.  Thus it is an affront to the laws of God, sinful, a cosmic crime against the most high.  It is all (what the Bible calls) high-handed sin (Numbers 15:22-31).  It is perpetrated by men who raise their fists to God and say they will not bow their knee to His laws.

Men who engage in this high-handed sin might be so bold as to kidnap girls for sex, or they might be so surreptitious as to sell their ideas to the stupid public as for their own safety and protection, such as gun control in the form of dictating what can be owned by whom and what one must do to placate the state if he engages in bartering.  Or, in the case of entitlements, it might take the form of “assistance” to families which ultimately destroys the family like it has with minorities in America.  But make no mistake about it, it is all high-handed sin, and God will judge it, now and in eternity.

Control over weapons is the final step and the signal accomplishment of a state which seeks to enslave its people.  Thus is disobedience to these evil measures a righteous calling.

13WMAZ:

David Hooks was shot in the back and head as he was lying face down on the floor during a drug raid by Laurens County deputies.

That’s according to the lawyer representing his family.

It’s been nearly four months since David Hooks was shot to death during a drug raid at his East Dublin home.

13WMAZ’s Paula Rotondo spoke to his wife, Teresa Hooks and the family’s lawyer, Mitchell Shook.

Hooks died Sept. 24 while deputies served a search warrant at his home.

They were looking for drugs, but didn’t find any.

Shook, who is representing his family, says the raid was illegal and has asked the FBI to investigate.

He says officers were looking for drugs in the home, but didn’t find any. Shook says the officers fired 17 shots inside the home and struck Hooks.

He says Hooks had four wounds, two of which he says are very problematic. Shook says that’s according to the Laurens County EMS records. He says the same information is found in the medical records from Fairview Park Hospital.

“One was to the side of the head, the other, was in his back, the back of his left shoulder, based on the evidence we see, we believe that David Hooks was face down on the ground when he received those last two shots,” says Shook.

A man is dead, his wife is a widow, the police walk away with impunity, and the judge who signed the approval lives in a nice home and will never be held responsible for anything.  And the FBI won’t do anything about it, so I’m not certain why they would ask the federal government to intervene.  That’s like asking the fox to guard the hen house.  There isn’t a jury anywhere who will hold them accountable for murders they perpetrate because the folks are shepple.

And a woman will have to live alone the rest of her life because of this.  I’ve studied Gestapo and SS tactics, and I cannot see one bit of difference between what these thugs perpetrated and running the Jews into cattle cars in Nazi Germany after guns were confiscated.  These men, and all who perpetrate such heinous acts, aren’t heroes.  They aren’t worthy of admiration.  They aren’t suitable to teach our children to respect and obey – like the peace officers or constables of old.  This is why men teach their children to be suspicious of the police today, including me.

These men are dangerous because they have no conscience.

Oregon Live:

Offenders who kill an on-duty law enforcement dog would face stiffer penalties under a proposed law that has been drafted for Oregon’s next legislative session.

The proposal is dubbed “Mick’s Law,” in memory of Portland police dog Mick, who died in April from fatal gunshot wounds sustained while trying to stop a suspect wanted in connection with a Southwest Portland burglary.

“Mick has not been forgotten,” said Marsha Hettman, who has pushed for the change in law since Mick’s killing.

The proposal would make killing an animal who is working in an official law enforcement capacity at the time of the animal’s death a Class B felony, punishable by a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and/or a $250,000 fine. It would also prohibit someone convicted of the offense from receiving probation or a reduction in sentence.

[ … ]

Portland police canine Officer Jeffrey Dorn, wounded in both legs during a shootout with a burglary suspect in Southwest Portland on April 16, credited his slain police dog partner, Mick, for saving his life that day.

The 17-month-old German Shepherd was shot trying to stop the burglary suspect, who was armed with an AR-15 rifle. Mick died of a single gunshot wound after Dorn unleashed him to chase the suspect on Southwest Lobelia Street. Mick was found dead under a hedge hours later in the front yard of a Lobelia Street home.

The dog was heroic, there is no doubt about it.  But what about when police shoot dogs in Springfield, Oregon, or when police do the same thing in Scappoose, Oregon?  How about when those quarter of a million dogs are killed by cops each year, most often needlessly?

In fact, there has never been a documented case of a dog killing a cop, and yet an officer offers no reason whatsoever for his recent deed in Woodville, Ohio:

WOODVILLE, OH (Toledo News Now) – Woodville police officer is under investigation after shooting a dog at a traffic stop Monday.

According to the mayor, the officer pulled a vehicle over for a traffic stop on US 20, just outside the village. During the stop, a black lab approached the officer and the officer shot it in the leg.

The dog is a five year old lab named Moses. He is expected to survive but is currently at an animal hospital in Sylvania, where a vet is working to save his leg.Moses owner Lauren Meyer says he did not deserve to be shot.

“I said ‘so why did you do it? was he barking or growling at you’ and he said ‘no.’ So I said ‘why did you shoot it?’ he said ‘that’s not enough to tell me that he wasn’t going to bite,'” said Lauren.

He shot the dog because it did nothing, and he said so.  Yea, I’ll support protection of police dogs when someone puts in place protections of my dogs.