Articles by Herschel Smith

I ran across this fairly informative podcast late last week.  If you want to listen to it I encourage you to do so.  It is just short of twenty minutes.  If not, I will summarize for you.

The law passed several years ago in California forced all new firearms to be microstamped with laser etching right at the time of firing, with spent cartridge casings showing the serial number of the firearm used – ridiculous technology that no professional engineer would seal (this is my judgment, not that of the podcast).  It would be too expensive, it wouldn’t last, and it would be subject to removal by anyone.

The law stipulated that the law becomes effective when the attorney general deems that the technology exists.  The attorney general of California is a liar because she deems the technology to exist even though it doesn’t.  Therefore, all new firearms sold in California must include this technology which doesn’t exist.

Here is the operative phrase: new firearm.  Gun makers can continue to sell existing firearms if they have previously been approved by California, including the silly limited capacity magazine.  But because a new firearms is defined as any firearm that has had any change at all made (part tolerance, alloy specification, gun color, etc.), and because even small changes routinely made by manufacturers would be included in that list and necessarily involve approval which included microstamping (which doesn’t exist), gun manufacturers are no longer selling guns in California.

We’ve discussed this before in slightly less detail, and noted that Smith & Wesson will continue to sell to law enforcement (or at least, they won’t commit to me that they won’t), thus providing weapons to LEOs that other citizens can’t have.

You can let Smith & Wesson know how you feel about this.  I have.  At the same time, remind them that it is way past time to remove themselves from the communist state in which they are ensconced and come South like most other gun manufacturers.

Their customer base is watching – carefully.

Ms. Elizabeth Sharp, VP of Investor Relations (Lsharp@smith-wesson.com)

Janes:

Thales Australia has disclosed it is developing a new family of high-lethality small arms ammunition, including a 5.56 mm round that the company says outperforms 7.62 mm ammunition at all ranges.

The so-called F9 technology is scalable in calibre, from 4.6 mm up to .50 calibre, and is being developed in collaboration with an undisclosed overseas partner, Graham Evenden, Thales Australia’s Director of Integrated Soldier Systems, told IHS Jane’s on 20 August.

The initial focus is on 5.56 mm ammunition. Trial batches use a projectile developed by the overseas company, low toxicity, optimised propellant from the Thales-operated Mulwala propellant and explosives plant in southern New South Wales, and cases produced at the Thales-owned Benalla munitions facility in northern Victoria.

The design of the 5.56 round involves yawing in flight (even for boat tail ammunition) such that impact tends to fragment the round leaving multiple ballistic tracks through tissue.  UPDATE: This is a correct and functioning link to the paper entitled Small Caliber Lethality: 5.56 mm Performance In Close Quarter Battle.  Warning, this is a PDF supporter by a very slow server.

Color me unpersuaded until I see test results.  But I’m interested, if someone from Thales Australia wants to contact me and give me more detail.

Washington Times:

A competing rifle outperformed the Army’s favored M4A1 carbine in key firings during a competition last year before the service abruptly called off the tests and stuck with its gun, according to a new confidential report.

The probable takeaway from all of this is that the Army is in a sloppy love affair with Colt, and nothing will ever replace it.  Colt lost the contract for M4s almost two years ago, and due to pressure from various lawyers, government entities (GAO) and others, they reopened the bidding and testing process.

Then it closed, with no selection of a new firearm.  You know what I think about H&K (their attitude to customers, “you suck and we hate you“).  I really don’t care much for who won the competition because I think it was badly framed to begin with.

Phase one has had nothing to do with evaluating test prototypes, but instead has focused on weeding out companies that may not have the production capacity to make thousands of weapons per month. This has become a bitter point of contention that has driven away some companies with credible names in the gun business.

“I’m not going to dump half a million to a million dollars for them never to review my rifle,” said Steve Mayer of Rock River Arms, standing amid his racks of M4-style carbines at Shot Show, the massive small-arms show here that draws gun makers from all over the world.

But you, dear reader, can have whatever you want for the right price.  The government doesn’t (yet) have the authority to tell you not to buy a Rock River Arms AR-15, or LaRue Tactical, or whatever you want.

And let’s try to keep it that way.  Weapons are best vetted and tested in the civilian market anyway.  The Army and Marine Corps uses what they’re given.  We have the right to use what we want.  We are the most picky users who give the best feedback.

If some reader wants to pick at this issue until he gets hold of this report, we would all be interested to read it.

Reading the comments to this post by Mike Vanderboegh has persuaded me to weigh in on Ferguson and the liberty movement.  It had to happen.  The liberty movement – at least for some – sees a common enemy, the police state, and is allying itself with crooks and liars.  This is to be avoided since it does nothing except harm the movement.

Let’s begin by divorcing the person of the LEO who is the subject of the goings-on in Ferguson.  He has as much right to self defense as anyone else, and had someone tried to beat the shit out me of I wouldn’t have waited until the perpetrator was going after my weapon.  It would have been 230 grain fat boys to the belly until the magazine was empty – and then reload and do it again.  I suspect that the LEO was shooting 9mm, which is why it took six rounds to put him down (wound track is everything).

Furthermore, the perpetrator in question was apparently walking in a traffic lane, which is a crime.  I don’t do that, and no one I know does that.  The cop had a right to tell the perpetrator to get out of the traffic lane and arrest him if he doesn’t.  As for whether the shooting was justified (i.e., it was in self defense), the facts will have to bear that out.  I cannot and will not comment on that.  But the point is that this isn’t unlike a thousand such incidents that occurs every day in America.  There is nothing special about Ferguson.

Now on to the main issue.  Militarization of the police is a bad thing, always, under any circumstances, and especially when it comes to invasion of homes.  Any serious reader can study my tag on SWAT and see my views.  I couldn’t care less if it is a black man in suburbia Chicago dealing drugs or me in my home writing on my web site.  A man’s home is his castle, and he deserves for it to be so.  My history is clear on this.  Find another way to do evidence collection.  If the police want to come into my home, they should call and make an appointment.

As for the militarization of police in Missouri, they shouldn’t have all of that gear.  It’s wasteful, expensive and sends the wrong message – to the LEOs themselves.  As long as they want to dress up and play soldier-boy, the damage is minimal.  If they want to enforce the law that way, I object.  And don’t carry around a patrol rifle unless I can carry one too.  But what I really object to is home invasions, and the best of my knowledge, that has not happened in the context of Ferguson.

In any case, I think it’s a sad commentary on the police that they appear the way they do.  But that fact doesn’t in the least cause me to side with crooks, liars, looters, criminals, ne’er-do-wells, and other maladjusted folk.

I have for a very long time taken the position – at work and at home – that I don’t fill in the gaps for people.  If you work too hard to repair the bad decisions by management at work, they never learn from their mistakes.  If you undo the consequences of every bad decision your child makes, he never learns.  Like it or not, in God’s economy, consequences is the premier teacher.  Blocking consequences is the same thing as hating your child.  Don’t do it.

My position on Ferguson is that the police should back away.  If the criminals want to tear up the gas stations, grocery stores, roads, sewage and water supply systems, then so be it.  Let them do it.  They will learn from the consequences of said actions when no more groceries can be obtained, no automobile gasoline is available, and they have no power for their air conditioners, heaters and televisions.  We owe them nothing.

There are no good guys in Ferguson.  The liberty movement doesn’t have to side with anyone in order to maintain the position that criminals should be prosecuted and the police shouldn’t be militarized.  It’s possible to walk and chew gum at the same time.  Aligning with the criminals is a bad move not only from the perspective of optics, but also from the perspective of morals.  I am not a criminal, and I have no sympathy for criminals.

Liberty is not equivalent to lawlessness and anarchy, and if you think so then you don’t understand liberty.  In fact, you don’t understand much.  Battlefield USA discusses warts in the liberty movement.

I support your liberty, just like I support your liberty to house just enough explosives in your own home to blow it and yourself up… not mine, nor the whole neighborhood. You might be the most responsible super-duper explosives handler bar none… but give every idiot the “liberty” to store enough explosives in their home to blow up the neighborhood is just plain stupidity.

There is a reason why the military has hardened weapons bunkers. There was a reason why the colonials had store/arms rooms for their cannons and black powder.

And on and on… There are too many in the “liberty” movement who can not reason, can not logic, who don’t understand that with liberty, comes responsibility.

Just like I told my new neighbor a few years ago. He has every right to party. He has every right to listen to his music… he has no RIGHT to blast his music in my ear and off my windows and walls that my damn windows and walls literally shake and vibrate. I asked him if it was okay if I threw rocks at his ears, windows, and walls… and why not. He GOT THE POINT and apologized.

I’m not the sharpest cookie on the block. I have my faults… but ya know, there are really some dumb fucks in the liberty movement that think liberty is all about them. It’s all about the… individual… and by individual, they mean… all about them.

I have a responsibility to not endanger your life. I don’t drive drunk. I don’t go outside and go all Rambo with my firearm. I don’t drive down the street like a maniac at 120 mph. I don’t house enough black powder to blow up the whole frikkin block… or my own house.

I have as much as a responsibility for you and yours as you do for me and mine.

When you are out there doing your liberty thing… keep that in mind.

Otherwise, you’re just a savage. Which is an excuse for license.

Ferguson is the hive’s chickens coming home to roost.  It is the collectivist’s nightmare.  A class of people who have had the family destroyed for generations, been taught that we owe them something for generations, and think they can break the law with impunity, are at odds with the police and other authorities, while the police and other authorities are under criticism for using the very tactics on this entitled class that the collectivists set them to to use, because they want to fill in the gap and prevent the effects of consequences (I think Mike Vanderboegh pointed out something like that with his clever title).  We should all stand back and say to the collectivists, “Look upon what thou hast created.  Are you proud?”

Nightmare.  And it’s just beginning.  Ferguson is a microcosm of Chicago, LA, Houston, New York, and Atlanta.  It’s all unraveling for them.  Your job is to be prepared, not to side with any of them.  This is their nightmare.  Let them live it alone.  Let Ferguson burn.  Don’t fill in the gaps for them.  Don’t side with criminals or militarized police.  Let it all collapse, you have no friends in the fight.

My good friend Tim Lynch sent me a note today that is so valuable that it needs to be shared with my readers.  I asked Tim permission to do so in its entirety.  Tim was a contractor (military and intelligence) in Afghanistan for about a decade.

He knows more about Afghanistan (and as much about Jihad) as any English speaking man alive.  His words should be studied.

Thanks for that Herschel I didn’t know or correspond with Jim when he was in Afghanistan and that is no doubt my loss.  Seeing him go that way makes me pissed too.  It reminds me that in both Afghanistan and Iraq the Jihadis faced the most danger when activly fighting Americans.  If they were wound and captured or just captured by the Americans they were in the safest situation they could possibly be in given the time and place.  Literally – they would not be safer no matter where they were or who they were with if they were captured by our military.  Conversely an American was in mortal danger not while fighting Jihadis but if captured by them.  The Jihadis were horrible at fighting, cowards when hard pressed but lions once their foes were wounded, hog tied and under their control.

I hate cowards more than just about anything and those punks, who would cut and run in the blink of an eye if they felt pressure on their flanks, are straight up cowards.  And only cowards could believe that beheading captives will put fear in a warriors heart – it does the exact opposite and this country still produces enough men who will run through the fires of hell just to sink a bayonet into the guts of cowards who threaten our way of life.

Those shitbirds will find that out soon enough.

Mike Vanderboegh: Police shoot and kill an Ohio dad, 22, holding a BB gun in Walmart.  I say prosecute them for murder.  If I did that I would be in the state penitentiary.  They should be too.  One long term solution is to legalize open carry everywhere, at all times.

Matt Bracken has an outstanding piece up at WRSA on The Islamic Jihad Conquest Formula.  Matt hits the nail on the head.

David Codrea:

“A citizen will lose his appeal if the Attorney General can prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, not that the individual poses a risk, or that the person is a terrorist, or even that the person is under investigation; rather, the Attorney General must only demonstrate that the person has been placed on a terror watch list,” Titus continued.

“Once that has been proven, a process which affords the citizen no due process, no right to appeal, nor guarantees any reasonable notice or information to the actual fact that the citizen is on a terror watch list, the appeal is over and the citizen loses his Second Amendment Right to Bear Arms,” Titus elaborated. “The individual will not have a chance to introduce evidence of mistaken identity, abuse of Executive discretion or mount any other meaningful defense.”

Oh my.  This seems like more inside-the-beltway rulemaking gone awry.  Perhaps they put this in the federal register, perhaps not.  Perhaps they kept it out with approval of the rubber-stamp FISA courts.  Either way, you can bet that this is more infringement.

And speaking of David, he says he doesn’t like to go around link-whoring his articles.  He isn’t posting to Facebook anymore, but that’s fine with me because I make WoG a stop several times a day to see what David is saying.  David is a nice guy so he doesn’t like to link-whore.  I’m not, and I don’t mind it at all.  Traffic means that even if it is a poor article, my Google page rank increases, sending more traffic and increasing my voice of advocacy.  I do this for advocacy, not for ego (or at least, so I say).  I don’t really care what you think about me, but I want you to listen to my views because I want to change your mind.  But for David, he deserves to make a living at this, and I ask that you stop by every day to see what you can do to send him traffic.

Kurt Hofmann:

Frum notes that about 42 percent of police deaths this year were by gunfire. Whether that statistic is intended to justify the shooting death of unarmed Michael Brown, or the outrageously heavy-handed efforts to quell the unrest (a task now being handed off by the heavily militarized police to the actual military, as the National Guard is brought in), we can only guess.

Frum also asks if anyone thinks that “things [would] be better in Ferguson if the demonstrators were armed.” Well, some of the brutalized demonstrators might.

Perhaps the most chilling of this series of tweets was his observation about the supposed law enforcement need for heavy body armor:

Fewer guns in hands of the policed ==> less need for body armor on those who do the policing …

Oh good grief.  We just can’t get away from Frum can we?  Visit Kurt’s piece to see his full analysis.  As for my comments, I think that David Frum is an idiot.  And I think he’s chicken little.  And I think he should feel bad about himself.

Even the NYT is asking Who Will Stand Up For Christians?  Well, not the Christian church.  As I have pointed out, they don’t give a damn.

California:

For one California man, what began as a day fishing trip quickly turned into a five-day fight for survival.

Mike Vilhauer, 58, went fishing Aug. 6 at Lower Sunset Lake in Alpine County when he noticed he wasn’t catching any fish. Deciding he needed more bait, Vilhauer, butterfly net in hand, left on what he thought would be a short trip to find some grasshoppers.

“I was just zigzagging up and down the mountain,” Vilhauer told ABC News. “I didn’t see anyone for quite a while.”

After a few hours, Vilhauer said it began to get late, and he decided he should probably head back to the fishing site. “That’s when the fun began,” he said.

Vilhauer began to make his way towards what he thought was the fishing site. But with darkness upon him at about 8 p.m., he decided to make shelter under a pine tree, covering himself with pine needles and willow branches in an attempt to stay warm. Vilhauer attempted to call 911, but a weak signal thwarted his efforts.

Vilhauer continued his search for the help on Thursday. Weak from his lack of food and water, he adapted what he called his “survivor man routine,” drinking water out of puddles, regardless of what else was in the puddle.

“I thought ‘I’m going to keep walking, I’m going to get back to my wife,’” said Vilhauer, who lives in West Sacramento.

After trying to find a way back the whole day, Vilhauer came across a stream and began to follow it before the sun began to set. Setting up a camp of tree bark and needles, he slept for another night in the open wilderness.

He was crushed to find on Friday morning that the stream came to a dead end. “At this point I’m thinking ‘Man, this is looking bad,’” Vilhauer said.

Vilhauer continued to wander in circles on Friday, unsure of where he was or where to go next. Exhausted and hungry, he set up camp under a large rock.

“I hadn’t slept at all,” said Villhauer, “It was cold and I just tried to keep moving around. It rained every night.”

Saturday morning brought no relief.

“I hadn’t eaten since Wednesday morning,” said Villhauer, “I was so weak, I could only do so much before getting too exhausted and having to lie down.”

Grounding himself underneath the rock, Villhauer tried to build up his strength. He decided he would try to climb up the side of the ridge, only to find out that every time he thought he had reached the top, there ended up just being another peak ahead.

Suddenly, Villhauer could hear helicopters in the distance. One flew overhead, but kept going, leaving Villhauer “disheartened.”

“It was a rollercoaster of emotions,” said Villhauer, “I thought, ‘You know what? I’m done. This is it.’”

“I was thinking about my family and my wife and all of the stupid things I’d done to get myself into that position,” said Villhauer.

“And then, after 10 to 15 minutes I decided ‘No. Hell no. I’m not going to give up, I’m going to get down to that stream and I’m going to sit there and wait until somebody finds me,’” he added.

Villhauer made his way back down the stream, drinking out of puddles along the way, and made his way back to the rock.

He picked up a piece of driftwood and began writing his last words to his wife.

“I put all of these thoughts down, I had to continue on another piece of drift wood,” Villhauer said.

He then used cypress needles to spell out “HELP”, saying “I figured if I don’t make it, at least I gave it my best shot.”

Sunday morning, Villhauer had just had his first meal in five days – a dandelion – when he heard the helicopters again.

“I got excited, I started waving around my blue shirt on a stick,” said Villhauer as the helicopter kept repeatedly flying over and then leaving.

“It was a big rush, and then the letdown. A big rush, and the letdown,” described Villhauer, who assumed that the choppers were operating on a grid system, so once they deemed the area clear they would not be returning.

“I figured, if they hadn’t seen me yet, I was in here for the long haul.”

The choppers returned and began circling Villhauer, when he suddenly heard a bark from behind him. It was a search dog leading one of the rescue teams that had been looking for Villhauer since Friday.

After five days in the wilderness, he had been saved.

Folks, as I have pointed out so many times, carry a day pack / patrol bag.  Twenty pounds can save your life.  You need: (a) a gun, (b) fire starter, (c) a tactical light, (d) 550 cord, (e) water, (f) a heavy rubberized poncho, and (g) a compass.

With the gun you can protect yourself, with the light you can see at night, with the fire you can prevent hypothermia, with the poncho and 550 cord you can make shelter in under two minutes, you need the water to live and you need the compass to navigate.  You may even go comfortable and carry along a few energy bars.

Why is this so hard?  Why do people go into the wilderness unprepared?

Journalist James Foley (he corresponded with me as Jim) has been beheaded by ISIS.  I choose not to remember him from the recent photographs, but as the wonderful young man he was.  As a note to ISIS, I don’t believe a word he had to say while under duress.  I knew him better than you did.  You wasted your time with his confessions, or charges, or whatever you forced him to say.

We first corresponded during my blogging on the war in Afghanistan.  I initiated the conversations with him, but he was very warm in his effusive praise and kindness towards me.  He worked primarily for the Global Post, but did a good bit of embedded independent work.  He was in Kandahar at the time, and politely recommended that I link his blog, A World Of Troubles, which redirects now to Free James Foley.

Jim was kidnapped in Libya early in 2011.  I had also made significant use of his fantastic work in The Five Hundred Meter War.  The U.S. Army later contacted me wanting the rights to use this video in training and analysis, and I directed them to Jim who (I hope) made some money from the work.  He told me that he would gladly sell the rights for a small fee.

I have since reconsidered my position on long distance warfare, and concluded that it isn’t necessarily that the 5.56 mm round is all that ineffective at long distances, but that based on subsequent conversations with various officers, no one (Army or Marine Corps) teaches their men to shoot uphill.  All of their ranges are flat.  Then again, the 5.56 mm round does tend to yaw in flight, which causes problems at long distances.  But Travis Haley has shown us that the 5.56 mm can be effective to beyond 500 yards, and my son qualified at 500 yards as a Marine.

But I digress.  Suffice it to say that Jim was an important voice in bringing this feature of the war to our attention.  Jim called me “an important voice in the war” in one e-mail exchange, but Jim’s voice was far more important.  His reporting was at the same time fact-filled and accurate, and personal and engaging. Jim was the consummate professional, but a genuinely nice person.

I have long since left analysis of the war(s), given that we failed to negotiate a reasonable SOFA in Iraq and proved that we wanted to continue the social sciences game in Afghanistan rather than prosecute a war.  I recommended that we leave without another drop of American blood spilled, and never looked back.

Sort of.  I have often thought of Jim and what might be happening to him.  There aren’t many folks from those days I know only electronically to whom I feel such a kinship.  Tim Lynch and Michael Yon are a couple, but the list is short.  People like that are the sort where if you met up with them somewhere it would be like meeting a long lost brother, and the conversation would flow without any effort at all.

It was hard to be accepted in military blogging with such parochial and hierarchical (even if unofficial) structure, and with the desire for control by a few.  Jim’s acceptance and warmness was welcome, as it is with the folks whom I engage in my current interests of gun and gun rights (like David Codrea and Mike Vanderboegh).

I will miss Jim.  I give my warmest, most sincere and most heartfelt condolences to his family.  Your family gave us a good and wonderful man.  We are worse for this loss.

My brief note to ISIS is this.  You screwed up.  I’ve previously been told how good you are, how savvy, how connected to social networks you’ve been and how you’re coming for us.

I can’t speak for the folks up North since the collectivists may have disarmed my fellow countrymen by now, but I dare ISIS to come South and bring your brand of sharia to North Carolina or South Carolina.  I dare you.

You don’t scare me in the least and you didn’t impress me by harming my friend Jim.  Come to the land where the American insurgents beat up the best that Lord Cornwallis had to offer.  Come try to plant your damn ISIS flag in my front yard, or try to force my wife or daughter to wear a burqa.  The result will be swift and brutal, involving magazines full of 5.56 mm rounds and 230 grain fat boys.  I have guns too, and mine still have their buttstocks unlike your dumb ass rifles that can’t be aimed.  Mine can shoot 1 MOA, and I can do about the same.  I see your stupid videos where you waste ammunition by shooting at the air.  I’ve laughed at them.

I had previously lamented the plight of the poor Christians in Syria and Iraq, pleading with them and Christians around the world to arm themselves before it is too late.  I have ridiculed the Christian church worldwide for its sloth, arrogance and self centeredness in refusing to help fellow Christians or even pray for them.

But this isn’t just a world away.  It’s personal, for I knew Jim.  You killed a friend, and I owe you.  I pray that you end in hell, and that very soon, screaming out in agony from thirst while you suffer in the lake of fire for eternity.  My only regret is that in all likelihood I won’t be the one to send you there.  I don’t think you’ll ever get to my doorstep.  You’ll die before you make it here because my armed fellow countrymen won’t tolerate you.

UPDATE:

I am sent an article by Daniel Greenfield, published at Front Page Magazine.  It is entitled James Foley Went Looking to Support Terrorists in Syria, Instead They Cut Off His Head.  I have learned to ignore anything published at Front Page Magazine, but in the interest of full disclosure and openness, I’ll give the link below.

Daniel’s thesis is that he was a terrorist sympathizer.  He knows this based on his Twitter feed where he retweeted the posts others made.  Certainly, based on Jim’s review of my own analysis work of OIF (communicated directly to me), he was no terrorist sympathizer.  He was an independent journalist.  In fact, Daniel’s commeters try to tell him in the comments that Jim was taken to task in his Twitter feed for NOT taking sides.  It’s too late at that point.  Daniel is committed to his thesis and can’t roll it back.  This is one of the hazards of writing.

I think Greenfield otherwise does good analysis, but I think he missed the boat on this one, and badly so.  For me his thesis lands somewhere between highly unlikely and totally impossible.  It is my policy never to link to Front Page Magazine.  I’ll break that policy this one time and give you Daniel’s article in the interest of full disclosure and to show that I’m always willing to listen to all sides.

UPDATE #2:

Tom Rogan:

His death won’t be broadcast many places, but take my word for his final courage. As the terrorist moves his knife downwards, Foley grimaces but does not cry out. This, after all, is the man that he was, a man who faced great danger to bring knowledge to the world. After being imprisoned by Qaddafi loyalists for 44 days during the Libyan civil war, Foley returned to the country to finish his reporting. When asked why he did so, Foley offered a simple answer. “Why wouldn’t I go back? People had done so much for me back home. I was humbled, I felt indebted to them. [We] wanted to connect the dots; we wanted to finish that story.”

Foley did finish that story (the series about his captivity is here). We should always remember his life and his accomplishments. But we must also remember his moment of passing: facing down a murderer hiding behind a black mask.

And from PBS:

… she was worried that I was being forced to say everything I was saying over the phone. And I just wanted to tell her I was strong, I was praying, I could make it. I knew it was going to be more time, but I was doing — physically, I was fine, and I wasn’t being harmed.

And she was worried that they were making me say these things, but she also said, oh, so many people have been praying for you and so many of your friends and family have come to our assistance.

Remember when I said this?

The judge should be impeached, and as for the claim that Mississippi would turn into the Wild, Wild West, I think that the fear is exactly the opposite.  I think that everyone knows that nothing untoward will occur, and thus Mississippi will become an example to the rest of the states (e.g., Texas, South Carolina, etc.) that have not been traditional open carry states but choose to change that …

In the end, this stolid judge’s day in the sun will soon go away, guns will be openly carried in Mississippi, the Wild, Wild West will not obtain, and LEOs like Chief John Miller will be ridiculed for their fear mongering.

And everything will be made right.

There is this report from the Clarion-Ledger:

About this time last year, there was furor about state House Bill 2, the “open carry” bill.

HB 2 allows someone to openly carry a firearm. It caused an uproar, and litigation to block it, even though the state constitution already had given Mississippians such a right since 1890.

In late August last year, with opponents warning it would bring “chaos” and “the wild West” and with no-guns-allowed signs popping up everywhere, the state Supreme Court upheld the law.

Since then, I’ve noticed … nothing. I’ve seen two people who I suspected were just citizens and not law enforcement wearing holstered pistols. Neither caused an uproar, and neither of their pistols jumped out of their holsters and committed a crime.

“A year later, we don’t have the wild, wild West,” said HB 2’s author, Rep. Andy Gipson, R-Braxton.

Ken Winter, director of the Mississippi police chiefs’ association, last year had voiced serious concern about HB 2. Last week he noted he still has concerns but, “It’s kind of been a non-issue.”

“Personally, I haven’t seen anybody carrying,” Winter said. “I live just outside a small town here in north Mississippi, so I figure if people would be swinging hoglegs anywhere it would be here.”

So it would appear gun-owning Mississippians were granted a right (again, one they already had) and — lo and behold — the vast majority appeared to be sensible and law-abiding about it.

Anyone over about 30 might remember when Mississippians practiced this right years ago, with gun racks in most every pickup. That stopped because criminals were stealing them, even though there were laws against auto burglary and larceny.

That’s the thing about gun laws and restrictions. Short of total bans, they’re not effective. They apply to and restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens.

And thus am I ridiculing Chief John Miller, Judge Winston Kidd, Jody Owens of the Southern Preposterous Lie Center (who said “We’re looking at a Wild West scenario”) and all the other fear mongers.  And everything has been made right on this issue in Mississippi.

Now the next step is to end the machinations of communist South Carolina State Senator Larry Martin and bring constitutional carry to South Carolina.

LA Times:

The department has posted the list, complete with pictures, on its SPD Blotter website. It includes floatation vests and binoculars, signage and gloves, pistol holders, a radiation detector and rifle sights “used by the approximately 130 officers who have passed the department’s rifle-certification program.”

“We have equipment that we feel is necessary for a city of our size,” Whitcomb told The Times. “The equipment we have serves a police purpose. Our No. 1 priorities are protecting people’s lives and looking after their well-being. Our second most important is looking after possessions and property.

“The gear that our department employees use … is primarily defensive in nature,” Whitcomb said. “Our equipment is police specific. We don’t have any military weaponry. The weapons we do own are specific to our profession. … No rockets, no predator drones, no cannons, no tanks.”

The department’s SWAT team does use a BearCat – an armored truck for situations where there may be gunfire, Whitcomb said, but such a vehicle is standard operating procedure for modern police departments.

“It’s used to get our personnel in and out safely, so we can rescue people and evacuate if necessary,” Whitcomb said. “You cannot do that in a sedan. Though we have put some armored plating on the doors in our cars. We also have purchased ballistic shields. It all goes back to the problem of gun violence in our country. … But ultimately we are a police service. We are not the military.”

This is a red herring.  Only seven percent of all SWAT deployments are for hostage, barricades or active shooter situations.

So here’s the deal.  To the Seattle Police Department, you are liars.  I don’t believe you since you invoked a rarely used justification for having SWAT.

What you really want to do is use SWAT to save evidence by busting in doors and invading homes.  Frankly, I don’t give a damn about your evidence collection.  Find another way, including the old fashioned use of detective work.  Or in other words, be thinking men and women rather than knuckle draggers.

You promise me that you’ll never use SWAT in incidents unless it involves hostages or active shooters, and I’ll take back my charge that you’re liars.

Any takers among the PDs who read these pages?  I’m waiting.

And by the way, that picture of the police “sniper” shows it to be absolutely the goofiest setup on a rifle I’ve ever seen.  I certainly wouldn’t use that setup.  You can read more here if you wish.  I’m just not interested enough to elucidate the details for you.  Readers may wish to weigh in.  And I wonder how the U.S. Marine Corps feels about this jerk wearing MARPAT?