Articles by Herschel Smith

Business Insider:

A recent poll suggests Americans will consider the gun debate a pivotal point in the 2014 elections. So we wanted to explore how Americans kept the right to bear arms in the first place. As it turns out, grammar is the culprit.

Take a look at the Second Amendment:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

That little, red comma caused the Supreme Court to strike down D.C.’s ban on handguns, the country’s strictest gun control law to date.

Before the Supreme Court heard the case, the D.C. circuit court of appeals nixed the ban, too. “According to the court, the second comma divides the amendment into two clauses: one ‘prefatory’ and the other ‘operative.’ On this reading, the bit about a well-regulated militia is just preliminary throat clearing; the framers don’t really get down to business until they start talking about ‘the right of the people … shall not be infringed,'” The New York Times reported.

Gun control proponents argue the founders used commas more frequently than common English today, Ross Guberman wrote in his legal writing blog. Some historians even claim that many states ratified a version of the Second Amendment with only two commas, not three. The extra commas don’t mean much in that context, the argument goes.

Straining at a literary gnat to swallow a camel.  This is what happens with you superimpose literary criticism over the inherent rights of mankind.  The title of the commentary is telling: “How a comma gave gave Americans the right to own guns.”

The author, poor Christina, believes that rights are granted by the state, as she was no doubt taught by her college professors.  Nay, Christina.  God gives us rights and you cannot take them away.  Neither can any state – all a state can do is formally recognize what God has granted.

As for the silly argument over commas, let’s hurry the death of this debate by a simple observation.  Rather than turn to grammar to understand how the colonialists thought, recall how they saw weapons in their day.

In the colonies, availability of hunting and need for defense led to armament statues comparable to those of the early Saxon times. In 1623, Virginia forbade its colonists to travel unless they were “well armed”; in 1631 it required colonists to engage in target practice on Sunday and to “bring their peeces to church.” In 1658 it required every householder to have a functioning firearm within his house and in 1673 its laws provided that a citizen who claimed he was too poor to purchase a firearm would have one purchased for him by the government, which would then require him to pay a reasonable price when able to do so. In Massachusetts, the first session of the legislature ordered that not only freemen, but also indentured servants own firearms and in 1644 it imposed a stern 6 shilling fine upon any citizen who was not armed.

Whatever else you might find significant in one comma, two commas or three commas, and whatever else you think the second amendment means, it cannot possibly mean something contrary to the way the colonialists believed and behaved.  And thus it cannot possibly mean that they intended to garrison all weapons in an armory controlled by the state.

Christina needs to do some historical reading, as do most Americans.  A comma cannot take away your God-given rights any more than it can grant them to you.

Missoulian:

A federal appeals court on Friday ruled against state laws designed to buck federal gun rules — but advocates welcomed the court’s decision for leaving open the possibility of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday agreed with a lower court’s decision against the 2009 Montana Firearms Freedom Act, which also has been adopted in other pro-gun states. The laws attempt to declare that federal firearms regulations don’t apply to guns made and kept in that state.

The Justice Department successfully argued that the courts have already decided Congress can use its power to regulate interstate commerce to set standards on such items as guns. Some gun control advocates sided with the federal argument, saying that “firearm freedom acts” would allow felons to obtain guns without background checks and make it harder to trace guns used in crimes.

The Montana Shooting Sports Association said it had expected the appeals court would rule against the law.

The group’s president, Gary Marbut, argued in the case that he wanted to manufacture a small, bolt-action youth-model rifle called the “Montana Buckaroo” for sale in Montana. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms pre-emptively told Marbut such a gun would be illegal under Montana law.

“This was about as good of a ruling as we could have expected from the 9th Circuit. We must get to the U.S. Supreme Court to accomplish our goal of overturning 70 years of flawed Supreme Court rulings on the interstate commerce clause,” Marbut said in a release. “Only the Supreme Court can overturn Supreme Court precedent.”

The state of Montana has intervened in support of its law. The case also attracted the support of Utah, Alaska, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

Marbut said the federal government has become a “monster,” that abuses the interstate commerce clause to intrude on states.

Yes.  The federal government has become a monster.  Justice Clarence Thomas is said to be the modern day jurist of the tenth amendment.  But he may be alone, and turning to the monster to slay the monster is bad form and unwise.  It is more likely that they will simply bow to stare decisis and make matters even worse by giving the commerce clause more modern legs, or refuse to hear the case, letting the Ninth Circuit’s decision stand.

And this notion that the Ninth Circuit only did what they could do is ridiculous.  The Ninth Circuit has come down with many a decision that was overturned by the Supreme Court.  For once, when it actually had to do with liberty and freedom the Ninth Circuit had the chance to do something right – and failed again because they’re all losers.

As I’ve said, nullification laws have the legs under them that the states put there.  Montana could have incorporated the company (perhaps they already have) and then arrested federal employees who attempt to enforce federal laws (and thrown them in with the general prison population).

The monster will never admit that he is a monster.  He wants you to fear him and bow to his monstrous intentions and behavior.

No, that’s not my preferred title, but the one used by Adam Winkler:

Adam continues, “The idea that the Second Amendment gives people the right to revolt against government is broadly shared among gun rights extremists” (Adam is referring to people like me – Adam would have been a loyalist during the revolutionary war, I would have charged up King’s Mountain against the loyalist troops) … “The insurrectionist understanding of the Second Amendment fails to account for two other features of the Constitution. First, the Second Amendment itself includes a preamble referring to the necessity of a “well regulated militia.”

Here Adam continues with the well-worn and tired claptrap about well-regulated meaning controlled by the state.  Bob Owens has the must-read defeater argument on this, but since Adam won’t care about this I won’t spend time recapitulating what Bob says.  Adam can continue to wring his hands and worry over things, and we can move on to one salient observation about Scalia.

I have long lamented what I perceive to be the weakness of Heller versus D.C.  But perhaps Scalia really does understand that the Second Amendment has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with hunting or self defense, and has everything to do with ameliorating tyranny.  And perhaps Scalia knows that the Supreme Court had to bite this off in chunks.  If so, this is a welcome evolution in Scalia’s thinking – at least as it pertains to what he feels free to say out loud.

And oh, by the way, the Hughes amendment was an unconstitutional obscenity.

UPDATE: Kurt Hofmann writes me, observing that: ” … Mr. Constitutional Law Professor is already lost, when he talks about any bill in the Bill of Rights giving rights.  Besides, my position has always been that the Second Amendment does not protect “the right to revolt,” but protects the right to the means of effective revolt.  When revolt becomes necessary, a Constitutionally protected “right to revolt” wouldn’t matter, even if there were one, because by then, the Constitution will no longer be relevant.”  Good points.

Thanks to David and Mike for the attention.

West Virginia:

A patient at Boone Memorial Hospital is living to tell a story even she says she thought she’d never tell.

“At times I thought I was going to die,” Charlene Hankins said.

Hankins had been missing for 12 days when she was discovered Monday.

Hankins said she was driving to her mother’s house in Oceana when her car ran out of gas deep down an isolated road in the Twilight area of Boone County.

She had no food, no water and tried to get help, but instead she got lost.

[ … ]

She said she ran out of gas and spent the first night in her car.

Crews found her car on Sunday. The gas tank was empty and the keys were still inside.

She told crews she tried to walk to find help, but ended up lost in the woods.

Hankins told crews she lived off berries and mushrooms and tore off the sleeves of her shirt to start a fire.

I’m glad that she was found and is recovering.  The berries, mushrooms and shirt sleeves to start a fire were a nice touch (although the caloric value of mushrooms makes them essentially worthless as a survival food).

But take this as yet another object lesson.  First, I don’t walk from room to room of my home without carrying one of my guns with me, much less take long road trips.  She could have faced black bear, snakes and coyote (panther have been sighted as far north as South Carolina).  Feral hogs would have been a good source of food.

Carrying a parka and 550 cord as part of a survival bracelet would have given her instant shelter in the case of rain (from which she could have died due to exposure).  I also don’t go on road trips without carrying a tactical light, which would have given her ability to see her surroundings at night and a stand-off weapon to blind animals of the two- or four-legged kind.

Finally, I don’t go on road trips (and certainly not backpacking or hiking trips) without a good knife, usually a large folder rather than fixed blade knife, and I always have some sort of liquid container with me.  She apparently carried an ignition source for a fire.

A gun, a parka, a knife, 550 cord, a tactical light, a container and a fire ignition source.  A few light, simple tools can go a long way towards ensuring survival in the case of becoming stranded or lost.  Others may not have fared so well.

The Tennessean:

One of the nation’s largest gun manufacturers, Remington Arms, has looked at sites around Nashville for a potential corporate relocation or expansion that would likely include hundreds of manufacturing jobs.

The Madison, N.C.-based company, which is part of the nation’s largest firearms company and has its largest plant in Ilion, N.Y., has scouted sites near Nashville’s airport, Lebanon and in Clarksville, Tenn.

Remington is among a growing number of gun manufacturers nationwide that have been courted by states pitching themselves as more gun-friendly. The wooing came after a handful of states, including New York, passed tougher gun control laws in the aftermath of last December’s shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., which claimed the lives of 20 first-graders and six educators.

Remington’s roughly 1,200-employee plant in Ilion makes rifles such as the Bushmaster semiautomatic weapon, which is now banned under New York’s Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act, the first law passed by any state post-Newtown.

In addition to the much stricter definition of assault weapons, which now includes semiautomatic pistols and rifles with detachable magazines and one military-style feature, the New York SAFE Act banned magazines that contain more than seven rounds, required instant background checks on all ammunition purchases at the time of the sale and required mental health professionals to report concerns about a gun-owning patient who posed a risk of harming himself or others.

Quick passage of that law upset not only the gunmakers, but also residents of that state who own certain guns, said Erin Crowe, office coordinator for the Mohawk Valley Chamber of Commerce in Utica, N.Y. “Ilion, New York, is Remington — if it wasn’t for Remington, Ilion wouldn’t exist,” she said. “There’s not a lot of new industries coming to central New York, so if you take a huge company like that and they leave, our unemployment rate is going to skyrocket.”

People familiar with Remington’s exploration of sites said the company looked around the Nashville area as recently as within the past month …

In Middle Tennessee, firearms maker Barrett already has 100 employees at its headquarters and manufacturing plant in Murfreesboro. And the National Rifle Association booked Nashville’s Music City Center convention hall for its 2015 annual convention with about 5,000 delegates.

Analysis & Commentary

This would be a welcome change.  Cerebus / Freedom group, as we’ve seen, purchased numerous smaller gun manufacturers and closed out business while moving said manufacturing to Ilion.  They conglomerated and centralized, and that is good neither for small businesses nor the communities they serve.  There is a difference between buying to make businesses more efficient from business model changes, and buying in order to close down the competition.

Furthermore, in spite of the silly, fawning article National Review did on the plant in Ilion, gun owners never forgive and never forget.  As we’ve discussed, see the Smith & Wesson boycott for a lesson in payback.  Doubtless, Remington Arms didn’t support the recent New York gun laws.  Nevertheless, at least a fraction of money going to purchase Remington products made in Ilion goes towards taxation for a totalitarian state to continue to do their thing.

In the end, I would have preferred that Remington relocate based on principle.  But as I have previously remarked, I am in the market for a good bolt action rifle and was looking at the Remington 700 series.  I am no longer considering Remington at all (for a 1911 either) because of the fact that Remington is primarily located in New York.  Some of my readers weighed in similarly.  With this change, if Remington indeed relocates its plant in Ilion, perhaps I’ll reconsider.  If principle cannot force Remington to move, then perhaps market pressure can.  Ruger is already ahead of the game.

Finally, I would prefer that Remington consider South Carolina.  Remember, anywhere in S.C. is no more than several hours from one of the best beaches on earth and some of the most beautiful mountains on earth.  Then again, Middle Tennessee ain’t bad.  Remington should be encouraged to move.  Their employees can enjoy the vista at Mount Le Conte and Clingman’s Dome within a few hours drive from where they will live.  They will find good churches, and the people are warm and friendly.

Make it happen without delay.

Kurt Hofmann:

If true–if Christie really believes that this will be enough to appease gun rights advocates–he is adding insult to the injury of the extremely draconian anti-gun bills he has signed, like the one that enables the federal government to disarm anyone it chooses, simply by designating political enemies as “suspected terrorists.” One would certainly hope that gun rights advocates are both far too intelligent and far too proud to be bought off that easily.

Yes.  Read all of Kurt’s assessment of Christie’s recent pandering in his rejection of the ban on .50 rifles.  I am equally unimpressed.  Recall that we’ve discussed Chris Christie before.  Chris Christie is a gun grabber from way back who made his fame in New Jersey by supporting the assault weapons ban.

David Codrea notes another source that points out that Christie opposed concealed carry in New Jersey and is admitted to support strict gun control.

Chris Christie is of the get the hell off the beach crowd of obnoxious, loud mouth, blow hard, windbags who like to run the lives of other people.  However, that’s not what’s really wrong with him.  I may be a loud mouth too, but at least I’m not a totalitarian.  But it would be just like the dead elephant party to nominate this man for national office.

CNN:

… a 12-year-old girl jogging in Michigan is among the latest victims in a spate of bear attacks that have left seven people mauled in five states since Thursday.

Abby Wetherell was out on her nightly jog when she was ambushed by a black bear Thursday outside her home in Cadillac, Michigan. She tried to run at first, but, “It just took me down,” she told CNN’s Piers Morgan Live.

“It clawed me and it was growling,” she said. “It was scary.”

Eventually, she said, she played dead, hoping it would go away. It did, but not before inflicting cuts and scrapes to her face and deep gashes on her legs that required dozens of stitches.

“I just thought I was going to die,” she said. “It was very terrifying.”

After the bear left, Abby ran toward a neighbor’s house, screaming for help. The bear came after her once again, but neighbors were able to scare it away, she said.

Her father, Chris Wetherell, heard her screams and ran out of the house with a gun, but the animal was gone by then, he said.

Authorities also reported attacks in Alaska, Colorado, Wyoming and Idaho …

“The common belief that surprising a mother bear with cubs is the most dangerous kind of black bear encounter is inaccurate, the University of Calgary said in a summary of the study. “Instead, lone male black bears hunting people as a potential source of food are a greater cause of deadly maulings and related predatory attempts.

Other recent incidents include:

A hunter mauled by a bear in Alaska survived 36 hours in the remote wilderness before rescuers found him using night-vision goggles, the Alaska National Guard said Saturday.

A bear clawed its way into a tent and bit a sleeping camper on her arm Thursday night, CNN affiliate KCNC reported.

Two hikers at Yellowstone National Park were injured Thursday after the encountered a female grizzly bear and a cub. The sow charged the hikers, leaving claw and bite marks on one, park officials said.

Two habitat technicians collecting data in Shotgun Valley, Idaho, were injured Thursday when a grizzly bear charged, the Jackson Hole Daily reported.

Or how about 15 stray dogs in Houston, Texas, mauling a woman, or maybe 8 or 9 dogs in Fargo, North Dakota and the man they mauled?  Hey, smart boy, tell me the story one more time about how we don’t need high capacity magazines.  It’s my favorite fairy tale.

Prior: Backpacker Shoots Grizzly In Denali, First Life Saved Since Firearms Legal

As if we could take any more, Piers Morgan and Bob Costas talk guns.

As part of an hour-long conversation conducted in front of a live audience, the man who’s hosted a record nine Olympic games shares his stance on gun control and firearm legislation, offering a response to those that suggest assault weapons with high-capacity magazines are necessary as a means of self-defense:

“They always present this theoretical – ‘well, what if there’s not one or two invaders to my home, what if there’s 10 or 12 and after I’ve killed the first eight or nine, I need to reload?’,” quotes Costas. “Yes, let me know when that happens. And between now and when that happens, sadly, there’s going to be another Aurora, there’s going to be another Newtown.”

We all know that Piers Morgan is a liar, so there’s no need to rehearse that.  But Bob wants us to let him know when someone actually needs a high capacity magazine to defend his life.  Well, here you go Bob.  It happened before you ever did this stupid interview.  It has to do with Mr. Stephen Bayezes.

We may suppose that Costas wants it to happen this way instead (via David Codrea).

I never really had any respect for Costas as a sportscaster anyway.  I think he is an amateur.

First, Jerry having some fun.

The V-drill video is found here.

CBS 60 Minutes recently did an absolutely fawning review of a police department in Springfield, Massachusetts, who claims to have implemented counterinsurgency tactics (hereafter COIN – Lesley Stahl incorrectly calls it a strategy, when it is more correctly a set of tactics, techniques and procedures).  You can watch the segment on your own time, but it’s worth pointing out that 60 Minutes didn’t do anything earth-shattering in this segment.  This is a fairly well known and well rehearsed report from 2012, and it is here that we will turn our attention.

SPRINGFIELD, MA (WSHM) – It’s a story CBS 3 has been following – the success of a state and Springfield police initiative in the city’s North End.

Law enforcement and residents say it’s transforming their neighborhood and cutting crime by 68 percent.

“I wish every hotspot community could use it, it has changed the lives of people here,” said Jose Claudio, director of the New North Citizens Council.

Claudio has lived in arguably the city’s most dangerous neighborhood for more than 40 years.

But he and many others aren’t giving up on it.

“This is our city, this is our neighborhood, we need to all work together,” he said.

After a particularly violent week that claimed three lives in the fall of 2009, police and residents were finally fed up with the violence.

“It was, it was a wake-up call for all of us,” said state police Trooper Michael Cutone.

Cutone took a lesson from his time in the Army Special Forces in Iraq and applied them to the streets in the North End.

“Gang members and drug dealers operate very similar to insurgents…by paralyzing the community and instilling fear in the community,” Cutone said.

But it’s more than just locking people up.

“It starts with every neighbor, it starts with every resident of Springfield,” said Claudio.

Claudio invites people he knows involved in the community to weekly meetings. Community and religious leaders and Springfield and state police meet there to talk about recent arrests, complaints and programs that are helping teens.

Issues brought up at Thursday’s meeting led state police to a home on Washburn Street, where a group of kids has allegedly been terrorizing one family.

Cutone says all too often this neighborhood swallows young kids up into a world of fear and abuse.

And most of the time gangs are seen as the only way out.

“It’s very difficult for that young person to say ‘no’ and they get sucked into the gang, so we have to have a counter-message, and one of those counter-messages is Joseph Mendoza,” Cutone said.

CBS 3 first introduced you to Pfc. Joseph Mendoza last week just days after he had graduated from Marine Corp boot camp.

Since seeing his story as a North End kid staying out of trouble and succeeding, families have approached his mom on how they can do the same.

“First young man from this community to go to the student trooper program, a year later from that joins the Marine Corp,” said Cutone.

But his story is not the only one of hope and survival coming out of this neighborhood.

Some of the people that go to the weekly meetings have done time, learned the hard way and are now paying it forward in various ways.

“It’s very humbling and rewarding at the same time,” Cutone said.

Claudio says he knows that once this group continues to scrape away the crime, the people of the North End can turn a corner.

“If everybody takes that pride and makes it happen, this city will be the comeback city,” Claudio said.

C-3 policing is catching the attention of law enforcement all over the nation.

Since seeing its benefits, police from California and North Carolina have visited Springfield to learn about it.

Police in Paterson, New Jersey, have learned about the COIN approach allegedly used in Springfield, and are reaching out to their police department to obtain mentoring to adopt those same tactics.

Analysis & Commentary

The 60 Minutes report is more remarkable for what it doesn’t say concerning the application of COIN in America.  This didn’t begin in a vacuum.  The theoretical underpinnings for this approach have been in the developmental stages for a long time.

The so-called war on drugs was the casus belli for the militarization of the local police forces in the U.S., although it took time to effect the evolution far and wide.  Near the end of the campaign in Iraq, the favorite think tank of the left, the RAND Corporation, published a report in 2009 entitled Does The United States Need A New Police Force For Stability Operations?  In it, Seth Jones, et. al., conclude:

Weighing all considerations, the researchers concluded that the best option would be a 6,000-person hybrid force headquartered in the U.S. Marshals Service. The personnel in reserve status could be employed in state and local police forces so they would be able to exercise police functions in a civilian population daily and could be called up as needed.

The Marshals Service was deemed to have many of the requisite skills. However, its training and management capabilities would need to be expanded to take on this large mission, and it would have to recruit additional personnel as well. The annual cost, $637 million, is reasonable given the capability it buys. The cost savings in relieving military forces of these duties could be greater than required to create the SPF.

The Military Police option was attractive for a number of reasons, especially its capacity, training, and logistical capabilities, but its inability to engage in policing activities when not deployed was a major stumbling block. The Posse Comitatus Act precludes military personnel from exercising police functions in a civilian setting, and legislative relief might be difficult to get.

Not to be outdone or left behind, the military establishment has weighed in with papers advocating the use of U.S. troops for a similar mission on American soil.  One example, causing me forever to lose any respect for Small Wars Journal, was entitled Full Spectrum Operations In The Homeland: A Vision Of The Future, and SWJ followed this up later with Political Violence Prevention: Profiling Domestic Terrorists.  The former paper advocated the use of U.S. military troops for stability operations in America, while the later paper advocated the use of human terrain systems for profiling “domestic terrorists” (I discussed these papers here).

Just to ensure that we all knew that the full force of the think tanks was behind this effort, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point published Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far Right (via Western Rifle Shooters Association).  Several observations may be made at this point.  First, while the seeds for military operations on American soil by police and/or U.S. troops had been planted long ago, watching war occur for a decade across our television screens caused a change in those whose predilections would point them in the direction of waring on American soil.

This is how it is to be done, it was easy to conclude.  Social science with a gun: community involvement, town meetings, law enforcement knowledge of everyone all of the time, biometrics to track people (and especially men of military age), door kicking and killing as punitive measures, all sanctioned by the authorities and fully approved.  A new mission.  No longer will we merely perform constabulary duties.  We must rebuild our cities, bring stability, and ensure that the centralized planners work with the military leaders to guide us all.  The example has been set, and we’ve watched it unfold before our eyes for ten years.  It has been paraded across our television screens for years, and now we know how to do it.

Second, in order to effect this revised mission, they must have the same tactics, same military hardware, and the same doctrine.  Police involving the community sounds warm and acceptable to the uninitiated, but it has a dark underbelly.  The carrot and stick approach requires that they perform as COIN troops, as forces of occupation, to enforce their will.  War is, after all is said and done, the use of violence to enforce your will.

And this history of COIN in America has indeed been violent, partly because of the paradigm which guides the mission.  I know something about the mission because my son is a former Marine and conducted operations in Fallujah in 2007.  He performed counter-sniper operations, cleared rooms with an M4, cleared rooms with his Squad Automatic Weapon, performed satellite patrols, and operated an M2 aboard a helicopter targeting insurgents as they crossed over the Euphrates River into Fallujah after checkpoints had locked down the city.  Marine Corps 2/6 went into Fallujah hard in the summer of 2007, but there’s an interesting instance that demonstrates how SWAT teams operate in America.

The Marines had control of Fallujah, but on rare ocassion special operations would roll through the city on their way to Ramadi after bad actors.  On one such occasion when my son and one other Marine were coupled with Iraqi Police in one precinct, U.S. special operations based in Baghdad sped through his AO.  He stopped them, and emphatically stated, “If you ever speed through my AO like that again in an unmarked vehicle, without uniforms and insignia, I’ll light you up like a f****** Christmas tree and laugh while you bleed out.  You inform me the next time you’re in my AO.”

After that SO and the Marine Corps in Fallujah had a clear understanding and there were no more problems.  But special operations desires anonymity, all of the time.  I am unpersuaded that this is primarily for OPSEC or protection of families, since there is no anonymity for conventional Army or Marines.  But SWAT teams have taken on the same tactics in America, wearing hoods, prohibiting photography, and generally refusing to divulge their identities.

In Chicago SWAT Raid Gone Terribly Wrong, we discussed a case in which the Chicago SWAT team raided a wrong address, hurling profanity at the family, pointing weapons at children, and demanding that one eleven month old show his hands.  I later filed a FOIA request to find out the identities of the officers, and the request was denied.  To have divulged the identities of the officers would not comport with the paradigm of special operations.  But the problem runs deeper, and while we could run through the litany of dilemmas brought by the militarization of police in America, we’ll discuss it is three headings.

While SWAT teams have adopted the tactics of the military, they aren’t trained like the military.  One prime example of this is the death of Mr. Eurie Stamps.  Mr. Stamps was innocent of any wrongdoing.  The police of Framingham, MA., forcibly entered his home and forced him into the prone position on the floor.  One officer who had his finger on the trigger of his weapon stumbled over Mr. Stamps and discharged his firearm into the completely compliant Mr. Stamps, killing him.  My son has been trained to overcome the sympathetic muscle reflex to pull the trigger of his weapon if he stumbles, but SWAT teams have not been through such training, and will never sustain the pressure, get the training or be required to have such skills and abilities.

Max Velocity sums up the situation very well in his discussion of the horrible situation in which the head of a household finds himself in a SWAT raid.

Realizing that this is a Law Enforcement raid, you decline to open fire. The stack comes in through the door. If you decline to fight, you better drop that weapon before they see it, or they will riddle you with bullets. At this point, you are putting your trust in the restraint of the HIT team. They now own you, your house and your family. Remember, they are poorly trained and afraid. They want to go home at the end of their shift. Your safety is not really their concern, only as far as any liability goes. If they kill or injure anyone, they will cover it up and get away with it. You are encouraged to pursue these actions within the system of the courts, but there will never be any satisfaction to be had there. The courts are corrupt and stacked towards the HIT team.

Oh yea, and they just shot and killed your beloved family pet as they made entry.

Remember: It is very important to note that any danger created by the HIT raid is unnecessary and purely created by the actions of the HIT itself. The very methods they use are creating danger, in particular for the home occupants. The HIT is liable, pure and simple, for their unnecessary militarized actions. Any threat to “officer safety” is greatly overborne by the threat to civilian victim safety, and entirely avoidable by the use of civilized methods, as opposed to the current thuggery.

What to expect? If you are not killed immediately, you will have weapons pointed at you. You wife and kids will be rousted out of bed, the family dogs killed and laying around thrashing in front of them. Rifle barrels will be pointed at your family. Death is only a twitchy trigger finger away. You and your wife will be screamed at, cussed at, thrown to the ground and restrained. If you argue you will be tasered and beaten if not shot, until you ‘stop resisting.’ Anyone in your house who is slow to react, such as a handicapped adult looking relative or child, or an ornery old WWII veteran from the Greatest Generation, risks being shot and killed for not immediately complying with orders.

The HIT team now owns your house and your family. They will tear it apart looking for whatever it is they are looking for, even if it is the wrong address. Your kids will be segregated until a social worker arrives to take custody of them. They are now wards of the state until you are freed. You property will be torn up. You will be cussed at and threatened by HIT team guys looking like military in their full gear. They will take all your legally owned firearms and you will never see them again.

They are afraid, trigger happy, generally untrained to perform these functions, and poorly led.  In fact, SWAT teams in America will never rise to the level of control, discipline, leadership and training in special operations or the U.S. Marines.

Even if SWAT teams were trained like the military, their actions violate the fourth amendment of the U.S. constitution.  This is true even if they obtain bench warrants for said operations (although oftentimes they do not).  They operate with virtual impunity since their actions have judicial approval.  In other words, they can generally find a judge who will sign anything.  Without judicial approval for these tactics they would cease to exist, and thus the problem has its cancer deep into the fabric of the establishment.  Judges are usually very well know and deeply influential in their communities anyway, and they not only know about these tactics, they approve of them, both implicitly and explicitly.  The brutality with which the occupants of a home are treated is seen as collateral damage in a society that needs to be controlled with the application of force.

The application of force isn’t discriminatory.  The Pittsburgh SWAT dragged a ten year old out of the bathtub and made him stand naked next to his four year old sister at gunpoint.  The Detroit police were all in a tizzy over an art gallery.

The moment the assault rifles surrounded her, Angie Wong was standing in a leafy art-gallery courtyard with her boyfriend, a lawyer named Paul Kaiser. It was just past 2 A.M., in May, 2008. Wong was twenty-two years old and was dressed for an evening out, in crisp white jeans, a white top, and tall heels that made it difficult not to wobble. The couple had stopped by a regular event hosted by the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit (CAID), a red brick gallery with the aim of “turning Detroit into a model city,” and arrived to find a tipsy, jubilant scene: inside, gallerygoers were looking at art and dancing to a d.j …

Only then did masked figures with guns storm the crowd, shouting, “Get on the fucking ground! Get down, get down!”   Some forty Detroit police officers dressed in commando gear ordered the gallery attendees to line up on their knees, then took their car keys and confiscated their vehicles, largely on the grounds that the gallery lacked the proper permits for dancing and drinking.

A naked ten year old in a bathtub, dancing and drinking at an art gallery … these are the things occupying the SWAT teams of America. In the case of Brian Terry’s death, border agents initially fired bean bags at the killers.  Yet bean bags were precisely what killed a 95 year old innocent man in Park Forrest (via Mike Vanderboegh).

The old man, described by a family member as “wobbly” on his feet, had refused medical attention. The paramedics were called. They brought in the Park Forest police.

First they tased him, but that didn’t work. So they fired a shotgun, hitting him in the stomach with a bean-bag round. Wrana was struck with such force that he bled to death internally, according to the Cook County medical examiner.

“The Japanese military couldn’t get him at the age he was touchable, in a uniform in the war. It took 70 years later for the Park Forest police to do the job,” Wrana’s family attorney, Nicholas Grapsas, a former prosecutor, said in an interview with me Thursday

Illegal Mexicans bent on killing, or a 95 year old veteran of WWII who had done no wrong.  Eh … what’s the difference?  Actually, the irony of these two cases is quite sad.  In the one situation that should garner our support for militarized policing – the border – the authorities are prevented from acting in a manner which would secure the border.  Illegal aliens are (a) promising votes for the Democrats, and (b) workers for Archer-Daniels-Midland and Monsanto as they scarf up family run farms, which they despise, while the American ratepayer and taxpayer foots the bill for medical care, uninsured motorist coverage, welfare and food stamps.  Illegal aliens are loved by the big corporations in light of the corporate welfare that we all pay, and an economic disaster for the balance of Americans.  The border is easy enough to secure, and remains open because the elite and powerful in both parties want it to be open.  So a better way to state this problem may not be that the use of force isn’t discriminating, but that it is discriminating according to the wishes of the power brokers in America.

Finally, the COIN narrative is false.  For those who are interested in the details of my assertions, see the category The Anbar Narrative.  This is a subject that Professor and Colonel Gian Gentile (of West Point) and I have discussed in detail together – that is, the Petraeus narrative is a happy story made for the masses who do not understand warfare.  Petraeus, it is said, stopped being brutal, befriended the people, brought peace to their neighborhoods, listened to the town leaders, and placed his folk in harm’s way in order to make the people safer and thus win hearts and minds.  Winning hearts and minds means that they give up the insurgents, and presto, counterinsurgency made easy.

But there is nothing easy about it, it didn’t exactly happen that way, and in the end more than a thousand Marines perished in the Anbar Province and more than 4000 Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines perished in Iraq.  Afghanistan was the campaign led by the social planners rather than a war fought by the NCOs and their men.  Thus we lost in Afghanistan.  Many tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and others perished in Iraq, and the scene on the street and in the countryside was brutal, bloody and awful.  The belief that the COIN narrative can be applied in America or any place else by coupling with the community is a myth, at least as far as that narrative has been told to America.

The police cannot apply such a paradigm in the hopes of ameliorating social and cultural problems, because the police and armed forces cannot change the soul of mankind.

Summary and Conclusion

The evolution of militarized police in America has its doctrinal roots long ago, but has seen an acceleration during the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The mission has evolved to one of COIN and stability operations, but this is a mission too far for constables.  No constabulary operation or operations can possibly bring cultural change to a community.  Thus the police have become occupational forces, without the training, discipline or leadership of the military, but with veritable impunity and complete judicial approval for their actions.

The use of force is indiscriminate, and armed invasion teams are being used to enforce trivial warrants that at one time would have been enforced by uniformed officers acting wisely and with restraint.  In many cases the innocent suffer, and animals are routinely shot as a potential threat before any other actions occur.  The police will always paint a happy face on their community involvement, but it’s corollary – de facto legalized home invasions by occupational forces – is the dark underbelly for which they anticipate and expect treatment as heroes, much like military troops returning from a hard deployment.

A man’s home is his castle and he has a God-given right to defend it, and thus armed invasion teams, state sanctioned or not and in all but the most extreme circumstances like situations with hostages, are evil and the men who perpetrate them are deeply sinful.  These raids violate constitutional protections, but the judiciary is in bed with the executive branch rather than acting as a balance and counterweight to it.  Judicial approval for these tactics is complete and comprehensive.

Max Velocity has another excellent article where he discusses for us the only possible solutions.  Submit or resist.  Resistance may and probably will mean that you resist alone.  But submission may be equally dangerous, as armed teams acting as LEOs have become a favorite tactic of crime gangs.  Submission may mean that you’re dropping your weapon only to learn that those invading your home intend to rape your wife and kill you and your children.  The health and safety of your family may be at stake, and in fact, the very health and future of the republic.  Choose wisely.  But remember as you choose, the same establishment who would send armed invasion teams to shatter the safety of your home would prefer that you not have weapons.  It makes their job much easier.

Update: Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the attention, and welcome Instapundit readers.

Thanks to Western Rifle Shooters Association for the attention.  WRSA has some worthy ideas for confronting local leadership to ascertain where they stand on these issues.  All politics is local – or at least, it should be.

Thanks to Mike Vanderboegh for the attention.

Thanks to David Codrea for the attention.  David has some salient ideas on hood-wearing shooters.

Other reading:

Max Velocity Tactical, The Home Invasion Dilemma – Discussion & Scenarios

Max Velocity Tactical, Solutions – Followup To The Home Invasion Dilemma

Jack Minor, WND Reports On SWAT Raids On The Innocent

Prior:

Son, Will You Fire On American Citizens?

Police Arrest Man For Filming Raid, Then Shoot His Dog In Front Of Him

Yet Another Wrong Home SWAT Raid

You Have No Right To Invade My Home Or Kill My Beasts

SWAT Team Rams Wrong Man’s Car

The Hazards Of A Militarized Police Force

Another Wrong-Home SWAT Raid

Apparent No-Basis Raid In Kansas

Chicago SWAT Raid Gone Terribly Wrong

Jack Booted SWAT Raids

Police Officers Never Intentionally Pointed Guns At A Sleeping Toddler

Arkansas Town Unleashes SWAT To Patrols Streets

Ogden SWAT Team Raids Wrong Home

Yet Another SWAT Team Raid On The Wrong Home

SWAT Team Terrorizes Family In Wrong Home Raid

What Does A SWAT Team And Eight Children Have In Common?

SWAT Raids A Snake Shooting

SWAT-Capades

Continuing SWAT Raids Errors And Pranks

DEA SWAT Raid And Ninth Circuit Ruling

ATF SWAT Failure

D.C. Police Bullies

One Police Officer Dead And Five Wounded From No-Knock Raid

Judges Siding With SWAT Tactics

The Moral Case Against SWAT Raids

Department Of Education SWAT Raid On Kenneth Wright

The Jose Guerena Raid: A Demonstration Of Tactical Incompetence