Articles by Herschel Smith

One writer at Toledo Blade weighs in with a plea:

I’m still picking buckshot out of my hide from gun-rights advocates — I didn’t say “gun nuts” — who hated my March 31 column about how easy it is to buy an assault-style rifle with 30-round magazines.

Many readers even accused me, and The Blade, of breaking federal law by making a straw purchase of the AR-15 assault-style rifle I bought at a gun show last month. They also asked what the hell I planned to do with it.

To clear the air, it was my gun — not The Blade’s — though the company reimbursed the $1,200 I paid for it. Last week, I donated the weapon to the Toledo Police Department, handing it off to Sgt. Tom Kosmyna and Officer Roger White at the police range in the Scott Park District station.

It sounds to me like he is confessing to a straw purchase, but we’ll leave that issue behind for a moment.  He ends his rambling rant with the the following demand.

… we have to agree to do something. Maybe if we stop screaming at each other, we can find some common ground on guns.

You’re right. I am crazy.

He says that he wants many more gun laws, and so do some Senators.  They have a plan to persuade the others to go along with them.

One of the senators behind the compromise proposal to expand background checks on gun purchases will mount a Senate floor sales pitch Monday, part of a lobbying effort to ensure passage for the key piece of a larger guns bill when it comes to a vote this week.

When the Senate convenes Monday afternoon, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W. Va.) plans to take to the floor to go through his proposal piece-by-piece to dispel what he considers misrepresentations from critics of tighter gun laws. He’ll then challenge colleagues who have any questions to come to join him in the chamber for an open debate, and stay there for as long as it takes to satisfy concerns.

Manchin’s move to mount a kind of reverse filibuster in favor of his proposal aims to get ahead of critics as the Senate opens what could be a weeks-long process of considering alternative proposals that would either strengthen or weaken the legislation.

Manchin’s plan is essentially the same as the aforementioned writer.  Talk enough and everyone will eventually agree to agree, or agree to disagree but go along, or something like that.  And despite the fact that I have pointed out the inherent weakness in the language of the bill (see “notwithstanding”), Alan Gottlieb, Chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and Founder of the Second Amendment Foundation staked an authorship claim to the bill.

Cover, as they see it.  Toomey needs it, and thinks it will be enough, and I sense a problem with Manchin.  This has turned into his centerpiece legislation, and he knows that he either needs to convince gun owners that it’s okay, or succeed for Mr. Obama so that he has a place in the administration if he becomes so toxic in West Virginia that he can no longer function or live there.

But the reason our writer at Toledo Blade received such criticism is that the polls are wrong, and there is no cover.  Senator Chris Murphy puts the order like this: “The N.R.A., doing the bidding of the industry, ratchets up paranoia about government so that those people will go out and buy more guns.”

Murphy has it all wrong.  The NRA is hearing from its constituency (that would be us), and the firearms manufacturers do our bidding.  We’re the boss.  A firearm hasn’t been fully vetted until it hits the American civilian market (the military forces its folks to use the bidder of choice), and the manufacturers respond to us.  They make what we want.  They earn our money, and if you think that we sit back and wait for the manufacturers to tell us what to think, just ask Smith and Wesson what happened as a result of their agreement with the Clinton administration.

Having Alan Gottlieb on their side won’t work.  There is no cover large enough to protect them.  More talk won’t convince us to take part in their intentions, or to approve those who do.  As long as common ground or compromise means more gun laws (as opposed to repeal of some of the ones we already have), there is no common ground, and there is no compromise.

No new gun laws.  Period.  No compromise, no vacillation.  It’s more than the proposed bill being a “slippery slope.”  It is that, but it’s more.  The law itself does nothing for crime, and universal background checks (and the corollary national gun registry) empower the government rather than the people.  As one writer put it:

This entire gun-control farce is a rigged, premeditated sham, and the outcome was determined before a single page of this legislative abortion hit the senate floor. The bill itself is a convoluted mess, with ambiguous terms, poorly worded and broad declarations, and is nothing less than an article of outright tyranny that no civil and liberty loving patriot should be able to peacefully tolerate. This is by deliberate design. Easy to follow, clear, and reasonable laws are not a tool tyrants can easily exploit or profit from.

Because this law would empower the federal government and interfere with our rights, it would be what we call an intolerable act.  You cannot talk us into agreeing with an intolerable act regardless of how emotionally you present your case or how long you persevere, and you’re warned to tread carefully.

These are very dangerous times we’re approaching.

Prior: The Coming Federal Gun Registry

UPDATE: David Kopel writing at The Volokh Conspiracy.

The Toomey-Manchin Amendment which may be offered as soon as Tuesday to Senator Reid’s gun control bill are billed as a “compromise” which contain a variety of provisions for gun control, and other provisions to enhance gun rights. Some of the latter, however, are not what they seem. They are badly miswritten, and are in fact major advancements for gun control. In particular:

1. The provision which claims to outlaw national gun registration in fact authorizes a national gun registry.

2. The provision which is supposed to strengthen existing federal law protecting the interstate transportation of personal firearms in fact cripples that protection.

Let’s start with registration. Here’s the Machin-Toomey text.

(c) Prohibition of National Gun Registry.-Section 923 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:
“(m) The Attorney General may not consolidate or centralize the records of the
“(1) acquisition or disposition of firearms, or any portion thereof, maintained by
“(A) a person with a valid, current license under this chapter;
“(B) an unlicensed transferor under section 922(t); or
“(2) possession or ownership of a firearm, maintained by any medical or health insurance entity.”.

The limit on creating a registry applies only to the Attorney General (and thus to entities under his direct control, such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives). By a straightforward application of inclusio unius exclusio alterius  it is permissible for entities other than the Attorney General to create gun registries, using whatever information they can acquire from their own operations.  For example, the Secretary of HHS may consolidate and centralize whatever firearms records are maintained by any medical or health insurance entity. The Secretary of the Army may consolidate and centralize records about personal guns owned by military personnel and their families.

The Attorney General may not create a registry from the records of “a person with a valid, current license under this chapter.” In other words, the AG may not harvest the records of persons who currently hold a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Thus, pursuant to inclusio unius, the AG may centralize and consolidate the records of FFLs who have retired from their business.

Under current law, retired FFLs must send their sales records to BATFE. 18 USC 923(g)(4); 27 CFR 478.127. During the Clinton administration, a program was begun to put these records into a consolidated gun registry. The program was controversial and (as far as we know) was eventually stopped. Manchin-Toomey provides it with legal legitimacy.

Which of course is what I’ve been saying, although not in as much detail.  Read it all.  On and on it goes.  The bill is more than just a sellout.  It’s Fascism, plain and simple.

David Codrea:

The draft of S. 649 that provides the framework for the legislative arguments that lie ahead contains an item that could prove highly controversial, even though no one has, until now, recognized it, let alone raised it as an issue. While there is much to discuss in the entire bill, one particular seemingly-overlooked section could prove contentious not by what it includes, but by what it doesn’t, and that in turn reflects recent and profound political changes that have marked significant milestones in the Obama administration’s “progressive” agenda.

Sort of like the college kids who campaigned for their great god-man Obama, only to find out that the economy sucks, there are no jobs, they have huge loans to pay off with no hope of ever getting their heads above water, drones could be watching their actions from the sky, SWAT teams continue to swoop in and shoot at them for smoking pot, and there is no hope of any kind of support, financial or medical, from a country that is far worse off than flat broke.  Is that the kind of oops we’re talking about?

Read it all at Examiner.

The Toomey (R) – Manchin (D) deal is said to involve gives and takeaways to gun owner rights.  But David Addington at Heritage has written a smart analysis of at least one peril that America faces with the plan.

The STM bill fuzzes up the law prohibiting a federal gun registry. First, the legislation says that nothing in the legislation shall be construed to allow establishment of a federal firearms registry. In addition, it says that the Attorney General may not consolidate or centralize records of firearms acquisition and disposition maintained by licensed importers, manufacturers, and dealers, and by buyers and sellers at gun shows (and makes it a crime for him to do so).

But then, the STM bill takes those protections away by using the all-powerful word “notwithstanding”—”notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter, the Attorney General may implement this subsection with regulations.” The courts may construe the “notwithstanding” to allow Attorney General Eric Holder to issue regulations that could begin to create a federal registry of firearms, because the law says he can implement the subsection without regard to the protections against a registry elsewhere in the legislation.

The courts view the word “notwithstanding” as very powerful. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said in 1989 in Crowley Caribbean Transport v. U.S. in reference to the phrase “notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter” that “a clearer statement of intent is difficult to imagine” to push aside other laws. The same court indicated in 1991 in Liberty Maritime Corporation v. U.S. that a grant of authority to a department head to be exercised “notwithstanding” any other law generally grants the broadest possible discretion to the department head. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 1992 in Conoco, Inc. v. Skinner took a somewhat different approach, in which the judges themselves divine the congressional intent whether to let the word “notwithstanding” in a law override other conflicting provisions of the same law.

It has been postulated that the Republicans have outsmarted the Democrats by forcing a vote on any number of measures that actually make things better for our rights, while giving them only a little of their own demands – or – by forcing the Democrats to vote on an outrageous bill that will force them out of office in the next election.  I don’t subscribe to either view, for a number of reasons.

First, this is more than likely to be yet another “you have to pass the bill in order to see what’s in it” example of ruling by ignorance.  Second, the GOP is full of cave-ins and sell-outs, and has been for a very long time.  Third, the GOP just isn’t that smart.  They’re basically a very stolid, slow, confused bunch, many of whom act without any real principles.  Leave it to the GOP leadership to miscount their own votes, thinking that they can stop the legislation at the end, only to see defections and thus new gun control laws.  When this is over I expect to see GOP leadership looking stunned and shell shocked at what happened to them, just like with Obamacare.

Furthermore, I have warned against laws that can be broadly interpreted within some regulatory framework crafted by armies of lawyers sitting inside the beltway.  Nothing good will come of it, and we all know that nothing they have done really addresses the real problem of ending phony gun free zones.  And finally, we have discussed why universal background checks (and their corollary, a federal gun registry) are a bad thing, the quintessential element of any gun control program, and the goal of every progressive.

The only way we can truly be safe and prevent further gun violence is to ban civilian ownership of all guns. That means everything. No pistols, no revolvers, no semiautomatic or automatic rifles. No bolt action. No breaking actions or falling blocks. Nothing. This is the only thing that we can possibly do to keep our children safe from both mass murder and common street violence.

Unfortunately, right now we can’t. The political will is there, but the institutions are not. Honestly, this is a good thing. If we passed a law tomorrow banning all firearms, we would have massive noncompliance. What we need to do is establish the regulatory and informational institutions first. This is how we do it.  The very first thing we need is national registry. We need to know where the guns are, and who has them.

Gun control is evil, at the same time both a function and a sign of wicked rulers.

The Bible does contain a few direct references to weapons control. There were many times throughout Israel’s history that it rebelled against God (in fact, it happened all the time). To mock His people back into submission to His Law, the Lord would often use wicked neighbors to punish Israel’s rebellion. Most notable were the Philistines and the Babylonians. 1 Samuel 13:19-22 relates the story: “Not a blacksmith could be found in the whole land of Israel, because the Philistines had said, “Otherwise the Hebrews will make swords or spears!” So all Israel went down to the Philistines to have their plowshares, mattocks, axes, and sickles sharpened…So on the day of battle not a soldier with Saul and Jonathan had a sword or spear in this hand; only Saul and his son Jonathan had them.” Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon also removed all of the craftsmen from Israel during the Babylonian captivity (2 Kings 24:14). Both of these administrations were considered exceedingly wicked including their acts of weapons control.

We are not willing to give a little here as long as we can take a little there.  The message has been clear from the beginning – and won’t change now.  No new laws.  Not a single one.  If we have good and laudable goals (such as the repeal of the Hughes amendment), it’s our task to work to make that happen, rather than acquiescing to the very touchstone of gun control – universal background checks.

If we cannot pull this off, then America is truly lost, and the next steps are obvious.

Prior: Toomey And Manchin Sign Suicide Pact On Guns

UPDATE: Thanks to WRSA for the attention.

UPDATE #2: Thanks to Sipsey Street Irregulars for the attention.

UPDATE #3: Thanks to War On Guns for the attention.

Columbia Tribune:

JEFFERSON CITY – The Missouri State Highway Patrol has twice turned over the entire list of Missouri concealed weapon permit holders to federal authorities, most recently in January, Sen. Kurt Schaefer said Wednesday.

Questioning in the Senate Appropriations Committee revealed that on two occasions, in November 2011 and again in January, the patrol asked for and received the full list from the state Division of Motor Vehicle and Driver Licensing. Schaefer later met in his office with Col. Ron Replogle, superintendent of the patrol.

After the meeting, he said Replogle had given him sketchy details about turning over the list, enough to raise many more questions. Testimony from Department of Revenue officials revealed that the list of 185,000 names had been put online in one instance and given to the patrol on a disc in January.

Schaefer has been investigating a new driver licensing system. He and the committee grilled the revenue officials for several hours in the morning and again at midday before they admitted the list had been copied. The investigation was triggered by fears that concealed weapons data was being shared with federal authorities.

Under Missouri law, the names of concealed weapon permit holders are confidential. The only place in Missouri where the names of all concealed carry permit holders is stored is among driver license records. Permit holders have a special mark on their licenses indicating they have been granted the privilege of carrying a gun.

The list was given to the Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General, Schaefer said he was told.

“Apparently from what I understand, they wanted to match up anyone who had a mental diagnosis or disability with also having a concealed carry license,” Schaefer said. “What I am told is there is no written request for that information.”

He said he intends to ask Replogle for full details at an appropriations committee hearing on the patrol’s budget on Thursday morning.

The patrol responded by confirming that it had shared the list of concealed weapons holders with federal authorities.

“The information was provided to law enforcement for law enforcement investigative purposes,” Capt. Tim Hull wrote in an email response to questions from the Tribune.

Ron Replogle and Tim Hull (and whoever else participated in this outrage) are criminals who broke the law, and being in law enforcement and allegedly doing something for “law enforcement purposes” doesn’t give them the right to break the law.  That’s just a myth and excuse, and a bad one at that.  Furthermore, they did so in order to increase the power of the totalitarians ruling the collective which lives in the hive, and so it’s especially loathsome and immoral.  Sometimes laws have nothing whatsoever to do with morality, and sometimes things that are immoral are quite legal.

In this case, what these men did was both illegal and immoral, and they deserve our most sincere contempt and disgust.  Opprobrium and public humiliation isn’t enough for them.  These men need to be in the state penitentiary with the general prison population.

Reddit/guns asks a great question.  My answer?  John Basilone.

During the Battle for Henderson Field, his unit came under attack by a regiment of approximately 3,000 soldiers from the Japanese Sendai Division. On October 24, 1942, Japanese forces began a frontal attack using machine guns, grenades, and mortars against the American heavy machine guns. Basilone commanded two sections of machine guns that fought for the next two days until only Basilone and two other Marines continued fighting. Basilone moved an extra gun into position and maintained continual fire against the incoming Japanese forces. He then repaired and manned another machine gun, holding the defensive line until replacements arrived. As battle raged, ammunition became critically low. With supply lines cut off, Basilone fought through hostile ground to resupply his gunners with urgently needed ammunition. Toward the dawn of the battle, Basilone fought Japanese soldiers using only a .45 pistol. By the end of the engagement, the Japanese regiment was virtually annihilated. For his actions during this battle, he received the United States military’s highest award for bravery, the Medal of Honor.

And you?

Military.com:

If and when women assume the role of infantry soldier, one of the biggest challenges they may face is the weight on their backs, according to an official at the Veterans Health Administration.

The average female will have trouble as infantry soldiers must carry a load often weighing more than 80 pounds for many hours at a time over rugged terrain in some cases, said Dr. David Cifu, national director of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Veterans Health Administration.

“I’m certain the majority of women doing this won’t be physically able to do it as long as the men. It’s a matter of body size and body mechanics,” Cifu said.

Well gosh.  This could be embarrassing for the women, the Army, the Marines and just about everybody associated with this effort.  If only someone could have said something beforehand?  If Dirty Mick and my son Daniel had only weighed in on this issue, maybe some of this embarrassment and trouble could have been avoided.

Kurt Hofmann on whether the proposed gun control laws “deserve” a vote up or down:

The only problem is that they do not “deserve a vote,” not really. The Constitution, with its limits on federal power, takes certain policy options off the table–no matter how popular they are. Fundamental human rights are not subject to a popularity contest–they cannot be. When the rights of 49% of the people can be voted away by the other 51% (or even the rights of 10%, by the other 90%), they are not “rights” at all.

Good point, and one made by Jonah Goldberg about democracy in general.

As longtime readers know, I have little passion for pure democracy — a system by which 51 percent of the people can give 49 percent of the people a wedgie. If America were a pure democracy, the citizens of the 10 most populous states could impose their will on the other 40 states.

Read it all at Examiner.  But expecting the Senate to understand the constitution is like expecting my dog to do calculus.

CBS News:

A pair of bipartisan senators on Wednesday announced they’ve reached an agreement over a bill to expand background checks for gun sales, marking a significant first step as Congress attempts to tackle the thorny issue of gun control. While the Senate is now one step closer to actually voting on the legislation, the bill’s fate remains far from certain, its authors acknowledged.

“I think this is a fluid situation, and it’s hard to predict,” said Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., one of the drafters of the background check bill, said of the legislation’s chances. He added, however, that the legislation represents common ground and that he’s “hopeful” it can pass.

“Criminals and the dangerously mentally ill shouldn’t have guns,” Toomey said. “I don’t know anyone who disagrees with that premise.”

You’re a liar.  That criminals and the dangerously mentally ill shouldn’t have guns isn’t your premise.  Your premise is that what you propose for universal background checks would have any effect on criminals and the dangerously mentally ill having guns.  I think you know that this is a false premise and doesn’t comport with the facts and data.  In fact, let me remind you just why the left really wants universal background checks.

The only way we can truly be safe and prevent further gun violence is to ban civilian ownership of all guns. That means everything. No pistols, no revolvers, no semiautomatic or automatic rifles. No bolt action. No breaking actions or falling blocks. Nothing. This is the only thing that we can possibly do to keep our children safe from both mass murder and common street violence.

Unfortunately, right now we can’t. The political will is there, but the institutions are not. Honestly, this is a good thing. If we passed a law tomorrow banning all firearms, we would have massive noncompliance. What we need to do is establish the regulatory and informational institutions first. This is how we do it.  The very first thing we need is national registry. We need to know where the guns are, and who has them.

Thus ends two non-remarkable careers in politics.  I hope you enjoy your new buddies, Pat.

UPDATE: David Codrea asks:

Why Toomey felt compelled to take this stance, particularly noting the slim margin he was elected to office by and the likelihood that angry gun owners will remember at the polls if he decides to seek office again, remain unclear. While the bill is far short of what President Obama wants to sign into law, if it passes, it will be used as the plateau from which the next series of demands will be issued.

I don’t know why Toomey felt compelled to take this stance.  Why does any tyrant feel compelled to be one?  Original sin due to the “federal headship” of Adam.  If you don’t like that answer, you don’t hurt my feelings.  Queue one up of your own.  Either way, I hope Toomey chokes.

Survival Blog has a great article up on winter outdoor survival lessons, and I’ll reiterate part of it here while driving you to the Survival Blog for the rest of it.

Darkness was rapidly settling in, I was soaking wet, and the temperature was falling as fast as the snow.  There were still about 8 miles of very rough country between me and my truck and I was flat out smoked from hiking all day in deep snow at high elevation.  I realized I could not hope to navigate by headlamp the many blow down trees and steep canyon walls that separated me from my truck in my current condition.  While I realized the seriousness of my situation, I was not particularly worried and silently thanked the Lord I had practiced the skills essential to surviving in the wild and carried the appropriate gear on my back.  As I quickly went about the tasks required to set up a field expedient bivouac camp, I contemplated the many similar situations I had been through in my life were the main goal and focus was to not die.

Curled up comfortably in my emergency blanket with my face towards my fire and my back to a large log serving as a heat reflector, I realized that without the proper skills and some basic gear the situation good have been deadly.  The sounds of a distant wolf howl in the night reminded me of the thin veneer between polite society and the wild, were man is reduced to the basic necessities of survival; food, fire, and shelter.  In my experience, most people fail to realize how delicate the balance of our society is and how quickly they can be thrust into a situation where the main focus is survival.

Not dying has frequently been a priority of mine while fighting in Iraq as an Infantry team leader and designated long range marksman, followed by a career in law enforcement in western Montana.  My love of hiking, hunting, and camping has resulted in many hours spent in the wilderness of western Montana and northern Idaho.  While enjoying these pursuits, my focus has had to frequently switch from hunting and camping to not dying.  While some of these instances were indeed emergencies caused by bad decisions and a general lack of intelligence, some of them were self induced to practice survival skills in the wild.  After surviving several life threatening situations while hunting and camping with me, many spouses of my friends no longer allow their husbands to go hunting or camping with me.  I have had to resort to marketing my frequent hunting trips as “hands on survival courses” graded on a pass or fail depending on whether they make it back alive or not.

I have an affliction that is probably encouraged from reading way too many books about Mountain Men and Native Americans that causes me to constantly push myself to the limits and test myself by surviving in the wilderness with minimal equipment in varied terrain and all kinds of weather.  Frequent trips into the wilderness to practice survival skills have resulted in a fairly good working knowledge of what actually works when the chips are down versus what just sounds good in a book read by the warmth of a fireplace.  After spending his childhood tramping around the woods with me and camping with minimal equipment, my son decided to join the Marine Corps to relax for a while.  He’s joked that after some of our hunting trips, the Marines should be a walk in the park.

There have been countless books and articles written about what to carry in your survival pack and how to survive if lost in the woods.  I don’t plan on reinventing the wheel and will not bore you with writing a field manual on the many varied tasks and skills required to survive in the wild.  I would like to share a few of the lessons I’ve learned and some of the items I always carry whenever I go into the backcountry along with a few essential skills that I’ve found to be absolutely necessary for survival.

Now that it has grabbed your interest, go read the rest at Survival Blog.  He has some great counsel, and I don’t necessarily disagree with any of it, but would emphasize other things.

I am not a proponent of the lone wolf scenario as you know.  See Tactical Considerations For The Lone Wolf and especially Surviving The Apocalypse: Thinking Strategically Rather Than Tactically.  I won’t rehearse any of that here.

I’m not a proponent of pushing the edge.  If you need to climb, do it with qualified ropes.  For example, rappelling is safe if done correctly.  Don’t see how little you can get away with – carry the right equipment for the job and make it as light as practical.  Cordage is a necessity, and paracord is cheap.  Don’t look for cordage in the wild.  It’s a waste of precious time.  Time is one of your greatest assets.

Don’t start fires with primitive means, even if you know how.  Never walk into the wild – even if for a day trip – without a knife, cordage, a container, cover, and a means of starting a fire.  Carry multiple means of starting a fire, such as a lighter and a ferro rod.  Never plan to be out in the wilderness where you could get lost or stranded for weeks.  Be closer than that to egress.  There are so many things to address and yet the author has done a good job of listing most of the considerations.  But I note that the author didn’t address guns.

Guns may be the most important asset at your disposal, and as one who carries, I certainly wouldn’t be in the wilderness without a firearm, even if only for a day trip.  I would like to address a little about survival guns as an adjunct to Jim’s post at Survival Blog.

A long gun is an unlikely asset on a long hike or overnight trip.  It’s just too heavy and bulky to carry, especially a .308 or 7.62 mm rifle.  Too much weight can be a detriment to your survival.  I am a proponent of the .270 cartridge, but a rifle still suffers from the same fate regardless of caliber.

What is true of the large caliber or bolt action rifles is also true of carbines such as the AR-15, M1 Carbine or pistol caliber carbines.  While it may be nice to have rapid fire capabilities, it’s just not feasible at least some of the time.

Frankly, if you’re going to carry a long gun, a shotgun may be the best choice given the fact that you can hunt fowl (with bird loads) and larger game (with slugs).  But because of weight of the weapon plus ammunition, it still suffers from the same limitations as other long guns.

So if we’ve settled on hand guns, this narrows the field a bit and makes our choice easier.  Here the best counsel I think anyone can give.  Choose reliability above all else, and choose the weapon with which you are practiced and familiar.  There is no comparison to hitting your intended target.

For semi-automatic weapons I like my .45 and .40, Springfield Armory XDm and Smith and Wesson M&P, respectively.  But it might be a different manufacturer for you.  If I carry a revolver I like my Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum.  I would carry any of those weapons into the wilderness, as I consider them large enough calibers to accomplish the intended purpose.  I have hand guns that I consider to be range toys, and I wouldn’t carry those for self defense whether in the wilderness or not.

Remember too that whatever weapon you carry must be accompanied by enough ammunition to make it effective.  Except for the .357 Magnum, none of the rounds I mentioned would likely be enough for game hunting, so the goal of the weapon would be personal defense.  If you intend to carry a weapon with which to hunt, you are planning a different trip than the one Jim and I have described.

Prior: What Happens If Your Bug Out Gun Breaks?

From Reason.com (h/t Say Uncle):

Richard Ahlstrand, of Auburn, Massachusetts, faces criminal charges after encountering a bear in his back yard and shooting the damned thing to avoid being mauled or eaten. Specifically, as noted at Reason 24/7, he’s charged with “illegally killing a bear, illegally baiting a bear, illegal possession of a firearm and failure to secure a firearm.” All of these charges, once translated from Massachusetts to American, seem to stack up to outrage that Ahlstrand didn’t make his yard completely inhospitable to animals that are rarely seen in the area, and then investigated a suspicious noise with a weapon in hand rather than cower under the bed. Worst of all, he actually defended himself when he encountered danger.

According to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Ahlstrand had a 50-gallon drum of birdseed in his backyard, and this appears to be the basis of the “baiting”charge against him. Leaving the birdseed outside might be considered a foolish idea in an area where bears are known to congregate, but the same article quotes the police chief claiming that “bear are not common in Auburn” with the last such sighting about a year ago. So Ahlstrand shouldn’t have had birdseed because … ?

When confronted by the bear, Ahlstrand had a shotgun with him — in his own backyard, remember — because he’d heard a noise and thought he’d seen a bear the day before.

From CBS Boston:

Richard Ahlstrand told WBZ-TV he was stocking his bird feeder Friday night when a bear about seven feet tall and 300-to-400 pounds started chasing him.

That’s when he turned his shotgun on the bear.

“I didn’t have time to aim through the sights, but I aimed in the direction of the head on this thing and I pulled the trigger before it got to me.  It just dropped,” he said.

Ahlstrand said he was carrying the shotgun Friday night because he thought he saw the bear in his yard Thursday.

The police version from the Telegram:

Chief Sluckis said the bear is believed to have been attracted to a 50-gallon drum of birdseed Mr. Ahlstrand had in his backyard. He said Mr. Ahlstrand told police he heard a noise outside and felt in fear of his life.

“He went back inside, retrieved a shotgun and decided to shoot the bear,” Chief Sluckis said. “Obviously we believe if Mr. Ahlstrand was truly in fear for his life he would have stayed secured in his home and would have called the police.”

I’ve lived in Boston and Worcester both, sad to say, and so I’m fairly certain that official Massachusetts policy is that people should dial 911 and then curl into a fetal position whenever they hear a curious noise. But living in the wide open spaces of Arizona, as I do, I’m called upon to investigate suspicious noises fairly frequently.

When backpacking I am a great proponent of taking smells away from camp as much as possible.  We have had all manner of wildlife in camp even in spite of our best efforts.  Having a large container of food in the yard may not be the wisest thing to do.

But this is a man, made in God’s image, contrasted with an animal, which is not.  Laws that favor animals over man are immoral, and there is no question what a judge or jury should do in this case.  If I carry a gun in order to stop an assault by another human, I’ll surely stop an assault by an animal.

Prior:

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