Articles by Herschel Smith

This is what totalitarianism looks like in Chris Christie’s New Jersey – you know, the Chris Christie who could be the savior of the GOP if he weren’t such a gun-grabbing totalitarian, jerk and loud mouth himself.

Did this photograph spark a police action that tried to enter a New Jersey home without a warrant? That’s the story being told on a website dedicated to “Open Carry” in the state of Delaware. The title of the story, “The fight has officially been brought to my front door.”

The young man in the photo is the 11-yr-old son of Shawn Moore. The gun is a .22 rifle, a copy of the AR-15, but a 22 caliber. The photo was posted on Facebook by a proud father. That Facebook posting apparently triggered an anonymous call to New Jersey’s Department of Youth and Family Services (DYFS). On Friday night, March 15th, two representatives from the state’s social services office (along with four local police officers) came to the Moore home and demanded to see the family’s firearms …

Here’s what Moore alleges on the Delaware open carry forum:

• NJ’s Department of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) came to his home, accompanied by police officers. They claimed to be responding to a call about a photo of a young boy holding a firearm. (photo above)
• Without a search warrant, DYFS demanded entry into Moore’s home and access to all of his firearms. Moore was not initially there, but his wife called him.
• With his lawyer listening to the exchange on the phone with police and DFYS, Moore denied entry to his home and access to his safe where he stores his guns.
• When Moore requested the name of the DFYS representative, she refused to give it to him.
• After threatening to “take my kids,” the police and Family Services worker left — “empty handed and seeing nothing.”
• The DYFS worker repeatedly demanded access to the house and for Moore to open his safe where the firearms were stored. She said that the guns should be catalogued and checked to make certain they were “properly registered.” (NJ does not require registration, it is voluntary.)
• The four police officers acted professionally, they were there at the request of DYFS.
• The worker refused to identify herself. Mr. Moore demanded that she giver her name. She refused and ran away.
• As of Tuesday morning, Mr. Nappen believes that DYFS is still pushing for an inspection, “which is not happening.”

Did the poor nanny state trough-feeders run away scared?  Did they fail to get their intended, abused child to the right parents who could raise him without fear of the big, bad guns?  Folks, the only difference between this instance and the one depicted in this picture is that the New Jersey statists and nannies weren’t prepared for resolute action.

Denver Post:

Gov. John Hickenlooper signed bills Wednesday that place new restrictions on firearms and signaled a change for Democrats who traditionally shied away from gun control debate in Colorado – a state with a moderate streak and pioneer tradition of gun ownership and self-reliance.

Hickenlooper’s signature of the bills comes exactly eight months after dozens of people were shot in a movie theater in suburban Denver, the day after the executive director of the state’s Corrections Department was shot and killed at his home.

Police were searching for the person who killed Tom Clements, and trying to figure out if the attack was related to his job.

The bills require background checks for private and online gun sales and ban ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds.

Hickenlooper was surrounded by lawmakers who sponsored the bills at the signing ceremony. Before signing the first bill, which requires purchasers to pay fees for background checks, he looked around with a solemn look on his face and then began signing it.

Every time he signed a bill, applause erupted from lawmakers and their guests …

So be it.  It’s now time for Magpul to leave and take its revenue and jobs with them.  When laws like this are implemented it’s always the duty of every individual to study the bill itself, sometimes including case law that ensues from the bill.  Gun forums don’t do justice to the complexity of most gun control bills, and every visitor to the State of Colorado is in danger of some sort of new violation of their laws, which most of the time would be felonies.  It just isn’t worth my time to study the law.

I have visited Colorado only once to ski in Breckenridge.  It was a wonderful experience, and sadly, one that will not be a recurring trip.  Not only will I not risk any sort of violation of their new law, but I won’t reward Colorado for their actions today.  I have friends and readers in Colorado and I don’t wish them ill.  But now that Colorado has been proven to be an anti-gun state, they will feel the wrath of gun owners and gun manufacturers.  They should consider their future through the lens of firearms at a time when their chief of the department of corrections was just gunned down.  Will the criminals have such a hard time getting what they want?

My treatment of Colorado won’t be any different than my treatment of other gun-control states.  I steadfastly refuse to drive through or even fly over New York, New Jersey, Illinois, or Maryland.  If I drive through with a weapon I must know their idiotic laws.  If I fly over with a weapon I might have to make an unscheduled landing in one of their cities.

I don’t take pleasure in seeing friends suffer under totalitarianism.  But when we look for work-arounds and fill in the gaps for others, we prevent the learning experience that comes from bad decisions.  Consequences bring the gift of wisdom.  For half a century now America has raised its children to avoid consequences, and partly for that reason we are where we are.

In this case, may Colorado get exactly what they have asked for, and exactly what they so richly deserve.   Tonight I will go home and order some Magpul hats, clothing and accessories (I already have their AR-15 magazines).  I will never again visit Colorado, and depending upon what other manufacturers do (Remington has made their bed, are you listening, Colt?  Rock River Arms?  Kimber?  Springfield Armory?), I will look for ways to reward the faithful and punish the wicked.  And there are millions of gun owners just like me.

The founder of Sandy Hook Promise weighs in on firearms technology.

At present, most gun marketing is predicated on power and machismo. But what if the unique selling point of a weapon became safety features, like a trigger that only works in the hands of the gun’s owner? That, in a nutshell, is the aim of the Sandy Hook Promise Innovation Initiative.

The initiative will pull together the tech and venture capital communities to form a Technology Committee to Reduce Gun Violence that will work to identify and foster innovations in gun and school safety and mental health research. The group will solicit proposals for the best ideas in these areas and award a prize to encourage the most promising innovations. The point is that making firearms safer could help the nation to reduce the 30,000 gun deaths a year, including nearly 19,000 that are suicides. But if that isn’t incentive enough, there’s the money, and the Volvo lesson, to consider.

Starting with the three-point seat belt in the late 1950s, Volvo introduced safety features, from head restraints to side impact protection systems. Sales grew tenfold. By the time the first mandatory seat belt use was enacted in New York state in 1984, Volvo’s market share hit a record.

Budding gun entrepreneurs could become rich by emulating Volvo’s golden years. Weapons manufacturers could first and foremost tout their products’ safety features. And public policy could guide them along that path.

New Jersey, for instance, has a law that would require smart gun technology in all new handguns sold three years after the state’s attorney general determines a prototype is safe and commercially available. Other states are considering similar rules.

As the Volvo story underlines, however, government action isn’t the only way to reduce America’s gun fatalities, which have remained stubbornly high for decades. The only thing more characteristically American than gun ownership is the impulse to create wealth in free and open markets. Let the innovation begin.

Yea, let the innovation begin.  But recall what we observed about the shotgun with a solid state circuit board in the stock?  Remember how obscene it was?  It is obscene because of any number of things, including control over that circuit board, traceability of that circuit board, and just as important, the introduction of a new failure mode.

Take it from a registered professional engineer.  You see that picture above with the solid state electronics inside the gun?  It is obscene.  Not only that, it’s stupid.

There are even old school shooters who don’t believe in such a thing as the grip safety (Beaver tail) on my XDm.  I am not among that crowd, but the notion that I would rely on a gun with solid state electronics for my own protection is absurd, leaving aside the problems I have with it being amenable to governmental control.

David Codrea has weighed in before (and also links a related NPR article), and Bob Owens weighs in as well.  Read them both.

I’m simply not smart enough to know whether violent FPS video games have any affect on the player in this context.  I’ve seen them before, and they bore me.  I tend to think that they cannot have an affect on the person if the tendency to violence isn’t already there.  The problem is evil.  Evil is in the heart of man (Jeremiah 17:9 and Mark 7:21), and only God can change the heart.

For me it’s simple.  Maybe I am looking at this as a firearms purist, but as I said before, I’ll purchase such a gun when hell freezes over.

Manufacturers Dabble In Smart Guns

More On Smart Guns

The CEO speaks, Courant.com.

Our customers are unusually brand-loyal. In many cases, they personally identify with the firearm brand they choose. Although our Connecticut heritage has historically enhanced our brand, that will change overnight if we ban the modern sporting rifle.

As a result Colt, as well as other Connecticut manufacturers such as Mossberg and Stag Arms will see immediate erosion in brand strength and market share as customers migrate to manufacturers in more supportive states. This will have consequences for dozens of Connecticut companies and thousands of workers. Connecticut will have put its firearms manufacturing industry in jeopardy: one that contributes $1.7 billion annually to the state’s economy.

Like every other precision manufacturer in Connecticut, Colt is constantly approached by other states to relocate, but our roots here are deep. Colt is and always has been an integral part of a state characterized by hard work, perseverance and ingenuity.

I know, however, that someday soon, I will again be asked why we fight to keep well-paying manufacturing jobs in Connecticut. I will be asked why we should continue to manufacture in a state where the governor would make ownership of our product a felony.

I will be asked these questions and, unlike in the past, there will be few good answers.

He’s right.  Some of the customer base will be faithful, but this issue runs deep, and many will abandon them.  We’ve also discussed how many will abandon Remington, too, for staying in New York and focusing almost exclusively on a new military contract.  It won’t work out well for Remington.

But the CEO will likely have to decide whether this is bluster or serious-speak.  The State of Connecticut won’t listen to him and will probably pass their ban.  When they do that, Colt will have to decide whether it is a Remington or a Magpul.  The choice is theirs, and no amount of posturing in local newspapers will delay or change things.

These are serious times for a lot of people.

Washington Times:

Transportation Security Administration inspectors forced a wounded Marine who lost both of his legs in an IED blast and who was in a wheelchair to remove his prosthetic legs at one point, and at another point to stand painfully on his legs while his wheelchair was examined, according to a complaint a congressman has registered with the TSA.

Rep. Duncan Hunter said in his letter Monday that the Marine, who is still on active duty and showed TSA agents his military identification, was still forced to undergo that scrutiny.

“A TSA office asked the Marine to stand and walk to an alternate area, despite the fact that he physically could not stand or walk on his own. With numerous TSA officers sitting and unwilling to assist, an officer then made him remove his legs, then put them back on, only to advance to a secondary screening location where he was asked again to stand, with extraordinary difficult, while his wheelchair was examined for explosives,” Mr. Hunter said.

He also said TSA officers initially directed the Marine to the wrong line, then made him move lines but made no effort to help him. The incident occurred at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor airport last week, as a group of Marines was returning to San Diego.

Mr. Hunter included two photos of the inspection in his letter that appear to show a TSA agent patting down the Marine’s arm and examining the prosthetic leg.

The congressman asked TSA to detail its procedures to inspecting wounded U.S. troops at airports, and to consider whether agents should show “situational awareness.”

Situational awareness?  Mr. Hunter’s sentiments are well placed and appropriate, but here is the point being missed in all of this.  The TSA is now and always has been a jobs program for morons who couldn’t find work doing anything else.  On top of that, the conceptual framework upon which the organization and its procedures were built doesn’t lend itself to situational awareness.  It is a statist, totalitarian concept from the outset, crafted to give morons a paycheck and something to do.

I’m sorry for the Marine, but who’s stupid enough to have expected anything else from all of this bureaucratic apoplexia?

Random thoughts and guns has an interesting post up on Bracken’s cube (h/t WRSA).  I think the way to see it is lines of tension that may act to oppose, may act symbiotically or may couple (with forces in opposite directions but with a common outcome).  You can decide for yourself.

At any rate, it is in the best interest of the hive that the rulers do all they can to eradicate the lines of tension.  This means a number of things, but an interesting line of effort appeared today.

Last Friday’s headlines focused on President Obama’s address at Argonne National Laboratory, where he proposed to spend $2 billion on an energy-security trust fund for renewable fuel research. Obama boldly pledged “to shift our cars entirely . . . off oil.”

How exactly is he planning to do that? Research will have an effect over time, but “entirely off oil” is either a greatly exaggerated or a very incomplete account of the administration’s energy plans. The New York Times story on Obama’s speech dryly notes that although the president “has vowed to make addressing climate change a priority in his second term . . . he has provided only scant details on how he intends to act.”

Look closely, however, and it’s possible to spot some troubling plans. The Times, and just about every other major news outlet, neglected to note that on the day of Obama’s Argonne speech, the Department of Energy released a series of coordinated reports called “Transportation Energy Futures” (developed in cooperation with Argonne). This DOE project explores a variety of strategies designed to curb America’s greenhouse gas emissions up to 80 percent by about 2050.

Arguably the most controversial of those reports covers the “effects of the built environment on transportation.” To put it plainly, the “built environment” report lays out strategies the federal government can use to force development away from suburbs and into cities, supposedly for the sake of reducing carbon dioxide emissions given off by all those suburban commuters. The Obama administration wants to force so-called smart growth policies on the country: get out of your car, stay out of the suburbs, move into small, tightly-packed urban apartment complexes, and walk or take public transportation instead of driving.

After all, those country boys with guns will be much easier to control if they collect them into the hive than if they leave them in the mountains and woods to cause trouble for the collective.

Do you understand?

Good grief.  Heritage again.

On February 26, the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Center for Human Rights issued a white paper on the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which concludes that “the proposed ATT is consistent with the Second Amendment.” This conclusion neglects important facts about the treaty and the processes surrounding it, which we have explored in this four-part series.

We have shown that while we agree with several of the ABA’s contentions, it ignores the fact that the ATT—like many treaties—is not designed for a nation with a federal structure like the U.S. The ABA also ignores the fact that the ATT goes beyond import restrictions on firearms by requiring signatories to prevent the domestic diversion of imports. The treaty may also invite the executive branch to take executive actions to restrict and control the import of firearms into the U.S., imports which comprise about 35 percent of the new firearms market.

Finally, the treaty raises broader concerns about the application of transnational law to the U.S. These concerns are heightened by the fact that both foreign nations and some prominent legal scholars have identified treaties like the ATT as a mechanism to pressure the U.S. to change its domestic policies, and even to change the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, including the Second Amendment.

The question, then, is what the U.S. should do about this. The U.S. is sensitive to allegations that it is failing to fulfill treaty commitments, and it rightly takes its treaty obligations seriously. Because the ATT is a process that is designed to evolve and grow, it is impossible to know where it will lead.

A new ATT conference begins today in New York, and we will be blogging from the conference.

Supporters of the ATT frequently defend it as entirely unrelated to the Second Amendment. Some opponents of the ATT criticize it as a nefarious plot against the Second Amendment. The truth is more complicated …

Listen carefully.  No, the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty isn’t really that complicated.  It is a nefarious plot against the second amendment.

We’ve covered this in detail before.  All that rubbish and claptrap about the treaty excluding civilians because it excludes civilian arms is a ruse.  What it does is what Feinstein and Obama want to do within the framework of U.S. law, and distinguish between so-called “military weapons” and “civilian weapons.”  Again – it doesn’t distinguish between you and a member of the professional military, it distinguishes between military arms and civilian arms.

It would make illegal all sorts of firearms currently in circulation, as well as subject you to a set of rules, licensing and governmental checks that would make what Obama has proposed look like free utopia.

Some things really are as they seem.  Can Heritage at least try to get it right next time?  Otherwise, it’s just wasted space and bandwidth.

David Codrea:

“Marcus Hook mayor under investigation over gun incident,” a Saturday Philly.com report revealed.

“The mayor of tiny Marcus Hook, who just last year was a guest at the President’s State of the Union address, is under investigation for allegedly shooting a gun in his house and giving alcohol to a 20-year-old whom he threatened to hold hostage,” the report continues.

On top of that, the report says Mayor James D. Schiliro “ordered a borough police officer to pick up the 20-year-old, who was at a friend’s home, in a police vehicle and bring him to Schiliro’s home.”

But David, don’t you understand?  Gun control is like all other laws.  It is all intended for the little people, not the special people.  You are little and the special people, well, they are special.  Understand?

Read the rest at Examiner.

ExpertClick.com:

The Supreme Court recognized our right to ownership of firearms, but didn’t specifically broach the issue of “bearing” those arms, i.e., carrying them for personal defense. The Second Amendment, as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia knows, isn’t about duck hunting, or deer hunting, or any other “sporting purpose.” The sporting purposes test imposed by the last round of onerous firearms laws, and enforced by the ATF, is entirely unconstitutional. But proliferation of this test through the judiciary (from some future decision) is cowardly because it doesn’t formally recognize the truth, and that is that the second amendment exists in order to ameliorate tyranny.

Me on Scalia:

The Supreme Court recognized our right to ownership of firearms, but didn’t specifically broach the issue of “bearing” those arms, i.e., carrying them for personal defense.

This relationship that appears to be developing between Scalia and Kagan is, I’m sure, very sweet and and all of that, but I wouldn’t count on her vote.  Furthermore, the whole issue of duck hunting concerns me.  The Second Amendment, as Scalia knows, isn’t about duck hunting, or deer hunting, or any other “sporting purpose.”  The sporting purposes test imposed by the last round of onerous firearms laws, and enforced by the ATF, is entirely unconstitutional.  I have said before that I think the test is misapplied, and that if it is a firearm, it has a sporting purpose.  But proliferation of this test through the judiciary (from some future decision) is cowardly because it doesn’t formally recognize the truth, and that is that the second amendment exists in order to ameliorate tyranny.

Look, I will quote other writers, and sometimes at length.  But what I try to do is quote (especially for my friends) in such a way that the reader wants to visit their site to finish reading their analysis.

This was cited without attribution.  Bad form.

MSNBC:

H. Joaquin Jackson is the kind of iconic rifleman that gun advocates welcomed to their board. He spent 27 years as a Texas Ranger and is remembered for following his commander into a jailhouse shootout and capturing an elusive horse thief.

The actor Nick Nolte spent several weeks studying Jackson in preparation for his role as a Ranger in the 1987 film Extreme Prejudice. And Tommy Lee Jones cast Jackson to play a sheriff in the 1995 TV movie The Good Old Boys alongside Jones, Sissy Spacek, Frances McDormand and a young, unknown Matt Damon.

With Hollywood friends and a storied law-and-order past, Jackson was an ideal fit for the National Rifle Association’s 76-member governing board, which he joined in 2001. Today, however, he is under fire from a younger generation of NRA activists. Organizing online, they want Jackson voted off the gun lobby’s board for his past comments criticizing high-capacity magazines and semi-automatic weapons. His comments are making waves again due to the assault weapons ban recently proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

[ … ]

“I wouldn’t be with the NRA if I didn’t believe in the Second Amendment,” Jackson told MSNBC in a telephone interview. But critics are not convinced. “Joaquin Jackson has a background in law enforcement and he’s a ‘staunch supporter’ of the Second Amendment…or is he?” recently asked one gun rights activist, Joe Levi, on his blog sittingduckpolicy.com.

“I personally believe a weapon should never have over, as far as a civilian, a five-round capacity. If you’re a hunter, if you’re going to go hunting with a weapon, you shouldn’t need over but one round. So five rounds would be plenty,” said Jackson in the video now labeled by one of his critics as “The Enemy Within” on YouTube.

On assault weapons, Jackson said: “Personally, I think assault weapons basically…need to be in the hands of the military, and in the hands of the police.”

Two years later the NRA’s lobbying wing posted a statement by Jackson to clarify “misunderstandings” about the interview. Jackson said his comments on assault weapons referred only to fully-automatic weapons used mainly by military forces and some police. High-capacity magazines, he clarified, were not appropriate for hunting.

I don’t care that Mr. Jackson is a former Texas Ranger, any more that I would care if he were an engineer or dug ditches for a living.  That movies that were made about his exploits are irrelevant to me.  His history means something to him, but nothing to me.

The same rule applies to boards of directors that applies to politicians.  You are voting for policy decisions.  Nothing more.  If my dog could consistently make decisions that followed my policy, I would vote for her for President.  She would certainly make a better one that the totalitarian clown we currently have.

And that bit about a clarification of his position is clearly a lie.  No one needs to “clarify” that he believes that hunters need to limit their available rounds for  sporting purposes because every state already does that without his assistance.  And as for a high capacity magazine, if all you’re talking about is the difference between LEOs having fully automatic weapons and civilians not being allowed to (a policy with which I firmly disagree anyway), then there is no need to bring it up in the first place.  It’s not germane to the conversation.

Jackson is therefore lying about his clarification.  Jackson’s days should be limited on the NRA board of directors.  There is no place – none – for someone who says he believes in the second amendment but undercuts it with his words.  The second amendment says nothing about hunting, and Mr. Jackson believes in a different second amendment than do I.  Mine is written in the Bill of Rights, and he fabricated his version in his head.