Articles by Herschel Smith

I should be more specific and say that those weapons are protected from bans.

“Under Bruen and Heller, the irreducible minimum of the Second Amendment is this: States may not ban arms that millions of Americans possess for lawful purposes. That most basic of principles dooms HB 5471. The Court should grant Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction.”

“The Second Amendment secures “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms.” U.S. Const. amend. II. And as the Supreme Court made clear last year, “when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.” N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 142 S.Ct. 2111, 2126 (2022). The first question this Court must ask in analyzing HB 5471 is thus whether the firearms and magazines the statute bans fit within “the Second Amendment’s definition of ‘arms.’” Id. at 2132. After all, one can neither “keep” nor “bear” what one cannot acquire or possess in the first place. If the answer to that first question is yes (which it plainly is, see infra pp.1-6), the Court must then ask whether the firearms and magazines HB 5471 bans are “highly unusual in society at large” today. Id. at 2143 (quoting Heller v. Dist. of Columbia, 554 U.S. 570, 627 (2008)). If the answer to that question is no (which it plainly is, see infra pp.6-11), then the inquiry is over and the statute is invalid, because a state may not “prohibit[] … an entire class of ‘arms’ that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for [a] lawful purpose.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 628; see also Bruen, 142 S.Ct. at 2128, 2143 (“[T]he Second Amendment protects … weapons that are unquestionably in common use today.”).”

“The rifles, pistols, and shotguns that HB 5471 flatly bans, see 720 ILCS 5/24-1.9(a)(1), (b)-(c), obviously fit that bill. Indeed, if the most ubiquitous firearms in America do not even fall within the ambit of the Second Amendment, then Bruen, Heller, and the Amendment itself mean nothing. The AG nonetheless contends that the firearms HB 5471 bans are not “Arms” covered by the Second Amendment because (he says) “they are not commonly used for self-defense” today and were not “in common use at the time the Second or Fourteenth Amendments were ratified.” AG.Br.2, 16. The first argument is analytically confused; as for the second, the Supreme Court has twice “rejected” it as “‘bordering on the frivolous.’” Caetano v. Massachusetts, 577 U.S. 411, 414 (2016) (Alito, J., concurring) (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 582); see id. at 411-12 (per curiam).”

Read the whole brief to the court.

Everyone has seen the news reports on the school shooting at a PCA church school in Tennessee.  I won’t rehearse the facts here.  Pray for the families.  We have friends who are close to some of those who perished today.

I have a few observations to make, and then more for tomorrow.  I have a [hopeful] interview with an individual cited in one of the pieces today on AR-15s.

Observations.

First, don’t you find it just a bit odd that no less than four (4) hit pieces came out over the legacy media today, and before the morning was over, an attack on a school occurred with the woman carrying ARs?

Second, the shooter was engaged within 15 minutes after the 911 call was made and put down the shooter.  Suck on that, Uvalde police.  Cowards.

Third, something seems wrong with this account.  She was carrying two AR-15s and a pistol.  Something doesn’t add up.  No one needs or carries two rifles and a pistol.  The additional rifle would just get in her way and bang around, impeding her mobility.

Recall when I recently asked the question why anyone would work hard and put harsh solvents down his barrel to remove copper when the first shot after cleaning will simply refill the discontinuities and imperfections with copper all over again?  And I asked why it wasn’t better to leave it alone?

I can’t locate that post at the moment, but I know I posed those questions.

This experienced gunsmith is telling you not to worry about it.

That’s good enough for me.  I have never worried about copper fouling before, I don’t now, and I don’t intend to in the future.

I think his list devolves a bit into 7 rifles he either wouldn’t trust or wouldn’t choose to carry again.  Anyway, his views are always interesting, and I know he carefully tests out his equipment. I’m not sure I would choose to carry a 13 pound rifle very far on a hunt either. I’m also not sure I’ll ever have a need for 28 Nosler.

David Codrea.

“Senator Mike Rounds, R-S.D., is taking on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) with a new bill expanding full-time travelers’ gun ownership rights,” Fox News reports. “Rounds reintroduced the Traveler’s Gun Rights Act on Thursday, a bill that aims to update federal law to account for gun residency issues full-time travelers — such as people who live in recreational vehicles (RVs), individuals with multiple homes, and military personnel and spouses.”

Yawn … big deal.

Read the rest of David’s analysis.  He’s a pro-immigration pol, supporting amnesty for more than ten million illegals in America.  That means your medical bills and tax dollars go towards medical care for someone other than your family since they treat the hospital ER as their PCP and then lean on the entire medical system to finish the job and foot the bill.  Ask me how I know and I can send you to an NP who works in surgery and emergency medicine.  There are no arguments here.  These are facts, and they are not in dispute.

For pro-immigration libertarians out there, that’s one of the most un-conservative and un-libertarian things you could do to the American people system.  It’s also theft, and therefore immoral.

David ends with Mark Smith’s video (which we’ve embedded), and then this.

Bearing Arms takes exception to Smith’s video.

I take exception to Bearing Arms. So does my colleague Herschel Smith at The Captain’s Journal.

By the way, his orange attire and bird vest doesn’t impress me.  I upland bird hunt too, but whereas he’s a realtor and insurance salesman and broker, I’m a working man.  He supports legalized theft, and many big businessmen do (so they don’t have to bear the brunt of the expense of immigrants), and I support morality.

He also fails to acknowledge what I’ve pointed out so many times before from Pew research that Hispanics support gun control by some 75%.  It’s a fact, and it is not in dispute.  Comments to my linked research from others say things like ““Hispanic” is a chimera. Around here the Cubans are damn near 100% gun owners. I think what they mean by “hispanic” is Mexican.”

Interesting, and totally irrelevant.  I didn’t say anything about where this commenter was from.  I quoted Pew who told us that 75% of the immigrants being let into America do not support their RKBA.  It’s a fact, and it’s not in dispute.

This guy doesn’t get it either at The Libertarian Institute.

The principle at stake here is the same principle at stake in the gun control debate–whether peaceful, law-abiding individuals should lose their freedoms because a few bad people commit atrocities.

Nice misdirect.  That’s not the principle and he knows it.  The principle is whether we let those people here to begin with given their opposition to our RKBA.  They oppose it by 75%.  That’s a fact, and it’s not in dispute.

I’ve watched John Bryan do God’s work for several years now in WV, and he is in large measure responsible for shining light on the complete corruption of the WV state police.

He’s lost some significant cases, but solely because of the horrible rulings by the Fourth Circuit, a gaggle of sophomoric, pompous and unscholarly rubes second only to the second circuit.  They found against the defendant in the case of a young man carrying an AR-15 to hunt Coyotes, claiming directly against what they claimed in U.S. versus Black, and going on a diatribe against the rifle itself.  Just several months ago, even after Heller, McDonald and Caetano, went on another diatribe against the AR-15 and ruled in favor of Maryland’s AWB in Fianchi v. Fosh (and the SCOTUS had to send it back to the Fourth Circuit for reconsideration under Bruen, just as they are pressing the Second Circuit to make the right call for gun owners in NY).

Anyway, even though Bryan has lost some cases, in every case I can think of, his arguments were sound and the fault lies with stupid courts.  But he has won many cases, and managed to bring a lot of light to the corruption in WV on the local and state level, and at least a modicum of justice for his clients.

As I said, he is doing God’s work.

This is just a terrible catalog of goofy, dangerous and unnecessary foibles in a very short amount of time committed by the best and brightest America has to offer.  The list is culled from many examples I have and is not even nearly comprehensive.

First up, cops in Colorado handcuffed a woman, put her in the back seat of a squad car, and then chatted with each other about the woman.  The problem is that they parked their car on railroad tracks.  Yes, seriously, railroad tracks.   The car was hit by a train shortly thereafter.  Here is video.

The most serious, necessary, and fundamentally requisite thing you’ll ever do as a worker in a manufacturing plant, power plant, construction zone, or working with lifting and rigging, scaffold building, or basically for anyone who can be held liable for injuries or cited by OSHA, is work safely.  Safety training is so important that it interrupts work activities, even critical ones.  You’re never late with safety training – ask me how I know.  You don’t climb stairs in a plant environment without holding both rails, or else if someone sees you, you might lose your job.  You never climb above a few feet off the ground without lanyards and harnesses.

It gets even more serious if it has to do with basic radiation safety, the annual retraining and testing taking a day to complete before you’re allowed in an RCZ.  If anyone ever sees you knowingly violating those protocols, security is called, you’re ushered off the premises, and management will collect your stuff and send it to you at home.  You’ve lost your job.

Those cops didn’t even think about safety.  Not the safety of the woman in the car, nor even their own safety.  Safety comes first, in everyone you do, in every activity in which you engage.  I’m left wondering if those cops would even have been able to pass basic safety training or recall what they learned while in the field.

Next up, here is a report from the great northeast.

It was mishandled, but it wasn’t.  It dropped, but it wasn’t dropped.  But it gets better and the excuses start.

“These weapons are not something like a handgun or something where you could just pick it up and the average person would know how to utilize it,” said Jeff Rinaldo, retired Buffalo Police captain.

No, of course not.  No one knows how to use a rifle.  But the best is coming up.

“It’s not the days of old when I was on patrol and we had officers out. You’ve got to have highly trained tactical officers now in these in these situations.”

This “highly trained tactical officer” who didn’t mishandle his rifle which wasn’t dropped, mishandled and dropped his rifle.  If you did that in the Marine Corps you would have spent some time in the “room of pain.”  At least that would have happened ten years ago.  As for now, it’s anyone’s guess.

Up next, they don’t know the law.  They never seem to know the law.  This video from one of my favorite lawyers (except for Stephen Stamboulieh) who explains the whole silly affair.

Next up in this parade of the obscene, Uvalde police are making excuses, the real one being that they are cowards.  “He has a battle rifle!”  Despite John 15:13, they just gave up and let someone else do the hard work, and even prevented fathers from going in to get the little ones.  What they’re doing now is figuring into the gun controllers’ calculus.

The cowards in the Uvalde Police Department that allowed a shooter to rampage inside a school for an hour before responding decided to peddle liberal gun control talking points to excuse their spinelessness.

Uvalde Police Department Sgt. Donald Page told investigators that they knew the weapon that the shooter had “was definitely an AR” and, therefore, “There was no way of going in. … We had no choice but to wait and try to get something that had better coverage where we could actually stand up to him.” One officer called it a “battle rifle.” The Texas Tribune, of course, ate this up, declaring that “The AR-15 was designed to efficiently kill humans.”

The Uvalde cops are weaponizing anti AR-15 sentiments to excuse their appalling incompetence and cowardice and people are eating it up. You're giving these people a pass because of their political utility to you. https://t.co/5POZBKj9WC

— Noam Blum (@neontaster) March 22, 2023

But remember boys and girls, they are the best, brightest and bravest America has to offer.

The reality is different as I’ve observed so many times before.  You’re never in more danger than when the police are around.  Get away from them as quickly as humanly possible.

And never, ever believe the myth that they’re there to protect you or your loved ones.

It’s like the Keystone cops, but with military hardware. Remember, with a simple signature of a police captain, they can go purchase machine guns and train them on you or your family … after busting down doors in wrong home raids.

Basically, this has unfortunately become the picture of cops in America.

GM 🌞

It’s Monday!!! pic.twitter.com/WEqcgDO844

— EducatëdHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) March 20, 2023

Amusing video.  I will remark that while I don’t have a strong opinion (or any opinion really) on Bear Creek Arsenal uppers, lowers or full rifles, he didn’t get great grouping with the heavier load.  One comment to the video indicates that one viewer got much better results with a 200 grain load.  But with such a lousy BC, I wonder why you would have the 450 Bushmaster and opt for a lighter load?

Anyway, if I was going to purchase a 450 Bushmaster rifle, I’d likely choose a Rock River Arms rifle in 450 Bushmaster.  They manufacture tight, close tolerance, well functioning rifles that usually group extremely close.  Of course, purchasing a RRA rifle will set you back more than buying a Bear Creek Arsenal rifle.  So the choice is up to you – if you make the choice at all.

If you have a rifle in 45-70, I would see this as overlap and maybe unnecessary.  But variety is the spice of life, and it’s always good to have more rifles.

Mark Smith makes a compelling case for his view.  He takes an incrementalist approach.  Listen to his whole argument.

Even after judge Reed O’Conner issued a preliminary injunction in the case of the Polymer80, the ATF is bowing their back up and demanding that their rule be enforced.  They literally don’t care what the court says.  They are in love with the courts when they side with the controllers, and ignore them when they don’t.

They are among the most lawless people on the planet. ATF doesn’t need laws – they make ’em.