A crime scene is depicted in this undated stock image.
ABCNews
A shooting in Indiana that injured two people after a three-year-old accessed a gun led to the arrest of a man wanted for murder in Illinois, authorities said.
Trayshaun Smith, 23, was arrested on Thursday after he visited a hospital with a non-life-threatening gunshot wound, according to Lt. Justin Hartman of the Lafayette Police Department.
Investigators eventually determined that the shooting that sent Smith and another victim to the hospital occurred when a three-year-old was able to access a gun and fire a single round.
“It was determined that a three year old child at that location accessed a gun and fired one round striking two people,” according to Hartman.
The police department said officers initially found both shooting victims at the Franciscan Health Lafayette East Hospital, where they were being treated for non-life-threatening injuries. They later determined that the shooting occurred at an apartment complex in Lafayette, Indiana.
Hartman said the other victim was the child’s mother and Smith was a friend of the mother’s.
Smith was arrested on an active murder warrant from neighboring Cook County, Illinois. The Lafayette Police Department said it is coordinating with police in Markham, Illinois, regarding the arrest.
Smith resides in Lafayette, according to authorities.
A representative for the Markham Police Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the arrest.
Young American men will be taught the hard way that selflessness, courage, and their masculine instincts will get them 20 to life in prison.
This week, a brave Marine acted when no one else would to restrain a deranged homeless schizophrenic on a New York City F train who was, by all accounts, terrorizing people and shouting “I’ll hurt anyone on this train.”
“‘I don’t mind going to jail and getting life in prison,’ screamed the 30-year-old Jordan Neely, who had 44 arrests under his belt and an outstanding warrant for felony assault (he punched an old woman in the face), as he flailed around throwing items of his clothing. ‘I’m ready to die!’ In response, a 24-year-old Marine Corps veteran put Neely in a chokehold, incapacitating him and releasing him after he stopped struggling and passed out,” Inez Stepman wrote.
When Neely died at the hospital, all hell broke loose.
This is not the first time a courageous man minding his own business has put himself in danger to protect others. It’s happened many times, in fact. Toxic masculinity has saved more lives than penicillin.
But in this case, the erratic lunatic was black, the courageous restrainer was not just white but blond and handsome, and worst of all: the lunatic shuffled off this mortal coil when he arrived at the hospital.
Inevitably, the left’s muscle memory of how politically lucrative George Floyd’s 2020 death was for them kicked in. The Floyd Playbook could be run!
AOC fired up her Twitter and called his death a “murder.” Al Sharpton is polishing his diamond cufflinks before his press conference. Neely’s cousins are getting fitted for new suits before their Oval Office visit. Nancy Pelosi has already ordered the solid gold casket and white horse-drawn carriage for the funeral, which will be held after Neely lies in state in the Capitol. Kente cloth scarves are being passed out in the Old Executive Office Building. Kamala Harris’s speechwriter is ripping nitrous balloons as he crafts her eulogy. The whole band is getting back together!
Weakness Is Strength. Courage Is Hatred
In the aftermath, I tweeted this: “Strong men brave enough to intervene publicly when a deranged lunatic is terrifying people are going to be rounded up first; this is brilliant strategy for the Regime. Pick off the bravest and most selfless heroes first. Leave the cowards behind, who will fall in line fast.”
The worse the subway Viking’s fate is, the less likely any of us, the sane ones, will be tempted to lift a finger when they come for us, our friends, or our neighbors. If the Viking gets 20 years on Riker’s Island, plus some prison rapes and beatings for good measure as the guards look the other way — that’ll teach you boys a lesson.
Since literally the morning the first European settlers set foot in the new country, the ethos drilled into American men is to be strong, be brave, and be prepared to protect and defend your family, your homestead, and your fellow man. This is what men are for, after all. This is why God made them stronger than women. Those biceps are not just for deadlifting. Their main purpose is twofold: wielding a spear for the hunt, and wielding your fists or a sword for defense.
It feels like Good Samaritan laws have gone in and out of favor over time in America. For many years after 9/11, no able-bodied man boarded an airplane without first preparing himself to tackle a terrorist if he had to. Does that happen anymore? Or would the passengers laugh and whip out their phones as the terrorist slit a flight attendant’s throat? You will not go to jail for watching someone beat another person to death as you stream it live on social media. That’s perfectly acceptable now, even encouraged.
But every normal man I know would be unable to stand and watch a psycho assaulting an innocent stranger. My future husband once threw the first punch in a bloody fistfight against a much larger, much drunker man who was persistently harassing me and getting in my face late at night outside a bar in New York City. (My husband won, so I married him soon after.)
You Won’t Get In Trouble for Being a Coward
As an avid Twitter user, I probably see a dozen graphic videos a week of men doing the opposite: standing idly by, shouting approval and laughing, cameras out, as violent individuals assault, beat, rape, and shoot innocent strangers. This violence is almost exclusively black-on-white, or black-on-Asian.
In April, such a video made national news: a terrified young woman in downtown Chicago is knocked down and stomped on by a large mob during a “teen takeover” of the city. Where are all the videos showing the white-on-black and white-on-Asian stompings? I’m sure if they existed, AOC herself would be tweeting them out 24/7.
In this terrible, ugly, upside-down, zero-trust society I’ve been forced to raise a family in, I have developed new survival rules. I have instructed my husband and son to be cowards. That’s right: to do nothing if they are in a situation where a dangerous psycho is threatening violence to a stranger.
I have begged them to sit on their hands; to be one of the people who just watches, runs away, or calls 911. It goes against every chivalric instinct in their bodies, but I do not want them dead or in jail. Instead of being hailed as heroes for saving some old lady’s life, they would be tried as killers and put away for life.
My teenage son informed me he won’t go along with my surrender monkey ethos and is prepared to defend himself and others if he has to. This is a dangerous virtue for a boy to have in a blue city in 2023! Does he want his mother to get gray hair? Doesn’t he know how much good hair colorists cost these days?
I have failed as a mother because I forgot to teach my sons to be cowards.
This week’s watershed event on the New York City F train illustrates the blackpilling utility of my new rules. “Son, you see that damsel in distress over there getting her teeth kicked out by that filthy homeless man? You just sit tight and get off at the next stop and tell the nearest social worker. It’s not your problem.”
Podcaster Aimee Terese tweeted: “A man threatening the safety of everyone else in a tiny, highly populated, contained space, is a liability to himself and to others. The marine is a hero, and we need more men like him, which is why the left is wetting the bed about it. They don’t want that ethos to catch on.”
Courage and Nobility Will Be Punished
Neely was lynched by a racist and this racist will be made an example of. This is a teaching moment for Democrats — young American men will be taught the hard way that nobility, selflessness, courage, and their masculine instinct to defend the innocent are bad. Don’t be like this former Marine!
Mohammed Atta’s immortal words to the doomed passengers of American Airlines Flight 11 were “Just stay quiet and you’ll be okay.” Of course, it only applies to some of us. The raving maniacs on our subways, in our parks, and on our buses are free to live their best lives.
Democrat politicians have made forced passivity the new rule for normal people out in public. We are all cuckolds now. After all, what other sane choice do we have?
Arthur L. “Gat” Howard earned his reputation and nickname from behind a Gatling gun.
As slang for a gun, “gat” took hold in the early 20th century, but is clearly a play on Gatling gun, designed in 1862 and named after its inventor Richard J. Gatling.
Born in 1846, Howard served with the U.S. Cavalry for five years and fought in the Indian Wars on the western plains before going to work for Winchester Arms. Eventually he left Winchester and started his own cartridge manufacturing company and enjoyed some success before the factory burned down. Howard served in the Connecticut National Guard where he led the Gatling gun platoon, but it was in service of the Canadian government where Howard earned his nickname.
An American, Arthur L. “Gat” Howard earned his nickname working a Gatling gun in service of the Canadian military during the North-West Uprising of 1885. He stayed in Canada and also fought in the Second Boer War where he was killed in 1901.
Gatling Gun
Gatling, a doctor, invented his namesake weapon hoping to make a gun that would reduce the number of men in battle and lower the devastating losses seen early in the American Civil War. A precursor to the machine gun, Gatling’s multi-barrel, crank-operated weapon was patented in 1862 but not officially adopted by the U.S. military until 1866, after the end of the Civil War.
This black powder reproduction of a Model 1862 Gatling gun is available in Rock Island Auction Company’s Feb. 14-17 Sporting & Collector Auction.
Colt produced all Gatling guns for the U.S. market from 1866 to 1903. The grandfather of the machine gun, the first Gatling gun could fire about 200 rounds per minute. Later models achieved the fire rate of as high as 1,500 rounds per minute. The 1883 Colt Gatling gun had a full brass housing and a fire rate of 800 rounds per minute.
The Gatling gun available in the February Sporting & Collector Auction is an unmarked black powder reproduction of the Model 1862 which did not use self-contained cartridges as we know them today. It utilized steel cartridge chambers which were individually loaded with paper cartridges in the front and primed with percussion caps at the rear.
A U.S. Government inspected Colt Model 1883 Gatling gun with an Accles drum magazine, full original carriage, and crate of vintage ammunition.
Rebellion in Canada
In 1885, rebellion was fomenting north of the border as indigenous people and mixed race settlers were unhappy about European settlers coming west, the Canadian government’s neglecting to recognize land titles in Saskatchewan and Alberta, and being under-represented in the Canadian parliament.
The Canadian government at the time had a small professional army and so enlisted militias to assist in quelling the uprising, amassing a military force of about 5,000 soldiers. Colt executives seeing a marketing opportunity, offered to loan a Gatling gun to the Canadian government.
The question was who would operate the Gatling gun? Colt and Gatling turned to Howard. He was not to be a representative of Colt, nor the Connecticut National Guard. Even Gatling stated that Howard didn’t represent him but was on the mission as “a friend of the gun.”
Gatling saw Howard, two of his guns, likely 10-barrel 1874 models, and 5,000 rounds of ammunition get on a train bound for Winnipeg. There was little time to train Canadian gunners.
In an early battle during the uprising, the Battle of Cut Knife Hill, the resistance gained the upper hand so it was up to a Gatling gun operated by a Canadian gunner to cover a retreat by government forces, preventing a possible massacre. Howard, as always wearing his blue army uniform, played a key part in stopping a charge in the decisive Battle of Batoche in May 1885 that ended the five month-long rebellion. Ultimately, it was the superior firepower of the government forces that led to the end of the resistance.
In this lithograph depicting the Battle of Batoche, in May 1885, Howard and the Gatling gun can be seen in the lower right corner, though the gun would likely have been placed closer to the action during the battle.
Canada after the Rebellion
Howard earned $5,000 and received a medal for his role in quashing the rebellion. He never returned to Connecticut, instead taking up residence in Montreal where he became an investor in the Dominion Cartridge Factory. Along with the stipend and medal, Howard also got assistance from the Canadian government that allowed him to import materials for the cartridge factory duty free. The business made him a wealthy man.
His actions gained Howard enough fame that his purported death and survival in a storm off Nova Scotia was reported by The New York Times. He grew weary of the tedium of Montreal and as the Boer War began in South Africa, he offered to commission a battery of four machine guns at his expense but was refused. Instead, he was offered and accepted a position as machine gun officer in the 1st Canadian Mounted Rifles.
This Smith & Wesson New Model No. 3 is attributed to Arthur L. “Gat” Howard, who gained fame and his nickname from operating a Gatling gun during Canada’s 1885 North-West Uprising. It is available in Rock Island Auction Company’s Feb. 14-17 Sporting & Collector Auction.
Second Boer War
Conflict between the descendants of South African Dutch settlers, called Boers or Afrikaners, and British colonists exploded into open warfare in 1899. The British took control of most of the territory as the Boers began fighting with guerilla tactics.
In South Africa, Howard commanded a Maxim and Colt machine gun. An aggressive and fearless leader willing to fight at close quarters, he didn’t return to Canada with his unit in December, 1900, choosing to stay in South Africa where he organized the Canadian Scouts, equipped with air-cooled Colt Model 1895 machine guns.
A Spandau Maxim MG08/15 machine gun.
Two months later, in February, 1901, Howard was killed at the age of 57. Reports of Howard’s death varied, with some saying he and his aide were killed in an ambush by Boers, or that they were captured and murdered. In a short article in The New York Times, he was described as “an intrepid and absolutely fearless fellow.”
The article also stated “He knew a machine gun perfectly and it was his skill in handling the gun of the Gatling make that earned for him his title during the Riel rebellion when he was in the Canadian Service.”
A drawing from a news periodical of the time portrays Arthur L. “Gat” Howard’s death in 1901 during the Second Boer War. Accounts varied that he and his aide were killed in an ambush or that the men were captured by Boers and executed.
Machine Gun Hero
Arthur L. “Gat” Howard was a man of action who joined in the Canadian government’s effort to put down a western uprising, earned his reputation and nickname as a Gatling gunner. An American who remained in Canada, Howard fought in the Boer War where he met his death. A Smith & Wesson New Model No. 3 with pearl grips and attributed to Howard is on offer in the Feb. 14-17 Sporting & Collector Auction, as is a Gatling gun Model 1862 black powder reproduction of the weapon that ushered in the machine gun.
This Smith & Wesson New Model No. 3 attributed to Arthur L. “Gat” Howard is available in Rock Island Auction Company’s Feb. 14-17 Sporting & Collector Auction.
Federal investigators said whistleblowers exposed the matter.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives intentionally overstated the duties of multiple workers so they could be classified as law enforcement agents and be paid more, according to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel report this week.
Federal investigators say the agency has been making such overpayments since 2003. And over 100 jobs in the agency’s human Resources department and other departments were falsely labeled as criminal investigators, according to the Washington Times.
The investigators allege that roughly $20 million was wasted on overpayments in a five-year period, according to a letter for the special counsel office Tuesday to President Biden.
Fifty employees who held positions that were misclassified have either been reassigned or have retired, according to the letter, obtained by CNBC that also states whistleblowers helped expose the matter.
“I thank the whistleblowers for coming forward with these very serious allegations and am pleased that under [Office of Personnel Management] oversight, ATF has initiated corrective measures,” special counsel Henry Kerner said.
Kerner said progress is being made toward fixing the problems, but acknowledged the process is slow.
“While I find the report to be reasonable, progress toward full resolution has been slow, which may be attributable to the long-standing nature of the problems and the entrenched culture reinforcing ATF’s practices,” he said.
Progress on House Bill 189, now named “Freedom to Carry NC,” stalled on Wednesday after the NRA reportedly came out in opposition to the bill. NRA lobbyist DJ Spiker, who had been utterly absent from the debate over permitless concealed carry (and rarely seen at the legislature), showed up at the Judiciary 2 Committee meeting, which passed HB 189 on Tuesday, and began complaining about the bill’s contents.
To satisfy Speaker Tim Moore’s requirement to move the bill, the latest incarnation of HB 189 contains a nominal training requirement to establish that concealed carriers know relevant state laws. The training requirement can be satisfied by courses from the NRA, USCCA, or an online course to be established by the North Carolina Criminal Justice Education and Training Standards Commission. There will be no permit, no live fire training, no requirement to carry proof of training, nor any central repository or database of who has or has not taken a course.
NRA “not invented here” syndrome
Spiker reportedly complained to bill sponsor Rep. Keith Kidwell, that due to the training requirement, it was no longer a “true” constitutional carry bill. In truth, HB 189 has always been a hybrid bill in that it offered permitless carry only to those who would otherwise qualify for a permit. Its progenitors stretch back to 2017 with HB 69, sponsored by Rep. Larry Pittman, and HB 746, sponsored by Rep. Chris Millis, both of which contained language similar to HB 189. Despite the fact that HB 746 passed the NC House, sponsors report that the NRA has never been active in the constitutional carry debate.
What the NRA is really objecting to – and which they have done many times in the past – could best be described as the “not invented here” syndrome. Namely, that the NRA couldn’t claim credit for a bill it had not participated in crafting.
What Spiker seems to avoid mentioning is that HB 189 represents a huge step forward by eliminating governmental “permission slips” for exercising a fundamental civil right. When called to explain, Spiker is quoted by the Raleigh News & Observer as making the laughable claim that the NRA “will never apologize for refusing to compromise on an issue as critical as Constitutional Carry.” In truth, the NRA (and Spiker) have a long history of compromise not only tactically but on core principles in the gun rights movement.
But most importantly, the NRA has had since 2017 to weigh in on the language making up HB 189, but it reportedly never has. Instead, Spiker swooped in at the last minute and, like a vulture, deposited a large load of dung onto the efforts of the activists who were actually getting things done.
Next Steps
HB 189 is not dead. Rep. Kidwell had it referred back to the Rules Committee in order to add a fiscal note, which would make it immune to the May 4 crossover deadline by which bills must clear at least one chamber to remain alive. In the coming days, Grass Roots North Carolina will issue alerts to get it moving.
Meanwhile, gun rights supporters are advised to contact the NRA and hit them where it hurts: money. If you are a current member who is not fully paid up or have an annual membership, resign from the organization. If you’ve already quit, call and email them anyway.
The message is this: “Not a dime for the NRA.”
Bonus Round
As a bonus, if you would like to express your “appreciation” to NRA lobbyist DJ Spiker, he can be reached by phone or text at 757-575-8507 and by email at DSpiker@nrahq.org. In order that your feedback not be misrepresented as “harassment,” be civil and phone, text, or email only once.
IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED!
CALL AND EMAIL THE NRA: Contact the NRA membership department at 877-672-2000 or 800-NRA-3888 AND email them at membership@nrahq.org
DELIVER THIS MESSAGE
Suggested Subject: “Not a dime for the NRA”
NRA leadership:
Apparently, alleged misappropriation of membership funds is not enough. Now, after years of absence in the debate over constitutional carry, you send NRA lobbyist DJ Spiker to North Carolina to derail House Bill 189, the “Freedom to Carry NC” bill which would for the first time relieve citizens of the burden of obtaining a governmental permission slip in order to exercise the fundamental right affirmed by the Second Amendment.
Here is my response: Not a dime for the NRA. No membership dues, no donations, no merchandise, no “Friends of the NRA” dinners. Nada.
If you are smart, you will leave decisions on North Carolina gun rights to North Carolinians.
Respectfully,
About Grass Roots North Carolina
Founded in 1994, Grass Roots North Carolina is an all-volunteer 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving individual liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights with emphasis on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
