Tag: Smith & Wesson

Q-Anon is Not a Conspiracy, It’s a Promise: Defending that GREAT company of Smith and Wesson

I wouldn’t say that the Q-Anon internet postings are a conspiracy theory. It may make mainstreamers uncomfortable, but that is about as conspiracy as things get. The Trump family isn’t stupid and they have a history of fighting, and there are plenty of people who support Trump that do not have surrender in their vocabulary. So it really doesn’t matter who or what Q-Anon is or what many of the criminals in power fear it will become, because their end started well before the election of Donald Trump. I have always been one of the good guys and I know I’m not the only one. That is why I found this video that a friend sent to me below refreshing, because it let me know that finally enough people were getting it to actually make a difference. The good guys for a change were poised to win, and for that I am proud. But I never really worried. I have had everything that can be done to a person thrown at me over my adult life, even before. Lucky for me I had an interesting childhood and teen period which prepared me for just that kind of war, and honestly, I never went to bed one day in my life thinking I couldn’t single handedly beat them all. The reason, well honestly, it was the great company Smith & Wesson and their products which I’ve always loved that put my mind on firm ground of understanding. So long as I had the support of Smith & Wesson in my life, nobody was going to bring harm to my life or those that I cared about. They might think about it, but it wouldn’t happen. So I feel just a little compelled to defend that great company as they were attacked last week by the latest young people inspired to protest by the same villains who are trying to keep Hilary Clinton free and Donald Trump on defense.

I could tell stories all day long of the events that pissed me off to the point where I decided to write this blog everyday to essentially prepare a movement that might become Q-Anon or the presidency of Donald Trump, that might inspire radio talk shows to contemplate the what ifs. I decided to do my part years ago when white vans followed my wife everywhere and had us under constant surveillance. And why wouldn’t they, I supported Ross Perot heavily during both of his presidential runs, I had fierce convictions against sexual perversion and drugs which came into conflict in my children’s school days. I caused trouble with several city mayors including those in Mason and Cincinnati and the word on the street was that I was trouble. But I worked three jobs most of the time just to keep ahead of all the financial burdens so that my wife and kids always had the money we needed to build a strong family, so the anti-family big government types hated me, and they let me know it. When they couldn’t get to me they went after my wife and it was very hard on her to have people always following her around, to know what we were doing and always being listened to. I got used to it, she didn’t. There wasn’t anything in her life to prepare her for that kind of pressure.

But I stayed the course, and I pushed those against me to try to suppress me after I proved that I could outwork any of them and still out think them with a hand tied behind my back. When they tried unsuccessfully after many years of frustration the psychological intimidation they came after me with threats of violence which went nowhere. After all, I’m a professional bullwhip artist. I can cut the arteries of someone’s neck with a flick of my wrist with pinpoint accuracy. Nobody threatens me with violence, it’s just not something I’ve ever put up with. As a tradeoff, I don’t go around threatening people for no reason, so there has been a kind of stalemate over the years that has occurred on a political level. I found my support system in the Tea Party, they resorted to traditional party politics and tried to use it to ostracize me. Obviously, that didn’t work either, it was the Tea Party that elected Donald Trump and changed the nature of the Republican Party to poise it for what is about to happen next.

I always knew in the back of my mind that no matter how bad things got that I had the Second Amendment to defend me against the villains, even those that had taken over law enforcement. I wrote two books predicting my own eventual arrest, one called The Symposium of Justice which was my argument for the need to defend my family against the kind of games that I had witnessed firsthand. The second was The Tail of the Dragon which was for me a legal argument supporting an insurrection against the forces of government with a kind of Donald Trump president sitting in the White House to support one side over the other for the health of the whole. As I wrote those books my main concern was to offer them as my testimony for when things did go wrong and people kicked in my door one night to make an arrest in protection of the “state.” The more I worked toward a real justice, the more I knew my efforts were a threat and in spite of many efforts to keep my thoughts from other people, nothing worked. Knowing that they’d be coming at some point in time I did go out and buy the Smith & Wesson gun that I had always wanted, the .500 Magnum for home defense against any enemy, foreign or domestic and I made it clear that was always my intention. Things looked pretty rough before Donald Trump ran for president and the moment he did, I threw my support behind him, and since he has won, the offensive efforts against my household have been much less. I noticed it right away.

I always felt that so long as I had Smith & Wesson products under my roof that I could defend right and wrong. As I said, up to this point I’ve managed to avoid such physical encounters. Being the expert bullwhip handler is a big reason for that. Fortunately, nobody ever really pushed me to the point where I had to use those skills in a lethal way, and that kept the guns in their holsters, because I tend to use that method of self-defense first, before shooting. But I always know that the big guns are there to defend the people I care about from the forces of evil, and it gave me the extra horsepower to defend goodness when it mattered most. Even as my wife was unsettled to learn that her own government had no problem following her around almost to the point of madness, the biggest part of the threat was purely psychological because they knew I’d shoot them dead if they did anything but imply violence and constant surveillance.

I can safely say that the discussion around the Q-Anon is not a conspiracy, but is very real. I learned it firsthand and the reason I’m hear today to discuss it is because of Smith & Wesson. If not for them, I wouldn’t have felt nearly as empowered to defend myself against the biggest of the big dogs. Sure you can cut open someone’s neck with a bullwhip, but when they show up with tax payer funded armored cars and big guns covered in body armor, you need the next level of punch. To be honest, before Donald Trump was elected I thought I was probably a month away from a major raid. There was real concern in my family that if Hillary Clinton won, that “they” would be coming after me. My kids were actively making plans to move to England to flee the aftermath. But I told them that night even as Sean Hannity was worried after seeing the exit polling that Trump was going to win. I said it in the days leading up to it, I was certain of it because I knew how the Deep State worked. I have written about it as openly and logically as possible and people have learned for themselves even more. I knew Trump was going to win.

I’ll then say that I know the Deep State is on the run because the eyes that used to watch me so closely have gone away. Not that we can afford to put down our defenses, but they are now the ones looking over their backs. Sure, the shadow banning is going on. If you look at my YouTube account and my Twitter you can see it for yourself. Does anybody really think that I only have a few hundred hits on my work, even some that have been up for ten years. People post videos of cats eating and they get more hits than I do. Yet I get asked all the time about my videos from hundreds of people. The same with Twitter, so many people comment to me about my Twitter account, yet I seldom have any traffic that indicates that anybody is watching. That is because they have messed with the counter, it’s a very real circumstance. But what do I care? The goal isn’t to make money off my hits, its to get information to people, and it has worked. But the difference now is that they know the momentum is shifting against them and they are now pulling out all the stops, banning Alex Jones, taking down videos from Cody Wilson and his very great “Ghost Gunner” milling machine. It doesn’t matter, because it’s over for them. It’s like the Q-Anon said, get ready for the plan. I certainly am, and have been for well over ten years now. I am sentimental to Smith & Wesson because the day I purchased the .500 Magnum from them I have never slept more soundly in my life than from that day on. And that is what a great company does for America. They don’t deserve to be protested, they should be honored, and I have a feeling that in the days to come the protestors will be a thing of the past and Smith & Wesson will be taken in regard among the great patriotic companies of our times, as more people come to know them the way I have.

Q-Anon is not a conspiracy. It’s a promise.  I have proven that I am more than willing to follow the law and to function within the Constitution.  But if the villains are bad and are in charge of our government and want to use its power against me and you, I am more than willing to take that next step.  It’s not our fault they decided to be criminals, let’s just put it that way.   I have committed a huge part of my life to this legal discussion and I feel I have made a good case that could hold up in any court–so its their move next–and after that, checkmate–or violence, whichever they select.

Rich Hoffman
Sign up for Second Call Defense here: http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707 Use my name to get added benefits.

What I Love About Christmas: Guns, Guns, and more Guns–Smith and Wesson stock is rising!

It’s a wonderful time that we live in, regardless of the challenges posed by poorly constructed philosophies and destructive politics—it is truly a wonderful life.  In spite of the terrorists that want to kill us in America because of our use of capitalism, or the domestic insurgents who want to blast the United States back into the Stone Age regarding religious and hierarchical structure—life is beautiful.  It is Christmas time, time with family is wonderful, and we have guns—lots of guns—so all is well.  I love guns, and so do many Americans.  I also love my iPhone, so it gave me great pleasure to get a stock notification while I was having a nice lunch that Smith & Wesson stock was up, way up.  Given the recent attempts by the left-leaning political class to propose stricter gun laws, the American public responded by purchasing large numbers of personal firearms.  That of course drove up the stock offering from Smith & Wesson and Sturm Ruger—two of my favorite firearm manufacturers, both examples of great American companies—that can emphatically declare—Made in America.  Here is the news that came over my stock app which made my lunch taste so much better.

Smith & Wesson Hits 8-Year High On Gun Control Push

BY JAMES DETAR, INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

12/07/2015 05:04 PM ET
Shares of Smith & Wesson (NASDAQ:SWHC) and Sturm Ruger (NYSE:RGR) gapped up sharply Monday amid new gun control calls by President Obama and the New York Times as well as a Supreme Court ruling.

Obama’s Oval Office address Sunday night and an unusual New York Times editorial came in the wake of the mass shootings in San Bernardino, Calif., on Dec. 2 in which 14 died and 21 were wounded. Shares of firearms makers often rise after mass shootings and other violent incidents, and fall during lull periods.

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider an appeal of a Chicago area law banning semiautomatic guns such as the AK-47 and Uzi, and high-capacity ammunition magazines.

Two justices, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, said in a statement that they would have allowed consideration of the case “because noncompliance with our Second Amendment precedents warrants this court’s attention as much as any of our precedents.”

Smith & Wesson shares gapped up 7.6% to 20.44 to an eight-year high in Monday afternoon trading on the stock market today.

Read More At Investor’s Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/business/120715-784076-smith-wesson-sturm-ruger-rise-on-gun-control-talk.htm#ixzz3tjtPLTmp

I remember when stock prices used to be checked by reading the Wall Street Journal and the closing value from the previous day.  The information was at best 24 hours old by the time you could effectively use it to make a trading decision.  Now with the mobile devices that are so easily available, stock pricing changes are instant.  I’ve come to enjoy my iPhone because the apps are so interactive and run well on the Apple operating system.  I have my preset favorites and one of them is (NASDAQ:SWHC) but that’s really just for fun.  You aren’t going to get rich on that kind of stock; you’d have to buy it in large quantities when it’s very low and sell it off on a bounce-back.  But watching it climb to such lofty heights as it has after Obama’s speech has more value to me than just money.

Smith & Wesson are and Ruger are companies that I cheer for, because everyone knows the political pressure against them to shut down, the threats of lawsuits that they’ve had to endure from every pandering politician to ever hit the scene—the gun companies have been easy targets for many years.  So I watch the stock of gun companies to monitor their health—because that is important to me.  I want to see them succeed, because if they do, I succeed also.  It’s good to see Smith & Wesson stock climbing because that means that mainstreamers are buying guns and are wanting to own a piece of the company.

I would suggest Smith & Wesson stock for a Christmas present to a person in your life who values such things.  At the current prices, they won’t be retiring any time soon, but it is ownership into something that is distinctly, and unapologetically American.  I know I feel every time I buy one of their firearms pride in owning a piece of American craftsmanship.  I have a long history with fine machining products—and even today it’s a part of my life.  I have great respect for products made on lathes and milling machines.  So I never tire of rubbing my fingers over a fine firearm that was built to contain controlled explosions and deliver a projectile to a target radius many yards away.  It is a similar appreciation as I feel when holding a fine set of golf clubs, or shooting a basketball into a well constructed hoop.  Its science melded with human invention out of necessity—and they are things to behold with appreciation.  Machining measurements on firearms are understandably very tight, so it takes a lot of responsibility, and craftsmanship to be a firearms manufacturer.  The liability alone makes it nearly prohibitive, which has been politically motivated to sink those companies with compliance costs.  There are much more profitable ventures to be involved in, so I greatly respect companies like Smith & Wesson, who have their headquarters in a liberal part of the country and are holding their own against a tide of progressive sentimentality.  They could do other things to make a buck, but they work each day to stay in business for the few of us out there who greatly appreciate their efforts.  Those are the things I think of when I rub my fingers over the contours of a finely built gun.  They are objects of great love and care—and they go perfectly with a bold American flag flying on the Fourth of July.

Watching the stock price rise on my iPhone indicated to me that the attempts of the gun grabbers were failing.  If they were trying to use fear instigated by terrorism to drive society into their warm embrace—they have failed in their task.  Instead, what they are getting is a society that is rejecting their extended arms knowing that the cost of that embrace is a loss of freedom and personal sanctity.  What the government is doing is essentially perverted, like a teenage boy trying to sneak a kiss from an innocent girl by taking her to a scary movie so that she wants to tuck herself into his arms as an invitation to a first base advancement of sexual exploration.  Government wants America disarmed for the same reasons—and the public isn’t falling for it. Instead, they were going in the other direction and that is good for firearms manufacturers like Smith & Wesson who have been making guns for a long time—yet have done so without the glamour and glitz of the great success story that they are, because guns have been given an undeserved stigma.   Yet Smith & Wesson made them anyway.  So it’s nice to see good things happening to good people and the owners of Smith & Wesson are.  Those who aren’t owners yet desired to be, so they bought some stock, which is the best way to tell such a company—Thank You.

Rich “Cliffhanger” Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

http://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Just Type in “Overmanwarrior”: A great offer from Second Call Defense

 

George Lang from Second Call Defense presented a very nice offer during the WAAM radio show I was hosting for my friend Matt Clark.  I’ve done quite a lot of radio but this was the first time I was the host, which took a bit of getting used to.  Its one thing to be a guest as George was, it’s another to be the pace setter watching all the commercial stops and working with the producer on the other side of the glass.  But it was fun, as I expected it to be and as always quite revelatory.  The entire broadcast can be heard at the following link, which I’d suggest listening to again and again because of all the information presented.   I dedicated the show to the use of personal firearms for self-defense spending the first half talking about my personal experience in the matter, then put George on to discuss Second Call Defense, which is to my mind as important as the bullets you put into a gun used during a self-defense situation.  George covered a remarkable number of legal ins and outs during his segment which was worth listening to all by itself.  I have included the script I was working with to provide some guide to the broadcast.  The times include commercials which have been removed from the following recording.  George offered a free month of Second Call Defense subscription to anyone who types OVERMANWARRIOR into the redeem code on their website—which was a pretty good deal.

 

Here are the plans and pricing.  The box requiring the redeem code is on the next page while filling out the payment information form.

http://www.secondcalldefense.org/plans-and-pricing

 

Radio Show WAAM Saturday June 13, 2015 1 PM
WAAM Talk 1600  734-822-1600

5 min — Matt Clark’s secret mission

8 min — Previous show and buying a .500 Magnum after realizing that society is already over the precipice.  Clinton emails, Lois Lerner corruption, Benghazi cover-up, drug violence, open borders, ISIS terrorism, power grab by the Justice Department law enforcement over localized police, Common Core and two generations of poorly educated children, the weakest foreign policy of United States global presence in over a century, bomb scares at the White House, Justice Department cover ups, and men who want to be women and vice versa—the world has fallen over the edge.

10 min — What I wanted to be when I grew up—a gunsmith.

17 min — Soft break

20 min — Treat at the bottom of the hour, old song from T.G. Sheppard and Clint Eastwood from a more civilized time – the 1980s.

  • The reason 80s music and movies still resonate so powerfully in our culture.

o Reaganomics and individual empowerment.

  • Dirty Harry represented by Clint Eastwood embodied traditional America with the encroaching progressivism culminating in the movie Sudden Impact.

30 min — Hard break

35 min — Song “Go ahead and Make my Day.”

38 min — Introduction of George Lang and his company Second Call Defense.

47 min — Soft break

50 min — Continuation about Second Call Defense.  Possibly take a phone call or two.

58 min — Exit to the top of the hour

As George pointed out during the broadcast George Zimmerman could have saved himself a lot of headache if he had used Second Call Defense during the Trayvon Martain shooting in Florida.  Using a gun in home defense or in a stand-your ground situation is only part of the story.  Because of the way laws and modern politics work, the burden of proof falls unfortunately on the shooter to validate their innocence.  When talking to the police after such an unfortunate incident, it is best to give the police as little as possible to turn around and use against you in court during a criminal or civil trial.  Some of those court hearings can be so painful that you might almost wish you hadn’t used a gun—which is the reason for all the progressive legislation—to nudge Americans away from the Second Amendment.  There are entirely too many people involved in self-defense shootings every year that lose everything because of the legal entanglements that occur after.  The very best thing to do in such a case is to turn all the legal work over to Second Call Defense and keep your mouth shut—even if you’re innocent of all guilt.  The system works against gun owners, so you’ll need some help, which is why George Lang is involved in Second Call Defense to begin with.  It’s a much-needed service for firearm use; just as the NRA is needed as a lobby against a gun grabbing government.  They are both very important and go hand in hand in this modern age of a lawyer driven society primarily against gun rights.

As I reported in my broadcast my decision to purchase the .500 Magnum was for all the reasons that the SWAT guys used a .50 caliber sniper rifle to stop the crazed gunman who opened up on a Dallas police station just hours before my show.  They used the big, powerful round to disable the getaway van by putting two shots into the engine block.  The .500 Magnum has the same type of stopping power, which in the world we are living in, is needed.  There is no reason to take risks with personal safety, so I am choosing the Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum as my choice for family defense.  But, those big bullets aren’t enough to protect a firearm user from the diabolical reaches of the classic political class and their need for a straw man to prosecute in the wake of a shooting.  Their need for a straw man should never be underestimated.  As a firearm owner, you need protection from them as much as you do the goons, the punks, and the creeps George and I were talking about.  It’s a vicious world out there, and I have to thank George for making it easier for listeners of the Clarkcast to get protected with a free month by using the redeem word, “OVERMANWARRIOR.”  Take advantage of that offer, it is some of the best insurance that you can have for yourself

I’ll be hosting for Matt again on Saturday, June 20th at 1pm.  On that show Gery Deer will be with me to talk more about guns, knife throwing, and bull whips.  Be sure to tune in for more voluminous entertainment and interconnecting knowledge.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Thank God for an American Gun Company in Springfield MA: The .500 Magnum, the most powerful production handgun in the world

When I cover for Matt Clark’s radio show on WAAM in Ann Arbor, Michigan on Saturday June 13th I plan to play an old T.G. Sheppard song he did with Clint Eastwood called, “Make My Day.” The song is a country song done after the success of the Dirty Harry film Sudden Impact as a tribute to that classic cop drama featuring the .44 magnum from Smith & Wesson.   The song itself is a fun romp through common sense as seen from behind the trigger of a gun owner. Since I first heard that song shortly after watching Sudden Impact as a very young man, I have been in love with the company of Smith & Wesson. It has always represented to me a classic American company full of patriotism. The factory itself is located in the middle of an extremely liberal part of the country that is heavily dominated by labor union mentality and progressive politics. But Smith & Wesson has maintained itself as a dominant player in the firearms manufacturing world stage from its Springfield, MA factory off Roosevelt Ave for a long time and is a testament to the ingenuity of American resiliency. Firearms and aviation are still global manufacturing fields that are specifically dominated by American methods making the Smith & Wesson factory to me one of the most sentimental acts of patriotism available today.

It was largely that sense of sentimental patriotism that made me want to have the Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum. There was a lot of controversy when S&W released their Model 29 Dirty Harry gun when it was declared then that it was the most powerful handgun in the world by Clint Eastwood himself at the start of Magnum Force. 

  There were other handguns that were more powerful and it became well-known that S&W were overstating the power of their .44 magnum Model 29. Sure it was a powerful gun, but it wasn’t the most powerful. Regardless, Model 29 sales soared throughout the 70s into the early 90s when progressives launched a full-out attack during the Clinton years against guns and their manufactures. Clint Eastwood turned to more serious films and never returned to Dirty Harry after the film the Dead Pool in 1988 leaving the S&W Model 29 hanging a bit in a changing marketplace.

Instead of turning tail and running for history the tenacious engineers at S&W went back to the drawing board looking to officially become the most powerful handgun in the world—this time for real, not just in movie reference. That’s when they came up with the X-frame revolver series which produced the .460 Magnum and the massive .500 Magnum. With that .500 Magnum S&W had officially become the most powerful production handgun in the entire world, and because of the patented X-frame design, it will hold that title for a number of years.

It is for this reason that I had to have one. It wasn’t just to own the most powerful production handgun in the world; it was to reward S&W for standing the test of time, competition, and politics to emerge with such a massive personal firearm which clearly went against the grain of social pressure. I respect S&W immensely for holding firm against the tide of progressivism that surrounds their facility in Massachusetts. In a lot of ways they represent the kind of pressures going on all across the nation and world in general. Instead of backing off and tucking their tale to hide, they went to the drawing board and invented something that was unequivocally the most powerful and dominate handgun around. In a lot of ways it’s a lesson for how we should all handle the pressures of progressivism.

That’s certainly not to say that we should go out and shoot anybody. When I brought the .500 Magnum out for the first time around a lot of seasoned shooters over the Memorial Day weekend, there weren’t too many who wanted to fire it. The sheer size and power of it is extremely intimidating. Most were happy to just look at it in the case I brought it in. I had brought along $200 of ammunition just for that gun, and there still weren’t many who wanted to fire it outside of my son-in-law, and myself. Its one of those things that is a deterrent to improper behavior just in knowing that it exists, and in a lot of ways it represents the resiliency of Smith & Wesson as a company serving as a kind of last stand of classic value in a land of progressive erosion. My brother-in-law shot the gun into a nearby river and when a geyser erupted in the wake of the bullet scattering water in multiple trajectories as though hit by cannon fire, he declared, “Holy shit………..I’m good for life.” That is the kind of punch the Smith & Wesson announced to the world with their determined effort to product Model X revolvers while the rest of the world was going softer, smaller, and more Brady Bill friendly.

The song “Make My Day” embodies that same S&W tenaciousness, and is what most of us feel now that we are backed up against the wall by a progressive infusion into the national media. It’s why I still love that song and the S&W company after all these years—and is why I’m going to use it as an intro to the radio segment I plan to do for that particular half hour. It’s a metaphor for what we all have to do in America and the kind of attitude it takes to get there.

The theme of the song and the reason that out of all the cop dramas that have come out over the last four decades, Dirty Harry is still popular. The power of the .44 magnum from Smith & Wesson gave the Clint Eastwood character the assurance that no matter what kind of firepower he faced from the bad guys, he could out-gun them. Smith & Wesson to assure to their customers that they could always have that same type of personal assurance offered up the .500 Magnum for that very reason. Like the song brings to light, whether it’s a motorcycle gang, a collection of thugs, goons or punks who hide out in the night, Smith & Wesson provides their customers the assurance that they don’t have to be concerned with threats to their personal sanctity. That after all is the key to the American system of government and economics. Groups, no matter what their background whether it is an officially sanctioned government or a group of criminals desire to use fear to control individuals. When someone possesses the most powerful production handgun in the world it buys the assurance that no matter what a group tries to do to inflict fear on individuals, which the owner of such a gun doesn’t have to be afraid of anything. It is when individuals are forced to deal with each other on equal footing that a respectful culture of Americans emerges. Peace through superior firepower in the hands of good people.

Among gun owners it is found some of the best people functioning in the world today. Recently my same son-in-law who shot my new .500 Magnum visited his family in Great Britain who were shocked that he and my daughter had so many guns. In England it was appalling that anybody could own a personal firearm. My kids drove the point home by stating that guns are so prevalent in American culture that they had matching his and her 9mm semi-automatic pistols. That prospect was astonishing to the English family members who were functioning from a totally different culture. It is that kind of mentality that progressives here in America are trying to breed into our culture and currently surround the Smith & Wesson factory in Massachusetts. But the biggest difference between American society and everyone else is really the number of guns available to individuals. With so many guns come secure investments and limited government to abuse their power on helpless individuals. That is the point of the “Make My Day” song; it suggested that Dirty Harry actually looked forward to righting wrongs because he had such a powerful handgun in the .44 magnum. Because he was prepared, he looked forward to using it and didn’t have to live his life apprehensive as to what might come next.

In a lot of ways I have to thank Smith & Wesson for sticking around and fighting it out all these years. They answered much criticism to their product line by offering truly the most powerful production handgun in the world and to reward that tenacity—I bought one. To me it is a marvel of modern engineering achievement that is the backbone of the American system of government. Those who are against that American system are those who want to put the gun manufacturers out of business so that the firearm culture in the United States might abate. But that’s not going to happen, and now that I’ve given myself a taste of such a powerful gun in the .500 Magnum, I have a reiteration of a whole new category of Adam Smith philosophy to dust off and shout to the world. But before I do that I’ll give WAAM listeners a treat to what started it all for me, an old T.G. Sheppard song from a famous Clint Eastwood film that defined more than a cop drama to a Hollywood industry offering a story they thought would come and go without much memory. It was Smith & Wesson who was a silent credit in that film which defined for America a subtle key to its global success. When it comes to American success and self defense—the bigger the better—and because of S&W customers can legitimately get the biggest and best that a human hand can hold defending capitalism with all the self-assurance of Harry Callahan. There’s nothing wrong with that. As it says in the song, “It was Smith & Wesson that taught them a lesson, Go Ahead, Make My Day.” Obtaining my own .500 Magnum not only made my day—it made my century.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

Listen to The Blaze Radio Network by CLICKING HERE.

Review of the .500 Magnum: Being on the trigger side of freedom

There really is nothing like Memorial Day.  All through the year I refer specifically to this late spring early summer period as the absolute best part of a 12 month calendar.  In Ohio the temperature is just perfect hovering right around 70 to 80 degrees during the day and dropping down into the upper 50s at night.  Everything has a fresh feel to it in May which climaxes on Memorial Day typically.  And for each Memorial Day my father-in-law has a birthday for which the family gets together to celebrate.  May is a time for blockbuster summer movies, wonderful weather and eagerness toward the events of an upcoming summer.  I always love May and I likely always will.  So for this year we did something special, we finally bought a gun that I had been thinking about for a long time, the Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum with its heavily engineered X-frame revolver introduced in 2003 capable of hunting any form of life on planet earth.  It is the most powerful production handgun in the world and is a real brute to shoot, but I wanted to best to defend my home from the stacking pile of hostiles contemplating aggression, and sometimes the best deterrent is assured destruction.  After a lot of discussion with my wife, we finally made the purchase in May 2015 and tried it out on my father-in-law’s birthday over the Memorial Day weekend.  It was the best tribute to what Memorial Day means in America.  Memorial Day is a time to honor those fallen fighting for the freedoms we all enjoy in America.  But it is also a time to remember that the fight for freedom doesn’t end with memory of losses in foreign wars.  That fight continues daily and a good way to stay sharp and focused to that responsibility is with the purchase of a new gun—well, in the case of the .500 Magnum—artillery.  The .500 Magnum is everything that I hoped it would be as you can see me firing it below.  I have shot the gun before, but this time it was my own weapon fired for the first time outside of the factory.

One of the targets seen in the video was a portion of a tree branch cut to stand on its end.  The second was a standard sedimentary rock out of the river behind the target radius.  It is dangerous to shoot at such things with any gun.  But I had a pretty good idea that the .400 grain bullet would punch through both without ricochet so I wanted to test the punch power of the .500 magnum and its 1,800 fps velocity, 2,579 ft-lbf muzzle energy which is extraordinary for a handgun.   As can be seen clearly the bullet from the .500 Magnum split the log in half and punched the rock in two.  The rock itself was about five inches thick.  The ideal distance for shooting at such targets should have been 50 to 100 yards—but for the sake of this video so that target interaction could be seen, we moved in to about 25 yards.  That was not enough as debris pelted us even from that distance—something I would not have expected.  But when dealing with such powerful forces the strange and unusual can and do occur.  Needless to say, the most powerful handgun in the world did not disappoint.  It exceeded my expectations in every way.image

But that’s not all there was to such a fine day of shooting.  The entire Memorial Day shooting event was just marvelous.  We started the day gathering up our guns and preparing to hit the road.  My wife had several coolers made for a day trip to the south as we went around the city to pick up our family.  On the way to our shooting destination we stopped at McDonald’s twice and enjoyed the fruits of capitalism to its fullest.  We also stopped by the Field & Stream superstore in Northern Kentucky to buy some more ammunition.  It was a glorious start to a magnificently beautiful day.image

But once we settled in at our destination the culmination of much anticipation erupted with the sheer power of the .500 Magnum.  It was a pleasure to shoot.  But after a box of ammunition, the bones in my hand were starting to feel the fatigue.  In some of the slow motion portions of the video it is clear how much a wave of energy was displaced through my body during each shot.  It was truly an exhilarating sensation to have such a controlled explosion occurring in the palm of your hand.  It is truly a hand cannon as it is firing a projectile what would have sunk ships during the pirating days of 15th century buccaneering.  In those times that kind of power would have been strapped to a ship in the form of a fixed device.  It would have been unfathomable to contain such power into a hand cannon designed by the Smith & Wesson team with the X-frame to put such force in the hands of an individual.  Yet that’s why I bought the gun, to possess that kind of power.image

Having the gun however is not enough.  Learning to shoot it is the next great step.  My arms and wrist are already well prepared because of my frequent bullwhip work so the learning curb is less for me than the average shooter.  It takes a considerable amount of strength to handle the .500 Magnum for more than a few novelty shots.  Most of the men present at our event after seeing the power given off by the gun wanted nothing to do with actually firing it.  It shakes the ground when it fires and gives off a shock wave that will stop a target range still with silence after you fire it. The roar of the blast suppresses even a .12 gage shotgun so it’s truly something to behold.image

My son-in-law shot it several times and did very well.  Even from where I stood a good ten feet away from him, I could feel the wave of energy displacing each time he fired the gun.  It is like setting off a stick of dynamite with each shot.  There isn’t anything else like it.  For a person weighing less than 200 lbs, anything more than a 300 gr bullet would be too much to hold feet to the ground.  We went through our 400 gr bullets and I decided to save the 500 gr bullets for self-defense and concealed carry opportunities.  Ammunition as high as 700 gr bullets are available for the .500 Magnum which I will be getting but pleasurable shooting diminishes with so much raw power.  For target shooting and setting sights anything 275 gr to 300 gr is a decent range to stay within.  After firing the 400 gr bullets several times I am certain it would have stopped a 9’ grizzly bear or an African elephant.  I’m not the hunter type, so I will likely never use the gun for that kind of thing, but it was reassuring to know that if such a circumstance presented itself—I had a personal firearm that could handle the situation.  The .500 Magnum is insanely powerful.image

Because of that wonderful Magnum all my future May months will be just a little sweeter.  I will never forget the joy of buying and shooting that gun over this 2015 Memorial Day weekend. I had thought that the .500 Magnum would punch through that rock, but I wasn’t absolutely sure until I saw and felt it in real life.  Rocks are dangerous to shoot at, and it’s not something that I’d recommend.  I won’t be doing it again now that I know that the .500 Magnum will indeed thump through such a target.  It would easily destroy concrete blocks and other similar materials, which is just astonishing.  The .500 Magnum from Smith & Wesson is my favorite gun from one of my favorite gun companies—and its raw American.  So it only made sense that we celebrate such a fine American weapon on one of America’s most revered holidays and remember that it is through such actions that we all remain free.  While those who have lost their lives fighting for freedoms are the purpose of Memorial Day, it is better not to die while fighting that same fight.  A good way to stay alive is to be on the trigger side of the .500 Magnum.  For those on the other side they won’t stand much of a chance.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

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