Around about a week ago, Jason A. Kilgore (aka "Baldr Odinson", his anti-rights alter-ego*) threatened Miguel of Gun Free Zone with legal action if Miguel did not take a picture down that he was using in accordance with fair use, and upon which Jason has no claims to copyright. Yeah. Wrap your head around that one.

After the initial back-and-forth where Jason clearly showed he did not have a clue what he was talking about, it has been pretty much radio silence from him, and now… well… *crickets chirp*

This is not overly surprising; as Say Uncle said:

Anyone who says ‘i’ve talked to my lawyer’ hasn’t talked to one. If they had, their lawyer would be the one doing the contacting.

If Jason there was honestly interested in legally pursuing a copyright he does not hold, the first thing Miguel would have heard of it would have been an official letter from an actual lawyer on actual lawyer-ish letter head informing him to "cease and desist" (or some other appropriate, legal-ish phraseology) with the implied or stated threat that if he did not, the lawyer would be pursuing the matter in courts. But we already know that Baldr/Jason is far from honest.

Which, really, is pretty much my only reason for writing this post – at this point, Jason has completely destroyed whatever credibility and reputation he might have otherwise had. Far be it for me to engage in a genetic fallacy, but I fully believe it is safe to say that the phrase "pattern of misconduct" and word "incorrigible" are wholly applicable to this situation. Time and time again, when given the choice between being the upstanding defender of truth or dealing in dishonesty, deception, and lies… well, his history speaks for itself.

In short, bear that in mind in your dealings with him, or when you read anything he writes – he is not here to help, his information is likely suspect, and his conclusions are automatically so.

To momentarily jump to a parallel track, though, one of the favorite harping-points for "gun control" extremists like Jason here is that of "safe storage".  In their world, unless a firearm is under Fort Knox-grade security, complete with locks on the doors, alarms on the structure, and a safe that could withstand a nuclear blast, it is the fault of the firearm owner if those firearms get stolen, not the actual criminal doing the stealing.

So, time to draw an analogy – Jason here basically plastered the exterior of his home with his pictures without so much as a lock, door, or other securing method between them and the world, and, as such, by the logic of the organizations, groups, and people he chooses to affiliate with, it is his fault those pictures were copied and used elsewhere.  Obviously, if Jason did not want his pictures "stolen" (his pictures were emphatically not stolen, but using the word helps with the analogy), he should have "safely stored" them better.

Hey, if that "logic" is good enough for firearms, it is definitely good enough for pictures!

(* – Is anyone else vaguely disturbed/amused how, on his "Jason Kilgore" Facebook profile, he wrote, "Me, as Baldr Odinson, presenting…" Would you have written it that way? Apart from the absolutely horrific grammar involved, I would have either written, "Me, presenting…", or gone over to my screenname account (since Jason had one for him and one for Baldr) and written, "Me, presenting…" Does Jason see Baldr as a separate entity? As a role he is playing? Something tells me a psychologist would have a field day with him…)

No joke. The *.xlsx sheet, complete with all of my raw numbers, my formulas, my charts, and my background number-crunching are all right there, on my site, available for anyone to download and scrutinize at their leisure. On occasion, a fellow pro-rights activist will point out where I fumbled a number somewhere or just did a bad job typing something out, but here is an interesting observation for you: in all my years of writing those posts, and in all my years of being attacked by "gun control" extremists for those charts, those who disagree with me have never been able to point out where I did anything wrong in any of my sourcing of the information, calculations, or representations of the conclusions. Their objections have invariably been of the "woman with the earrings" variety.

So after all my hard work, and after taking the time to put all of that stuff together, why would I go to the effort of making it public to anyone who would want to steal or misuse it? Well, on the one hand, I want to know if I made a mistake – our arguments are only as good as the facts they are based on, and if my bases are flawed, I need to address that. On the other hand, it keeps me honest – if I know external sources will be reviewing my data, I will not even feel so much as tempted to "tinker" with it to give me an outcome I might prefer. And, on the gripping hand, it is simply the right thing to do – a study is meaningless without the data to support it, and "showing your work" is not just something that was beaten into us throughout our early school years, but it is also simply an axiom of life.

An axiom that, apparently, Michael Luo never bothered to remember.

This morning, I received the following email from Sean Sorrentino:

Gun owners all know the damage that Michael Luo did to us with his one sided story in the New York Times where he claimed to have found "more than 2,400" criminals who have North Carolina Concealed Handgun Permits. Here’s what you don’t know.

I got him to respond via email. I sent him a request for the data, and after much wrangling, he ultimately refused. After telling me he would offer the data to a lawmaker or a police agency, he refused the primary gun rights legislator in the NC General Assembly. This wasn’t a single email, or two emails, there were quite a few emails before he googled my name and realized he was talking to a gun blogger.

The best part were his admissions. He admitted in writing that the misdemeanor crimes that made up 2200 (or so) of the 2400 (or so) total were mostly not crimes that would disqualify a permitholder.

I passed all this info along to Paul Valone, President of Grass Roots North Carolina, our best gun rights organization, and he included it all in his video response to Luo and the New York Times.

http://ncguns.blogspot.com/2012/02/grncs-paul-valone-responds-to-michael.html

Please link this so that it gets the wide distribution that it deserves. We can’t hope that the anti-gun MSM will be as excited to report this info as they were to report Luo’s biased story, but we can at least get this video in front of the opinion leaders.

Mark my words, when HR822, National Concealed Carry Reciprocity, gets into the Senate, Luo’s story will be the centerpiece of the anti-822 forces. We need to get this to all the rest.

Respectfully,
Sean D Sorrentino

And the video he mentions is here:

The Cliff’s Notes version is that Grass Roots North Carolina and Sean now have evidence in their possession, up to and including emails from Michael himself, indicating that Michael Luo fabricated his numbers for his New York Times hit piece against North Carolina concealed carry permit holders, speciously conflated misdemeanors with permit-disqualifying criminal actions (specifically, felonies), lied about whether or not sheriffs were appropriately revoking permits, and generally did everything in his power to hide how he came to his conclusions. To provide something of a counterpoint, when I compared the number of lawbreakers amongst the Mayors Against Illegal Guns to those amongst the Tennessee handgun carry permit holder and Florida concealed carry permit holder populations, I laid it all out there for everyone to see.

How disappointing – and unsurprising – it is that a part-time, unpaid, recreational weblogger has a stronger sense of personal morals, professional ethics, honesty, and integrity than a bought-and-paid for "authorized journalist".

Regardless, as Sean says, when this propaganda-masquerading-as-science gets held up by the next "gun control" extremist as "proof" that we peons are too dangerous to allow to carry firearms, remember the long train of abuses of mathematics and honesty Michael Luo subjected us to, and remember how easy it is to point out.

(Helpful Note to Those Who Do Such Things: If you are going to take the time to produce a 10+ minute documenting how a report in the New York Times is fraught with lies, misdirections, inaccuracies, and abuses of statistics, please also take the time to type it all out – not only does that rank higher on Google searches than a video (more keywords), but people like me can read it in about a tenth the time it takes you to enunciate it. This is pretty much why I do not do podcasts – I read far faster than most people talk, and have better things to do with my time.)

And, what do you know, I have some experience with that.

To begin with, I will repost what I wrote almost a year ago: 

Before we get into the performance of the firearm, I have to touch on the quick-sights… in this comprehensive review, Walt Rauch took a really good picture of the overall concept, but the basic concept is that the “rear” sights are actually forward of the ejection port on the slide. This obviously reduces your sight radius, which will reduce your overall accuracy at longer ranges, but from testing out the arrangement at their demonstration bay, it does seem like sight and target acquisition is significantly faster… it probably has something to do with indexing off the back part of the slide, much like skeet shooters index off their shotgun’s dorsal rail.

[…]

And here is my own personal take on the quick-sight system… not the best shot, I will grant, but all of these pictures here are taken with my phone, so I absolve myself of any responsibility. As you can see, they use a fiber optic front post (which really helps in acquisition), and then the strange, in-front-of-the-ejection-port “rear” sights. The word is that these sights will be available on all of the sizes, but time will tell whether or not that holds true.

And then let me hit you with the marketing hype from the guys at Caracal (I would link to it directly, but their site uses some crazy frame/Flash tomfoolery): 

The unique Caracal Quick Sight system (QS) allows for extremely quick target acquisition under pressure. Unlike conventional pistol sights BOTH the front and rear sights are seen in the same focal plane. This offers previously unseen speed in target acquisition.

And now for the promised retrospective…  For those of the TL;DR community amongst my readership, the short version is “they are right”. 

Alright, I know what you are thinking – firearm accuracy is affected directly by the sight radius, i.e. the distance between the front sight and the back sight.  This only makes sense if you stop to think about your high school geometry and how lines behave.  Think of your back sight as one defining point of a line, and the front sight as the other.  Now think about how that distance compares to the distance between the front sight and the target.  A slight deviation of either the front sight or the back one from the “ideal” will be multiplied many times as the bullet travels between the barrel and the target; however, most of the time, you can notice those slight deviations (even if some of us cannot do anything about them).  Now, shorten the distance between the two points – and the same deviation off “ideal” will be significantly larger at the target, just by the math involved.  Kind of like this: 

The distances are obviously not to scale, but the premise is that the two solid black dots indicate your sights as they should ideally be lined up.  The back-most grey dot indicates some deflection off this, and the front-most grey dot indicates the same deflection but with a shorter sight radius.  As you can see, the round goes much farther off track in that case. 

In other words, longer sight radiuses are generally thought to be “more accurate” (with the same shooter doing the shooting, of course), which is why you see ungainly contraptions like this with the back sight pushed as far back as the rules let them get away with. 

That is all good and well when you are trying to drill out a bullseye or engage targets at a thousand yards or whatnot, but at “conversational” distances (the <25 yards most people practice handguns for, and most DGUs take place at), quicker is sometimes better… And that is where crazy ideas like the “Quick Sight” system comes into effect. 

I am not a professional shooter, or even a competitive one, so everything I say should probably be taken with a relatively substantial grain of salt, however, I will say this much: I ended my day at the Caracal shoot marveling at how stupid-easy the Quick Sights made plinking 6” diameter steel plates at 10 yards; I almost had to try to miss.  And this was after spending somewhere around six hours in the sun and heat, shooting who-knows-how-many rounds downrange, running around, engaging targets, standing around, and generally being tired and wore out.  My hands were probably shaking, and my concentration had taken leave of me after I shot the very last match of the day clean, but the quick sights… well, worked. 

This may be a combination of how the Caracal’s grip angle fit my hands pretty much perfectly, the large back sight notch, and the fiber optic front sight, but I brought the firearm up, it dropped pretty much on target when I felt like my hands were “pointing” at it, and that was that.  As I wrote above, with my extremely limited experience shooting skeet, it feels kind of like lining up that gold dot with the rib of the shotgun. 

Would I want to use something like that for long-distance target shooting?  No, not at all – that large notch in the back and somewhat standard-sized front sight let a lot of light through the sights (which could be why they were so easy to drop on-target), which makes it hard to determine that your front post is actually centered in that notch (especially with no dots or other indicators on the back sight).  But for “minute of bad guy” purposes at distances I am likely to be shooting at them?  It did the job just fine, despite my best efforts to screw it up. 

For lack of a better description, it really does boil down to pointing the firearm, rather than worrying about lining up front and back sights / dots / fiddly bits. 

A lot of this is dependent on personal taste, and I would imagine that if the grip angle does not suit you (which it may not, given how people fight about 1911 vs. Glock grip angles) it probably will not work nearly as well, but I could still see myself owning a Caracal with this particular sight set up at some point in the future… if they ever reach the mass market here in the States. 

Speaking of, and given my recent success in this field, if Caracal would like an objective, comprehensive, and picture-filled review of one of their handguns (preferably with the Quick Sight system), I would be more than willing to oblige.  I missed my window last time around (apparently the American distributors – Waffen Werks – went out of business?), but might as well try again, right? 

(Note: appearances aside, the “Quick Sight” system is not a resurrection of the Guttersnipe Sight, and more the shame for it.  You still have front sights and rear sights, rather than the three triangles.) 

– The firearm is new to the market. 
– I might be talking with the manufacturer about making it mine after the evaluation period. 
– It is, unfortunately, not the latter item Robb will be getting to review. 

Like the title says, this should be interesting…  though Lord knows why anyone would take my advice. 

That said, on the one hand, pictures of the destruction are strangely compelling, especially the detail to which they were able to show the failures. On some of them, the pin responsible for keeping the stock locked in place simply gave up and quit, while on others, pretty much the entire stock came unglued, and would be effectively useless for anything more than a paperweight in the future. Huh.

On the other hand, it is good to have one’s choice of stocks validated by something approximating objective testing, and I do have to admit that my choice of a Magpul UBR was based on "feels sturdy" and "has storage". That said, it is an expensive bastard, and you can achieve both of those requirements at a lower pricetag assuming you are willing to compromise a little.

And, on the gripping hand, I am very intrigued by the manufacturers’ responses to the testing. Their responses seem to range from "We know it sucks but we are working on it" (ERGO) to "That should not have happened, but we will fix it" (Troy Industries and Rally Point Tactical) to "That is about what we expected" (Rogers Shooting School) to "We do not care because we are awesome" (Magpul (duh)) to "Your test is invalid!!1!!11" (VLTOR). I am, of course, paraphrasing, but the attitudes of the last two companies rather disappoints me. No, the test was not realistic, and no, most users will not be making a habit of dropping their multi-hundred (-thousand?) dollar rifles on the ground from 3 feet, but failure data is failure data and there is always room for improvement.

I am not entirely sure what the stock will be on my next AR-15 build (probably a dedicated .22 with a still-desired Tactical Solutions AR-22 SBX barrel), but I imagine the goal for that exercise will be to keep costs and weight down. Whether that means I go with GearScout‘s recommendations depends on what comes out between now and the build date, but I definitely appreciate their testing and honesty.

I have to admit, the color pink does nothing for me. This is not some sexist statement; the color just has no particular attraction for me, and its extreme overuse by Hollywood socialites has all but soured me on the entire concept.

Furthermore, Better Half and I are both somewhat disheartened by firearm and firearm accessory companies painting/dying things pink and then claiming that they are marketed towards / targeted at women. Not all women like pink; it is rather demeaning to imply that women would not like something if it were not pink; and just changing a firearm’s color does nothing to alter whether or not it is easy to use for people generally or shorter stature and lower upper body strength.

That said, if someone wants to silver-plate their firearm, paint its grips pink, and stick diamonds all over it, more power to them and I hope they enjoy it. Lord knows the all-black motif of current firearm design needs a little variety.

In a similar vein, I cannot say as though I am a huge fan of the Walther P-22 pistol. Walther missed a chance by not making it a direct parallel to one of their pre-existing full-sized or compact pistols, and the construction (specifically the MIM parts) leaves something significant to be desired (I hardly see a post any more about those pistols without the word "failure" appearing at least once). And, finally, while the .22LR is great for plinking, I would argue there are better platforms for it available, and there are definitely better calibers for self-defense applications.

That said, I know of at least one woman who carries a P22 for self-defense, and while I would still encourage her to seek out stouter alternatives, I cannot say as though I specifically disagree with her reasons for doing so (aside from the assassin bit, but that is another matter for another time). In the end, a .22LR beats a pointy stick, and if that is what a person feels comfortable carrying and if that is what a person can reliably hit a target with, then more power to them.

Alright, so where the hell is Linoge going with all of this? Apparently Discount Gun Sales (which is a middlingly-large chain in the PacNorWest) is now offering the Walther P-22 Hope Edition, with a portion of each sale being donated to the Susan B. Komen Foundation in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Shiny (no, actually, the gun really is kind of shiny with that Duracoat finish on the slide). I am not exactly a huge fan of the Komen for the Cure folks at the moment, but so long as some of the funds get through to some honest-to-God research on breast cancer, I will deal with whatever objections I have about the color / firearm / foundation.

Apparently this makes me about an order of magnitude more accepting and tolerant than your average anti-rights cultist. On the one hand, we have this tweet from Joan Peterson, blood-dancer extraordinaire, deranged eugenicist, and Brady Campaign Board Member:

@ProtestEasyGuns – outrageous to see Komen Foundation pushing sale of pink handguns for Breast Cancer Awareness Month

And on the other hand, we have this tweet from Ladd Everitt, cyberstalker, bully, copyright violator, and "Communications Director" for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (despite getting their Twitter account shut down for weeks and forgetting to pay their hosting bill):

#Komen Foundation offering pink Glock handgun in "recognition" of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Disgusting. #p2 http://fb.me/13BUtsZpc

(Note: surprisingly enough, the link goes to the actual listing for the firearm, not another of Ladd’s unhinged, frothing-at-the-mouth screeds.)

Let me get this straight… Selling a rather mundane, if arguably nattily attired, inanimate object in a quest to provide people a product that they want AND, simultaneously, raise money for an unquestionably good cause (Save the boobies! Sorry, someone had to…) is both "outrageous" and "disgusting"? So selling people – and, in this case, arguably specifically women – a tool with which they can drive back a larger, stronger attacker is "outrageous"? So supporting research into and prevention of the primary contributor to the second-most leading cause of death in women is "disgusting"?

… Huh?

I swear to God, I will never understand the mentality of your average "gun control" whackjob. Which brings us to today’s quote of the day, proffered up by none other than Weer’d Beard:

Gun control, the groups that would prefer women get cancer AND raped!

Classy people!

Indeed. The small amount of funds generated by this little exercise probably will not make the difference between treating breast cancer or not (but you never know), but in the name of keeping all people, including women, defenseless and potential victims, "gun control" extremists would cut off that trickle of funding all the same. It is no wonder anti-rights cultists have no shame – if they did, they could hardly live with themselves.

(And, if I do say so myself, this would be a perfect opportunity to employ a page from the "gun control" playbook against those who wrote it with very high efficacy.)

5. Social Media — Various forms of this phenomenon were so frequently mentioned in visits with folks that I think we need to discuss it. Marketing on the web has become almost automatic for lots and lots of companies and businesses. It seems if you want to be serious about your business you need a web site. Almost a given. Now Facebook, blogs and forums of all kinds are becoming a major source of information. People love the web and magazines as a source of information, but now they are linking up to various info interchanges and getting "the word" at lightning speed on just about any subject. If you want to stay up to date with what people are looking for, you absolutely must have a web site, and by now you almost need the blogs, Facebook, and forums as a way to get people to find you and for you to get information out to them.

Indeed; our society of instant gratification permeated the Internet from its very inception (or, perhaps, the Internet defined that society, but that is another debate for another time), and if a company – any company – hopes to survive, much less thrive, in the current market, they need to come to terms with that still-developing horizon.

However, speaking of GunsAmerica, I promised Rauðbjorn an honorable mention for this, and here we are:

Judging from the traffic I have been observing, he is far from alone, and the better for it.

[Elliot] Fineman said his organization plans to boycott large corporations, including Starbucks and Nike, unless they change their stance on gun violence.

Starbucks, which allows people to openly carry firearms in its stores, must ban the practice and commit $10 million each year to getting sane gun laws passed, he explained, adding that Starbucks made $550 million in profits in 2009.

As a reminder, Elliot Fineman is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the NGVAC, along with being a senior member of the Brady Pac-Illinois. Apparently his vast marketing experience and education somehow neglected to teach him that blackmailing corporations in order to "encourage" "donations" to your organization is not exactly legal, moral, or socially acceptable any more.

Friendly folks, that.

Predictably, we defenders and supporters of individual rights and freedoms have organized a counter-buycott, which currently has somewhere around 10,000 confirmed attendees, which should have no problems making up for the <200 people who have signed up for the boycott (in an unsurprising turn of events, once the bigots at NGVAC realized how badly they were losing the numbers game, they hid the total number of attendees to their event).

But what about folks who are not near a Starbucks… like our servicemen and women doing their part overseas? Barron Barnett has you covered:

Let’s hit two birds with one stone. Lets send our troops overseas a little taste of home. I’m currently working on contacting Soldiers’ Angels to get the details on where to send donations with no firm destination.

If you are stationed overseas and would like a delivery, please contact me with your APO or FPO address. I will mail any requests personally directly to you or your unit. I have no idea how much traction this little idea is going to get, my hope is it gets a lot.

If you would like to participate or donate please contact me and I will keep you filled in with the details. I want to ensure we fill requests from troops overseas first before sending it to Soldiers’ Angels. So, just because you don’t drink coffee yourself is no excuse, you can buy a bag of roasted beans and send them to some one overseas who will greatly appreciate it.

So, recap time:

Various states legalize open carry, or, in Tennessee’s case, simply remain silent on the topic, rendering it de facto legal.

Starbucks, exhibiting sound business acumen, decides not to irrationally and unnecessarily limit its clientèle, and remains silent on the issue.

Open carriers meet at Starbucks for social or activism events.

"Gun control" extremists lose their collective gos-se at the sight of law-abiding citizens peaceably exercising their rights, and launch a boycott / extortion racket.

Boycott / extortion racket fails; Starbucks continues to neither support nor forbid open carry (or any other form of carry), instead defaulting to whatever the state laws are.

One year later, same organization that lead the failed boycott / extortion racket tries it again, under the "do it again, only harder" theory.

Boycott / extortion racket gets laughed out of the room, with somewhere north of 500x more people signing up to support Starbucks than those signing up to harm it.

And, in the end, we, pro-rights activists are supporting American business and the employees paid by that business, along with military members overseas now, while the anti-rights cultists are… well… getting more hysterical as they see the writing on the wall.

Oh, and regarding Starbucks official stance on this entire debacle, I emailed them thanking them for respecting my individual right to self-defense, and received this response:

Dear [Linoge],

Thank you for contacting Starbucks Coffee Company.

Thank you for your feedback regarding Starbucks’ policy on open carry laws.

At Starbucks, we deeply respect the views of our customers and recognize that there is significant and genuine passion surrounding the issue of open carry weapons laws. We are proud to comply with local laws and statutes in the communities we serve. Our long-standing approach to this issue remains unchanged and we abide by the laws that permit open carry in 43 U.S. states. Where these laws don’t exist, openly carrying weapons in our stores is prohibited.

As the public debate around this issue continues, we encourage customers and advocacy groups from both sides to share their input with their public officials. We are extremely sensitive to the issue of gun violence in our society and believe that supporting local laws is the right way for us to ensure a safe environment for both our store partners and customers.

Sincerely,
[Name]
Customer Relations

Personally, I would prefer if they remained sensitive to all violence in our society, but I will spot them that given the nature of the debate and how badly the anti-rights cultists have perverted and misappropriated the language involved.

And, really, folks; what is so darned wrong with a company choosing to abide by the laws set forth by the states they are in? And why do you feel so disturbingly self-righteous about not only demanding that other people acquiesce to your narrow-minded bigotry and phobias, but also demanding they give you money against their will? That is just sick.

Speaking of, one of the few advantages of keeping at least half an eye on Twitter is that you occasionally find out about things before they hit the bigtime – for instance, when I read about some new "gun control" extremist organization called the "National Gun Victims Action Council" and how they were planning on boycotting Starbucks (yeah, because that has never failed before), I recalled seeing their Twitter account spouting a few stupid things before. At the time, their tweets were so remarkably inane that I figured they were yet another upstart, astroturf anti-rights organization offshooting from one of the parent organizations and scrabbling to gain traction in their dying community, and, as it turns out, I was not terribly far off-base.

Just take a look at their board of directors, screencaptured to the right so you do not have to give them any traffic (arrows added for clarity). Who are these people? Well, they provide nice, complete bios on each one of them, but here are the important takeaways:

- Elliot Fineman – "Senior member of the Brady Pac-Illinois". (He is also a "behavioral-science-based proactive marketing" professional, which explains why the site reads like one huge propaganda machine.)
- Andrew Goddard – "President of the Richmond Chapter of the Million Mom March". (As a reminder, the Million Mom March is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Brady Campaign.)
- Lori O’Neil – "Served as president of the Cleveland chapter of MMM for two years and as vice president for two years". (Yet another marketing professional, to boot.)
- Kenny Barnes – Has generated press releases with the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. (As a reminder, the CSGV is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Joyce Foundation, which accounts for most of the anti-rights funding in the country.)
- Jeanne Bishop – "Volunteers with the Brady Campaign through its Million Mom March chapters as well as with the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence".
- Griffin Dix – "Chairman of the Brady Campaign’s Million Mom March National State Presidents Council and the chapter-elected member of the Brady Campaign Board of Trustees".
- Bill Jenkins – Bill and his wife, Jennifer, frequently represent the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence at debates, panels, and other public meetings.
- Thom Mannard – "President of States United to Prevent Gun Violence" and "founding member of the Brady PAC- Illinois". (As a reminder, SUPGV is another wholly-owned subsidiary of the Joyce Foundation.)
- Alice Thomas-Norris – "President of the Million Moms March Chicago Chapter of Survivors".
- Tom Vanden Berk – "One of the founding members of The Bell Campaign, which eventually became known as the Million Mom March" and "board member of the Brady Campaign/Million Mom March".
- Amanda and Nick Wilcox – "Serving as the Legislative Co-Chairs of the California Chapters of the Brady Campaign and interim leaders of the Sacramento Valley Chapter" and "President of the Nevada County Brady Campaign Chapter".
- Willie Williams – Frequently works with the Brady Campaign to further "gun control" agendas.
- Heidi Yewman – "Washington state president of the Million Mom March/Brady Campaign".

Notice a pattern? Well, apart from not a single one of them being an actual, first-hand victim of "gun violence" (which I find particularly interesting, given Collin Goddard’s willingness to jump on any "gun control" grenade out there), the overwhelming majority of the board has not-insignificant ties to almost every other major and minor anti-rights organization in the country.

In and of itself, this is hardly surprising, given how incestuous anti-rights organizations are these days (and with their decreasing memberships and support, can you hardly blame them?), but this overlap of members is not the backstabbing to which I was referring.

Instead, I would direct your attention to the screencapture to the left. Verily, that thing could provide me blogfodder for… well… years*, but I want you to ignore the rest of the material (that I only screencaptured as proof that this did, indeed, come from NGVAC’s webpage) and instead focus on the highlighted-in-pinky-purple block.

So far as I can tell (the Board may be comprised of marketers and anthropologists and other high-brow pseudo-"intellectuals", but damned if they can create a webpage that communicates their ideas clearly and efficiently), the format of this section is:

#. Our Buzzword-Laden Name for One of the NRA’s Supposed ‘Main Tactics’
What they are doing.
• Our counterpoint.

While that is just a guess, it is substantiated by the pattern in item number 6. Now, pay attention to item number 7:

7. Simplistic Sound Bite Logic
Law abiding citizens are always going to be law abiding.
• Fact: Every criminal was once law abiding citizen.

The government secretly wants to take your guns away:
• Any sane gun law will lead to the government being able to take your guns away.

The only… *ahem*… "sane" response to the first italicized sentence is, "Duh." Every adult was once a child, every rapist was once "just a man", and every prostitute was once "just a woman". What was your point again? Oh, right, obviously the solution is to lock everyone up! (Which, given NGVAC’s love affair with once-Great-Britain and the developing police state there, may not be as sarcastic as I might like it to be.)

But the second italicized line… well, that is the money quote, so to speak. "Any sane gun law will lead to the government being able to take your guns away." The NGVAC seems big on "sane gun laws", with the phrase, along with "insane gun laws" (referring, of course, to anything the big, bad NRA proposes), occurring somewhere around once every two sentences on their webpage – can you say, "SEO-whoring"? I knew you could. But Google-bombing or not, that single sentence, right there, is a seven-inch, ivory-handled KA-BAR shoved between the third and fourth ribs of the dorsal side of "gun control".

Why? Simple: one of the favorite talking points of "gun control" extremists – especially when someone accurately observes that registration leads to confiscation – is that no modern "gun control" organization wants to take your guns away.

ORLY?

Well, then, thank you Elliot and thank you Andrew and thank you to the rest of the National Gun Victims Action Council for providing us such an easy counterpoint to that claim – after all, why would people so viciously obsessed with firearms and the demonization of them want the government to have the ability to take our firearms away if they did not actually want the government to do exactly that?

And look at the phrasing of the sentence – note how they simply say "take your guns"; not "take criminals’ guns", not "take convicted persons’ guns", not "take some people’s guns". Nope, take your guns – as in every single firearm-owning person who happened upon their webpage and happened to read that sentence. Nevermind the "why" of the situation (especially because it boils down to nothing more complicated than their deep-seated, pathological, uncontrollable fear of an inanimate object) – these people want to empower the government to whimsically and capriciously confiscate your private property… ironically, at the point of a gun.

We have committed no crimes. We have no convictions levied against us. We might not even know what the inside of a jail or courtroom looks like (I certainly do not). And yet these deluded, frothing-at-the-mouth blood-dancers sound like they are on a mission from God to disarm everyone and anyone, regardless of whether they want to be or not.

Is it any wonder why we fight them on every front? Is it any wonder why we "get angry"? Is it any wonder why I refer to them, and people like them, as ‘cultists’?

And remember, these are not just wierdos off the street or some fringe organization just spouting off nonsense; no, this organization is comprised of honest-to-God movers-and-shakers the lead "gun control" organization in the country (not as though that is saying a lot). Do you really think these bigoted, narrow-minded, and zealous views do not percolate down through their daily dealings in the Brady Campaign, SUPGV, or CSGV as well?

So thank you again, boys and girls of the National Gun Victims Action Council – your words will prove to be invaluable in showing the "gun control" movement for the authoritarian, intolerant, illogical, and irrational disaster it really is. I wonder if you comprehend that yet?

(* – Just look at the last two sentences of the first section. The first is a lie, confuses the causalities of market pressures, and implicitly spreads other lies that simply are not true. The second is a non sequitur; it does not follow logically from the first – simply due to the fact that respecting individual rights, especially that of self defense, is intrinsically sane – so there cannot be any "as a result". And this is without even touching on the fallacy of comparing once-Great-Britain’s crime rates to America’s, or the fallacy of maliciously narrowing the playing field to only the fabricated statistic of "gun murders", or the fallacy of "common sense"… er… "sanity". Oy.)

(Note: As always, family members of those killed by criminals, regardless of the tool employed by the criminal have my condolences. However, being related to someone who was killed in a criminal action, or even being someone a criminal attacked yourself, does not make you above reproach, it does not make you automatically right, and it does not give you the right to go about wantonly attacking other people’s rights. Your grief/outrage/anger/etc. is an insufficient reason to infringe on my right to self-defense, much less my Constitutionally-protected, unanimously-recognized-by-the-Supreme-Court individual right to own firearms.)

On a more graspable level, however, that the same data port can not only be used to energize the optic by an external power source, but it can also be used to power other accessories from the optic’s onboard 3V CR123 battery. I have no idea if one would ever use a functionality like that, especially since the plug design is probably proprietary, but it certainly sounds interesting.

When it comes to actual functionality, though, the Browe Combat Optic apparently has a self-setting brightness feature that examines the light coming from the target, rather than the ambient light surrounding the shooter, and adjusts accordingly, as well as a vibration-based on-off switch, which seems like a fantastic idea for pretty much any battery-powered firearm accessory. Obviously, I cannot rationalize an optic that costs more than all but one of my firearms, but it is always interesting to see how whiz-bag companies are progressing their products, and keeping the spirit of competition very much alive and well.

‘Course, if Browe Inc. wants a "nobody" to review their optic… yeah, right…

Not to be rude/snarky/whatever, but about time! Good prices should not have to come at the cost of a substandard customer experience, but that often seems to be the case…

In any case, his prices are hard to beat, and now the website should be a lot easier to use, so give him a look. 

At this point, though, the answer appears immaterial – Springfield Armory beat them to the punch:

Springfield Armory released the new XDS .45 with six shots and, at an inch thick, has the single stack magazine. Cashing in on the desire for smaller carry guns and adding the popular .45 to it is a good move.

The overall design looks remarkably like the PPS I carry almost daily, with the exception of a more-standard magazine release and takedown lever, and my 9mm variant can take 6, 7, and 8 round magazines – Springfield will definitely be missing the bus if they do not offer a “full grip” magazine that solves the “dangling pinky” and adds another round or two.

It is always interesting to see how firearm manufacturers move… Ruger has made an industry out of copying other companies’ designs, rebranding them, marking them up, and laughing all the way to the bank; in this case, Springfield Armory took a Smith & Wesson concept to its natural conclusion, since S&W showed no indications of doing so themselves. This is why I love things like the KRISS…

Oh, and regarding the title, what moron in charge of marketing at Springfield Armory decided to name their new handgun using the same string of letters that was previously, and still is, used to describe multiples of a previous model of handgun? Now, when someone says “XDs”, are they referring to two-or-more “XD” firearms, or the new, .45 subcompact?

And inside… holy crap. There were at least 40 people milling about the sales floor, not counting employees, and all ten lanes were active and blazing away. When my father visited about six months ago, we went to CCA bright and early when they opened on Saturday morning (1000) for a little shooty goodness, and by the time we left, there were about seven lanes occupied. From a totally unscientific finger-counting exercise, the folks this past weekend skewed male, but only about 60/40, with a pretty even distribution of ages, and neither the womenfolk, nor the kids, nor the old fogies were just “along for the ride” – they all had hearing protection and targets and/or range bags of some type.

Obviously, I am not the only one to notice similar phenomena.

And this is all without touching on the 14.4% increase in NICS checks from last year, and 54.1% increase from ten years ago (as a reminder, each of those checks can cover the transfer of one-to-many (is there an upper cap?) firearms, and those numbers have been adjusted for states employing the NICS system to background-check their handgun carry permit holders), or the record numbers of attendees at the recent SHOT Show.

So remind me again how recreational shooting / hunting / target shooting / etc. are all “dying sports”? And remind me again how it would matter if they were?

Now apparently they have a Over-Under Double Defense, and I still kind of want one because of that classic, “I mean business” profile and, hey, rails.

So now, like I said, I have to ask – when is the “Quadruple Defense” coming down the pike?

Because, damnit, that is a shotgun I would buy at the drop of a hat just to have.

All good? Great.

So, really, that was just an exercise in me stretching the definitions of a few words in order to cast my opponents in a negative, socially unacceptable light, right? Wrong. I meant every word of what I said almost a year ago now, and I contend they are even more poignant today than they were in the past; here are a few reasons why, courtesy of my fellow pro-rights activists.

Example the first:

He believes (or claims to) that somehow a law against possessing a gun in national parks would have stopped someone on the run from the police after shooting multiple people from bringing his gun into the park, so that it would have been impossible for him to shoot the ranger. And he expects other people to believe this irrational assertion, too.

Example the second:

The anti’s truly believe that, had guns not been allowed in National Parks, the shooting in Mt. Rainier would not have happened. You see, crazy people do not care about taking human lives nor are they concerned with any punishment for their actions, unless of course that punishment revolves around getting busted for carrying a gun. Then they’re all like “Whoa! The death penalty for murder I can deal with, but 5 extra years for carrying a gun across an imaginary line? I can’t live with that on my conscious!”

Example the third:

So what CSGV says is that a mentally unstable person who already committed murder was actually going to respect a law forbidding the possession of firearms in a National Park if it wasn’t for the NRA convincing both Congress and president Obama to rescind the prohibition.

Example the fourth:

Because if a CRIMINAL knows that there is a LAW that stops them from crossing state lines while they have a gun in their waist band they will stop, turn in their firearm to the nearest police officer and stop their life of crime, and join a local non-profit that’s whole mission in life is not to help people but to strip them of their rights because they believe that an inanimate object is what causes people to commit crimes not the person themselves.

If you honestly believe that a "gun free zone" will actually keep out a criminal intent on murdering someone with a firearm, or will cause him to somehow surrender his firearms before he commits that crime, or if you honestly believe that one state not honoring a criminal’s carry permit (if he has one at all) will stop him from entering that state, you are thinking no more rationally than the sign-wielding fool below:

You are allowing yourself to be deluded by the belief that a sign and an arbitrary, invisible line will somehow cause a violent, sociopathic, probably psychopathic, murderer to somehow rethink his methods and his motivations and adapt them according to your desires. That is not sane. That is not logical. That is pretty much the very embodiment of "blind faith", especially since there is precisely no evidence to support it.

And as such, it is, by definition, an "unconventional belief" – after all, convention indicates that if something works, are some sort of indications that it does, in fact, work. Sure, we may not understand the precise mechanics of why it works, but at least we know it functions. This cannot be said of "gun control" as a whole, and it surely cannot be said of "gun free zones". Furthermore, per the definition established by the Supreme Court in D.C. v. Heller, "gun control", and specifically the banning of firearms in specific locations, is an "unconventional" belief, in that the Second Amendment explicitly protects and preserves the individual right of all law-abiding, of-age Americans to own firearms "in common use for lawful purposes", such as handguns, shotguns, semi-automatic magazine-fed rifles (aka "assault weapons"), and so forth.

As I said, "gun control" supporters are operating off blind faith that verges on religious zealotry – not only do they know they are right (despite the absence of any evidence whatsoever demonstrating their right-ness), but you should have to live according to their beliefs, damnit*! In any case, couple that single-minded fervor with charismatic (in their own minds) leaders who are capable of riling up their followers into a (supposedly) righteous, frothing-at-the-mouth rage, and, hey, look, a cult.

Speaking personally, I prefer to have my world view shaped by facts, rational thought, logic, and actual hard evidence, rather than the deranged rantings-and-ravings of charlatans whose continued employment literally relies on more people being shot and killed by firearms. But maybe that is what sets me apart from anti-rights cultists…

(* – When I phrase it like that, maybe "cult" is too gentle of a word… perhaps "inquisition"?)

It’s time for another term for the pro-gun community:

Faragosis (n.) – The act or attempted act of being a d*ck within the gun-rights community.

I will give you two guesses as to the inspiration of that neologism, and the first one does not count. 

Brady Campaign Board Member, blood-dancer extraordinaire, arguable face of “gun control”, and eugenicist Joan Peterson (writing under the moniker “japete”) at the conclusion of a post abusively castigating pro-rights activists for daring to point out that the anti-rights cultists’ “candlelight vigils” will do nothing to reduce the number of “gun violence” victims (note: none of the links go to her site, in accordance with Clause 2 of the Terms of Use): 

No comments will be published from pro gun activists on this post.

Sexual assault / date rape survivor (read with caution), pro-rights activist, holster-fabricator’s wife, and all-around good person Jennifer, in response to Joan’s vicious and vindictive post: 

I know you won’t publish this. That’s fine. It’s your space. But I give you my word that I won’t censor you on my blog. And I do plan to publish my comment on my blog. Probably repeatedly.

I dare say that difference in mentalities is about as perfect an illustration of the chasm separating us from them as you could ever ask for. 

We pro-rights activists do not need to rule our comment threads with the iron fist of censorship, because we know our ideas will survive the arena of public debate. 

We defenders of individual rights do not need to hold publicity-stunt “vigils” to feel like we are Doing Something, because we are accomplishing our goals on a daily basis. 

We believers in the sanctity of human life do not need to self-absorbedly narrow the playing field to only certain types of violence, because we are interested in stopping all predatory violence. 

We who stand up for the individual do not need to use the threat of government force to coerce people to abide by our beliefs, because we accept anyone with open arms. 

And that is why we are winning. 

On the one hand, I wish I could unequivocally share Lila’s position on this distinction (read the whole thing): 

Do you know what gets me? The sheer sadness of it all. Truly. When it comes to wanting to see less victims we are on the same side. The difference is that some have let their hatred of an object obscure any other thing.

But on the other hand, I am struck by two disjoint thoughts.  First, as expressed by Cargosquid*: 

Joan Peterson…without proof, without evidence, you slander good people. And yet you call us shameless? You have the outright, shameless, unmitigated, GALL to insult people that actually JOINED you in honoring victims of violence BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T DO IT IN YOUR APPROVED MANNER?

Apparently, the vigils were all about….. you.

I simply cannot get past the self-absorbed egotism of the average anti-rights cultist, especially not when coupled with their overriding sense of authoritarianism – while we want to live in a world where everyone can choose to defend themselves, or not, as they see fit, they want to live in a world where everyone is relegated to the position of “unwilling, defenseless future victim”, and I simply cannot tolerate that. 

And, second, I cannot help but to see Joan and every other “gun control” supporter like her as being roughly analogous to book burners, especially when viewed in the light of their infatuation with censorship and controlling the message.  Not only do they want us defenseless and easy prey for criminals, they want us quiet, docile, controlled.  No.  Just no.  You cannot stop the signal, and we simply will not be forced to go quietly into that good night, no matter how many petty insults and specious accusations you throw our direction. 

Yes, my life is worth enough to me to speak up against those who would deprive me of the ability to defend it.  How about yours? 

[Update]  And in comes Barron to whack the crap out of that nail: 

Also those you attack are also standing out in the open willing to freely debate, yet you hide unwilling to defend your position in public. That is a sign of someone who lacks integrity.

… among other things.  To employ one of my mother’s favorite sayings, I am very sorry Joan’s opinions are so weak that they cannot withstand ours being expressed.  [/Update]

(* – In fairness, I will more than admit to “attacking” “gun control” extremists for their honoring of those criminals amongst the ranks of “gun violence” victims.  However, I stand by those words, and will not apologize for them.) 

First, run a Google search for “gunsamerica”.  If you do it sometime near the time of this post’s writing, check out return number seven. 

Yup, that would be my little post, put up all of seven hours ago, showing up on the front page of Google returns for your company.  Not bad for a “nobody”, eh? 

And that, Paul, is how the Internet works.  That is why the NSSF is “allowing” “nobodies” like me to show up to their (not your) SHOT show.  The times are changing, Paul, and the days of “official” media are over – you can either get with the times, or you can be left behind. 

You can still salvage this situation, Paul – all it takes is an honest, genuine, public apology, and I will be more than happy to repost it for you.  But part of that is admitting you screwed up. 

So why does all of this matter to you?  Well, SHOT Show is right around the corner (sadly, I will not be attending), and the National Shooting Sports Foundation (the folks who own the show) put up a post pertaining to the power of gunbloggers and social media, and how both will probably be a significant driving force at the show.  This should be nothing new to my readership – Twitter, weblogs, Instagram, and all the rest of those have seriously shaped how the world gets and views its information, and when some coder can break the news about bin Laden taking a permanent dirt nap a quarter of a day before the major news outlets get the first inkling, the world has indeed changed. 

Unsurprisingly, some people cannot grasp the nature of that change.  Paul Helinski would be one of those people, as evinced by this comment he left on the above thread: 

Now the question is when you are going to start qualifying internet media? We have to crawl over nobodies who can install wordpress and have nobody reading anything they write, It isn’t so hard to qualify internet media using Alexa.com and Compete.com. Why do you waste the manufacturers’ time and make the real internet media have to deal with wish I were internet journalists who are just using your stamp of approve to solicit review guns and accessories? You’ve created this giant gorilla in the room and we all have to deal with it, and you may think the industry takes your numbers seriously, but everyone sees things for what they are. If you are serious about bringing value to your exhibitors, you need to vet the press list.

Yes, he did just write “real internet media”.  As someone said later on in the thread, “elitist prick” may be too kind for Paul here.  Unfortunately (for him, at least), he doubled down on “stupid”: 

I think your link explains your argument Tony. But if you had to deal with it from not just our perspective, but also the manufacturers’ perspectives, you would understand that between the organizations out there in the market place blatantly lying about their readership (ahum), and the hundreds of people who call the manufacturers every month to get T&E guns, I think that NSSF as the industry organization could do a lot more to qualify the media list to those who have actually built something that people read. Even the print mags have been marginalized by the "bloggers," many of whom, when you look at their stats on Compete.com, have only a few thousand people every month, if that. I have no problem with letting people *trying* to build something into SHOT, but they should not be allowed into Range Day, and they should not carry the same press credentials as those of us who have put the work and the years in to actually build something. NSSF themselves put together some of the highest quality videos for youtube in the firearms world. They have made a deal with our competitors that I’m sure has cost them a lot to broadcast those videos to hundreds of thousands of people. They know the dedication, money, and time it takes to build quality editorial and find a way to get it to the people. They should use that experience to set a standard.

Since I am a nobody of nobodies (i.e. a small-time gunblogger), I am probably way overstepping my position by saying this [/sarcasm], but maybe Mr. Helinski has not heard of these people or events before: 

Jim Zumbo – we “nobodies” took his referring to AR-15s and the like as “’terrorist’ rifles” somewhat personally, and our outrage, grass-roots capabilities, and promised voting-with-our-dollars resulted in Remington Arms, Outdoor Life, Gerber Knives, Mossy Oak, and many of his other sponsors firing him.  Zumbo later apologized, and was reaccepted back into the fold. 

Ocean Marketing – Paul Christoforo resorts to some remarkably rude and obnoxious behavior when a customer expresses his displeasure at the pre-order process for the new N-Control game controller devices.  Said customer took his case to Penny Arcade, and the rest, as they say, is history. 

Operation Fast and Furious – This entire disgusting governmental disaster, including the murders of at least two Americans and countless hundreds of Mexicans, was originally exposed by the endeavors of a couple of webloggers, not the “real internet media”. 

Hell, I know I alone have made quite the impact on the internet and the world that drives it thanks to my “graphics matter” series of posts, my exposé on the duplicitous business practices of Lucky Gunner, and my reviews of both the Exile Machine Hammerhead and the Mantis knives. 

We “nobodies” literally scribbling weblog posts in our own basements have power these days, and we are not afraid to flex it should we feel the need arises; only a damned fool would claim otherwise.  Apparently, Paul Helinski is a damned fool. 

Of course, Paul’s funniest comment is yet to come: 

Exactly the point. You are a wanna be internet media professional. Why don’t you go into Compete.com and compare gunsamerica.com to any other gun website, not just blogs. You’ve never heard of us, and we are the industry leader in internet readership, after 15 years of hard work and dedication. Why should I have to wait for you to finish taking a video with your phone at range day?

So, let us take this from the top.  1.  GunsAmerica is not a “internet media” site; it is a retail site, and there is a difference, Paul.  Attempting to compare retail sites’ traffic against media sites’ traffic is just plain stupid.  GunsAmerica does maintain a weblog, but…  2.  Compete.com does not allow me to compare, say, my weblog against GunsAmerica’s actual weblog.  It only compares root domains against root domains, and trying to compare retail domains against weblog domains is, once again, just plain stupid.  3.  The GunsAmerica weblog does not have any stat tracking system us mere peons can view.  Why is that?  My stats are public knowledge down at the bottom of my page.  4.  Finally and most hilariously, Paul trots out that 15-year number as if it means something, but in those 15 years, he has only managed to rustle up 140 RSS subscribers.  My not-really-“wish I were internet journalist” site has somewhere around 320 RSS subscribers – over twice as much.  Oh, and I have only been doing this “weblogging” thing at this domain for about six years (about eight years total). 

Suck it, Paul. 

This post is getting a bit long in the tooth, so it is time to sum it up.  GunsAmerica has officially lost my business, and I am definitely, definitely, definitely, definitely, definitely far from alone.  Furthermore, I would strongly encourage my readership to take Paul’s and GunsAmerica’s view of their customer base in mind when they are considering websites from which to purchase their firearms (through FFLs as the laws require, of course) – there are countless firearm retailers who do not go out of their way to demean, insult, and marginalize folks like me who only are trying to share our firearm-related enthusiasm with the world. 

If, however, Paul wants to make a formal apology (with all three parts) and retraction of his words, I will update this post accordingly, write another post highlighting that apology, and reconsider my future business transactions with his employer.  I am not counting on having to do that, though. 

(Oh, and as something completely hilarious yet mostly unrelated, if you want to see how “real internet media” professionals behave, check out Paul Helinski and GunsAmerica breaking an embargo from Ruger!  Way to be a dick.) 

(Also, Paul claims to be an “internet media professional”.  Have you seen your non-existent Twitter feed, Paul?  FAIL.) 

I found myself re-(re-?)reading Fallen Angels recently (available free online through Baen, if you feel so inclined), as a break between Dead Zero (an… interesting book, and one that I will have to review soon) and Soft Target, and I was intrigued/amazed by the prescient writing of Niven, Pournelle, and Flynn. No, they were not exactly on the money when the book was written back in 1992, but they were damned closer than I would like.

The modern-day future they paint is chilling, both literally and figuratively – "science" has been painted as the evil demon destroying the world around us, and thus has been cast down and replaced with "environmentalism", "conservation", the belief that "crystals have power" and all the rest of that greenie gos-se. Industry has been stymied. Popular opinion has replaced the scientific method. Talk about hard sciences or even science fiction results in "reeducation". Computers are regarded as "unreliable" and used only for monitoring and controlling the populace. "Belief" is considered to be more accurate than "facts", and "the alleged objectivity of materialist science was an invention of heterosexual, white males, so we shouldn’t use that as a basis for judgment" (a quote from the book). Remind you of anything?

Anywise, one of the fen – the folks who still read science fiction, and still try to keep the torch of civilization lit – made this comment in response to one of the main characters being confused as to the difference between scifi and the pabulum being written by the "mundanes", as they are called:

Thor: "Well, you can see it in our stories. Mainstream literature is about Being. For character studies, it’s probably the best genre around; but nothing happens, nothing changes. Imaginative literature is about Doing. About making the future, not just bemoaning it. We’ll all be living in the future by and by. Some of us like to scout ahead."

Taken literally, I find the parallels between contemporary "mainstream literature" and the fictional ones being described above to be far too strong for my likings – one need only examine the "Twilight" series (otherwise known as "The Importance of Having an (Abusive, Violent) Boyfriend (with a Whacked-Out Family)") in comparison to… well… pretty much any science fiction written over the past 50 years.

However, step away from the paradigm of science fiction versus mainstream, science versus faith, and recast your thoughts around the notion of our ongoing fights for the preservations of our individual rights, including the right to self-defense and the right to peaceably own property.

On the one hand, when it comes to "gun control", nothing happens, and nothing changes; people who were victimized by criminals using firearms and who then buy into the "gun control" cult never recover from being victims. One need only examine the self-inflicted* situation of Joan Peterson, a person who is as much a "gun violence" victim as I am an Alzheimer’s victim – she has chosen to never move past her mentally unbalanced brother-in-law murdering her sister. That is, of course, her choice, and I will never begrudge anyone their own choices when it comes to their own lives; however, it is a damned shame, and it is completely reprehensible that she would use her sister’s blood to drag us all down to her "voluntary, willing victim" status. Not only is trapped in bemoaning the past, present, and future, she wants to destroy other people’s futures by forcibly disarming them in the face of violent criminal threats.

No, one person does not a movement make, but if you spend any time at all reading the weblogs, articles, and Twitter feeds of those who support "gun control", you will find Joan’s methods and mentalities, such as they are, echoed across the spectrum.

Oh, sure, she and her fellow cultists can convince themselves that they are actually Doing Something by supporting "gun control" and occasionally getting one of their pet bills turned into law, but we all know the underlying flaw in "gun control" is that it simply does not work, and I am willing to wager good odds that the cultists know that as well (whether they are willing to admit it is another matter entirely). And so nothing changes – criminals go on preying on the law-abiding because self-defense has been demonized and marginalized by anti-rights cultists, "gun control" supporting victims never recover from being victims, and they keep pushing the same tried-and-failed methodologies as if "do it again, only harder" was a valid tactic.

On the other hand, pro-rights activists and advocates are all about Doing and making our futures – making our futures safer, making our futures better, making our futures at all. We firmly believe in taking demonstrably effective steps for ensuring our own safety and longevity – planning for potentially disastrous events (because if you are ready for the Zombie Apocalypse, some pissant hurricane is nothing), being observant of ourselves and our surroundings (because criminals exploit ‘condition white’), preparing ourselves for emergencies (something tells me the percentage of CPR-certified gunbloggers is higher than CPR-certified "gun control" extremists…), and so forth. And we firmly believe in providing the necessary tools – or at least ensuring they are available – to people to accomplish those goals, whether those tools are a little self-esteem boost, a helping hand, some training, a welcoming attitude, a safe environment, or a firearm.

And not only are we pro-rights activists scouting ahead every day, formulating new techniques, developing new arguments, discovering new ways of spreading the truth, we are more than willing to share that knowledge with anyone who is interested in listening… as A Girl and Her Gun discovered herself and can attest to.

However, one important distinction sets us so far ahead of the "gun control" extremists that it is not even funny – we would never force someone to abide by our desires, our plans, or our intentions. We will certainly encourage people to consider things that actually work, but if they want to do something else entirely, then more power to them, and the best of luck with that. Why do anti-rights cultists have such a hard time letting other people live in peace?

It is too early to definitively state that we will all, one day, be living in a future wherein all of our individual rights – including that of self-defense – are acknowledged and respected by our government and our fellow men (too early indeed, given the current political tendencies of America), but that future will never be realized unless we, ourselves, work towards it.

So while the "gun control" extremists are ringing their bells or lighting their candles or doing whatever else it is they do in order to make themselves feel better about being victims or knowing victims or thinking they are victims, we will be encouraging potential victims and past victims to learn how to defend themselves, giving them the tools to do so, learning from their stories rather than bemoaning them, coming to terms with their experiences rather than endlessly reliving them, and educating them to be survivors… and we are everywhere.

Who do you really think is going to have a bigger impact on the future?

(* – When I say "self-inflicted", I refer exclusively to Joan’s daily decision to be nothing more than a "gun violence" victim-in-her-own-mind, not to her sister’s murder.) 

(All images courtesy of Oleg Volk.)