A few months back, the same publishing house sent me a few review copies of the sequel to that book, Soft Target, which I then put to good use raising over $2300 for Soldiers’ Angels.

What I have not done, however, is review those books that they gave me to… well… review.

Whoops.

So here is me, doing what I should have done a year ago (at least) and reviewing both books… simultaneously. Why? Well, I have never read any of the lengthy series that precedes these two books, but, taken together, they resemble nothing more than an honest-to-God complete reboot of that very series, complete with the effective retirement of the old main character and the rise of a new one.

To begin with, let me say this – Stephen Hunter knows his material. He only spent two years in the United States Army (attached to the 3rd Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) in Washington D.C.), but he obviously supplemented the limited training he would have received there in the time since. His descriptions and depictions of firearms, ballistics, tactics, and so forth are so detailed they verge on “obsessive”, and while I cannot, personally, attest to the accuracy or veracity of most of it, I can say that most of his material regarding specific firearms matches up against what I know and could look up* – unfortunately, some of it was straight up Hollywoodism. When it comes to Marine RECON elements and their particular tactics, or how to do off-hand shooting crazy-accurate, though, I am just going to have to smile and nod, but at least the “suspension of disbelief” was not difficult.

Speaking of Marines and their general bad-ass-itude, though, brings me to one of my primary, if not the primary complaint against Mr. Hunter’s writing – he did far too much “telling” in my opinion. I am not an author (much to everyone’s relief, let me tell you), but it is my understanding that one of the more difficult balancing acts a fiction author must maintain when writing is that between “showing” and “telling” – sure, both can get the point across to the readers, but the former tends to have a significantly more lasting effect upon the audience. In my hardly humble opinion, Mr. Hunter spent far too much time on telling us just how monstrously hardcore his characters were, and too little time allowing the characters to demonstrate that for themselves. This may be an artifact of the former book being at the tail end of a series, and thus Mr. Hunter feeling he needed to get everyone caught back up again, and the latter book ostensibly marking the full start of a new one, or it could be something else entirely, but, personally, I got a little tired of it by the end of the second book. Your mileage, of course, will vary.

That said, there are more than ample opportunities for you to learn, first hand, just how badass Bob Lee Swagger and Ray Cruz, the respective main characters of the books, can be when properly motivated. Such demonstrations ranged from Cruz making prone shots against terrorists 100-200 yards away with nothing more than an iron-sighted AK-74 and a potato silencer**, to his making fairly short, but nowhere near easy, work of another Somali terrorist with a little help from a rather unstereotypical female local. Unfortunately for the storyline, Bob Lee has unsurprisingly aged over the course of his series, so his particular talents reside less in the “beat the crap out of people” department and more in the “think and act like a sniper” kind of way. The specific actions and decisions in his combat scenes can occasionally be a little difficult to follow, but Mr. Hunter keeps the audience, or at least me, interested in how they will turn out.

Speaking of, the stories did tend to keep me turning pages. They were rather quick reads, for whatever that is worth, but once I started I did not want to put them down until I figured out where all the pieces went and where it all ended up. Mr. Hunter did not seem to have too much of a problem killing of supporting or faceless characters, so there was always the overriding possibility that one of the main characters might make it under the chopping block, and, in fact… well, you will have to read for yourself.

Before you dive into Soft Target, however, you should probably be forewarned: to call it “a thinly veiled, intentionally insulting allegory on the current Presidential administration and the sociopolitical forces that would allow such a thing to come into existence and then stay in existence” would be putting it very, very mildly. In fact, I would even go so far as to say the story suffers in light of Mr. Hunter’s desire to let you know just how very much he dislikes the current situation. That story is eminently believable, given how many malls in America insist on declaring themselves to be “victim disarmament zones” and the prevalence of similar tactics in other countries (Mumbai, anyone?), but I get the feeling the book would have been significantly shorter, or significantly better, if the author had not used it as a avenue for his venting against the current state of politics. That is, of course, the author’s choice, though.

All in all, I would consider both Dead Zero and Soft Target to be a good, distracting read. They are not exactly earth-shattering in… well… anything, honestly, and I am not likely to pick them up again for a while, but they passed the time, and I would be lying if I said I did not enjoy some of the fight scenes. If you are as hardcore a Stephen Hunter fan as his characters are Marines, go ahead and snag a copy, but, otherwise, I would recommend at least waiting for paperbacks.

(* – I do, however, have to question the… artistic… depiction of a .50BMG round impacting a metal desk in Dead Zero. I have fired a Barrett Model 82A1 and watched through the scope as the round impacted a 55 gallon drum just shy of a thousand yards away (thanks to previous shooters perfectly zeroing the optic). The phrase “hot knife through butter” does not even begin to adequately describe the experience, so I really have to wonder if such a round impacting a similar object at an even closer range would behave anywhere near how he wrote it.

** – Which, thankfully, does not actually work, otherwise we would have the BATFE laser-engraving every spud to come out of the ground)

(Obligatory Middle Finger to the FTC:  As clearly indicated in this post, and the previous posts about these books, they were provided to me by Simon & Schuster on the premise I would eventually review them.  This is the review.  Get over it and get a real job instead of harassing webloggers.) 

I could also "settle" for this one.

One thing I do not often mention here is that I used to be rather big into creating three-dimensional computer models… not on any "professional" software, or even any kind of software that let you grab individual pixels and push them around, but rather a piece of Japanese software that gave you LEGO-like building blocks from which you could assemble larger things. One of my personal dreams was always to see those little creations come to life in a physical form, but, obviously, trying to get someone to cast or mold them would have been a massively cost prohibitive operation, and such thoughts never really came to pass.

Granted, two thousand dollars or so is not exactly "cheap" by my accounting, but considering how many other things 3D printers can be used for, the cost would be amortized over a variety of objects. And then there is the whole print-your-own-AR-15-at-home thing that could prove to be so very interesting…

Obviously this technology is still in its infancy, and trying to shoot a "printed" AR-15 lower may not be the safest idea in the world, but I am sure you could come up with no shortage of potential uses around the house for a gadget like this, and, really, at-home three-dimensional printing! What more do you want?

(Both courtesy of Uncrate.)

(Though, in fairness, both can fire the MHI-mandatory pistol bullet caliber…)

Well, I found one – the original, v0.38.2 Adobe.air TweetDeck install.  All of the old functionalities, all of the old design, all of the old setups, all of the old options, and none of the new idiocy.  Alternatively, you can download the file here – my anti-virus promises it is clean. 

Obviously, this version will not be receiving any further updates in the future, but considering what Twitter considered an “update”, would you really want any? 

One pro-gun blogger, Wer’d Beard, is sensitive about his real name being "outed" by CSGV. Poor guy, but I’ll abstain as a fellow blogger.

That tweet used to include a link to the CSGV’s weblog wherein they did the outing, until such time as Weer’d requested Baldr take it down.  One cannot mistake the sentiment in those short sentences, though. 

Well, it would appear as though Baldr Odinson has beaten all of the rest of us to the punch, and gone and “outed” himself on Facebook – say hello to Baldr, everyone… or should I say “Jason Kilgore”? 

Now, normally, I would not go posting the personal information of folks who choose to use a screen name while they make use of the Intertubes – being one of those folks myself, I fully understand the motivations involved.  However, in this particular case, I feel as though it is particularly warranted for a variety of reasons. 

First, as you can see to the left, he “outed” himself, on a public page, on Facebook.  He put his screen name right next to his carbon name, in a place where anyone and everyone could see it.  And, lo and behold, someone did. 

Second, as previously mentioned, he condoned / supported / encouraged / facilitated the CSGV when they were going on their mass “outing” spree a few months ago, and personally leveraged some of the outcomes of that despicable activities for his own gain.  The shoe is now on the other foot. 

Third, he has been using either his screen name or his carbon name to sock-puppet for the other, as seen in the two screen captures to the right (the first is available here, the second is available here).  Trying to make yourself look more popular, more appreciated, more widely-recognized, and more agreed-with by generating additional screen names / accounts / etc. is a time-honored tradition of the Intertubes, but not a particularly honorable one. 

Fourth, he actually gave an interview, to a television station, using his screen name as his identification: 

Really Jason?  Really?  Welcome to being a “public figure” (as your Facebook profile claims, by the by); once you assume that mantle, any semblance of “privacy” goes right out the window.  (Of course, the misspelling is all the more amusing, given the circumstances.) 

Fifth and finally, Jason Kilgore (aka “Baldr Odinson”) decided to get his panties in a wad over the lawful use of the above-left Facebook image.  As you all know, I am a firm believer in individual rights, including the right to intellectual property ownership; however, as I said in comments: 

He cannot even claim that. He did not take the picture!

That, right there, is the key element.

Baldr was in a public place, acting as a public figure. As such, he had no reasonable expectation of privacy when that photograph was taken. As such, he has no copyright claim, whatsoever, to that picture, despite being the subject of it.

The only person who originally owned the copyright was the person behind the camera that took it. Did Baldr have that person’s permission to put the picture on his Facebook page?

Seemingly petty though that question may be, it is invaluably important, given Facebook’s rather… demanding… copyright rules, in that they claim ownership of anything and everything that is posted on their domain, regardless of who owned it previously.

Unless Baldr has a notarized power of attorney (or equivalent documentation) from the person who took the picture, or from Facebook themselves, he simply has no standing.

IANAL and all that.

… And as Tango followed up with: 

That’s not the key. You didn’t reuse his picture. You captured the picture with the surrounding page because what you wrote is specifically about that exact picture and the article associated with it. You wrote an article ABOUT the picture, so reproducing it as such is very very clearly covered under fair use.

So welcome to the club of “outed” webloggers, Jason Kilgore (aka “Baldr Odinson”).  If you had not gone to the effort of Streisanding yourself, maybe this all would have blown over and no one would have been the wiser.  As it is, given your encouragement of the CSGV when the started violating people’s privacy, you are, as I believe the saying goes, not-so-respectfully invited to “suck it”. 

(Oh, and what the hell is with the Heaven’s Gate outfit?) 

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.)

Apparently, for some people, some discrimination is a-ok so long as they disagree with the person being discriminated against but it should be strictly, legally verboten in any situations they feel appropriate (in other words, logical/internal consistency fail), while those those same people (and others) have no problems misrepresenting other people’s positions and words.

This is me, being genuinely more than a little surprised and disappointed at the whole debacle, and specifically at the behavior of folks who, along with me, have been on the receiving end of the exact same behavior from other folks who wish to strip us of other rights. I imagine there is some appropriate quote that could be fielded in this instance (if nothing else, something about staring contests with really deep holes), but I am just not feeling it at the moment.

What I will do is point out two comments from Martha Boggs, the owner of The Bistro at the Bijou, and the first one may surprise her supporters:

Boggs actually agrees with her critics. She says she handled the situation the wrong way.

"It wasn’t really the right way to do it. It wasn’t the best method. But at least it got something that needed to be discussed, discussed," said Boggs.

"Passionately" and "heatedly" kicking someone out of your establishment does absolutely nothing to alter the differences of opinion you may be having with that person, and the animosity exposed may, in fact, increase whatever chasm separates the two of you. Damned if I am one to lecture someone else about being dispassionate when it comes to dealing with dicks (and mark me: Stacey Campfield falls under that heading), but more often than not, I am not trying to convert them, only ridicule them; I dare say Martha has different goals in mind.

When it comes to achieving those goals, however, it would help her immensely if she knew what she was talking about. Again, courtesy of Rich, we have a wonderful cherry to go on top of this steaming pile of suck and fail, in the form of a direct quote from Martha:

If there was a group of people, it would be discrimination if it was a group of people. But he is an individual. There was a Ku Klux Klan rally outside my front door last year. I had both sides of those people in here.

… *headdesk*.

To begin with, Martha has already admitted it was discrimination, and "unfair" discrimination at that, so backpeddling at this point is just pathetic. I would have significantly more respect for Martha, especially given my position on discrimination in general (which I could swear I had harped on enough in my previous post on the topic, but I guess "TL;DR" is the internet standard now), if she simply owned up to her actions and moved on.

Second, really? You really want to trot out the "some of my friends are black" defense? God help you.

And, finally, let us examine this word everyone keeps yammering about – discrimination:

1. an act or instance of discriminating.
2. treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit: racial and religious intolerance and discrimination.
3. the power of making fine distinctions; discriminating judgment: She chose the colors with great discrimination.
4. Archaic. something that serves to differentiate.

And since that definition links to discriminate, so shall I:

1. to make a distinction in favor of or against a person or thing on the basis of the group, class, or category to which the person or thing belongs rather than according to actual merit; show partiality: The new law discriminates against foreigners. He discriminates in favor of his relatives.
2. to note or observe a difference; distinguish accurately: to discriminate between things.

In other words, discrimination can only be against an individual. Furthermore, while Stacey’s credibility is not exactly something I would bet anything on, apparently only you and he were privy to your conversation, and he contends that your request for him to leave included something approximating, "You are a homophobe. I am not serving you." If this is true – and your later interviews wherein you state you were "standing up" for homosexuals would tend to substantiate it – your behavior unquestionably meets the definition of "discrimination".

Get over it already.

But, then, I am not one who is dedicated to reducing certain types of discrimination – in fact, as I clearly stated, I am quite comfortable with people and businesses discriminating as they see fit – so I am not trapped in your current, hypocritical position of wanting to reduce discrimination for some people by discriminating against other people. Such a predicament certainly does explain your rationalizations, but it does not excuse them.

She said: ‘I want everyone to know how badly some people [aboard the sinking cruise liner Costa Concordia] behaved. It was a nightmare. I lost my daughter and my grandchildren in the chaos.

I was standing by the lifeboats and men, big men, were banging into me and knocking the girls. It was awful. There was a total lack of organisation. There was no one telling people where to go.

And when we finally got into a lifeboat, people, grown men, were trying to jump into the boat. I thought, if they land in here we are going to capsize.

[...]

‘We fled with only the clothes we were standing in and my poor wife lost her shoes. We’ve lost our passports, £500 cash and my credit cards, which were all in the ship’s safe.’ Mr Rodford said the officers were no help. ‘The people who served us our dinner were the people who helped us get on the lifeboats and were manning the lifeboats. I didn’t see captains’ jackets and things like that. It was the staff who had served us dinner.

Given my Navy history, I could probably annihilate thousands of innocent bytes explaining just how the spineless scum masquerading as "officers" onboard that particular cruise ship completely and totally failed their crew and passengers (and said failure started long before the puddle of piss sporting captain’s bars pulled the "Screw y’all, I’m outta’ here" maneuver), but to save my keyboard from "death by pounding", I am going to go a different direction today. However, do keep in mind that no one I am quoting is trying to excuse, mitigate, or rationalize that failure of the captain and his crew, and neither am I.

On the one hand, consider this:

This was not so much predictable as predicted. Women have methodically attacked the concept of male duty and honor through every possible means for the past ninety years, and now they are whining that they don’t get special treatment simply because a ship happens to be sinking. Why, exactly, should any man "prioritise women, expectant mothers and children"? On what grounds can they be reasonably expected to do so, those outdated traditional grounds that the schools teach is hateful, sexist, and bigoted?

Those big, burly crewmen shoving aside women as they prioritized their own escape should have been wearing t-shirts that said "this is what a feminist looks like". Enjoy the crash.

"Feminists" have been demanding "equality" for decades now, and imposing it by governmental, bureaucratic, or policy fiat wherever and whenever they can. In a world where "equality" reigns supreme, "women and children first" is a completely meaningless, semantically null concept, at least when it comes to the women. Whoops. (I, personally, make something of an exception for children, given their marked inequality with adults, but, then, I would be pushing women into a lifeboat before me anywise.)

And just to tie this back to being a gunblog, this is the world the "gun control" extremists would force upon us – one where the larger and stronger gets what the larger and stronger wants because they are larger and stronger, while the smaller and weaker are lucky to survive… if they survive at all. On the other hand, by allowing a 120-pound-soaking-wet woman to authoritatively and finally decline the undesired proposal of sexual activities offered by a 300-pound ex-convict, a firearm ensures the thin veneer of ‘civilization’ remains intact and prevents the creation of another victim.

On the other hand, consider this:

And I mean that. For two generations, Europeans have been coddled by their governments – asked to do ever less (other than support their Ruling Elite) while the Governments do ever more. We saw the result of that, in the icy waters of the Mediterranean, as society went feral and it was sauve qui peut.

Again, from my Naval background, and my generally inquisitive nature, I know how to deploy most forms of lifeboats – do you? Would you learn how to before/after boarding a vessel? Would you even know where the boats/rafts were located? Think more generally… do you know how to handle alfa, bravo, or charlie fires? What about deltas? Do you know what those are? Think even more broadly… how long could you and your family deal with a loss of power in your house without outside assistance? Water? Internet?

Odds are, most of my readers are probably capable of handling those kinds of scenarios… but what about your neighbors? What about the "average" American, much less the average human?

We have successfully created an entire population of people who are entirely dependent upon other people for pretty much everything, up to and including direction in their lives. When faced with an emergency situation, do you think they will immediately spring into action with a well-formulated plan in hand, or do you think they will stand around, waiting for directions, and blaming someone else for not "saving them"? Yeah. Me too.

And on the gripping hand, I will leave you with this: your life is your responsibility, and your responsibility alone, unless another of-age adult voluntarily accepts responsibility for it. The captain of a ship does exactly that – accepts responsibility for his crew and any passengers onboard – every time he orders his sailors to cast off, and the captain and officers of this cruise liner disastrously failed in their responsibilities, orders, and obligations. However, that failure does not absolve you of your eternal responsibility for your own life, and the cold reality that when the chips are down, the odds are very good that no one is going to save you but you.

Me, I am going to take the steps I see as necessary to improve my chances at success. How about you?

Color me surprised.

No, not really. "Gun control" extremist organizations have a long-standing history of violating copyrights in their unending crusade to demonize and dehumanize firearm owners and carriers, which bring us back to an interesting point that comes up time and time again: if you do not respect one individual right – such as the right to self-defense – you probably do not respect any of them.

My evidence for this observation? Well, as mentioned, anti-rights cultists obviously do not respect our individual, Constitutionally-protected rights to self-defense and self-preservation by the very nature of their positions and desires, so that rather goes without saying.

However, moving deeper, gun control organizations and supporters go to radical lengths to silence dissent, even going so far as to tell people with different opinions to "shut up". The rights protected by the Second Amendment were out the window from the get-go, but apparently those protected by the First are worth nothing to these people either.

And now, here they are, violating multiple people’s rights to intellectual property – specifically pictures they took or pictures of themselves – without so much as a by-your-leave or "Image courtesy of [x]".

Methinks I see a pattern developing.

And this is all without even touching on the gratuitous, vicious, and vindictive nature of the smear piece that contains the copyright violations… I would remind Ladd Everitt that the last time he embarked on a similar specious character-assassination campaign, he got the CSGV’s Twitter account locked down for over two weeks due to his inability to keep his stalkerish, abusive, bullying mentality in check… and that was without a copyright infringement to throw on the stack. One really does have to wonder why Michael K. Beard keeps Ladd on the payrolls, given how much of a hot-headed, frothing-at-the-mouth thug the latter is on a regular basis… Or, on the flip side (and purely speculatively), one has to wonder how threatened Michael feels by Ladd that he is concerned about letting him go…

Thankfully, Oleg Volk has already issued a DMCA take-down notification to Google, so hopefully the image will be struck shortly and the image is now gone from CSGV’s weblog post, but Emily Miller will likely always have to deal with having been targeted by a particularly hateful, spiteful, and borderline-violent "gun control" organization. Whilst that superficially seems like something of a downer, there is a silver lining to joining that distinguished club: we get to watch, first hand, as the CSGV abandons its stated mission, slowly collapses, and augers into the ground as it pursues its staff’s personal vendetta against those who disagree with them.

I shall not speak for Emily, but I can live with a few disgusting personal attacks levied against me if it means I get to watch the modern-day equivalent of the KKK crash and burn.

Speaking of Emily Miller, though, I, along with countless other pro-rights webloggers, would like to thank you for standing up in public and documenting the draconian nature of the current version of D.C.’s firearm laws. One can only hope your shining the harsh light of the truth on the situation will result in further successful legal challenges against D.C.’s idiocy.

It was discussed, perhaps here, the notion that we are able to develop a shitstorm when something goes wrong, but the author could not recall an atta boy resulting in a built business.

I currently carry in a crossbreed, but my next holster will be a Dragon Leatherworks. By all accounts, all subsequent holsters will likely also be by Dennis.

I first noticed the notion he is referencing here:

I agree completely with you. Plus, bloggers are going to have to learn how, as a group, to give ‘treats to the dog’.

They certainly know, as a group, ‘how to beat the dog’, but they have yet to learn the opposite.

When they do that, then you might see that $20,000 back page ad payment. Otherwise, the ‘dog’ is continue to give money to those that do give it ‘treats’ and don’t beat it or throw stones at it all the time…

All The Best,
Frank W. James

… And responded with:

Otherwise, the ‘dog’ is continue to give money to those that do give it ‘treats’ and don’t beat it or throw stones at it all the time…

Right, because those bought-and-paid-for “reviews” that are nothing more than multi-page, effusive advertisements for the product in question have nothing to do with print media’s declining readership.

Oh. Wait. Was that too much of a “stone”?

… But, really, my comment falls short in one primary fashion: Frank James is simply wrong. Coincidentally, he is wrong for much the same reason that Paul Helinski is a bleeding moron, hence the "disparate thoughts".

Consider, as Oliver did, the story of Dragon Leatherworks. A little over a year-and-a-half ago, Jay G. introduced us to the Fugly, and in those intervening 20 months, Dennis’ business has grown from "just a hobby he was doing because someone encouraged him" to "he barely has time for anything other than work and holsters", all through the power of the gunblogosphere. Yes, Dennis did have one ad photo on the back of the Concealed Carry Magazine, and his Quantum IWB/OWB Holster just got reviewed in Shooting Illustrated, but fully 99% of his business growth has been a direct product of word-of-mouth blogging, commenting, and communication.

I dare say taking a man from a hobby to an almost-sustainable primary business constitutes "giving ‘treats to the dog’", but what do I know?

Pretty much the same thing could be said for Michael’s Custom Holsters – so far as I know, the vast majority of his advertising and support has been by way of weblogs such as this one, and, hey, look, his leather is going to be on cable television. Oh, and by the way, his holster fabrication is his primary form of employment (I believe), and it has been made possible through the positive exposure through weblogs.

So, we "have yet to learn the opposite", huh?

Which brings us to an all-too-amusing email I coincidentally received very shortly after Oliver’s comment:

I’m stunned at the recent comments by Paul Helsinki of GunsAmerica — as you have pointed out, he seems to think that gun blogs are somehow "secondary" media, at least for the purpose of obtaining Shot Show credentials.

My new book‘s ONLY exposure was a mention on a couple gun blogs. The Kindle version now is outselling 96% of all Kindle books on Amazon (and Amazon now sells more Kindle editions than paper books).

Message to Paul: There’s nothing "secondary" about the gun blogosphere. A few positive words from a couple gun bloggers are going to put a nice dent in my three kids’ college tuition. Take the hint.

Kind regards,
Phil Mulivor
Director of Media Relations
Ohioans for Concealed Carry
Proclaiming Liberty: What Patriots and Heroes Really Said about the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

Wow. That was a mighty big "stone" we webloggers threw at Phil, what with his climbing to the top of a very competitive stack within only a few weeks. Shame on us and all that.

No, we "nobody" webloggers are nowhere near being movers-and-shakers amongst the media elite, and that is ok, because we have something better: public opinion. Not only do we report on it, we can shape it with nothing more complicated than a few hundred-word post and a few pictures, the ripples of which can still be felt years and (small) fortunes later. And, yes, it is far easier to generate a negative public opinion wave than a positive one; helpful hint to those who have been residing in their ivory towers for a leeetle too long: it has always been that way. Reputations are difficult things… it takes you forever to generate a good one, and all it takes is one solid slip-up for you to destroy all that hard work; and that holds true regardless of the medium of communication.

If companies do not like getting negative reviews from upstart webloggers like me, I would suggest they stop producing/selling items that are deserving of negative reviews. If self-absorbed jackasses like Paul Helinski do not like being crowded by "nobodies" with a keyboard and a processor, I would suggest their get over their faragosis and stop being a dick. The introduction of the Internet and, specifically, "social" systems like weblogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc. has created an arguably more-substantial sea-change than the fielding of long bows at Agincourt; only a true idiot would bitterly cling to the supposed superiority of knights when barely-skilled craftsman are equipping barely-armored farmers who are knocking down human tanks left and right.

Get with the times or be left behind – for someone genuinely interested in his business, or maintaining his position in the world, I would think the choice would be simple.

Why is downtown even coming up? Because the next time we are down there in search of food, I know where I will not be eating – The Bistro at the Bijou. Why? Because I generally do not patronize businesses / establishments that demonstrate rank intolerance, regardless of whether we are talking about skin tone, firearms, or political viewpoints.

Before we go any further, if you want a recap/synopsis of what transpired, Rich has an outstanding one, so if you are not local, go read the backstory and then come on back here.

All done? Great. So, first, I do not agree with… well, the overwhelming majority of the things State Senator Stacey Campfield says/does. I appreciate his willingness to go to bat for my right to self-defense, and I definitely appreciate his fiscal conservative bent (though I wish it were stronger, as I do with all politicians), but I firmly believe that much of his time could be spent on significantly more useful and productive pursuits than he choses to expend it upon. However, I absolutely love how he seems innately capable of driving the liberals / progressives / left-wingers in Tennessee into a knee-jerk, deranged, frothing-at-the-mouth tizzy simply by existing; he almost seems like Tennessee’s own Sarah Palin, considering the extents those lefties go to to smear him, attack him, and otherwise hate him.

Second, I believe that corporations / companies / businesses / etc. should be able to do, and not do, business with whomever and whatever they so choose. Yes, that means I would be comfortable with businesses discriminating against blacks, homosexuals, Irish, Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Muslims, open carriers, etc. etc. etc. And? We, as individual people, discriminate for or against other people all the time, and not only would it be unconstitutional for someone to force us to do otherwise (can anyone say “freedom of association”?), but it would simply be wrong. As such, there is simply no reason why an owner of a business should be forced to associate with, or not associate with, people against his will by way of his business.

Yes, I know there was a time in history when such force was necessary to move things along, and, yes, I know that the government does not readily give up power it has claimed for itself, but time has moved on.

Third and finally, I firmly believe in voting with my dollar – by and large, I do my best to not encourage/support companies whose policies/behaviors I do not agree with.

So why am I not going to eat at The Bistro in the future, apart from simply not being in that geographical area very much? Just because I am comfortable with someone doing something does not mean I necessarily endorse it or want to support it, and, personally, I do not want to encourage corporate discrimination on the basis of political/social beliefs. I am fine with another person doing so if they want to, but I am not going to help them along their way or force them to modify their behavior according to my beliefs (a statement which, in my humble opinion, could serve well as an attempt at reclaiming the concept of “tolerance”); I am simply going to do my business elsewhere.

… And this is all without even touching on the inanity of combating discrimination with… wait for it… more discrimination. The non-stop stream of “It’s not [X] when WE do it!”, rationalizations, appeals to political correctness, and so forth have been rather disheartening, but even worse are those morons claiming, “You sure taught him!”

Uhm, no you did not.

What you did do, however, is teach the world that you are more than willing to employ discrimination, intolerance, and hate when you think it is appropriate to do so. If you take exception to that observation and support The Bistro refusing service to Senator Campfield, let me ask you this: would you support a business owner kicking out a pro-LGBT politician on the basis of disagreeing with that person’s political/social views? If your answer is “no”, as I expect it would be, then you are logically inconsistent, internally inconsistent, a hypocrite to boot, and in absolutely no place to lecture anyone on anything even remotely related to “tolerance” or “acceptance”.

I credit Martha Boggs, the proprietor of The Bistro at the Bijou, for taking a stand for her beliefs, but if you think she “won” anything, you are a damned fool.

(Oh, and on a mostly unrelated note, being let go cannot keep a good man down – Michael Silence is back to webloging, in much the same pattern as before, just at a different address.)

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.

This is pretty awesome.

As WizardPC indicates, you would not want to shove a full-blown desktop PC in there due to heat concerns (and leaving your safe open to vent it seems somewhat counter-productive), but if you had some kind of "plug computer" concept hooked up to a mongo, energy-efficient external hard drive, you might be able to leave that running constantly, and, at the very least, you could definitely have it wake up for an hour a day to synchronize backups with your main computer(s). Granted, temperatures inside the safe during a house fire will likely reduce your little mini-puter to a little puddle of plastic, but the hard drive platter might be salvageable, and, at the least, it stands a better chance of surviving than a completely unprotected device does.

This year’s "gun" purchase (speaking of, I still need to touch on the last one of the previous year) will likely be a safe, along with its $250+ markup for in-home delivery – after all, these things typically weigh 3-5x me, and there is just no way I am going to wrangle that into place. Cannon realizing that the Venn diagram of "gun owner" and "geek" has a pretty significant overlap may have just made my choice a lot easier.

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.)

No, really:

Smartphones are constantly getting better at imitating compact cameras, but so far we haven’t seen many cameras that attempt to mimic smartphones. That changes today with the Polaroid SC1630 Smart Camera, a 16-megapixel compact camera unveiled at CES. It’s a point-and-shoot camera that’s pretty much a smartphone without the phone. Powered by Android, the camera features a 3x (36-108mmm) optical zoom lens, a 3.2-inch touchscreen, Wi-Fi connectivity, 720p video recording, and geotagging. The Android OS means that users can install and use Android Market apps on the camera (e.g. Instagram once it becomes available). It’ll be available starting in April for $300.

I might hold out for a different/better brand than Polaroid, and “16 megapixels” does not necessarily mean anything when those sensors are stacked on top of each other like tribbles, and a 6.5mm lens (am I reading that right?) is freakishly small for point-and-shoots these days, but, yeah, include actual “phone” functionalities in that device, and I will be interested.

As it is, people have largely stopped carrying around point-and-shoots in favor of those strange little devices that can take pictures and make phone calls… slapping a phone’s OS into a camera will not really change that equation significantly.

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.