Glenn Reynolds linked to an article in the Christian Science Monitor about the growing prominence of gun-bloggers among the old media and how these sometimes cranky and contrary souls [We don't know anyone like that, do we?] are even forcing the hand of the NRA on occasion.

The very first comment on the article was from someone using the name Susan Gill. I'm sure you'll recognize someone you know in her reply:

My goodness, it's hard to know where to begin. In Seattle, there is an increase of gang shootings, often by teenagers, right out in the open on the University of Washington Ave., Alki Beach, Golden Gardens, the South end at bus stops, etc. Kids should NOT have guns. Nationally, we have people in the same families shooting one another. People go off the deep end and shoot fellow workers or students with machine guns they should NEVER have access to.

The logic is we all have the right to protect ourselves. But, maybe we need to be thinking through the best way TO protect ourselves. Some good ways are living a wise lifestyle, trying to be harmonious with all, listening to your intuitions, staying out of trouble spots, leading a good purposed meaningful life and providing opportunities for others to do the same.

This pressure and lobbying from the NRA has been escalating for years. I don't like it at all. I'm to the point I'm more opposed to the pressure than the availability of guns. Why not more pressure for a harmonious society? Why not more pressure to provide for larger police forces? Why not more regulated laws that oversee gun sales, and limit gun sales to the appropriate parties, those who are professionals in the service of protecting our cities and country? (I won't even try to talk about the "hunting" aspect. I cannot in a million years imagine shooting an animal!)

I simply cannot believe our Founding Fathers' intent with the 2nd Amendment was to indiscriminately pass out guns to anyone who wants one. There MUST be more intelligent scrutiny and stricter laws on who may carry a fire arm.

Let us for a moment look past her sincere ignorance and the fact that there have been precisely two murders documented with legally-owned machine guns since 1934, that children are already barred from purchasing all manner of firearms, that "harmonious living" never stopped a hardened criminal, and that criminals should not circumscribe your freedoms. We'll look past all that to focus on what all too many outside of her moonbeams-and-unicorns world view also misunderstand about what our nation is, and the role firearms were intended to play.

To her and others like her I would write:

Ms. Gill,

I'd like to direct you to The Federalist Papers and other documents written by our Founding Fathers. They did indeed mean for every law-abiding reasonable man be armed with small arms suitable for military use. They created the Second Amendment not to sanctify pheasant hunting or target shooting, but to make sure American civilians always had access to small arms for the defense of their communities and against tyrannies foreign and domestic.

They recognized the militia as the citizen, not the National Guard, and the contemporary use of the phrase "well-regulated" in their time meant "well-trained."

The Founders wanted America to be a nation where the citizenry itself was a well-trained deterrent to tyrants abroad and would-be tyrants at home, recognizing that blood needed to be shed from time to time for liberty to remain and free men to remain free.

What the media glibly calls "assault weapons" today are the very arms that most closely mirror what the founders would have regarded at the proper armament for a free American citizenry. Our Founding Fathers, Ms. Gill, were what you would regard as right-wing extremists.

They wanted us armed and well-trained with those arms, knowing that any government security force sufficiently large and powerful enough to protect us from any crime is large and powerful enough to strip us of our freedoms. There is, after all, a reason why totalitarian nations are known as "police states."

Our Founders were men of action, and require action from us. They do not expect us to shirk our duties and responsibilities, and would be ashamed of those of you who think so much of your own self-worth that you would put another person's life on the line to assure you safety.

If you truly love your nation and your God, procure a weapon, and learn how to use it to defend the one sacred life that your Father gave you to lead, and freedoms that our Founding Fathers hoped to enshrine on parchment three centuries ago.

Thank you for your time.

Bob Owens

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 05:37 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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More outright fabrication from The Daily Beast (my bold, of course):

At the gun show in Reno, I witnessed the sale of rocket-propelled-grenade launchers and bazooka guns; I watched a California-based dealer demonstrate how rapidly he could field strip his .308-caliber sniper rifle, then stash it in a deliberately innocuous-looking backpack and a briefcase that "looks just like a camera case."

Mr. Blumenthal, I'll make you a deal.

Produce a functional gun show-purchased RPG-7 launcher and grenades or a functional "bazooka gun" (whatever that is), and I'll either eat it, or let you shoot at me with it. The simple fact of the matter is that such weapons are not available at guns shows, though replicas— non-firing essentially 1:1 scale models—sometimes are.

The take-down rifle design he shows with forboding isn't particularly innovative and has been around for over a hundred years. I just watched the Clint Eastwood classic Joe Kidd over the course of a weekend, where a western set in 1900 featured a scene where the title character assembled a similar weapon transported in a compact presentation case, and then used it to kill a rifleman sniping from a ridge hundreds of yards away.

As for Blumenthal's crockmentary, I'm less than impressed with tired leftist tactic he used of finding a small number of crackpots from multiple events and presenting them as being a fair representation of the overall group. Whether used by Blumenthal or Riefenstahl, it is purposefully dishonest.

You'll note that though he claims to have attended two shows, he came back to the same 2-3 guys for the bulk of his interviews, most prominently the old Alex Jones fan and the young Paultard. Those interviews were culled from out of what must have been thousands of potential attendees he could have chosen to talk to. I have little doubt his intention was to isolate and fixate upon those he thought would be most useful fodder for a smear out of what was sure to have been thousands (for example, there were 8,000 people attend a gun show in Raleigh over the course of the weekend, and I suspect I could find several dozen conspiracy theorists or more that would give similar stories to what he culled, but that doesn't make them representative of the larger group).

It's a smear job from a shameless propagandist, and yet another blow to the credibility of Tina Brown's Daily Beast, which seems to be trying to emulate the kind of journalism that is leading the New York Times into both irrelevancy and bankruptcy.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:53 PM | Comments (58) | Add Comment
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