"The whole world is watching now. We must be nothing less than fabulous."

I see some folks have missed the point.

Gun owners are primarily considerate, mature, responsible people exercising their constitutional right in the face of a campaign to take those rights away. The angry, selfish, childish firearms owners are a tiny minority. Regardless of that fact, the internet is a haven for the truly misanthropic or the misanthropic acting attention-hound. The anonymity of the internet forum allows the worst in people to come out. You see examples of it at almost every public forum and website. Threats, insults, vulgarity and profanity over and over again. It's unimaginable that these people would behave this way in real life, but because there is no "society" on the internet there are no "society standards" to limit the Mr. Hyde in all of us.

That irresponsible behavior plays right into the hands of the antis. They don't have to stretch their imaginations to come up with bogymen to worry the public with. We provide them a wealth of poor examples of gun owners endlessly just with the cyber phantom posturing from our own supporters.

To counter the myth of the antisocial trigger happy gun owner with anger control problems THR asked everyone that came here to follow a code of conduct that reflected the day to day real world behavior of the vast majority of Americans. THR is one of the few places on the internet where people that have been made to feel uncomfortable to admit they have a couple of family guns in the house due to the endless propaganda campaign from the antis can come and actually see other normal folks just like them denying the lies of the antis. It's the place that folks who don't have guns, but are curious about what all the noise is about from the antis, can come and see that gun owners are just like they are. The only difference is that we already recognize the lies and propaganda for what it is and we want them to see it as well. We aren't the slavering racist redneck, the abuser of children and women or the angry man behind the wheel just one perceived insult from blasting away at other drivers. We're just like them and their families and their neighbors and we're putting the lie to the antis' fear and hate mongering and doing it by being strong and truthful without being hysterical or strident or foaming at the mouth with hatred ourselves. We won't back down from fighting the lies told about us, but we won't loose our heads in the fight and be goaded into "swinging wildly" and attacking everyone that doesn't leap instantly to our side of the fight. To do so makes us less effective.

We hold to the code of conduct agreed upon when we signed on because we want the folks who come here to get that message that gunowners are like everyone they know or have ever known who they have no reason to fear and have every reason to respect. To keep from turning them off before they can even begin to absorb the truth, we avoid insults and threats and vulgarity and profanity and bloodthirstiness seen on other sites. The antis say that people are supposed to fear and look down upon gun owners. Our response is "come and see for yourself" and then decide who you really should be afraid of.