Buzz,
The method of presentation was deliberate. It was designed to accomplish several objectives. Some people have picked up on it and some people haven't.
Objective one of my (what some would consider neferious) plan was to draw certain members who always are right there posting broad condemnations of every police officer everytime an article on a police shooting is posted out into the open where they would be making the same statements about waiting for the whole story and that you can't trust the media to get things right. This phase was successful. Every targeted member but one rose to the bait and made those statements or similar ones. I couldn't help but chuckle as certain members demonstrated that they can dish it out, but they can't take it.
Objective two was to illustrate that
any group is going to close ranks to attempt to protect the group from damage when one of its members disgraces it or appears to. There are a lot of posts here about the so called
Brotherhood of the Badge,
The Thin Blue Line, the
Blue Wall of Silence. Yet when faced with a news story that makes a CCW holder out as a cold blooded killer, the CCW holders on the board closed ranks. What's up with that, should we call it
The Brotherhood of the CCW Badge ?
Why? Could it be that it's just a natural reaction not to want to be painted with the same broad brush?
Objective three was to bust the myth that a person who holds a CCW is a
Supercitizen. The only thing in common with all CCW holders is that they haven't been convicted of a crime. There are almost as many reasons people get a CCW permit as there are people with CCW permits. Those permit holders who actually carry their weapon regularly are probably for the most part a little more switched on about the security of themselves and their loved ones then the person without a permit. But just like there are some people who become cops because they like pushing people around there are some people who get a CCW permit because they get much of their sense of self worth from carrying a gun.
All a CCW permit means is that you had your fingerprints run through the FBI. I think that there are some states where they don't even send fingerprint cards in. I don't accept a CCW permit as a guarantee that the holder of said permit didn't just come home to find that his wife left him for his shooting buddy, taking every gun but the one he's carrying with her and the citation I'm about to write for speeding isn't going to be the straw that breaks his camel's back and pushes him over the edge.
I would bet that if someone were to research it, they would find that CCW holders commit crimes in about the same numbers of other groups that pass a perfunctory background check, like school bus drivers.
No one, not in any of the CCW disarm threads has ever addressed my working conditions. When I point out that I work alone and that backup can be as much as 30 minutes away (and I'm far from being the only person to work under those conditions, troopers and deputies in more rural areas can have even longer waits for help) it is ignored or I'm called a JBT for wanting to disarm someone who is a
certified good guy.
Myth: CCW = Supercitizen
BUSTED
The sad fact of human nature is there are no supercitizens, not CCW holders, not cops, not supreme court justices or ordained members of the clergy. We're all human beings.
Objective four, the final objective was to bring out some of what's wrong with THR. THR was founded with the idea that it would be a unique place. It would be different then other firearms forums. Civil discourse would be the norm here. For the first couple years things went well. Then as the membership grew, standards began falling. Much of what passes for civil discourse in General Gun Discussions and Legal and Political would have gotten members banned when THR was young.
If you want to know why we're losing the culture war, you don't have to look any farther then here. If we don't start looking inward and policing ourselves, our granchildren won't enjoy the shooting sports. Not that they'll necessarily be legislated out of existance, but it will become too politically incorrect.
There are many posts on THR that do nothing but prove to the casual observer who is not in the gun culture that we're all nothing more then fat, tobacco chewing, camouflage wearing, government hating, Tim McVeigh wannabes who are just itching to kill someone to prove our manhood.
There are plenty of other forums where you can go and act like that. It's even encouraged on some of them. But this one was named
THE HIGH ROAD for a reason. If we can't be smart enough to watch our public image we're going to be marginalized right out of existance.
Jeff