Oh Lord is this a doozy of an article

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Excellent post coyote...The guy does have a point though. I never head to the range without looking like Al Borelin.:rolleyes:

The guy is an anti through and through and nothing will ever change him....He's a sheep forever.






Not exactly high road, but I could easily call him a close-minded panzy.
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Dear Hunter,

You said it, not me. :D
 
I see my original post has been deleted as well. You are all right in the fact that it was not a high road post, and i would like to apologize for the comment i had made, however, it was my opinion, which i am allowed to have, but nonetheless, inappropriate for this board.

BUT, i still do not completely agree with all of those who are sympathizing with him, and i think glummer and coyotejr have explained what i summed up in my inappropriate comment.


Oringinally posted by glummer
I sent him this:

We can't remember whose idea it was, but neither of us thought we'd actually go through with it.
You sound like a 10-year-old running through a cemetery. And it is not very believable that you don’t know how you got there. “Seeking refuge from the heat.” Childish, affected, nonsense.

Apparently, I'm holding a girl's gun.
The .357 was, for decades, the most powerful handgun in the world. It is not a “girl’s gun” – it was originally developed for Highway Patrolmen and hunters. When firing .38 Special target loads, in a full-size revolver however, anyone who is not physically handicapped can shoot it without suffering from the recoil.

… children can't accidentally kill themselves by playing with seat belts …
Of course they can. That’s why child seats were invented. Regular seat belts are dangerous for small children – they can strangle.

… a fire can't steal your fire extinguisher and use it against you …
A criminal is very unlikely to successfully take a gun away from a person who is competent to use it. And by competence, I mean that level equivalent to what is required to drive a car (do you drive?) The “he will take it from you and hurt you with it” argument is absurd propaganda. In reality it is virtually unheard of.

… even with ear protection the noise is deafening.
That should not be the case, with well fitting muffs. Did you have trouble getting the muffs to seat well over the safety glasses? That is a common problem, and the reason many people use ear plugs instead, or in addition.

When I find an intruder in my house, I'll just throw a fire extinguisher at him.
Ironically unfunny, considering your previous remark about fire extinguishers. In the real world, he probably would “use it against you” – either throw it back, or beat you to death with it.

I'll be glad to get out of here without soiling my undergarments.
I violently twitch as another gun is fired
… wondering how much it hurts to accidentally shoot oneself in the foot.
… jumping at the sound of each one.
I feel terror.
… before I run out of luck and end up with nine fingers.
Did you feel the same sort of thing when you learned to drive?
Who is your target audience? Do you think your readers really enjoy such a silly, childish, emphasis on your emotional inadequacies?
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I lost the bold accents of glummers post because i just copy/pasted it, but those are all the things about the article that disgusted me.

I firmly believe that the writer was extremely biased before even going to the range, and i do not believe by going to that range, that he had any intention to change his attitude.

BTW, i dont think most of the comments that were deleted were men banging their chests. The first pistol i ever shot was a .45, it was a big kick for a 13 year old, but it did not scare me or turn me off to guns. No i was not raised around guns either. It is only a hobby that ive gotten into (on my own) in the last 4 years as soon as i could purchase a handgun on my own. I believe that if he was truly interested in learning about or being open minded to the gun culture, the article would have been less insulting to gun enthusiests.

Again, please don't take this the wrong way, this is my opinion. Again, i apologize to any that may have been offended by my original post. :)
 
Correia
...(most of them referred to panties, chest hair, "growing a pair" or other vauge references to genitals) ...
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I think you & Justin are right about the need-to-delete, but as a slight defense for those who reacted so intemperately, I would point out that the biggest stereotype in the article is not the plaid/beard/gunnies, but the author himself. He is almost a caricature – the sissified, limp-wristed, “girly-mon,” prancing with his “buddy” into that dreadful gun place, giggling to each other in delicious fear. I suspect that image accounts for a lot of the tone of the more low-road remarks.
 
My reply to him:

Dear Mr Zuck,

I just read your column from the Sun Chronicle about your shooting adventure in Vegas. Someone posted it on a gun forum that I frequent, more as humor than anything else, I suppose.

The owner of that gun club was very wrong suggesting that a gun would be good for you to have around, mainly because you would most likely end up becoming a statistic; a statistic that would play very badly for gun owners; a statictic about the number of people who are killed after an intruder takes their gun from them. Without question, you would be better off calling the police, maybe grabbing a baseball bat or a golf club, hoping the guy coming up the stairs doesn't have anything better than that, and cowering in a corner waiting for help to arrive.

Some people aren't equipped, physically or mentally, to take responsibility for their own safety. Some people are better off if their safety is left to the pros. However, some of us don't see things that way. Some of us realize that evil does exist in the world and that the police won't always be there when that evil comes to call. Some of us believe that certain tools can overcome a physical disadvantage. Some of us will actually take the time to learn to use said tools, to train with those tools so that the first wolf through the door doesn't take them and kill us with them, and to prepare our minds for the moment we all hope never comes. Too many people take the view that the mere act of buying a gun will create an invulnerable shield around them, their homes and their families. This is simply not the case and is not a view held by responsible gun owners.

But you, sir, do not seem to be one of them.

If the wolf came to my door, I'd rather have my 10 year old son watching my back than you any day. At least he wouldn't be afraid of the tool in his hand.

*******
******, PA
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Careful, vis-a-vis, my first post was deleted for that exact same comment. Might want to edit it (or maybe you dont :)).
 
Everyone is operating under the assumption that this incident really occurred. It's just as likely that the reporter made it up out of whole cloth just to push his agenda and give him something to write about.
 
Sympathizing?

BUT, i still do not completely agree with all of those who are sympathizing with him, and i think glummer and coyotejr have explained what i summed up in my inappropriate comment.
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I think that most of us who are not calling this guy a pansy, emasculating him, or making fun of him are simply stating that his experience (if true) is what is pretty common at shooting ranges and gun shops. We are pointing out no matter what this guy had in his agenda when he walked in to that range, we had an opportunity to convert or sway someone, and it was not accomplished… Mission Failed. Even if this guy went in there with the attitude of “I need a story to show how bad guns are”, but he was shown all of the safety and functional info, if he was coached, if he was eased into shooting, then he would have nothing to write about… What, is some anti going to write about how comprehensive a safety class was? Or how patient and benevolent the instructors were? NO. and if that was his experience and he wrote that story then he is a lire and a fool.

Short story:

I used to run an informal program in college with 2 of my friends to get folks out to the range to shoot. Being college in the north east, there were a lot of folks who were anti, at least on the surface. I had the chance of taking one girl to the range who was very anti, and although I knew that she would most likely just used this to justify her position that guns are bad, I took her anyway. I was very professional, followed all of the tips that I posted previously, and in the end she said that she still did not want to own a gun, but she did admit that her preconceived notions were wrong. She thanked me for being professional and for assisting her. To my surprise, two weeks later she called me and said that her roommate was now “gun curious” and asked if I could take her shooting. One month after taking her roommate shooting I was helping her (the roommate) pick out a pistol.

So you see, we may not win them all, but by fighting the good fight, and playing by the rules, even when you know that you are *probably* wasting your breath, good things can come out of your actions. You never know who the anti that you don’t convert will talk to.
 
Anyone want to ask him which range it was? That would allow some fact checking to determine if it's true or not.
 
Sometimes I do really wonder if some of the people here are actually plants by the other team, set with the intention of making us look bad. And then I realize that no, we really do just have some guys who are in desperate need of reading the advocacy FAQ.

"Ha ha! This guy stereotyped me as a gun owner, so I'm going to immediately live up to the stereotype! And I, as a blogger, clearly have a much larger audience than he, as a journalist, so there's no possible way this plan of cementing his negative opinion of the gun-culture could backfire!"

So yes. This fellow wrote an article that got published that cast firearms and firearms owners, and the act of going to the firing range and shooting firearms in a negative light. And now you have the choice of writing him off as a "hopeless anti" and dashing off some mouthy, shrill screed, lambasting him and his qualifications as a man, and making yourself feel better in the process--or you can write him a well thought out letter that politely suggests he give it another shot, and giving him suggestions on how the experience might be made less unpleasant for him, and making all of us look better. If he really is a dyed-in-the-wool anti, the worst you've done is waste some time. If he's not, you may well be one more paving stone on his road to becoming a member of the gun culture. And don't we really need more vocal, positive members out there in Massachussetts?
 
vis-à-vis, I'm gonna have to assume that you didn't read the three pages before your post. Because if you had read them, I would just ban you outright for pissing me off. But I'm going to go ahead and assume that you're not being stupid on purpose. 'Cause I'm merciful like that.

Here's the deal guys.

Whether the guy is a wimp in real life, whether he fabricated the whole thing, or whether he did actually have a bad experience through ignorant people at the range, irregardless of any of those facts, THR is not the place for grade school level mockery.

We're better than that.

Don't think that putting your best face forward, and acting like professionals somehow makes you PC, or that you have "sympathy" for an anti. Even if this guy is total anti, and complete lost cause, how is some fence sitter supposed to take this thread?

How is a giant series of posts about the size of your testicles, and how little your sissy girl wives cried when they shot your manly guns supposed to make us all look?

Whether you like it or not, you're all ambassadors of the Gun Culture. THR has more fence sitters and new people on it than other gun boards for a reason.

The days of us tolerating stupid crap that makes us sound EXACTLY like the stereotypes being used against us are done.

Do you think we closed L&P because of juvenile stupidity, for fun? Do you think we closed L&P so that we could just move the stupid posts to a different forum?

Is this article writer a liar, or just plain mentally ill? That's very possible. So instead of bitching and making us look stupid, do something about it. For those of you that wrote a letter, awesome. I don't care if you wrote a letter with the assumption he's an anti who already made up his mind, or if you're assuming he's an honest newbie who is teachable. Either way, bravo for you for taking action.
 
well...

Everyone is operating under the assumption that this incident really occurred. It's just as likely that the reporter made it up out of whole cloth just to push his agenda and give him something to write about.
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Weather or not it actually did occur, how scary is it that most of us tend to believe it, at least some what?

That is probably because most of us have personally seen similar behavior in regards to new-bees. I’ve seen it, and I am ashamed to say that I have even done it, and had it done to me. Heck, my grand pa dropped his 45 in my hands when I was 12, and although the instructions that he gave me, and that safety rules were strictly enforced, if I had been recoil sensitive I might have grown to not like shooting. Thank goodness that didn’t happen…
 
Dog

Kudos to you, in your previous post, for your proactivity towards introducing new shooters.

how scary is it that most of us tend to give it believe it, at least some what?
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I don't find it scary at all. Unless given a blatant reason for disbelief, I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, regardless of whether I agree with their point of view.

If we stop believing just because we don't agree with the opinion, we are treading a very slippery slope of self-delusion...

But...even if it was a fallacy, that is no excuse to reaffirm the guy's opinion of us.
 
strat81 got it right:
I'm incredibly afraid of snakes. Hate 'em. Always have, always will. However, I have no intentions of going to the House of Reptiles at the local zoo, jumping in the snake pit, then writing a story about how traumatic it was.
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The problem is, the author of "Have Gun, Will Tremble" believes that his
fear and loathing of guns, and his condescension toward gun owners,
marks him as a superior being. On one level he is pathetic.

I am snake-o-phobic and I did make a point of going through the
herpatorium at the Knoxville Zoo with the point of trying to overcome
my phobia, not to take a perverse pride in it. Irrational fear blinds
one to making rational judgements; I am afraid the author of that
editorial is proud of his fears.
 
DogBonz
That is probably because most of us have personally seen similar behavior in regards to new-bees.
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Do we know that he told them he was a newbie?
Was recoil a problem? He doesn't say so.
The described events are ambiguous enough that I don't think we can tell for sure what the range's behavior was. But we CAN tell what his attitude was. Somehow, I think he would have told us if he had asked for help and not gotten it.
 
I'm glad that Oleg and the mods are stepping up their enforcement of THR's rules to keep it High Road. For a while there, I had stopped visiting the site at all and was afraid I'd have to find a new home - the panoply of ridiculous SHTF/revolution threads, the violent, frothing rants against anybody with a hint of blue in them, and the childish "mine's bigger than yours" personal attacks were just getting to be too much.

Pardon my language - but if I wanted to hear that ****, I'd go to the gun shop.

For a long while THR seemed like the perfect gun forum - full of knowledgeable, friendly, peace-loving people who simply ask that their right to self-preservation not be taken away. I've pointed quite a few people towards THR since I started here, including Bill, the author of this article. Please, let's try to bring this site back to its former standards. There are plenty of other places on the 'Net that one can go to to discuss SHTF fantasies or huddle around keyboards and make thinly-veiled threats against politicos. THR should not be one of them.

This is what I wrote to Mr. Zuck, late last night. I'm not looking for pats on the back, hence why I didn't feel the need to post it sooner - rather I hope that this can be an example to a few of the others in the thread who haven't yet figured out that threatening force of arms comes only after diplomacy has failed.

Mr. Zuck,

Interesting that your first choice of venue for "escaping the heat" was a shooting range, and not a nice little diner for some iced tea (of the Long Island variant or otherwise, being in Vegas and all). A deliberate search for, and criticism of, something you don't personally agree with? Nah, couldn't be...

Your argument with regards to children is valid only if a gun owner chooses to forsake his or her obligation to personal responsibility and stores the gun without a trigger lock, outside of a safe, or away from his or her immediate person (i.e., in a holster) - which is strongly discouraged, if not outright illegal, whether or not children are present in one's household. While common sense is, sadly, not a prerequisite to owning a firearm, the great majority of gun-totin' types possess it in quantity. It is unfortunate that the collective reputation of responsible firearm owners everywhere continues to be blemished by those who, either through ignorance or apathy, do not seek out the proper instruction for handling and care of their firearms.

One of these people could be you - you should not have to "wonder how much it hurts to accidentally shoot oneself in the foot" if proper handling is observed.

The late Colonel Jeff Cooper scribed a set of four simple rules that the responsible gun owner considers law (explanations mine):

1. ALL GUNS ARE ALWAYS LOADED.
Meaning that any firearm one picks up should be considered "ready to go" and checked, then re-checked, by sight and touch, to verify that they are, in fact, unloaded and safe to handle; the solution to the "cleaning accidents" that pop up every now and then in the news.
2. NEVER AIM A GUN AT ANYTHING YOU ARE UNWILLING TO DESTROY.
Being self-explanatory: any firearm should be pointed in a safe direction, usually at the ground or into the air, such that an accidental firing of the gun would not harm anything or anyone surrounding the handler; though that risk is all but nullified given the next rule,
3. KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER UNTIL YOU ARE READY TO FIRE.
Being once again self-explanatory; the most common way to do this is to "index" the, well, index finger along the gun above the trigger and outside the trigger guard - the loop around the trigger - such that stumbling or being startled will not cause one to reflexively pull the trigger.
4. BE SURE OF YOUR TARGET AND WHAT IS BEHIND IT.
One should place one's finger on the trigger and prepare to fire only after ascertaining beyond all doubt the identity of the target, and having full knowledge of what is beyond it, should a bullet fully penetrate the target and keep going - a possibility with any firearm, and a certainty when shooting smiley faces in paper targets.

These rules, or something approximating them, should have been related to you upon your rental of the gun at the range. If they were not, it was most likely assumed that you were familiar with the handling and operation of firearms; had you asked for further instruction and perhaps a few "hands-on" shots (it takes practice, as with anything else, to be consistent in aim - it's not as easy as it seems, especially with a handgun!) I imagine you would have been happily obliged. Any other response would have been a good reason to effect an escape - careless attitudes have no place around guns.

I am sorry that your experience at this Vegas range was a bad one, but should you still be interested in helping defend America against its teeming hordes of paper targets and old tin cans, I hope that you will consider trying again. No group is immune to the occasional jerk, gun owners included - but I hope that in time, you will find that most of "us" are just normal, friendly guys with jobs all over the spectrum, college degrees ranging all the way up to doctorates, and an understanding that the police do not always arrive in time to prevent bad men from taking lives. Take a few trips to the ranges or gun clubs close to you, or try requesting a lesson or two on one of the firearms-centric forums on the Web. I recommend www.thehighroad.org - a civil forum for the promotion and discussion of responsible gun ownership for hobby and personal protection. Discussion between differing points of view is always encouraged - make a post to introduce yourself and I am sure you will receive a friendly welcome from the High Road community.

A few tips for your next (I hope!) outing:

- Double up! Gunfire is loud, takes getting used to, and does cause hearing loss over time; use earplugs under your earmuffs, make sure both fit you well, and consider a set of electronic earmuffs, which muffle louder noise while still allowing one to hear normal speech.

- Start small! Calling a .357 Magnum a "beginner's gun" is sort of like calling a Corvette a "beginner's car" - it most certainly is not! The .22 Long Rifle cartridge, commonly abbreviated .22LR, is a very small cartridge that produces very little noise or recoil, as well as being extremely cheap (about $15 for a "brick" of 500 rounds). Recoil is another thing that takes getting used to - and, eventually, you will find your limit, which has nothing to do with your physical stature. Plenty of men find any given caliber to be "too much," while a petite woman may be able to shoot the same caliber all day long comfortably.

- Rifles first! Handguns are more difficult to aim accurately and consistently because of their light weight, short distance between the front and rear sights, and the fact that one usually fires them unsupported - whereas rifles, by contrast, are usually heavier and more stable, are inherently more accurate due to their longer barrels and longer distance between the front and back sights, and their ability to be fired from a bench or using sandbags or other supports.

- Don't be too proud! Everyone's a beginner at some point, and you shouldn't be expected - or expect yourself - to know what all the buttons and levers on a gun do, or be able to produce one ragged hole on a target with ten shots, any more than you should be expected to be able to reproduce a van Gogh painting with no prior experience. With practice you will be able to punch a hole in a soda can from 300 feet away, or shoot your initials in a paper target, but it takes time - and that's okay.

- Remember the rules! Do your best to memorize Cooper's Four Rules above, and for the first few times you go shooting, make a conscious effort to watch where your finger goes when you handle a gun - it will soon become habit to keep your finger off the trigger and correctly indexed.

- And most of all... have fun! Relax and breathe normally - shooting holes in paper with a gun is just like woodworking with a hammer and chisel - you're enjoying a hobby, facilitated by a tool that isn't a deadly weapon unless your action and intent make it one. It's not going to "go off by itself." You're not going to feel an urge to run off and kill someone. Holding it doesn't make you an anti-government nut, and no one's going to try and make you shoot Bambi. Take a deep breath, relax, and oblige the ten-year-old boy inside of you: producing loud bangs and little puffs of dust can be pretty darn fun. It's as simple - and innocent - as that.

Thank you for reading, sir. I hope I've done my small part to reinforce the reality - that "we" aren't all "like that."


With regards,

Xxxxxx X. Xxxxxx
Cedar City, Utah
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or you can write him a well thought out letter that politely suggests he give it another shot, and giving him suggestions on how the experience might be made less unpleasant for him, and making all of us look better.
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Check the activism forum. If you do write, can you share it with us? maybe it will encourage others to do likewise?

Tac Ninja, can you put that down in Activism please? That is excellent.
 
Coyote_jr, Tu Quoque much?

Nowhere did I defend the author of the article in question, and quite frankly, I find his writing repugnant.

That doesn't mean we should drop to his level.
 
coyote_jr said:
Tac Ninja, can you put that down in Activism please? That is excellent.
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Someone like Arfin could have done a much more commendable job than my own contribution, I'm sure. I just figured I'd do my part to try and balance out the "come for my guns so I can kill ya, ya sonofabitch" emails.

Having never actually been into the Activism subforum, I wouldn't be so sure as to the correct way to post - but if you'd like to, feel free to use my email. I don't like tooting my own horn much. :)
 
Nice Job

Ain't nuthin' wrong with what you wrote.

Shucks, I doubt I could have done better.

It's an excellent example of even-handedness and informative content.

Well done.
 
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