I started my charity self defense course 14 years ago. I was working as a fingerprint technician for the police here in Columbus, Ohio at the time. Part of my job was 'printing violent crime victims so the latent print examiner could focus on the fingerprints left by people who had no business being inside someone's home.
It really didn't feel like a conscious decision, just something that had to be done. I have always imagined that a lifeguard feels the same way when he jumps into the pool to help a swimmer who is in over their head.
Since my main concern is the safety of my students, I very carefully researched and examined all sides of the gun debate. It seemed obvious to me that the claims by the anti-gun lobby were unrealistic at best, and that they sometimes resorted to outright falsehoods. Their main goal appeared to be an outright ban on all privately owned firearms, no matter how beneficial or innocuous their use.
To do this, the anti-gun crowd focused on a tried-and-true method. They would demonize a certain type of gun, such as so-called "assault rifles", and then demand a ban on these pernicious engines of destruction. But any new laws passed to placate them would simply be a springboard to new and ever more restrictive laws.
This means that any ban should be resisted by everyone in the shooting community, even if the firearms that are targeted aren't important to their preferred sport.
Some professional gun writer I have never heard of before has a blog hosted by the gunrag he works for. Looking back at his past works, it looks like it was a reasonably popular effort. He would get 5 or 6 comments per post, occasionally 50 comments if he wrote about something that people felt strongly about. His scribblings seem to be more popular than anything I have done here.
But two days ago he posted an essay where he voiced an opinion against so-called "assault rifles". He ignored any legitimate use that the firearms might have, equating them with terrorists. Then he went on to say that hunters needed to divorce themselves from the scary guns.
It looks to me like this guy is willing to go along with the anti-gun lobby and screw over some fellow shooting enthusiasts simply because they don't follow his own pet sport of hunting. The cowardice and bigotry he expressed is amazing, and this post by Tamara expresses my own take on it better than I can.
It would appear that I'm not the only one who has this opinion. I said before that previous posts would get 6 comments, maybe 50 if he was lucky. The post in question currently has 2714 comments.
I haven't bothered to read them, but a fair number of those comments must be negative. The magazine's executive editor was inspired to add a postscript in an attempt to distance himself from his employee's opinions. The gunwriter himself then decided to post a retraction to try and salvage some shred of credibility. The new post currently has 878 comments, so I suppose that some people are still fired up about this.
I don't think this guy goes far enough in his apology. His focus still seems to be almost entirely on hunting, and the tone of his post seems to be "if hunters use these guns then I'm willing to accept them". I really don't think he realizes how he used his position as a so-called authority to betray his fellow shooters, nor how potentially damaging his actions can be.
I don't currently subscribe to the gunrag that employs this cretin, so I can't cancel my subscription in protest. But I can send along an Email to the companies that buys ad space from the magazine and let them know that I'm mightily ticked off.