Now that’s a fisking!
Barron takes on She Who Must Not Be Named, and wins.
Project Phoenix
Good bye, Vicious Circle. Hello, The Squirrel Report!
Phew, I was getting the VC DTs. They are going to ease me to an analog.
I am a gunnie
Well, we seem to have kicked over the hornet’s nest with our counter protest!
Weer’d highlights the fallacy.
And Madmedic in the comments makes it a meme.
I’m a solutions architect for a major software company.
I am a gunnie.
I have a Bachelors degree in Computer Science and Philosophy. They are more closely related than you might think.
I am a gunnie.
My MBA is in Finance.
I am a gunnie.
I’m a dad and a husband. The two most important roles in my life. I want to make sure that my daughter grows up with her daddy, and my wife grows old with her husband.
I am a gunnie.
I love my daughter more than life itself. I can’t imagine what it would be like if she was threatened, and I couldn’t protect her. I can’t let that happen.
I am a gunnie.
While I’m larger than I used to be, I don’t think it can fairly be called a beer belly.
I am a gunnie.
I do, however, enjoy a good stout.
I am a gunnie.
I learned a long time ago that criminals break the law, whether it is the law against carrying a gun or the law about killing your neighbor. And begging for mercy from the merciless is a bad strategy.
I am a gunnie.
The deepest shame that I can imagine is my family hurt or killed, and knowing that I could do nothing to stop it. It’s my responsibility as a father and as a husband to provide food, shelter, and safety to my family. I do that with my tool of choice, the defensive firearm.
I am a gunnie.
You have nothing to fear from me. I mean you no harm. I don’t break the law. In fact, I’ve spent hundreds of dollars to make sure I don’t. I’ve been fingerprinted, background-checked, trained. I’ve proven that I can use my tool safely. And that wasn’t enough. I know the awesome responsibility I’ve taken upon myself. I’ve spent thousands of dollars more on training, making sure that I can use my tool, effectively, safely.
I am a gunnie. I’m your friend, your neighbor, your teacher, your pastor, your doctor, your mechanic, your customer. Look to your left and to your right. I’m one of you.
Why we win
Emily Miller is a columnist for the Washington Times. She has been writing a series on her attempt to get a legal gun in Washington D.C. It’s an interesting series. She has a blog entry discussing her trip to the Beretta factory in Maryland. During the trip, she got to shoot the Beretta ARX-160 rifle. The results are here:
I think the laughter and grin speak for themselves.
People of the gun
Welcome A Girl and her Gun to the fold.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Gunnies are good people.
A New Year’s resolution
As we greet the first day of 2012, all of us here at Newbie Shooter want to wish our readers a happy and prosperous New Year. And I have a few asks of you, the shooting community.
First, if you shoot and don’t have a concealed carry permit, go get it. We have already tipped the gun culture from fringe to mainstream. Shooting and gun ownership are mainstream activities. This is the year that we make concealed carry a mainstream issue.
If you do have your concealed carry permit, use it. Carrying a gun is a pain in the ass. It’s heavy, its uncomfortable, you can’t go certain places…the excuses are legion. Make a commitment to carry your gun, and do so every day for a month. One month, every day. At the end of that month, see if you want to keep carrying, or not.
If you already carry, good for you! Your assignment is very simple. Take a training class. I can highly recommend both Gunsite 250 and TigerSwan’s pistol courses. And bring someone with you. Training is more fun with friends.
Happy New year, Gunnies!
Blood in the streets
Sean linked to a…well, I guess I’ll call it a screed…by one Chris Fitzsimon, complaining about some aspects of the new gun laws that took effect here in NC. I’m not going to go into the specifics and refute his assertions; Sean has done a much better job of that. But one paragraph stood out for me from Chris’ diatribe:
It’s probably not a good idea to argue with a stranger over a parking space at a state park or confront a reckless cyclist on your local greenway. They might have a loaded handgun hidden in their belt.
For those of you new to the gun rights arena, this is the latest incarnation of the classic “Blood in the Streets” meme. I am first aware of in 1987 when Florida began the movement toward modern, shall-issue concealed carry. It posits that once law abiding individuals (law abiding by definition, remember, in order to be eligible for a permit) have ready access to concealed weapons, they will immediately abandon all previously used mechanisms for conflict resolution, and instead will begin a conflict resolution strategy wherein one murders the individual with whom one is in conflict with. For example, in the aforementioned parking space conflict, the previously law abiding citizen will, for some reason, murder the individual attempting to take his or her parking spot, and then presumably resume his or her shopping. This may be an example of guns inciting violence, as Joe Huffman documents here.
The fact that this never happens does not seem to diminish the concern of the anti-gun crowd. The meme was originally applied at the state level, as more and more states adopted modern concealed carry, but inasmuch as 49 out of 50 states allow some form of concealed carry, the anti-gunners are running out of states to apply the meme to. It seems that the new theory is that the meme applies, not at the state level as previously thought, but rather in micro-environments such as parks and playgrounds. Thus, allowing law abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons in playgrounds will trigger the previously described change in conflict resolution, and when little Johnny wants to use the swing that little Suzy is on, the citizen will simply murder parent and child and allow little Johnny to use the swing. As you can see, this is much more likely than the “taking turns” conflict resolution strategy currently in place in most playgrounds.
All kidding aside, what kind of a view of the world do you have to have in order to believe this crap? That lurking in each and every one of us is the potential, nay, the desire, to murder our fellow citizens over trivial matters. It is only good folks like Chris Fitzsimon who keep us safe by…making it illeager? Or something…
One of the things that I have picked up in watching and reading the interviews with Jerry Sandusky is that he really doesn’t get how creepy he sounds. He thinks that it is perfectly natural that a grown man would shower with adolescent boys, and that showering would involve “horsing around.” In his view of the universe, that is natural behavior between grown men and boys. In Chris’ view, the natural order of things is that people kill each other over trivial matters, and he and his ilk stand as vanguards preventing the natural order.
And I find that just as creepy.
Gunnie Deals
John at NLOG&M has compiled an extensive list of Black Friday deals for gunnies. Go stimulate!
What a day!
My TigerSwan updates will be over a few days…I dreamed about the class last night and that’s a pretty good indication to me that my brain is still percolating.
Quick thoughts:
I got to meet some great folks. Sean has been promoted from “Gunnies” to “Gunnies I’ve met” in the olde blogroll. And I’ve gotten to add John R. from f No Lawyers, Only Guns and Money, Larry from Last Refuge of a Scoundrel, Rich from Knitebane Manor, and Paul from Arms are the Mark of a Free Man to that elite group. 
I’ve had one key takeaway from each shooting class that I have taken. Gunsite 250 taught me that I was able to be competent with my defensive gun. Gunsite 350 taught me that tactics were just as important as the shooting. TigerSwan taught me that it is impossible to miss if you do things right. Likewise, it is impossible to hit if you do things wrong.
I’m working on a full review, but in one sentence it would be: “Get your ass to TigerSwan!” In some ways, I learned more in one day at TigerSwan than I did in a week at Gunsite. I’ll definitely be back.
Thanks to Sean for setting this up, thanks for Brian and Paul for world-class instruction, and thanks to my fellow students for a great day of shooting!
400 strong!
North reports that we have over 400 blogs on the Gun Blog Blacklist.
I think we might be mainstream….
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Do your part!
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