Michael R. Weisser's Blog, page 47

A Gun Safety Device Which Really Works.

Now that school shootings appear to be happening on a day-to-day basis, we seem to be a lot more concerned about figuring out our real estate tax bill than about keeping our schoolchildren safe, but there is a new company out there which has come out with what appears to be a gun-safety device which really works.  The company is called Simtek, it’s the brainchild of an engineer named Brady Simpson, and they are launching a product, Duo, which is designed to prevent shootings by telling a gun owner if and when someone else gets their hands on one of his guns.

[image error]             Basically the device is a sensor that detects the movement of any piece of equipment in the space where the sensor is deployed – a file cabinet, desk drawer, gun safe – and then sends an instant text alert to the individual who now knows that a secure space has been breached. Motion detectors are hardly a new technology, but combining the detector with a digital messaging system represents a significant step forward in terms of alerting someone to the possibility that a gun might be grabbed by the wrong hands.

When I say ‘wrong hands,’ I’m talking about the hands connected to the bodies of kids. Anyone who believes that a gun in the home doesn’t represent a risk if there are children in the home doesn’t know anything about guns or kids. With all due respect to the gun industry which has been promoting safety programs aimed at children for God knows how long, telling kids not to touch a gun is an absolute guarantee that the kids will, if anything, get more interested in picking up the gun.

Not only are children unable to understand the notion of risk, they are also naturally inquisitive and instinctively try to discover anything and everything hidden around the house. Want to read an eye-opening study about how kids behave around guns? Try this study, which found that four out of ten gun-owning adults believed their guns were successfully hidden away and didn’t know that the kids had found the location of the guns. And the idea that children can be taught to ‘respect’ a gun is about as stupid and self-deceiving as the idea that I can eat every potato chip in sight and still lose weight.

The company has posted a clever video on Youtube which shows a young child finding the combination to a gun safe and then opening the door but Dad got the alert and arrives in the nick of time. Obviously what Simtek is trying to promote is the idea that the Duo device will provide an extra level of protection even for those gun-owning parents who have already taken precautions to keep the kids away from guns. But the truth is that for every family that locks up or locks away their guns, there’s at least one other home where guns are lying around unsecured.

What I really like about this product is its portability; in other words, if the gun is going to be transported from one place to another in a suitcase, an attache case or some other carry-all device, you can easily stick the Duo inside the same case and then get an alert if someone opens the rucksack or handbag and now has access to the gun. There have been recent media stories linking the increase in concealed-carry to a significant uptick in the number of stolen guns. These thefts don’t take place inside the home; they occur when the gun is taken away from the residence by the lawful owner who then forgets and leaves it lying around.

The good news is that Simtek has tested and certified their Duo device. The not-so-good news is they need to raise a little more dough to get the product into production and out the factory door. Pre-order a device (it’s not very expensive) and give this new company a quick start. Duo is a smart idea.

Gun-nut Nation Gets Kicked In The Ass By Its Favorite Federal Court

If the Gun-nut community wanted a judicial decision about gun rights in their favor, they couldn’t have gone anywhere more likely to help them out than the 5th Circuit, which oversees the federal judiciary in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana and is considered to be the most conservative Circuit Court in the United States. Not only was a gun case argued in front of this court, but the case had already been decided at the district level in favor of gun rights, it was now being appealed by the Department of Justice run by you-know-who, and all three judges who heard the case were appointed by either George H. W. Bush or his son.

[image error]             The court not only decided against the gun-rights gang, they dashed the hopes of the gun-loving contingent to get rid of one of the legal issues which pisses off gun nuts more than just about anything else, namely, the prohibition against going across a state line to buy a gun. Actually, the prohibition against buying a pistol or revolver in a state other than where you live has been on the books since 1939, when the feds first required individuals engaged in the ‘business’ of selling guns to purchase a federal firearms license and keep records of their sales. The reason that inter-state handgun purchases required a transfer between dealers was because it was recognized that allowing handguns to be moved across state lines without any form of regulation made it easier for criminals to get their hands on guns.

What gun-rights advocates are claiming, however, is that the prohibition against buying a handgun in a state other than where someone resides is no longer necessary because every purchase from a gun dealer, no matter where he is located, requires a background check. Which means that if I had been convicted of a felony in my home state, the felony and the consequent prohibition on gun ownership would come up no matter where I tried to purchase a gun. In 2015 two gun-rights activists decided to test this law by going to Texas and attempting to buy a handgun. After the purchase was denied, they found a district court judge who decided that their 2nd-Amendment ‘rights’ had been violated; hence, the appeal and decision by the 5th Circuit, effectively standing the district court’s ruling on its head.

Not only did the 5th Circuit reaffirm the prohibition against non-resident handgun purchases, it went further and actually used one of Gun-nut Nation’s most cherished legal principles – strict scrutiny – to find the prohibition constitutionally sound. According to judicial rules, for a law to pass strict scrutiny muster it must be shown that the particular law is justified by a ‘compelling government interest,’ and must be written specifically to ‘serve that interest.’ Lawyers for Gun-nut Nation have frequently used the strict scrutiny argument to attack gun regulations (e.g., New York’s SAFE law’s regulation limiting gun magazines to 7 rounds or less) and they no doubt hoped to do the same thing here.

The 5th Circuit reviewed the discussions leading up to GCA68 which codified the inter-state prohibition and concluded that Congress decided there was every good reason to maintain and strengthen the prohibition because otherwise it would be easy for someone to circumvent the laws and regulations of their home state and hence increase the possibility that an out-of-state purchase would result in a crime gun. The opinion points out that a dealer in one state cannot possibly know the gun regulations which exist in other states (e.g., some states require 10-shot magazine capacities, other states do not) and such knowledge has nothing to do with whether a potential buyer can pass a background check.

The decision by the 5th Circuit is clear on one basic point: the government has a compelling interest to safeguard public safety and a gun even in the hands of a legally-qualified individual could still be a risk. This decision by a conservative court is both a victory for the gun-control movement and a victory for common sense.

As For The Mandalay Bay Shooting, What Happens In Vegas Stays In Vegas.

So the mountain moved (to paraphrase Phaedrus) and out came a mouse in the form of an 81-page report from the Las Vegas Police Department covering the events of October 1, 2017 when Steve Paddock barricaded himself in a hotel room and set a new American record for the number of people killed and wounded in a rampage shooting event. You can download the report here but save yourself the trouble because there’s really nothing we didn’t know about the how’s and the why’s of this horrific 20-minute shooting spree that we didn’t know within a couple of days after the volleys that poured from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel came to an end.

[image error]             Paddock did what just about all rampage shooters do in the months and weeks leading up to the event. He stockpiled lots of guns and lots of ammunition, he knew the venue well, he behaved in a normal way to the point that even his live-in girlfriend claimed that nothing appeared to be amiss, and he made a point of not telling anyone about his specific plan. These four elements – building an arsenal, scouting out the terrain, acting just like everyone else, not divulging the specific plan – was exactly what happened at Virginia Tech, Aurora, Isla Vista, Orlando, Sutherland Springs, Sandy Hook and just about everywhere else where a rampage shooting has occurred since 1966 when Charlie Whitman took a bunch of guns up to the top of the University of Texas Tower and began blasting away.

Paddock also shared one more feature with most, but not every rampage shooter, namely, that when the blasting away ended, so did his own life. Which creates an immediate problem in terms of figuring out why rampage shooters commit rampages, because few of them are around who can then tell everyone why they did what they did. But for the several shooters who have survived their own rampages – James Holmes in Aurora, Anders Breivik in Norway – it appears they simply want to become notorious and well-known and choose this particular type of behavior to gain notoriety, even if they spend the rest of their lives in environments which don’t give them much opportunity to cash in on their new-found fame.

One other issue with rampage shooters that remains completely beyond any understanding at all. The fact that they devote serious time to developing a game plan, stocking up with weapons, casing out the venue, and so on and so on, doesn’t reveal the ‘trigger’ event or moment which makes them decide their plan is now good to go. Paddock evidently wanted to blast away at a large crowd attending a public event, but his computer searches indicate that Vegas was one of a number of such events which might have provided him with the scenario he would use. Deciding that you want to plan a rampage shooting is simply not the same thing as carrying it out. The shooter at Sandy Hook was on his computer studying other shooting rampages for months before he drove over to the elementary school at Sandy Hook. How come he chose that particular day?

One thing the Las Vegas timeline reveals is that it took the cops close to 75 minutes to get to the room where Paddock was located and breach the door. First responders on the ground began helping victims almost immediately. How come it took so long to get into where the actual shooting was taking place?  And by the way, we still haven’t learned how a member of the team that first entered Paddock’s room took personal pics of the crime scene, including a dead shooter, which then showed up on various internet sites. The chief, Joseph Lombardo, promised a thorough investigation of what can only be described as a complete contamination of the crime scene. A thorough investigation. Yea, right.

Know the old saying, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? As far as figuring what happened on October 1st, 2017, that saying is still ringing true.

A New And Different Book On The 2nd Amendment.

I hereby issue an invitation to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a radical activist and author who has just published a book about guns: Loaded – A Disarming History of the 2nd Amendment – to attend my gun safety course that is required in my state – Massachusetts – before someone can apply for a license to own or carry a gun. The reason I want Ms. Dunbar-Ortiz to visit my gun class is I think she might gain some fundamental correctives about why some but not all Americans are so invested in the ownership and use of guns.

[image error]             The author’s thesis is that today’s gun culture grows out of an amalgam of racist ideologies and practices which justified gun ownership as a necessary adjunct to the settlement and exploitation of the wilderness with the consequent destruction of Native American communities, followed by the subjugation of the few surviving indigenous peoples as well as African-American slaves. Since this process could only be accomplished by armed force, the 2nd Amendment was inserted into the Constitution to give legal sanction for the emergence of a nation state ruled by white men. I think that’s what she’s trying to say.

The reason I would like Ms. Dunbar-Ortiz to come to my class is because she will spend some time with some folks who may decide to purchase and own a gun after they finish my safety course, which means going to the local police department, getting photographed and fingerprinted and having their backgrounds checked. Is there the slightest possibility that a single person in this class gives one rat’s damn about how the Wampanoag Indians got chased out of the Bay Colony in 1676 by a bunch of white men who wanted more land? That may sound like a pretty heartless thing to say, but such thoughts are the furthest from anyone’s mind.

Ms. Dunbar-Ortiz would like us to believe that current-day gun ‘culture’ isn’t just a figment of the gun industry’s fertile imagination to create the idea that guns are necessary to protect us from real or imagined harm.  In that respect she critiques the study by Pamela Haag (The Gunning of America) of how Winchester marketed its products noting that this work too narrowly construes the importance of the 2nd Amendment in justifying the conquest of Native American lands long before the Winchester Repeating Rifle helped ‘win’ the West. What Dunbar-Ortiz ignores is the fact that the tool which wiped out Native American society wasn’t the gun, it was the plow. Hence, the decision by Winchester to concoct a marketing scheme.

I am sure the students in my gun safety classes would respond politely to Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s attempt to make the 2nd Amendment the deus ex machina for everything and anything having to do with guns. I also suspect they wouldn’t really understand anything she says. Because the truth is that folks who decide they need a gun to defend themselves aren’t going to spend one second thinking about whether the gun they buy and the Constitutional statute which protects that purchase has any historical or cultural meaning at all. They are going to buy a gun because they believe in some fashion or another that having a gun will protect them from crime.

I support gun ownership but I don’t support the idea that anyone should walk around armed just because they think it’s the thing to do. They need lots of training and they need to meet a government-mandated proficiency standard before they can walk around carrying a gun. And none of those requirements in any way limit or threaten so-called 2nd-Amendment ‘rights.’

I only wish that someone as experienced and knowledgeable as Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz had written about the 2nd Amendment in a manner that would make her book accurate and relevant when it comes to the issues of safe gun use that gun-control advocates deal with every day.

As for the final sentence of her book about ‘you’ll never have justice on stolen land.’ How profound.

Contributing Editor Josh Montgomery – 5 BEST AIR RIFLE SCOPES – WHICH ONE SHOULD YOU GET?

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Mike the Gun Guy Magazine welcomes Josh Montgomery, founder and writer for Minute Man Review, a really great 2nd Amendment and gun blog which contains a diversified list of articles, all written in a solid and informative style.

I like the idea of not just posting whole columns, but linking to work that our Contributing Editors published somewhere else.  Here’s the link to Josh’s fine piece.

Contributing Editor Ashley Johnson: The 10 Commandments of Gun Safety

Firearms are savage, and need all the care in the world. Being a slouch is no option while holding one in your hands, because the trigger can’t be trusted. As fascinating a firearm might look, it isn’t meant to tote around like a toy and must be stacked really safely. Even if you’ve a knack for guns, you shouldn’t feel too comfortable while handling them, because a moment of negligence or slacking off can cost you dearly.

Before a gun does a loss or an irreparable damage to you, it’s time for you to learn the 10 commandments to firearm safety and dodge the bullet. If you’ve a gun and want to improve the way you handle it, drop everything you’re doing and read this post NOW.

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1. Be Wary of Gun’s Muzzle

Nothing’s certain with a gun unless it happens. As a rule of thumb, don’t ever point the muzzle at anything, which isn’t your target, even when it’s unloaded. Better yet, make it a habit of pointing the muzzle in safe directions while loading/unloading the gun. Get this rule etched in your mind, because most of the gun accidents involve an owner being lax to which direction the muzzle is pointing it, and the gun discipline in general.

2. See What’s Your Target and Beyond It

Once a bullet shoots off, it can go here, there, anywhere. It’s on the prowl to seek its target, and any semblance of control is rightly eliminated when it strikes off something which isn’t the target at first place. Plus, it isn’t just about right targeting, but also about being mindful of what surface you’re aiming your fire at. Since bullets can ricochet off certain surfaces, like trees, rocks and metal, and pose an elaborate risk to the people nearby, you should be double sure before firing.

3. Unload when not in Use

There is nothing worse than an accidental fatality. Though it is understandable that one should always be on guard with respect to safety and security, it is recommended that firearms should always be unloaded when not in use.  Whether you are camping, practicing targets or any other activity, the firearm should be unloaded completely, including the removal of any ammunition in the chamber or in the magazine. Additionally, ensure that your gun is kept well out of your loved ones’ reach even when it’s securely unloaded. Remember that safe storage is as important as safe upkeep of the firearm.

4. Always Keep Your Finger Off the Trigger

It is kind of a given fact that since the trigger holds the ultimate power of the gun, it is essential that you don’t regulate this responsibility carelessly. Unless absolutely necessary, ensure that your finger stays away from the trigger and the muzzle is always facing upwards. This guideline comes in without a rule book and should be more of an instinct than a guideline. While the movies have spoilt us for good with our thirst for enacting that perfect shootout scene, it is essential to remember that reel life is very different from the real life where there is no coming back from the fatal consequences.

5. Don’t Solely Rely on the Firearm ‘Safety’ Mechanism

Though the safety mechanism has been given to ensure that you don’t pull the trigger in a reckless manner, yet your gun cannot be solely responsible for preventing any mishap. As a firearm bearer and user, it’s your responsibility to ensure that the safety mechanism is complied with. Treat your gun like a machine that it is and not a human that understands the viability of safety and security. It’s prone to failures like any other. For instance, while travelling, carrying your gun rashly or fiddling with it can disengage it, and requires you to keep a constant check on how your firearm is behaving. Be wary of not pulling the trigger and keep your fingers away while loading/unloading the gun(gun safe).

6. Handle your Gun with Care When It Fails to Fire

There are many instances when your gun might fail you and not shoot as required. At this point, keep your ammunition at a safe distance and direct it right. Keep the muzzle away from your face, put it down carefully, engage the safety position and while keeping your fingers far away from the trigger, gently release the cartridge safely. Always remember that this is a sensitive situation and though your ammunition failed to fire on time, it holds equal chances in discharging at any point later. Thereby, it’s essential to be vigilant and stay safe.

7. Use Proper Ammunition

Every gun is different. Failure to understand this essentiality of firearms can lead to fatal consequences. Every ammunition is designed keeping in mind the specific calibre, distance and gauge. Slight lethargy with respect to handling and the nature of the gun can lead to hazardous and dangerous conclusions. Therefore, it’s advised to buy the best suited ammunition from a reputed manufacturer. Or else, you’ll be put under the liability of breach of safety and security.

8. Always Wear the Proper Protection Gear

While handling ammunition, it goes without saying that self protection is one of the key commandments that you HAVE to adhere to before delving into showing your blazing skills. With the right protective gear, especially for the eyes and ears, you protect yourself from the reactive elements, gun reactions, bullet shells and elements of the unfavorable surroundings. Moreover, with these gears, you are in the position to take snap decisions without endangering the lives of people around you.

9. Learn the Mechanical and Handling Characteristics of Ammunition You’re using

Before one starts using the firearm at hand, it’s necessary to understand the dimensions and design of the potentially lethal object. No one should be given the responsibility to handling a firearm without having an end to end idea of its working, structure, mechanical provisions and characteristics that make it unique to the user as well as the situation. With the correct and complete knowledge, the user gets the opportunity to leverage the situation to his/her advantage without jeopardizing the sensitivity of the environment, or the lives of people around him.

10. Don’t Alter or Modify Your Gun and Have it Serviced Regularly

Your gun has been designed in a specific manner. With special designs and layout, it’s mandatory for you to blend your usage with the design of the ammunition at hand. Like any other mechanical substance, your gun is subject to wear and tear, and it’s your duty to focus on its upkeep. Ensure that the barrel, trigger and the outer body stay clear of any obstruction, giving you an easy access during any emergency. In case of a long time storage or an exposure to unfavourable weather, ensure that your gun undergoes an end-to-end cleanup.

You may be well into basics, but still, situational errors are a thing and we request you to make quick amends to how you’re dealing with gun if you’ve been doing it all wrong so far. In this guide, we’ve covered almost the entire cache of safekeeping your guns. If you’ve anything to include, write it down to us in the comments below.

 

 

 

Want To Know What Happened In Vegas? We Still Don’t Know.

After the Sandy Hook massacre, initial media statements were confused and often contradictory to the point that online conspiracy hawkers like Alex Jones had a field day ‘proving’ that the assault never took place. Now that more than three months have passed since the Las Vegas shooting and the unanswered questions continue to pile up, I’m surprised that we haven’t yet seen a new wave of conspiracy explanations to explain how and why the ‘real’ events on October 1st actually occurred.

[image error]             Last week the FBI unsealed 448 pages of documents covering more than 20 searches conducted to figure out a possible motive for what Steve Paddock did. Given the fact that the hotel space he occupied was a crime scene and that he lived in one residence located in the town of Mesquite, why were so many warrants drawn up by the FBI? Because nowadays if you want to figure out anything about anyone, start by looking through the computer and/or the droid, then check out every online shopping and messaging account. And if you want to see if someone posted on Facebook, or Instagram, or bought something from Amazon, each of these venues requires a separate search.

What the newly-released documents in this case don’t tell us is anything beyond what we already knew. Paddock didn’t have a Facebook page; his emails were often sent to himself; he purchased a few items from Amazon, and that’s about it.  Between his house and the hotel room at Mandalay Bay he evidently owned more than 30 weapons, along with a large stash of ammunition, various tools, body armor and other crap. He also banked online like everyone else.

What law enforcement now knows about Paddock’s behavior and motives is more or less what they knew before they went through all this legal rigmarole to gain access to the shooter’s private life.  Or to put it differently, I read through the entire 488 pages released by the District Court, and I didn’t learn anything beyond what I knew within one day after the Las Vegas shooting took place – the guy took a bunch of legally-owned guns into a hotel room and began blasting away.

But leave it to our friends in law enforcement to use this documentary pile to develop some totally-unverified theories about what Paddock did and why, and then leave it to the media to take those theories and embellish them further. Then leave it to journalists who concentrate on gun news to embellish this ‘fake news’ a little more.

Today’s daily newsletter from our friends at The Trace contains this interesting comment about the Las Vegas document release:

According to investigators, the perpetrator intentionally sought to thwart their efforts, in part by buying many of his dozens of firearms online.  Private dealers who peddle guns over the internet are not required to run background checks on buyers, nor maintain the paper trail that ATF agents follow when linking crime weapons to licensed sellers.

 

This comment links to a story in a Las Vegas paper which claims the guns came from “internet retailers,” a statement linked back to an FBI ‘spokesman’ who said that Paddock’s ‘methodical planning’ was making it more difficult for law enforcement to figure everything out.

So The Trace refers to ‘private dealers’ but the media story says that Paddock purchased his weapons from ‘online retailers,’ which if that’s the case, none of those gun purchases would have been hidden from view. It may still come as a shock to some of my friends in the gun violence prevention (GVP) community, but buying guns on the internet and keeping such transfers immune from a background check may or may not have any connection at all.

Back on October 5th and again on October 12th and a third time on October 26th I wrote columns arguing that we didn’t know much, if anything, about what happened on October 1st. Don’t hold your breath.

In Memoriam – Dr. Martin Luther King

On April 30, 1967, I found myself at a big anti-war demonstration in New York’s Central Park. As the event wound down a bunch of us left the park, walked over to Broadway, then all the way uptown to a neighborhood known as Morningside Heights where we then squeezed ourselves into a monumental edifice known then and now as Riverside Church. We were there to listen to a speech delivered by Martin Luther King which as he began his address we realized that he was going to say something remarkable, vibrant and new.

[image error] This speech marked a momentous turning-point in the growing public resistance to the Viet Nam War. The fighting in Southeast Asia had already produced nearly 20,000 casualties but the worst still lay ahead, particularly in 1968 after Tet; a majority of the public and certainly the media still supported the idea that a gradual troop withdrawal might succeed; Gene McCarthy’s anti-war Presidential campaign was six months’ away; Lyndon Johnson had not yet announced that he wouldn’t seek another term.

When King said he was going to break publicly with Johnson and the Democratic Party over Viet Nam, many people, including other civil rights leaders, denounced his decision as an unfortunate and untimely challenge against the ally whose ability to push civil rights legislation through Congress had resulted in dramatic legal changes to the status of African-Americans and their relationship to whites. Nevertheless, King felt he had no choice but to move from the politics of racial equality to the politics of peace, because what made racial inequality so objectionable was the degree to which legal barriers to African-American racial equality resulted in even greater barriers against economic equality as well. As he said in his remarks, “it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor.”

I sometimes wonder what might have happened had King not been gunned down a year later and instead been able to unite the civil rights and anti-war movements into a successful political effort for serious social and economic change. But there’s no value in thinking about what might have been; what we need to do is think about what is, and how Dr. King’s words can help us understand what we now need to do. And here is what King said which brings his views from fifty years ago into focus today: “I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without first having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.”

In the current climate it’s simple and easy to point an accusatory finger at our government; after all we have a President who promotes and endorses violence every chance he gets. And a day doesn’t go by without him bragging about how he’s going to increase military spending while gutting every social program he can.

But when Barack Obama took office in 2009 we had troops stationed in more than 1,000 locations outside the United States. When he left office in 2016 that number hadn’t changed. In his first year alone he approved more drone strikes than his predecessor allowed in his entire eight years. Meanwhile, every time there was a mass shooting he went on television and cried and cried and cried.

My public health friends who do research on gun violence never forget to remind us that the reason we suffer more than 120,000 gun injuries each year is because we own so many guns. But if you think there’s no connection between the existence of 300 million privately-owned firearms and what we lavish on our military, think again. In 2015 the world spent $1.6 trillion on military goods and services, of which we spent nearly 40% of that figure all by ourselves.

Want to reduce gun violence? Take seriously what Dr. King preached in 1967 and ask where the real cause of this violence lies.

GVPedia – Good To Go!

Every once in a while, someone comes along with a really bright idea for doing something positive or useful about reducing gun violence. Not that joining an advocacy group or sending an email to your local Congressman isn’t a positive idea, but it’s not very new. On the other hand, there’s a young man sitting, of all places in Oklahoma, who has done something positive and new to reduce gun violence, which is funny given the Oklahoma is probably the most gun-rich state of all.

[image error]             I’m talking about Devin Hughes and a new website, GVPedia, which had a soft launch last month and now is good to go. The site is basically a reference library containing publications which inform about gun violence, and to his credit, the collection of more than 700 articles includes work on both sides of the gun debate – I suspect this is the only online venue which allows a visitor to access articles written by David Hemenway and John Lott. But if you want to create a credible knowledge source about any topic, then you need to include all points of view.

The website bibliography can be searched either by topic or the usual a to z. There is also a small but growing collection of ‘white papers’ designed to give members of the gun violence prevention (GVP) community some basic information and talking-points if/when they find themselves in a public or private discussion about guns. I understand that plans are afoot to make the site more dynamic, including sponsoring gun-violence research, developing infographics that could be used for online debates – all of these activities and others being directed by Jen Pauliukonis, whose GVP creds are far beyond reproach.

So that’s the good news, and I want to congratulate Devin, his Board members and his major financial supporter (who wishes to remain anonymous but it’s not Mayor Mike) for moving this whole effort forward and getting it online. But that was the easy part, now the heavy lifting begins.

First and foremost (and I’m sure Devin and his crew have been talking about this but it needs to be said publicly nonetheless) even though GVPedia is unique to the discussion about guns, this uniqueness in and of itself doesn’t mean that the site and its associated activities will necessarily get the exposure or public presence which it deserves and needs. As much as I believe that the 1st Amendment should apply to what appears on the web, I find sometimes myself thinking that maybe getting rid of net neutrality isn’t such a bad idea. Because if nothing else, eliminating open access might (but might not) tend to curb some of the excessive digital content which continues to grow every day. I put up my first website, believe it or not, in 1995. And it was easy to build an audience because where else were the early internet surfers going to go?

I have an idea for getting GVPedia noticed, however, by a very wide audience, an idea which may or may not align with the strategies of the website’s managers, but perhaps should be taken into account.  I would run some notices on websites, blogs and Facebook pages not just favored by the GVP, but used by Gun-nut Nation to communicate amongst themselves.  For example, I belong to a bunch of private Facebook groups which promote guns; one of them is devoted to building your own AR-15 and more than 75,000 people have joined. One of the Glock private groups on Facebook enlists more than 30,000 followers – such numbers aren’t unusual on many of the better-known gun blogs.

Donald Trump started a ‘university’ so that he could peddle some drek. By opening GVPedia to researchers from both sides of the gun debate, Devin and his crew have made it very clear that the ultimate value of this effort rests on a search for truth. So why not invite everyone to join the search?

And by the way, GVPedia is a 501(c)(3). Send them a few bucks.

There’s Nothing Like A Good Story To Help Sell Guns.

Sooner or later someone in the gun business would figure out how to merge reality with fantasy and take advantage of the upsurge in left-wing political activities since the election of the nut-job known as Donald Trump.  It started with the home-school queen, Dana Loesch, who popped up in an NRA video production whining about threats posed by the Left. She goes on and on about how the Left is doing one dangerous and violent thing after another and her rant concluded with, “the only way we save our country and our freedom is to fight this violence of lies with a clenched fist of truth.”

[image error]              Now notice – no mention of guns, no mention of armed, self-defense – the whole thing is about as subtle as getting whacked over the head with a two-by-four. But now a gun company, admittedly not yet a major player in the industry, has started running messaging on its Facebook page which explicitly takes Dana’s message about fighting left-wing violence to another level and making the clearest possible connection between politics and armed, self-defense; in this case, using an AR-15 assault rifle to defend everything that patriots hold dear.

The company is called Spike’s Tactical out of Florida, which sells various AR-15 models and claims they build the finest AR-15’s ‘on the planet,’ even though every other AR outfit basically says the same thing.  The good news about the AR design is that it’s kind of like a Lego set; you can buy all the individual parts and put the gun together any way you want. The bad news is that AR sales have hit rock bottom, the proof is simply the fact that the new guns cost about half of what they were selling for during the heady days of the Obama regime.

When assault rifles first hit the market as a mass product, the gun industry tried to picture them as nothing more than just another type of ‘sporting’ gun, no different from any other rifle that a hunter or sportsman would take into the field. The industry even invented a new term, the ‘modern sporting rifle,’ as if there was the slightest similarity between these guns which take 30-round magazines and the Browning or Remington semi-auto hunting rifles which held 4 or 5 rounds. This attempt to present the AR as just nothing other than a 21st-century version of the Daisy Red Ryder found under every Christmas tree began to take some serious lumps after a guy stuck his ‘sporting gun’ out of a hotel window in Vegas, killing or wounding more than 600 folks, but leave it to the fertile imaginations of the people selling guns at Spike’s Tactical to turn the idea of ‘sporting arms’ on its head and make the concept of killing people with an AR-15 a virtue instead of a vice.

The release of the ad, which shows four armed citizens protecting us from a murderous, threatening Antifa bunch, happened to appear at the same time that one of America’s most beloved patriots, Cliven (‘let me tell you about your Negro’) Bundy, had all the charges against him and his sons dropped that came out of the standoff at his ranch in 2014. And as soon as he emerged from the courtroom, ol’ Clive made it clear that he’s ready to resume his fight. His Facebook page is already selling sweat shirts and I’m sure there’s more consumer crap to come.

If I were the owner of a tactical gun company, I would release a Cliven Bundy limited edition rifle, complete with a carrying case and t-shirt because the profit is always in the add-ons, and I notice that Spike’s Tactical is already promoting a clothing company under another brand name. The point is that notwithstanding the usual liberal lament about how the gun industry increasingly pushes products toward the most extreme elements on the alt-right, the truth is that what works for the gun business best of all is messaging based on fantasy, not on fear.