Time To Go Tactical!
Last week I received an email from an internet ad
agency asking if I would allow one of their clients to post some ads on my website.
I told the internet marketer to send me the URL and I would list it for
free.
I’m happy to help any small business out with a free listing
on my website, as long as it isn’t that bunch of scam artists and so-called physicians
who own an outfit called Stop the Bleed. Any physician involved with
that bunch should hang their heads in shame. Otherwise, I’m just about open to advertising
by anyone who wants to promote something on my site.
This particular company, whose logo and link will
shortly appear on mikethegunguy.com is an outfit called Tactical
Gear Hut, which contains some pretty good reviews of various kinds of ‘tactical
gear,’ which is a catch-all category for accessory items that shooters and
gun-nut enthusiasts might like to buy.
In the olden days, when someone walked into my gun shop
to buy a handgun, I might also get them to buy a holster and a box of shells. The
leather and ammo would add $30 or so to the sale. If they bought rifle or a
shotgun, I might also add a box of ammunition to the order and on occasion a cheap
piece of cloth to wrap around the gun – another $30 added to their tab. I
rarely sold scopes because my shop’s in an Eastern state where a long-range
shot during hunting season might be 50 or 60 yards.
That was the olden days. Now welcome to the new days,
in particular, welcome to the ‘tactical’ days thanks to the appearance and
popularity of the AR, which happens not to be an acronym for ‘assault rifle,’ but
was the designation for the gun designed by Gene Stoner and first manufactured
by Armalite (as in ‘Armalite Rifle), a gun company which has gone in and out of business more times than I can count.
Of course, once the gun-grabbing contingent led by our
friend Dianne Feinstein got their hands on this product and limited its use in
California, a law which then morphed into the 1994 Clinton assault rifle ban, how
anyone then talked about this product became the acid-test for their views on
guns. If you are pro-gun, you believe that everyone should keep an assault
rifle around; if not, not.
The problem that the gun industry faced by using the
term ‘assault rifle’ is that it cuts both ways. Because again and again
whenever someone went into a school or a movie theater and shot up the place,
he used an AR, which was then described as a ‘mass assault.’ Which is
exactly what it was.
So, the industry came up with a new way to market these
products, by replacing the word ‘assault’ with the word ‘tactical.’ After all, tactical
guys are the good guys. We send them out on those high-risk missions to kill
Bin Laden, we expect them to protect us against all kinds of threats.
Meanwhile, I’m sitting here in my living room and
around my house there are 15 acres of trees. Maybe what I need to do today is
go out and select a spot in my woods where I can put up a stand to give me and
my AR the necessary cover for when I have to defend myself and my family
from a terrorist attack. And maybe I also need to go to the Tactical Gear
Hut website and pony up five hundred bucks to get my hands on a tactical
scope. After all, what’s a tactical rifle worth if I don’t have the optics
required to get the job done?
Know why the United States is the richest country on Planet
Earth? Because it’s the only country where any law-abiding citizen can go out
and blow a couple of thousand bucks on some equipment that will never be needed
for anything at all.
