Some Thoughts for Saturday Morning

I think everyone should read this brilliant analysis of the current "Occupy" fad by Victor Davis Hanson in PJ Media, titled "Playing With Fire:"

Occupy Wall Street follows three years of sloppy presidential name-calling — “millionaires and billionaires,” slurs about Las Vegas and the Super Bowl, profit-mad, limb-lopping doctors, introspection that now is not the time for profits and at some point we should cease making money, spread the wealth, punish our enemies, and all the old Obama boilerplate. Someone finally got the message about the evil 1%.

And so the cultural fabric, a fabric woven first by the Founder and made strong through the years of America, is stretched and twisted, perhaps beyond it's ability to recover. Playing at class warfare is like juggling grenades with the pins outs...sooner or later they all blow, and the consequences are greater than the juggler or the spectators ever imagined.

I'd also like to make a short comment on Paul Barrett's book, GLOCK: THE RISE OF AMERICA'S GUN, and why I have specifically chosen NOT to blurb the book, as author Barrett asked, to interview the author or do excerpts from the book, to use Mr. Barrett as an expert on any of my television products, or provide the author with any additional publicity opportunities.

I met Mr. Barrett at one of the National Shooting Sports Foundation media events I used to run back when he was working for the Wall Street Journal. He now works for the Bloomberg media operation, headed by Michael Bloomberg. He contacted me when the book was in manuscript form and asked if I would read the book and maybe provide a blurb for the back cover and/or subsequent publicity. After reading the manuscript, I decided not to be involved. Here's the thought behind my decision.

First and to be totally fair, Paul Barrett is both a fine reporter and a fine writer, an increasingly rare combination in these sunset days for the MSM. His story of Glock is fascinating reading.

HOWEVER, and this is one hell of a "however," the book, especially in its closing quarter, is laced throughout with Bloomberg's "Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG)" talking points. Mr. Barrett repeatedly quotes antigun sources uncritically and at length, including the widely discredited Tom Diaz from the execrable Violence Policy Center.

As a consequence, the tone of the book is violently anti-NRA...at one point Mr. Barrett notes quite casually that the NRA was actively engaged in pushing it's members to higher capacity handguns during the AWB years. Really? Sources? Or is that simply one of the many false "articles of faith" from VPC and MAIG?

I would say it's puzzling that a journalist of Mr. Barrett's caliber could so easily accept antigun dogma at face value. At one point Mr. Barrett expresses puzzlement that we gunowners could object to government-mandated magazine capacity laws. Had he spoken to any of us gunowners, we would have explained in simple, easy-to-understand-even-to-northeastern-liberals terms that if we accept the government's questionable "right" to mandate a firearm's ammunition capacity, then we by default accept the government's ability to set that number at "zero." In a world where the major federal law enforcement agencies and even the State Department can be recruited by the nation's top law enforcement officer, Eric Holder, for a complex, deadly and patently illegal scheme like "Fast and Furious" solely to create an environment for stripping us of our Second Amendment rights, the idea that the government would set firearms' capacity at "zero" isn't paranoia...it's a hard, cold reality.

Finally, Mr. Barrett works for Michael Bloomberg, whom Mr. Barrett described as an "really good boss." I describe Bloomberg as a blood enemy, a man who has already shown his willingness to break federal laws to do us -- the gun culture and the firearms industry -- harm. If you believe for a single second that Michael Bloomberg would have allowed one of his top employees to produce a book on guns that DID NOT benefit Bloomberg's stated antigun goals, I have a lovely bridge to sell you...