Metcalf Canned

Intermedia moved quickly to protect their flagship Guns & Ammo property and capped longtime editor Dick Metcalf after his inexplicable, profoundly stupid column on the Second Amendment:

Couple of personal points here...Dick Metcalf and I have been friends for 30 years...that's a lot of adult beverage under the bridge. We have shot together, competed against each other, run matches, exchanged lies, and on and on. But the cold hard truth is he had to go. You can't spew the kind of nonsense Dick wrote and expect to walk away from it unscathed.

The very best thing I have read on the whole imbroglio comes from my friend Paul Erhardt writing in The Shooting Wire:

It's hard to tell exactly why Dick Metcalf chose to write what he did. Even harder still to understand his embracing of regulations as both needed and fundamentally the cornerstone of the framers' intent when they wrote "a well regulated militia."

Paul quotes from another column by our mutual friend Paul Markel from Student of the Gun:

The reasonableness approach is seductive and genuinely the default of most people. Were we living in a different time I might be willing to acquiesce to Dick's many reasonable points. However, for at least a century, as far back as the questionable passage of the individual Federal Income Tax, we the people of the United States of America have indeed been reasonable. We have accepted restrictions on our liberty a tiny bit at time. A minuscule amount of arsenic will not kill you, but it builds up over time, slowly.  

Decade after decade, we are treated to just a bit more gun control, just a bit more restriction in the name of public safety. To argue against "public safety" makes you unreasonable and modern man fears that label. Individual liberty and freedom will not be killed by a single, decapitating blow, that would be far too obvious. Instead, the body of liberty is being slowly but very deliberately bled to death one tiny cut at time, the cuts being so small as almost not to be noticed.  

When it comes to liberty, we, the reasonable people, have given and given and given, but it is never enough. The beast of the authoritarian state will never be satisfied. I, for one, am finished willfully surrendering my liberty. Don't come to me asking for "reasonableness" I'm all out and if you took a moment to be honest with yourself, I think you would be out as well.

We are playing a deadly serious zero sum game...every time our blood enemies win a point, we lose a point...and move closer to the abyss The concepts of "reasonable," of "national dialog," of an "open conversation" are nothing but false flag operations to reel in suckers.  We've had a "national dialog" for half-a century, and all we've done is lost ground. Hey, the facts are all on our side! The numbers are all on our side! The laws are all on our side! How can we lose a national dialog?

"If you like your health policy, you can keep it...period! If you like your doctors, you can keep your doctor...period!"

Here's how. Folks, our blood enemies lie. They are not misinformed...they are not operating on incorrect or incomplete information...they are not misinterpreting data...they are intentionally NOT speaking the truth because they know that low information voters have the attention span of gnats. They lie, because they understand if you keep telling the lie it wraps itself in the veneer of truth. As Adolf Hitler, the master of the Big Lie, wrote in Mein Kampf:

All this was inspired by the principle--which is quite true within itself--that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

The concept of "reasonable" is flypaper for smart people. Smart people — and former Professor Dick Metcalf is indeed a very smart man — find the idea of debate virtually irresistible because they believe they can't lose. I am reminded of the head of a gun company whom I counseled not to appear on a weekly network news show. Do you think I can't handle myself, said the exec, a trial attorney by trade? No, I replied...I said the game is rigged...you cannot win. I quoted Leonard Cohen — "Everybody knows the dice are loaded; everybody rolls with their fingers crossed..."

He ignored me, and a quote taken out of context cost him his job.

To borrow a phase from our Liar-In-Chief, let me be clear...our blood enemies have one single agenda item  — one single item! — that has remained unchanged for half a century, and that is complete and total civilian disarmament. Or, to phrase it another way, door-to-door confiscation of every civilian-owned gun in America. That's it, folks.

Recall how that for the last decade as support as support for gun control waned we heard more and more about "reasonable" and "common sense" gun control laws. Don't be silly, we were told...no one wants to take away your guns! The moment Newtown happened and our blood enemies thought — incorrectly — that the national landscape for gun control had changed, it was confiscation time, baby! Hey, San Francisco started the confiscation of magazines with a capacity greater than 10 this week. The end game is ALWAYS confiscation!

For more than a decade Paul Erhardt and I have taught that whomever gets to define the game will ALWAYS win said game. When a high-visibility "gunnie" like Dick Metcalf decides to validate the other side and by stepping into their arena, it does untold damage to our cause.

Dick, Good Lord, what were you thinking??? 

We don't need a new dialog, a national discussion, a third way, a new beginning or common sense anything...we don't need "reasonable" — we need to hold the damn line against people who would happily load us into boxcars and send us east! We need to say no to the people who destroy our heritage, spit on the Constitution and unleash their thugs. 

No compromise.

That clear enough?