The Fix is In

From InstaPundit:

A READER AT A MAJOR NEWSROOM EMAILS: "Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working." I asked permission to reprint without attribution and it was granted.

UPDATE: The Anchoress hears similar things. And reader Eric Schubert: "The Edwards debacle was proof enough of where the heart of the MSM lies, and lack of curiousity of the press about Edwards probably cost Hillary the nomination. And that shameful episode offers a warning to the MSM. What if Obama does have a skeleton in his closet (such as a shady deal or outright bribe) that is revealed after he wins the election? While the chance of this scenario is remote, imagine the backlash against the MSM if it could be shown that a reasonable investigation by the MSM would have easily revealed this secret to the public prior to the election?"

ANOTHER UPDATE: Rand Simberg isn't so sure: "Where was the backlash against this about Bill Clinton in 1992? They just seem to continue to get away with it." Well, yes and no. Their reputation and readership/viewership keep falling. And layoffs keep happening. I think they're willing to pull out all the stops because they realize this is the last election where they have a chance at swinging things this way. No point saving your credibility for the future when you don't have a future, I guess . . . .

BTW, re the earlier post, I've flayed Petzal in the past for his comments on "military style": weapons.

A Column I Wish I'd Written.

... from the ever-iconoclastic Dave Petzal over at the Field & Stream Gun Nut blog:

But, my fellow Americans, lest I be thought superficial, here is a brief summation of each candidate as I see him or her:

John McCain: A mid-20th-century man trying to get a handle on the 21st century and failing. Sort of like me. However, I know how to send an e-mail. He is about as interested in gun legislation as he is in acquiring a third wife with no money.

Sarah Palin: I would go moose hunting with her any day, but as for the rest of it…

Barack Obama: Our best orator in years, provided he has a teleprompter. He ran a fine campaign against Hillary, who ran a terrible campaign. His major qualification seems to be the 143 days he has spent in the Senate.

Joe Biden: I had thought of him as merely one more spavined Senate hack. However, he is proving himself to be a major buffoon. I expect that any day now, he will claim he owns the laptop on which Lincoln composed the Gettysburg Address. Biden has it in him, if elected, to take his place alongside Dan Quayle and Spiro Agnew in the pantheon of Truly Embarrassing Vice Presidents.

Instant Serial Killer Vicim!

From the Dexter "Create Your Own Serial Killer" website...

Getting Beyond Catch & Release

The last few posts have got me thinkng about recruitment and retention strategies within the shooting sports, and issue that is guaranteed to come up in the first meeting of the NSSF 20/20 Shooting Sports Task Force in mid-October.

Speaking strictly for sport shooting, we typically put the huge majority of our efforts on recruitment — how do we get new shooters? Most of the sports have junior programs in place (in some case for a long time), and we define that as "recruitment."

That's good, but not nearly good enough. I think the strength of the NSSF report is dividing potential shooters into a number of distinct markets that all require different strategies to reach. I'll deal with that in a later post.

I do plan to put the issue of retention squarely on the table, because I think we do a very poor job of it. That's because retention has only in the last couple of decades become an issue. In the semi-mythical Old Days, hunting/shooting was in fact a lifetime pursuit. You had "hunting families," where generations of family members went into the field. However, the same megatrends that have affected shooting and hunting — urbanization/suburbanization, competition for declining leisure time, liability issues — have also worked to alter the retention equation...there's more to do and less time to do it. A constriction of places to shoot, rising ammo prices and, let's face it, a change in the social acceptance of the shooting sports have made it easy for even dedicated shooters to "drop out." As I've been fond of saying for years, "net is net" — if we recruit 10 new shooters and lose 10 through attrition, it's a wash.

Interestingly enough, about a decade ago I did some research in participant retention in another sport, scuba diving. At that time (and I haven't looked at it in a while, so the numbers may have changed), the average time-in-sport for a scuba diver was 18 months. After a year and a half, new divers started to drift away, so to speak. And this was in a sport with pretty high barriers to entry: a certification process requiring classes and in-field tests, relatively complicated math skills required, expensive equipment to purchase and an element of danger in the sport.

My take on the issue was what I termed the "blue fish conundrum." As a sport scuba had built a huge recruitment machine and it worked extremely well. People come into the sport really pumped up after the recruitment phase, ready to explore the underwater world; after a year or so, divers without gobs of money to travel the world, started wondering how many blue fish they could look at. While there were upward paths that would help keep divers involved in the sport, they were often not readily accessible, expensive and often scary (my own certifications, which interestingly enough I never use anymore, are Full Cave/Mixed Gas/Deep Air, and that's a path not a lot of people would choose to follow).

I see a good bit of similar retention issues in shooting. We're actually pretty good at getting people into the sports, but once they're in they're pretty much on their own. That works just swell for serious competitors,, who tend to be both self-starting and little Energizer Bunnies on moving forward. More casual competitors, however, tend to drift away.

As usual, I don't have giganto answers, but I think the key to retaining shooters is to both publicize what's "under the tent" — that is, show the breadth of what's available to shooters in all the venues...sport shooting, hunting and self-defense/training — while making it as easy as possible to sample those items under the tent. We definitely need to make sure the self-defense/training component of the industry — huge — is under the tent. the NSSF report makes only one "action item" reference to that side of the industry, and it's negative...allegedly some newcomers to sport shooting are 'troubled" by the huminoid targets used on the self-defense side of the industry, so, hey, let's abandon ship!

To quote John McCain, "Oh, pleeeeeeessssssse!"

We need to figure out how to keep the people we've got in the tent in the tent. I'm open to suggestions...

The Ideal Home Defense Weapon...

...is a 10-bore Howdah pistol, made under license by Remington in the London custom plant in the late 1800s. Big BIG fun to shoot...can't wait for you to see it on SHOOTING GALLERY! Also finally got to shoot 4-bore 18-inch smoothbore blaster...definitely an Elmer Fudd "Wascally Wabbit" gun!

Yes, the guns at the Vintager match are expensive, as per the previous pst commenter's note, but the point of this match isn't to try and bring new shooters into the top of the funnel...that's why we've designed the Ruger Rimfire Challenge.

BTW, was really pleased with how the Ruger #1 450/400 shot...I shot it on the antelope moving target and was happy to see...holes! I've decicded to keep the rifle in anticipation of an Africa trip next year...more reloading practice is definitely in order.

Here's an interesting piece on b-HO and guns...as you may know, the pro-Obama supporters are arguing that, see, Obama isn't really against guns, like you know...

The gist of the discussion is that pro-Obama people say Obama doesn’t really oppose the right to arms, while pro-gun people say he does.

I don’t understand why anyone would doubt the validity of the pro-gun people’s argument.

If Obama supported gun rights, many pro-gun people, even Republicans, would support him, because many pro-gun people are single-issue voters on this topic and Obama’s opponent has a spotty record on gun rights. (The NRA and pro-gun rights voters have supported pro-gun Democrats in many elections.) Also, if Obama really supported the right to arms, it’s likely that many additional Republican, libertarian and independent voters would support him because conservatives and libertarians often interpret a politician’s support for the right to arms as a reliable proxy for that politician’s support of other individual rights. This point seems especially strong now, since many Republican voters distrust Obama’s opponent on free speech, business regulation and other big-govt-vs-individual-rights issues.

So on the one hand we have single-issue pro-gun people opposing Obama on guns, and on the other hand we have people who are primarily Obama partisans, not gun people, arguing that pro-gun people should trust Obama on guns. Who should we believe?

UPDATE: Via John Lott, this statement from Richard Pearson of the Illinois State Rifle Association:

SPRINGFIELD, Ill., Sept. 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The following
was released today by the Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA):

“One of the most blatant lies ever to come from a politician’s mouth,”
is how the ISRA is characterizing a recent statement by U.S. Senator Barack
Obama. Speaking in the latest issue of “Field & Stream,” Obama claims that
Illinois sportsmen know him as an advocate for their rights. On the
contrary, Obama’s voting record while a state senator clearly indicates
that he has nothing but contempt for the law-abiding firearm owner.

Yeech!

It's way raining in Maryland...hey, we shoot in the rain, too!

I definitely need TWEEDS...and oilcloth...

Can't wait to light up the 450/400!

Mo' later...

Interestng Piece on Media Bias in the Campaign

From Protein Wisdom:

I’ve noted before that we are now fighting an all out ideological war for the survival of what the democratic republic. In fact, I’ve been making this same argument for years now: when the press, under the cover of “objectivity,” is allowed to function as an advocacy arm for a particular ideology and its titular representatives, what follows is a necessary skewing of facts — and a carefully constructed attempt to frame “stories” with “lessons” that the public will interpret “correctly” (according to those attempting to teach the lessons from the perspective of their own personal advocacy).

This is not hyperbole: a free society relies on a free press to inform. That the mainstream press leans demonstrably left is not the problem in and of itself; the problem arises when that demonstrable bias is given cover as “objective,” and when those who believe they are basing their support for a candidate or platform on objective reporting are in effect doing no such thing, but are rather being coaxed, prodded, directed, and manipulated — in everything from what comes to count as newsworthy to, in cases like these, shoddy reporting (which may or may not be intentional), the effect of which is to leave those who rely on the media literally less informed than had the media reported nothing at all.

A free society cannot run this way. If information is power, those who control the information and its mainstream dissemination are in a position to act as the most important swing vote in any election. That the press has given up, at this late stage (and despite declines in readership and public trust), any serious attempt to report objectively suggests that we are now quite immersed in a battle for the very principles of a democratic republic. Progressives have decided that the ends justify the means — that lies in the service of greater truths (as defined by their own ideology) are both pragmatic and utilitarian measures to be adopted so that “we” can finally get things “right,” and accept government from a permanent political class, a new aristocracy, that will expand the federal government in ways that will protect us from ourselves, in the process, assuring that ever new generations will be reliable upon the good graces of the federal government for their survival.

Read the whole thing, by all means!

Who Watches the Watchers, Etc.

Or as they say in Latin, "Que cuspidor cuspidor-spittie"...or something like that.

Our pal David Kopel notes that the fact checkers got the NRA's spin on Obama wrong:

FACTCHECK FLUBS OBAMA GUN FACT CHECK: FactCheck.org is an excellent project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. It a non-partisan organization which provides factual evaluations of the claims of and about political figures. I have cited it in my own writing, and will continue to do so. However, that FactCheck has a well-deserved reputation for accuracy and good judgment does not mean that its work is infallible, as the VC has pointed out previously. The Encyclopedia Britannica also has a well-deserved reputation for accuracy and impartiality, but the Britannica sometimes contains errors or overstatements.

FactCheck’s September 22, 2008, report on the National Rifle Association’s advertising critical claims that the NRA “distorts Obama's position on gun control beyond recognition.” FactCheck itself, though, has overstated its claims, and made several errors.

How Stupid DoThey Think We Are, Part 2

Greasy Joe, is there any depth to which you won't sink? This from Fox:

CASTLEWOOD, VA — Memo to Barack Obama: don’t mess with Joe Biden’s guns.

At a fish fry for mine workers in rural Southwest Virginia, the Delaware Senator commiserated on being from coal country himself — and did his damndest to convince the blue collar, mostly white Democrats that he’s on the ticket to win over that Obama’s one of them as well.

One of rural Democrats’ biggest fears about Obama? That he’ll come after the Second Amendment. Not so, said Biden — and he’d better not try.

“I guarantee you, Barack Obama ain’t taking my shotguns, so don’t buy that malarkey,” Biden said angrily. “They’re going to start peddling that to you.”

“I got two, if he tries to fool with my Beretta, he’s got a problem.”

This from the Real World, a place that Greasy Joe has apparently forgotten about:

I'm the guy that originally wrote the assault weapons ban that became law. Then we got defeated. Then Diane Feinstein sent to town on it and did a great job. Look, we should be working with law enforcement right now to make sure we protect people against people who are not capable of knowing what to do with a gun because they are either mentally imbalanced and/or because they have a criminal record. (Glassbooth.org)

Rated "F" by the NRA, voted "NO" for banning bankrupting lawsuits against the firearms inudstry. (www.onthessues.org).

From the NRA ILA:

Just like fellow Democrats Edward Kennedy, Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein, Biden has voted for, and actively pushed, major anti-gun bills, including those:

Banning semi-automatic firearms;
Banning hunting, sporting and self-defense ammunition;
Banning magazines holding more than 10 rounds; and
Imposing a waiting period on handgun sales.
Biden also voted against the law that prohibits lawsuits designed to bankrupt law-abiding firearm manufacturers and dealers. And he voted against the confirmation of Supreme Court Justices who support the Second Amendment, and voted for the confirmation of Justices who do not.

The Brady Campaign sums it up in a straightforward fashion: "Senator Biden has been a consistent supporter of the Brady Campaign." According to the gun prohibition activist group, "Senator Biden was a key player in the fight for the federal assault weapons ban that passed in 1994. He also worked hard for passage of the Brady Law (sic)."

To hear Biden tell it, though, that's only half the story. Last year, during a debate with Obama, Sen. Hillary Clinton, and other contenders for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, Biden said, "I'm the guy who originally wrote the assault weapons ban."

Now, on the one hand, Biden has been faulted in the past for claiming credit for others' work. In one instance, the Washington Post reported, Biden "lifted five pages from a published law review article and used them in his 15-page paper for a legal-methods course" in college. He also plagiarized British Labor Leader Neil Kinnock in a speech before the National Education Association, and similarly "failed to attribute to the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy a lengthy passage . . . in a speech he gave to the California Democratic Party."

But Biden almost told the truth about his role in the "assault weapon" issue. Indeed, though Sens. Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH) and Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ) had authored earlier bills, Biden introduced an "assault weapons" ban in Congress five years before the Clinton gun and magazine ban was imposed. In 1989, a Biden bill (S. 1970) proposed to ban the Colt AR-15 and eight similar firearms as "assault weapons," and authorize the Secretary of the Treasury (in reality, the then Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) and the Attorney General to recommend to Congress any other firearms, regardless of type, to be banned as "additional assault weapons."

To this day, Biden doesn't merely support a ban on "assault weapons" and standard-capacity magazines holding more than 10 rounds, he actively pushes it. In the current Congress, another Biden bill (S. 2237) proposes to renew the Clinton ban on roughly 200 makes and models of semi-automatic rifles, shotguns, and handguns on the basis of things like the shape of their grips, and on ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, regardless of the kind of firearm in which they are used.

Here is the bottom line:

1) If Obama/Biden is elected, there will be a new "Assault Weapons" Ban with no sunset and no loopholes.
2) Both Obama and Biden have expressed their support for the most radical forms of gun control...if they can get the votes (and remember, Obama himself said that our guns were safe because he "couldn't get the votes") expect registration of existing assault weapons, including the AR-15, the most popular and best-selling rifle in America.
3. Worldwide and in America, registration is invariably follwed by confiscation...not occasionally; not often but every single time. The Democrats goal is the elimination of the most popular rifle in America. If you believe anything else, you are in Dream Land!

Greasy Joe Biden's shotgun may be safe, but yours isn't, because he is above the law. The Democrats will move quickly against AR-15s and .50 BMG rifles, but they will not stop there...they'll go as far as the votes will take them!

Sorry for Light Blogging!!!

Between a heavy travel schedule and this wretched head cold, I have felt up to witty repartee...or even unwitty repartee.

I did, however, spend a wonderful day at the range today at the Advanced Armament Silencer Shoot, lobbing lots of rounds downrange from some very quiet guns. I never really realized how much a suppressor cut recoil, but boy, on .308s, .338 Lapuas and .50s, it was really amazing! The real revelation to me was the little CZ 527 mini-Mauser in 7.62 X 39 with an integral suppressor from John's Guns. Mine, was this little gun sweet...smooth, quiet and like shooting a .22. I would love to take this gun through a boltgun class at GUNSITE!

Also saw a really cool Ruger LCP in .32 NAA, North American Arms' proprietary super hot little cartridge based on the necked-down .380...the little sucker supposedly rocks pretty hard.

More on everything — including the Knights Armament "hat gun" later!

Traveling...

...busily infecting my fellow passengers! It's either a head cold,
allergy to politicians or Ebola.

If I feel up to it, will hit suppressor seminar tonite...

Notes from the Frontier

The US Airways - always a Third World bus service at best - terminal
at Wash Reagan has by my count 6 defibulators and 1 - count 'email! -
bathroom . No danger of heart attack, but may turn yellow...

Sent from my iPhone

We Can Dance if We Wanna...

Survived political immersion unscathed ... Even helped Sen. Mike Crapo
from Idaho-Land pick a new pistol (a Sig 250, if you must know).

Had excellent conversation with Sportsmen for McCain folks...more
later ...

Sent from my iPhone

Freedom Isn't Free



Uh-oh! Fatwa Alert!

The Volokh Conspiracy has given us a heads-up on more top-notch thinking from our friends the Saudis:

RELIGIOUS DECREE SAYING IT IS PERMISSIBLE TO KILL THE OWNERS OF SATELLITE TV NETWORKS THAT BROADCAST IMMORAL CONTENT"

...issued by "Saudi Arabia's top judiciary official." So reports the Associated Press:

The 79-year-old Sheik Saleh al-Lihedan said Thursday that satellite channels cause the "deviance of thousands of people." ...

Al-Lihedan is chief of the kingdom's highest tribunal, the Supreme Judiciary Council. Saudi Arabia's judiciary is made up of Islamic clerics whose decrees, or fatwas, on everyday issues are widely respected. Their fatwas do not have the weight of law. In the courts, cleric-judges rule according to Islamic law, but interpretations can vary...

Well, al-Lihedan lightened up a bit later, saying that you should only kill the purveyors of "black magic and sorcery" television, which is probably part of HGTV:

“Sorcerers who appear on satellite channels who are proven to be sorcerers have committed a great crime ... and the Muslim consensus is that the apostate’s punishment is death by the sword,” Sheikh Fozan told Al Madina newspaper. “Those who call in to these shows should not be accorded Muslim rites when they die.”

I promise I'll try to get some sorcery in next season's SHOOTING GALLERY...maybe I could just start with crossbows and some black candles...a bit of stage blood...Angelina Jolie...

b-HO's New HO's!

Lay down with pigs, the saying goes, and you're likely to wake up dirty. So why are we not surprised that the American Hunters and Shooters Association, best known for being much beloved of Sarah Brady, is endorsing b-HO in the hopes that the gun culture is as stupid as Barack Obama thinks we are. This from New Hampshire today:

Barack Obama's campaign is airing a new radio ad in New Hampshire that focuses on Obama's stance on the Second Amendment and the economy.

The ad features Ray Schoenke, a former Washington Redskins player and current president of the American Hunters and Shooters Association.

"It's important to me that our next president protects our Second Amendment rights to own guns and defend ourselves," Schoenke says in the ad. "Barack Obama and John McCain will both make sure we can keep our guns. But what about keeping our jobs? Barack's got a real plan that invests in creating jobs here at home and cuts taxes a thousand bucks for working families."

Schoenke then criticized McCain's economic policies.

"It's the same old Bush playbook," he says. "When the coach loses eight years in a row, you don't bring him back for a ninth season! We just can't afford more of the same."

AHSA is, of course, a thinly veiled antigun organization that has endorsed Obama already...look it up; their antigunj credentials are all over the Internet...Schoenke himself is, of course, simply pathetic.

The Airport Nacho Chronicles

You know, there should probably be some sort of caveat on Blogger about blogging after airport nachos — in this case, the Phoenix airport, but, hey, they do all run together. It is Monday and, in fact, a scary Monday if you're of the financial analyst persuasion. I used to live right off Wall Street in NYC (across the street from the South Tower of the World Trade Center, as a matter of fact), so I suspect you can right now feel the angst in my old building.

As you know, I'm more-or-less paranoid, so it probably won't surprise you that I'll be bumping up my awareness level while the U.S. economy is smacking the rocks. Here's the quickie rationale...any period of social tension, for lack of a better word, puts additional stress on the ole social fiber...bad karma can roll forth like hot molasses over biscuits and just about as fast. So I want to be paying a bit more attention to things going on around me, what's up in the ole home turf, for example. A word to the wise...

BTW, since we're sort of on the subject, I wanted to recommend the sanest preparedness book I've ever read, Cody Lundin's WHEN ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE. Lunden's not nearly as reflexively paranoid as I am, but this book may be the best overall text I've ever read on the subject...and it's funny, too...hard trick to pull off! Lunden's a wilderness survivial instructor, and he walks the talk, which is rare. I learned a bunch of stuff I didn't know, and that's the measure of any book for me. Go buy it before Hurricane Whatever turns your back yard into a waterpark.

On gunstuff, I too am a little worried about NSSF's 20/20 Task Force...according to their own study, hunting and shooting are at this point equal partners in terms of market size...I would much rather have seen a Task Force splt down the middle between hunting and shooting folk. Yet of the 26 members on the task force, only four (five, if you include the NRA) come from the sport shooting side of the equation.

I'm sorting through the NSSF report's action items to choose my 10 most important, as per my marching orders. Once I get them sorted out, I'll post them on the blog. Unfortunately, a lot of the action items when you start burrowing into them fall under the heading of "Encourage the Weather not to Rain on Weekends," no doubt a good idea but hardly the basis for intelligent planning.

And speaking of intelligent planning, check out MD Arms 20-round drums for the 12-gauge Saiga shotguns.

It's enough to make you buy a Saiga, which seem to be getting more and more popular among 3-Gun shooters. Sign up to get on their mailing list if you want one!

Sunday Sunday...

...here in the waning days of summer at the Secret Hidden Bunker...the trees are starting to color...sight, I'm pretty much not ready for snow yet.

On the plus side, got my Ruger #1 in 450/400 3-inch Nitro Express yesterday...we're going to be using it for the Vintagers Cup stalking rifle competition. It's a beauty...gives one an urge to don the ole pith helmet and head to the Dark Continent...is that California? LOL! The only ammo available are Hornady's hunting rounds, so they're thumpers. I have shot a bunch of rounds through a #1 in 450, so it's not impossible...does leave a mark, though.

I'm now completely recovered from the computer crash...my main beast has been repaired without loss of data and I'm cloned all over the place. I upgraded my Mac's operating system without disaster, and my main calendar (which is now safely protected on the Internet, among other places) is perking along. I'm also very pleased with my new iPhone, which replaced my ailing Samsung flip phone that was dangerously close to death (for example, you had to shake it to get it to work). I chose the iPhone since all my calendars and contacts can sync off my Internet mail account, and on short trips I'll leave my laptop at home...maybe. I've got to set up Internet mail blogging for the Michael Bane Blog, since the iPhone isn't really a blogging machine.

I note that Sig Sauer is running a whole bunch of specials until the end of November, including a $99 Sig white light/laser ($270 MSRP) with the purchas eon any "classic line" Sig...if you've been thinking of a 226 like the one next to my bed, now might be a good time to suck it up.

The Psychology of Anti-gunners...

Interesting peak into the heads of the people on the other side of the Great Divide...and, indeed, it's a nasty rat's nest of seething repressed violence and unacknowledged victimhood. There's also an interesting take on communication with antigun people:

Communicating with anti-gun people

How can you communicate more effectively with an anti-gun person who is using unhealthy defense mechanisms? There are no quick and easy answers. But there are a few things you should keep in mind.

Anger and attacks do not work

Most gun owners, when confronted by an anti-gun person, become angry and hostile. This is understandable, because gun owners increasingly face ridicule, persecution and discrimination. (If you don't believe this, ask yourself if anyone would seriously introduce legislation to ban African- Americans, women, or Jews from post offices, schools, and churches. Even convicted felons aren't banned from such places - but peaceful armed citizens are!) But an angry response is counterproductive.

It's not helpful to attack the person you're trying to persuade. Anything that makes him feel more fearful or angry will only intensify his defenses. Your goal is to help the person feel safe, and then to provide experiences and information that will help him to make informed decisions.

Be Gentle

You should never try to break down a defense mechanism by force. Remember that defense mechanisms protect people from feelings they cannot handle, and if you take that protection away, you can cause serious psychological harm. And because defense mechanisms operate unconsciously, it won't do any good to show an anti-gun person this article or to point out that he's using defense mechanisms. Your goal is gently and gradually to help the person to have a more realistic and rational view of the world. This cannot be done in one hour or one day.

As you reach out to people in this way, you need to deal with both the illogical thought processes involved and the emotional reactions that anti-gun people have to firearms. When dealing with illogical thought processes, you are attempting to use reason and logic to convince the anti-gun person that his perception of other people and his perception of firearms are seriously inaccurate. The goal is to help him to understand that armed citizens and firearms are not threats, and may even save his life.

Reversing Irrational thoughts

The Mirror Technique

One approach that can be helpful is simply to feed back what the anti-gun person is telling you, in a neutral, inquisitive way. So, when replying to my anonymous e-mail correspondent (above), I might respond, "So you fear if your neighbors had guns, they would use them to murder you. What makes you think that?" When you simply repeat what the person has said, and ask questions, you are not directly challenging his defenses. You are holding up a mirror to let him see his own views. If he has very strong defenses, he can continue to insist that his neighbors want to murder him. However, if his defenses are less rigid, he may start to question his position.

Another example might be, "Why do you think that your children's schoolteachers would shoot them?" You might follow this up with something like, "Why do you entrust your precious children to someone you believe would murder them?" Again, you are merely asking questions, and not directly attacking the person or his defenses.

Of course the anti-gun person might continue to insist that the teachers really would harm children, but prohibiting them from owning guns would prevent it. So you might ask how using a gun to murder innocent children is different from stabbing children with scissors, assaulting them with baseball bats, or poisoning the milk and cookies.

It's important to ask "open-ended" questions that require a response other than "yes" or "no". Such questions require the anti-gun person actually to think about what he is saying. This will help him to re-examine his beliefs. It may also encourage him to ask you questions about firearms use and ownership.

The "What Would You Do?" Technique

Once you have a dialogue going with an anti-gun person, you might want to insert him into a hypothetical scenario, although doing so is a greater threat to his defenses, and is therefore more risky. You might ask how he would deal with a difficult or annoying co-worker. He will likely respond that he would never resort to violence, but "other people" would, especially if they had guns. (Projection again.) You can then ask him who these "other people" are, why they would shoot a co-worker, and what the shooter would gain by doing so.

Don't try to "win" the argument. Don't try to embarrass the person you're trying to educate. Remember that no one likes to admit that his deeply held beliefs are wrong. No one likes to hear "I told you so!" Be patient and gentle. If you are arrogant, condescending, hurtful or rude to the anti-gun person, you will only convince him that gun owners are arrogant, hurtful people - who should not be trusted with guns!

There's more...read the whole thing...yes, there will be a test!

Michael B Catch-Up

Lots of things going on that I wanted to give you all heads-ups on (gee..is that an awkward construction or what?).

First, I have been added at the last possible minute to the National Shooting Sports Foundation's Shooting Sports Task Force. There was some resistance to having me on this Task Force...I suppose the "troublemaker" moniker will follow me forever, as well it should...I do, however, represent Outdoor Channel, so in the end it was hard to keep me off.

Frankly, I'm a little concerned that not one single handgun company is on the Task Force, a significant concern since the original NSSF study was biased badly against handguns and the handgun sports. Luckily, USPSA is on the Task Force, and them and I are on the same page. I will keep you informed on the goings-on!

I'll be heading to D.C. Monday for the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation annual banquet. I'm hoping I can get in a couple of hours on Tuesday morning over at the NRA, where we've got bit stuff to discuss — the overhauling of the Bianchi Cup for 2009, for instance. I'll be wearing a suit, so I'll take a picture for the archives...

I pick up my Ruger #1 450/400 3-inch Nitro today...my FFL guy, Grant, left me a message that read, "Your artillery piece is here." I'm stoked...darn thing costs like a .50 BMG to shoot! Hornady has the ammo.

BTW, speaking of ammo, I hear Federal is cooking up a special .410 buckshot cartridge specifically for the Taurus Judge .45 Colt/.410 revolver. It's supposed to really rock...let you know when I can lay my hands on some. Ought to be perfect for my weird Bond derringer as well.

We're thinking of making the Whittington Center the home base for both SHOOTING GALLERY and COWBOYS, filming maybe 4 shows per series a season there...in effect, we've been doing that with SG, so I thought I might formalize the situation.

Spent last night imbibing adult beverages at the hotel in California with Brother Michael Wadell, Jim Zumbo, the lovely Aurelia Riley from The Catch and Cameron Hanes from the Elk Chronicles. There was the usual little moaning about the road, but mostly we talked about how very lucky we are to be able to do this and even get paid.

Gotta get in the wind!

Check out the DRTV coverage of the USPSA Nationals in Tulsa, too! Great job, Marshal and Paul Erhardt!