February 2007 – Page 2 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Over at HuffPo…

…they pick up the Zumbo story.Â Not really that postworthy in itself, but check out the comments.Â I have to wonder, is there’s any other group of people the left looks down upon more than shooters?Â Even the religious right doesn’t seem to draw this kind of vitriol.

It’s pretty clear to me that the left fails to understand guns or the gun culture, because they are wholly ignorant on the subject.Â I’ll extend an open offer to any left thinking people who come across this to introduce them to shooting, or offer some respectful dialog, either in the comments, or through other means, if you’d like to be better informed about these issues.

A Reminder to Maryland Blog Readers

Tommorrow is the day the state wide assault weapons ban, Senate Bill 43, will be heard before the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee.Â If you can, it’s important to show up in Annapolis to make your voice heard.Â I don’t think I need to tell you all how important it is to stop this, and not just for folks in Maryland.

Since when is it extreme …

… to believe the government ought to respect the Bill of Rights? That’s what I’d really like to know from all the people tossing around accusations that we ruined Jim Zumbo because he deviated from the NRA orthodoxy.

And as someone who could be regarded as “liberal” on more than a few issues, and who’s vote is generally up for grabs for either party, how do the Democrat types expect me to identify with them when they like to argue that it’s extreme to shout down those who would disparage the Constitution, or give ammunition to those intent on doing so?

Again, the Zumbo thing wasn’t because he argued that “assault weapons” were a bad choice for hunting. I think most of us would have been happy to debate him on that point without trying to shout him down. The issue was that he said things the anti-gunners would happily latch onto and make sure policy makers knew that “even the top outdoor writer thinks these guns have no sporting use and should be banned”.

On a personal level, I feel bad for what happened to Jim. I do hope that Jim will work with us in the future, and that we can welcome him back into the community of shooters. But I don’t apologize for what happened to him. What he said was so potentially damaging to our community that we had to react, and react strongly. I don’t mess around when it comes to the Bill of Rights, and I would have hoped that was something we all could agree on. Maybe not.

When Hunters Attack

Anyone else noticed the large number of comments from hunters on our blogs defending Jim Zumbo, while at the same time being rather derogatory toward our community? I can’t blame them for being a little angry given how some in our community have been behaving, but a lot of them seem to be pretty ill informed about the issues. So I have a message for them.

A Message To Hunters

We’re not pissed off at Jim Zumbo because we think hunting with “assault weapons” is great (though, if someone wants to, I don’t see what the issue is, if the game is appropriately small for those calibers). We’re pissed off at Jim Zumbo because he a) called our rifles “terrorist rifles” (the anti-gun folks will love to use that one), and that he suggested they be banned from the prairies (another great gem for the anti-gunners). It’s not so much we’re pissed off about the insult, though that is part of it, it’s that this gives a tremendous boost to the anti-gun organization who want to ban scary looking rifles.

Hunting is already in decline, and if you think the image of a guy chasing after a deer with an AK-47 might not be the best image for hunting, I think you’re entitled to that opinion, and I can see your point. But poor image is not the most serious problem for the hunting culture. The declining number of people who participate in the sport is, and that has more to do with fundamental demographic issues than image. But one sure way to make hunting go into a population free fall is for the anti-gunners to end up back on the offensive.

Oh sure, they claim they aren’t coming after your hunting rifle, but if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. Take a look at two states that the anti-gunners hold up as their examples of states that have gun laws closer to what they would like: Massachusetts and New Jersey. There are others, but these are states I know. Ask anyone in these two states how healthy their hunting culture is. Ask them how they like spending hundreds of dollars on the licensing that’s required to own a gun, even an air gun (in the case of NJ). Ask them how much they like having to ask the police permission to possess, or continue to possess, their deer rifle or duck gun. In Massachusetts, let a cartridge slip out of your case after a weekend of hunting, your wife takes the car the next day and doesn’t have the appropriate licenses, gets into an accident, and the police discover the round: say goodbye to your wife for a year. She’s now a felon, and there’s a one year mandatory minimum in Massachusetts for even very minor violations of their insane gun laws.

The anti-gun folks aren’t done in either of these states by far. So don’t believe them when they tell you they just want reasonable gun laws and are concerned about violence. That’s what they tell you to buy your acquiescence.

What happened in these two states, and others, is the future that the anti-gunners want to bring to hunting. If you hunters are OK with that, well, don’t cry to hard when most of your fellow hunters decide it’s not worth the hassle, and groups like the Humane Society of the USA and PETA get the political clout to ban hunting. Don’t think it would ever happen? Ask hunters in New Jersey how well their bear hunt went this year. They will ask, “What bear hunt?” Governor Corzine, under political pressure, stopped the bear hunt, despite a burgeoning bear population in The Garden State, and successful and safe hunts happening in previous years.

Understand one thing, hunters, we black rifle shooters are willing to stand with you on these hunting issues, because we recognize that hunters are a part of our community, and we need every man we can get. We understand giving even an inch of ground to the anti-gun and anti-hunting people is an inch closer toward prohibition on each of our respective sports. I’m sorry so many in the black rifle community are so angry that they are insulting hunting and hunters. It’s time for both sides to calm down and start figuring out how to work together.

Mystery MySpace Blogger Surfaced

From the comments:

Hi.

Long distance murder rifles? Ban .22s and shotguns for the children?

That was me.

I settled on this board by the complicated algorithm of flipping some coins. Now that the Brady Campaign has gotten myspace to return the /bradycampaign blog to their ownership, thereâ€™s no reason for me to not come out with what I have to say, and I have a lot to say.

For example, the amount of messages and comments I got stunned me. Thousands apon thousands. The blog itself was getting 10,000+ views every day. (I regret not screenshotting this)

I want to make some comments about how we have to accomplish standing together, â€œfuddsâ€ and EBR owners, as long as you guys want to hear me out. Oh, Iâ€™d have gone to ar15.com since they had 5+ threads about it, but the registration never emailed me. So you guys are stuck with me.

So it would seem Kevin Baker was right all along. It was one of our own. Now I feel kind of bad for screwing up his scheme :)

UPDATE: I didn’t realize my commenter was not the actual MySpace dude. He was quoting a post you can read over here. For future reference, you can quote sections using the <blockquote></blockquote> in the comment area, if you want to make a quote of something else.

Further Thoughts on “Zumboing”

I started a comment in the last thread and decided it would probably be a more effective post. Sailorcurt mentioned in a comment:

I disagree with the big picture conclusion however: the implication that we canâ€™t be more effective if we mobilize on Washington Politics like we did on Zumbo.

I wouldn’t really assert that conclusion. I think Zumboing does make us more effective, but it’s just another tool, and we’re not at the point yet where we can expect that tool to have as much of an impact on Congress as it did on the industry as a whole, for the reasons I pointed out. I will never discourage people from writing their Congress Critters on the gun issue, and I think it’s a good idea to do that often. But the points I was trying to make, sorry if they weren’t clear, were:

We have to continue bringing more people into the RKBA community.
We have to continue traditional forms of political lobbying, and that is going to still represent most of our political muscle in Congress.
We can’t count on Zumboing tactics to have the same effect on Congress they had on the industry.

But the more I’m thinking about it, the less I think we can talk about Zumboing as if it’s something we have under our control. The community saw an issue and, collectively, decided to go after it. It’s not like we had a leader sitting in an ivory tower, announcing “Smithers, release the hounds!”. I’m not sure that would even be desirable. When the next big thing comes down the pike, we’ll know, and will spontaneously organize.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing at all, or that we shouldn’t do it. Just that we shouldn’t expect too much of it, and figure that other forms of activism (I hate that word) we’ve traditionally used are now less important, because this form will be effective.

Zumboing Politics

I want to talk about another meme moving around in the gun blogosphere that goes something like this: “Wow, look at what we managed to do to Jim Zumbo! If we only applied that kind of pressure to Congress, we’d be buying MP5s from Wal-Mart in no time!”. Oh, how I wish that were true. But it’s not.

What we have done with the Zumbo thing is demonstrate that shooters, particular we evil black rifle shooters, are now a force to be reckoned with within the shooting community. When we talk, the industry listens. This makes sense for them, because we constitute one of the growth markets for the industry. We’re buying more rifles, we’re buying more ammunition, and we’re active politically. They can’t afford to piss us off, so it’s no surprise they dumped Zumbo like a hot potato when we started to squeeze them.

That doesn’t translate into political power outside of the community. Jim Zumbo was one man, and the number of players in this industry are few, and they depend on us. Once you’re talking Congress, you’re talking 435 memebers of The House and 100 members in The Senate. Now you’ve gone from a handful of people you have to infleunce, to 535 people. And those 535 people have hundreds of other interests they listen to, and can count on for votes and money. In short, we can rule our little estuary, but that’s not to say we’re the big fish once we swim into the sea.

The new voice we’ve found as a community with the whole Jim Zumbo thing is great, and useful. It will come in handy the next time we have a big political fight on our hands. But we still need to reach out to more people who might not be as involved or as informed as we are about these issues, and will still have to play the dirty game of politics as we have been. What I don’t want to see happen is people thinking, because we managed to destroy Jim Zumbo’s career, that we can just make demands on politicians and get our way; we can’t.

We’re still just another interest group, a powerful one, no doubt, but there’s still a lot of work to do. Zumboing will be another political tool in our arsenal, but we will have to be careful about how we use that tool. Using it in the wrong place or the wrong time could wear it out, and ruin it’s political effectiveness. So my advise to everyone out there is that we continue to work hard to bring more people into the issue, and not get too cocky with our new found power.

The Zumbo Defenders

I’m not sure I’d agree with the assertion out there that we’re about to divide into Fudds and Shooters. I’ve seen few people defending Zumbos actual comments, but I think a lot of people lining up in his corner are defending Jim Zumbo the man, more than defending what he said. We do need to be careful not to be seen by the hunting community as sharks that are tasting blood in the water, and are ready to go into a frenzy.

I agree with folks who have pointed out that Jim is “Stuck on Fudd” with his comments that indicate he still only views AR-15s through the lens of their hunting utility. This really shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering Zumbo is a lifelong hunter. Now, don’t get me wrong, I want to see Jim jump back on the second amendment bandwagon and start helping reach out to hunters to make them understand what’s at stake, but you can’t expect the guy to change who he is, and what he loves to do. We should let Jim remain a hunter at heart, because that’s what he is. He’s never going to become one of us, in all liklihood. All we should ask of him is that he get on board with defending gun rights, all guns rights, period. If he wants to not like AR-15s because he doesn’t like to hunt with them, fine.

The reason it’s important, is because the majory of hunters that Jim can reach have absolutely no idea what went on this past weekend. Unless Outdoor Life runs a summary piece of the incident, you’ll have hundreds of thousands of hunters out there who will get subsequent issues and think “What ever happened to ol’ Jim Zumbo? I really used to love reading his great hunting articles.” It’s those people that we need to reach. Jim would be a good vehicle for that if he can be educated. But we must be patient an tolerant in that process. My vote is let The Nuge work his magic, and we’ll see where it goes from there.

Brady MySpace Blog Altered

Interesting. The MySpace page seems to have been altered, with different content being substituted streamed right from the Bradys:

Which means, that both the MySpace page is pulling content from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownershipâ€™s main page, and the Brady Bunch is letting them (note the xshare/myspace/ subdirectory)

Possibilities are that the Brady Campaign managed to get MySpace to turn the blog over to them, which is Standard Mischeif’s theory (I agree), and they removed the content, or they convinced the person running it to remove the stuff, and accept their stream. Or they really did run the site and were a bit paniced when we caught them ;)

I think the Bradys were telling the truth about the blog not being associated with them, and got the blog turned over. It was using their trademarks, so they do have a legal leg to stand on if they demanded that.

Panic Buying

Some of the google search words coming in are interesting. One thing GoStats does that Sitemeter doesn’t is keep a record of which phrases bring people in on an ongoing basis. One of my top searches is:

“panic gun buying because of democratic congress”

I have some suggestions if that’s what you’re coming around looking for:

Springfield M1A – Not a great panic buy, because it’s never had a pistol group, but still is named in most bans. I don’t have one, but should.

Barrett M82A1 – This rifle makes the anti-gunners weep, and they definitely want to ban it. If you can afford over 10 grand for one of these babies with some decent optics attached, go for it. I want one of these, but I also need a house.

FN Five-seven – Good for people who like pistols that might be banned.

SIG 556 – Like a Swiss watch, that goes bang. Extra scary looking to Congressional Democrats.

Arsenal SLR-108 Kalashnikov – Great panic buy! Nothing pisses of anti-gun folks quite like the idea of someone being able to buy and shoot an AK. Arsenal AKs are pretty decent. I have one myself. I recommend.

FN PS90 – Personal Defense Weapon. Fires the same round as the FN Five-seven. Hasn’t been in production long. Definitely scary looking. Good post-ban value if you ever have to sell it. SBR version available if you want to do the NFA thing. (I would, the 16″ version is fugly)

Robinson Arms XCR – Choose form three calibers. Easy switching of calibers. Extra scary looking to gun banners. Adjustable gas system. May be my panic purchase :)

So there you have it panic buyers! Nothing pissess off Carolyn McCarthy more than stocking up on your favorite black rifle, so spend away.